Tauforged Archon Shard Probability System Overview

[[DE]Taylor]

Hi Tenno,

If you caught the news in Devstream 167, we are introducing a “pity” system to increase the chance of players receiving Tauforged Shards from their weekly Archon Hunts. 

With the approach of Citrine’s Last Wish later this month, we wanted to share a larger overview of how this system will work for our avid Archon Hunters!

NOTE - the following Probability Changes will come into effect the Monday following the update so as to not interfere with the current active Hunt. We will include full dates and times in the notes when the Citrine’s Last Wish Update goes live.

TAUFORGED ARCHON SHARD PROBABILITY CHANGE: 

Each time a specific Tauforged Archon Shard (Amber, Azure, Crimson) is not your reward from completing an Archon Hunt (i.e. you received a regular Amber, Azure, or Crimson Archon Shard), your chance to receive a Tauforged Shard of that variant increases in the next respective Hunt. 

The base probability for an Archon Shard to be Tauforged is 20% and increases by 20% (up to 100%) for each Hunt that does not reward that specific Tauforged Shard. The probability resets back to 20% once that Tauforged Shard variant is rewarded. The chance % will be indicated via the Archon Hunt Navigation panel for the Shard color that is currently available.

Here is an example of how several weeks could play out: 
(This is not a reflection of the current/upcoming Archon Hunt rotations)

Week 1: Archon Nira is active with a 20% chance of a Tauforged Amber Shard. Completing the Hunt does not reward Tauforged, your chance increases by 20% to earn a Tauforged Amber Shard the next time Archon Nira is active. 

Week 2: Archon Boreal is active with a 20% chance of a Tauforged Azure Shard. Completing the Hunt does not reward Tauforged, your chance increases by 20% to earn a Tauforged Azure Shard for the next time Archon Boreal is active. 

Week 3: Archon Amar is active with a 20% chance of a Tauforged Crimson Shard. Completing the Hunt does not reward Tauforged, your chance increases by 20% to earn a Tauforged Crimson Shard for the next time Archon Amar is active. 

Week 4: Archon Nira is active with a 40% chance of a Tauforged Amber Shard. Completing the Hunt rewards Tauforged - huzzah! Your chance resets to 20% for the next time Archon Nira is active. 

Week 5: Archon Boreal is active with a 40% chance of a Tauforged Azure Shard. Completing the Hunt does not reward Tauforged, your chance increases by 20% to a total of a 60% chance to earn a Tauforged Azure Shard for the next time Archon Boreal is active. 

Rinse and repeat! 

======

Players can look forward to this change, and so much more, in Citrine’s Last Wish, coming later in February!

[trombocyc]

Thanks for the informations!

 

By the way, is there a chance to get info when Citrine's Last Wish will be released or at least when the info about it will be shown (date when date of update will be mentioned)?

[Merrcenary]

just remove tauforged shards and turn all existing ones in players inventory unto regular. problem solved without need to complicate things much more. ez

[(PSN)Shaun-T-Wilson]

For those who dont understand, my understanding is that each separate shard will have an independent pity counter. 

[Tiltskillet]

19 minutes ago, [DE]Taylor said:

NOTE - the following Probability Changes will come into effect the Monday following the update so as to not interfere with the current active Hunt. We will include full dates and times in the notes when the Citrine’s Last Wish Update goes live.

TAUFORGED ARCHON SHARD PROBABILITY CHANGE: 

Each time a specific Tauforged Archon Shard (Amber, Azure, Crimson) is not your reward from completing an Archon Hunt (i.e. you received a regular Amber, Azure, or Crimson Archon Shard), your chance to receive a Tauforged Shard of that variant increases in the next respective Hunt. 

 

I really appreciate yall posting the explanation here.  Thank you.

[Voltage]

Why not add a crafting system (alongside the pity system even) to turn normal Shards into Tauforged that adds additional grind for unlucky players to catch up to lucky ones in inventory progress? It would also add value to the Shards offered by Kahl's Garrison. Tauforged Shards should be both a lucky drop and a graduated enhancement, not an RNG roll once per week that the player has no agency over rerolling or catching up to others on. Archon Shards right now feel akin to if Umbra Forma had two types (one being upgraded) that was a randomized chance of being earned. This has been suggested many times for months, but I recently wrote a quick concept and what it achieves so I may as well cross-post it for reference on why it's a superior system to implement:

On 2023-01-30 at 4:25 PM, Voltage said:

Add a blueprint to Kahl's Garrison's Offerings. You can only buy 2 of these per week (one for Kahl's Shard and one for the Archon Hunt Shard). The cost would reflect being able to purchase the weekly Shard and two of these new blueprints (adjust challenge Stock rewards or reduce the cost of the weekly Shard, whichever is easier). Make the cost of the blueprint a fair bit of resources like Nitain Extract, Anomaly Shards, Narmer Isoplast, Eidolon Shards, Sentient Cores, Argon Crystals, and a 48 hour craft time.

