Why does Prime Vault exist?

[000Fenix000]

I’m a complete rookie in Warframe so I’ll say now that I haven’t done a lot of research on Prime Vault (so please don’t roast me too much), but what exactly is the purpose of Prime Vault? Like when a Prime frame or Prime accessories gets “vaulted”? Is this DE’s way of making more money when people buy Prime Access? To me it seems like between reaching MR and farming/grinding relics just to get the component blueprints, nothing Prime in the game should or needs to be vaulted.

I’ve spent very little money on this game on slots, skins, etc, so I guess you can call me cheap...but I’d like to be able to farm certain Prime frames without trading for plat or paying lots of money for Prime Access.

So I have to wait for the right period of time of when something is unvaulted in order to acquire it?

[Siegecraft]

7 minutes ago, 000Fenix000 said:

So I have to wait for the right period of time of when something is unvaulted in order to acquire it?

your question this summarizes your answer to the question why prime vault exist . if u want to got another rout u can say it exists so that DE can make money\

and another thing more the prime vault opens fast the value of it decreases

Edited October 17, 2019 by Reakacemrz

[Hawkstormz]

I do agree with you but ill give you the most common argument. The thing is that the drops tables have lots of relics currently in them so keeping more than the current 7 would dillute the drop tables even more. I personaly think you could put specific relics in specific game modes and/or planets also bring back the old keys system as a supplement.

[Neo3602]

In short things get unvaulted periodically and during that time you'll be able to get the relics that have the unvaulted prime parts in them. Once the unvaulting ends you can no longer get the relics from missions, however any relics that people still have don't disappear so it is still possible to get vaulted parts primes from doing  public missions from time to time. Of course the best time to farm vaulted prime items is still when they are unvaluted.

[Talinthis]

with the way this game is setup it would be an utter nightmare to try and farm relics for certain things, it simply was not designed for such a system and vaulting is 100% necessary to prevent the tables from having hundreds of different relics.

[FrackingBiscuit]

A rotating vault was implemented specifically because players felt Prime part drops were becoming so diluted that it was increasingly frustrating to farm new releases. 

Simply put, there is a finite number of places where players can get rewards, and with regular Prime Access releases there are more and more items to fit into those finite drop tables, meaning individual drop rates become smaller and smaller.

When a plant grows too big for its pot, you buy a bigger pot. The problem this plant is growing to grow constantly over its entire lifespan... rather than buying pots so big they don't fit in the house anymore, DE has chosen to prune the plant to keep it from growing so big that it becomes unmanageable.

[Zebiko]

12 minutes ago, 000Fenix000 said:

I’m a complete rookie in Warframe so I’ll say now that I haven’t done a lot of research on Prime Vault (so please don’t roast me too much), but what exactly is the purpose of Prime Vault? Like when a Prime frame or Prime accessories gets “vaulted”? Is this DE’s way of making more money when people buy Prime Access? To me it seems like between reaching MR and farming/grinding relics just to get the component blueprints, nothing Prime in the game should or needs to be vaulted.

I’ve spent very little money on this game on slots, skins, etc, so I guess you can call me cheap...but I’d like to be able to farm certain Prime frames without trading for plat or paying lots of money for Prime Access.

So I have to wait for the right period of time of when something is unvaulted in order to acquire it?

Simple answer: Non-mandatory subscription type model that fits warframe.

Various mmos have perks with their own subscriptions that fits their game. Warframe gives you items instead for grinding them or speeding up the grind. There is also the cosmetic bundle that give 90 days of buffs, which is about $16.66 per month, a little more than a standard subscription price, depending on the game.

The worst offender is black desert online, which have various types of timed buffs that are really helpful in game, secretly just subscriptions. They basically (holy smokes, I can't think of the word that means splitting something up and selling individually for more profit. It's driving me nuts)...

[Chicken-Biryani]

It helps them make money. 🙂

Also helps bring inactive players back. 🙂

Edited October 17, 2019 by --C--Nehra

[trst]

It was both a long-term solution to a growing issue and an additional revenue stream.

The number of primes only increases over time while the number of nodes and mission types can only increase so much. So by vaulting the oldest sets they can make room for new ones.

And unvaulting is essentially the same as putting the frame's original Prime Access (and accessories) up again. Which allows people to buy the bundle and it's exclusives if they previously missed or passed it up.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

To gouge money from new players.

[DarthIronclad]

Mainly to allow people, mostly newer players to get some of the older primes that was vaulted. 

[(PSN)Mono-Pop]

Prime’s getting vaulted is essentially what allows players to trade platinum.

You can pretty much guarantee that vaulted prime’s will sell for a decent price.

That false sense of urgency and scarcity is necessary for maintaining any kind of economy.

[0_The_F00l]

The Reason is multifold. 

It is to ensure players have a means to directly buy prime weapon and frames from DE so they actually make some money (cosmetics are exclusive to PA and vaults) 

The loot tables already have so many relics, if they kept going up indefinitely you would rarely get what you actually want, 

Vaulted relics are usually limited to specific nodes, giving players more reason to play those nodes. 

It also influences market prices and Plat purchases for those that don't want to buy the vault and just trade for its parts. 

[(XBOX)GearsMatrix301]

To not oversaturate the relic drop tables.

[Miser_able]

Multiple reasons really. 

The biggest reason is to prevent the dilution of drop tables. If things weren't vaulted there would be soooo many relics to choose from that it would be a massive headache to try and farm a particular relic, rotating them helps with this issue. 

Another reason is to provide DE with a steady source of income. As a free game DE has to find another way to make money because without money they can't afford to keep making the game. 

Edited October 17, 2019 by Miser_able
Posted too early.

