April 11Th: Community Hot Topics!

[NuLycan]

 

 

Moving forward, our team is currently examining the Codex to ensure stance mod drops are being shown correctly and reading feedback. The issue of mod drop dilution is still a hot issue from which we’re listening to. Would putting stance mods in the market alleviate some major concerns? Further investigating will be done. 

 

 

Well, apparently you guys listened to our concerns about RNG and grinding getting out of hand, and nothing has changed. In fact, things have gotten worse.

Edited April 12, 2014 by NuLycan

[unknow99]

Well, apparently you guys listened to our concerns about RNG and grinding getting out of hand, and nothing has changed. In fact, things have gotten worse.

The prosecutor thing was a step forward, it's way less painful to find now (except for the argon crystal).

There still is some needed fixes about the "random" number generators but I think that our feedbacks aren't coming in a deaf ears.

[V0LK]

I still think that hiding stances on a enemies that spawn two-three times per mission is a bad, bad idea.

 

Drop tabes per faction was a far superior system.

Edited April 12, 2014 by V0LK

[NuLycan]

The prosecutor thing was a step forward, it's way less painful to find now (except for the argon crystal).

There still is some needed fixes about the "random" number generators but I think that our feedbacks aren't coming in a deaf ears.

The prosecutor thing was better, and while it's still grinding, it's less tedious and more interesting.

 

ON THE OTHER HAND, grinding for core components of the game is unacceptable. Next we'll have to grind to fire our secondaries. Then we'll have to grind to use the menu. Then grind to sign in.

 

As much as I want to believe this isn't falling on deaf ears, DE has made too many mistakes IMO for them to be seriously listening to our concerns/complaints. Honestly DE when is the last time you farmed for anything? Because unlike the employees, we earn it. It isn't given to us.

[(PSN)PJZERO2]

I been waiting on this Excalibur Proto skin forever 

[Bulletmachine]

I see that my and other people's complaints about Shotguns have been largely ignored since that hot topic I don't remember how many weeks (months even?) ago. I'm just going to keep posting about Shotguns until they are finally addressed like you promised us.

 

Shotguns need a raw damage buff across the board, with the not so recent fixes and the decoupling of status and crit proc chance from single pellets Shotguns in general have suffered much.

 

Small magazines, long reload times, damage fall-off and unimpressive mods are gimping Shotguns more than needed.

 

I'd like to see different ammo types for Shotguns, actual flechette rounds, dragon's breath rounds, slugs etc, the Street Samurai Catalog has lots of options for futuristic space ninjas.

 

 

Please, make Shotguns a viable weapon class again!

[goatwithbenefits]

I would like to know what exactly the point behind a decaying resource is. Did you not want the player to stock up on Argon Crystals and only grind for them when they need them?

 

Also the sheer rarity of some stance mods is plain stupid. I can see you want players to pour in some effort into getting them but all these updates of doing nothing but trying to harvest every enemy limb by limb for what feels like a less than 1% chance of getting what you want is getting boring.

Putting stance mods into the market would probably alleviate the issue for those willing to pay and it certainly would tweak the current plat price of them as well. I'm actually wondering why you haven't done so before, you've probably read enough threads here that people are simply fed up with how abysmally low the drop rates are.

[Paladin0987]

Text Walls Inc.:

 

1) 'The Sword Alone' works well, and feels fantastic right up until you run into a corpus camera, a grineer camera, or a shock trap that you can't reach.  If the dev team really intends for 'The Sword Alone' to be viable, there has to be a way to bypass or disable such obstacles, end of story.  (Flying enemies present a similar problem, but I don't see any simple solution to this)

 

2) While I certainly have not spent as much time as many trying to get the new stances, I can still understand the frustration at not being able to get them, but I feel like they in a similar situation to the Nav Coordinates when first released (felt grindy initially, but now we have tons through natural gameplay progression, as was intended), give it some time and I get the feeling that the majority of the stances will be acquired through just playing normally.

 

3) The Codex (and Scanner) is truly awful and only getting worse.  Aside from some (3 or 4?) bits of lore, there is zero incentive for players to scan things over just going to the wiki to find what drops where.  The usage of the scanner is not fun, rewarding, or responsive, and is god awful to try and use on certain enemy types (I'm looking at you, Ospreys and Rollers).

 

In a game like Warframe which is designed around speeding around slaying stuff at the speed of space ninja, a game mechanic which by design makes you actively stop killing things is completely antithetical to the core game experience and at the same time all but forces you into solo missions where your scan targets aren't being constantly instagibbed by Soma and Ogris wielding teammates, and you don't feel like a liability.  The only exception to this being the currently inefficient (and also unrewarding) stealth mission which currently has no supporting reward mechanics to make it worthwhile (no, getting double scan exp is not a reward when your overall exp for a stealth mission is less than one one hundredth of what you could earn by simply killing everything).

