[Scarlet Spear] Restrict Operation access to more experienced Railjack players

[Xandis]

The event page explains that only players of Mastery Rank 3 and higher can participate in the operation, but I don't believe that it's a reasonable benchmark. Late-game Railjack is fairly tough, considering extreme tankiness and damage output of Veil Proxima Grineer, and the Fighters can one-shot any Archwing without Amesha's 1. And we're still talking about Grineer, who knows how tough Sentient enemies and fighters will be? While an inexperienced player can just sit on the ship to gun/repair/forge, you can't deny that a player with 7/7/7/7 Intrinsics would be much more suited than another player who's never played Railjack in their entire career.

 

Thus, I suggest that Scarlet Spear's accessibility should be restricted to players that have reached Saturn/Veil Proxima and/or have a minimum number of Intrinsic ranks, instead of Mastery Rank. I am aware that there is the non-Empyrean option of doing Ground Assaults, but there would be noticeable imbalance between that and the Murex Raids up in space. Having players that are more experienced in both realms would likely keep number of players on each end balanced.

 

Old version:

Spoiler

 

TITLE: [Scarlet Spear] Please make an exception for the MR0 veterans

EDIT: This suggestion may serve a different function: Restrict Operation participation to Veil Proxima access and/or minimum Intrinsics level to gate inexperienced Railjack players. I've kept the old version of this topic below:

According to the latest news post, players that are Mastery Rank 2 and below are not able to participate in this event. As a longtime MR0 player, this is a bit of a bummer as I've been preparing my arsenal and Railjack a ton for this Operation. Could an exception be made for MR0s with certain requirements? Like having access to Veil Proxima or a minimum Intrinsics level? These kinds of exceptions have been made in that past, such as:

1. In Update 20.4.1, an exception was made during Operation: Ambulas Reborn for sub-MR3 players since they could not talk to Syndicate leaders: "Mastery Rank 3 and under can now purchase Operation: Ambulas Reborn rewards from Ergo Glast in the Perrin Sequence Relay room."
2. in Update 22.14.0, another exception was made for Arcane functionality: "You must be at least Mastery Rank 5 or have an Arcane owned if below Mastery Rank 5 to install an Arcane."

Speaking of Arcanes, this Operation would be the most reliable source of them for us MR0s, as Arbitration Arcanes are hard-locked behind the Oro, Earth node (MR5 required) and Eidolon arcanes are difficult without Amps (MR1 for Saya's Vigil)

 

 

Edited March 23, 2020 by Xandis
Realized that this can apply to everyone and not just MR0s

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

Seems like a reasonable way to make an exception.

Can I ask why you don't just do Mastery tests over the next 2 days? There is no shortage of available xp to earn compared to back in the day.

[(PSN)Quantaminum]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)Ozymandias-13- said:

Can I ask why you don't just do Mastery tests over the next 2 days?

Because some people are actually trying to MR0 the game.

Those aren't new accounts. They are accounts that the owners refuse to level up and resort to bypass some MR locks. It's actually a thing, just like the racing community.

Edited March 20, 2020 by (PS4)Quantaminum

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

21 minutes ago, (PS4)Quantaminum said:

Because some people are actually trying to MR0 the game.

I'm not sure exactly what that means. If they don't care about all of the main story quests that are mastery locked, that's up to them. I think the main argument against it on DE's end though could be that this event is tied to the main story. But because they're only asking for MR3 rather than the MR5 needed for The War Within, who knows? 

It's at least worth getting DE's attention for them to look into.

Edited March 20, 2020 by (PS4)Ozymandias-13-
Typo

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

I get it but wouldn't that just create another wasted amount of time and resources just because of a "thing"? Isn't this an overkill ask? Small requests like this that players think are simple changes can tally up to be very time consuming. Am I wrong here?

[Redeye]

I too, as a MR0 player, second Xandis' suggestion. I was kind of puzzled as to why it is locked in the first place.

At first I thought that it was in order to prevent newcomers to join a difficult mission right away, but MR3 is reachable in far less than a week and there's little difference between 0 and 3 in terms of available weapons and time played, if MR tests are taken as they're available.

I've worked hard aswell to get a good railjack and my intrinsics leveled, reached the Veil a long time ago as well, so I'd be really grateful if I were allowed to play the event. You know we exist, and were kind enough to add exceptions for us when it was doable and made sense, so I'm hoping you'll consider doing the same once again.

As Xandis' said, since raids are gone, it's become harder for us to get arcanes.

