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The 1-Hour Kubrow Experience Feat. Too Much Grind (Mod Edition)?


Curaidh
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Let me start by saying that I understand why there is an RNG in this game, it makes sense. I'm not someone who writes too often or is too vocal with complaints, but this time I actually collected data to make a point.

 

Here we have a few statement by DE devs themselves concerning grind in Warframe:

 

Devstream 14
Dave: “Every time we release an Update there’s firsts anxiety of, will we get it out, will be give them everything that we promised? People have good comments and they raise good concerns but it’s hard to fight through the hard comments to the point that their trying to make. [in terms of Nekros] The idea was to give players game play; not to create a grind. Maybe our approach was how we framed it and the lack of narrative it was shipped with.
 
Scott: “We’re trying to build a game that has long term health, grind is not the answer and we know that.”
 
Devstream 23
Melee 2.0:
Steve: It will give people a chance to customize their hammer or how their fast daggers work. They can use a mod to change the way it works which will bring a new play style.
We're not going to make you grind out Mods to get the new system. Equipping these Mods will give you stat boosts like damage bonuses and attributes.
Quick attacks will be there but you won’t have as much potential. Every weapon style will have new Mods.
 
 
So, it seems DE is against too much grind in their game, right? And they completely got it right that we didn't have to grind mods for Melee 2.0, right? *cough*
 
Let's get to the meat.
 
Duo run on E-Prime. Loki + Nekros. (Thanks to DaSeven for his time and desecrate!)
~1hour of killing Kubrows. Not running mission,  pure killing.
Amount of Kubrow Kills: 764 Kubrows
Amount of desecrated Kubrow corpses: 764 (recast until health orb drop, 2x Energy Syphon + maxed efficiency on Nekros)
Double loot rolls: 0.9 x 764 = 687 (90% maxed desecration)
 
Total loot table rolls on Kubrow: 764 + 687 = 1451
 
Resulting mod drops with amount and effective drop chance:
 
Loyal Companion 13x 0.897%
Pack Leader 14x 0.966%
Scavenge 6x  0.414%
Fast Deflection 2x 0,138%
Link Armor 5x 0,345%
Link Health 5x 0,345%
Link Shields 2x 0,138%
Maul 3x 0,207%
Dig 0x
Ferocity 0x
Howl 0x
Hunt 0x
Protect 0x
Savagery 0x
Stalk 1x 0,069%
Unleashed 0x
 
Now I'm fully aware that 1451 loot rolls is not an awful lot for a sample, but it does show a trend.
This was only possible due to an infinite Kubrow spawn! The Dens we were camping never ran out of Kubrows.
 
On average if you are not camping Dens but just killing Kubrows while running through E-Prime you get anything between 10-20 Kubrows and I'd say the needed time averages at around 4-5 minutes, you still need to find and kill those Kubrows after all.
For the sake of argument, let's assume you get 20 Kubrows all the time and you desecrate them all and get a reroll on ALL of them, so that's 40 Kubrow in a 4 min timespan, not bad.
 
Since we got exactly 1 rare mod, the calculations are easy.
1451 Kubrows required for 1 rare mod.
 
1451/40 = 36
 
36x 4 min = 144 min
 
144 minutes of running the same mission over and over for one single possible rare mod drop.
Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Considering there are 8 of them out there and assuming you get unbelievably lucky and get a different one each time, this just racks up a mere 1152 minutes of farming, or 19 hours and 12 minutes.
That is if you have a Nekros handy with enough efficiency to desecrate it all.
Non Nekros will have to grind 38 hours and 24 minutes, if they are incredibly lucky.
 
 
Now what I want is simply to know whether these numbers are intended by DE or not.
To clarify: I'm not saying I want all these mods right now!
I want to understand how people see this when they have some numbers to back up the argument and I'd like to hear from DE if this matches their target expectations
 
I do not want discussions along the lines of:
But game x does it worse!
 
 
TL;DR;
Is there too much grind in regards to farming the new mods that only drop from Kubrows? Minimum required grind time with extreme luck but no Nekros: 38 hours and 24 minutes.
 
 
 
I have taken lots of Screenshots as "proof" of the numbers I'm presenting here, I couldn't screencap it as video since my Shadowplay decided to bug out on me. I can provide links but this post is already too big for my taste.
 
 
Edit:

At the time of writing I wasn't aware that you get handed a free copy of the type-specific mods when you incubate a Kubrow of that type, so no grinding for those rare mods is in fact necessary which makes my point invalid. I'm leaving the post intact though.

 

Now if it is true that the "Bite" mod is also dropping from Kubrow (unconfirmed rumours only it seems), then good luck trying to find that single one specific Mod that you will want on your Kubrow.

