Heart of Deimos: New Syndicates & Economy Feedback Megathread

[V0lution]

The fish spawn rate are way too horrible, at times you use 1 bait to catch like 2 fish. Most of the other open world fishing was still an enjoyable semi afk chill experience. This one is just too low to even be called decent.

[shootaman777]

13 hours ago, master_of_destiny said:

<snip>

I'll get back to you in the next few days. I had most of my response to you typed out (up to point 13). Unfortunately, I then accidentally hit some combination of keys while trying to type a capital R, which sent me to the next page... and deleted the entirety of my response. I'm done with the forums for today, as you can probably imagine.

[Karonuva]

Unless it already does and I haven't noticed, Conservation should award Son tokens directly on capture. Both because tokens are the equivalent of reputation and Deimos conservation currently gives none of it AND you shouldn't have to choose between trading tags for tokens or for floofs.

[(XBOX)Architect Prime]

I like the lore involved. 

[master_of_destiny]

2 hours ago, shootaman777 said:

I'll get back to you in the next few days. I had most of my response to you typed out (up to point 13). Unfortunately, I then accidentally hit some combination of keys while trying to type a capital R, which sent me to the next page... and deleted the entirety of my response. I'm done with the forums for today, as you can probably imagine.

Let me offer what I would conjecture, and maybe you won't have to make a longer response.  Specifically to point 13.

 

ESO was stated as something primarily for the affinity grind by you.  I agreed, and stated that it was not about that.  The problem is that new content always comes, so there's always a reason to farm more affinity to level things.  That might be true, but you cannot level frames, archwing, archguns, railjack, or effectively gather as  much focus as a mediocre run of Adaro (30k focus for a 5 minute run versus about 50k for 20 minutes).

 

ESO does have rewards other than the Braton Vandal.  Well, let's call the cosmetics and bizarro mods as value free.  The remainder of what is on offer is relics and endo. 

Endo has a hard cap on usefulness (2 million and change extra for me), it's easier to farm in other missions, and it's a more consistent drop elsewhere.  Kind of funny, regarding your earlier statement that only the most efficient grind will be chosen....so I'm only guessing at this being a possible retort.

What about relics?  Well, they are radiant....and there's little control over what drops.  I've had runs with two endo drops, a lith relic, and a meso relic.  I've had other runs with a couple of liths, a meso, and an axi.  It's 20 minutes....and it's a crap shoot.  I can run disruption on Lua for guaranteed axi relics.  This effectively halves the pool from axi+neo, and it's as fast or faster to get 2-3 axi relics than to maybe get something from ESO.  Again, the discussion on optimal grinding.

 

Let's also address affinity gains in ESO.  No chance at a stealth multiplier.  If you want an eight run round without friends you'd better be ready for doing it solo after about round 4.   Rando groups fall apart there, unless there's a nightwave event.  Experience a host switch, well be prepared for a penalty on efficiency and potentially a much higher drain rate than before because...well, I haven't ever figured it out.  Are you trying to level a garbage weapon, well it's likely to take two rounds of 8 unless you've got a booster for affinity.  

None of the previous paragraph even considers there is no ability to earn resources.  That was a deliberate design choice made by DE because SO/ESO were going to be a place to go instead of the usual grind spots like Hydron or Adaro.  It was basically just a shooting gallery to allow fast grinding....and obviously the rewards were added as a reason to keep grinding because nobody had seen them since the closed beta period (and I understand the irony in that terminology, but I mean before it was available to everyone).

 

 

Now, I think ESO is pretty much everything wrong with warframe.  It isn't challenging, rewards certain very specific optimal path choices, and it's content is so far from worth grinding that it isn't funny.  That said, I can see why people would use it and slap on another forma before grinding it all over again to spend a few hours and have the weapon grind entirely done.  This is especially true if you run silence Banshee rather than a sleep Equinox, or have a weapon designed for rapid pew-pew rather than enemy stopping power.  I can also see people with Lich weapons grinding 10-12 waves given the functionally more than linear affinity gains by enemies.  

