The addition of several Archon Shards has to come with an overhaul to the massive gating to earning them

[RichardKam]

7小时前 , Qriist 说:

Can confirm! this was barely a month ago lmao

I was there 300 years ago.

All the crazy and stupid stuff getting thrown around, something like "shard fragment to craft a tau" or "dissolve a shard into materials to craft a tau with color of your choice" and others, calling it a solution to remove tau RNG. All of them were trying to trick/push DE into giving them more red tau forge.

Of cource DE did not give a dxxn and gave us the incremental chance, up to 100%, of tau forge system. Those tenno were hilariously furious. 

[PublikDomain]

22 hours ago, RichardKam said:

I was there 300 years ago.

All the crazy and stupid stuff getting thrown around, something like "shard fragment to craft a tau" or "dissolve a shard into materials to craft a tau with color of your choice" and others, calling it a solution to remove tau RNG. All of them were trying to trick/push DE into giving them more red tau forge.

Of cource DE did not give a dxxn and gave us the incremental chance, up to 100%, of tau forge system. Those tenno were hilariously furious. 

And despite all the namecalling and the "you don't need them"-ing and "well I don't see the problem"-ing and "you're just tring to trick DE"-ing so typical every time people bring up obvious issues like those, the RNG protection DE added anyways ended up having the same acquisition rate as if we instead got 2x 5x fusion. And now we're getting something prettty close to that fusion system too. Turns out things tend to improve in spite of all the petty browbeating from the "no" camp.

Edited November 26, 2023 by PublikDomain

[Nobodys-Perfect]

I really, really hope that what we were shown regarding the new shard mechanics is only a small part of the changes, because as it stands it's rather disheartening. It was said that there's new aquisition for shards, but without more info we can't tell if it'll be a meaningful improvement or not. Shard fusion, if it allows fusing two of the same basic shard into a tauforged, could offer a reliable way to get those and turn the RNG drop of those from hunts into an appreciable bonus rather than the necessary avenue of aquiring them.

With how obviously powerful some of the PH effects shown for the new shards look at present, they're going to become "mandatory" meta picks and also be compelling players to use specific elements and focus on things like using a crit secondary. It's power creep that will smear meta picks into more build specificity (Here's to the ten thousand saryn players I'll see in the near future using emerald shards. Bless.) This point is more observation than complaint. If this ends up being bad, it's going to be more due to the core problems with shards (availability and flexibility) taking the wind out of everyones sails as usual.

Shards offer a lot in terms of changing builds to help hit breakpoints, but these new ones look like they might be even more build and weapon specific. You know stats like health regen, power strength and parkour speed (to use examples from each currently existing type) are broad spectrum buffs that tend to help most builds. When we're getting bonuses tied to use of specific elements, procs and weapons that's restricting our loadouts to take advantage of the shard being used, which in my eyes is anathemical to the build freedom Warframe has usually provided. Must I now build, reactor, and forma new warframes to simply even -test- a new toxin or corrosive build without utterly destroying my existing shard sets? Shard aquisition will have to see a signifigant bump or uncap from weekly to justify fusing two shards into one, especially two tau shards. Just how many do DE think players have managed to stockpile as of now? It's not like we have that many. (Sue me but I like to play a lot of different warframes. Maybe tau shards are fine if you're someone who only plays say, Mag, 100% of the time, and you can just shard her up and forget about the system forever.)

Shards, like mods and arcanes, really aught to be something we can attach to loadouts and shift around freely to preference. As it stands, it's hard to even properly experiment with builds that rely on shards to see if they necessarily even work as well as intended. I really don't care for "socket a gem and commit to it across all of your loadouts for this warframe" because I want my builds to be able to be varied. Freedom is really important here and shards reduce that. Adding more types exacerbates the existing issue.