 

3)a) While Helios at least helps mitigate the frustration of trying to scan an Osprey or a Roller, its scans are so sluggish that you still feel obligated to try and follow around and keep whatever you are trying to get Helios to scan in your FOV so it doesn't lose its lock.

 

A sentinel exclusive precept should not feel so wishy-washy.  Ghost, Vaporize, Crowd Dispersion, and especially Vacuum all feel 100 times more solid when they function.  Investigate on the other hand, occasionally turns an enemy orange, and then I turn a little too far, or I move out of it's apparently tiny radius, or kill the enemy, etc. and then....nothing.

 

On top of this, 90% of the time, when it eventually manages to scan something, it just happens to be something I've already maxed (i.e. a common enemy type), essentially throwing away one of my scans.

 

I don't know exactly what the best solution to all of this is.  Aside from making scans either much faster, or instant for players, Helios, or both, and also perhaps adding a dedicated key for scans, I don't know what else is technically feasible so I can't really say what would be best.

 

(Only having Helios scan non maxed codex entries would seem an ideal solution, in addition to buffing scan speed and/or making Helios's target lock less dependent on character orientation would be some steps in the right direction.  Another alternative which could work would be to give him a radius within which all non-maxed things get scanned after a brief delay.)

 

3)a)1) While I realize these things can and do change (the initial Stalker Codex requiring 20 scans for example), and that this is supposed to be something for gradual completion, the number of scans required for some of the rarer enemy types are absolutely ludicrous.  I haven't even SEEN all of the different crawler types, let alone scanned them (I stopped trying when infested got pulled from the star chart), and their relative fragility means that 99.9% of the time, unless I'm in a solo mission or rushing around way ahead of my team, there is ZERO possibility for me to scan them before they're dead.

 

You could boost the scan exp per crawler to 10000+ and you still couldn't convince me that it was worth my limited gaming time to scan all of them, because the reward vs time spent is non-existent.  At this rate, even assuming I keep Helios equipped, I'll be old and gray before I complete the codex entries for some of the enemies.

 

TL;DR for 3) Codex Scanner/Investigator function as well as Codex scan count requirements/rewards/incentives desperately need a balance pass.

 

4) For the love of all that is sacred, take all the stinkin' ability mods out of the drop tables, and put them in the market for credits.  You'll never have to worry about someone selling/trading/transmuting their last ability mod through some glitch in the matrix (freeing up time spent by customer support fixing said glitches, and saving you money in the long run).

 

It also advertises the Warframe powers more effectively than just seeing the power names on the frames' codex entries, and when (if?) the generic mods come out, you could even add those into the same section for platinum (generic mod packs).  At the same time, this will help relieve some of the drop table dilution among normal enemies which will only continue to worsen as more and more frames are released.

[egregiousRac]

4) For the love of all that is sacred, take all the stinkin' ability mods out of the drop tables, and put them in the market for credits.  You'll never have to worry about someone selling/trading/transmuting their last ability mod through some glitch in the matrix (freeing up time spent by customer support fixing said glitches, and saving you money in the long run).

 

It also advertises the Warframe powers more effectively than just seeing the power names on the frames' codex entries, and when (if?) the generic mods come out, you could even add those into the same section for platinum (generic mod packs).  At the same time, this will help relieve some of the drop table dilution among normal enemies which will only continue to worsen as more and more frames are released.

 

 

Yesterday I did a bunch of counting and statistics to do with mod drop tables, and the conclusion was that removing the ability mods would boost drop rate of everything else by around 25%. Since this would also boost fusion core drop chances, which DE might not want, maintaining their current drop chance would improve the chance of anything else even further. Check out the post for more information:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/212189-mod-drop-table-statistics/

[(PSN)ZOA069]

Putting Mods on the market would not alleviate mod concerns because it would be a step towards charging plat for mods.  Getting rid of the grind, complication, and lack of freedom from camping the same thing for hours on end to get mods would alleviate the concern.  Because of the drop tables, Warframe is losing it's last vestiges of game play.  The drop tables are the dominant factor in Warframe, not the game play.  People do not log on to play a game.  They log on to sit in the same spot for hours, days, weeks, months .... eons ...  getting bored farming the same thing over and over and over ...... then moving on to farm something else. It's killing the game because such activity is not a game, it's insanity.  This is not the game I started playing in April 2014, BC.

