Deimos: Arcana - Steel Path Changes Megathread

[FlopCZ]

7 minutes ago, _Tormex_ said:

Wow people do that? That's really annoying. I see why they would want to, but it screws up the economy for literally everyone else. They're basically the equivalent of Spanish Conquistadors bringing boatloads of gold home lol

If people can make them that complicated, is there any way to detect/stop them?

I'll say leave this one to the developers they'll figure something out eventually. I don't know about the economy since we don't have data on this, right now only thing that's preventing them from doing long runs are the glass enemies which spawn usually every 20min or so. Nighwave ending in January could make this worse unless something is done. (player bans/enemies/difficulty)

I'd expect their population is much lower right now after ophelia nerf/steel essence nerf

[Lazframe]

I like the new changes. The fact that the reward of each daily mission isn't affected by booster doesn't put pressure on carrying one at all times (previously if you didn't have a booster it wasn't even worth getting into getting SE). Now you can do it more casually.
It's good to be able to get access to guaranteed SE instead of being at the mercy of either RNG or being tied to multiple hours into a mission.
 

This was the best way of handling the situation, but this should also have been a lesson: rivens need to be revisited. You're sending out the message that you would rather work around it than fix the core issue, people decided to spend hours "not playing your game" with macros because
1) the other ways to get access to kuva are abismal and not engaging at all
2) the RNG behind rivens is unacceptable. While in a documentary there was a mention of "stopping an addictive strategy" and taking great pride in it (when it came to the kubrow-coloring stuff) I don't get how we can keep rivens in the game in the state that they're in.
 You buff rivens to promote weapon diversity, yet it's an impossible diversity to reach since getting a good riven is - at this point - the most expensive thing in Warframe. So people just go for the safe bet when investing time & money into a riven and get one for the good weapons instead of experimenting.

[eboomer]

1 Umbral Forma every 8 weeks?  Are you completely unaware that a great many of us farmed up thousands of Steel Essence when we heard you were massively nerfing Steel Essence farming?  I now have enough Steel Essence for two years worth of Umbral Forma, and likely will have no incentive to engage at all with the new Steel Essence system until then.

And for what?  For a resource that allows such minute optimizations to our builds as using a higher rank Adaptation mod.  You are WAY to stingy with this.

Given the effects on incentives to earn Steel Essence, I think you should remove the cap on Umbral Forma purchases, or at least make it a regular feature of the store, that we can buy every week.

[xombob89]

21 hours ago, xombob89 said:

I think the FIRST acolyte of the mission should spawn at 2-3minute mark rather than 4-6 or whatever it is right now. Because otherwise you get absolutely nothing for doing the non-endless missions aside from the first 25 you get for clearing the whole planet, unless you stay and wait around for it which can sometimes be as long as 5 minutes after youve already cleared the mission, and in some cases it didnt spawn at all for us for w/e reason (dispite killing things). And this whole waiting game is already happening with fissures and everyone hates that (meaning theres not enough reactant if you dont wait and slow down gameplay).

Even if people started running captures for Steel Essence because of the first 2-3minute spawn, they would get roughly the same amount of essence compared to long survival runs.

Another option would be rewarding 1 guaranteed steel essence for every map so even if no acolytes spawn its not a total waste.

Forgot to mention that usually theres also no Acolyte spawn at 5 waves of Defense because they are usually over around 4-5mins (without speed nova or nuke frames) just before the Acolyte would spawn which is kinda annoying considering its still almost as long as 5minute survival.

 

[HunterDigi]

The non-endless missions need to have the acolytes spawn sooner, it's really not great at all to have to do a capture mission in ~2minutes and then have to wait around doing nothing...

It needs a more active way to draw out an acolyte, so far I'm skipping acolytes because it's just too boring to stand around in a mission... and many people do the same aswell. And when people that want to wait are put into squads with people that don't want to wait, you get animosity.

[sitfesz]

Artifically making the missions longer by making players to wait for acolyte spawns is unacceptable.

Make them spawn latest at 50% objective completion.

Edit: Same for fissures on reactants.

[PhoenixElite]

The acolytes seem to have that "randomly instantly-kill you" factor which would be great if it could be looked into (got blasted by blast, radiation, AND viral procs and died a second later in a solo mission; it's either the limbo one or the loki one, if not all of them that have that)

Also, in the void, could the acolytes be removed and instead, have corrupted Vor drop the steel essence. As it stands, the spawns for both of them seem to line up pretty often, leaving you to have to fight both Vor, AND the Acolytes simultaneously, while Vor is annoying as he doesn't have any special drop at all in Steel Path.