Edited by Curaidh
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I dont think Kubrow mods are that hard to obtain, but this is a wild assumption by me based on my personal and brief experience. If it works the way I think it works, you can equip a modless poopy weapon, jump into Earth solo and just poke Kubrow dens after every 3 kubrow spawns from each den as to not destroy them. You should be able to repeat this over and over without starting a new mission which would be even worse a grind, a chore. But I suppose it wouldn't hurt to increase the drop rates, it's not like wild kubrows drop anything else anyway.

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I dont think Kubrow mods are that hard to obtain, but this is a wild assumption by me based on my personal and brief experience. If it works the way I think it works, you can equip a modless poopy weapon, jump into Earth solo and just poke Kubrow dens after every 3 kubrow spawns from each den as to not destroy them. You should be able to repeat this over and over without starting a new mission which would be even worse a grind, a chore. But I suppose it wouldn't hurt to increase the drop rates, it's not like wild kubrows drop anything else anyway.

 

Well there is a small mistake in your assumption: Kubrow do not spawn infinitely, The Dens "deplete" except if you encounter a bug.

 

Even with the bug that speeds up mod acquisition incredibly you are still looking at 8 hours. So, if you ecnounter the bug, you better have a Nekros ready and prepare not to quit the mission for 8 hours. Then you MIGHT get all the mods, if every time a rare rolls it picks a different one of the 8 options.

 

Do you still think they are not hard to obtain?

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Too much unrealistic low drop rates in Warframe?

Who could have thought?! (we already knew droprates are bad) 

 

I've been told by other people the drop rates are just fine, which is one of the reasons for me to collect actual data and provide numbers as basis for a fair discussion.

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Well there is a small mistake in your assumption: Kubrow do not spawn infinitely, The Dens "deplete" except if you encounter a bug.

 

Even with the bug that speeds up mod acquisition incredibly you are still looking at 8 hours. So, if you ecnounter the bug, you better have a Nekros ready and prepare not to quit the mission for 8 hours. Then you MIGHT get all the mods, if every time a rare rolls it picks a different one of the 8 options.

 

Do you still think they are not hard to obtain?

Actually I think it's a dull chore regardless... just like farming Argon Crystals that will expire anyway. But like everything else in the game, it seems to be RNG based. I played with one other in an earth extermination mission and I was able to get about 14-15 waves of kubrows even without attacking the 2 dens we camped, with each wave having 2-3 kubrows. Then there were times when I exhausted a den after 3 waves, but I assumed that was a bug at that time :x

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Too much unrealistic low drop rates in Warframe?

Who could have thought?! (we already knew droprates are bad) 

 

Yeah, but confronted with actual numbers makes it that much more daunting. People seem to have this misconception about how percentages work. Just because you do something 1400 times doesn't mean you're going to get that one mod that drops x amount of times. Its all random. BUT THANKFULLY we have a trade channel to nab these mods that elude us so much. This is still ridiculous though. I can't imagine people actually going out there and farming these mods for countless hours just to sell them to people.

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I've been told by other people the drop rates are just fine, which is one of the reasons for me to collect actual data and provide numbers as basis for a fair discussion.

Yes the droprates are FINE! I don't want to get everything in 1 run. I want to farm it (not grind)

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Yes the droprates are FINE! I don't want to get everything in 1 run. I want to farm it (not grind)

 

Well then please elaborate? When does it start to be a grind instead of farming? 40 hours gameplay? 50 hours?

Where is your threshold for something to be a grind? It's subjective and I'd like to hear your opinion. :)

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Yes the droprates are FINE! I don't want to get everything in 1 run. I want to farm it (not grind)

Grinding and farming are two different things as far as I'm aware. Like when you're leveling up your weapons only to use a couple of formas on them just to level them back up, that would be "grinding".

 

Mindlessly killing tons of mobs in order to get resources/credit, that's "farming".

 

Grinding is goal oriented while farming is simply farming an abundance of "stuff you might need"

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Well then please elaborate? When does it start to be a grind instead of farming? 40 hours gameplay? 50 hours?

Where is your threshold for something to be a grind? It's subjective and I'd like to hear your opinion. :)

 

When you can go into something for x amount of time and know you're going to get something out of it you call that farming. Underlined the important word there. Grinding for drops on the other hand is when the drops are so few and far between that you just do it knowing you most likely wont get anything out of it. Its kind of like the feeling of playing the lottery. You just go out there to see if you can get it. Thats it really. 

 

You will say its a subjective thing...and it is. Some people enjoy doing stupid pointless crap for hours upon hours mindlessly. Me on the other hand I would like to at least have the peace of mind that whatever I'm going for isn't going to be at a rate of "Stalk 1x 0.069%."