 

EDIT For Clarification:  Yes, there was farming back in april, but, it was for Warframe components, unlike in other games where you farm for every little scrap, even the rusty spork you use to kill your first pit bull sized and dispositioned rat..  This was one of the things that drew me to Warframe.  I thought Warframe was revolutionary in this and other ways.  Each update deteriorates that initial assessment: the ever increasing grind, the attacks on movement speed(Rush and Marathon mods are virtually rare now.), the lack of urgency in the flow of movement(pauses at the end of the Use function even while under heavy fire, movement and firing interrupt each other), etc.

 

Before mod sharing and per weapon loadouts and void, there was one mod table for non-bosses.  You just played the game or farmed the boss and the mods flowed.  Now, the same, often  lame, mods drop all the time.  To get the worthwhile mods, you have to camp forever.  Gone are the days when you could just play the missions or faction you felt like playing whenever you felt like playing them.  Now, if you are not camping, you are not getting anything worthwhile or, on rare occasions, you are getting something good(even if it's just a basic common or uncommon) but not as necessary as what you don't have.

 

To make matters worse, we are no longer talking about simple scaling mods, we are now camping for game play mods, for core mods.  We are now camping, farming, grinding, etc. for Rush and Marathon mods so that the game lives up to it's claims of being fast and fluid in movement.  We are now camping elemental mods so that Damage 2.0 lives up to it's claims of resolving the dominance of armor and rainbow builds.  We are now camping for Melee 2.0.

 

I don't know this game anymore.

I wanna shake your hand, sir.

[xkillo32]

Sorry for the rage but: Why the heck my Crystal expires in 8 hours after I get it? Seriously 8 hours? 

 

This has to be a joke T_T

 

edit: also, the Delta beacon the hardest to find? I got 32 Deltas before getting A SINGLE Gamma, wtf. I had to end up buying Gamma Beacons in the market because after 5 hours of gameplay I got only 4.

i want that many delta beacons

[residente]

i want that many delta beacons

 

I have 7 left after getting all hydroid parts so if you want to offer... I'll sell them cheap ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[PhoenixShi]

As much as I want to believe this isn't falling on deaf ears, DE has made too many mistakes IMO for them to be seriously listening to our concerns/complaints. Honestly DE when is the last time you farmed for anything? Because unlike the employees, we earn it. It isn't given to us.

 

Or scanning, does anyone really think they sit there scanning stuff? I doubt they bother, and bet they didn't like how it worked when they did. Although they still expect players to do it considering how they point to the Codex as telling players about drops and such, and they just keep adding more rare things to scan, that need a ton of scans to complete. People have been complaining how they don't like scanning from the start, yet the closest DE has come to improving the matter was that crappy sentinel that tries to scan everything, slowly, with the scanners you bought, any other change has just been to make it worse.

Edited April 12, 2014 by PhoenixShi

[Thaumatos]

Answer:

Someone at DE is REALLY bad with probability and s/he's been tasked with assigning drop rates.

[Sunny_Skies]

Argon Crystal

A call for clarification about when the resource decays has been heard!

“A full 24hrs from when you acquire it and then when GMT 00:00 hits is when it’s considered in its decaying period.” We've seen a small amount of feedback on this new resource but nothing alarming as of yet.

 

Although I really dislike the idea of a resource that disappears if it's not used immediately, I would also like to point out an issue in that the most recent Argon you've collected is used when building an item. It should be the opposite. The Material that is going to disappear first should be used first.

Edited April 12, 2014 by Sir_Sketch

[(PSN)UpscaleSteamX]

......ok I guess *disappointment*

[droidjv]

Concerning mod drops

 

With the addition of frontier/arid versions of enemies, you effectively created new types of enemies from existing ones and now when we want something that's dropped from an arid variant we know we have to go to phobos to get it. 

 

If you take this further, you could make certain mods drop only from certain planets, planets like mercury would drop mods that are required for the newbie and those same mods wouldn't drop on higher planets.

 

As a fictional example, let's say the scorpions right now show both in mercury and pluto and have the following dropping table:

1.- Nothing (45%)

2- Resource (15%)

3.- Redirection (15%)

4.- Vitality (15%)

5.- Master thief (5%)

6.- Retribution (5%)

 

If you limit the drop table by planet (same idea as enemy variant) you could get something like this:

For mercury:

1.- Nothing (50%)

2.- Resource (20%)

3.- Redirection (15%)

4.- Vitality (15%)

For pluto:

1.- Nothing (50%)

2.- Resource (20%)

3.- Master thief (15%)

4.- Retribution (15%)

 

Just an idea.

