Heart of Deimos: Cambion Drift & Activities Feedback

[frogov99]

About bounties: collecting samples for the corpus Latrox has excessive rng. I would add a forced drop every certain amount of kills or every 30 seconds, if you don't get any by chance. Rex femur should have a mark when it's released because it doesn't always spawn exactly where the pod was. 
About Isolation Vault bounties: we get more drops because of the extra necramechs but the bountie rewards are always the same. I think relics and legendary gems should be removed from drops and replaced by necramech mods. Adding necramech mods (at least the common ones) as Necraloid offerings is another option. 

Mining: Thaumica's rarity must be corrected. I got the legendary rarity gems quite frequently (embolos and xenorast) from jackpot rolls on ore veins but I'm not able to get the rare Thaumica from ore veins. And I do not missed the hotspot on the wheel. I know it's rare but its rarity exceeds the legendary. 

Conservation: the quality of the captures is pointless if we don't get extra standing like before. In this case should be extra markers. Tracking spots do not refresh regardless of the outcome of the conservation task, they should do so, otherwise conservation takes longer because you have to go back to the necralisk go outside again.
I don't like having to get weakened predasite and vulpaphyla to create a companion. First, conservation species shouldn't be considered hostile by the infested. Second, allow us to use predasite and vulpaphyla from perfect captures (or any capture quality) to create companions. 

Fishing: spawn rate of fish is inconsistent in hotspots, even with bait. I'm not against moving between fishing spots, and the basic bait is free but when I use the special bait and not even 2 rare fish spawn in the hotspot it feels like a waste of time and standing.

[(XBOX)Err0rCode404]

My game crashed after 2 hours in the new open world, i was fishing and mining. I lost all my resources that I farmed out over the two hours. Adding a resource deposit somewhere (maybe with mother at her many spawn points?) would help give incentive the stay in the drift longer. If i have to worry about staying in the drift and losing all my resources, that just makes me not want to interact with it.

[fiendishrabbit]

To solve the vault puzzles I had to give the Requiem runes mnemonic names. For most this works fine.

Fass = Leaf, Khra = Timeglass, Netra = City, Ris = Sunworship, Xata = Eye

However for Lohk only one mnemonic really comes to mind, and I'm not sure if this is intentional or not or if this is a freudian moment or something but...

Spoiler

It's a vagina.

 

[Lazarow]

The Sample collection of awfully slow, the samples are rng based and that makes most of the issue, buff it or reduce the samples required.

The infested creatures that grab onto the warframes face dont seem to be affected by vaubans basstile,

[chronicmissfire]

Can't get Scintillant from mother bounty 2. It never drops even though it says it is a common drop.

[LordPreda]

I really love the new Open World. Very impressive looking and the worms-as-day-cycle idea is great! Would it be possible to have the current Worm be displayed somewhere in the Necralisk so people can coordinate better?

Also I kinda wish the Necramechs that roam around the Drift were more than just occasional set-dressing. Wouldn't it be fun to have some Bounties that center around mechs, maybe retrieving them or bringing them in for repairs?

[LordPreda]

2 hours ago, chronicmissfire said:

Can't get Scintillant from mother bounty 2. It never drops even though it says it is a common drop.

I agree that it would be nice to be able to find Scintillant around the Drift, maybe in areas that still have Orokin ruins around them, the same way Wisps are always found on the Plains around the lakes.

[THeMooN85]

It would be goddamn nice to see Vome/Fass timer in Necralisk (I don't want to get beck to orbiter just to see when climate change on Cambion Drift).

I know, there are "trackers" on pages but... why the hek should I use something that is not the part of the game and the game already has timer in game?!

[SpaceAgeBrain]

I have 757 Bapholite, and I've only gotten 20 Thaumica. 

Please look at the drop rate for Thaumica. 

[TheArcSet]

While there is a lot to like about fishing in the drifts, when it not mandatory, there are a few environmentally features that have made things that were annoying in the valis, extremely frustrating here.
 