I'm the type of player who likes to be able to set a goal and focus on grinding towards it until I accomplish it. Since shards are timegated, I can't do that at all with them and I find their route of aquisition to be a detriment to the fun they can potentially provide in maximizing and tuning builds. If I were to have my way, they'd probably be like the eidolon arcanes. Reliably obtainable at all times, rare, farmable, and tradeable. Basically do what warframe has always been great for: let people who want plat farm them and sell them for plat. Let people who want a huge grind earn them for themselves, and let those willing to spend money fueling DE and the ingame economy finish the builds they want to make.  It's not implausible that this new aquisition route for shards could be something repeatable and thus go this way. 

The reason a lot of people complain about the timegating is ultimately because there's no way to soften the bitter taste of not being able to finish what you want to finish or do what you want to do in a timeframe you find personally reasonable - something Warframe traditionally allows through player mediated trading. Grind prime parts, sell for plat, buy what you want so you don't have to deal with it's low droprate, etc.  Can't get this item for RNG memeing on you? Someone else already got it for you buddy and they'll take plat, and you can get plat reliably whether you trade for it or decide to fund DE's wages and server costs.

Shards are disconnected from the sensible systems warframe already uses and ignore lessons DE already learned with arcanes. They feel like a badly thought out implementation of something from another game done to force weekly engagement. They don't complement the freeform nature of mod loadouts (Like arcanes specifically were changed to do with the addition of slots and removal of distilling from cosmetics), they're tacked on the end of them and aren't readily changeable once committed to. They don't interact with the economy, you get your weeklies and your desire for more or specific types to do specific things doesn't matter, you can't influence it at all, even if you're willing to engage more in the game or even spend, you can't.

Shards are squeezed purely for long term repeated weekly engagement. I don't get it, must be to make some corporate graphs look favorable in meetings because it's certainly not capitalizing on what they could actually be used for and the promise they hold to become a cool and equitable system that respects player effort like so many things in Warframe have tended to do. Remember, this is a game where you can dump premium currency to hasten build times, and that's apparently a signifigant enough money draw that it remains a feature in our foundry - yet if we want to complete a full set of shards for a single warframe it's a literal weeks long affair with no way to ameliorate that? It felt alien to warframe when it was introduced and it still sticks out like a sore thumb as some distasteful experiment in player engagment.

I don't think you can even call the process of getting archon shards a grind, it's more like the regrettable daily tribute system, except weekly, with token missions tacked on. Long term, Boring and repetetive. Like paying off your mortgage except worse because your aims won't be reached more quickly no matter the effort you put in.

That's my pithy rant over. If you find it disagreeable, feel free to spew whatever half formed, easily dismissible "You're entitled, you're impatient" bile I'll charitably call "criticism" that might boiling up within you as a response. May it make you feel better in the same way posting this does for me. 😌

[Ascythian]

What massive gating?

You can get two a week, its endgame stuff, its like complaining that a super rare mod isn't easy to get.

 

[Synitare]

47 minutes ago, Ascythian said:

What massive gating?

You can get two a week, its endgame stuff, its like complaining that a super rare mod isn't easy to get.

They are nothing at all alike. You can farm rare mods. You can farm the rarest arcanes. You can farm just about everything else in the game except Archon shards and to a lesser extent rivens. Because they are strictly time-gated. It's not difficult to understand.

[Skoomaseller]

absolutely agree. I still think the rate we're getting them right now is stupid in and of itself, even with """"pity"""" system in place.

[SneakyErvin]

10 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

And despite all the namecalling and the "you don't need them"-ing and "well I don't see the problem"-ing and "you're just tring to trick DE"-ing so typical every time people bring up obvious issues like those, the RNG protection DE added anyways ended up having the same acquisition rate as if we instead got 2x fusion. And now we're getting something prettty close to that fusion system too. Turns out things tend to improve in spite of all the petty browbeating from the "no" camp.

How? 2x fusion would result in a guaranteed Tau every 2 rotations. Red, blue, yellow, red(tau), blue(tau), yellow(tau), red, blue, yellow, red(tau), blue(tau), yellow(tau) etc. The RNG protection is 20/20/20, 40/40/40, 60/60/60, 80/80/80, 100/100/100. 

That said I prefer the RNG protection system since I dont need to spend normal shards to get Tau, meaning I'll have normals to use either on frames I dont play as much, or on those that dont need Tau in their min-max.

