Sorties - The most boring yet most rewarding mode

[adek183]

Sorties are pretty much the only thing that provides a lot of incentive to complete them. Rivens, boosters, exclusive ayatan sculpture, endo, kuva and a freaking legendary core. Yet people don't wanna play it because it's so damn boring... Why? Because it's pretty much vanilla starchart missions set with a single difficulty modifier from which only "energy reduction" and "Augmented with corrosive / viral / slash damage" are actually dangerous. I never understood why it's possible to earn rewards only once a day either it just feels like the game devs don't want you to play this game mode at all to be honest.

So my question is what's stopping it from being repeatable with rewards besides the irrational fear of swinging "rivens economy" which can't really be worse at the moment? Also why there was no "sortie update" in like forever?

 

Edited October 4, 2019 by adek183

[LSG501]

Not sure people would lump ayatan and endo into the 'incentives' to complete it lol.

As to legendary core, never seen one, doubt I ever will with a sub 1% drop chance.

There is already an issue with sorties for some players... they've hit their riven cap and can't do sorties because of it.

[Miyabi-sama]

13 минут назад, adek183 сказал:

freaking legendary core

How much did you got tho?

14 минут назад, adek183 сказал:

So my question is what's stopping it from being repeatable with rewards besides the irrational fear of swinging "rivens economy" which can't really be worse at the moment?

Rational fear of people nolifing that for their sweet Rubico riven.

[Cyclouros]

1 minute ago, LSG501 said:

Not sure people would lump ayatan and endo into the 'incentives' to complete it lol.

 

My wall of anasans considers it an incentive very much

[adek183]

2 minutes ago, Miyabi-sama said:

How much did you got tho?

Rational fear of people nolifing that for their sweet Rubico riven.

If somebody wants to nolife for a mod he will do it anyway. Either by farming plat and buying it or by dealing with RNG so that's not a good reason.

[NekroArts]

18 minutes ago, adek183 said:

So my question is what's stopping it from being repeatable with rewards besides the irrational fear of swinging "rivens economy" 

• Free 3-day boosters (9.81%)
• Orokinn Catalyst/Reactor (2.5%)
• Anasa/Endo ("new" players) (28% / 12.1%)

Even with a low reward chance, we can finish them relatively quickly to the point that these numbers won't phase us. 3-day boosters is a big thing that can sky rocket progress and Catalyst/Reactor makes up a good part getting stronger.

[adek183]

Just now, NekroArts said:

• Free 3-day boosters (9.81%)
• Orokinn Catalyst/Reactor (2.5%)
• Anasa/Endo ("new" players) (28% / 12.1%)

Even with a low reward chance, we can finish them relatively quickly to the point that these numbers won't phase us. 3-day boosters is a big thing that can sky rocket progress and Catalyst/Reactor makes up a good part getting stronger.

Then tell me what stops you from selling 10 prime parts as "junk" and getting the very reactor off the market? (Besides the daily trade limit) You can also "farm" plat for the booster indefinitely. For statues to be effective you need to farm up the stars and boosters aren't really as big of a deal as you think because you still need to play the game to make use of it.

[NekroArts]

1 minute ago, adek183 said:

Then tell me what stops you from selling 10 prime parts as "junk" and getting the very reactor off the market? (Besides the daily trade limit) You can also "farm" plat for the booster indefinitely.

If there's ever a better option to not use plat, players will take it so it  can be use to buy expensive Rivens.

4 minutes ago, adek183 said:

 For statues to be effective you need to farm up the stars

Speed at which we can complete Sortie, 28% reward chance, and 2,000 endo at base; I'm confident enough to say that using stars will be a bonus.

[FrostDragoon]

I think the real issue with Sorties is just the boredom factor. Instead of 3 missions, one after the other, with lame modifiers most of the time (although I definitely LOVE eximus stronghold), make it slightly more interesting. Set it to level 100, pick 2 non-endless modes to be the first two "phases" of the mission, and end it with a random bossfight.

For example, one day might be to go in, hit a capture target who drops a data mass that you have to use to hack into the boss room (Mobile D), and the boss you happen to find this time is Kela.

Another mission would have you do Spy caches (maybe without setting off alarms, if you want a challenge), then wipe out all the enemies before Vay Hek descends upon you.

I'm kind of spit-balling here, but I think you get the idea.

[(PSN)PanserKunst]

My issue with sorties are spy missions that are too dependent on other players that don't realize they can't use cyphers. I'd solo them, but that takes too long. So If I see a sortie queue with spy / rescue I think twice before getting involved. Getting tired of Ayatans, mainly because they require two Amber Stars and their drop rate is crap. Last riven was for a kitgun... (doesn't interest me.) It's been a real dry spell for sorties (personally.)

