Steel Path, Arbitrations and Lich system integration of sorts

[Xardis]

Here is a concept for merging those: scrap Steel Essence, convert it to Vitus, we don't need yet another currency that will be a yet another island of grind. Add new prerequisite to both Arbitrations and Steel Path - having completed War Within. Liches don't get to have their own missions, Steel Path is where the Lich system happens, larvling only spawn in Grineer nodes in Steel Path. Add 2 or 3 nodes to each planet with the opposite Corpus/Grineer faction. Liches spawn only in Grineer nodes, Corpus will get their Liches someday and they will spawn on Corpus nodes. Your lich spawns only on select planets, you can only clear a planet from Lich influence by killing or converting it. Lich expands its influence when it levels up. Kuva Thralls spawn only if at least one squad member has an active lich, but if the planet is not under the influence of any squad members lich, the chance to spawn a Thalls is very low. Killing a Thrall progresses murmurs regardless of location.

With Liches being moved into Steel Path, their base health, armour and shields are reduced to not make them insanely tanky with Steel Path modifiers, they also start at level 100 and go up to 140.

Eximus in Steel Path drop Vitus instead of Steel Essence, additionally Steel Path has arbitration drones spawning in missions. On top of that, those drones in Steel Path and Arbitrations are reworked: there are multiple drone types instead of one, each one has specific weakness. Those are the example of different drones.

Ability drone - provides immunity from Tenno abilities to self and protected targets.
Weapon specific drone - provides 90% damage reduction to self and protected targets from Tenno using primary weapons, secondary weapons or melee.
Void touched drone - provides immunity from all damage and Tenno abilities to self and protected targets, has low health and shields that don't scale with level, can only be damaged by Void damage.
Modulating frequency drone - provides immunity from Tenno abilities and all damage types to self and protected targets, can only be damaged by one damage type displayed on it at all times, this damage types shifts every 15s to another damage type or if the drone is damaged by Void damage, resetting with void damage has a cooldown of 1.5s.

Kuva Siphon/Flood, Syndicate and Nightmare missions are present on Steel Path and are mutually exclusive with starchart versions of those. Kuva Siphon rewards 2.5 times Kuva while Kuva Flood rewards 4 times Kuva. Syndicate mission reward 1.5 times more standing and have 4 more talismans hidden in level. Nightmare missions have an additional random Sortie/Nightmare modifier and reward 3 Nightmare mods, with a 20% chance to also reward a random Corrupted mod. On top of that, there is another Void Fissure tier specifically for Steel Path, only one node, non endless mission and not capture, mission usually has 2 times bigger level and has 2 times more objectives. You can equip up to 3 relics for it, it takes 30 reactant to unlock relics regardless of the number of relics you equipped. At the end of the mission, all relics from each person are unlocked but you can only take 2 rewards (if you took 2 relics you still get 2 rewards, but less traces, if you took only one, you take only one reward, and none means you don't get to take rewards). This fissure rewards the same amount of traces as Axi fissure.

In Steel Path, all relics that are in rotation are divided between all planets. Mission on that planet reward those relics with higher chance for them to drop. In Steel Path there are not tiers of missions like on normal starchart. Fast missions can drop only Lith and Meso relics, missions with caches or Spy missions drop them on rotation A and B, they also drop Neo and Axi relics on rotation C, Endless missions with AABC rotation drop Lith/Meso on rotation A and Neo/Axi on rotation B and C. Disruption reward random relics from all eras regarless of tier, but higher tiers give higher chance for relics to drop from them.

Besides all of this: restrict the ability nullification on Nullifier bubble, maybe increase the range and in turn its durability, increase the spawn rate of Combas and Scrambuses in Corpus mission and make at least one of them have a Corrupted version for the Void.

[Synpai]

👏Pretty much this and then some. I.e: Making every syndicate a vendor for arbitration eventually.

[Hypernaut1]

i like it- but what about players that dont want to play Steel Path?

[Xardis]

37 minutes ago, Hypernaut1 said:

i like it- but what about players that dont want to play Steel Path?