[CephalonCarnage]

16 hours ago, Hexerin said:

Are you drunk/high? Infested Salvage is absolute trash.

Its the mission I thought as well, until I decided I needed to farm nidus. Then as I played it, I realised it was a lot more fun than I remember. Go into it with an open mind and you might be surprised. Lots of running around shooting things, bring an AoE gun for added enjoyment.

[(XBOX)ECCHO SIERRA]

17 hours ago, RichardKam said:

I was there 300 years ago.

All the crazy and stupid stuff getting thrown around, something like "shard fragment to craft a tau" or "dissolve a shard into materials to craft a tau with color of your choice" and others, calling it a solution to remove tau RNG. All of them were trying to trick/push DE into giving them more red tau forge.

Of cource DE did not give a dxxn and gave us the incremental chance, up to 100%, of tau forge system. Those tenno were hilariously furious. 

I dont remember anybody being "hilariously furious". About the change. I also dont think its accurate to say "DE didnt give a hoot". 

The math changes are significant. In all cases you're looking at a higher number of tau shards across the board. 

What i *do* remember, though, is a veritable salt mine worth of salt from people who for some reason seem to think people getting tau shards is some sort of apocalyptic tragedy. 

[PublikDomain]

2 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

How? 2x fusion would result in a guaranteed Tau every 2 rotations. Red, blue, yellow, red(tau), blue(tau), yellow(tau), red, blue, yellow, red(tau), blue(tau), yellow(tau) etc. The RNG protection is 20/20/20, 40/40/40, 60/60/60, 80/80/80, 100/100/100.

I might be misremembering the ratios, the topic is a year old after all. With the RNG protection we have now it's one Tau every 2.5 weeks on average, and looking back on my old spreadsheets it looks like that'd be the same as the 5:1 fusion which was typically proposed at the time, not 2:1. Though my point still stands: despite all the whining about how terrible even the most needlessly expensive version of fusion would be we still ended up with similar acquisition rates anyways. We just got it in a way that came with none of the benefits of fusion, like giving Kahl content a reason to continue to be played or adding some use for your regulars after you move on to Taus.

3 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

That said I prefer the RNG protection system since I dont need to spend normal shards to get Tau, meaning I'll have normals to use either on frames I dont play as much, or on those that dont need Tau in their min-max.

You know that with fusion you could still do exactly that, right? Put regulars on frames you don't play much or put them on frames that don't "need" them? The only difference is that you could also fuse up to Taus. With a proper system you could even split Taus down into regulars if you really wanted a bunch of them for some reason.

[Hexerin]

11 hours ago, CephalonCarnage said:

Its the mission I thought as well, until I decided I needed to farm nidus. Then as I played it, I realised it was a lot more fun than I remember. Go into it with an open mind and you might be surprised. Lots of running around shooting things, bring an AoE gun for added enjoyment.

Yea, no. I went into it without any preconceived notions (because I knew nothing about it), hated it, and thus relegated it to "I cleared it once for the star chart" bin. Returned to it months later with a stronger account and a willingness to give it a second chance, because I needed to clear it on Steel Path this time. No longer "hated", but rather "this is mind-numbingly boring, trash". Cleared it for Steel Path, and left it in the "I cleared it once for star chart" bin.

I'll just buy Nidus off market, once I get around to raising him. Running that garbage for Helminth bile? Nah, not worth.

Edited November 27, 2023 by Hexerin

[dEjAvU5566]

I think the merge system should be the pity function that merge normal shards into tau forged shards, an additional way to get it besides mission reward.

new kind of archon shards should be acquired by resources other than existing shards. I think current method demonstrated in dev stream is not great.

[Chewarette]

On 2023-11-24 at 9:34 PM, PublikDomain said:

There's also the longstanding issue of Shards costing so much Bile to unequip. I've got a bunch of Shards installed on frames I don't play much, now I have to pay a S#&$load of Bile to unequip them for Fusion? Unequipping needs to be cheaper (or free) and cost rotating resources instead of always being Bile.

