Ideas for Evergreen Rewards

[(PSN)Wolf_Folivora]

In a recent interview with Rebecca Ford (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxDLgWQ_Zss&t=6074s) it was mentioned that in DE it is challenging to narrow down evergreen rewards for missions, and i do feel like late game you get the problem of picking up duplicates you dont need, so lets share some ideas for DE on what one could always need after picking up all the regular drops in the drop pool. Because they sometimes forget that they can just ask.

My idea .- Forma and lots of Endo (because late game you will find yourself polarizing your gear and upgrading your mods - a lot)

What about you guys?

 

[Artekkor]

Double that. Credits, formaas and endo are pretty much 3 core resources that players reliably need through their warframe journey. I still need like 500.000 endo to max out all the primed mods, and even more credits.

And formas... Formas ran out like crazy these days.

[master_of_destiny]

Respectfully, I disagree with you.  Allow me to outline why.  

 

Formas - Assuming they drop as a blue print they're 23 hours of construction.  The largest sink for them right now is the Kuva weapons, with 5 required per item.  While I see their value, it's a way to stretch play time unless they drop completed.  We have to grind the void to get prime parts, which offers plenty of blue prints.  If they dropped completed at any substantial rate DE would have less reason to log in daily, and less of an easy revenue source.  

On a personal note, I've got nearly 200 complete and 150 blue prints.  Eventually you just run out of desire to grind a thing back to level 30 for the fourth or fifth time.

 

Endo - The issue here is pacing.  Endo is a concern until the day it isn't, at which point it accumulates as spare statues until Baro decides to bring something around.  At which point I can cash in sculptures, garbage mods, and max things out.  While you've got none, 40k endo sounds like investment.  Once you've maxed out the mods it's settling on collecting dust.  Again, this is fantastic for being sprinkled liberally throughout the progression path, but you will get to a point of not caring.  By this point you can grind on Sedna, Arbitrations, or simply equip a radar mod and get the RNG sculptures.

Again, transparency here.  I have thousands of stars, 2 million in the bank, and the only mods I'm missing are conclave.  The frustration I have is something like conclave, where 40+ minute runs can award only endo.  That was a waste of my time, given what I need are arcanes and mods.  

 

Credits - Wow.  I remember these mattering years ago, before the Index.  That being said, I took a break before the Index and returned well after it.  I have never really engaged with it, and currently have 120 million.  This, again, is a resource that matters only until it doesn't.  You will get to a point where the passive earnings from nightwave, dailies, and syndicate will outpace the spending you can do.  This is coming from someone at the highest possible MR, has 3+ of each and every modular component, and has functionally maxed syndicate rankings.

 

 

So I've crapped all over what you've said.  What else can be offered, but shouldn't?  

Boosters - At some point the only one you want is affinity, so that you don't have to grind to get to the daily cap.  Credits are a joke.  Double resources and resource chance are nice, but you'll get to the point where you need RNG for the drop of a blue print more than 2 more tellurium.  The mod drop chance still feels...less than fair.  It's fixing insanely low drop chance, which is a solution for a problem that was created rather than a solution for something which cannot be addressed.

 

Catalysts/Reactors - Again, you'll be swimming in these eventually.  That's doubly so when 90% of weapon releases are mediocre, so you grind them and sell them immediately.  As far as reactors, we have 8 new frames a year.  On average about 2 companions per year over the life of the game.  You'll reach the point of not needing them at around MR 16, at least in my experience.  

 

Exilus Adapters - Simaris exists.  If you have a Loki or Ivara it'll take 2 exterminate missions to max out the daily standing, and 1 with the daily synthesis and any luck.  Everything else Simaris offers is one-and-done, so it'd effectively be making that grind useless.  I don't think this is a bad idea, only one with diminishing returns and one which will negatively impact other content.

 

 

So, what do I propose?  Well, sadly there's only two pieces of content which are always viable.  The first is rivens, and the second is prime gear.  Rivens have eaten a huge nerf given the starting disposition of 1/5 stars, but for established weaponry we can offer utility.  For prime gear, we need to decrease accumulation of junk and the continued devaluation of Baro's inventory.

 

Rivens (transmute lock) - When you're looking to cycle a Riven you can use 1, 3, or 6 of these locks per riven.  They will lock the value of a chosen slot (1 slot = 1, 2 slots = 3, and 3 slots = 6 locks), so that upon rerolling you can control stats.  This effectively allows rerolls to be mildly controlled, is consumed and thus needs to be accumulated, and is tied to the random rewards of rivens.  It's not going to feel good, but it's infinitely better than rolling the perfect multishot, critical chance, and getting the negative as critical damage.  Those rolls just make cycling frustrating.

 

Rivens (slivers) - Packs of slivers.  The only positive here would be to make them something that you can choose, rather than the Palladino dice roll.  I want a shotgun riven, but after the third week of getting a single pistol riven I'm left feeling like this is just another bad slot machine.  

 

Rivens (shifter) - Change the type of riven or the challenge associated.  This gets you at least into the right category, and could reset a challenge you think is annoying.  It's convenience, and player choice to get what they actually want.  I know I'd be using this on nearly all my kitgun rivens.