Honestly, this kind of integration is the idea to give those players reasons to play it in the first place. If the content is disconnected from the game, its obvious that less people are intrested in it because they have to go out of their way to do it and with Steel Path, the rewards are a not very good reason to do it. They way I see it: Lich system would not change that much, its bottom part would be harder, but level 5 Lich missions were already in that level range. Population on both Steel Path and Lich nodes is low, partly because in both content islands you progress only one thing at a time. I would imagine that if a person disintrested in Steel Path alone could progress the new starchart, get the progress on your Lich and get new locations for more focused relic farms, that person would be more intrested in Steel Path.

I would like something similar to this done not only to Steel Path but to the majority of the game, both PoE and Fortuna need it badly, not to even mention Railjack - the only reason I would do it at the moment, if the new content requires me to do it. And I would imagine, thats for exactly the same reasons some people dont want to play Steel Path.

[(PSN)Jesias]

I absolutely agree with this sentiment; however when a content is new, it needs to be in its own place else people have no reason to be excited because it is just something extra that I get passively. That being said, now that these systems are properly all released, fusing them to provide a seamless experience would be amazing. A minor setback is that getting Kuva at double the rate due to boosters and getting boosted void traces would change the reward drop chances significantly making everything a lot easier to get and leading to players running out of content. They will likely do something like this once the new content is outdated and there is something else to grind beyond your Kuva army, but until a new system eclipses these systems, they can not merge them else risk having their game become stale due to everything having been experienced so quickly.

 

All this said, I look forward to playing Warframe on next gen consoles when all these beta systems are fully fleshed out. We must always remember they continually iterate on things as needed e.g. Corpus rework. So it is likely that Kuva liches will be worked into Kuva floods, or Steel Path someday that or they will be pulled into Railjack like they originally wanted it to be after they flesh out  new clan based system to encourage comraderie.

Their Railjack systems was made with the goal of making a fully connected world, they need to tie it into the core tile sets and will eventually. Likewise, steel path and the Lich system will find their place in a seemless gameplay experience, thematically liches even make sense because Teshin mentions that the enemies grow and adapt and the like. It is fully possible that eventually liches will make the “new game plus” be the “completed version” of steel path. I would be surprised if they didn’t take that step.

[(PSN)Jesias]

It’s actually really nice that they made steel path instead of making a “Warframe 2” Like certain other developers did when their game was completely beaten and experienced by the player base. It makes the original star chart a training grounds for new players, and the real game becomes the steel path with liches, Railjack, and a bunch of other systems interconnected with a new tile set due to the access that Railjack gives us into new areas. Likely Sentients will come into play as well at some point in the “steel path” due to the nature of their bodies literally being hardened to avoid the infestation. The nodes will not be the same nodes as what we currently have for lower level content. They will have brand new tile sets in the future, it’s all a matter of development pacing to not burnout the team, that and they need to milk what they can due to the F2P nature of the game. Time = money for them, so slow rolling the full game out as they design it and integrate everything is without a doubt the best way to longevity. If they make their team too large, it will lose its focus, so they are doing very well thus far keeping it together.

[Uthael]

Leave arbitrations where they are. Don't add more drones into them OR add those special drones into Steel Path. I like my Grineer tileset runs without some void-themed drones, for example.

Add Steel Path arbitrations after. Add those drones there.

[Uthael]

Kuva siphons and floods can have 1.5-2x multiplier on kuva, people would still do it. Syndicate missions don't need more talismans. Rather, make each count as several. 2 is fine though.

On second thought, no. Any plat-related resource shouldn't be boosted. Kuva, Endo, syndicate standings and whatever else.
Larger supply means lower prices. While I have nothing against lower prices, I like newer players having a chance to work for plat at a reasonable rate. Steel Path Endo farms are hurting them.

[Uthael]

What's that about Nullifiers? I didn't quite catch that.

Please, no more Combas/Scarambuses. It's not that they're causing problems. They're not even that hard to deal with. But I really dislike my UI being scrambled and it happens too often that I can't prevent it for whatever reason (not seeing them before their ability goes off or a different target is a priority).
Any more frequent UI scrambling would REALLY be annoying. I agree with adding them to the Corrupted.

[Uthael]

Kuva Thrall spawns are fine as-is. Leave other squad members out of it.
I'm against changing how Disruption rotations work. I really like them the way they are.
I'm indifferent to other mentioned relic ideas.

Agree with and support everything else OP wrote that I didn't mention.

[Kaggelos]

I more or less love this idea. Not sure about the arbitration drones though. We'll have to see how it goes