With regards to Netracells and Archon Shards, the latest Devstream seemed a bit tonedeaf.

[DecadeX]

After Netracell changes being mentioned as a Devstream thing in the devshort this week, I was hoping to hear the playerbases's complaints about Cells addressed, hopefully with a coming change to Netracells themselves. I was disappointed to find out the "fix" is a different gamemode entirely. As it stands the Netracell droptables are really bad. 33.72% of the time you get the same arcanes dropped by the Fragmented bosses and the books. They are extremely easy to farm, especially in an Assassinate or Exterminate bounty with a book side objective, and that's not considering using standing to buy them. Another 20% of the droptable is the Melee Aracane Adapter which isn't awful, but can be bought for 50k standing or a measly 20 platinum otherwise. Even the 2 legendary arcane rewards exclusive to Netracells are mediocre at best. Outside of playing with them for their own sake, Crescendo is useful on exactly Ash, and he does not need more than 1 copy to achieve the full effect, and Duplicate currently has no relevant usecase. It would not be an exaggeration to say that all of the arcane rewards are Vosfor fodder given the ease with which the low tier arcanes are maxed and lack of power of the 2 legendaries. Given the low plat price of the adapter, Vosfor is arguably the better reward. That's a 64.96% chance of the reward from a Netracell run being Vosfor at best, and I can farm that better elsewhere. Judged by powerlevel, Netracells are also the hardest or second hardest piece of non-Steel Path content in the game in contention with only Archon Hunts. By the time the new gamemode releases they will be no lower than 3rd place by that metric. They should be worth it on their own. Addtionally they are billed as an additional Archon Shard source at a time when new systems ask players to spend more shards, but I'm having to win coinflips to get shards at all let alone the specific shards both fusion and the new tau creation systems demand. The new mode might help with that problem, but nobody said anything about shards on stream. We only heard that the legendary arcanes will be a guaranteed drop when the 2 of those we have are not even that good. I want to be excited for the new gamemode. Pablo obviously is and I've like a lot of his work that's had his name on it over the years, but this feels like I'm getting that in exchange for not getting fixes to the existing game, and I don't like that.

[migoq_aki]

why does the weekly, limited content has rewards that are easily obtainable from multiple other, farmable ad infinitum sources is beyond me

I had most of weeks equal 0 shards and I don't mean 'give me guaranteed shards', I mean 'why the #*!% this S#&$ is giving me melee fortificate'

[TomeWyrm]

Fully agreed. Shards are the problem. They're the only loot from Netracells that has a reasonably high ceiling.

Even if you want a full set of the legendary arcanes... they'll be in vosfor packs, and even if not? You need precisely 21 of them EVER.

Shards? You don't have to squint to see you could use more with each new frame released. Even if a tiny fraction of players only play 1 frame. Having the ability to put shards in multiple frames is good if they ever decide to branch out.

[Numerounius]

13 minutes ago, DecadeX said:

Duplicate currently has no relevant usecase

Uh. . .  I don't think so. Still great for a wide range of builds just don't fall into the mindset of needing exactly 100%CC in order to use it.

 

I'm just disappointed that there is tons of other stuff that needs fixing and a non-direct statement to this legendary arcanes and archon shards is the best they could come up with.

Adapters need work for an acquisition standpoint. Not just from a netracells standpoint.

Cavia drop tables still not published so I can't critique it.

Stela in Mirror Defense still a problem.

Alchemy Extraction and squad scaling.

 

But they are all hey look more steel path that I know you'll salivate over! Its a shame that this is their we need stuff to talk about card rather than looking at their latest content they've released and fixing up issues that are not the number one most talked about thing. Heck even Duviri got more devstream time than some of Whispers update stuff they could've talked about.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

32 minutes ago, DecadeX said:

this feels like I'm getting that in exchange for not getting fixes to the existing game, and I don't like that.

please paragraph in future, forcing people to read a wall of text doesn't help you convey your point.

 as far as I know DE never explicitly stated they were actually gonna do something about it, only that they were aware of our complaints. I certainly would like them to make the changes that many of us, including myself want, but unless those exact words come out of their mouths, I wouldn't expect them to happen.

Edited January 26 by (PSN)robotwars7

[migoq_aki]

20 minutes ago, Numerounius said:

Uh. . .  I don't think so. Still great for a wide range of builds just don't fall into the mindset of needing exactly 100%CC in order to use it.

Getting way over 100 cc for even not "the good" melees is easy to do even accidentally, and on the okay melees it's basically the norm to have much more than 100, duplicate is riding the train of ppl that don't know how crits work or can't read, it has very niche usecases at best

8 minutes ago, (PSN)robotwars7 said:

Uh. . .  I don't think so. Still great for a wide range of builds just don't fall into the mindset of needing exactly 100%CC in order to use it.

