New Tenebrous Ephemera acquisition

[Vespilan]

With the re-interpretation of the acquisiition of the Tenebrous Ephemera we saw a victory. 
With Empyrean, I saw alot of justified complaint in the community of how Warframe seemed to lean alot more towards RNG than the "traditional" mode of acquisition for items. The traditional mode herein means always redeeming, always your goal in sight and calculateable, though be it sometimes repetetive work to get your hands onto an item rather than having to rely on sheer luck which can lead to either having to farm six months for Nidus or getting every part the first try. The traditional method kept progress comparable. Everyone had to go through a very similar experience when farming something. It was one of the reasons, from what I have gathered, alot of people kept going in Warframe grind. 
The change in acquisition of the Tenebrous Ephemera is a reminder of this traditional way of acquisition. An RNG system was swapped for a progression system. 
I have attached a strawpoll to find out wether my assumption was correct or not. Feel free to vote and use for future reference.

But for now, because I feel it is said way too rarely, thanks DE. 

https://strawpoll.com/g2z36zp9

[-Krism-]

There's nothing rewarding about RNG

[White_Matter]

How many shards per run do you get ? 

 

[16Bitman]

4 minutes ago, White_Matter said:

How many shards per run do you get ? 

 

1, but boosters and smeeta work on it too.

[White_Matter]

4 minutes ago, 16Bitman said:

1, but boosters and smeeta work on it too.

Yeah well. That's still silly. Considering I come across the anomally once everyday or twice best case scenario.

[Vespilan]

3 minutes ago, White_Matter said:

Yeah well. That's still silly. Considering I come across the anomally once everyday or twice best case scenario.

Well, thats your personal experience, really. With a booster you can get two shards consistantly per anomaly if @16Bitman is correct, potentially even more. 
You can pick up the ephemera for 15 shards at little duck. That makes 8 anomaly runs for you to get it guaranteed. You can easily get that on a weekend.

[IntheCoconut]

I'm fine with some things being left to RNG but I think it is healthy to have multiple systems. After getting burned with bad luck in RNG, it is nice to have a system like in Fortuna, Syndicates, Arbitratons, etc. where I can earn a currency and simply buy what I want from their store. 

[VoidArkhangel]

I think that no cosmetic in this game should be RNG reward. It's a silly way to keep players engaged.

[lukinu_u]

Both RNG and progression based system has their good and bad points :

• RNG allow you to get a specif item after an undefined amount of tries, ranging from 1 to infinity, so you the rare is the item the higher chance you have to be happily surprised when you drop it, but it also greatly reduce the chance and since there is no actual progression, it feels super unfair and frustrating. Overall, it's frustrating if drop chance are too low but the surpise when you get what your want is a good feeling.
   
• A progression based system is great because you already know what you have to do and it's fair for everyone, but if there is too much farm involved like Nightwave, it just become a psycholigical torture because you actually how far you are from the item and you know it will not be fun. Overall, it's good because you know what you farm for and there is a sense of progression but if the progression is too slow, it feel super frustrating because you know how far you are from what you want.
   
• A third way of getting loot is kill based. Getting loot for being good at doing something is actually the most rewarding and encourage you to play better and maybe adapt your loadout to the type of diffuculty you are confronted with. Doing a parkour as fast as possible, cooperate to kill as much eidolons as you can in one night, the old raids, etc... Over this one is fun and super rewarding, but may be frustrating for casual players that are not good and want reward locked behind content they can't actually play.

I think the best solution is actually a mix of all 3, which a progression based system than can be speed up by skill and luck.
This would be a regular RNG based sytem where you drop different stuff from common unwated stuff to rarer cool stuff you actually want, but allow you to trade unwanted reward for token, to buy the stuff you want. Additionnaly the mission duration or reward should depend on your performances, which mean a better player would get more reward for the same time, or rarer rewards (so more token) for the same mission.
So, if you get what you want from luck you're happy, but if you don't you can trade unwanted reward from token, and get faster token by being good at doing stuff.

 

[gluih]

I'm never sure if people who dislike randomness do so, because they know something I'm missing or because they just don't understand it.

There are a lot of aspects to systems with randomness, that are actually good imo. Now you can be cynical and say, that's just the developers fooling people with an addictive personality into playing their game for longer. On the other hand you are actually getting most things quicker this way, because the developers can't make it too frustrating and you might end up looking at things, that you would have ignored otherwise. The riven system is a perfect example. You can be frustrated, when you don't get the riven for the great meta weapon or you can try it out on a weapon, that would have been mediocre otherwise, but is now really strong, because nobody uses it and it has a better disposition (some weapons are unfortunately still going to be trash). Of course the devs can still make a bad RNG system like with previously with the ephemera, but non-RNG systems are definitely not always better than systems with some randomness.

[PookieNumnums]

Let's be clear that the author of the original post suggests that the move From rng to pay with points was a victory for players.  