All of that said, when ESO launched the only rewards unique to it were the Lato and Braton Vandal.  Once those were had the value of ESO was only power leveling with severe restrictions.  Consider me unimpressed by this, as power grinding isn't fun for me.  Likewise, running missions just to power grind isn't rewarding.  Consider it weird, but I want to be able to take content somewhere and just finish .  You're welcome to disagree, but grinding content to get it done ASAP is a bit much.    

 

I look forward to you take, given our innate differences in opinion illustrated thus far.

[kyori]

It seems whenever My Sly cat uses its survival instinct power, my screen will have flowing water effect like you are driving in the rain without using your wipers. Please remove that effect as it obstruct visibility... also you don't drive in the rain without using your wipers to clear the water off your windscreen right?

[Synpai]

On 2020-08-31 at 3:17 PM, _Blackeye_ said:

Scintillant is a big problem. If the common drop from the bounties is fixed this will be solved.

But the biggest problem I see are the seriglass shards. Granny asks 20 tokens/shard and we need 60 tokens (!) to build the new weapons. If getting all the different tokens was easier then sure. But some of the tokens are just too hard to get + we're being forced to do things we don't want to do. I think it's more reasonable for the shards to cost 5 granny tokens.

Also (don't know where to put this), the 'feature' of having to do all 3 ISO tiers in 1 cycle is just annoying as there's no difference between doing it in the 2 cycles. Pls disable that...

In terms of bounties, I find that many players (rightfully) have no idea how drop chance and probability works so hopefully this helps:

 

[HardcoreSalmon]

Serigrass shards are way too expensive. They are 20 grandmother tokens each.

There are 3 weapons that require them: sepulcrum, trumna and quassus

I've been trying to get a shard for about 4 days, getting father and otak tokens constantly and have 9 grandmother tokens. It's especially annoying given how randomized it is and how you have to wait for offers to reset.

I'd say the quassus is the one of the most annoying weapons in the game to get. The bp is easy to get but then it required 5 scintillant and a serigrass shard.

At this rate maybe in about a month I'll have those 3 weapons

[Borg1611]

The new hotfix made Scintillant more common in the lower level bounty, however, it's still a completely unreasonable resource to farm. I have done a number of vaults and never seen a single one in the wild. It still does not spawn correctly out in the world or at least it certainly isn't as easy to farm in the wild as cetus wisps were, which is the item you compare them to. 

[Valfaun]

On 2020-09-03 at 1:56 AM, V0lution said:

The fish spawn rate are way too horrible, at times you use 1 bait to catch like 2 fish. Most of the other open world fishing was still an enjoyable semi afk chill experience. This one is just too low to even be called decent.

i was wondering if there's something that i'm missing here. good to know it's not just me. you come to a body of water, catch whatever might be there already, throw out bait and then... nothing. fish just doesnt spawn. you get like a fish per 2 or 3 minutes, it feels like. if at all

[Sweagen]

I feel like the Son Conservation Token exchange is a lil silly... right now the 'rare' animal tags are worth insane amounts of tokens (I traded 1 rare Criptilex and 1 rare Vulpaphyla  for 5 tokens just now), but the less rare tags are overinflated for how many u need to trade for even just 1 or 2 tokens... (ex. it'll ask for like 6 burrowing criptilex for 1 or something dumb or even a few common avicheas) despite still taking forever to hunt down and catch. Basically I think the lesser Animal Tags should be looked at again and less of them should need to be traded in for tokens, that's about it 

[FelisImpurrator]