[Raskalnickoff]

I am really enjoying the steel path changes. The new assassins arriving every ~5min makes it really feel different to the regular game nodes. I find these minibosses a little challenging, but they have never caused me to fail a mission. It also makes looking for steel essence so much less tedious and achievable.

I rarely play a map more than 30min, so it is great that the steel path gives me a little bit of a challenge, but now I am curious to see if I can do level 200 content. For now though I am happy experimenting with steel path dragon keys.

[Uan91]

I'm having a really hard time to find any open squad in steel path or in recruitment chat.
How is everyone farming Steel essence now?

[RevanZim]

On 2020-11-18 at 7:16 PM, [DE]Bear said:

Look forward to things like an Umbra Forma Blueprint, Shotgun Riven Mod, and more!

I was the guy that, almost 5 months ago, said that this should be a thing. I'm still the first reply in the original Steel Path Feedback Megathread.

All I can say is this:

Spoiler

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYrXK5ek_PQ&t=5m16s

 

Also, the execution is pretty close to what I suggested in my sustainability post. I suggested a one month time limit. A rotation of 8 weeks seems fine too and allows other rewards to take the spotlight. I suggested it to be a sort of "soft" monthly alert similar to the weekly alerts of Clem and Maroo. The new system of weekly items (basically a weekly "alert") is actually better I think, and closer to what I would have wanted it to be. The fixed income from the daily alerts means you can shoot for the weekly target pretty comfortably (depending on the item, or just stockpile during other weeks), and still have time to do other things oustide of the Steel Path. It also evens the grounds between less and more hardcore players. Every 8 weeks there'll be an Umbra Forma for everyone.

I read complaints about the Umbra Forma price, but if you know it's coming then stockpiling should not be difficult at all. With Acolyte kills every daily gives 5, so 175 per week if you play everything (assuming I did the math right). Seems appropriate and in line with what I imagined for the mode, more of a "soft" alert where you have 8 weeks to hit 150, seems fine.

The dailies mean that the playerbase isn't as split as I'd feared it would be. And progression when it comes to completing every Steel Path node is made more comfortable as well since the alerts unlock the node they happen on. No more getting stuck on a mission you hate! And the Acolytes add some nice extra spice as well!

 

Very well done, DE! The challenge with the Steel Path was to integrate it into the rest of the game loop in a healthy way that doesn't rub too many shoulders with other things or feels excessively forced onto players, while still keeping it relevant and not dead after people finish all the nodes. I don't think it could have been done better. Big props.

 

Maybe I'll play more again now, before the Cyberpunk 2077 hype consumes me completely :P

If I do, and find glaring bad things while playing, I'll make another post or maybe just update this one. Thanks again for the great work! :D

[cha0sWyrM]

acolyte spawns need to be fixed.

as it stands....they dont show up at all in about half the missions. unless of course you dont play the mission and stand around and wait for them...but not actually playing is why (according to de) they made this change in the first place. the way it is now...objectives are met in 2 or 3 minutes.....enemy spawns stop...and then no acolyte shows up. its pretty stupid seeing a bunch of bored tenno just standing outside the extraction point twiddling their "thumbs" on the off chance an acolyte will pop in, especially considering that at that point theres usually no more enemy spawns so they arent going to show up at all.

how difficult is it to just make sure an acolyte appears on the ready to extract event? or as a last thing before an auto mission end sequence? or to just have the thing show up in the first 2 mins. i mean...why make everyone wait around? we all know why were doing these missions.

[Genitive]

I met a few acolytes and I feel like they could have slightly more health. They die pretty quickly compared to the likes of grineer heavies. I think they are a nice addition.

On the other hand, please take a look at bosses the next time you touch the steel path. Some of them have too much health. Lephantis, for example, is incredibly tedious to fight.

It would be great if you adjusted spawn rates for endless missions. With how many enemies spawn, they can will clog corridors and block one another. This doesn't make for an engaging gameplay, you just stand in front of a meat wall and slap it with melee or AOE. It gets prettty boring. Maybe make them approach from more directions in smaller groups? And make them keep their distance. 

