Suggestion For Stalker, G3, Harvester Spawning

[drhead]

I've heard many people complain about the lack of any dependable method to get any of these to spawn.  I can understand this, since I have been playing for quite a long time and still have none of their drops other than enough Dreads to outfit a small army and one Detron part.  People have usually suggested something like a craftable bait for these guys.  However, I thought of what might be a better system.

 

The main complaint seems to be a lack of guaranteed meaningful progress when farming for Harvester/G3/Stalker.  You get them to spawn, you kill them, and unless you're lucky enough to get them to drop what you need, you're no better off than you were when you started.  Of this, possibly the most frustrating is getting them to spawn in the first place.  I've joined a lot of G3 farming groups.  Most of the time, people quit before even doing 5 runs, which seems to show that some people are a bit frustrated with farming for these weapons.  I can understand this, since I just recently finished crafting all of the market weapons and I can count on my fingers the mods that I am missing and the prime weapons that I am missing.  Once you're at this point, there's very little to do other than rank up some weapons and hope that Stalker will come and visit and drop you something that isn't Slash Dash or Dread.

 

I think this could be remedied by allowing spawn chances for bosses to increase with continued runs of whatever triggers them, up to 25% per player.  After they spawn and there is a decisive conclusion to the fight (one that ends in either the death of the boss or the death of the marked player), this chance will be reset to 0 for all players who are in the session.  This has the advantage of increasing the chances of a spawn occurring at the player's will, as well as guaranteeing a spawn after a while.  This is meaningful progress.

 

There is still the question of how much to increase the chance by per run, though, and how to keep it semi-sane so that people aren't getting Hate, Despair, Detron, and Brakk all in the same day.  I'm proposing that it is done in such a way that a group of four people who are doing invasion runs repeatedly should have a mean probability of 0.5 of getting it within their first 10 runs (meaning that, on average, a group of four people repeatedly doing invasions have a 50/50 chance of being attacked by G3 or Harvester within 10 runs when starting with a clean death marker.  

 

Calculations:

 

Assuming the increase is 0.004 (0.4%) per player per run:

 

Increase of 0.016 per run for a group of 4 players

 

Probability of 10 consecutive runs having a spawn:

0.000 0.016 0.032 0.048 0.064 0.080 0.096 0.112 0.128 0.144

(inverse of these probabilities:)

1.000 0.984 0.968 0.952 0.936 0.920 0.904 0.888 0.872 0.856

(product of all inverse probabilities - should equal the chance of no encounter on these runs) 

0.4679 (46.79%)

 

So the chances of getting a spawn to occur in 10 runs is 0.5321 (53.21%), a little over the 50% target value I used.

 

Now, what happens if you are unlucky and fall on the other 46.79%?  Let's simulate 10 more runs:

0.840 0.824 0.808 0.792 0.776 0.760 0.744 0.728 0.712 0.696

 

Multiplying all of these together results in 0.0701, meaning there is a 92.99% chance that you will have an encounter within the second 10 runs, assuming you didn't get one the first 10 times.  There is a 96.72% chance you will get an encounter within 20 runs from scratch, in case you were wondering.

 

Other advantages:

 

 - Encourages higher leveled people to do invasions beyond what they need to do for gathering clantech resources.  This may be necessary since the non-research rewards have been nerfed.

 

 - The standard amount of runs for an invasion for re-adding a death mark will result in close to the same chance of a spawn (0.064 versus 0.060).

 

 - Guarantees a spawn after 62.5 runs (though if you're this unlucky, you really do have a problem and should stop walking under ladders).  This mitigates the bad luck problem (where we hear claims of people saying "I've done 700 runs and I still have no Brakk) without being too ridiculous.

 

 - Adds an element of realism to the game.  If you're only doing the occasional invasion run, you'd naturally be a lower priority target for the G3/Harvester.  However, by doing a lot of invasions (or killing Stalker's BFFs by the dozens), you draw attention to yourself.   You eventually reach a point where you are too much of a threat to be ignored, and must be eliminated immediately.  But if you only did that one catalyst invasion, the G3 and Harvester could really care less about you, since there are other Tenno to kill that have done a lot more.

 

 - Makes the G3/Stalker/Harvester a threat to anticipate and worry about.  This takes advantage of the fact that the triggers for these bosses are missions where people will need to go to progress.  Everyone needs to go fight all of the bosses to progress and to get all of the Warframes.  Everyone who doesn't want to wait weeks to craft all of the clan research weapons will want to go do invasion missions to get clantech resources, and if a catalyst is being awarded, people will all jump on it.  Even veteran players with all of the Warframes will need to go fight Sargus Ruk to get Orokin Cells.  This system is true to Stalker's taunt: "Your actions have consequences".  

 

- Keeps things reasonable for players who prefer to play solo.  If you've been doing invasions by yourself, you'll gain notoriety at a much lower rate. For example, within the first 10, you will have a 1 in 6 chance of encountering a boss.

 

- Gives people who want to farm for these weapons an actual means to do so, one which guarantees that even if they don't encounter a boss this time, their chance for encountering a boss will be higher next time.  And even if you don't like the idea of these weapons being farmed for, the triggers are normal activities that people will do anyways.  What is the difference between farming and not farming when farming involves doing the exact same thing as not farming?

 

TL;DR: Skim the text and pay attention to what has been underlined, and you'll get the general idea.

 

I could list more, but I think I've listed enough.  Thoughts? Feedback? Concerns?

[Aka_Miso]

to much to read just scanned. If you have a way that gives anything a spawn chance of 100% it will get shot down apparently people hate that it happened to my idea

[OriVerda]

This makes a lot of sense and would reduce grind. One Up from me.

 

All too likely a bazillion down from DE itself.

[Darkjackal_2031]

This would certainly make it better than it is. I have no problem getting them to spawn, they just never drop anything for me.

[Yezzik]

It'd be a great idea, which naturally means you're going to be in for a lot of opposition soon from some very loud, very angry people.

[EChondo]

Honestly, I've noticed that I've been fighting the G3 a lot more, just recently.

 

I've fought them 7-8 times in this past week, end up getting all the Brakk parts as well.

 

Of course this is after a good ~500 missions since the G3 was released.

[Yezzik]

I hardly ever see them any more, and it's not been for want of trying.

I think you have my luck.

[--Q--uaint]

Well, it seems you guys were wrong. There aren't a whole lot of angry people storming this thread.... How about it, DE?

 

 

As an aside, (bragging) I got the Brakk from Gradivus, the Detron within the first few days (and could craft ~5 more if I had the cells), and quite a few Hate and Despair BPs sitting around..... (/bragging) Basically, I have all these items that I want, and I sympathize with you guys :P.