Heart of Deimos: Cambion Drift & Activities Feedback

[(XBOX)EvolvedMonkey97]

Can there be more clarity in-game about fish, where they spawn, when they spawn, and what parts they drop? I'm tired of looking at the wiki for every little fishing resource. This will be the third time.

With regard to the new bounties, I think they're fine, at least on par with what we've gotten before. However, the bounty where you have to defend the corpus guy is a little odd. During the part where he has to upload data, he only ever seems to get to 16/25, even if he is defended very well. There is no clear instruction on how to help him upload faster to get the bounty bonus. Maybe a bug?

Lastly, the day-night cycle is unique and cool this time around, but from a gameplay perspective, having certain content tied to certain cycles is still a nuisance as it was for PoE and Orb Vallis. I won't rehash old arguments here like Eidolons and so on, but I think there needs to be a middle ground for people who don't have the time to wait an hour to farm the resource they need.

[Astinasha]

Jumping on the bandwagon re: conservation. The current time investment to reward - even with 500 per token - is completely skewed to anything else in the game. Any given hunt is going to take something like at least 3-4 minutes, and it is not unusual to have a requirement of 4 captures of one specific type. Worse, since they don't repop all the time you might have to enter and leave the open world portion repeatedly. The very worst part, however, is the 'common' 'easy' tags take - from what I saw - something like 8 and 6 captures of stuff just... spread out over the map, often killed by the time you reach it, doesn't show up on minimap, and the tranq gun doesn't work all that well for hilighting at distance.

 

What it basically boils down to is a very time consuming unsatisfying experience which does not reward 'good' capturing practices at all, unlike both Cetus and Fortuna.  If captures rewarded 2 good or 4 for perfect, it'd be lucrative, fast, and not too tedious for the people who hate it with a passion and want to rank up just enough for helminth.

[Kylo.]

31 minutes ago, KingsAndQueens said:

For the love of god, please remove the fact you need to hunt to get to rank 3. And please remove the entire token system. Its bad. 

 

The token system is good but hunting required for progress I agree on.

[Lady_Khaos]

 I see the intent of the token system. However, the result is just a clunky mess of excessive steps, inconsistent values placed on resources, and abysmal Standing payouts for the amount of effort (considering you have to over farm since you don't know how much you will need).

Also, the bonus for saving up to convert to the super tokens just feels like a slap in the face as you further waste player time. Could have tied those tokens to something else and raised the value of the individual tokens instead.

Deimos is cool. I like the setting. I look forward to uncovering the lore and secret mechanics. However, not only have you once again failed to learn from the mistakes of the past open worlds, you actively made the most tedious rep grind yet. How did you not only ignore the previous feedback, but directly make a rep system that removed all of the reliable ways the previous systems had? Completing bounties and animal captures in the other open worlds just grants standing directly. Here, we get either tokens or worse, PIECES OF A TOKEN. Which we then have to go through the process of turning in for standing at a completely different NPC. 

 

Every new thing you guys add is further proof you have zero care or respect for player time. We are tired of the commitment Warframe keeps demanding. Many of us want to come home from work and relax, not feel like we are logging in to use what little free time we have as a second job.

[Eenbeen]

So far the Cambion Drift is pretty amazing, but its still seems very rough around the edges.

Mining always used to be a tedious and painstakingly long task, but on Deimos it is near excruciating as it is right now. You essentially need to go on a nightmarish adventure for almost every single one minable node, seeing as most seem to be INSIDE the surfaces and the only way to actually see them is by the white dot you need to laser. The general aesthetic of the nodes also make them incredibly hard to spot seeing as they look pretty much the same as any of the other enviromental details. In plains and orb vallis, you at least had a VERY clear out of the ordinary blue and red crack showing the nodes. On deimos you only have the faintly glowing orange and blue spots. So maybe consider visually increasing the size of these spots by quite a bit and adding a much brighter glow to it.

 

Derelict\disabled Necramechs absolutely need an invincibility state when you transfer into one, because it simply isnt fun getting all giddy, because you've finally found one, then to experience the cool rebuild scene and then to see it blow up in your face before the scene is even halfway through.

 

Bounties are mostly fine, except that isolation vault eso%&^es dont seem to work if you opened the vault. And it might be apreciated if a waypoint could be added to exactly show where the vault door is instead of just the extraction icon on early leave eso%&^e.