1. The Drifts have areas of shallow water: places that are clearly intended to be water, that fish can swim through, but where the 'ground' is raised up so fish count as in the ground and are uncatchble.
2. A lot of cave hotspots, in particular, have narrow rivers, this can already be a problem, but when you add in shallows, a lot of these rivers have areas where the regions where you can actually catch fish are a rather small part of where the fish can swim.
3. Because fish can swim above ground, the seem even more inclined to swim underground.
4. Fishing hotspots often only seem marginally related to where fish will spawn, often with fish spawning a long way, in multiple direction at once, from the map marked hotspot.
5. Because hotspots are often grouped closely together in the drifts, with rivers connecting them and fish spawn so far from the actual spot, it can be very hard to guess which hotspot fish belong too, which can lead to you having to put down a lot of bait, to hedge your bets.
6. There are often large periods at hotspots when fish won't spawn, sometimes seeming only to spawn if you leave for a bit. If there are no fish at a spot when you arrive, it's possible that no fish will ever spawn there, even if you use bait.

 

Basically, a lot of this boils down to clearly visible fish being totally un-intractable, without even cursor indicators, and tying up the spawn cap why you hope that they might eventually swim somewhere you can catch them; the cartography of the Drift's waterways, especially the narrow rivers the un-fishable shallows and the massive and highly variable spawn location for each hotspot all combine to make this even worse than it should be.

Hopefully you can alter some pathing boundaries to make this much less aggravating, or let the spears penetrate the shallows.

Thank you for all your work to improve this game.

[DeltaPangaea]

On 2020-09-07 at 2:55 AM, supernils said:

"Garv" always dies when I solo the easiest bounty. It's lvl15 and I'm MR17. Am I supposed to bring a full squad to kill enemies that get one hitted? Am I supposed to use a specific frame so I can protect the guy?

Compare this to the "protest the drone" Eidolon bounties  ... ?

 

This is one of the most garbage things.

The reason it's garbage is because infested can and will just near-silently spawn right behind you, and there's no way to intercept them or attack them before they can attack. So a mob of three of them spawn next to the guy, decent odds they'll get a few swings in before getting killed.

I'm kind of sick of the VAST plethora of 'defend the thing' mission types DE resorts to since they can't trust themselves that we'll be threatened in any way personally.

[.LeiA._]

Reduce the time needed for the missions/bounty, please, especially the Isolation Vault mission. It's already good from the beginning and you guys decided to add some more time. Please, just reduce it. No one ever asked to make timed-missions to be longer. 

[MrNaxeros]

I wonder how many people would share the same opinion, but I feel like the mission with Latrox Une where you defend him and grab samples takes way too long.

It gets really boring when you get one sample from every twentieth enemy. Either increase infested spawns (reducing the amount of tougher enemies of course) or increase the sample drop chance.

[pantophage]

I have seen a lot of talks and complaints about the conservation grind, and was feeling pretty disappointed myself with how little progress the non-combat activities felt like they were giving. So I decided to sit down and evaluate and quantify the grind for the conservation activities and break down just what we get for our standing.

Conservation Hunting
the per tag value for standing is abysmal 4-8 tags for 1 token is ridiculous, while I have gotten 4 tokens for 2 rare tags, that is still a not an good pay out when you compare it to the other open worlds

On the low end:
assuming BAD captures: common pobbers/kuakas variants are 200 each
assuming PERFECT captures, 400 each
compared to deimos (4-8 tags for 1 son token), that is  1.6-6.4 times more value per animal in other open worlds (37.5- 84% reduction in value)

On the high end
assuming BAD captures: rare mergoo 1800, rare kubrodon 4000
assuming PERFECT captures, rare mergoo 3600, rare kubrodon 8000
compared to deimos, (2-4 tags for 4 son tokens) that is 1.8-8 times more value per animal in other open worlds (44-93.75% reduction in value)

Fishing
Fish standing ranges are as follows:
Cetus: 25-2000 standing
Fortuna: 35-1000 standing
Deimos: 25-250 (assuming 100% accuracy of available assignments to correlating fish parts) a 75-87.5% reduction!

I am ignoring what fish give specifically and breaking down what fish give in terms of common, uncommon, and rare resources since daughter's assignments are RNG, with the possible combos available on the wiki rn. Please note this is assuming that the fish parts gained through chopping aligns perfectly with the RNG deals from daughter.
kymaeros are the most common fish, found both fass/vome on the surface. The small variant gives 5 common resources with the only the 1 and 2 token deals relying solely on common parts. meaning that a small kymaeros gives 25-50 standing.  The more rare fish are a bit more complicated to calculate as the 4-5 token deal possibilities have a wide range of common to rare resource demands but by breaking down what the large of each fish gave and comparing it to the smallest possible demand for each assignment combo, it was possible to get 5 tokens for 2 fish using this theoretical method, making the most standing a fish could possibly be worth 250. The exact fish that is worth the most is debatable but any combo of duroid and vitreospina/chondricord could fulfill this assignment (8x uncommon + 1-6x rare + 1-6x rare).