Adding colors this way is also going to make it harder to add, say, a new Archon. If they add Archon Bojangles and Archon Cane with the Black and White Tau Shards as new base colors, well now they have to add a bunch of new fused colors too. Not very future-proof...

There are a ton of mechanics which could make this not suck (fusing base to Tau, splitting Tau to base or fused to base, color cycling, etc.), but my faith in DE adding those is about as high as my faith in DE remembering to add plants for the Duviri planters. Which is to say just about none.

Just like when they refund Formas when they rework Warframes, they should refund X resources equivalent to the amount of Shards you currently have equipped.

Or they could automatically unequip all Shards from your Warframes (as they did with Focus' reworks), but that would be painful for everyone to re-slot them back if they have a ton

(not having great hopes for either changes here)

[SneakyErvin]

17 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

I might be misremembering the ratios, the topic is a year old after all. With the RNG protection we have now it's one Tau every 2.5 weeks on average, and looking back on my old spreadsheets it looks like that'd be the same as the 5:1 fusion which was typically proposed at the time, not 2:1. Though my point still stands: despite all the whining about how terrible even the most needlessly expensive version of fusion would be we still ended up with similar acquisition rates anyways. We just got it in a way that came with none of the benefits of fusion, like giving Kahl content a reason to continue to be played or adding some use for your regulars after you move on to Taus.

Yeah that makes more sense. But you still only care about Tau.

17 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

You know that with fusion you could still do exactly that, right? Put regulars on frames you don't play much or put them on frames that don't "need" them? The only difference is that you could also fuse up to Taus. With a proper system you could even split Taus down into regulars if you really wanted a bunch of them for some reason.

Those spares would get eaten so it would not be possible to place them as hand me downs on other frames since the frame that need Taus would still need those Taus. Each Tau obtained through the "failsafe" in that system would eat 5 normals to get 1 Tau. With the current system we keep all shards so they can be used on lesser used frames whenever we replace a normal on a frame we play often or one that needs Tau to min-max a build.

And overall the fusion system would be slower. Since even after 5 rotation you wouldnt really be able to make use of a Tau as a direct upgrade since you'd need to practically eat the power you already have on the frame to gain a 50% increase on a single shard. So say you have 5 red already equipped on a frame, then you'd lose 35% duration or strength if you decide to upgrade after 5 rotations. So you'd effectively have to wait until you have enough shards to make enough Taus for that frame before you see any return from that system.

With the current failsafe we know that after a maximum of 5 rotations we will have a straight upgrade for whichever frame and stat we need a Tau,

[Aruquae]

Those complaining about tauforged being time gated completely neglect the fact that it used to be so much worse before. It’s a guarantee at least, and it’s a hek of a lot better than beforehand. 
 

You don’t get everything you want immediately, sad how it took Warframe to tell you that. 
Edit: It seems my point wasn’t clearly mentioned, my bad ya’ll

I was pointing out DE wanting to keep Archon Hunt as their “Weekly content” to prevent Tenno from speed running through all of it, running out of things to do, then complaining about it. I also pointed out how it was so much worse, yet people still pretend nothing changed. Of course the “compromise” is trash, but it’s a step forward. 
Of course tauforged isn’t that much of a bonus compared to normal imo, but let’s be real here, we all love “shinies.” 

Edited November 28, 2023 by Malikili
Clarity

[Synitare]

2 hours ago, Malikili said:

Those complaining about tauforged being time gated completely neglect the fact that it used to be so much worse before. It’s a guarantee at least, and it’s a hek of a lot better than beforehand. 
 

You don’t get everything you want immediately, sad how it took Warframe to tell you that. 

So Warframe is a video game, not an educational simulation of reality. The entire purpose is to have fun, and a lot of people find it fun to improve and progress in their video game. Being arbitrarily gated from doing so for no real reason is frustrating and irritating. I really can't understand why this is such a difficult concept for people to grasp.

[Aruquae]

23 minutes ago, Synitare said:

So Warframe is a video game, not an educational simulation of reality. The entire purpose is to have fun, and a lot of people find it fun to improve and progress in their video game. Being arbitrarily gated from doing so for no real reason is frustrating and irritating. I really can't understand why this is such a difficult concept for people to grasp.