Economy

• I think there's a lot of work left to be done for the Entrati reputation, but it's close to being in a good place.
• Personally, Father, Daughter, and Otak Tokens could stand to be increased in value, with smaller amounts for Grandmother trade-ins. Perhaps 200 Reputation for a Father token (5 per Grandmother trade), 250 for Daughter and Otak, whose tokens take slightly longer to farm (4 per Grandmother trade). Mother is perfectly fine where she is, and Grandmother trades are good value, just very tedious to farm for.
• Father's trades are in a good spot.
• Son has a few trades that are a bit off in value, requiring way too many of certain tokens, but I don't have enough information on the entire Son table to name them all - 1-token trades in particular are a bit too heavy on the tags for common critters.
  • Son trades do still need to be more value per tag on average, if only because Gilding costs 10 tokens and the economy for standing/gilding is competing with Floofs (so there are twice as many sinks, and more requirements for specific animals, compared to standard Conservation).
  • Maybe Son could just offer gilding for standard reputation instead?
• Daughter and Otak often seem to require far too many of certain rare materials per token.
  • Thaumica and Necrathene feel disproportionately rare, especially in relation to how many are required by Otak. They could be made a bit more common - and maybe their quantities in Otak trades reduced substantially. Xenorhast and Embolos really should not require more than one to three per token trade (alongside a lesser ore, of course).
  • Sporulate Sacs and Tubercular Gill Systems are demanded in excessive quantities by Daughter, at least proportional to how many you realistically get. They're often requested in quantities equivalent to any common material, despite having very limited sources; Glutinox is the only source of Sporulate Sacs and available at only one time of day, while only Orokin-hybrid (i.e., uncommon or higher rarity) fish possess Tubercular Gill Systems. And yet, Sporulate Sacs are a very common request and consumed in large quantities, basically forcing players to spend lots of Vome time just fishing (or else wait for a very long Fass cycle to pass). Tubercular Gill Systems are treated like all the other common resources, despite the Orokin/hybrid fish being significantly rarer than the common Kymaeros or Amniophysi.
  • Sporulate and Tubercular both need a reduction in trade costs, while Benign Infested Tumors and Ferment Bladders could stand to see an increase - it's trivial to have hundreds or thousands and never be able to use them all.
  • Myxostomata being cave fish and only spawning with expensive bait (while being the only fish source of their unique drop), they really shouldn't be locked to Fass cycles only - I'd say they should be able to spawn at any time as long as you have the Processed Vome Residue in a cave.
• Grandmother's Seriglass is very, *very* expensive. I think it could really stand to be 10 tokens at most; 30k rep is way too much. Each Seriglass shard is one whole day of MR29 Standing. Optional cosmetics are fine, but the Seriglass needs to go down.
• Mother's Endless bounty is very poor return on time investment, even if you let it scale to higher levels rivaling high tier bounties, giving less than half of the tokens for the same time. It should really be adjusted to be a better reward prospect.
• Mother's T5 bounty gives too few tokens for one more stage and higher level than the T4; it should give 90-100 for the stage count and difficulty.
• The Necraloids, on the other hand, seem fine.
• Scintillant is still a little too rare in terms of 'wild spawns'. It could be adjusted a bit more, even though they are for sure spawning; a tri-vault cycle is somewhere around 20-30 minutes even if you're trying to hurry, and I've seen about one or two spawns *at most* in one tri-vault.