And please do something about the defend area mission thats literally PoEs liberate camp, just smaller, but still has the same bs potential to fail the bounty as a whole or definitely ruin the perfect bonus you've been working on. And by something I mostly mean removing that bounty type completely.

[shadowstormr]

While I understand that Deimos is actively hostile and is a very cramped map and thus finding a zero threat area and fishing/hunting/mining peacefully is impossible, why are we presented with this convoluted ranking system ? Why is this not following the good precedent set by Fortuna ? I also understand that this may have been implemented with the family lore in mind; it is not fun to rank up with the token system that forces us to do activities we have no interest in. I love conservation in fortuna and then in poe but here it's a nightmare. I'd love doing it at my own pace but I'm forced to run it now to rank up the synd. On top of that I have to fill a random quota of specific variations.  Which takes away from the fun of progression and is really making me detest playing the game. Why is warframe punishing to play instead of fun ? The quest was fun and in general the bounties and npc interactions are fun but the progression system is bonkers bad. Also why is mining this bad after the lesson learned in poe and fortuna. It seems like someone in the art department doesn't understand how colour theory works or how human eyes and brains work.

Also pretty sure Isolation Vault nercamech scaling is bugged. Ran lvl 40 isolation vault and one necramech went down without much fuss and another took as long as steel path jordas golem. It had mad damage reduction and a very large health pool. I'm mr27 with rivenned up loadout.

Edit : Man I really don't want to S#&$ on this update. I was hyped up with tennocon and love the quest and map and the lore and the npcs and I want to sing praises but this S#&$ gets on your nerves like nothing else. There's a nice coat of paint but it ain't dry.There's like a surface that shows you great promise and as you start delving you get hit with a brick.
 

[Zendadaist]

The token system idea is fine because it offers flexibility. The problem is that the implementation of this token system in HoD does not use this flexibility.

Instead of the Token system generating a series of OR actions allowing you to progress, it is forcing a series of AND actions leading to gates upon gates upon gates for every tiny thing.

This is all compounded by the absolutely atrocious conversion rates of items-traded-into-standing - even when you add in the extra hoop jumping of converting tokens at Grandmother for a better return. Compare how much standing you can get from a few gems or fish on Plains and Vallis, then look at how many more gems/fish you need on Drift to get the same amount of standing's worth in tokens. The disparity is eye-popping!

tl;dr The core system is fine but the numbers and options need a LOT of tweaking to make it have some semblance of parity with Plains and Vallis.

[Lady_Khaos]

1 hour ago, Zendadaist said:

Compare how much standing you can get from a few gems or fish on Plains and Vallis, then look at how many more gems/fish you need on Drift to get the same amount of standing's worth in tokens. The disparity is eye-popping!

This. Until this is fixed, I'm not logging in again. The conversion rates for standing are absolutely abysmal and frankly insulting.

[Althaline]

The "Upload All Data" bonus objective seems impossible to complete in multiplayer, since the upload speed and time limit don't increase at all but the required amount more than doubles. The Purifier's bonus objective also seems unreasonably hard. Perhaps don't count reactivations until the Purifier actually runs out of juice entirely?

[am0rtized]

To preface this, I'd like to say that the Cambion Drift itself looks very nice.  One of my main complaints about PoE was that it was very...flat.  It's not terribly fun to just run up a gentle slope when your Warframe has access to a wide variety of traversal options.  However, each new open world has been more vertical than the last, and I'm very happy to see Heart of Deimos continue that trend.  That said, I have quite a bit to say about bounties and other activities.  I hope at least some of this stuff will get fixed, especially since I think the open world area itself is pretty solid.  

Bounties:

This is a mixed bag for me, to be honest.  On the one hand, there are several fun new stages (the Grineer contest one and the one where you have to quickly collect plants stand out to me), as well a few new takes on some old ones.  On the other hand, there are still far to many Mobile Defense type of objectives  (Defend the Area, my most hated bounty stage from PoE, makes its malignant return).  The correct number of Mobile Defenses in a modern Warframe mission is zero.  They are uninteractive, tedious, and utterly surpassed by better options such as Excavation or Disruption.  Any mission that can be most efficiently completed by a single Limbo, sitting still, alternatively pressing one of two buttons does not deserve to exist.

Personal preferences aside, I'm generally unhappy with how long bounties take to complete.  Timed objectives should be used sparingly, since they force players to play passively, and I would guess most people don't have fun doing that.  Unfortunately, too many bounties have timed components, and that makes the whole thing drag.  For example, the Isolation Vault bounty takes egregiously long to fully complete, largely because you're repeatedly forced to sit still and wait on a timer.  

