Arcane changes show little thought from DE

[Voltage]

I disagree with OP. I too have gotten tired of things being in the game for years and then suddenly being changed, but with this mainline, it is different. DE is finally grabbing the bull by the horns for the base game and addressing fundamental issues. I would say the Melee changes were a much worse hit to invested items than the Arcane changes. I feel 2020 will include lots of changes for years old things, but ultimately, the final result will be a more enjoyable base game. I'm not thrilled about Arcane Guardian/Energize (as well as Lockdown and Repair I am guessing) changes either, but what I can tell you is that I am open to trying Arcane Strike which becomes essentially a free Berserker, Arcanes Velocity on Mesa, and Arcane Consequence/Agility.

Grind is Warframe's bread and butter gameplay loop, but Railjack and Liches have missed this mark. I like the Arcane changes, and I like that they are essentially rewarding players who already farmed 2 sets of every stackable Arcane. Those who didn't will see the same grind as getting two sets of the current rank 3 stackable Arcanes (+1 which is pretty irrelevant).

Also, if you combine the changes to Arcanes with enemy accuracy / damage / eHP scaling changes as well as future content, I feel like it won't be so bad. If you look at the bigger picture, this is a healthy decision for the game. If you look narrowly at a handful of Arcanes, you will likely be disgruntled.

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

21 minutes ago, Voltage said:

addressing fundamental issues

I don't find addressing arcanes (or something extra and not needed and largely meh) to be a fundamental issue. That's just my opinion tho. Arcanes didn't need a nerf at all but a major over haul, especially the status ones. I think DE should have finished thier melee rework and damage/elemental rework before doing anything with arcanes. That said this is DE yet again putting the cart before the horse like they have so many times before. 

Edited March 2, 2020 by (XB1)YoungGunn82

[Voltage]

Just now, (XB1)YoungGunn82 said:

I don't find addressing arcanes (or something extra and not needed and largely meh) to be a fundamental issue. That's just my opinion tho. Arcanes didn't need a nerf at all but a major over haul, especially the status ones. I think DE should have finished thier melee rework and damage/elemental rework before doing anything with arcanes. This is DE yet again putting the cart before the horse. 

The energy economy and modding variety are both issues that DE has not tackled in a long time. Arcanes are just mods with a fancy slot and no drain.

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

2 minutes ago, Voltage said:

The energy economy and modding variety are both issues that DE has not tackled in a long time. Arcanes are just mods with a fancy slot and no drain.

A valid point, modding and energy as well as health should have been tackled long before anything with arcanes. Those are vary fundamental and vary borked issues/opportunities. 

Edited March 2, 2020 by (XB1)YoungGunn82

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

OH and while I'm enjoying this can I get a drink?

I'm setup don't get the thread locked guys 

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

8 minutes ago, (PS4)sweatshawp said:

OH and while I'm enjoying this can I get a drink?

Pepsi? Disgusting. 

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

Just now, (XB1)YoungGunn82 said:

Pepsi? Disgusting. 

I'd expect nothing less from an Xbox player 

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)sweatshawp said:

I'd expect nothing less from an Xbox player 

Ha. I swing 4 ways son! And Pepsi is some nasty S#&$. The only thing it's good for is cleaning battery cables. 

[DatDarkOne]

3 hours ago, (PS4)sweatshawp said:

OH and while I'm enjoying this can I get a drink?

I'm setup don't get the thread locked guys 

[Bacl]

17 hours ago, (PS4)M00n_Slippers said:

I am MR 21, been playing for 2 years, and the first time I did an Eidolon hunt was least week and I never had any arcanes until I started doing arbitrations a few months after they came out. I didn't really understand focus or work on it until a year ago. People acting like the changes to arcanes are going to globally disrupt the game are kidding themselves, more players are like me and DON'T have much experience or use with high level content such as arcanes. We learned to live without them and do just fine. I run eight waves of arbitration without any arcanes at all, and I don't use Inaros or Rhino, either. These changes will effect a VERY small part of the player base that does things like four hour kuvivals. I can barely get anyone to stay for 4 waves in a defense. More specifically, it only effects players who double-stack arcanes, and those who use builds that rely on some of the arcanes that were tweaked. This is a TINY amount of people. This change is not going to run the game into the ground.