Companions

• General:
  • The resistance changes currently seem to do nothing, giving Shield/Ferrite/Flesh at all times.
  • Personally, I'm not a fan of the resistance mechanic - not all health types are made equal, and Proto Shield/Alloy Armor are so substantially superior to Robotic and Cloned Flesh that a lot of players end up sacrificing pet fashion for EHP.
  • Maybe they could get fixed resistances to certain things instead, like common damage types that many enemies use.
• Predasites:
  • Vizier: Not a bad doggo. Its precepts are versatile and fairly useful, and could just use a tiny bit of tuning.
    • Acidic Spittle is pretty nice, but it being single target does limit its usefulness.
      • The spit could be an AoE, a small one of about 3-4m.
      • As a corrosive attack, it should have naturally high status chance (and possibly allow different procs with other elemental mods).
    • Iatric Mycelium seems like a pretty good precept. The only thing is that it's fairly low visibility, and hard to see/step on the healing cloud in the heat of combat.
      • I think the AoE of this could be substantially larger and brighter.
      • An audio cue would also help.
      • Maybe a second less of cooldown? Not needed, but it would be nice.
  • Pharaoh: Not a bad dog either - but some of the numbers need tweaking.
    • Endoparasitic Vector is a great concept, but it's just a bit too small, and the Viral proc being single target is a bit disappointing.
      • The radius could stand to be increased to at least 8-10m at max rank.
      • Its Viral damage/proc really should be applied to every enemy tethered; that would let it compete a bit more with Panzer's viral spread.
      • Its cooldown seems very long - could stand to be reduced.
    • Anabolic Pollination isn't bad at all, but has the same issues as Iatric Mycelium.
      • Again, better AOE and better audiovisuals would suffice.
      • It needs to state its cooldown, and currently it seems to be quite long, so again, maybe a bit less?
  • Medjay: Unfortunately not the best of doggos. It feels like a partial rehash of the Sunika Kubrow; dog finishers are underwhelming, and its second precept really doesn't work out well due to its low duration.
    • Infectious Bite is neither very infectious nor very powerful. The "virus" is single target, and the pustules don't last very long, do much damage, or proc a significant amount of Viral. Single target attacks rarely feel particularly exceptional, especially with no control over what they target.
      • This needs to last longer and multiply damage dealt to the enemy significantly, detonating in an AOE that spreads the pustules to other enemies if the enemy is killed (whether the cause is gunfire or the spores exploding naturally from their timer). It should also proc a substantial amount of viral, especially when shot.
    • Paralytic Spores is neat, but still just doesn't last long enough to be worth it. At most, you'll get one or two finishers before it expires, and even at 16m listed it doesn't feel as big as it should. Its cooldown is also very long.
      • This should last longer, at least 5 seconds, to let you actually finisher enemies - and apply something like the stealth multiplier when it does so.
      • As 'paralytic' spores, maybe it could also have a lingering slow effect on enemies. That alone would make it way more interesting.
• Vulpaphylas:
  • Sly: Not bad, but its Larva feels honestly stronger than its living form, if only because of the fact that it doesn't end the precept when you fire.
    • Survival Instinct needs to just drop the next attack restriction. It doesn't feel good, and actively disincentivizes using weapons. The cooldown is also kind of superfluous, especially since the larval form has no restrictions.
      • I'd like it if it were just 40% for 8s, which would make it a great pet for survivability.
    • Sly Devolution is flat out better than Survival Instinct currently, even factoring out that it's currently bugged to read 40% - it's great as is, and needs no changes.
  • Crescent: The weakest one, and honestly feels like it barely has any abilities.
    • Crescent Charge is incredibly weak and single-target; again, single targets with no control over which enemy gets targeted are rarely very useful. It's currently bugged to give only half the duration, but even at 8 seconds, one enemy getting the equivalent of a single Viral proc is nothing compared to the Panzer stacking up to ten times viral on every enemy in the room in seconds.
      • If it lifted all enemies in a line for 8 seconds and perhaps offered a bigger damage multiplier or an AOE wave, it would be more compelling - an Exodia Epidemic with a damage buff is far more interesting.
    • Crescent Devolution is incredibly weak, doing almost nothing except a stagger, having very low attack rate, and dealing next to no damage. It's the only Devolution precept that feels like it has no added bonuses.
      • Crescent Devolution should also punch through enemies, fire more often, and apply a weaker form of its damage bonus to enemies in range with at least a hard stun - in keeping with the other Devolutions conceptually, the larva should offer a reduced version of the original precept.
  • Panzer: The strongest one, and possibly the best of the six pets, but it has issues.
    • Viral Quills is a great precept, but it has a few targeting issues - occasionally trying to fire through surfaces, or missing entirely.
      • It really just needs a bit of targeting debugging.
    • Panzer Devolution is good in theory, but it's currently bugged, so its damage/Viral spreading ability can't really be checked; when it actually hits enemies, I'd be able to say something about how effective it is.
      • It does also need a bit better targeting, but in theory is fine.

[Shryoss]

Seriglass shard price is ridiculous. The whole token system is overly convoluted and feels even more forced requiring me to do boring tasks that I could sort of get around with the other two open areas (or had to do less, since it was only needed in weapons and such). It feels like I have to donate a lot of resources in exchange for those tokens (except for father tokens since those resources are kind of passively gained while you are killing stuff). And I'm not even allowed to choose what to donate, it's mostly just another layer of RNG to extend the amount of time you have to put in.

It just stinks that boosters are pretty much encouraged and required more and more....