Oh, and one further thing:  At least one bounty reward is bugged.  Scintillant rarely drops, despite supposedly being common.

Fishing:

I think this works reasonably well,  The fish parts display after you choose the "Cut Fish" option from Daughter is currently bugged and doesn't match up to what you actually get.  However, you still get the correct (as far as I could tell) amounts.  I've also found that some of the cave fish silhouettes look too similar, but I haven't had any trouble finding and catching everything I needed.  Then again, I don't think I've had to deal with rare fish yet, so there's still time for things to go horribly wrong.   

Mining:

I am one of those very strange people who actually liked the mining minigames in both PoE and Fortuna.  Therefore, it pains me to say the current implementation of mining in Heart of Deimos, which is basically just a copy/paste of the same mechanic from Fortuna, does not work well in the Cambion Drift.  Using the color red to indicate common mineral deposits is a very bad choice, given that most the background is also red.  Moreover, the interconnected webbing of organic tissue that gives the Drift its unique look frequently hides mineral locations, rendering them practically invisible.  To make matters worse, deposit markers are bugged (also a holdover from Fortuna), so that deposits are often literally invisible.  There have been multiple occasions when I could not find the right spot to mine despite standing less than 3 meters away according to the HUD. 

The crafting costs to refine the raw deposits have been significantly increased, often requiring minerals from other open world areas.  This is bad in itself, but it's made somehow even worse by the bizarre requirement that these minerals remain unrefined.  I have large quantities of crafted Travocyte Alloy.  I have a lot less Travoride.  Adromal Alloy takes Travoride to build.  Why?  I appear to be getting punished because I spent the time and resources on refining ore.  This is also the case for Devolved Namalon and others.  I don't know why it was done this way, but it's extremely inconvenient. 

Conservation:

I have always hated this activity with a burning passion.  I've skipped Nightwave objectives that have required me to do it.  Being coerced into it just to earn the Son tokens necessary to rank up  with the Entrati is unbelievably galling.  At the very least, the Son token ranking requirement should be removed.  At the very most, conservation should be scrapped and redesigned from the ground up.  

 

[Jfalz]

34 minutes ago, am0rtized said:

Timed objectives should be used sparingly, since they force players to play passively, and I would guess most people don't have fun doing that.  Unfortunately, too many bounties have timed components, and that makes the whole thing drag.  For example, the Isolation Vault bounty takes egregiously long to fully complete, largely because you're repeatedly forced to sit still and wait on a timer.  

 

Absolutely this.  Bounties should reward skilled players and teams by allowing us to plow through them.  Especially since we are forced to grind them over and over, at least there is some fun and satisfaction to be had by seeing how quickly you can ninja through them.  Adding the bonus rewards were a step in the right direction on this.  As mentioned in the above post, sitting on an objective for 2:00 minutes over and over again will never be fun.

[(XBOX)Poggers Guy]

I find it weird I’ve done a lot of bounties already and I have no xaku blueprint parts I’ve had way too many relics and the rare rewards I’ve gotten loads of too, aswell as yeah like others have said the corpus defence stage can’t be done for the bonus and when you’re defending the infested cauldron sometimes there just is t enough spawns of the enemies to keep up with the 30 you need to kill inside the zone. 

So far the mining and fishing hasn’t been bad, it isn’t the most obvious at how to get things at first but you do learn that as you go, the issue with the mining ores is the spawns of them some spawn on pulsating platforms that engulf them making them completely invisible which obviously isn’t good.

[Kingsmount]

It cannot be overstated how ridiculously unfun Son tokens are.  They're grossly overpriced.  One capture on Plains or Vallis can net you over 3,000 standing, equal to six son tokens.  Yet Son tokens cost as much as six-twelve tags each?   Animal capture used to be my favorite thing on Plains and Vallis, due to how rewarding it feels.  Here?  Absolutely not.

It feels like a horrific slog.

And Father tokens scintillant requirements are horrifyingly bad. 

Rank up requirements are equally awful for just the FIRST rank of Necraloid.  Ffs I can't imagine how bad later ranks are going to be.

[Conlisis]

The son's Token are extremely hard to acquire making the grind for 10 of son's token be an eternity, would love to be a way to trade tokens for other tokens so that it s not mandatory to find tons of poop.