As for people complaining about DE screwing them over and forcing more grind...I'm really not seeing it? For the most part, all level 3 arcanes are staying THE SAME, though one or two were tweaked. Yeah, it is no longer possible to obtain the effect of double stacking arcanes, but if you already have two, you can now break down your extra one to place into your other one and recoup most of the grind and effect. Your grind is going to be pretty minimal all told. Honestly if you are at the point that you are running lv. 300 content and NEED the rank 5 arcane for it, then what else do you have to do in the game? You are probably running Eidolons all the time, you'll rank it up in no time at all.

People pissed about their investments in plat possibly being downgraded--that's just life and investments are risks. That's how the real economy works. Someone invents a new, cheaper way to get or make something and suddenly everyone who hoarded that product when it was expensive is out money. Get over it. I'm not saying you have to be happy about it, but don't let your irritation cloud your objectivity. Also, it really didn't change your investment as much as you think, you have to take into account the use you got out of it too. If you got use and enjoyment from using the expensive purchase than that doesn't go away just because the resale value has gone down. Arcanes don't run down which is more than a car can say. No one said DE was going to cover your investments, no one forced you to spend thousands of plat on an arcane.

Will some of the tweaks to arcanes make certain builds impossible or make certain frames useless in high level missions? Maybe, I'm not sure. That's something you'll have to see later and if it proves the case, then you can complain.

Are the changes actually going to make lesser arcanes used more? Well yeah, which was the goal. Are these changes a net positive? I'm not sure, but the negatives are pretty minimal in my opinion. I can understand being annoyed, but the toxic "DE doesn't give a sh*t about players, DE doesn't know how their own game works, I of my own free will speant the equivalent of $100 on an item that will now probably only be worth $80, just like any product ever deteriorates in price over time, just because DE hates me personally," needs to end, christ, because it's based on kneejerk feelings and not reality.

 

So you dont see the problem because you didnt put in the work to grind them all the way to rank 3.

Pretty sure if you did you would be pissed too since you would understand how tedious the whole process is unless you lay down plat/real money to get them.

So you are judging others over arcanes without putting the work yourself? Yeah sorry mate but with respect i cant take your argument with any relevance.

 

[TENNO_NOT_FOUND]

Instead of nerfing the arcanes people used to the ground, they should have just buffed the arcanes people -didn't- use to be less niche than the general use ones. 

Nothing the devs do will make me slot an arcane just to resist puncture or any single status effect for that matter. I would probably consider it if the arcane gave me a high chance to resist any status proc, or gave me a stat boost if I was affected by any status proc, but I'm not wasting one of my slots for:

Arcane Defense:
On Rank 5: 
102% chance to resist a Puncture Damage effect

Or anything like it. I will just be angry and use Arcane Aegis/Guardian/Energize anyway. 

Edited March 2, 2020 by TENNO_NOT_FOUND

[CoreWolf]

Definitely agree on missing the core reason for the lack of use for the majority of the arcanes. Fixing it requires much more than just "nerf the most popular and remove double stacking".

They need to:

 - Make *all* of the effects useful. As you say, if it blocks a cold proc, there need to be situations in game where you may want to do this. If another procs on wall latch, what is the gameplay trigger to encourage that gameplay style? etc etc

 - Add additional, specific Arcane slots. They've already done this for frames and weapons with Exilus, so the thought process is already there. With the number of Arcanes and the limited number of slots people are always going to go for the 2 most effective ones they can use. There's no room for "fun" or less powerful Arcanes, because using them is making an active choice to nerf your own build.
  How to fix that? Add 1 or 2 additional slots, and limit them to specific Arcanes. As with exilus, you could have a Utility slot (parkour, pet healing, revive time, etc), and a Resistance slot. Now there is genuine choice because you've got your two survival or damage Arcanes already slotted, and can't/don't need to factor those into this.
 
