Kuva Weapon Spawn RNG Problem and Solution

[Vectyr]

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but I do think this needs to be talked about more going forward.

Warframe is already a massive time investment, as someone who has every currently available Weapon, Warframe, Companion/pet/MOA, vehicle, K-board, etc. in the game, I can't even imagine starting the game again, with the wall of things needed to be leveled. That's a whole other complicated issue, but today I will only be talking about the grind to get the Kuva/Tenet weapons to spawn in the first place- one that can't be bypassed at all -and how it is entirely too monotonous as it is now.

To begin with, I've acquired every Tenet and Kuva type weapon released so far, as of a week ago. I have an idea of how long this grind is supposed to be, but it's starting to feel more bloated than it already was. Today, I wanted to get another copy of a specific weapon: the Kuva Brakk, and that is the goal I set forth. FOUR hours later, I've ran the Capture node of Cassini on Saturn enough times that I started to fall asleep at my desk. Warframe is an RNG heavy game, I understand that and even enjoy it, but it really needs certain things to be reined in when they go off the solar rails. In the space of the last 4 hours of hunting for a particular Kuva weapon to spawn, I could've killed 3-4 Kuva Liches or Sisters of Parvos. I've already done this spawn grind before, but this four to five times longer than it's ever been for me.

"Vector, why didn't you just take one of the other weapons? Maybe you wouldn't be falling asleep then, nerd."

I'm glad you asked, why didn't I take one of the other weapon's I've already forma'd 5 times and have settled builds and elements for? Gee, I really don't know!

Sarcasm aside, there should be an 'easy' solution to this current problem I'm having with the Kuva/Tenet weapon system and I'm sure is much worse for less patient players. Right now, there are 19 different Kuva weapons, which means that there is a 1 to 18 chance of getting what you're looking for, or 5.26%. (I'm bad at math, so I hope that's right)

The following is two possible solutions I came up with while spending the last 4 hours running Cassini ad nauseum.

1. (A Possible solution) Just let the players pick the weapon they're hunting for, maybe if they've hunted the weapon at least once already. Although the latter half of that could still result in the same problem I'm trying to address and wouldn't be ideal, when it comes to completing one's Kuva/Tenet collection.

2. (My Preferred solution) Introduce a token system that either decays or resets when a weapon/lich is selected. An example of this: The player runs the Cassini capture node and takes down the Kuva larvling 10 times, but does not find the weapon they're looking for. However, every Kuva larvling that has been downed in a mission has dropped a Kuva Token (or other sci-fi item name), 10 or so of these tokens can then be exchanged at a vendor. (maybe Clem in Iron Wake could be used for this, lol) The vendor, would have a shop page with each and every Kuva or Tenet weapon listed as a beacon spawn, guaranteeing both a Kuva larvling spawn and the specific weapon that is desired. I think this would work really well and it could take away some of the sting of having wasted your entire afternoon, running a low difficulty mission, to TRY get a singular weapon to spawn and getting ZERO return investment at all.

The second solution, I think would be ideal. 10 is just an arbitrary number I selected and DE could place any other value they feel is fair for the time investment. 10 is already a big number of spawns however. A capture mission, ran relatively fast, while allowing the Larvling space to spawn, (too close to extract before they spawn can stop the spawn) can take 2-3 minutes. Taking that amount of time and multiplying it by 10, already gives us 20-30 minutes of bashing your head into a wall on Cassini.

A quick disclaimer: The above solution does not have anything to do with the Lich/Sister Ephemera, as those are purely cosmetic and do not affect the game in any type of progression. I don't really have any opinion to give today on that kind of cosmetic loot stuff as a grind.

Have a nice day if you read or didn't read it all. o7

tl;dr: Kuva weapon spawn grind is TOO long, make it shorter and respect our time please.

[XacKflash]

Greeting DE & Y'all!

You have just added all that I wanted to say about this, I have no Idea, why this has not reached DE yet or it has and they replied in another forum.

All I can add here is a couple addition to the first solution {Weapon Select based on weapon used} that could even work better;

-An Addition of Guaranteed Cycle of "NON-OWNED" , so that players can grab all those Tenet and Kuva weapons as fast possible to rank for MR without having to run the cat and mouse chase without gain

 

-If DE has an issue with making it targeting specific used weapon maybe you can concentrate them to a group/category of weapons
i.e. I want a Kuva Secondary so I run Larvling mission with [secondary weapon only] targets available pool of secondary weapons , if I want melee then melee only, Primary then Primary only, Since Arch-weapons have same classification am sure they can be added with their proper category
>>Yes this still doesn't completely fix the RNG roll issue, But at its a solution that is still grindy but focused at the very least in a situation where a Direct elimination of the issue is not accepted by the Devs.

Hope this reaches DE attention soon

Stay safe Y'all!

[(XBOX)KawaiiAsa]

I think a much more simple solution would be having the weapons just default to a cycle that it rotates through. Say the cycle starts on, the Kuva Shildeg for example... you go through 18 more times after getting a Shildeg spawn and its back at Shildeg, it'd still be grindy but at least you know that it won't take an entire day to appear. That or a way to guarantee the weapon you want by having it so if your running a kuva/tenet weapon (or 2/3), and get a larvling/candidate to spawn, it will pick between your equipped kuva/tenet weapons if those are available on a lich/sister.
Also a QoL update that needs to happen is that (from my experience), if you quit a mission after downing a candidate/larvling because they don't have what you want, and retry it will keep that weapon until you actually finish the mission or turn them into a sister/lich. Just change it so that it changes weapon even if you quit the mission

[Vectyr]

On 2021-12-29 at 1:56 AM, XacKflash said:

Greeting DE & Y'all!