[Kontrollo]

Guess the following could be seen as part of economy, so putting it here:

Good job on finally finding a new place for the Acolyte mods. The way that event was structured was decidedly unenjoyable, and it was high time to find a new, permanent home for its rewards. (And I'm saying that as someone who was able to get them all in the initial event already.)

[Zilotz]

Tokens are nice but we miss exchange function for them.

Would be good to make permanent exchange option for tokens: Tokens that are 100rep can be exchanged at 1:1rate, other tokens will be exchanged based on rep they give(Granny:15base(100rep) tokens=1Granny token), Son:5base tokens=1SonToken).

So if i want 20Granny tokens it would be for example 20*15=300MotherTokens.

The idea is to make exchange be available all the time so we can get what we earned when it is convenient.

[Klokwerkaos]

Thaumica (and more, see below) is still a problem.

I am running both resource boosters, a smeeta kavat with extra duration on the charm buFF, ivara built For perpetual speed and stealth with inFested impedence and only 1 hitting the green nodes because they don't provide thaumica and I STILL CANNOT aFFord to buy out otak tokens while exclusively mining For hours a day.  While I'm glad to be able to buy the tokens For all players to be able to advance, I'm starting to Feel a bit robbed because you're really jamming this awFul mini game down our throats to an unreasonable extent.

At First I was like "ah, you know, it's RNG... but yeah, it's been a bit, and it's still a problem.  I have no external Thaumica needs as all items are long since craFted, however as a dojo decorator it behooves me to stock all tokens, and I can't keep up with Otak, never mind that I have literally 1000s extra oF the rest oF the minerals and 0 Thaumica.

For that matter I also can't keep up with Son either, but everyone knows that's a huge problem and it's a universally hated mini game that should NEVER have been made mandatory.  Thanks to your brilliant money scheme I've managed to dump about 500p on this Feature in two weeks because A) I Friggen HATE doing this and B) I need to spend six hours a day mining and still can't keep up with that.

I want to be clear, I like the update, but the necramechs being broken on launch and this economy being LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE when doing ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING RIGHT TO KEEP UP FOR HOURS A DAY and I still can't manage to do it with over 7k hours experience in mission...  IF I can't do it, who exactly can?  Please explain that.  Seriously do it, with a straight Face.

The grind For Thaumica, Scintillent and Son are all STILL super jacked up and really make the experience overall sour even though the update is otherwise very good.

I've also seen complaints about Helminth costs, but I don't have those same complaints as I know how to Farm extensively and eFFiciently as a dojo decorator and have years oF it under my belt, so I think the main problem there was that you bothered to give it to newer players as an option which YOU KNEW was a bad idea.

Still, Thaumica, Scintillent, Necramech mods and to a lesser extent Nekrathene are all busted drop rates that are Frustrating to manage as a Top Tier player with every possible advantage in the game short oF Dev console commands.

Nekrathene I can Just barely manage to keep up with, which makes me think For the average player it's too much, but the other three are all broken AF.

Should I literally be mining on Deimos 24 hours a day to keep up with Thaumica?  Is that what you are expecting From your players?  Either increase the drop rate or chop the Otak token cost (like in halF or more)

[Borg1611]

I got to rank 5 with the Entrati and the only rank up reward option was a trophy blueprint. That seems... um, disappointing. 

[EinheriarJudith]

34 minutes ago, Borg1611 said:

I got to rank 5 with the Entrati and the only rank up reward option was a trophy blueprint. That seems... um, disappointing. 

especially since the last rank up takes a seriglass........

[enemystand]

something need to be done with the rarity and chances of that weird brand of toilet paper i mean with the quassus blueprints they are too common, i'm trying to craft a second xaku and can't get the chassis to drop, but i get like 3 quassus bps per bounty.

[Zendadaist]

Unsure if this thread is the right one for this feedback but: Gilding an animal at Son takes both 10 Son tokens AND 5000 standing. That's double dipping and ridiculous.

[HardcoreSalmon]

58 minutes ago, Zendadaist said:

Unsure if this thread is the right one for this feedback but: Gilding an animal at Son takes both 10 Son tokens AND 5000 standing. That's double dipping and ridiculous.