In the patch notes it says that you get one shard for every point of interest you visit.  I assume that means if the anomaly spawns on a three objective node with a derelict that you're looking at 4 shards and if the booster and smeeta actually works then eight or even sixteen. 

Edited January 24, 2020 by PookieNumnums

[gluih]

1 minute ago, PookieNumnums said:

In the patch notes it says that you get one shard for every point of interest you visit.  I assume that means if the anomaly spawns on a three objective node with a derelict that you're looking at 4 shards and if the booster and smeeta actually works then eight or even sixteen. 

As far as I understood it, point of interest refers to just the anomaly in this context.

[PookieNumnums]

As mentioned in 27.0.11, we wanted to implement a more token based system to obtain the Tenebrous Ephemera that we removed from the drop table. An Anomaly Shard is 100% guaranteed at End of Mission for every Sentient Anomaly POI you complete. 

 

Well it says sentient poi so i guess i was wrong above.. and i havent seeen more than one objective in the anomaly so i guess 1 2 or 4. 

Poopy. 

Edited January 24, 2020 by PookieNumnums

[PookieNumnums]

5 minutes ago, gluih said:

As far as I understood it, point of interest refers to just the anomaly in this context.

Yeah i went to the other post to double check.  It's booboo. 

[OniDax]

Empyrean is such a boring slog to me that I don't even feel compelled to run through 15 Anomaly runs + 15 Veil missions. If they would put the Anomaly on its own node, separate from the standard Empyrean mission, then I'd consider it.

[Melanholic7]

is it 100% true that booster and smeeta affects those shards?? dont want waste plat for nothing 😞

[LSG501]

Now all they need to do is remove the stupid time gating on the node....

[16Bitman]

7 minutes ago, Melanholic7 said:

is it 100% true that booster and smeeta affects those shards?? dont want waste plat for nothing 😞

Yes.

You can also just do runs without a booster and wait for a smeeta buff to confirm it yourself without spending plat.

[Midas]

3 hours ago, White_Matter said:

Yeah well. That's still silly. Considering I come across the anomally once everyday or twice best case scenario.

I just got 6 shards in one ship dude, try it yourself first. I already got the Ephemera in 3 ships. (4 runs last two times because we did not have an efficient squad)

Use resources to track stuff as well https://discord.gg/c4s5M7

ship tracker right there.

Go watch The Office and come back when it is up and form a group with clanmates/recruitment.

Edited January 24, 2020 by Midas

[White_Matter]

3 hours ago, Midas said:

I just got 6 shards in one ship dude, try it yourself first.

I just did and got 2.

Have resource booster, resource chance booster and smeeta.

So yeah, just because you won the lottery doesn't mean it is tedious.

It still is. 

[(XBOX)COA Altair]

It isn't asking much to do 8 runs with a booster to get a cosmetic item that before the change you could do dozens of runs and end up with nothing but a lot of excess shedu parts and excess dirac.  Doing that many runs in a couple of weeks isn't hard unless your schedule really is that tight at which point you should ask yourself why are you playing a game with so many different timesinks.  

[(PSN)robotwars7]

5 hours ago, LSG501 said:

Now all they need to do is remove the stupid time gating on the node....

this. or at least make it consistent like the other time gates, rather than waiting for X amount of time.

[(XBOX)The Neko Otaku]

The teneborus ephemera grind via red caches was not rewarding anyone who says it was must be masochistic. Time gate in another time gate and 1% of the thing to spawn and then unknown percent of even getting ephemera is not reward it's a gamble

[TARINunit9]

9 hours ago, gluih said:

On the other hand you are actually getting most things quicker this way, because the developers can't make it too frustrating and you might end up looking at things, that you would have ignored otherwise.

This only holds up for incredibly scummy games (I'm talking the Loot Wars: Buggyfront 2 kind of scum). Warframe has and for many items still is very good about this, you're correct that DE isn't EA.

But when you have an exclusive item that shows up in a Reinforced crate (roughly 1% chance to spawn at all, in a random location) and that only drops from that crate 33% of the time, in a mission that only comes around every three hours, you're looking at a LOT of runs. Conversely, moving the Tenebrous to Little Duck has reduced the grind to a mere 15 runs, or less if you also get a second shard from various sources (Smeeta Kavat, end-of-mission drop table, etc.)

[Yamazuki]

4 hours ago, White_Matter said:

I just did and got 2.

Have resource booster, resource chance booster and smeeta.

So yeah, just because you won the lottery doesn't mean it is tedious.

It still is. 

I'm not sure how a minimum of 8 runs for a guaranteed reward is "tedious". Unless by tedious, you mean you find Railjack missions boring rather than 8 runs taking too long, in which case, there's nothing wrong with that. There are other rewards tied to specific content, some of which are tedious in all meanings of the word.