Another Clan Tech/market Suggestion Thread

[KnaveSkye]

Greetings, I am sure there are dozens if not hundreds of threads about this topic already and more than likely someone has already said exactly what I am about to say. For the record, I couldn't be bothered to do more than a cursory search and apologize if this ends up being the case.

 

So, first I want to start by identifying very clearly what is gained when you buy a non-clan tech weapon on the market. I will list the necessary resources for each method below:

 

Blueprint:Credits, Materials, Time(build/farm), Weapon Slot, Potato

or

Market: Platinum

 

As you can see, buying a weapon saves you time, materials and the need to separately purchase a slot and potato. You still have to meet the mastery requirement to use the weapon.

 

Now lets look at clan tech and see what you gain when you buy these weapons directly from the market:

 

Research(clan): Credits, Mats, Time

+

Blueprint: Credits, Mats, Time, Weapon Slot, Potato

or

Market: Platinum, Bypass need for clan, Bypass building research facilities, bypass weapon research

 

Now, you can see that using the market is unbalanced for clan tech; it offers a much greater advantage and incentive to use. I believe in order to balance this you need to reduce those advantages to be the same as non-clan tech weapons.

 

This can be achieved by only allowing players to buy the weapon on the market if they are in a clan and the clan has at least started the research which means they have met all the prerequisites. At this point, the only thing buying the weapon in the market will accomplish is save you time, save you materials and give you a weapon slot and potato, just like a non-clan tech purchase does.

 

You can argue there is still greater value because the materials needed to research and build these weapons is typically much higher and harder to come by, but the research is a shared expense and the time gated materials like Mutagen Mass's, Fieldron Samples and Detonite Injectors are much easier to get now through Invasions/Alerts/Infestations than they used to be. 

 

It is not a perfect solution and personally I am in the crowd of keeping clan tech off the market entirely, or if you must put it there then put ALL of it there because it is confusing to have it randomly split the way it is now with new additions. Thank you for your time to those who didn't just roll your eyes at the title and move on and please feel free to leave any feedback that you believe would refine this idea.

 

 

[IIJetfireII]

True, if they are gonna put the clan tech weapons in the market, it better be all of it, or be none of it.

[KnaveSkye]

Hmm, I guess this is what I get for posting this so early.

[KnaveSkye]

Hmm, I had hoped for some feedback. This will be my last bump.

[Khunvyel]

I will step into dark waters here.

 

Warframe was advertised and still is a PvE game. There are a good number of people who prefer to play solo and thus don't even see the need for a clan. And if we are fair, then the building requirements do look a bit ... overwhelming, in order to just all the weapons by yourself. Therefore I can totally relate to the clan specific stuff becoming purchasable with Platinum being... wonky.

Yet this puts me into a difficult position.

 

I don't want to reinforce the frontier of "Clan research = player effort = keep it off the market." because let's face it... that is outright silly. Even if the complete weapon is not seeded on the market, you still can just buy everything with Platinum to create it. This completely invalidates the argument of "Clan = off the market". However, for people who do not want to spend their Plat in a different fashion, the story looks just as bad. Even if a player only purchases slots for weapons and Warframes, wanting to get their shiny stuff ingame through effort, it still is a bit irritating to see the "pay plat or go clan" sign waving in front of you. Especially because those weapons are really good.

 

Neither do I want to reinforce the frontier of "make EVERYTHING obtainable with both, ingame AND platinum effort" because it widens the gap of people arguing... "my contribution to the mission was higher because I simply dump my money into it and buy all the good stuff." It is not about people not being able to dump money in there, it is about their mindset of how they want to spend their bucks.

 

I'm on the fence with this, honestly. I don't know if it is a good or a bad thing that the Grinlok and Marelok are relatively cheap, plat wise.

I personally don't care for the 3 days waiting time to research, but that is due to my time constraints anyway, augmented by the Eve online mentality of patience. I do care more about that I would be, from my personal point of view, missing out my collector's heart because I don't see myself expanding my Clan with Formas which would be better used on gear.

 

I do appreciate their move to make those "event exclusive" items available bit by bit, because honestly, having such a thing in a beta is a horrid thing to begin with. That is my opinion on the matter. Therefore, I could totally see the possibility to have more Clan-tech on the market, bit by bit. We have to understand the marketing model too. If they just make all those weapons available which were research-only before.. then chances are they would make less money than if they would stray them like breadcrumbs in between the updates. In the end, I don't know how much the ongoing production of Warframe costs, and I don't know how much money they earn with it.