[(PSN)PanserKunst]

1 hour ago, FrostDragoon said:

(I definitely LOVE eximus stronghold)

Here, Here.

Extremely satisfying If it's the last mission doing defense (especially on Lua > Tycho) 

[Educated_Beast]

Are you upset about the awards?  I think it is a great showcase of the games gameplay.  I do not play near as much as used to due to RL commitments, so jumping on for an hour to do a few quick missions that actually give good rewards is something I enjoy.  

Arbitrations take to long, to much time in one mission. Although this has really gotten better recently to.  

Sorry, but I don't see a problem here.

[(XBOX)Erudite Prime]

If you think that the game is so boring, you don't need to play it.  

[adek183]

Just now, (XB1)Erudite Prime said:

If you think that the game is so boring, you don't need to play it.  

If you think this argument is still effective in 2019, you're wrong.

On 2019-10-04 at 11:07 PM, FrostDragoon said:

I think the real issue with Sorties is just the boredom factor. Instead of 3 missions, one after the other, with lame modifiers most of the time (although I definitely LOVE eximus stronghold), make it slightly more interesting. Set it to level 100, pick 2 non-endless modes to be the first two "phases" of the mission, and end it with a random bossfight.

For example, one day might be to go in, hit a capture target who drops a data mass that you have to use to hack into the boss room (Mobile D), and the boss you happen to find this time is Kela.

Another mission would have you do Spy caches (maybe without setting off alarms, if you want a challenge), then wipe out all the enemies before Vay Hek descends upon you.

I'm kind of spit-balling here, but I think you get the idea.

You have a good point. Instead of making a chain of 3 missions we should have one "big" and higher level mission. Like it used to be with raids.

[Teridax68]

My suggested smaller-scope changes to Sorties:

• Instead of a single modifier to each mission, add an extra modifier to each tier, so that Mission 1 has one modifier, Mission 2 has two modifiers, and so on.
• Add all Nightmare Mode modifiers to the pool, and then prune all the ones that are more frustrating than interesting, namely the weapon restrictions.

A larger-scope suggestion I'd propose would be to uncap the amount of Sortie missions per day, and instead allow players to run a technically infinite number of Sortie missions per day, with each subsequent one having increasingly more modifiers and higher enemy levels, as per the above. In addition, this should involve reworking the Sortie drop table, so that instead of giving a fixed reward at the third mission, the player should be given a reward on the following day, scaled to the number of Sortie missions they successfully completed. Alternatively, tie Sorties to a character or syndicate, and give the players a scaling number of currency they could spend at the relevant shop to obtain the reward of their choice, which should include the current drops: a simple change, for example, could be to have Sorties provide a scaled number of evergreen Nora Night credits, while adding Anasa sculptures, Riven mods, and Kuva as permanent options in her store.

Meanwhile, Legendary Cores should probably still remain a random drop, but the chance of obtaining them should increase with every subsequent Sortie mission the player completes. Ideally, this should give veterans something to repeatedly sink their teeth into, if only for bragging rights, without pressuring anyone else to do the same if they don't want to grind too much.

Edited October 6, 2019 by Teridax68

[MJ12]

On 2019-10-06 at 1:16 PM, Teridax68 said:

My suggested smaller-scope changes to Sorties:

• Instead of a single modifier to each mission, add an extra modifier to each tier, so that Mission 1 has one modifier, Mission 2 has two modifiers, and so on.
• Add all Nightmare Mode modifiers to the pool, and then prune all the ones that are more frustrating than interesting, namely the weapon restrictions.

A larger-scope suggestion I'd propose would be to uncap the amount of Sortie missions per day, and instead allow players to run a technically infinite number of Sortie missions per day, with each subsequent one having increasingly more modifiers and higher enemy levels, as per the above. In addition, this should involve reworking the Sortie drop table, so that instead of giving a fixed reward at the third mission, the player should be given a reward on the following day, scaled to the number of Sortie missions they successfully completed. Alternatively, tie Sorties to a character or syndicate, and give the players a scaling number of currency they could spend at the relevant shop to obtain the reward of their choice, which should include the current drops: a simple change, for example, could be to have Sorties provide a scaled number of evergreen Nora Night credits, while adding Anasa sculptures, Riven mods, and Kuva as permanent options in her store.

Meanwhile, Legendary Cores should probably still remain a random drop, but the chance of obtaining them should increase with every subsequent Sortie mission the player completes. Ideally, this should give veterans something to repeatedly sink their teeth into, if only for bragging rights, without pressuring anyone else to do the same if they don't want to grind too much.