- Design them better. Some are really powerful, others are just - from the outside - something someone scribbled down in their lunch break. You can't half ass a "fun" Arcane that has no real use and then expect people to want it.

 

Edited March 2, 2020 by CoreWolf

[CoreWolf]

All this said the Arcane changes are actually going to result in further power creep for most people. Take this example:
If you had Avenger and Rage before, you had
+30% critical chance, 120% damage, for 8/16 seconds

Now, you have:
+45% critical chance, +180% damage, for 12/24 seconds

That's a definite buff there. They've mostly nerfed double stacking survivability Arcanes (Guardian, Grace, Aegis) and Energize. Most likely because Guardian and Grace further the gap between tank frames and DPS/utility who get one-shot at high level, and Energize just obliterates a lot of their game design around abilities and energy usage. Fair enough, makes sense - even if I think the Aegis nerf is unjustified as it's one of the few keeping the paper armor frames alive.

Still could be thought out a bit better. Also the grind thing - when they mentioned it, you got the feeling "Why are they mentioning grind, that wasn't on my mind at all?!". Then you realise you need 21 Arcanes to get a new rank 5 and it makes perfect sense. Anyone who doesn't already have double stacks of every Arcane lying around now basically has their Arcane grind doubled. Literally more than doubled.

If they *really* don't intend to add more grind - double the number of Arcanes dropped per Eidolon for a start. Existing R3 Arcanes could also be upgraded straight to R5 - except we know they wont, as thats the carrot to get people to participate in the new event they have coming. Fine, but just be up front about it at least.

And again - Warframe needs to come up with some new, original reward mechanic. We've exhausted mods, forma, focus, and probably Arcanes at this point. There needs to be something new otherwise any new content is immediately hamstrung by having no real in-game incentive to play it. As evident with Railjack.....

Edited March 2, 2020 by CoreWolf

[TENNO_NOT_FOUND]

On 2020-03-01 at 1:30 PM, SilverRook said:

i love the over reaction to changes before they even happen this community has LOL 

This would make sense if this was aimed at anything that isn't a changelog list that specifically says "Go do 100% of the work you just did again to be slightly less effective than you were before."

If the potential changelog is inaccurate, then that needs to be addressed.

If the potential changelog is accurate, then that is suitable cause for annoyance/frustration.

 

Imagine if, instead of this, DE said sometime in March the frames you liked to use the most were going to get  half their formas/ranks removed, but if you grind and get them back to full you'd just be a smidge weaker than you were before their patch.

Because they want you to use, idk, Mag or something. 

Would you wait until patch goes live to be upset? 

[GPrime96]

2 hours ago, TENNO_NOT_FOUND said:

This would make sense if this was aimed at anything that isn't a changelog list that specifically says "Go do 100% of the work you just did again to be slightly less effective than you were before."

If the potential changelog is inaccurate, then that needs to be addressed.

If the potential changelog is accurate, then that is suitable cause for annoyance/frustration.

 

Imagine if, instead of this, DE said sometime in March the frames you liked to use the most were going to get  half their formas/ranks removed, but if you grind and get them back to full you'd just be a smidge weaker than you were before their patch.

Because they want you to use, idk, Mag or something. 

Would you wait until patch goes live to be upset? 

^Perfect example of later Arcanes

[SilverRook]

6 hours ago, TENNO_NOT_FOUND said:

This would make sense if this was aimed at anything that isn't a changelog list that specifically says "Go do 100% of the work you just did again to be slightly less effective than you were before."

If the potential changelog is inaccurate, then that needs to be addressed.

If the potential changelog is accurate, then that is suitable cause for annoyance/frustration.

