Steel Essence Acquisition Feedback

[Voltage]

Following the Dev Workshop, it was said Acolyte spawn frequency will be increased. This is a great decision, but I want to bring up an additional suggestion to make Steel Essence feel better to farm. Resource farming isn't a new concept in Warframe, and having drops from enemies and mission rewards simultaneously encourages players to maximize their farm and optimize the right tools for this job while still having reliable inventory progression.

Steel Essence dropping from Eximus originally wasn't a good move for one major reason: Eximus spawns are optimal after 60 minutes in an endless mission. This was frustrating for players who felt they weren't getting the most out of their mission unless it was hours and hours long. Steel Essence from Acolytes has a major flaw as well: Your farm cannot be influenced whatsoever due to timers, and the only way to increase drops outside of boosters is Smeeta's Charm.

My single suggestion to make Steel Essence feel better to farm is to give players Steel Essence per mission reward (Endless missions per rotation). This comes from my enjoyment on how Vitus Essence was changed in Arbitrations. It feels good when mission success rewards this "currency resource" as well as gives players an option to optimize their mission to squeeze out more enemy drops. 

Another slight tweak that would be nice is allowing Orb Mothers in the Steel Path to drop Steel Essence much like Eidolons. This rule can also be applied to Shadow Stalker (thank you @Tiltskillet) and other VIPs when appropriate (not the Sergeant).

When an item like Vitus Essence and Steel Essence drop in this fashion, players who are not as optimized as others still get the fallback progression of mission rewards while players who are geared for the mission get slightly better rewards for their effort. This also creates value in non-endless missions as players may not see an Acolyte in a short mission but still make progress on their Steel Essence inventory.

[SneakyErvin]

110% 👍

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

Yes. And Steel Path alerts could instead grant a slightly bigger reward (like, 5-7 SE) imho.

Such changes would still not be enough for me to enjoy SP, since I'd mostly like to do other stuff like opening relics (I'd even accept no fissure boosters, but being able to open like 2 relics per player tbh). Still, the suggested change is welcome nonetheless.

[GwinKyblood]

Maybe after update improves idk, i hope

[Joezone619]

I'm still waiting to hear anything about steel path fissures, invasions, syndicate missions,  etc.

[sitfesz]

This suggestion would be an improvement, but I'm for acolytes spawn on objective progress if possible. Acolytes will drop new arcanes too if I know right and by saying "please don't force me afk running into walls for 6 minutes while waiting for them after the objective is done", I think I'm speaking on the behalf of the majority of players.

[Voltage]

12 hours ago, sitfesz said:

This suggestion would be an improvement, but I'm for acolytes spawn on objective progress if possible. Acolytes will drop new arcanes too if I know right and by saying "please don't force me afk running into walls for 6 minutes while waiting for them after the objective is done", I think I'm speaking on the behalf of the majority of players.

This would create an unhealthy meta of spamming capture missions at 25 to 35 seconds a piece to farm Steel Essence as Titania or Nova. It's not sustainable. I much rather have a consistent game rule that can be applied to every mode for this drop that offers similar progression than a rule like yours that requires exceptions and inconsistencies for all gamemodes to achieve the same purpose.

My suggestion comes from a place of experience that timers are not the worst when they are reasonable. If an acolyte can spawn 90 seconds apart across all missions, the only time you will wait around (a brief few seconds) are missions like Rescue and Capture. That is a much better situation for the sake of the game's overall gameplay health and farming diversity as opposed to your proposal of tying drops to objective progression.

[Tiltskillet]

One minor thing, but requested a lot and it just makes sense...: 

the Acolytes' daddy should drop essence too.  (Happy Father's Day, Stalker!)

[sitfesz]

On 2021-06-19 at 2:29 PM, Voltage said:

My single suggestion to make Steel Essence feel better to farm is to give players 3 Steel Essence per mission reward (Endless missions per rotation).

 

34 minutes ago, Voltage said:

This would create an unhealthy meta of spamming capture missions at 25 to 35 seconds a piece to farm Steel Essence as Titania or Nova. It's not sustainable.

Same thing.

[Voltage]

37 minutes ago, sitfesz said:

Same thing.

It's not though. Finishing a Capture or Rescue in under 40 seconds would still forfeit the Acolyte's Steel Essence drop. You could also keep consistent game rules on "rotation rewards Steel Essence", but how much Steel Essence can be tuned across the game varying in each mission. This means Survival and Defense give more per rotation than an Exterminate, and an Exterminate can give slightly more than Capture. The structure of Steel Essence needs a solid foundation applied to all modes that can be tweaked within consistent regulations to have a healthy acquisition experience for all players and not push players into a single mission.

You're always going to have an optimal loot-cave, but it is totally possible for that optimal loot-cave to not destroy all alternative to the point where there is no where else to farm with similar results.

I went ahead and tweaked the suggestion to acknowledge this feedback that my original idea missed.

[Voltage]

53 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

One minor thing, but requested a lot and it just makes sense...: 

the Acolytes' daddy should drop essence too.  (Happy Father's Day, Stalker!)

Added and mentioned you for the suggestion. I overlooked those small tweaks. VIPs should definitely reward Essence to a degree such as Orb Mothers to match Eidolons or possibly other special bosses/units (not the Sergeant though).

[sitfesz]

11 minutes ago, Voltage said:

It's not though. Finishing a Capture or Rescue in under 40 seconds would still forfeit the Acolyte's Steel Essence drop. You could also keep consistent game rules on "rotation rewards Steel Essence", but how much Steel Essence can be tuned across the game varying in each mission. This means Survival and Defense give more per rotation than an Exterminate, and an Exterminate can give slightly more than Capture. The structure of Steel Essence needs a solid foundation applied to all modes that can be tweaked within consistent regulations to have a healthy acquisition experience for all players and not push players into a single mission.

You're always going to have an optimal loot-cave, but it is totally possible for that optimal loot-cave to not destroy all alternative to the point where there is no where else to farm with similar results.

I would just ignore acolytes and rush for consistent steel essence rewards. I ignore them even now. An essence reward every 1 minute is better than two rewards every 5 minutes (in endless). Better than 2 essence rewards randomly between 3-8 minutes too (in non-endless).

[parttimeparty]

I said 3>5 was way more fair right after it came out. Yes I want a cookie.

[Venus-Venera]

Am 19.6.2021 um 14:29 schrieb Voltage:

Following the Dev Workshop, it was said Acolyte spawn frequency will be increased. This is a great decision, but I want to bring up an additional suggestion to make Steel Essence feel better to farm. Resource farming isn't a new concept in Warframe, and having drops from enemies and mission rewards simultaneously encourages players to maximize their farm and optimize the right tools for this job while still having reliable inventory progression.

Steel Essence dropping from Eximus originally wasn't a good move for one major reason: Eximus spawns are optimal after 60 minutes in an endless mission. This was frustrating for players who felt they weren't getting the most out of their mission unless it was hours and hours long. Steel Essence from Acolytes has a major flaw as well: Your farm cannot be influenced whatsoever due to timers, and the only way to increase drops outside of boosters is Smeeta's Charm.

My single suggestion to make Steel Essence feel better to farm is to give players Steel Essence per mission reward (Endless missions per rotation). This comes from my enjoyment on how Vitus Essence was changed in Arbitrations. It feels good when mission success rewards this "currency resource" as well as gives players an option to optimize their mission to squeeze out more enemy drops. 

Another slight tweak that would be nice is allowing Orb Mothers in the Steel Path to drop Steel Essence much like Eidolons. This rule can also be applied to Shadow Stalker (thank you @Tiltskillet) and other VIPs when appropriate (not the Sergeant).

When an item like Vitus Essence and Steel Essence drop in this fashion, players who are not as optimized as others still get the fallback progression of mission rewards while players who are geared for the mission get slightly better rewards for their effort. This also creates value in non-endless missions as players may not see an Acolyte in a short mission but still make progress on their Steel Essence inventory.

Little thought has been given to the system. and i think this riven story is ridiculous. it does not work!

but if warframe should be for causale people, I would add the option for kuva amount for 10 rolls per day! and that should be achieved in an hour! if the player wants more kuva -> no problem! only then does he not get kuva so quickly.
and 10 rolls per day is an absolute minimum. with the absolutely lousy stats most of the time or ridiculous improvements for top weapons, it is even too little ...........

[Voltage]

2 hours ago, parttimeparty said:

I said 3>5 was way more fair right after it came out. Yes I want a cookie.

Welcome to the club of predicting an update's problems because you aren't disconnected to the gameplay. I mentioned day one of Wolf of Saturn Six that the structure of Nightwave wasn't sustainable. Look where we are now lmao.

On topic: Increasing Steel Essence Incursion rewards is a good decision and unfortunately took too long to change.

[TheLexiConArtist]

15 hours ago, Voltage said:

My suggestion comes from a place of experience that timers are not the worst when they are reasonable. If an acolyte can spawn 90 seconds apart across all missions, the only time you will wait around (a brief few seconds) are missions like Rescue and Capture. That is a much better situation for the sake of the game's overall gameplay health and farming diversity as opposed to your proposal of tying drops to objective progression.

Yeah, but Acolytes every 90 seconds would absolutely suck for anyone not already resorting to meta-OP weapons and/or cheese tactics for the active mission.

Most of the Acolytes are too cheap in an open fight. You and I just don't typically notice that because we pop them in a second or two.

 

Even if you can pop them before they have a chance to cheese you, that's annoying excess of distraction for some game modes. Basically guaranteed to have them regularly getting in the way of your Spy vaults, for instance. Solo on an Interception and lost your footing once and can't be in all four places, now also having to deal with 6 acolytes over the mission is going to make that nigh irrecoverable in some cases.

[Voltage]

1 hour ago, TheLexiConArtist said:

Yeah, but Acolytes every 90 seconds would absolutely suck for anyone not already resorting to meta-OP weapons and/or cheese tactics for the active mission.

Most of the Acolytes are too cheap in an open fight. You and I just don't typically notice that because we pop them in a second or two.

 

Even if you can pop them before they have a chance to cheese you, that's annoying excess of distraction for some game modes. Basically guaranteed to have them regularly getting in the way of your Spy vaults, for instance. Solo on an Interception and lost your footing once and can't be in all four places, now also having to deal with 6 acolytes over the mission is going to make that nigh irrecoverable in some cases.

Steel Path wasn't designed to be easy mode. This all looks like a non-issue to me. If you can't handle Acolytes you don't belong in Steel Path and need to rebuild your gear choices. If you solo interception and can't handle it, that's why the game is multiplayer.

You aren't "resorting to cheese tactics" when you just build a weapon properly.

I'm sick and tired of DE designing around a very low bar which makes the game completely trivial for geared players. 90 second Acolyte spawns aren't a big deal.