 

To break that down for you thats almost 1/10 of 10% of what makes up a 1% drop rate. You have severe brain damage if you think thats acceptable.

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Let me start by saying that I understand why there is an RNG in this game, it makes sense. I'm not someone who writes too often or is too vocal with complaints, but this time I actually collected data to make a point.

 

Here we have a few statement by DE devs themselves concerning grind in Warframe:

 

Devstream 14
Dave: “Every time we release an Update there’s firsts anxiety of, will we get it out, will be give them everything that we promised? People have good comments and they raise good concerns but it’s hard to fight through the hard comments to the point that their trying to make. [in terms of Nekros] The idea was to give players game play; not to create a grind. Maybe our approach was how we framed it and the lack of narrative it was shipped with.
 
Scott: “We’re trying to build a game that has long term health, grind is not the answer and we know that.”
 
Devstream 23
Melee 2.0:
Steve: It will give people a chance to customize their hammer or how their fast daggers work. They can use a mod to change the way it works which will bring a new play style.
We're not going to make you grind out Mods to get the new system. Equipping these Mods will give you stat boosts like damage bonuses and attributes.
Quick attacks will be there but you won’t have as much potential. Every weapon style will have new Mods.
 
 
So, it seems DE is against too much grind in their game, right? And they completely got it right that we didn't have to grind mods for Melee 2.0, right? *cough*
 
Let's get to the meat.
 
Duo run on E-Prime. Loki + Nekros. (Thanks to DaSeven for his time and desecrate!)
~1hour of killing Kubrows. Not running mission,  pure killing.
Amount of Kubrow Kills: 764 Kubrows
Amount of desecrated Kubrow corpses: 764 (recast until health orb drop, 2x Energy Syphon + maxed efficiency on Nekros)
Double loot rolls: 0.9 x 764 = 687 (90% maxed desecration)
 
Total loot table rolls on Kubrow: 764 + 687 = 1451
 
Resulting mod drops with amount and effective drop chance:
 

Loyal Companion 13x 0.897%
Pack Leader 14x 0.966%
Scavenge 6x  0.414%
Fast Deflection 2x 0,138%
Link Armor 5x 0,345%
Link Health 5x 0,345%
Link Shields 2x 0,138%
Maul 3x 0,207%
Dig 0x
Ferocity 0x
Howl 0x
Hunt 0x
Protect 0x
Savagery 0x
Stalk 1x 0,069%
Unleashed 0x
 
Now I'm fully aware that 1451 loot rolls is not an awful lot for a sample, but it does show a trend.
This was only possible due to an infinite Kubrow spawn! The Dens we were camping never ran out of Kubrows.
 
On average if you are not camping Dens but just killing Kubrows while running through E-Prime you get anything between 10-20 Kubrows and I'd say the needed time averages at around 4-5 minutes, you still need to find and kill those Kubrows after all.
For the sake of argument, let's assume you get 20 Kubrows all the time and you desecrate them all and get a reroll on ALL of them, so that's 40 Kubrow in a 4 min timespan, not bad.
 
Since we got exactly 1 rare mod, the calculations are easy.
1451 Kubrows required for 1 rare mod.
 
1451/40 = 36
 
36x 4 min = 144 min
 
144 minutes of running the same mission over and over for one single possible rare mod drop.
Doesn't sound too bad, does it? Considering there are 8 of them out there and assuming you get unbelievably lucky and get a different one each time, this just racks up a mere 1152 minutes of farming, or 19 hours and 12 minutes.
That is if you have a Nekros handy with enough efficiency to desecrate it all.
Non Nekros will have to grind 38 hours and 24 minutes, if they are incredibly lucky.
 
 
Now what I want is simply to know whether these numbers are intended by DE or not.
To clarify: I'm not saying I want all these mods right now!
I want to understand how people see this when they have some numbers to back up the argument and I'd like to hear from DE if this matches their target expectations
 
I do not want discussions along the lines of:
But game x does it worse!
 
 
TL;DR;
Is there too much grind in regards to farming the new mods that only drop from Kubrows? Minimum required grind time with extreme luck but no Nekros: 38 hours and 24 minutes.
 
 
 
I have taken lots of Screenshots as "proof" of the numbers I'm presenting here, I couldn't screencap it as video since my Shadowplay decided to bug out on me. I can provide links but this post is already too big for my taste.

 

 

 

38 hours its fine, you re not suposed to have everything in 1 shoot, its long time content, and well not like kubrows was the core of WF

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38 hours its fine, you re not suposed to have everything in 1 shoot, its long time content, and well not like kubrows was the core of WF

 

So 38 hours at the lowest if you get perfect luck with getting each of the 8 rare mods exactly once is fine to you? You quote my whole post but did you read and understand the implications of it?