They were teasing/hyping this devstream with netracells' info and what we got was basically 'so you'll be able to use your run attempt at a different thing for legendary arcanes and also there are some other things that may be done for legendary arcanes', it wasn't even a discussion, like 3 sentences and 0 info about shards which are the most prevalent complaint, not to mention netracells were marketed as additional shards source in the first place. I say this looks very bad on de's side

 

Edited January 26 by migoq_aki

[DecadeX]

41 minutes ago, Numerounius said:

Uh. . .  I don't think so. Still great for a wide range of builds just don't fall into the mindset of needing exactly 100%CC in order to use it.

I disagree. In general, if a melee weapon has good enough crit to consistently do a regular crit, Blood Rush will push them to consistent orange or red crits, and the reward for that is more powerful than double damage assuming those weapons don't also have a lower than normal Crit Damage Multiplier. Every other part of your reply I agree with. There are a lot of issues in the game right now, but I wanted to speak on the one that stood out to me not just cause it was brought up on the Devstream, but also on other official communication platforms, and it was addressed in a way that implies DE might not realize what the real problem has been.

[DrivaMain]

Being optimistic, DE probably doesn't have a concrete answer. There will be one more devstream before the update launches in March. I am fairly certain DE will come up with an answer after a month of internal discussions and silence.

1 hour ago, DecadeX said:

In general, if a melee weapon has good enough crit to consistently do a regular crit, Blood Rush will push them to consistent orange or red crits, and the reward for that is more powerful than double damage assuming those weapons don't also have a lower than normal Crit Damage Multiplier.

Not everyone prefers stacking combos in their playstyle, myself as a case in point, because I use guns more than melee. I see the value of Melee Duplicate by turning my 100%+ SC melee into a primer weapon for my Galvan CO guns. 

Edited January 27 by DrivaMain

[trst]

Except Netracells are easy and it takes 7-10 minutes to solo? The only change they need is for the farmable Arcanes to be pulled out, everything else about them is fine. But even then the potential reward for how easy/fast they are is pretty substantial even if you sometimes get a dud drop.

And as for the new Shard system we already have three sources of Shards and creating Tauforged ones is really just there for the players who only care about Taus.

[TomeWyrm]

1 hour ago, DecadeX said:

I disagree. In general, if a melee weapon has good enough crit to consistently do a regular crit, Blood Rush will push them to consistent orange or red crits, and the reward for that is more powerful than double damage assuming those weapons don't also have a lower than normal Crit Damage Multiplier. Every other part of your reply I agree with. There are a lot of issues in the game right now, but I wanted to speak on the one that stood out to me not just cause it was brought up on the Devstream, but also on other official communication platforms, and it was addressed in a way that implies DE might not realize what the real problem has been.

Duplicate only works on base criticals... which means if you're doing orange or red crits it CANNOT trigger.

Edited January 27 by TomeWyrm
Spelling

[DecadeX]

40 minutes ago, TomeWyrm said:

Duplicate only works on base criticals... which means if you're doing orange or red crits it CANNOT trigger.

I know that was my point. Orange and Red crits are more rewarding than Duplicate.

[DecadeX]

43 minutes ago, trst said:

Except Netracells are easy and it takes 7-10 minutes to solo? The only change they need is for the farmable Arcanes to be pulled out, everything else about them is fine. But even then the potential reward for how easy/fast they are is pretty substantial even if you sometimes get a dud drop.

And as for the new Shard system we already have three sources of Shards and creating Tauforged ones is really just there for the players who only care about Taus.

Oh I know they're easy for me, but so is everything else in the game. That is not the point. DE has been very clear about where most players are capable of and content like Netracells is hard for the average player. For the effort they're going through, Netracells should be better than they are. And if Netracells were not limited to 5 per week they would be way better even with existing droptables, but I can only do 5 a week. If they're going to lock me out of the farm and force it to drag on for weeks and months, and it should have rewards that make it worth coming back for all those weeks and months. Netracells don't have that right now. Barring the people who just get absurdly lucky, it's going to be a very long time before the people doing Netracells every week have any real advantage over the people sticking to just Archon Hunts and Kahl, and that is a problem. If DE wants to bill Netracells as an addtional shard source that's fine, but players should be able to log on after weekly reset and know they're getting a shard from it, not just hope that's the case.

[UnstarPrime]

The Netracell mention went by so fast that it's possible that I missed something, but it sounded like the "solution" for Netracells was that a new game mode that isn't Netracells will be added, and we can get the Legendary Arcanes there?  Which like...that doesn't fix Netracells!

