Void Key Woes

[DEDENX]

My friends and I have been playing Warframe for some time now and though we enjoy the game a lot, the content we're doing now has started to feel like a massive grind -- moreso than anything else we've done to date.

 

Most of us have already farmed and built or outright bought the vast majority of weapons and warframes in the game.  All that's really left for us to collect are a few of the Prime items.  These, however, are proving to be a serious chore to acquire.  Not because the missions are difficult or because the drop chances are low, but because there's no reliable way to get the required void keys (even buying them with platinum, you take your chances).

 

Sure, you can do multiple rounds of defense or 15 minutes on a tier 3 survival map to get a guaranteed void key to drop, but the chances of getting the specific key you want at the specific tier you want are tiny.  At least according to the wiki, defense drops for specific tier 3 keys are in the vicinity of 2.0% per five waves -- and survival's not much better at 10% for 15 minutes of gameplay.

 

Because of this, my friends and I have literally hundreds of void keys sitting around that we have no use for -- and we're really starting to resent having to grind so much just to get a chance at a chance to get something we want.  Randomization is all well and good, but too much of it is a serious pain in the keister.

 

(... and before anyone says that we can just join up and play with other people...  None of us are really interested in playing with randoms.  We all have limited time to play and we want to play together. As nice as the warframe community is, we're just not interested in interacting with it -- at least not in-game anyway.)

 

All that being said... We've had a few discussions over the last week or so and two ideas have been floated that I personally think might help alleviate the growing resentment and frustration that we're begin to feel towards the game.  

 

The first idea is pretty simple.  It's for the survival and defense missions to have a 100% chance to drop an equivalent tier key.  If you're doing tier 3 content, you get a tier 3 key.  Simple as that.  That pretty much doubles your chances at getting what you want right then and there.  We don't really care what the difficulty is, just that drops are more reliable.

 

One other thing that might also help could be to change the drop tables so that specific keys drop from specific factions.  For example, Corpus Survival maps might drop only Capture, Exterminate, or Defense keys while Grineer Survival maps might drop only Mobile Defense, Exterminate, and Survival keys.  Again, this would drastically increase your chances at getting the key that you want to do the content you want.

 

The second idea was to introduce some kind of blueprint that allowed you to either upgrade existing keys or to convert keys of one type into another.  Even if it's expensive in terms of materials and credits, it's something most of us would be interested in.  It might even serves as a worthwhile credit-, forma-, and/or control module sink.  God knows how many of each of those we all have now...

 

A potential Conversion/Upgrade Blueprint might be something like:

> Void Key

> Forma

> Control Modules x 10

> 50,000 credits

 

 

Anyway... Just some ideas...

Edited December 13, 2013 by DEDENX

[CelsiusPrime]

have to thought about trading keys so you can get the ones you need? like offering a t2 key to someone who needs in in return for a t3 key? there is a community out there that is big part of the game. maybe try searching there.

[Dipstick]

I like the idea of converting keys, but the trading system should get better in coming day and help some of these problems.

 

I'm guessing you need a boat load of T3 capture keys too tho....