What is this Circuit DE? Give me Liches and RNG!

[Lord_Drod]

I see you tried to make a variety mode, that sucks in newer players, by making a two circuits on top of each other, with different rewards, and then need to have similar game modes to attract these people to play it.  Then you did add some fast enemy scaling to attract veterans or elite players.  This game feels like a slog for me each time I play it. 

*There's no way to make the circuit go any faster.  I'm stuck going through 170 points(and slower before tier 5) at a time all the way up to 5.5k. 

*The gameplay modes are very old, not dynamic or updated (even going backwards with defense, by making it static without a live target you can revive), aside from flood, which was butchered, which is overall pretty boring experience. 

*The Undercroft feels super empty and bland.  Since defense has to be played on it, it shrinks the overall size of the tile.  There's huge gaps everywhere that disconnect the gameplay and there isn't very many obstacles in the environment, or anything up and down.  It's like a rodeo.  The circular nature of the tile destroys a fun mode like extermination. 

*Defense is the roadblock in the mission, although excavation can be a pain too at round 10+ with no CC.  What's fun about playing either of these missions solo with no CC, a situation that will come up rather frequently.  As a result, you prioritize defense frames, since the other modes are just timeouts and walk arounds.  I'm not slapping gloom on every frame just for the circuit.  I'm not sure why you thought I would do that or would want to.  Defense is a mission I always avoid because I can.  Why would I want a new mode, centered around grinding OG defense?  Unless there is super reward for an alert on new corpus ship defense(the slowest defense tile), Archon defense, or I'm leveling a new frame on Hydron, defense never gets selected ever.

*You don't earn decrees fast enough, or necessarily the right ones to solo defense with non CC frame and fodder weapons.  There's no decrees that provide any source of crowd control on cast, and 5-10 isn't enough for many frames to solo defense at enemy level 1000+  Then I can't even use my on call crew, specters, or Kahl or anything to make solo defense more fun (and I'm referring to playing with a non CC frame at high enemy level).  So you're forced to play with others, but then the host will often leave, and even though I see some patches, I'm not going to gamble that host migrations are fine - they still aren't fine in Zariman)

*Group scaling is pretty demanding for any random group.  You should get an advantage working with others, not a disadvantage.  Solo and group play don't take the same time on a exterm or flood mission.  Why should they here?

*This is not anyway an endurance mode.  You have decrees and your Operator.  There's only 5 waves of defense and the HP gets reset.  There's fast enemy scaling.  I appreciate that aspect. 

*There's zero drops and hardly any resources.  I realize some are part of decrees, but no drops provides a dull experience.  Even some arcanes dropping at a really low rate from thrax, would be nice.  If they do, cool, I was unaware.

*There's no reward for doing anything, except at each circuit tier, and many of those rewards are fodder, like rivens.

*The RNG system - how does it work?  Is it filtering anything or just taking skewed %used stats and slapping them into some algorithm where it heavily weights things I don't own or have builds for.  I haven't used plenty of the weapons in my top % used in ages, especially things like Atterax and Scoliac for 3 yrs, when they were turned into socks.  Many others you would not want a build for, like single pistols, that have a double variant and weren't primed.  It's pushing it to take a single kohmak into a mission, or to even invest or own that.  There's 400+ weapons, why should the same 5 get constantly repeated that have no use anywhere, including this mode, other than to annoy you?  If you want me to invest in any of the melee's with "heat" in its name, they should be i dunno, BASE HEAT.  Why is heat sword a slash weapon?  Just call it Red sword.  Why are there no options to select another variant of the same weapon it has given you, or frame?  If I own Hildryn prime, but have all the forma in regular Hildryn etc?  Am I gonna update my build for this mode?  No.  Why not?  Because its not needed, its just an annoyance.  As others have mentioned, it should be true RNG - if there's players that have 400+ weapons and forma in them, but still missing the bottom 20 1% utter junk, good?  That player has given you a lot of plat and investment already.  They shouldn't feel like they aren't getting any advantage from doing so.

 

How does this compare with Liches? 