Netracells is so close to being a fun weekly romp.  All they need to do is fix the loot tables, fix the chore that is waiting for enemies to enter the red circle, and shore up some known bugs and the game mode DE worked so hard to make will be in good shape.

[Novuz...]

Or fix the fact that 1 out of 3 missions ennemies do not spawn, or either the netramite is invicible.

[Nekomian]

2 hours ago, UnstarPrime said:

The Netracell mention went by so fast that it's possible that I missed something, but it sounded like the "solution" for Netracells was that a new game mode that isn't Netracells will be added, and we can get the Legendary Arcanes there?  Which like...that doesn't fix Netracells!

Maybe it's just wishful thinking but - they never said game mode or mission, just "an activity" they're very excited about that's been an idea for 4 years; it also sounded like it's not exclusive to Netracells, and affects the "likelihood of getting things". All in all, to me this sounds like some sort of "reward path" system, where you can choose a reward and work towards getting something specifically you want (sorta like how circuit currently functions tbh), or maybe some "modifier" like steel path but for drop table enhancements based on conditions (I like the idea of harder gameplay = increased drop table rates for rarer items tbh). Both of these sound like overall game health improvements in terms of coping with how harsh RNG can be sometimes, though I'd be more partial towards guaranteed path stuff better because even if something is statistically 0.001%, it still CAN happen to someone.

They should probably still adjust the Netracell rates too tbf, but I'm excited to see what it is specifically they've got cooking. The issue of drop rates has always been a problem, even way before Netracells, so I'd be curious if they're trying to address it systemically rather than continuing to tweak each individual mission's drop table (since there's hundreds of mission nodes with all different reward tables at this point). We'll just have to see next month I suppose.

[ShockTNC]

15 hours ago, DecadeX said:

After Netracell changes being mentioned as a Devstream thing in the devshort this week, I was hoping to hear the playerbases's complaints about Cells addressed, hopefully with a coming change to Netracells themselves. I was disappointed to find out the "fix" is a different gamemode entirely. As it stands the Netracell droptables are really bad. 33.72% of the time you get the same arcanes dropped by the Fragmented bosses and the books. They are extremely easy to farm, especially in an Assassinate or Exterminate bounty with a book side objective, and that's not considering using standing to buy them. Another 20% of the droptable is the Melee Aracane Adapter which isn't awful, but can be bought for 50k standing or a measly 20 platinum otherwise. Even the 2 legendary arcane rewards exclusive to Netracells are mediocre at best. Outside of playing with them for their own sake, Crescendo is useful on exactly Ash, and he does not need more than 1 copy to achieve the full effect, and Duplicate currently has no relevant usecase. It would not be an exaggeration to say that all of the arcane rewards are Vosfor fodder given the ease with which the low tier arcanes are maxed and lack of power of the 2 legendaries. Given the low plat price of the adapter, Vosfor is arguably the better reward. That's a 64.96% chance of the reward from a Netracell run being Vosfor at best, and I can farm that better elsewhere. Judged by powerlevel, Netracells are also the hardest or second hardest piece of non-Steel Path content in the game in contention with only Archon Hunts. By the time the new gamemode releases they will be no lower than 3rd place by that metric. They should be worth it on their own. Addtionally they are billed as an additional Archon Shard source at a time when new systems ask players to spend more shards, but I'm having to win coinflips to get shards at all let alone the specific shards both fusion and the new tau creation systems demand. The new mode might help with that problem, but nobody said anything about shards on stream. We only heard that the legendary arcanes will be a guaranteed drop when the 2 of those we have are not even that good. I want to be excited for the new gamemode. Pablo obviously is and I've like a lot of his work that's had his name on it over the years, but this feels like I'm getting that in exchange for not getting fixes to the existing game, and I don't like that.

Frankly with all the constant bugs we put up with, I find most all of their devstreams tone deaf. They keep talking about all the new things they are adding while pretending like its not going to introduce 50 new game breaking bugs and hundreds of minor issues. 

[ShockTNC]

11 hours ago, UnstarPrime said:

The Netracell mention went by so fast that it's possible that I missed something, but it sounded like the "solution" for Netracells was that a new game mode that isn't Netracells will be added, and we can get the Legendary Arcanes there?  Which like...that doesn't fix Netracells!

Netracells is so close to being a fun weekly romp.  All they need to do is fix the loot tables, fix the chore that is waiting for enemies to enter the red circle, and shore up some known bugs and the game mode DE worked so hard to make will be in good shape.

Fully agree, I had just been talking to a friend about the need for a gamemode just like netracells the week before whispers dropped. Then we got netracells and I was very happy, until I played them a few times and realized it was just another 30 minute slog for terrible rewards. 

 

Two things they need to fix to make them better:

More engaging gameplay 

Significantly better reward pool, with much better drop chances.