Mining 
All gems are classified as uncommon or higher in relation to Otak's assignments with all ores except thaumica being classified as common. 
Tiametrite (pink) and dagonic (orange) gems seem to be the most plentiful and are the only ones mineable with the basic mining laser, making them the direct equivalent to common gems on other open worlds which range in value from 50 (azurite, devar, phasmin, noctrul), 75 (veridos), and 200 (goblite).  Since ore deposits are generally more common, give more resource per node, and are not tradeable in the other open worlds, I will not be calculating in ore (which actually adds value to the deimos gems since their value is not spread out across more items) 

Otak offerings are somewhat wonky 1 token for (7-10x common + 4-6x uncommon) ignoring the commons since its exclusively ore, that values each gem at 25-16 standing.
The highest value per gem deal otak has using this calculation method is a 3 token offer (10-20x common + 15-20x common + 4x uncommon) which puts each gem at 75 standing, this does ignore a large ore cost though. His lowest value deal is also at the 3 token tier (10-20x common + 12-20x uncommon + 12-20x uncommon) which amounts to a measly 7.5 standing per gem. If you add in the ores to that deal it comes down to 5 standing per item. He only offers 1 deal type that involves rare gems. so to calculate the value of the rare gems I averaged the value of gems in each of his deals which came out to be 25 standing for all non rare gems. Unfortunately that leads to a bit of a conundrum. Because the 4 token deal is (10x uncommon + 10x uncommon + 2x rare) 20 uncommon times 25 is 500. 500 is 100 more standing than we would get out of that deal. back to square one. Let's assume that one of those 10x uncommons is actually the only uncommon ore: thaumica. While it would be very dumb to use it for standing because of its extremely rare droprate, for the purposes of this analysis we will ignore that. 10x25= 250. That leaves 150 standing to be divided between the 2 rare gems in the deal. meaning that at most a rare gem is worth 75 standing. 

the highest valued gems on the other open worlds are 400 in cetus and 1000 in Fortuna. The lowest in either of them is 50 standing. Deimos gems range from 5 standing  up to 75 standing. No matter how you slice it that's a 81.25-99.5% reduction in value.

OVERALL
Those are all direct item>token>standing values. But for the sake of argument, lets pretend that you turn in all of those tokens for grandmother tokens, which are worth 1.5 times as much as whatever tokens you trade to her. The lowest devaluation (37.5% from conservation) becomes only a 6.25% reduction, not too bad, maybe even forgivable. however the worst, 99.5% only gets brought down to a 99.25% reduction. But the high end of hunting is the exception, not the rule.
40% original reduction transferred to grandma tokens equals 10% reduction <This is where hunting begins
50% original reduction transferred to grandma tokens equals 25% reduction
60% original reduction transferred to grandma tokens equals 40% reduction
75% original reduction transferred to grandma tokens equals 62.5% reduction <This is where fishing begins
80% original reduction transferred to grandma tokens equals 70% reduction <This is where mining begins
90% original reduction transferred to grandma tokens equals 85% reduction< This is where fishing/hunting ends
95% original reduction transferred to grandma tokens equals 92.5% reduction

Quite frankly, this is unacceptable. Especially when combined with the fact that the weapons available from the syndicate cost between 3000-42,500 standing when compared to zaws which range from 3000-17,000 standing and kitguns which range from 10,000-12,500. I totaled the costs from each open world main syndicate to acquire every MR item and every every usable item that serves an active purpose (lure, tools, reusable blueprints) The low numbers represent all MR fodder modular builds using the cheapest parts, the high number maximizes the cost of each modular item.

Cetus 184,250-265,250 
Fortuna 204,500-312.500
Deimos 217,500-274,500

Bounties
Deimos does not seem too out of line at first, but both Cetus and Fortuna have gotten significant expansions since launch and contain significantly more content. I decided to break down how rewarding the bounties were because the more I was looking at the numbers, the more stuff just didn't feel right.