[Sunny_Skies]

Beacons

The Delta Beacon is the hardest fragment to find, so it comes without saying that frustrations arise when searching for it. With the Hotfix change we saw more positive feedback and are continuing to read as players progress.

 

I'm all for rarity, but this is a bit much when compared to the other beacons.

 

Even with a resource booster I'm lucky to find one per 20 minute match.

Edited April 13, 2014 by Sir_Sketch

[Nadhua]

I'm all for rarity, but this is a bit much when compared to the other beacons.

 

Even with a resource booster I'm lucky to find one per 20 minute match.

been pretty much the exact same for me, alternated between verro and nuovo and still got only 3 delta beacons in one match but none after that and ran 4 of the vay hek missions with 3 other people and got duplicates twice, annoying to say the least.

[Venexis]

Solar Rails: Dossier

Concerns have been raised about how the Dark Sectors/Solar Rails will work in a contested situation. 

 

The concern: Solo (rush) runs will destroy the base quicker than a squad of 4 Tenno because each run counts as a point towards the bases’ destruction.

The reality: Each Tenno in a completed mission counts as a point against the tower - meaning that effective strategies can be used in any combination of Tenno! 

 

In summation the Dark Sectors will not be exposed to “rushing exploits”.

 

 

I feel like the system is still flawed however you do it, as they still are exposed to rushing exploits. The concern only factors in a solo tenno rushing, but I am going to say "Inb4 4manlokirushtowersquads". A coordinated squad (which is more than likely given the team based nature of the solar rails) can just get a team of 4 lokis equipped with power duration and a max rush mod and just storm through missions. I myself do it in a number of missions in the void. There may be other effective strategies, but I don't think anything else will be more effective at destroying a solar rail than a team of lokis rushing through a mission while enemies can't even retaliate. Heck, even minus the invisibility duration, they are still significantly faster than every other frame out there. It feels like the possibility of 4 Loki in a coordinated group was massively overlooked.

Edited April 13, 2014 by Venexis

[se05239]

I feel like the system is still flawed however you do it, as they still are exposed to rushing exploits. The concern only factors in a solo tenno rushing, but I am going to say "Inb4 4manlokirushtowersquads". A coordinated squad (which is more than likely given the team based nature of the solar rails) can just get a team of 4 lokis equipped with power duration and a max rush mod and just storm through missions. I myself do it in a number of missions in the void. There may be other effective strategies, but I don't think anything else will be more effective at destroying a solar rail than a team of lokis rushing through a mission while enemies can't even retaliate. Heck, even minus the invisibility duration, they are still significantly faster than every other frame out there. It feels like the possibility of 4 Loki in a coordinated group was massively overlooked.

 

They will see the mistake when the 4-Man-Loki-Rush-Squads insta-gib the Dark Sectors.

[(PSN)STARSIDE_DESTINY]

I remember the first Community Hot Topics I read when I first started playing Warframe, and it blew me away. It was loaded with detail, and judging from the comments it seemed to me that DE was in tune with their fans and knew what the game needed. But quite honestly, the Hot Topics have been getting worse every week since then, culminating in this one. Moving certain mods to the Market has been tossed around for FAR too long, it needs to actually happen. Farming mods is ridiculous, and I can't believe how much poor judgment and/or lack of communication must have been involved in the decision to make Stance mods random enemy drops. You guys have been hyping Stances and combos for how long, and then you make them nearly impossible to access. This isn't the place for suggestions, so I won't lengthen my post with them, but I just want you to know that I am disappointed in the way that the Forums have been utilized by the developers lately. So many good ideas floating around, but very few of them are ever acknowledged, much less implemented.

[Loswaith]

@ Argon Crystal

These dont seem to be lasting the 24hrs, let alone 24+ time to GMT. Haps they need to be checked out.

I personally like the concept, however given the nature that they have been in the void for over 100 years. It seems counter intuative that they degrade when they can be stored in the dojos which are also in the void. So long as these are never needed in more quantities than a single one for any project then I suspect its more an over reaction. However history tells us they will remain anything but.

@Stances

No offence on this however the basic combos for weapons have always been part of the game yet have never been refered to as combos. Thus when you went about saying weapons will come with a combo, players automatically presumed you meant the NEW combo mods, not the basic melee attacks we always had, just refered to as combos. Sure posibly a misunderstanding, however not really new.

The melee system was hyped about all the NEW combos, so again expectations as players would atleast get some to try out. Sure we werent expecting all of them but a few basic ones to try out this new combo melee system you have been touting would have thrown us a bone to actually try it. These combo mods actually sit for melee where powers sit for the warframes (you can play the game still but cant do the fun fancy stuff).