[SordidDreams]

5 hours ago, 000Fenix000 said:

I’d like to be able to farm certain Prime frames without trading for plat or paying lots of money for Prime Access.

I'm sure you would, but the devs would like to make money.

[stormy505]

1. Money

2. Low effort content that brings players back into Warframe

3. A way to mitigate over saturation of relic drop chances. take that with a grain of salt, cause they could've made certain relics drop on certain planets to deal with saturation. We already have an issue where most of the star chart is dead after one clear cause there's no reason to relic farm outside of the most efficient and optimal place(s). which could have been fixed by tying certain drop tables to certain planets.

[(XBOX)SupremeMorph]

Actually, this dates back to the time before relics, when we still had void keys. TLDR, it's what a few people have said before me, to prevent oversaturation of drop tables. If you'd like a more detailed answer though, then read on

Before relics and fissures, prime parts only dropped in the Void, with a very select few being available in the derelict, typically as a rotation C reward of an endless node. Back then, you couldn't go to the void freely, you had to use a void key. Keys took you to a specific mission type (exterminate, survival, defence, etc.) at a specific tier, T1-T4. T1 was about level 10-15, T2 20-25, T3 30-35 and T4 35-40, but enemies dealt quad damage.

As there were far more parts in a particular key's drop table than we have with relics now (most parts were available from multiple different keys, and we only really had around 30 different keys) it basically became impossible to farm a particular part. Typically, you'd go until you got however many parts you wanted, sold them for plat and bought the part you wanted from trade chat.

To prevent the problem getting any worse, primes started getting vaulted when new ones were added. Relics were then added a few vaultings later, but we still feel the effects today. The same principle of not oversaturating the drop table of any one key is now made much easier by using relics. Put the parts in relics, put the relics in nodes all around the map.

And that, in a nutshell, is why prime vaultings occur

[Guest]

It gets them money, it helps keeping the drop tables manageable and also balances the trading economy (without vaultings, old Primes would be essentially worthless because of the supply greatly outweighing the demand)

[Jarriaga]

Once a new Prime frame/weapon is released, you have 18 months to farm it. After 18 months, it enters the Prime Vault and its relics are removed from the game and replaced with the newest Prime frame's/weapon's relics instead.

This is done to address over-saturation of relics flooding the drop tables and diluting them.

Every 2-3 months, the Prime Vault is opened and 2-3 of the oldest (Not really) vaulted Prime frames/weapons are added back to the drop tables as relics so you can farm them in case those frames were already vaulted by the time you started playing the game. This means that, during their respective unvaultings, you can farm them for free.

As an added bonus, you can buy those frame's Prime Accessories while the Vault is open. You can only buy Prime Accessories from the original Prime Access pack when the frame was first released, so the vault becomes the only way to buy those accessories years after their initial release.

Ash, Trinity and Vauban are the oldest Vaulted frames that have not been officially released before. Hopefully they are the ones added to the drop tables next month instead of Nova and Mag since they were unvaulted last year around the same time period.

Edited October 17, 2019 by Jarriaga

[Tsukinoki]

9 hours ago, 000Fenix000 said:

nothing Prime in the game should or needs to be vaulted.

While that sounds good in practice....could you imagine trying to farm for a specific relic when the mission drops 40+ other relics of that tier?

It would make getting anything you're after much more annoying and much more of a headache.  DE vaults the relics so that its easier for players to farm the new stuff that is out there.

Vaulting goes back before relics to the original system but the purpose has remained the same: Prevent massive drop dilution that makes getting anything nearly impossible (seriously if they didn't do this then the best chances of getting a specific relic you're after would be close to 2%)

3 hours ago, stormy505 said:

they could've made certain relics drop on certain planets to deal with saturation. We already have an issue where most of the star chart is dead after one clear cause there's no reason to relic farm outside of the most efficient and optimal place(s). which could have been fixed by tying certain drop tables to certain planets.

Sure...until they run out of nodes to put things on.
With how many relics are vaulted and in the game they would still be running into dilution problems even if they went "Well, Earth has this subset of lith relics...and we have like 10 competing relics that can only drop from Oro and are all competing with the other mission reward drops from that node as well...where do we put this new Lith relic?  The other planets that can drop Lith relics are full up too and people are complaining about having to do the earth assassination for a 5% chance at one relic...."

Eventually it would just become an absurd "Run this MDEf mission for a 5% chance at a single relic and hope its the one you need!" that just becomes more and more and more and more of a waste of time.

And remember: you can't just remove all other mission rewards and make it relics only...
Further how would you keep it straight.  If such a system was in place and I needed Axi X2 where would I go?  What is the one node that could drop it?

Edited October 17, 2019 by Tsukinoki

[SneakyErvin]

It is pretty much there to not water down the relic drop pool even more.

If they kept all primes in game we'd just have a crazy amount of relics where each would have like a 1% chance to drop at best. That or we'd have a multitude of different nodes rewarding different relics within each different type. So you might have 5 or 6 different Neo nodes, splitting up the playerbase beyond reason. It would also be hell to keep track of which relic within the tier drops at which node.

Plus there is always the money part, which still isnt much different than regular prime access.

[(PSN)dursereg]

Cash grab. Nothing more.  The whole relic defense is weak. Derelicts have plenty of room to drop something.

[trst]

1 minute ago, (PS4)dursereg said:

Cash grab. Nothing more.  The whole relic defense is weak. Derelicts have plenty of room to drop something.

According to the wiki there are currently 203 vaulted relics.

Maybe I'm just skeptical but I don't think the Derelict can support 203 relics being added to their drop tables.

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

Disney taught a generation about supply and demand and building a demand...