Jokes on you, life is a simulation. We are all in a simulation 

On a more serious note, Yes. My post was to simply point out how it was so much worse back then, and yet those same people that wanted a guarantee tauforged are still complaining about it. 
I too wish it wasn’t weekly, but this is something that’s not going to change. Warframe wants to keep weekly items available so people don’t rush through it all then complain that there’ “nothing to do.” 
You know the people, the ones who would speed run through new content then complain about no content. 

[KIREEK]

On 2023-11-26 at 2:34 PM, Synitare said:

They are nothing at all alike. You can farm rare mods. You can farm the rarest arcanes. You can farm just about everything else in the game except Archon shards and to a lesser extent rivens. Because they are strictly time-gated. It's not difficult to understand.

Makes me wonder if the guy that got hundreds of tauforged "grinded" for them.

As a small curiosity, not relevant to the discussion of the topic, someone decided to do a different aproach to shard hunting, they grinded IRL, then bought dozens of twitch accounts with the unclaimed tauforged drops, then simply claimed 2 at a time after changing the linked twitch account, needless to say the guy had like 70 of each color, DE was obviously made aware and they are likely to implement twitch account link limits of some sort to prevent the abuse again.

If a player plays on a weekly basis then eventually one will have enough shards and even tauforged shards for their favorite warframes, but i do admit this is a long term investment and can't be rushed in the same way as mods, especially given their untradability.

Why won't DE just make the shards tradable anyway?

[PublikDomain]

6 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Yeah that makes more sense. But you still only care about Tau.

Yes? Why shouldn't I? They're the best ones and there's no reason to choose a regular over them.

6 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Those spares would get eaten so it would not be possible to place them as hand me downs on other frames since the frame that need Taus would still need those Taus. Each Tau obtained through the "failsafe" in that system would eat 5 normals to get 1 Tau. With the current system we keep all shards so they can be used on lesser used frames whenever we replace a normal on a frame we play often or one that needs Tau to min-max a build.

To be clear, I think 5:1 fusion was a ridiculous suggestion at the time and still is even now, and that 2:1 was more than reasonable. That's the same 2:1 we're about to get with fused colors. Once we got drop protection 3:1 became pretty palatable too and should be even more acceptable with an additional weekly drop (or however much they add) from the upcoming content.

And again, there's no reason fusing wouldn't be optional. Is DE going to put a gun to your head and make you spend your regulars in a way you don't want? Just slot your regulars if you want to slot regulars. Or, like I said, with a proper system you could do things like split Taus back into regulars and have even more regulars if that's what you really want for whatever reason. There's no loss when you can convert back and forth as you like. You're not losing anything, and nothing is getting eaten.

6 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

And overall the fusion system would be slower. Since even after 5 rotation you wouldnt really be able to make use of a Tau as a direct upgrade since you'd need to practically eat the power you already have on the frame to gain a 50% increase on a single shard. So say you have 5 red already equipped on a frame, then you'd lose 35% duration or strength if you decide to upgrade after 5 rotations. So you'd effectively have to wait until you have enough shards to make enough Taus for that frame before you see any return from that system.

Any amount of fusion is mathematically faster. It could be 1,000:1 and it's still be faster to acquire Taus with fusion than without. For example, right now it takes ~12.5 weeks on average to get 5 Taus of unspecified colors. With additional 3:1 Fusion it would take ~5.36 weeks to get 5 Taus of unspecified colors. Is a month of work a reasonable amount of time to kit out endgame items for one of the game's more than fifty frames? I think so. And as an added benefit, fusion also makes the whole thing drastically more fair since there's a much smaller difference in Tau acquisition rates between those with the most/average/least luck.

And you know you could just be patient and wait, right? If you don't want to unslot your regulars to upgrade them to Taus at a stat loss........... then don't? Wait until you have enough to upgrade one, take it out, upgrade it, and put it back in.