And again I would like to suggest adding more unique mechanics. Have enemies freeze doors, gas rooms, blow up life support, make an attempt to separate the squad, etc. Something to differentiate steel path from standard missions would be a welcome addition and I feel like it could be the focus of the next revisit.

[Dunkelheit]

I like the SE changes, but the Acolytes need to spawn in time or at all.

[SirZeferino]

Please make it possible for Acolythes to spawn on Ophelia. Its annoying that such a good tileset can't spawn them cuz its an "archwing mission"

[OG-Savix]

Why would you tie the new vaults to the old one, people are not wanting to sit for hours on end to access the new stuff just for a SLIM CHANCE (BECAUSE THE DROP TABLES ARE SO DILUTED) at the drops needed for the new weapons.  It is like DE has lost all of their common sense and just became lazy in doing things the right way by having separate isolation vaults plus like someone mentioned earlier, have a person within the vault so you do not have to exit to start the next tier.  DE needs to quit making same old mistakes, its like the old saying "to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results, is the definition of insanity".  They need to actually read these threads and implement the changes that are being suggested here.  For starters, quit screwing up the game!!!!

[SnakeBadger]

well the way i see it after trying the first few missions was that it was not completely rewarding, some of the market place has the same problem u buy stuff you can earn and use right away, so there should be a few component like zaws or amps which we can get through the expert modes of each planet, and pvp and story items which you coulnt get before, this should be good to have some missions with faster timers and requiring oxygen and more opening of doors and gates are always yellow but it would have to be REALLY rewarding or players will quit, so it is good to make it optional or as a challenge mode, the vaults are still uggly in all modes, and the rewards at least should get better, steel path's only problem is not getting each planet involved, so only the samurai in PVP is handing out rewards from the cubic essences, this leaves the essenes in the future for obvious things like konzu and ordis bps, and weapons to bbuy from the spare, but honestly petplanet it should be simple packages to keep players replaying and other challenges for archwings, k-drive themed or temporary. I think that makes the zaws and ornaments like the sugatras popular gifts, arcatas, and posters, and other palettes, idk. but from what i have seen and know its only locked in to the leader and there are no quick way to justify the rewards problems until making new content, so there's no quick aughment or anything that will save steelpath enough for me to join it real quick, might be good to interweave these things with PVP and arbitrations until the more content is added per planet, honestly its like a newgame+ with decent difficulty. at least now the nekramech will make the content appear fresh until tilesets have more rework and struckture added per planet and exclusive loot per mission completion or email, i will skip it for now.

[SnakeBadger]

On 2020-11-22 at 5:30 PM, PhoenixElite said:

The acolytes seem to have that "randomly instantly-kill you" factor which would be great if it could be looked into (got blasted by blast, radiation, AND viral procs and died a second later in a solo mission; it's either the limbo one or the loki one, if not all of them that have that)

Also, in the void, could the acolytes be removed and instead, have corrupted Vor drop the steel essence. As it stands, the spawns for both of them seem to line up pretty often, leaving you to have to fight both Vor, AND the Acolytes simultaneously, while Vor is annoying as he doesn't have any special drop at all in Steel Path.

Maybe the boss fights in the steel path should include zaw and kitgun versions or husk until new "Steel"BPs and accessories are added to each planet to make content and focus more interesting, arcanes and archwing things to consider & fights worth it, amalgams mods are nice ones, i cant think o fanything else, 😇

[Frendh]

I cannot figure out how to consistently spawn the Acolytes. I kill everything in the mission until there is nothing left to kill. When there has been nothing left to kill acolytes have never spawned for me so far.

I have been waiting for about 10 minutes without any acolytes spawning. Just waiting with no enemies to kill.

[CanOfCraig]

taking a few days to actually play with this I have a few thoughts on the changes.

The new system overall is a win.
            It's bad design to have valuable resources locked behind a wall of content people don't want to do be it a player created mentality or otherwise. (glaring at eidolon's while I type this) This new system applies a guaranteed method of farm that is easy to jump into with friends, solo, or for public formed groups. This is a positive change, and I hope the mentality behind this is applied to both past and future content added to warframe. The ability to do a farm for something on my own terms is a quality of a game that will keep me coming back for more.