Wether you do it or not, thank you for the time you spent reading this.

[ES-Flinter]

Not sure how I should think about this. On way I can understand the situation for the Mr. 0 veterans. Everyone should be able to do what he want.

But on the other hand I would say that someone who don't want to do everything to get the best shouldn't get it. Best example are probably the primes. If you want a prime frame/ weapon you have to farm the parts from relics. Or you pay. 

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Redeye:

At first I thought that it was in order to prevent newcomers to join a difficult mission right away, but MR3 is reachable in far less than a week and there's little difference between 0 and 3 in terms of available weapons and time played, if MR tests are taken as they're available

But from a Mr. 3 player you can expect that he know his limits and know how he can still help. ^^

But a Mr. 0 player. (Allow me to be mean) They are probably only good to catch some bullets.

[Redeye]

 

3 minutes ago, ES-Flinter said:

But from a Mr. 3 player you can expect that he know his limits and know how he can still help. ^^

But a Mr. 0 player. (Allow me to be mean) They are probably only good to catch some bullets.

While I see what you mean, the difference between a "normal" MR0 player and a MR3 one is too small in terms of play time. In my opinion, game knowledge gaps might even be greater in some case between two players of the same rank, even at low MR.

If one's being taught the basics of the game by someone who spent some time on it, they will probably reach Natah or even TSD by the time they hit MR3 while not being carried. Some others will just start struggling at Jupiter and stay there for a couple more MRs. Well at least that's what I've noticed from the many low MR players that I helped/met in PUGs.

 

Anyway, as it was stated before, quest completion or intrinsics progression might be a better way to know if a player is used enough to the game to help, in my opinion. When you're starting, Uranus, Neptune, Lua and TSD aren't really a walk in the park. One can also assume that someone who reached Veil Proxima isn't roaming around with a rank 0 Odonata. 😛

[Voltage]

You are purposefully preventing yourself from progressing the game's Affinity system and/or bypassing locks (technically exploiting) to have things like the Operator, etc. 

No, they shouldn't tailor updates to this playstyle. You are locking yourself out of content and that's on you.

4 hours ago, (PS4)Quantaminum said:

Because some people are actually trying to MR0 the game.

And these people should not be catered to when it comes to progression systems and locks put in place.

Edited March 20, 2020 by Voltage

[Xandis]

5 hours ago, Voltage said:

You are purposefully preventing yourself from progressing the game's Affinity system and/or bypassing locks (technically exploiting) to have things like the Operator, etc. 

No, they shouldn't tailor updates to this playstyle. You are locking yourself out of content and that's on you.

And these people should not be catered to when it comes to progression systems and locks put in place.

Without getting too off topic, you're right: that's the whole MR0 shtick. However, I wouldn't call game mechanics and changes exploits. If a MR3 completes The Second Dream and is rewarded Broken War (MR10), is it an exploit because they just bypassed it's lock?

While I initially made this topic for MR0s, I realized it could actually serve to gate inexperienced Railjack players as a whole, as I'll explain at the end.

 

9 hours ago, (PS4)GEN-Son_17 said:

I get it but wouldn't that just create another wasted amount of time and resources just because of a "thing"? Isn't this an overkill ask? Small requests like this that players think are simple changes can tally up to be very time consuming. Am I wrong here?

Referencing the Operation: Ambulas Reborn example, the error was reported and subsequently hotfixed in approximately 3 hours. I'm no expert in coding, but wouldn't it be easier to have no restriction versus a restriction? Also, Intrinsic-based locks already exist: Saturn Proxima and Veil Proxima are locked at a minimum of 3 and 7 Intrinsics, respectively.

 

6 hours ago, Redeye said:

While I see what you mean, the difference between a "normal" MR0 player and a MR3 one is too small in terms of play time.

[...]

Anyway, as it was stated before, quest completion or intrinsics progression might be a better way to know if a player is used enough to the game to help, in my opinion. 

Continuing off of this, the difference between MR0 and MR3 is 22,500 Experience. This is basically a full mastered loadout: a Warframe, 3 weapons, and a Sentinel and its weapon. In either case, they would barely have any Archwing experience, much less Railjack. I would argue that any player, regardless of Mastery, would be unsuited for a Railjack operation without the proper experience.

Therefore, restricting the Operation's participation to those who have reached the Veil Proxima and/or have a specific amount of Intrinsics would be the more logical option if DE wanted to keep inexperienced players safe.

[Grey_Star_Rival_Defender]

The MR3 lock is probably because we're having Sentients with adaptation, and you "need" Mr3 to get Second Dream to get the Operator to reset Sentient resistances.

[DisasterIncarnate]

On 2020-03-20 at 5:45 PM, (PS4)Ozymandias-13- said:

I'm not sure exactly what that means. If they don't care about all of the main story quests that are mastery locked, that's up to them. I think the main argument against it on DE's end though could be that this event is tied to the main story. But because they're only asking for MR3 rather than the MR5 needed for The War Within, who knows? 

It's at least worth getting DE's attention for them to look into.

many MR0's like myself made our accounts in 2013/14 because there was nothing to do on our mains so rather than quit, we just started again with a new goal, at the time that was to never rank up, given that warframe is not like MMO's where levels = stronger characters, in warframe, mods and mod ranks matter, not mastery ranks.  back then, there were no quests, no junctions, just an open starmap, we managed perfectly fine back then and we still do and can, just that deliberate locks are set in place to stop it.

personally i do not mind the fact we cannot use syndicates, cant get augments, cant do sorties, only get 1k standing a day, cant use rivens, etc.  All these things are handy and useful but are not needed, they just make what has always been faceroll, drastically more faceroll, so many of us keep our MR0 characters for that extra/different challenge but are constantly blocked from doing many things that used to be open.  If they simply wanted "long serving" players to advance and raw noobs to feel some form of progression (even tho we all know its just to timegate them) then blocks would be via mastery point progression and not mastery ranks for simple starmap and quest progression.

[DisasterIncarnate]

On 2020-03-21 at 4:16 AM, Grey_Star_Rival_Defender said:

The MR3 lock is probably because we're having Sentients with adaptation, and you "need" Mr3 to get Second Dream to get the Operator to reset Sentient resistances.

the second dream does not give you a working and functioning operator, you need the war within for that.

[DisasterIncarnate]

On 2020-03-20 at 9:29 PM, Voltage said:

You are purposefully preventing yourself from progressing the game's Affinity system and/or bypassing locks (technically exploiting) to have things like the Operator, etc. 

No, they shouldn't tailor updates to this playstyle. You are locking yourself out of content and that's on you.

And these people should not be catered to when it comes to progression systems and locks put in place.

that mastery "system" was fudged in much later in the game, originally none of that existed and there were no issues, the sky did not fall, the mastery changes did not appear in order to do anything but timegate new players into not completing the starmap as quickly as they used to be able to do.

Lots of people still ramble on today about wanting "skill" to be a thing in warframe and not having total faceroll, MR0s accounts used to be that, no trading meant farming most stuff back then, a MR0 self hardmode is/was a good diversion from your main when you got bored and had nothing to do, as for progression, as i mentioned earlier, we always had perfectly fine progression early on before quests/mr locks and junctions started to appear, people arent retards, if something is too difficult they didnt just carry on dying over and over and never elarned, you went back to easier starchart nodes and bulked up on skill/mods/gear until you could progress.   Todays "progression" is simply made to stop you progressing at your own pace, in the case of my friends/family/co-workers this has been 1 of the infuriating reasons they just gave up the game.

[Voltage]

1 minute ago, DisasterIncarnate said:

that mastery "system" was fudged in much later in the game, originally none of that existed and there were no issues, the sky did not fall, the mastery changes did not appear in order to do anything but timegate new players into not completing the starmap as quickly as they used to be able to do.

Lots of people still ramble on today about wanting "skill" to be a thing in warframe and not having total faceroll, MR0s accounts used to be that, no trading meant farming most stuff back then, a MR0 self hardmode is/was a good diversion from your main when you got bored and had nothing to do, as for progression, as i mentioned earlier, we always had perfectly fine progression early on before quests/mr locks and junctions started to appear, people arent retards, if something is too difficult they didnt just carry on dying over and over and never elarned, you went back to easier starchart nodes and bulked up on skill/mods/gear until you could progress.   Todays "progression" is simply made to stop you progressing at your own pace, in the case of my friends/family/co-workers this has been 1 of the infuriating reasons they just gave up the game.

Mastery Rank 0 players (atleast the ones I have met) have Primed Mods, powercreep, and Primes by buying every Prime Access. They play the same easy game you and I do. Not everyone plays that way of course, but it still is a thing. Mastery is a progression gate and should exist for a number of reasons. Lowering the bar of entry for people who are unwilling to progress is foolish from a design perspective. Mastery Rank 0 accounts should never ever be considered for content.