You have just added all that I wanted to say about this, I have no Idea, why this has not reached DE yet or it has and they replied in another forum.

All I can add here is a couple addition to the first solution {Weapon Select based on weapon used} that could even work better;

-An Addition of Guaranteed Cycle of "NON-OWNED" , so that players can grab all those Tenet and Kuva weapons as fast possible to rank for MR without having to run the cat and mouse chase without gain

 

-If DE has an issue with making it targeting specific used weapon maybe you can concentrate them to a group/category of weapons
i.e. I want a Kuva Secondary so I run Larvling mission with [secondary weapon only] targets available pool of secondary weapons , if I want melee then melee only, Primary then Primary only, Since Arch-weapons have same classification am sure they can be added with their proper category
>>Yes this still doesn't completely fix the RNG roll issue, But at its a solution that is still grindy but focused at the very least in a situation where a Direct elimination of the issue is not accepted by the Devs.

Hope this reaches DE attention soon

Stay safe Y'all!

Hope your 2022 is going well o/

I haven't touched the Kuva/Tenet weapon system since I made this post but I don't think they've mentioned changing it all so far.
It might just be because the system sort of works and DE is always pushing to release new things rather refurbish old/already released and not completely broken content. I'm still worried about the player burnout of interacting with a system like this, it's almost like rolling in a gacha game except it squeezes the player for time rather than money.

[Vectyr]

On 2021-12-29 at 10:39 AM, (XBOX)KawaiiAsa said:

I think a much more simple solution would be having the weapons just default to a cycle that it rotates through. Say the cycle starts on, the Kuva Shildeg for example... you go through 18 more times after getting a Shildeg spawn and its back at Shildeg, it'd still be grindy but at least you know that it won't take an entire day to appear. That or a way to guarantee the weapon you want by having it so if your running a kuva/tenet weapon (or 2/3), and get a larvling/candidate to spawn, it will pick between your equipped kuva/tenet weapons if those are available on a lich/sister.
Also a QoL update that needs to happen is that (from my experience), if you quit a mission after downing a candidate/larvling because they don't have what you want, and retry it will keep that weapon until you actually finish the mission or turn them into a sister/lich. Just change it so that it changes weapon even if you quit the mission

Hi, hope your 2022 is goin well o/

This is a possible solution, but I'd consider a band-aid rather than a fix.
(A band-aid being a temporary solution that doesn't solve an underlying problem that can potentially get worse if left alone. And a fix being something that solves a current problem and a future problem at the same time.)
With the amount of weapons in the game currently, having a cycling weapon system as you suggested would take 57 minutes per full cycle of weapons.
(A generous 3 minutes per run, multiplied by 19/the current amount of Kuva weapons.)
The reason that would be a 'band-aid,' is that time to cycle through the weapon list would grow longer with each batch of weapons. Imagine 20 more Kuva weapons, and the mandatory cycle count would bloat to 2 hours long. It works, but as you can see: it isn't the preferable solution as it could become a future problem.

[Vectyr]

Update: Patch 31.1.0

From the patch notes:
"By skipping a Progenitor (choosing not to Mercy them) the spawned weapon is then put into a 'reject' pile for that round of Adversary generation, meaning that it will not appear again and ultimately reducing the weapon pool each time you 'reject'.

The list of rejected weapons is cleared once you accept an Adversary and the process would start again from a clean slate for both Sister or Kuva Lich the next time you go looking for an Adversary. This list clearing applies to both Sister and Kuva Lich, meaning once the chosen Adversary is Converted or Vanquished, the list clears for both factions."

Well, a step was finally taken towards this after all.
Not exactly what I was hoping for, as they can always add more Kuva/Tenet/whatever weapons to the pool to dilute it and potentially make the grind longer and longer.
If your desired weapon doesn't show up early in your capture mission runs, that's still almost an hour of your time wasted, to do a full weapon cycle. This is very similar to what I mentioned before:

On 2022-01-16 at 11:10 PM, Vector051 said:

The reason that would be a 'band-aid,' is that time to cycle through the weapon list would grow longer with each batch of weapons. Imagine 20 more Kuva weapons, and the mandatory cycle count would bloat to 2 hours long. It works, but as you can see: it isn't the preferable solution as it could become a future problem.

However, while this is 'band-aid' type solution, (not a 'fix') it does set a hard-cap onto how many runs you can do until you get to the weapon you want.

[(PSN)STREETKID-_-]

I had to run the same mission over and over for 2 half hours last night to get a KUVA weapon I didn’t already have. Finally got it. Now tonight seems I am in for the same agony, as I’ve now been running it over 1 hour with no joy. PLEASE DE fix this, there are some fantastic suggestions made by OP. Seriously this is utterly ridiculous and makes me want to close the game. I get this game has a certain recommended and intended grind, but honestly this is too much 😞

[(PSN)Tomplexthis]

you know they added a listing feature to the rng.

When you say no, it checks it off the list, when you finish the mission

so it rotates around the rng of the weapons to pick up.

the real grind is the damn 60% of any of those weapons, or the ephemeras

[(PSN)STREETKID-_-]

True indeed, getting high percentage drops is very hard, the toxic empephera drops like rain, it’s the others I can’t seem to get, no matter how many try’s.