The spawning system punishes players for being able to complete missions quickly.
           Endless missions work better than in and out objective based missions. You're unlikely to see an acolyte spawn at all. To counter this I feel like it would be good to have a system in place where the acolyte has a strong chance to spawn early in the mission, and a HEAVY chance to spawn after the objective is complete (if not guaranteed) I checked this out in Adaro and stayed in mission for 7 min with no spawn what so ever. We need consistency or this updated method won't work. Under 5 min spawn time should be the standard.

This may be a bit of a nit-pick, but having to go to steel path mode to see the steel path alerts has been a bit of an annoyance. If I have them unlocked I feel like I should just be able to see them Unless you have future plans for something like Steel Path Kuva Siphons.

Overall I'm quite pleased with this direction of Warframe, I just hope that a little more polish is given to make everything feel worth the time

 

[TheLexiConArtist]

Further playing of Steel Incursions has shown a few problems in the system.

• Acolytes not spawning in Archwing-component missions.
• Acolytes also seem not to spawn in Assassination missions.

For both of these, you already have the solution. I know you defer the Corpus Treasurer spawn until after the Jackal fight is done with (many runs of 'conveniently immediate' spawns once the deed is done). Apply these to Acolyte spawns when (A) boss fight currently in progress and (B) while no player is currently on foot in partial-Archwing mission zones. 

• Acolyte Spawn time range is too wide and extends too long on the high end.

Acolytes should probably just be using the standard Assassin timer (which I believe is 2:30 to 5:00 mission time) to spawn in. Currently seems to cover 4:00-11:00 which is too far, even if the statistical average is still a moderately reasonable ~7:30. I'm sure you're capable of offsetting that time bracket in Endless missions so it's evenly spaced, not having some missions spawning up to double of others for the same total time.

• Steel Path defense is still the chore-iest and not even an Incursion is generally worth the time and effort.

This might be more of a solo player woe, but I find myself running a couple of Capture missions for acolyte kills to 'make up' the difference when an Incursion has rolled Defense. It's just the worst waiting for a hundred spawns in packs of four at a time. Even more glacial, if they're armoured and I'm not using a slash melee.

[J0LLYDAVE]

very happy with the addition of the steel path incursions, sadly not happy with the removal of the steel essence drop chance been removed from eximus enemys, dont see why we couldnt have both to give us more options for steel essence. other than that think the update is great.

 

one thing i would like to know though is whether the infested on deimos are scaled up higher than their actual level.

by that i mean when me and a friend were doing the isolation vaults the enemies were level 45, compared to other enemies at that level in missions they were much stronger, almost to the level of steel path enemies if not higher

 

thanks for you efforts all the same :)

[TPtv]

There is a bug where an appearance message is displayed after the screen darkens for a very short time just before the acollite appears, but the acollite does not spawn.
Also, there are times when only the screen flickers and the accolite does not spawn.

[xombob89]

On 2020-11-23 at 8:14 PM, cha0sWyrM said:

acolyte spawns need to be fixed.

as it stands....they dont show up at all in about half the missions. unless of course you dont play the mission and stand around and wait for them...but not actually playing is why (according to de) they made this change in the first place. the way it is now...objectives are met in 2 or 3 minutes.....enemy spawns stop...and then no acolyte shows up. its pretty stupid seeing a bunch of bored tenno just standing outside the extraction point twiddling their "thumbs" on the off chance an acolyte will pop in, especially considering that at that point theres usually no more enemy spawns so they arent going to show up at all.

how difficult is it to just make sure an acolyte appears on the ready to extract event? or as a last thing before an auto mission end sequence? or to just have the thing show up in the first 2 mins. i mean...why make everyone wait around? we all know why were doing these missions.

Yeah, been doing these with a friend and we also found it really annoying and weird that the acolyte doesnt spawn quick enough in non-endless missions so we always have to look at the timer and decide wether we wanna wait or not, and if we wait sometimes he still doesnt appear dispite killing enemies and moving around.

Either they need to make the first acolyte spawn faster or guarantee a spawn once objective is completed so theres no pressure to stay and wait around for it after you are done.

[sitfesz]

Acolytes are not spawning. Thanks for nothing.

[HelNite]

2 hours ago, sitfesz said:

Acolytes are not spawning. Thanks for nothing.

they are spawning quite consistently for me although ive heard from others that they might be unable to spawn on certain nodes (havent confirmed as i dont know which nodes they were referring to)
if this is true it should be looked at