 

Primed Gear (rarity) - A unique relic, that once cracked awards requiem mods as common drops, and the rare/uncommon drops are rare prime parts.  The practical upshot here is making the Lich grind less annoying for those already at the point of wanting to do it to max weapon elements.  The other side is that the rare prime parts are from all but the latest non-vaulted prime parts.  This makes catching up on the items easier, doesn't detract from the latest prime release, and gives us a reason to come back instead of having to do 15+ relics to get a single part and 25+ if it requires two (looking at you dual wielded secondaries).

 

Primed Gear (transmutation) - Put in 4 primed parts of a specific rarity, add ducats, and get back two random primed parts, of equal rarity, of what is available now.  You're pulling out 2 primed parts from circulation, lord knows how much from the ducats, and giving back what people might want.  This is largely a nod to those who have thousands of ducats lying around, and would want to transmute day 1 of new primed access.  That said, it's offering someone who did enough grinding to get 4 parts with a 10% drop rate (assuming rare transmutation), then giving them 2 rolls at about a 1 in 8 chance of getting what they want.  That's a 23% chance of getting the item, if they only want one thing, from the two resulting rewards.

 

 

What are the problems with my suggestions?  Well, new players are out of luck.  They'll need at least to make it to the Eidolon fights to get a transmuter, and then they'll also need some rivens.  The counter argument to this would be to offer Kuva, and a rare chance to get riven slots.  The former would be viable, the later would effectively decrease the monetary return for DE.  It's risk to potential rewards, because players insane enough to get these rewards are also likely those willing to purchase the riven slots.

The Primed gear changes would require maintenance, and would devalue the kuva siphon system.  This is a weak argument, but made stronger if the kuva were also offered as a reward.  I'd argue that by the time you're able to spend ducats like water, or focusing on the Lich grind, that you're far enough into the game to justify it.  This might take DE willing to make Requiem mods less special, but right now running them to get a single amber star is a joke.  Maybe they need to be less grind.

 

 

With that, I'd like the same holes to be poked into my suggestions.  I'd only ask that the logic be evergreen, and not what you think is necessary elsewhere.  It's difficult to imagine this, given that there are multiple transitions in the game. 

In my experience, the first is having enough slots (warframe, companion, weapon) to do content.  The second is having enough resources not to always be scrounging.  The third is having enough credits to not care.  The final is having enough endo and focus that they're accumulating because there's nothing left to spend it on.  Once you reach that point you'll have an understanding of the difficulty of what "evergreen" truly means in a game where grind is 90% of the content.  Once that grind is done, the remainder is evergreen...and for warframe it's a relatively small pool.  -Insert fashion frame joke here.-

[Angwah]

Well, I'll quote my answer in the similar thread as I believe this to be the most pressing conundrum DE faces at this moment:

Every property could do with a long hard look at itself and how it operates now and then.

RNG lootboxes ought to merit such a critical appraisal in a big way. If a player is looking at getting a specific drop from a particular table the only way is to repeat triggering that table ad nauseam until it gives you what you want. Because of this repetition, no matter how enjoyable at first, it will quickly about the reward itself, and hence efficiency. Every time the loot table denies you, you will have wasted time because by this system's very nature you will have made zero progression towards your goal. None at all. If RNG is being particularly ornery, well, that way lies frustration and burn-out.

Now, as a basic suggestion to try something else, take those tables and put them in the market. You run a mission, you get a mission token (spy, exterminate, disruption, assassinate, etc) and a tier token. Look at the % and calculate the average number of runs to get the item, price accordingly.

For example, let's say we're going after Ivara:

We need a spy token to access the spy reward tables and 11-12 easy tier tokens to get systems or 17-18 medium tier tokens for chassis (or alternaticely 13-14 Lua tokens), 19-20 hard tier tokens to get main blueprint and neuroptics. 

It would take on average the same amount of time, but with vastly more variation in what you can choose to do, no more grinding the same thing over and over and over, and every mission you do will reward you with tangible progression towards your goals.

Also add in kuva, credits, endo, affinity, focus (or lenses but not a fan of them in general), relics, traces, keys to open relics and pick your drop and every single mission gets you something, no matter where you are in your progression. Higher tiers would award more of the 'evergreens' obviously. 

Seems to me the only way to break open the star chart again and allow the players the freedom to pick what they like to do at that particular moment in time instead of funneling them into the handful of options we have now.

Ok, to add to the basic idea, Conditioning with a random reward-scheme is stronger and stripping out all RNG might feel boring. There are still mob drops and there could be RNG-variation in the tokens themselves for example. Sometimes more, sometimes less (in the above example the tokens were on a 1 per mission scale but that can obviously be different to allow more variation), mix in some other fun and rare rewards (forma blueprints, riven slivers, the stuff @master_of_destiny proposes is also good) to give you that 'yes!', fist-pump dopamine rush without messing with the steady reward scheme.

