On Credits And The Market.

[Paradoxity]

So, I've recently been devoting a lot more time to warframe after an extended leave from it- have to say, I'm enjoying myself, but there's a few things that feel... well, to put it bluntly, they feel like DE has no idea what to do with them. Credits are an excellent example of this. 

 

Let me explain: when I joined (right around Easter last year) credits were farily difficult to amass, and pretty much only acted as a significant brake on being able to fuse mods. Best way to get them was farm vor nonstop and pawn the cronus BP. No big, but several changes later and credits are still pretty.. well, pointless while being easier to get (Significantly so with T3 captures and a loki rigged specifically to speed run them....) . At best they can be defended as a way to prevent players with 11 gajillion R5 cores from maxing raremods, but other than that? Sure, you use them for BPs and the foundry, but they're not a significant problem there, unless you're mass producing totems. 

 

So what else is there? There's a couple weapons in the market (very few, like, what, 2-3?) available for credits- the majority of the rest are available only as blueprints. The trade taxes are extremely high, which says to me that DE knows they can't just allow us to stockpile these things, but still doesn't have a good sink for them available yet. Thus, credits become (or, more accurately, are) just another resource to grind out when you run low (if you ever do.) and they're only really there to get taken from you while you do other things, not be spent on fun things on their own. 

 

So, here's the thought: why not introduce consumables?

 

At one point we had ammo boxes and heal items- I still own a few sniper boxes and a heal restore, actually. But these were superseded by the totems, and that's not really a problem since their use was marginal at best (and even more marginal now, given newly released Frames, Abilities, and weapons.) 

 

Since that functionality has been taken over by the totems, I was thinking along the lines of ammunition or limited duration buff items. 

 

Ammo is kind of tricky, since we can't really cap it on use- after all, we have pick-ups in mission to replenish our supplies, and we're not even sure the game could support something like that (though given the scanner, it's probably not too farfetched to assume it could.) We also want it to be an attractive option for missions, without becoming must have for all runs, and without stepping on existing mod functionality in any major way. 

 

Thus: ammo boxes. 

 

Each ammo box works kind of like a dragon key- you can equip one type, it sits in your gear list, and provides a buff to your primary and secondary weapon while it's equipped. at the end of the mission, it's 'expended' and removed from your inventory. The types I've got below are examples- again, the idea was to provide something to spend credits on that's worthwhile, without becoming required equipment or overlapping the existing mods. Similarly, they're just preliminary ideas, so the 'balance' (hah!) will likely need worked on.

 

I haven't included cost here, because, well, I frankly have no idea what they should cost, since there's nothing really in the market to base it on. Maybe the credit bundles? (even if the exchange rates suck, haha). Also, you guys'll note I didn't attach any numbers either- Not really sure what kind of numbers we should see here. I was thinking in the 5--10% range for most things- enough to probably notice, not enough to be requisite gear on every run. 

 

Ferrite ammo- increases slash bleed effect damage (Steel rounds would be the closest real-world equivalent, they tend to maim a lot more effectively without killing.)

 

Ferrite pin ammo- Improves armor penetration (Inspired by steel pin ammo. Long story short, warp a small steel rod in softer material and shoot. Kinda works like discarding sabot rounds in tanks- round hits armor, the majority of it stops, while the pin retains most of the energy and punches through.)

 

Oxium ammo- Increases range before damage fall off. (No real real-world analogy here.)

 

Alloy ammo- Increases weapon accuracy. (Basically, match-grade rounds. Higher standards of production)

 

Rubedo ammo- Increases elemental effect severity (DoTs do more damage, Radiation's confuse lasts longer, magnetic's max shield penalty is worse, that sort of thing)

 

Again, at the risk of becoming more repetitive, these are just ideas, and probably meh ones, at best. I'm sure they'd need name work, and they really need more fleshing out as an idea, but I wanted to get it out and see what the community thought first. 

 

I mentioned ammo specifically because any warframe items- potions or boosters or whatever, I couldn't think of without overlapping something we already have and risking making it outmoded (or, worse, making a frame obsolete. how bad would it be if, say, you had an invulnerability item that worked like Iron skin and could be spammed by a different frame? Rhino wouldn't be obsolete, but it'd be a lot harder to justify using it when you can run a nova with a stockpile of Iron skin potions, hahaha)

 

Anyway, sorry I rambled on, here. I tend to do that. I'd really like to hear anything you guys think, though, even if this idea is terrible. My thought was to improve the market and make it useful for something other than the occasional plat buy, and give credits some use beyond paying taxes, haha!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1lusion]

I don't know about you but I've been making 200-500k credits a day for a while now. And I'm never above 100k by the end of the day because I've been making a forma a day for the past 4 months. Also maxing out mods costs close to 2m credits. Weapon blueprints from the market also cost credits.

 

Am I the only guy that doesn't have a spare 20m credits lying around? :C

[Paradoxity]

I don't know about you but I've been making 200-500k credits a day for a while now. And I'm never above 100k by the end of the day because I've been making a forma a day for the past 4 months. Also maxing out mods costs close to 2m credits. Weapon blueprints from the market also cost credits.

 

Am I the only guy that doesn't have a spare 20m credits lying around? :C

 

Oh, absolutely. BPs cost credits as well- but that cost is hardly important to building new weapons, with the major bottleneck there being either weapon slots or other resources. (or mastery level, in some cases.)

 

Similarly, credit costs for mods feels like it was designed to act as a brake on speed, not necessarily something fun to do with the credits- not something you really look forward to as a player, you know? 

 

My goal here was suggest something that would make credits both useful as something other than a drag on player progression via fuse costs and the like, and to maybe open the door to further expansion of credits usefulness.