The issue however is rare mod drops, some rare mods in the game from fairly common enemies can mean you wont get squat even after killing 1000s of them. I personally have around 300+ missions for the corpus against the grineer from the Gravadius Delema and Invasions most of which have many Scorpions (plus many other non-invasion missions against grineer). I've still yet to get the Master Thief (a rare drop mod) to actually drop, even after killing 1000s of scorpions (just an example from experience). I am also not the only player to have had issues like this with rare mods, many do. The same potential lies in every single rare stance in the game.

You guys (DE) worked hard to get the Combo system into the hands of the player but having them as rare drops, even on reasonably common enemies, though some are on uncommon and even rare enemies it sets it up that some player may never actually see these mods even after 500+ hours of playing. I'm sure DE as a whole doesnt want this anymore than the players do.

As to having them purchasable, trading basically allows that for plat anyway (abet at exaordinary prices in some cases). I woundnt be keen on seeing them that way.

A potential way to add them could also be to award one to a player the first time they master a weapon of that grip type to rank 30 much like you start out with warframe powers. A lot of the weapons have a secondry one that could be left for the drop pool as well as additional primarly ones and any ones added in the future.

An alternative would be to add small training missions like the mastery tests that players can do using the melee system and awarding them a combo for the weapon type they trained with. Again, as a once off award for one grip type. (in theory some combination of the mastering and training could work too).

Either of these options requires the player to 'earn' the stance, and adds a moderate guarentee that every player (be they new or veteran) will get to play with the new combo system for melee 2.0.

@ Dilution

While not so much a factor for stances (I'd prefer some way to earn them as sugested above). Warframe powers seem to be the big issue here. I understand (as im sure many others do too) that DE wants them available so player can choose to have various ranks of the same power. The reality is few player do actually have various ranks. However making them available to purchase additionals (say from Darvo, giving him some permanant presence) with credits and/or resources, lets player that want multiple ranks able to get them, while also removing them from diluting the mod drop pool.

@Beacons

While I like the concept (needing to find clues to track hek) unfortunatly only the Delta beacons really matter (aside from the occasional anomoly) the rest you are basically guarenteed to have enough of by the time you get the delta beacons anyway to make the others simply trivial (ie. players feel no progression getting them). The only real way to make them all matter would be to simply have each one the same needed quantity and drop chance (eg. 4 of each with 25% drop chance for any one type). This is why the nav points worked (dispite player grumbling), even though you still need other resources to make the keys.

The major issue though is its grind to let you grind more, thus the real drop rate for Hydroid parts is closer to the 33% (presuming all parts have the same drop chance) multiplied by the delta beacon drop rate squared.

All in all the name of the game is Warframe, thus warframes shouldnt be the thing left to exponent RNG to gain, but something players can work towards getting (maybe by working though a series of linked nodes) rather than relying on getting lucky. The prosecutors (an interesting new enemy type) are not a bad way to handle an addition goal of needing player to defeat certain ones (upscaling them to mini-bosses if need be), they give a part or clue to the location of a part (maybe that is protected by another prosecutor even), the final piece/blueprint give by hek himself.

If the dev team think a player should need to do X number of missions to gain a warframe, then make a mini-quest so players have to work through X nodes to get it, even if parts are awarded along the way with the final piece at a boss. This way its not left to RNG but up to the dev team on the effort for reward. In some cases these mini-quests can even span multiple planets if so desired. With a bonus of giving lore about the world in the process

Weapons actually can be left to the RNG, so long as we have weapons available they can be left as the RNG bait if you will. With only the weapon available it eases the dilution as well. Players may even find they get lucky and gain some parts along the way as a bonus while doing the mini-quests for warframes.

Sorry for the tangent along the way but seemed relevant to not just Hek/Hydroid.

Edited April 13, 2014 by Loswaith

[LuciusCaelumn]

I might ask out off topic a little bit, but when will the next Prime Warframe be released in Prime package, and what will it be? Ash Prime Nekros Prime ?

Thanks for your concern :)

[ShardsSuperior]

@^ I heard that Loki Prime was in the works.

 

 

The Glaive stance (Gleaming Talon) drops from Leech Ospreys. I used to be able to find them on Cypress, Pluto, and I was anticipating a long slog through that one Sabotage mission until Gleaming Talon dropped.

Then I clicked through... and I noticed the Grineer had taken the point. Oops. 

Now how will I get my Glaive stance?

(It also doesn't help that it's a rare stance, so that even if I had found a few Leech Ospreys, the chance of Gleaming Talon dropping would be next to none.)

Come on, DE. The Glaive is as much a part of Warframe as the Excalibur. Should getting the part that completes it really be THIS difficult?