6 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

With the current failsafe we know that after a maximum of 5 rotations we will have a straight upgrade for whichever frame and stat we need a Tau,

Which you would still have if DE added fusion? In case it's not clear, we already have pity and pity isn't going anywhere. Pity and fusion are not mutually exclusive for any reason whatsoever and we could just have both.

Edited November 27, 2023 by PublikDomain

[(XBOX)Big Roy 324]

More hand wringing over shards with the announcement?

I'll hold opinions on this directly.  Instead I'll just say it will be neat to be able to finally have one of a different color for each slot so it seems like I'm holding the infinity stones.

It'll pair well with the shard ephemeras as well. 

[Nobodys-Perfect]

5 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

Any amount of fusion is mathematically faster. It could be 1,000:1 and it's still be faster to acquire Taus with fusion than without.

[Synitare]

8 hours ago, Malikili said:

Jokes on you, life is a simulation. We are all in a simulation 

On a more serious note, Yes. My post was to simply point out how it was so much worse back then, and yet those same people that wanted a guarantee tauforged are still complaining about it. 
I too wish it wasn’t weekly, but this is something that’s not going to change. Warframe wants to keep weekly items available so people don’t rush through it all then complain that there’ “nothing to do.” 
You know the people, the ones who would speed run through new content then complain about no content. 

It should change. Telling people to stop complaining about it and just accept it isn't exactly the best way to go about realizing that change. Discussing it in the forums dedicated to the purpose of discussing things seems like a better idea to me, honestly.

[Lord_Drod]

On 2023-11-26 at 12:11 AM, Nobodys-Perfect said:

Shards, like mods and arcanes, really aught to be something we can attach to loadouts and shift around freely to preference. As it stands, it's hard to even properly experiment with builds that rely on shards to see if they necessarily even work as well as intended. I really don't care for "socket a gem and commit to it across all of your loadouts for this warframe" because I want my builds to be able to be varied. Freedom is really important here and shards reduce that. Adding more types exacerbates the existing issue.

 

I'm the type of player who likes to be able to set a goal and focus on grinding towards it until I accomplish it. Since shards are timegated, I can't do that at all with them and I find their route of aquisition to be a detriment to the fun they can potentially provide in maximizing and tuning builds.

 

Yes, exactly.  I guess we're supposed to make 5 copies of frames so we can have all these different tau combinations, paying tons of resources for testing, just to do what we've always been able to do.  It would make a lot more sense if they were loadout specific.  And yes, the emerald shard is very specific, not general, so I would need a separate frame to build around that, and also a weapon.  I assume the other new colors will be the same.  Maybe if you could make shard necklaces and equip them like arcanes to each loadout, that would help some. 

[Lord_Drod]

22 hours ago, Hexerin said:

Yea, no. I went into it without any preconceived notions (because I knew nothing about it), hated it, and thus relegated it to "I cleared it once for the star chart" bin. Returned to it months later with a stronger account and a willingness to give it a second chance, because I needed to clear it on Steel Path this time. No longer "hated", but rather "this is mind-numbingly boring, trash". Cleared it for Steel Path, and left it in the "I cleared it once for star chart" bin.

I'll just buy Nidus off market, once I get around to raising him. Running that garbage for Helminth bile? Nah, not worth.

Off topic, but I'm pretty sure the resource earned for bile in that mission is absymal as far as time investment compared to other bile resources.  900 is a huge helping for helminth, so I never farm that.  I also agree that mission is terrible, but that's subjective and most don't like it.  I'd rather stockpile the bile resources that require small time for a helping by comparison. 

Speaking of, is DE every going to "balance" the helminth system?  Since balance is something they claim to care about.  There's certain resources in every type that you will only use because they are so efficient and others you will never use because they are so inefficient.  Bile is more problematic because it doesn't have as many of those easy to stockpile resources and has a bunch of hilarious prime filet steak resources you'll never give.  Why can't Bile just be like any of the others, with proper balancing?  Nobody is throwing thermia at those things.

[The_Royal_Elf_Mika]

please unequip all my shards with the next update... i have no bile and too many shards in warframes.