 

Imagine if, instead of this, DE said sometime in March the frames you liked to use the most were going to get  half their formas/ranks removed, but if you grind and get them back to full you'd just be a smidge weaker than you were before their patch.

Because they want you to use, idk, Mag or something. 

Would you wait until patch goes live to be upset? 

nah its just a game ... 😄

lol like its work to farm prime junk sell it and buy more arcanes.....

and whats wrong with mag ? 

and nothing is being removed - your getting 2 addition higher ranks on those arcanes... they will go up to 5 

oh you mean you have a really niche build that requires you stack two arcanes to work properly ? oh i get you.
 

 

Edited March 3, 2020 by SilverRook

[da_blok_is_hot]

7k hrs played mostly sitting in my ship. I can say that I care less about any changed the devs make at this point. I learned to feel this way years ago. They will forever give and take from us. Literally give and take. No surprise here. I am sitting on hundreds of arcanes from 1000+ eidolon runs and 700 JV runs alone. These type of changes are something that you get used to. Well me for the most part. It is what it is. Soon you will learn too. This is just how DE operates. Is it right? No. But it is what it is. They could honestly care less. LOL at all of you gamers who contantly kiss their ass lmfao. It is what it is. 

[(PSN)Toolriz]

On 2020-03-01 at 4:06 PM, (PS4)Shelneroth said:

I think they have to be rank 0 but you can break ranked arcanes up now. So basically you can stick rank 3 in to a rank 3.

Well that’s good then. The duration concerns me tho. Otherwise I’m fine with no double stack.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

Arcanes are basically becoming acolyte mods for warframes

I predict that in the future, that's exactly what arcanes will become, mods

[JackHargreav]

Can someone tell me what is so great about arcanes that ppl are peeing their pants over them?

Edited March 5, 2020 by JackHargreav

[Kyronz]

The arcane changes are meant to prolong the grind, but since i am not stupid ape, why the F would i even bother with this nonsense?

 

[Moraiel]

How can we make all the players who have stopped logging in after RJ come back to the game? Well, lets take their max ranked arcanes that they spent hours grinding for and make it so they aren't max ranked anymore, then they will have to come back to get them maxed again.

[mrpyro12345678]

В 01.03.2020 в 06:58, m0b1us1 сказал:

-snip-
Let's even assume warmth grants 100% resist for this discussion. If I had a giant list of all missions possibly available in WF, what missions would give you a chance to experience a cold proc. Typically this would only be corpus missions, and most cold procs in standard corpus missions comes from breaking a certain type of barrel. Outside of that, you have exploiter and a small number of enemies in the orb vallis that can proc cold damage. Even then, these cold procs are nothing that can "change the tide" of battle. So you have an extremely niche use arcane because the number of times where it would actually be useful are minuscule at absolute best.
-snip-

Excuse me, but there's a big flaw in your argument. There are a type of enemies called Exilus (I think), and they are present in all missions. In the exilus variants, you can see Arctic Exilus. Now, a reminder of what those do... Those things freeze you. So, Arcane Warmth can be used absolutely everywhere. Absolutely the same as Arcane Grace.

[(PSN)Hiero_Glyph]

1 hour ago, mrpyro12345678 said:

Excuse me, but there's a big flaw in your argument. There are a type of enemies called Exilus (I think), and they are present in all missions. In the exilus variants, you can see Arctic Exilus. Now, a reminder of what those do... Those things freeze you. So, Arcane Warmth can be used absolutely everywhere. Absolutely the same as Arcane Grace.

Nope. It's like Eidolons, you don't equip Nullifier and use it everywhere, only when you fight Eidolons and typically left on the one frame you want to use. You wouldn't waste an arcane to prevent being frozen unless the mission specifically has conditions that would freeze you so often it became a problem. Things like extra energy, crit chance, attack speed, etc. are universal in their application so these are used everywhere.