This accomplishes multiple things at the same time:

• Tauforged drops are still valuable to the player and feels good as a player earning one can skip farming Narmer Bounties and Tridolons to upgrade their weekly Shards.
• Kahl and Kahl's Garrison offers real value for shards compared to hunts.
• Unlucky players will have an avenue of redemption for an additional grind cost.
• Nobody is ahead or behind one another unless they are less active in the system. 
• DE's precious time-gate and long term investment is still preserved.
• Players can skip Shards if they want without being punished in the entire system.

I know several people with every single hunt completed (22+ weeks now) of Archon Hunts and at 2 Tau Shards or less, some still at 0. The pity system makes little effort to address this, and even with a guaranteed drop every 15 weeks for a specific color, it will take several years just to "finish" a collection of Shards for a very small amount of Warframes, especially as new release and more Prime Access launch. Not to mention that those behind will remain behind in this new system as anyone who's ahead or more lucky can continue that trend on average.

You can have a gated, long lasting system that doesn't disrespect the player for not being lucky once every 7 days. There's no downside or reason to not add such a system as I proposed as it can be designed to not make normal Shards into "free Tauforged" for everyone. This pity system in it's current form only caters to a specific demographic of player with quite a low bar of optimization for their gear if you look at player stats from 2020-2022, content creator influence, and general complacency with "good enough" builds. Adding a way to graduate normal to Tau (again, even if expensive) would also be a positive for those who don't enjoy settling for mediocrity with their progression. Given the "endgame" nature of the Shards system, the graduation from Normal to Tau can be quite expensive. As a looter shooter, it's only natural that many players want to hyper-optimize their arsenal, and Tauforged, even with this pity system, is unnecessary friction with the natural growth of power through additional gear.

I write this because I know once this pity system goes live, like most other updates in the game, the "couple months later revisit" will be the last time it's even looked at. Sanctuary Onslaught, Eidolons, Nightwave, Kahl's Veilbreaker missions, Deimos Arcana, Fissures, Focus, Void Sling, and so many other systems in the game get a small revisit shortly after launch to touch up a few flaws and then completely ignored, often in a continuously unfinished state that feels awful if you've been a part of this game a long time.

[Mazifet]

32 minutes ago, [DE]Taylor said:

Citrine’s Last Wish, coming later in February!

When in February though? The Lua's Prey subforum was archived in the past update section at the bottom of the forums, so is the update going to release within the next week or...?

[vanaukas]

The team should consider realeasing this kind of news earlier to avoid unnecessary salt and controversy within the community. Good job with the pity system tho :)

[Numerounius]

Thank you for the official announcement! More of this please and less of twitter announcements. 

[Skaleek]

1 hour ago, Voltage said:

You can have a gated, long lasting system that doesn't disrespect the player for not being lucky once every 7 days.

Sounds familiar. I wish their system helped players that are really outside the standard norm. You used to be able to play Warframe to put in effort to make up for poor RNG. Now its just a mobile gacha weekly game man. Also, Hey, can you guys please revisit the whole "it costs 50% of your bile to remove one shard thing?". I think that the removal costs is actually worse than anything else with the system because it discourages playing around with builds and testing/experimenting which is kind of the whole fun of Warframe for me, as it has been for the past 7~ years.

1 hour ago, Merrcenary said:

just remove tauforged shards and turn all existing ones in players inventory unto regular. problem solved without need to complicate things much more. ez

Also a great solution.

[Pakaku]

This system relies on players waiting three whole weeks for another attempt at a specific Archon shard colour. A guaranteed 100% chance will take 15 weeks, or three months. This is hardly an improvement and only gives me the impression that your team doesn't value our playtime at all.

[Voltage]

24 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

The team should consider realeasing this kind of news earlier to avoid unnecessary salt and controversy within the community. Good job with the pity system tho :)

Even if the this announcement was made before, during, or right after Devstream, there would still be "salt" and "controversy". I use quotations because these are buzzwords by people and actually translates to "frustrated player feedback for a disrespectful system" and "arguing between players who are heavily invested in the game and people protecting bad decisions or settle for mediocrity with Archon Shards".

Archon Shards as a system continue to be frustrating towards players as a gated weekly that often results in feeling terrible every week they aren't lucky without any recourse. RNG is fine when the player has agency on attempts. Gated, scheduled, curated RNG is awful and it should be obvious why.