This isn't meant as an insult, I'm seriously asking.

If you average 5 hours of game time an evening and do nothing but farm Kubrows, it will take you a full week of not doing anything in the game but farming Kubrows to get the mods, again assuming perfect luck. Have you considered that in your short statement?

 

Also: I specifically stated I don't say I want all the mods now. I want an honest and fair discussion.

To me it is a complete waste of my time I could spend having fun, instead of chasing some elusive mod that may or may not drop within the next 30 hours of doing something terribly boring.

Edited by Curaidh
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I personally think a low drop rate is good. I want the mods, but I don't want to see the market flooded where everything is worthless. I don't have the time to play as much so I don't expect to see a lot of em dropping, but the point here is people trade, this is a multi-player game not a solo grinder. Get out there and trade if you don't want to farm for a week.

 

Just my 2 plat, flame away.

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my friend I've killed more than 2500 kubrow ran 3 missions on mariana on earth and found the bug out with my necros, I litterally killed 700+ in each mission and I desecrated like 200-300 of each them, so to be a little more accuarated I have farmed like 3k kubrow I spend like 1 hours in each farm and guess what? I only found stalker mod as a rare the other were normal mods.

Edited by Oblivionotus
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Geez. Every time I start to think I might spend a little more money on this game, this same old crap starts in.

 

I'm not okay with it. All this grind.

 

DE, if you want to balance your game around the kind of free time a 12 year-old has, fine. Just be honest with us. Here I was, reasonably happy with U14, thinking it was nice that Mirage's grind wall wasn't intolerably high. 

 

Then I see 100,000 credit dog food (I guess that's what it's supposed to be) in the market. I see bonkers drop rate numbers for Kubrow eggs, based on numbers compiled by awesome people who care about this game a lot more than I do at the moment (bless you saints). I see super bonkers drop rates for Kubrow mods, based on numbers compiled again by people who love this game. People who love this game enough to smash their face against this abusive and immutable math djinn you've created.

 

It feels like we're being treated increasingly like whales, and I'm wondering aloud what I'm still doing here, playing this game and reading these forums. My brain is doing some master level psychological backflips to justify my continued emotional and intellectual investment in this game. It might as well be an abusive relationship at this point.

 

I remember the "partner" this game used to be, and I'm excusing/ignoring all kinds of great reasons to stop playing. It's a total nightmare. I hate having gotten so invested in this game. I hate having spent so much time reading these forums, looking at ideas and thinking about what might make this game better. This game has a drinking problem, and no amount of shiny content will convince me to stop hating this constant RNG junk-punching. The players deserve better.

 

All these frustration posts of mine keep getting so long, perhaps because I assume a longer post is more likely to be noticed. I have a feeling that I'm far from the only one who feels pushed to that last bastion of borderline pathetic pleading.

 

Have layers and layers of RNG beatings eroded my confidence? Has all the abuse inculcated that most insidious and terrible of maladies, the belief that I - that WE - really don't deserve better?

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Whether you're lamprey or not, very well said :P

 

I remember the days when Steve used to say they're being very careful as to not drown their playerbase in grind and farm, and got their players keeping them in check constantly. But then they did say a lot of things back then... Now it's all back to making the game as inconvenient as it can be so that you will have to buy some platinium, because F2P, otherwise you're "self-entitled" apparently.

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Whether you're lamprey or not, very well said :P

 

I remember the days when Steve used to say they're being very careful as to not drown their playerbase in grind and farm, and got their players keeping them in check constantly. But then they did say a lot of things back then... Now it's all back to making the game as inconvenient as it can be so that you will have to buy some platinium, because F2P, otherwise you're "self-entitled" apparently.

They say a lot of things now with most not even materializing. I'm to the point where I have to answer the question "why should I spend my time farming/grinding for something when I have a very low chance of getting it?" There are tons of other F2P games that offer things similar to warframe and have less of a headache inducing reliance on RNG. I'm having a hard time answer that question in a positive way. This latest update has made it near impossible. They continue to bork things up, hide things behind multiple walls of RNG and by the end of the day your time is usually wasted. I honestly think a Korean game would be less headache inducing and they are kings of RNG.

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I have to revise the original post here.

 

At the time of writing I wasn't aware that you get handed a free copy of the Race-Specific mods when you incubate a Kubrow of that type, so no grinding for those rare mods is necessary.

 

Now if it is true that the "Bite" mod is also dropping from Kubrow (unconfirmed rumours only it seems), then good luck trying to find that single one specific Mod that you will want on your Kubrow.

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