[m0b1us1]

On 2020-03-01 at 4:35 AM, Graavarg said:

Well, I don't agree with your conclusions, but this is mostly a result of the logical framework you are using. Let me explain, and as you said: "let's dissect".

DE has (especially lately) been very consistent in that they want to broaden the use of the huge content available in the game. From this it is fairly straightforward to conclude that the opposite is seen as a problem by the developer and owner of the game. The "opposite" being when some warframes, abilities, weapons, mods, builds OR arcanes are used much more than others.

It is also worth noting that there is no real need for META- or "god"-builds in the game, as you can handle absolutely all normal content in the game without them. There is also no need for META-/"god"-builds for "experiencing the power fantasy", the way the game plays you can do that just fine without getting into the ultimate stuff. All this is pretty important for the context, since the conclusion then is that being even "more powerful", or in extremis "most powerful", doesn't come from demands within the game but from the players themselves. It is a personal wish, need, interest, sense of fun, social standing (within the game), "completionistness", "effectivistness" or something that drives the META-/"god"-part of the game, not the game itself.

Part of the Warframe "playerbase" is extremely knowledgeable, smart, experienced, analytical and progressive, continuously probing the game and it's contents and functions for new, better and/or more efficient ways of "doing things". The goal could be described as the opposite to the devs stated intent, namely to find the most op, broken builds, combos and ways of playing the game. Since Warframe in part is a continually evolving sandbox game, there is quite a lot of room for this. Anything that is "broken" (as in too powerful, or more powerful than intended) is quickly found. The "findings" then get spread efficiently, and a huge part the playerbase just copies it from Youtube, Reddit and even the forum.

Boiling all this down you end up with the end result of specialist META- and "god-"stuff and -builds becoming widely used, which skews the usage of content, which it is against how the game is supposed to work according to the developers & "caretakers" of the Warframe.

Things are further complicated by more diffuse effects from in-game economy (the META- & "god"-concepts drives part of plat-based business), player motivation (as in wanting to acquire the stuff connected to having your own META-/"god"-build) as well as generating third-party content buffing interest the game. Or in other words, there is a risk of "hurting" the game by making everything more "flat", "same" and "non-special", by removing part of the "economy" and by reducing third-party activity.

Aboard so far? (It's just simple facts and logic).

The big question then is what to do in order to achieve the stated objective, which is a wider use of the contents in the game. Or put another way, diminish the use of the much too widely used parts. Preferably affecting the game positively in the process, though at least without affecting the game negatively.

This is where things gets mixed up, since making the game better (more interesting and fun for all players) might well include making a minority of players grumpy. And with "mixed up" I mean the viewpoint from which the upcoming changes are analyzed, which is the troika of "my viewpoint", "a player's viewpoint" and "the game's viewpoint" (and the last one could also be called "all the players' viewpoint").

I have no need to argue that the changes are not "nerfs" etc., they are and they are clearly meant to be (except the shotgun status calculations, which are just a long-awaited logical improvement to the game). I am also not surprised by all the salty tears in the forum, it has become par the course for a forum becoming more and more dominated by the "my viewpoint". A lot of posts claiming to be about the future of the game and about the effects on all player actually belong in this more ego-centered group, simply masquerading personal wants and feelings as a more general care of the game. What HAS surprised me is that so many player's (many quite experienced, based on the "join"-date & the number of posts) have chosen to view and analyze this from the game's perspective. What I am not surprised about is that these are generally in favour of the changes.