[BiancaRoughfin]

47 minutes ago, Merrcenary said:

just remove tauforged shards and turn all existing ones in players inventory unto regular. problem solved without need to complicate things much more. ez

Yes please! Thats what i have been saying for a wile now.

[NightmareT12]

I think upping the 20% to a 25% might be a better way, since it means the 100% will reach a week earlier and let people with worse luck probably even out a bit easily. Shouldn't be excessively generous while also being a bit easier for bad luck players. Having said this I guess most of the time people should be getting more Tauforged more easily now, so we should also account that.

I also want to note I appreciate what's been explained here more than what was explained last time, as each crystal now has equal chances at being assured Tauforged. I appreciate taking time to adress this post Devstream as well.

[Voltage]

6 minutes ago, Pakaku said:

This is hardly an improvement and only gives me the impression that your team doesn't value our playtime at all.

This is an unfortunate trend for years now. What's worse is that it can't be pointed out and discussed without being seen as dev-bashing or "another over-invested player" when it's just the norm now that updates and many systems feel this way. It's a fact that really can't go unnoticed anymore.

[vanaukas]

18 minutes ago, Voltage said:

Even if the this announcement was made before, during, or right after Devstream, there would still be "salt" and "controversy". I use quotations because these are buzzwords by people and actually translates to "frustrated player feedback for a disrespectful system" and "arguing between players who are heavily invested in the game and people protecting bad decisions or settle for mediocrity with Archon Shards".

Archon Shards as a system continue to be frustrating towards players as a gated weekly that often results in feeling terrible every week they aren't lucky without any recourse. RNG is fine when the player has agency on attempts. Gated, scheduled, curated RNG is awful and it should be obvious why.

I like it

[Voltage]

9 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

I like it

That's fine. I mean, if you like this system, then you'd also like a better one too right? A graduation/progression approach to Tauforged alongside a pity system is entirely possible.

[Kaiga]

Can we have something to do with our regular shards? Having them cost so much bile to move around is crippling and limits customization 

[vanaukas]

13 minutes ago, Voltage said:

That's fine. I mean, if you like this system, then you'd also like a better one too right? A graduation/progression approach to Tauforged alongside a pity system is entirely possible.

No

[Voltage]

1 minute ago, vanaukas said:

No

Elaborate please. I would love to hear the downsides of what I (and many others before me) suggested with graduated Archon Shard progression.

[vanaukas]

8 minutes ago, Voltage said:

Elaborate please. I would love to hear the downsides of what I (and many others before me) suggested with graduated Archon Shard progression.

I'm messing with you since my first reply to you. I've already told you what I think about this and about your mental health in other interactions and I stand by them.

[Voltage]

6 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

I'm messing with you since my first reply to you. I've already told you what I think about this and about your mental health in other interactions and I stand by them.

Ah right, my bad for wanting the best gear in a looter shooter in a reasonable manner. 

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

5 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

I'm messing with you since my first reply to you. I've already told you what I think about this and about your mental health in other interactions and I stand by them.

 

I don't know man. Feels a bit cheap to casually bring up another users mental health randomly in another thread. I don't know the context of the other thread, and usually as far as Warframe opinions go, I tend to align/agree with yours more, but... eh, I think we can disagree about stuff without bringing up users mental health. Unless they of course are comfortable, or bring it up themselves etc (like I may be misunderstanding because I don't know the context of the other thread you mentioned, in which case my sincere apologies). 

Take care either way! 

[vanaukas]

12 minutes ago, (PSN)slightconfuzzled said:

 

I don't know man. Feels a bit cheap to casually bring up another users mental health randomly in another thread. I don't know the context of the other thread, and usually as far as Warframe opinions go, I tend to align/agree with yours more, but... eh, I think we can disagree about stuff without bringing up users mental health. Unless they of course are comfortable, or bring it up themselves etc (like I may be misunderstanding because I don't know the context of the other thread you mentioned, in which case my sincere apologies). 

Take care either way! 

Yeah you are right. The context is because he claims devs are "psychologically abusing" the player base with the drop rate, and as far as I know psychologically abusing someone is related to mental health. I con quote it btw, it's literal.

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

2 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

Yeah you are right. The context is because he claims devs are "psychologically abusing" the player base with the drop rate, and as far as I know psychologically abusing someone is related to mental health. I con quote it btw, it's literal.

 

Ah okay. Thats quite the claim towards the Devs. Don't agree with that either. Not sure I necessarily think it justifies making a topic of an individual players mental health though, in a way that is implicitly judgemental. Two wrongs and all that, but I acknowledge there is likely greater context and history between you both, that I am ignorant and unaware of, so I'll peace out. 

It just made me slightly uneasy to see someones mental health brought up in this context. Its not something in general, I think should be breeched, unless with a persons consent and with respect all around. 

Thank you for clarifying.