Materials and rewards of general gameplay

[Suojelusp3rkele]

Couldn't think of a better title, I've been tossing some ideas in my head for quite a while now and I really want to share the feedback with the community.

This post is mostly about the general rewards, materials and grind of the game. The game has gone quite a distance ever since I've started playing, and generally the direction is good but some things I just feel are really neglected and should be looked at.

I'm mostly going to talk about some mission types and rewards that should be looked at to make the gameplay more rewarding without being too greedy. Missions that exist for one purpose and what feel somewhat unrewarding.

Derelict

Currently derelict serves quite little of purpose. People mostly go to derelict to farm for corrupted mods or mutagen, but after getting them there's no really a reason to go there. Before relic rework derelict was a spot where you could grind for specific prime parts, but after the rework derelict lost that functionality.

The derelict key requirement should be removed from derelict and thus derelict could be opened up for fissure missions and kuva missions. This way people could go to derelict for 'regular' content and the tileset wouldn't feel as useless as it is now. It's really cool tileset and it's a shame you only see it rarely in sorties. Additionally it would allow people to get mutagen somewhat regularly by just playing fissures/kuva missions.

This change would also change how the whole hema cost and mutagen farming would be. Currently mutagen only drops from derelict and eris. The drop chances from derelict are much better than in Eris, thus derelict is the only reasonable spot for mutagen farming, but you need to either go solo or ask recruiting chat for groups, which is something new players don't often do. And since you can now equip all four keys on yourself this shouldn't affect the corrupted mod farming business too much. If you want to efficiently farm them you'd still go to recruit chat, or you'd equip the keys on yourself and go for public groups.

Sorties, SO/ESO
One thing I really like about arbitrations is the vitus essence. DE should really look forward to the sortie token reward system that was talked about at some point. Nowadays people just rush through sorties and often get disappointed by the RNG rewards. Occasional rifle riven or legendary core is what makes people go *happy noises*, but due to the RNG nature of the rewards some people just ignore sorties because it doesn't feel rewarding enough.

One way to go with sorties could be some kind of mashup of arbitration rewards where the missions itself would give you reward (in addition of the credits), like RNG of endo/creds/kuva/whatever and the final mission would give you sortie coin or something like that. The coins could then be traded for items from vendor stock.

From economic point of view I guess this alone wouldn't be enough because with current system despite the RNG there's always more rivens of all types going on to market. If the system was turned into coin based system people would likely go for shotgun/rifle rivens and melee/pistol ones would become less common in trade chat. Not exactly sure how this should be adjusted to keep pistol/melee rivens coming into market. Potentially it'd be good thing for melee/pistol rivens because then they'd be potentially worth more. Maybe less cost for pistol/melee rivens?

I'm also mentioning SO/ESO. Regular SO could stay as is, as it's mostly just training version of ESO. For ESO I'm a bit on the edge, but just tossing idea anyway.
Currently after you get maxed focus schools/braton/lato vandal parts and the ephemera you'd only go for the ESO for the radiant relics. It's neat way to get bunch of radiant relics, but I'm just pondering if ESO could feel more worth it if you'd also get some ESO tokens by doing it. Basically these would be like the vitus is from arbitrations. More common than sortie coins, but you'd need more to buy things X/Y/Z from vendor.

Economically DE could adjust things by deciding what items would be on which vendor tables. Like ESO coins couldn't be used to buy primary rivens since you could technically farm ESO endlessly, but you'd be able to grind out pistol/melee rivens from that which could potentially balance out how rivens pour into the market. Can't really elaborate much on the costs and economy changes since I'm not the best guy at things like that.

 

Materials

Ever since I started my clan I've been constantly having issues with plastids. Plastids are used by most decorations in dojos, but currently plastids drop from Uranus, Eris, Pluto, Phobos and Saturn. It sounds like much, but due to the costs of decorations etc. and the way how plastid drops are spread through the star chart it seems like you don't get that much of it by playing without grind. There are some good spots that do drop plastids (Assur, Hieracon, Helene), but the costs are just way too high considering the amounts that drop per kill. (Polymer is 40 to 80 per drop, plastids 10-30)

Either by upping the per drop amounts (30-50?) or by adding plastids to locations like derelict/kuva fortress/void/lua/somewhere DE wouldn't need to go around adjusting the actual costs of dojo decorations.

Personally I'd really hope that kuva fortress was turned into a plastid dropping spot. That way kuva farming would provide plastids as well which would serve as extra reward while farming kuva.

Recurring events, operational supply and the mishmash of rewards

I'm mentioning these as well. Some of these are good purely because of the rewards (Acolytes, Plague star), despite being one trick pony farms. DE should really expand on the operational supply system to make thermia fractures, ghoul event, balor fomorian and razorback armada more worth it for veterans and new players as well. Like something that actually makes people want to play during these events. Also to unify the whole event system to make more sense for new players.

Currently each event sounds like they are offering very different rewards and  systems. Thermia has the reward track appearing on your navigation console. Plague star has operational supply. Razorback and fomorian are just one mission with rewards that come from the drop table of the boss. Ghouls provide.. Cetus standing and regular bounty rewards? And thermia provides diluted thermia based on performance while providing double resources after certain time.

The event reward systems should be unified to use the operational supply system. The standing could be the same for every recurring event but the vendor reward tables could differ depending on the ongoing event.

Additionally they should put these events on timers. Ghouls and thermia seem to re-occurr on set time intervals, while razorback and fomorian have their own most likely fake timers. Acolytes and plague star seem to happen whenever DE remembers to re-activate the event after certain time.

As the game keeps going the older events become less meaningful due to the weird reward systems. Plague star is something people always want to do because of the forma. People don't bother doing ghouls because it offers no sensible rewards.


Some random thoughts and general ideas

Quite random thoughts on post this far, but generally what I'm really hoping from DE for future is that instead of providing new one trick pony farms they'd always offer more reasons to farm for thing X in spot Y than just getting that one new shiny thing from RNG drop table.

ESO does have radiant relics and focus, but due to the lack of any materials, and the fact that after you've maxed focus it's back to one trick pony farm. Kuva farming does provide drops and materials, but there aren't really any rare mods or good material drops from kuva fortress, but kuva itself is something that could be added to generally any special vendor stock as well(Arby, NW cred, Sortie coin, ESO token etc.)

There are some really good spots in the game, I'm not denying that. Like places which people like to go for (Saturn - Helene, Hieracon, few others like that) because they have more than one thing you'd want. Hieracon has relics, cryotic and plastids. That's already three quite useful things. Helene drops orokin cells, plastids and is generally used as 'easier' affinity farming spot.

People often go for those specific farm spots which only contain one useful thing, which is when people keep saying that the grind is awful. If you combine more grinds into one it starts to feel more rewarding, and that's what I'm hoping DE addresses at some point.

 

Edited October 5, 2019 by Suojelusp3rkele