Tier 1          Tier 2        Tier 3                     Tier 4       Tier 5      Tier 6 (steel path)
 

Cetus            1500          2160          2650                      3520        4230        5020

Fortuna         1080          1920          2590                      3340        4290        5020

Deimos         1500          3600          4500 (endless)       7200        8900        11,300

Conclusion
All forms of conservation and non combat activities are HEAVILY de-incentivized  as made apparent by the bounty rewards giving 50-100% more standing than other open worlds and conservation work being next to worthless as a means to gaining standing (10-99% reductions). DE is not incompetent and I do not believe this is a mistake. These changes were likely made to combat players using conservation to max their daily standing in 10-15 minutes of play, as even 3 runs of a steel path bounty on Deimos take about an hour to complete, while still keeping the overall time to hit daily cap somewhat manageable. Combined with the sizable increase in standing costs obviously meant to inflate playtime (not a bad thing to do necessarily). While this might work in the short term, nerfing conservation work to the state it currently is in simply makes it not worth it to ever do outside of immediate demand for resources. Part of the reason conservation was enjoyable and played in the other open worlds was because it was an alternative to running bounties. You could break the gameplay loop without losing out. Even if you were max with the syndicate, you could still buy items that could be traded for plat with your extra standing. It did not feel like you were dead in the water while doing it. Deimos does not allow players to break the gameplay loop and progress through other methods in any meaningful way. This will and is generating a large amount of player burnout. 

[Dreyazed]

The Ebisu fishing spear claims to be silent, but throwing it alerts nearby Infested enemies even if you are invisible (e.g. Ivara's Prowl), who start shooting in your direction as is usual for enemies hearing but not seeing the player.

[AConfusedBird]

i'm sure y'all have gotten a number of complaints about this already, but the fish spawns on deimos are abysmal. i don't mind putting time into fishing, i actually find it kind of fun, but when 50%+ of my time "fishing" is actually "standing around waiting for something, anything, to spawn, dear god please," it drains the fun pretty fast. 

bait has no noticeable effect on either increasing spawns or changing spawns. i dropped a "processed fass residue" on a hotspot and it didn't spawn a single one of the aquapulmo fish before it ran out. 

in addition to vastly increasing the amount of time i need to just stand around to fish, you've also vastly decreased the value of each individual fish, by requiring sometimes dozens to purchase even a measly 100 standing. it's not a good look, guys. 

please, show me that you value our time as players, and at least increase the spawn rates. 

[tennomantra]

Token system has some irregularities which are extremely prevalent with Daugther and Son tokens.

5 token exchanges are undoubtedly the cheapest ones. It might be intentional, 1-3 token exchanges are the most expensive because the fastest way to progress is grabbing all available tokens. However, I will never be short on these "rare" beasts, since day one, and I will never have enough of the common ones.

Perhaps this is not intended, perhaps, unintentionally, the "rarest" beasts are more common than the "common/uncommon" ones, further exacerbated by the fact that token exchange asks for just 1 of those in truth very common "rare" beasts and as many as 6 of the "common" ones.

Furthermore, if you hunt for cryptilexes, to present an example, using the lure method and with pheromones, you are likely to spend more standing getting the required amount of little rats than you'll gain for some of the tokens even if we take into account how much more standing it would yield when turned in as a granny token. This means that some of son tokens have to be permanently ignored in favor of keeping the more desired tags for the better deals.

Now that wouldn't be an issue, as long as people dedicated enough to spend hours hunting animals wouldn't face this problem same as everyone else does. But they do. I have more "rare" beast than I will ever possibly turn in and no matter how much time I spend hunting, I will always be short on the most common beasts, forced to return to hunting as often as daily, only managing to muster enough common beasts/hour for a few token turn ins.

Intended, or not, this simply needs some rebalancing, imo.

[FmV01]

In regards of the cambion drift it kinda feels stale/dull at times, you'd expect a dangerous place to be roaming around but instead you get a small group of enemies on few locations (where in other open worlds we have enemy camps and even alarms calling enemy backup).

So i suggest the introduction of nests or tumors all over the map, but not those small lumps that generates eggs from the ground, but something bigger that acts like a bee hive or kubrow dens, where large group of infested come from inside of it, the trigger of the hive could come from infested drones that acts as guardians of them and why not also scout units, that way you'd pay more attention when roaming, to kill the drones and avoid triggering those hives.
To not complicate things for unprepared/new players, units from these hives will only chase players in a fixed radius, if they don't detect threats in the area after X amount of time they'll go back inside the hive.