Just so you know what balances that out is the fact that if you max the companion then provide it to him you get 15 tokens back. That is if you don't want to keep it.

I first thought that then realized you could make a profit out of it

[EinheriarJudith]

27 minutes ago, HardcoreSalmon said:

Just so you know what balances that out is the fact that if you max the companion then provide it to him you get 15 tokens back. That is if you don't want to keep it.

I first thought that then realized you could make a profit out of it

you cannot turn in animals if you reached your cap. its double dipping and its bad.

[Borg1611]

I feel that the endless excavators should actually excavate something. It would make sense to give a small random amount of a mining resources after each excavator completes. The bounty is even called strip mining, but we don't appear to be mining anything. 

[Kaokasalis]

Seems like there have been a slight oversight with the new pets you can get from Son. If you are at max standing you are unable to release any pets for son tokens despite the option not giving any standing but just 10 son tokens. If this is intentional then it goes against what the token system stands for. Isn't the whole point of using tokens instead of normal rep that we dont waste our time doing normal missions and can always turn them in later? Please remedy this by making us able to release pets at max standing.

[Cloud]

On 2020-08-21 at 9:23 PM, SilverBones said:

With the Heart of Deimos update, comes two new factions; the Entrati and the Necraloid Syndicates! We would love to hear your feedback on these new Syndicates, covering everything from their characters, their offerings, the economy of items, standing, as well as anything else surrounding their tasks and rewards.

If you have feedback to leave on the subject of the Entrati and Necraloid Syndicates, then please do so in this thread. Please remember that you should keep your feedback constructive and civil. If you like an aspect of the new content, tell us what you like. If you do not like an aspect, then tell us why, and what you would change to make it better!

Please bear in mind this is not a place to leave bugs you discover while playing. If you do need to report a bug, please use the dedicated Heart of Deimos Bug-Hunting thread!

Thank you!

 

I waited to complete most of the content to give a proper feedback, so sorry if I'm late.

 

The Progression

I found the pace of progression pleasant.
The costs for the ranking up have never been perceived as a burden, but rather they encouraged me to try all the mini-activities a bit.

I also appreciated that despite its importance, the helminth segment was placed at rank 3, easily accessible after a few days, especially considering the timing and farm needed to use the potential of the system. Leaving only niche content for last, and still enjoyable even with delay.

Mini Activities

Speaking of mini-activities, although I appreciate mining, fishing and wild animal capture, I was really hoping to see something completely new to enrich the dish and which in particular used the infested theme.

I also think that the value of the son tokens should be further increased, considering the timing required for the catches.

The Token System

I really appreciated the token system used for progression, and especially the double conversion. Thanks to this system, we can not only bypass the daily cap and therefore set aside reputation for as many days as we want, but we can also decide how to earn that reputation. So according to their preferences, everyone will be free to do the activity they like best to progress.
Now similar systems are also available on PoE and OV, but the thing that in my opinion distinguishes and makes it much more interesting on Deimos are the offers from Grandmother. In fact, by choosing certain particularly profitable offers, your work can be greatly enhanced by the exchange rate. Also this is a further stimulus to always check out Necralisk to see what offers are available for the various NPCs.

Entrati Family

I think they are the best crafted and sympathetic characters the team has ever made.
Not only am I happy to have humanoid characters with well-defined features and not with the usual masks or covers, but above all I am thrilled that they are not simple flat islands left to themselves.
The family dynamics, the relationships between the various characters and the fact that these evolve during the progression are high class touch that not only make the characters more interesting to discover, but also encourage you to progress in the ranks for a simple lore purpose.
The only thing I regret is that there are no more interactions with them, but I trust that with the next updates maybe something will be added  :P

Necramech Syndicate
I think that's the only real sore point of the whole. The Syndicate is really poor in content. I would have liked more versions of Necramech (at least 2) and above all the presence of the mods. Speaking of necramech mods, the farm of these is ridiculous and the chances of acquiring rare mods are close to winning the lottery (0.02% among other things limited further by tiers) as I explained in my topic: