The Arsenal Divide: Changes & Follow Ups

[Slayer-.]

17 minutes ago, NIX-01 said:

Completely disagree that arbitration easier than steelpath

Arbitration is more frustrating in the sense you can only do it for so long 2.5 hours solo is long enough for me before I start getting burnt out, you can also only do whatever missions DE decide to put up and if you don't like that mission type you need to wait to get another mission type you like, it's bad timegating imo.

 

At least in Steel Path it is the WHOLE STAR CHART you can play, bad move DE only in Arbitration, at least leave them in both to keep both groups happy.

[(PSN)JustinKan127]

Actually, I understand the purpose for switching them over to arbitration for new players to gain access to the new mods. But Warframe has always been serving the end game content to end game players, and as a part of them I think both are good places to sell those mods, so why not both?

14小时前 , [DE]Rebecca 说:

Tenno!

Since The Arsenal Divide Workshop launched on Friday, we’ve been busy developing, testing, and reading responses. We have some preliminary changes to share with everyone! We’re posting in a separate thread to highlight the changes, and will do all necessary cross posting in the originals to keep them up to date.  This means that June 22 onward has the latest information on The Arsenal Divide! 

In the days that passed, we’ve addressed 3 areas (as well as a 4th bonus one)!

Each one is covered in detail below:

1) Arcanes:

Primary and Secondary Dexterity Arcanes:
- Added +60% Holster Speed 
Why:  We are including a Holster Speed benefit within the Arcane itself to ensure the whole ‘Dexterity’ aspect of it is clear with the whole Arsenal being easier to use!  

Primary and Secondary Merciless Arcanes:
- Reduced MERCILESS Arcanes Duration from 6 to 4 secs
Why: We’re simply continuing to balance these (even after posting)! In practice, we felt lowering it was a better start given the pace of true Merciless enemy killing!

P.S the body of the original Dev Workshop missed this, but it was present in the video!
Dexterity Arcanes:  +7.5s Combo Duration

2) Galvanized Mod Properties:

Primary
- Galvanized Scope - Mod Capacity reduced from 14 to 12
- Galvanized Aptitude - Mod Capacity reduced from 14 to 12
- Galvanized Chamber - Stack count increased from 4 to 5. Mod Capacity increased from 14 to 16

Shotgun
- Galvanized Acceleration - Mod Capacity reduced from 14 to 12
- Galvanized Savvy - Mod Capacity reduced from 14 to 12
 Galvanized Hell - Base Multishot increased from 80% to 110%. Mod Capacity increased from 14 to 16

Secondary
- Galvanized Crosshairs - Mod Capacity reduced from 14 to 12
- Galvanized Shot - Mod Capacity reduced from 14 to 12
- Galvanized Diffusion - Base multishot increased from 80% to 110%. Mod Capacity increased from 12 to 14

Why: We reviewed feedback about build and Mod options when it comes to Mod Capacity, and felt it was a good idea to change Mod Ranks. Overall we’ve lowered the required Mod Capacity as a whole per category by 2. 
We also changed the Galvanized Chamber so that it is at parity with the Shotgun / Pistol Mods by virtue of maxing the stacks. 

3) Galvanized Mod Acquisition:

Moved all Galvanized Mods to Arbitrations from Steel Path. 

Why: This change is rooted in the depth of the new items we’re putting in Steel Path with this Update, and the hope some players had about being able to earn the Galvanized Mods before they even arrived on the Steel Path. Since Arbitrations also require a completed Star Chart, but are a step up in difficulty from that base Star Chart, we thought (and so did many of you) that they’d be a good stepping stone for earning some of the new Upgrades! 

Bonus: Beam Weapon Mods! 
4) General Beam Weapon Mod Change:
Ruinous Extension and Sinister Reach are now slottable in the Exilus slot and their text changed from "+X Range" to "+X Beam Length"
Why: While we are in the revision process for all things Mods, some well reasoned suggestions made it aboard! 


Original Post: 
 

 

 

[drsnivy]

14 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

3) Galvanized Mod Acquisition:

Moved all Galvanized Mods to Arbitrations from Steel Path.

Or, have them in both steel path AND arbitration.
I am NOT playing arbitration unless you fix:

• Awful solo spawnrates
• Vitus essence is 12 (guaranteed) per 60 minutes unaffected by boosters. This compared to steel path which is: 24 steel essence-ish every 60 minutes, affected by boosters which means it can be 48 guaranteed every 60 minutes.
• You can't choose the mission, you're stuck with whatever awful gamemode arbitration rolls into, and if you fail, you're waiting another hour til it rolls again. Bad design.

Move them to both shops ffs, and stop doing things like this where you hear the vocal minority saying "why would you put it in X, put it in Y instead." and then actually doing that, if that happens, have it available in both shops so you don't just cause an uproar from the other side, like you've done now.

[Butterfly85]

Oh God, why Arbitrations? Those suck if you play solo. One mission per hour, if it's a mission type you dont like, well rip that hour of your game time. Drop rate for essence is non existent solo, even with boosters. 

[drsnivy]

14 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Why: This change is rooted in the depth of the new items we’re putting in Steel Path with this Update, and the hope some players had about being able to earn the Galvanized Mods before they even arrived on the Steel Path. Since Arbitrations also require a completed Star Chart, but are a step up in difficulty from that base Star Chart, we thought (and so did many of you) that they’d be a good stepping stone for earning some of the new Upgrades! 

 

But Arbitrations are worse than Steel path, this is the worst decision. Have it in both shops or ideally make arbitrations more like steel path rewards and gameplay wise (Gameplay I mean, make the spawn rates match steel path and that is IT. no more, no less)
And allow us to choose the mission so we aren't stuck with defection and excavation for an hour.

[Chroia]

14 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Ruinous Extension and Sinister Reach are now slottable in the Exilus slot

\o/

[Savire510]

14 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Moved all Galvanized Mods to Arbitrations from Steel Path. 

i hope you moved them to arbitration shop, because polluting arbitration droptable in missions is not a good idea

[chaotea]

15 hours ago, Sevek7 said:

Do you worry that all this emphasis on buff stacks will incentivize players to use only a single weapon during missions to avoid losing the stacks? For example, if I build up my stacks on the primary weapon I'm unlikely to use secondary or melee since I'm afraid of losing primary stacks. 

Personally, I would prefer a system that incentivizes players to use the entire arsenal and mix it up a lot during missions, keeping the combat fresh throughout instead of just repeating the same actions over and over.

While i can see the point in theory, I feel most players build primary / seconday to cover different eventualities. Like if you take a sniper primary, youll take a rapid fire secondary or vice-versa.

[Nyarllathoteph]

Oh come on, I was looking forward to the Steel Path finally having meaningful rewards, them mods were lookin' sweet. Nvm then it seems...

[(PSN)NightzeroAX]

Arcanes are still On Kill, No Crit mod variant for shotguns. Seriously why no Crit Chance for mod for Shotguns. In fact why have the projectile speed mod exclusive to just Shotguns?

The only "okay" change here is moving the Arcanes to Vitus shops except there's one thing. Getting Vitus Essence to drop is worse than Steel Essence even with blue drop chance booster.

[(PSN)RWalls91]

9 hours ago, EmberStar said:

"Not needed" is a pretty dangerous argument to use.  I don't "need" to play Steel Path at all.  (And have mostly ignored it since it was introduced.)  I also don't "need" to spend money.  I don't "need" to play the game at all.  (And I'm only even posting in this thread because I think this is SUCH a bad idea - I had previously resolved to never post in the forums again, deciding that 1900 was exactly the right amount of posts to have, along with the fact that literally nothing I have to say actually matters to anyone anyway.)

Speaking only for myself, and setting aside the many non-logical reasons I despise Arbitrations.  Locking these mods behind that mod is (in my opinion) a bad idea because of two of the core limitations of Arbitrations.  First, there is exactly one mission available per hour.  Never more, and often less if you die and lose all the rewards.  Especially for anyone who doesn't want to deal with the elitism and drama that this mode seems designed to attract.  Second, you get *zero* choice of what mission that is.  Oh, it's a Defection mission.  Swell.  Followed by a Disruption mission, where the drones can buff the Demolysts, awesome.  Followed by a Lua Spy, huzzah.  Well, that's an entire night of trying to make any progress straight down the toilet.  Such fun, so wow.

Can I upvote this twice? The last time I wanted to do arbitration I had to wait for a decent mission to roll up, and when it did the arbitration was bugged (excavation with no batteries aka no rewards aka no vitus essence!) Really fun!

[That_Green_Guy]

Mod stat changes: nice

Mod aquesition: not nice

[(XBOX)CFG SatanDevil]

I’m waiting for the Vitus essence price of a mod

[(PSN)RWalls91]

13 minutes ago, (XBOX)CFG SatanDevil said:

I’m waiting for the Vitus essence price of a mod

Primed soon waiting for primed disappointment?

[-dicht.Seleszi-]

Please make Galvanized mods purchasable both in Steel Path and Arbitration stores, it's a win-win situation: people who haven't gotten through SP will get the mods to make SP easier through Arbitrations.

On the flipside, people that have already cleared SP can purchase the mods for all their acquired Steel Essence or just do Arbitrations too if that's what they desire.

There is nothing bad about freedom of choice DE. And if you're going to remain insistent on locking them to just Arbitrations, at least make changes to the game mode - make Vitus drops more common, make enemy spawns under 4 players more common and so on.

[(XBOX)CFG SatanDevil]

vor 3 Minuten schrieb (PSN)RWalls91:

Primed soon waiting for primed disappointment?

No why? 

[(PSN)RWalls91]

4 minutes ago, (XBOX)CFG SatanDevil said:

No why? 

Waiting to find out how much of a grind wall there will be to aquire them all. Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised at the pricing, but I'm not holding my breath

[(XBOX)CFG SatanDevil]

vor 3 Minuten schrieb (PSN)RWalls91:

Waiting to find out how much of a grind wall there will be to aquire them all. Hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised at the pricing, but I'm not holding my breath

I think, hope the price will max. 20- 30 Vitus  essence 

[GREF_TM]

15 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

- Reduced MERCILESS Arcanes Duration from 6 to 4 secs

Translation: "We tried it on a test build at a lvl20 mission and it was too stronk."

 

Seriously though. It's not even out, but they already are nerfing it. Was this some kind a ruse to nerf melee all along?

[NoLazyShadow]

15 часов назад, [DE]Rebecca сказал:

Reduced MERCILESS Arcanes Duration from 6 to 4 secs

If this is 4 seconds for 1 stack then it's fine. If its 4 seconds and you lose all stacks - big no

[festivneer]

ooooh boy. once again, the devs didnt just miss the broad side of the barn, they missed the whole damn farm.
im just going to state the three obvious glaring problems:

GUNS DO NOT SCALE WITH ENEMIES LIKE MELEE DOES
GUNS CAN NOT EFFECTIVELY DEAL WITH SWARMS OF ENEMIES
GALVANIZED MODS AND THE ARCANE SETS ONLY HELP TOP TIER META GUNS THAT CAN KILL IN STEEL PATH ALREADY

so now lets go through everything in those three problems:
THE COMBO COUNTER AND HEAVY ATTACKS
after the melee rework was initially dropped, the combo counter became a staple part of melee play. (as before it could only realistically get up to x3)
while combo mainly affects heavy attacks, getting high combo in a matter of seconds in high level missions is not exactly a hard task.
for example i was able to get to max combo counter on steel path E gate from in just 45 seconds from the start of the mission with a unmodded ceti lacera on a bad spawn (three enemies before a a elevator)
with a ceti lacera modded for status and damage, in the same situation this time drops down to 25 seconds, and ~7 seconds for the second x12 buildup thanks to enemies starting to bunch together
this alone already raises some concerns, as this allows for regular damage that is *much* higher than guns can achieve, not even going into all the things that push heavy attacks even further.
next we have the two big melee mods: blood rush and weeping wounds. these do not apply to just heavy attacks, but on normal strikes as well. i'll only focus on blood rush as it leads into my next point.
for the new blood rush, lets just say you have x5 crit mult and are using a weapon with 30% crit chance.
44% of the time you will deal x25 damage and 56% of the time you will deal x5. which yes you might say this is op, but using blood rush...
IMPLIES THE USE OF OTHER MODS, MODS THAT CAN TAKE UP A GOOD MAJORITY OF THE BUILD
this is the second thing we will focus on.
the nerfs to blood rush and condition overload ignore that one vital thing.
for blood rush to be actually useful you need combo duration of some form, and a decent crit multiplier.
lets use the old blood rush for a moment under the same scenario as the last blood rush example.
36% of the time you deal x125 damage, 64% of the time you deal x25.
which may sound marginally better but remember, THIS IMPLIES THE USE OF OTHER MODS TO MAKE THIS WORTHWHILE
assuming a 30% chance and 2x multiplier, in order to hit x5 damage and have combo building worthwhile you need one mod to increase combo duration and two mods for critical damage
meaning you have now dedicated half of your build to red crits. leaving only four mod slots for damage, range, attack speed, and elemental things.
now for condition overload. same situation. say you are just using your melee, and its a melee that does not deal an additional elemental damage. ontop of condition overload you need three or four elemental mods at the very least. leaving you with only three or four slots left.
considering all of this, builds that use these dont need any more nerfing, as the remaining slots dont allow for much customization.
now onto the next problem...
GUNS, AND THE FACT THAT THEY CANNOT SCALE LIKE MELEE DOES
melee itself, is fine as is. as it can kill in steel path. the problem, is that guns cannot.
guns for the most part, are incapable of scaling like melee does. guns dont have a combo counter, or mods that increase your effective damage drastically as you hit things more.
guns do not have their own heavy attack or condition overload.
infact, almost no gun mods stand out like melee mods. the only one that slightly does is hunter munitions.
which brings us to the next problem...
"ON KILL" EFFECTS, AND WHY THEY ARE BANDAID SOLUTIONS TO LARGE PROBLEMS
let me state it like this. say you have two options for what to bring into a mission, one that can kill and one that cant.
you of course, would obviously bring the one that can kill. as bringing the one that cant is the opposite of what you want.
this is often referred to as meta and non meta weapons. the only problem in warframe's case, is that melee has meta mods, while guns do not.
guns do not have anything that scales as they hit enemies. melee does.
guns do not have a combo counter which scales with hits. melee does
melee scales as it hits enemies. guns... do not
the proper way to balance this should be simple...
so why the hell is "on kill" the solution?
guns in steel path cannot kill fast enough to keep up with the hordes of enemies.
they do not have any form of combo counter or heavy attack to kill steel path enemies.
only top tier meta guns can (which in comparison to melee, is a very low amount)
so the point of all the galvanized mods and the arcanes are thrown out the window, because guns cannot kill fast enough. and part of this problem is...
THE ABILITY TO DAMAGE MULTIPLE ENEMIES AT ONCE
and why lacking it makes most guns inherently worse
lets use overframe's community tier list as a base to go off of for our ranged weapons (https://overframe.gg/tier-list/primary-weapons/)
looking at the S tier for primaries:
proboscis... has a radial.
cedo... launches a bouncing glaive that can hit multiple targets
rubico prime... single bullet shot, no extra effects.
acceltra... a swarm missile launcher.
ignis wraith... a flamethrower.
bubonico... a shotgun with explosive pellets
kuva bramma... a bow that shoots explosive shots
trumna... a rifle with a secondary fire thats a high damage explosive grenade.
so 7/8 weapons in the S tier have some form of explosive that allows it to deal with multiple enemies at once.
the secondaries are the same way, 3/4 of the ones in S tier have a base way to damage multiple enemies with one shot.
while most guns that can only damage one enemy at once, or dont have really high damage to compensate for it, are in B and lower.
so here, the solution is simple: guns for the most part need a way to damage multiple enemies in the same way melee can.
why? warframe is all about killing swarms. "one shot, one kill" is simply not enough to cut it most of the time.
"one shot, many kills" is the only way to keep up in higher levels, which is one of the reasons why melee thrives. as all melee (except for a few) is capable of damaging many things at once.
CONCLUSION
so in this essay that has pushed the time im falling asleep to a dangerous area, the solutions to these problems are simple:
leave melee alone - melee strength is not the issue, its how guns are lacking
give guns some form of "scale on hit" that melee has - possibly being able to shoot a hypercharged shot after enough hits?
mods that scale with gun scale on hit - without this guns will remain below melee
give more guns ways to damage multiple enemies - such as mods that add ricocheting.
NO "ON KILL" EFFECTS - they are only bandaids to the fact that non top meta guns cannot kill properly in steel path, and are infact only buffs to these guns. despite these guns not needing help. instead go for on hit/crit/status/headshot effects. or actually rebalance guns as a whole.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

16 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

Moved all Galvanized Mods to Arbitrations from Steel Path. 

Why: This change is rooted in the depth of the new items we’re putting in Steel Path with this Update, and the hope some players had about being able to earn the Galvanized Mods before they even arrived on the Steel Path. Since Arbitrations also require a completed Star Chart, but are a step up in difficulty from that base Star Chart, we thought (and so did many of you) that they’d be a good stepping stone for earning some of the new Upgrades! 

That a really really bad change. I can play 1 Arbitration per hour with a random frame/weapon buff. I can play Steel Path all day if I want to. Arbitrations already have a lot of stuff in their drop table, diluting that further doesn't help.

I can see a lot of extremely frustrating Arbitration gameplay followed by yet another Ayatan Sculpture.

This is just painful grind to get mods that supposedly balance guns? These mods should be about as difficult to get as their melee equivalents (Blood Rush, Condition Overload, Beserker, etc).

 

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

2 minutes ago, festivneer said:

 

You're also missing the farm as well.

We're not adding radial explosive damage to every single target pistol and weapon in the game. 

[vr37]

19 hours ago, VoidArkhangel said:

And what about making three universal arcanes instead of one for each category?

No, for balancing the numbers later let them be 2. That's not bad. 

 

3 hours ago, festivneer said:

guns do not have anything that scales as they hit enemies. melee does.
guns do not have a combo counter which scales with hits. melee does
melee scales as it hits enemies. guns... do not
the proper way to balance this should be simple...
so why the hell is "on kill" the solution?

Precisely. 

 

On Headshot kill is trust me a lot of work to actually pull off in Steel path when you have a massive horde of enemies to take out. "On Headshot" is leagues better than "On headshot kill" specifically. 

with the sheer amount of enemies in steel path it is completely non-sensical to bother aiming at the head with a single target weapon like say Daikyu or Fulmin when there are more powerful weapons that can kill groups of enemies. The very act of shooting them in the face should be rewarded with "on headshot" instead of "on headshot kill". Otherwise we will never use the Galvanized Scope mod so please let DE's effort be actually useful and not something we would never use. 

[(PSN)II2j-ZII]

My only question is why you guys decided to add new primary/secondary mods instead of buffing existing ones?

Genuinely wondering.