[Siilk]

On 2020-09-08 at 11:08 PM, Rusty_Hatchet said:

I love the update however as im a solo player i am only able to do the first vault run - one necromech i can kill - two is not possible - I have 160 of the common orokin orientation matrix and 0 ballistic matrix of which i need 15 to rank up to level 3 so i can get the necromech blueprint - i have done around 30 single vault runs and with 0 ballistic matirx (when i need 15) i will never get a necromech - i am almost top rank with the entrati but that doesnt help at all - why arent these ballistic matrix craftable once reaching max rank with the entrati - that way solo players can still get a necromech without spending a year doing nothing but single vault runs

SOLO players will never have a necromech

Had the same problem, killing even a single one was excruciatingly slow and painful with most frames. But turns out there is a cheese strategy: Octavia. Her 1+2 deal damage directly to mech's weak point and the damage is buffed into high heaven by mech's own high damage output. It can literally take 5 secs to down a mech that way. Octavia runs are not entirely mindless but are very close to being so for 1 and even 2 mechs. 3 can be challenging but still, nowhere near being tough.

As any other frame/weapon combination barely does anything to the mech when you can't hit the weak spot, iso vault missions really feel badly designed for solo play. Either cheese it by using a single specific frame that can do that or prepare for a painfully long and dull fight. It's not like mech is all that dangerous with frame built for toughness or just Vazarin dashing, just frustratingly hard to damage reliably when fought solo. Between mech having a ton of CC, operator powers being jammed and the mech itself being a huge bullet sponge, you are forced into a very unpleasant experience which just drags on and on. On top of that, it can turn its damage reflecting shield on at any moment without warning so if you are trying to get the most of moments when its weak spot is exposed by using high damage weapon you have a high chance of one-shotting yourself. So the best non-cheese solo strategy is to use med-power weapon with AOE or punch-through and slowly plink at the mech while kiting it around for what can easily end up being 10-15 mins.

[Crusty_Crumpet]

Thanks for telling me about octavia - doing as you suggested i can now do all 3 vaults without any problems.  the mechs die in about 10 secs even if all 3 are present

[Fallowsthorn]

Could we please get about half a second more added to the Infested Spawn Pod growing/popping animation? It's currently slightly too short to scan, especially with Helios.

[The_1_FreeMan]

You know what I really love? More than anything? Grinding like everyone here mentioned, then having the bounty FAIL FOR NO REASON upon returning to the necralisk and having everything, all my fish and all my gems and all of my pickups be TAKEN AWAY FOR NO REASON. That is REALLY FUN. 

[Drasiel]

Necramechs are bullS#&amp;&#036; let me count the ways:

1. severe diminishing returns on hard cc unfair to solo, these guys are end planet boss level diminishing returns 3 stomps before it shakes off the effect before you can even get around it.
2. zenurik slow doesn't reduce the turning/rotating speed of the unit, meaning solo you can't get behind them.
3. The weak spot on their back is not really visible or telegraphed with all the other effects going on I didn't even know it existed until I looked it up on the wiki
4. the shoulder pad weak points are not telegraphed, you find out by randomly shooting in the hopes of dealing damage.
5. Punchthrough doesn't seem to work to hit the empty arm holes and back weakspots anymore meaning multipellet and projectile weapons are a null choice.
6. The electric iron skin is totally ridiculous
   1. it's hard to see when it starts
   2. it has absorption period meaning you can totally screw yourself if you don't notice it and it's really *really* easy to miss.
   3. it has thorns damage because it's not bad enough it makes the goddamn mech invincible
   4. there's no health bar for the electric iron skin so it looks and behaves as if you are having no effect and need to do something different.
   5. It can use this ability way too frequently If the arms are gone it will rapidly trigger this ad nauseam until it picks up an arm again.

[RedZeroInferno]

A: The Animal hunting is poorly set up in Deimos
And B: WHY DO THE NECRAMECHS LOOK LIKE CORN ON THE COB PLEASE TELL ME YOU GUYS INTENT TO ADD SKINS OR SOMETHING AUUHGH

[Butterfly85]

Is it possible to get a map icon for where necramechs die in vaults? With all the infested chaos going on I dont always see where they fall.