But back to the three most central questions:

1. Will the upcoming changes achieve the (quite clearly) stated goal of broadening the use of arcanes? Since the metric is the player usage statistics the answer is clearly "yes", due to the combined effects of removing the stacking, nerfing the META-arcanes and buffing and adding other arcanes.
2. Will the changes make Warframe better? Well, this question is impossible to answer, since the answer is completely and totally dependent on your viewpoint, what you like about Warframe and why you play. Any measured results will be available only in the future, which means that arguing for or against fills some other function than trying to reach a conclusive result.
3. Is DE trying to improve Warframe and make it a better game? This is probably the most screwed and the funniest question of all, since there are so many posts containing variations on how DE is trying to destroy the game, even some claiming coding is flawed (which is hugely funny). Let's just say that anyone with any common sense at all would answer "yes", and in addition lots of longtime players would answer "yes" simply from 7 years of experience.
4. Has DE put a lot of thought into the arcane changes? Which is sort of the ultimate question, straight from the header in this thread. Of course we can't know, only speculate. But I tend to disagree (more or less completely) with the OP. I think DE has put an immense amount of thought into this, over a long time and over huge changes in the game. I also think DE has come to the conclusion that these old problems stacking up over time have to fixed, for the sake of the game. I also think DE was apprehensive (to put it mildly) of player feedback, and I even believe that fear of a huge negative response has inhibited making these changes earlier, instead just letting things continue and adapting to the flaws in the system. I also think DE underestimated their playerbase, a lot of us gets it.

So, yes, my unkillable god-Inaros will be a bit weaker, so will my ever-shielded Hildryn and so on. But it is for a good cause, and despite getting "hit by the nerfs" I sincerely believe this is for a better Warframe. My belief in DE's commitment to Warframe increased as a result of the devstream, not the opposite. And it might even become a better Warframe for me personally, because after the first shock wore off I've found myself speculating about which "second arcane" I am now going to use on my builds, and damn!, this little mini-thing is now so interesting I can hardly wait for the mainline to drop!

I disagree with you for a number of reasons.

1. Nerfing and removing stacking will not make other arcanes better. The issue with arcane warmth is that there simply are too few instances where one would ever desire resisting a cold proc. The answer is obviously NO, nerfing meta arcanes and removing stacking will NOT make arcanes that are far too niche better. Rather what will happen is instead of running 2 sets of the same meta arcane, people will just run 2 different sets of meta arcanes.

2. It mostly depends on how you define "better". What I expect as "better" is a better total gameplay and health for warframe. Band aid fixes like chroma nerf, itzal nerf, excal+mag nerf, etc etc. are not healthy for the game and rather are implemented to try and force players inside a smaller box. To put it to this case with arcanes, a band aid fix is nerfing meta arcanes. An actual healthy fix is to give us a reason to use others. The best example of this is arcane nullifier, which has immense value to the point where some would forgo any other arcane just to have 100% magnetic proc resist.

3. They attempt to fix and improve, but often and recently they seem to have a warped view of "improvement". Randomized stats on railjack parts just to increase grind, randomized stats on all things kuva that they only changed after there was a back lash, I could go on and on. Even players that have been around since day 1 have no shortage of memory of DE making a change that they claim "improves" the game, but in reality just makes it worse. So, are they trying? Yes. Are they actually improving the game? As of the past 2 years I would have to give that a hard no.

4. Absolutely not and completely disagree. Going back to my original argument, non meta arcanes will NEVER be used more that meta because THERE IS NO NEED FOR THEM. Go to your starchart and find me every single situation where you experience cold procs, or fire procs, or radiation procs. Now go find me every single situation where you take damage, pick up energy orbs, or deal damage. It takes less than a minute to realize that buffing horridly niche arcanes will not help at all because the instances where they are valuable is completely obliterated by other meta arcanes that are useful pretty much in all forms of game play.

 

These arcane changes are not being made for the good of the game, they are being made for the same reason that chroma was gutted and basically retired to only eidolons, that itzal's one key defining trait was absolutely trashed, the same reason DE pushed ESO so heavily to be considered "end game", and the same reason that kuva liches/railjack have randomized stats. DE is not trying to make the game better, rather they are trying to push for more and more grind without helping any actual issues. As someone who has multiple sets of arcanes already, I have been doing that since I ever got my hands on arcanes through trials. Stacking never stopped me from trying different combinations.