*In the circuit: Instead of RNG, were paying a penalty by have a progression system.  Some people want this.  I do not.  When there's a progression system, it just feels like a chore, like a job.  It doesn't matter how long it takes, but yes, its basically working a shift each week.  No, I don't really have time for that or want to do that.  When there's RNG, like the liches have, I am actively making guesses each time they spawn, cutting down the RNG, all while still earning progress towards a guaranteed key.  What am I doing in the circuit that's cutting it down?  Why is defense not double or triple the progress since everyone extracts there?  Why isn't there a bonus for each mission you complete within the same run?

*I'm not stuck doing defense on a defense tile.  There's rescues, and plenty of other mission variety allowing you to CHOOSE what you like.  Do I feel like I'm playing extermination here?  No.  Defense and excavation can be completely ignored farming liches and you should, because they have the worst time investment (kind of like in the circuit).  In over 50+ liches I farmed, defense was played 0 times.  ZERO.  In my opinion, defense starts off great for beginners, but you slowly start to hate that mission the more hours spent in Warframe, hence why its included for this update(starter circuit leads to expert circuit, so must have starter mission).  Why not address why defense is avoided by many veterans instead of spoon feeding it?  Even mirror defense would be better, and you could eliminate flood if you did that, and add in something else.

*You earned rotation rewards, whether it be in spy, whatever, you got something.  I think? 

*There's resource drops, mod drops etc!  What's cool about having nothing drop?  Is this a PVP Arena?  Why can't I invade others and kill them and take their progress then?

*There's tile changes!  You aren't stuck in any one place for long.  Yes, not everyone is going to enjoy the Undercroft.

*RNG in a good way.  You can guess keys and get lucky, You can guess keys and not get lucky and eliminate them.  How awful would it be if every key took the same amount, and increase all those murmur requirements since RNG was removed completely?  Well then it would basically be the circuit.

*No bad RNG - I can select the random junk I want to use and often did, since they were mid tier missions.  You're doing the same thing in the circuit, just in a less fun, more annoying way.  Of course I could just take a meta setup for this as well.  The decrees are there to balance out the fodder I guess, but it doesn't really work like that.

*I can do other things while doing these missions, such as search for Kuria etc.

*A lich can spawn in these missions, which is fun and exciting.  Nothing can spawn here, its a simulacrum simulator for bread crumbs.

*The freedom to kill a lich whenever.  How many people had a lich they didn't kill for months?  Would you have wanted your lich to disappear if you didn't get it done in a week?

 

I think this is a fair comparison, because the rewards are similar.  This isn't really some endurance mode.  For people who are playing this for that intent, this is incredibly easy I'm sure.  In an experienced group, they will just blitz through it and only have to be responsible for 5 waves of defense at a time, where the target restarts at full HP.  The enemies stop scaling and they keep earning decrees, so its a snowball effect, where the "difficulty" hits a plateau, but you can keep increasing in power for a while.  There's very little reward in here outside the incarnons.  The table past tier 10 is horrible.  Let's be honest, we're just farming a powerful weapon here, and that's actually all you can farm, minus some arcanes at an abysmal rate.  

If that's all we're doing, I say give me a lich, get rid of this progress system or give me a way to get it done in 2 hours tops or remove the time gate.  I am not dedicating 4 hours weekly to this.  You have to be careful what you wish for when asking for no RNG.  When you remove RNG, you get a lousy system like this that makes you work for each tier.  If its going to be like that, you should be able to select your reward at EVERY tier.  Different people value you different things.

The only unique thing here is decrees and fast scaling.  You could put decrees everywhere, but limited to lich missions, then we aren't stuck in the undercroft.  What's the actual purpose of being forced to play in the undercroft on a specific mission rotation?  I could do this in Zariman and enjoy it way more.  Zariman is an amazing tile.  It's dense.  There's tons of decorations.  It's beautiful by comparison.  It has tunnels, up and down and open areas and narrow areas.  Ironically, a lot of Zariman is in this tile, but its nowhere near it in detail at all.  The track for example in Zariman is amazing.  If you want to FEEL the variety, you have to have a diverse tile.  Like if we just did all these missions on Hydron, would it feel like a variety mission?  No.  The same applies for the Undercroft.  It's hard to enjoy recycled game modes on a tile that is really bland, with no drops and very slow progression system.