I can see why you'd suggest that but the concern I have is that this is likely to lead to Sortie elitism and that kind of elitism is what breeds toxicity in games.

One of the reasons Warframe is actually extremely chill by basically any videogame's standard is because the difficulty curve is pretty generous, and you can get the best rewards with even pretty suboptimal kit, it just means it takes a bit longer and you see more loading screens for the absolute top percent of items locked behind 'difficult' content. So you'd have to be careful here to make sure that the rewards for greater skill-based achievement are large enough to encourage players to keep going and testing themselves, while not being large enough to introduce toxicity by making it so that people get angry at anyone who doesn't play the meta, is bad at the game or is having an off day, or other things that might impact their ability to advance.

[FrostDragoon]

The reason they wouldn't do a mode like that is because they need the p2w rewards to be gated and that 1/day is the gate.

[Avienas]

On 2019-10-04 at 1:50 PM, LSG501 said:

Not sure people would lump ayatan and endo into the 'incentives' to complete it lol.

As to legendary core, never seen one, doubt I ever will with a sub 1% drop chance.

There is already an issue with sorties for some players... they've hit their riven cap and can't do sorties because of it.

In the Earlier days when we did not have so many ways to get Ayatans & Endo, people THIRSTED the crap outta ayatan statues as the main source for loads of endo. But the issue is they never really `modernized` anything about sortie, except maybe long ago when they changed how the reward table worked and made it so you did not have to spam sorties to get the parts to make particular warframes *cough*.

Plus lets be honest, legendary core just needs to fking go, its a troll item that acts as a reminder on how d.e. originally handled modding where you melted other mods and `fusion cores` to rank up mods, meaning it was more often you see people not with a maxed out setup as it is with these days, since farming the dang things was a huge arse chore! 

This is kind of why i just dang say Sorties need to be a weekly thing, not a daily thing and just have a cap of 7 a week so people can blaze thru`m or take their time like with the old system, but for cripes sake: CONVERT THE RNG-SUS into a EFF-ING CURRENCY SYSTEM! Quite literally the majority of the loot becomes absolutely worthless to players in the mid-to-late tier since they are able to be sitting on mountains of the stuff or can just easily acquire 10 to 100 times the amount with just some casual runs in arbitation or kuva round running, it would be better if people could just stock currency and use it to buy what they want, aka just how NIGHTWAVE does things currently. Would certainly put a better PERMANENT position for potatoes, exilus adaptors, even riven mods where they could just keep the riven mod `pack` as a random draw similar to relic packs so people cant just mass stock shotgun rivens with ease still while having it as probably among the more expensive items, likely requiring 3 to 4 sortie runs of currency to get one of them, maybe less if they cram bonus objectives into the sortie missions that would vastly increase how much currency you get in that sortie run.

If the crap between loot-box based systems did not prove a point, people are not a fan of random-ness tacked onto a frustrating system. Its fine when said random-ness happens often and fast (Hello Borderlands 3~), but i tend to find daily repeatables that cannot be `stocked to do another day`, tend to lead to a double standard of frustration, namely being forced to do it every day or miss out a chance at the wheel AND the random`ness to boot even if its only a single pull each day, but you gotta spend 30 minutes or even more to likely get said chance to spin the wheel, not counting changing up loadouts for each mission as necessary.

Edited October 8, 2019 by Avienas

[Teridax68]

6 hours ago, MJ12 said:

I can see why you'd suggest that but the concern I have is that this is likely to lead to Sortie elitism and that kind of elitism is what breeds toxicity in games.

One of the reasons Warframe is actually extremely chill by basically any videogame's standard is because the difficulty curve is pretty generous, and you can get the best rewards with even pretty suboptimal kit, it just means it takes a bit longer and you see more loading screens for the absolute top percent of items locked behind 'difficult' content. So you'd have to be careful here to make sure that the rewards for greater skill-based achievement are large enough to encourage players to keep going and testing themselves, while not being large enough to introduce toxicity by making it so that people get angry at anyone who doesn't play the meta, is bad at the game or is having an off day, or other things that might impact their ability to advance.

Sure, in which case the benchmark to set would be to give players the same rewards as now for completing three missions, and scale the added bonus per mission so that players get slightly less for completing one or two, and incrementally more beyond three. I don't see why this in particular would encourage elitism when it would be far from the only piece of high-level repeatable content with a shop attached, e.g. Arbitrations, nor do I see why this would be perceived as unhealthy when the only thing playing more Sorties would give you would be more currency that everyone else can attain.