[BrazilianJoe]

Bounty Missions fail for unclear reasons. 

Sometimes It *feels like* if you enter a cave from one end, and exit on another, it increases the distance, so even if you get into the target area it still shows "abandoning objective". 

Or the game thinks you are still in the cave. 

Other times, insta-fails where everyone goes WTF in chat also happen. 

[AlternateRoute]

Enough of the monotonous grind to get Warframe parts from bounties. It's not fun, they're way too long, and is a crappy way to get players to engage with the new content. I've done so many of the high tier bounties and have only gotten endo, creds, kuva (occasionally), or relics. Raising the drop rate of Xaku parts would be nice

[Zelmen]

Please make the exit room completely count as the extract zone. People are standing right next to the door and not triggering to leave the zone.

[(PSN)camwyn-xenos]

Scintiliant not dropping from mother bountys received only 1, having got to rank 2 entria on mother 1 and 2 bountys. Son tokens to expensive for time spent farming captures, a part of game play i actually like. Found some start points seem to vanish as soon as you start the capture and some start points seem to keep move as you approach taking you through caves before vanishing (actual start points not trails)  Mining almost impossible you can be 1m away from resource and its not visible, not flashing dot or coloured patch. The token system on the whole is great idea no wasted standing from farming and the ability to store standing in token form brilliant, only really have a problem with the son tokens. Perfect captures could reward 3 tags good 2 poor 1 this would give meaning to capture scoring and aid reduce the hard grind, not fun atm. Great job DE visual is right on the mark 

[Fallowsthorn]

18 hours ago, mcmarbles2 said:

Does anyone find these open world chores fun?

I like them? A lot? Way more than constantly murdering things over and over. I love that I can just explore and fish and scan and pick up resources without being annoyed by enemies all the damn time. Really hoping this is how Deimos is and it's not just because I wandered off immediately after starting the quest.

[Lady_Khaos]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)camwyn-xenos said:

the ability to store standing in token form

You mean...what we could already do in both Cetus and Fortuna with raw minerals/gems and fish? Which we now have to go through extra processes with inconsistent conversion rates for a significantly lower Standing payout than in either of those places.

[(PSN)Eru_Ellimist]

The conservation as a requirement would honestly be okay with me, if it weren't for the fact that when in Archwing, as soon as I stop long enough to tranq something a screaming flying enemy spawns. EVERY DAMN TIME.

I tested this. You practically can't stop moving in an area with no enemies without the thing spawning. Empty bit of space above the zone with no enemies to stop and draw tranq rifle/fire a few shots? Not for very long.

The issue being it scares away the things you are trying to tranq, dismounts you from AW, and they spawn nonstop. 1 every minute, okay whatever. Prevents afkholes. Respawning as soon as I kill the previous one? Not okay DE.

EDIT: That being said, son token costs need a balance pass. HARD. Current rates are a literal dumpster fire. Currently looking at a 4 pack of tokens costing 3 tags total, with a single token going for 12 tags. I want some of whatever the person who came up with son token costs was smoking please and thank you!

EDIT 2: It's called a Deimos Tendril Drone. 🖖

EDIT 3: It took a few runs of capturing every creature that made the tranq rifle ding + velocipods, along with only buying tokens in bundles of 2 or more - but I have my ten tokens and that wasn't as bad as I expected. Tendril Drones can still jump off the edge of Deimos though 🤣

[ebrl]

Recycling content is lazy but somewhat understandable. Recycling buggy content without fixing it first is unacceptable. Deimos conservation birds have the exact same issue as Vallis birds: they might show up extremely far away from the calling points, so far away that aborting and starting over would be a better option... if not for the very high risk of it just happening again.

[Xylena_Lazarow]

Please add alternate sources for tags or Son Tokens, such as Vaults or Deimos mob kills, daily plat deals for the Son NPC vendor (exactly like the fishing or mining NPC vendors), or some other avenue involving core WF combat. Hard requiring minigame side content for progression has soured many players on an otherwise great expansion.

[SimbaXp]

Change conservation asap, it is the worse system on deimos right now and I like hunting the animals. It seems that this feature wasn't tested properly because it gives the lowest amount of tokens for the time invested in comparison with other activities on deimos. I know you want people to progress slowly on things but this one is too much that doesn't makes sense.

[ixidron92]

Bounties take too much time due to dialog and RNG. I kid you not, I once spent 5 minutes in phase 1 waiting for enemies to drop samples for the Corpus researcher.