This way everyone can pursue what they need and we could avoid your choice of missions getting smaller and smaller as you progress. Some places might still be more efficient to get specific evergreen rewards, but make it so that sacrificing efficiency for fun, because you are just tired of a particular tileset for example, is a great deal less punishing.

[HeartPurity]

99% veterans don't need credits/ endo anymore. Instead, it is more interesting to give us kuva/ kuva sliver/ cosmetics (armor set, syndana, glyph, emblem, decors, ephemeras or even fur patterns for pets are more meaningful to us) 

[BlackCat500]

If someone barely cares for kuva/rivens and already has all primes in the game, even those don't feel evergreen. Personally, what I'm looking for, is an experience that is intrinsically rewarding (as in, fun in itself). Then the rewards don't matter too much. If it's something you can always return to and have fun in, something you don't go into because you feel like you're being forced to do it due to wanting the rewards, you won't be as disappointed when you get x and y.

 

I realize it's not exactly an entirely constructive argument because I don't have a suggestion that will fix this, but I personally just dislike the idea of anything being built solely around its rewards. The game has done this for years and it's always the reason for having too much or too little of something, either way disappointing everyone and leaving us craving for something better. In my opinion, evergreen rewards don't exist. There will always be a point when you have too much of something. Even rivens you could argue that someday, you are going to hit the hard limit of number of rivens and you have the utmost perfect rolls on each and every one. That is very unrealistic, but a non-zero thing. In essence, that makes the reward not evergreen. Technically speaking yes, because there will be more people who aren't satisfied yet than those who are, but people like me who care very little for them it isn't an argument. Like every other drop in the game it will satisfy some, but not all.

 

So, what I'm saying is, I would prefer if steps were to be made to go away from brain stimulating reward systems as the focus for creating a fun experience, because I don't think there's a sustainable way to make it last. The recent reworks have greatly reinforced this for me. I begrudgingly grinded away to get all the new stuff within two days, now nothing in there is worth of value to me and the granum void is annoying. However, I am having a lot more fun in the game because of how great the new tileset is. It feels fun to just spend my time in it doing what the game asks me to. Now, if the basic mission types were made intrinsically fun, everything would be even better.

[HeartPurity]

Moreover, there are already more effective ways of getting endo/ credits/ sculpture from arbitration/ index & we need a better motivation to grind the start chart all over again in hard mode. 

[HeartPurity]

23 hours ago, Artekkor said:

And formas... Formas ran out like crazy these days.

oh ya formas and catalysts those are welcome. 

[Angwah]

Yes, I quite agree. The focus should be more on the intrinsic fun, and less on the rewards themselves.

That said, depending on where you are in your progression what you consider to be an evergreen reward changes. On top of that what a player considers to be fun, their intrinsic reward, also varies a lot. All of this 

In my (humble) opinion the RNG loot boxes, aka reward tables, as they currently exist and the obvious superiority, exclusivity even, of needing to go to very specific places or game modes to get get what you need is what needs changing. Be it endo, credits, kuva, rivens, that blueprint or prime part you are after, it doesn't matter. Might be because one mode of play is so vastly superior, or simply because there is only one loot table where you can roll on it. This is an issue you face at any point in your progression, but the further along you get the smaller your playing field becomes. Oh, ok, yeah, sure, kuva mostly doesn't come from lootboxes, but a particular game mode, but you need it to roll on the biggest jackpot of them all, so, same issue.

And the smaller your play area becomes, the more you are forced to repeat the same content, almost back-to-back. No matter how enjoyable it once was, repetition is boring, and it is no longer about what you are doing, but why you are doing it, namely the reward. Can't be helped. Whether it is cracking eggs, farming kuva, farming endo, or focus, or affinity, or credits, specific rare mats, Intrinsics, getting the parts for a frame or weapon, for all of these you can open your navigation screen and if you are lucky you can point at more than one node where you can go, which will give you what you seek on a scale that is an order of magnitude more than the rest, but lets face it, that is rare.

The nature of a pure jackpot system is also counterproductive. It is pass-fail. You get what you need, or you don't. If you don't, well, zero progression towards your goal and all time spent towards getting that roll is a total waste. Oh, perhaps not the first couple of runs, no, but by run 10, let alone 20? Hell yeah! 

There is a place for RNG, sure, but as an additive reward, not as your base progression. There is also good reason to have places which are more efficient to farm, but again, not to the point of making them the only sane way to get something. I'll happily give up efficiency of I'm sick and tired of a particular mode of play, but not a factor of 10 and often a lot more, which is about what we're at now.

This is why the game comes across as 95% play-once content and we're talking about content islands. Because of the way the reward tables are implemented, as very localized litlle jackpots, offering nothing worthwhile in comparison to that 5% which will always have a pay-out.

So, put the current reward tables in a shop, let the star chart give tokens to get what you want (per tier and mission type), add the rewards we are currently playing for at a ballpark 25% efficiency rate drop/increase per tier difference (yeah, easier said than done, I know). Let the jackpot at the end give some extra small amounts of credits, endo, whatever, with some rare 'yay' items you could always need, but nothing you can't get anywhere else.

[Twilight-Knight]

I can only agree on formas.