[DisasterIncarnate]

2 minutes ago, Voltage said:

Mastery Rank 0 players (atleast the ones I have met) have Primed Mods, powercreep, and Primes by buying every Prime Access. They play the same easy game you and I do. Not everyone plays that way of course, but it still is a thing. Mastery is a progression gate and should exist for a number of reasons. Lowering the bar of entry for people who are unwilling to progress is foolish from a design perspective. Mastery Rank 0 accounts should never ever be considered for content.

the bar of entry to what exactly?  as i said back in 13/14 the starmap had no locks no junctions and there was still progression, that progression was and still is the mods you have, the ranks you get them to and the gear you made, a bunch of arbitrary hard-locks sat inbetween does not improve or change anything for the better, the locks have nothing to do with progression they are timegating mechanics to slow you down, simple as that.

Nobody said anywhere that a fresh 0 could jump into the latest all singing all dancing content right off the bat, just needing access to certain planet nodes to do certain alerts/tasks is already a progression checkpoint, instead of locking people to some silly number, having them have access to eris/sedna/whatever is all that has ever been needed.  Even if you lock a quest or event to a particular mastery rank, that does not even mean the player can handle the content in question, they may still have a rank 4 serration, rank 5 vitality, no multishot mods and numerous other gear problems that cause them to fail/falter even with a higher MR.

MR means nothing in regards to progression, it never has and never will exactly because of the way power/strength manifests itsself in warframe.

[(PSN)PanserKunst]

If you don't want to progress, Then don't progress. It's pretty simple. Not playing the game as intended by design is bound to contain the player at some point. Deal with it.

[DisasterIncarnate]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)PanserKunst said:

If you don't want to progress, Then don't progress. It's pretty simple. Not playing the game as intended by design is bound to contain the player at some point. Deal with it.

thats the whole point, the game was never "intended" to work this way until much later, clearing the starmap is progression, ranking up mods is progression, finding new mods is progression, using new warframes and gear is progressing.

Taking a mastery test is not progressing.

[Xandis]

I've edited the original post. Although I was originally posting for MR0s, I think that this might benefit all players instead. Basically, Mastery Rank is mostly irrelevant in a Railjack environment; it's the Intrinsics that do the talking. You could have a MR8 with tons of Railjack experience versus a returning MR24 with absolutely none at all.

[DisasterIncarnate]

1 minute ago, Xandis said:

I've edited the original post. Although I was originally posting for MR0s, I think that this might benefit all players instead. Basically, Mastery Rank is mostly irrelevant in a Railjack environment; it's the Intrinsics that do the talking. You could have a MR8 with tons of Railjack experience versus a returning MR24 with absolutely none at all.

indeed, just like our warframe/weapon mods, "things you own"  and the ranks they have combined with node access is what should count rather than an arbitrary number that does not reflect everybodys circumstances.

[(PSN)PanserKunst]

Well perhaps it's a ham-fisted unconscious or unintended decision by design. It may very well be a mistake. Impossible to say, perhaps the DE team did not think it through in regards to the whole community, which to be fair here as a developer with a community so large, and many years of development it's easy to slip through the cracks. I think this problem is a symptom that leads back to DE's ugliest basic truth. Warframe has not and never will be integrated into a whole contiguous title. The game is exception after exception after exception. If I came off too harsh in my earlier post, that's my mistake.

[Methanoid]

11 hours ago, (PS4)PanserKunst said:

Well perhaps it's a ham-fisted unconscious or unintended decision by design. It may very well be a mistake. Impossible to say, perhaps the DE team did not think it through in regards to the whole community, which to be fair here as a developer with a community so large, and many years of development it's easy to slip through the cracks. I think this problem is a symptom that leads back to DE's ugliest basic truth. Warframe has not and never will be integrated into a whole contiguous title. The game is exception after exception after exception. If I came off too harsh in my earlier post, that's my mistake.

nothing wrong with that opinion tbh, imho DE only really needed the new mr lock system on solar map progress due to there largely being no content to play after starmap completion back in 13/14, today that is not a problem, there is plenty of things to do, the current mr progression lock system is simply outdated and no longer fit for purpose, it instead discourages new players to get into the game, we no longer need to fear players clearing up shop in 1-2 months like the old days, its just not possible.

Letting things go like the old days is a better system now, let players go at their own pace without any pseudo hardlocks, we always had progression in the form of gear/mod checks, thats kinda still the same even now with railjack and other added content.