A Suggestion On Improving Drops And Scaling Rewards

[Xrylene]

This suggestions covers a broad range of drop types, and focuses on introducing level scaling(similar to the new credit scaling) as well as some amount of guarantee to them to alleviate the RNG a bit.

 

First off, the new change to the credit system is a very pleasant one, it feels nice to be able to play higher level missions and actually feel rewarded for them, and the new higher reward Alerts make them feel worth doing. It could still use a couple of things though.

 

The first thing that it could use, is as brought up by other council members, missions with secondary objectives may need a little extra reward, seeing as they usually take more time and effort than normal missions. This also includes missions with conditions such as ice that make the mission more difficult than it otherwise would appear to be based on it's level.

 

This I propose giving a smaller scaling credit bonus for these bonus objectives, something along the lines of ((25 * minimum level) + 475 credits), which adds up to 1450 credits as a bonus on the highest level mission in the game(to my knowledge at least, level 39), and obviously less for lower level ones. It's not completely necessary, especially compared to the prior need for scaling mission rewards, but that or something similar would make more difficult missions seem a bit more worth it.

 

 

 

The second scaling suggestion has to do with drops, in this case Affinity orbs and health orbs. I'd prefer if health orbs weren't a drop and handled another way, but assuming they remain that way for a while they should have a percentage factored in, I would suggest 20 + 10% of max health. For Affinity, something along the lines of ((5 * level minimum) + 95 Affinity) would work nicely, just adding a bit more incentive to actually pick up those orbs later.

 

 

 

The third has to do with common and uncommon resources. Now that aborting a mission can't be used to farm decent amounts of them, it's quite apparent that relying on random drops throughout missions can be quite frustrating and just encourages mindless grind. It's also annoying that along with the random chance of obtaining resources in the first place, you have a random amount obtained as well.

 

My suggestion to fix this is twofold. The first is to scale the drop amount based off of level, much like my previous suggestions. Common could be 45 + 5 per level minimum, uncommon could be 15 + 1 per two levels minimum. Second, enemies would no longer drop resources, though lockers and crates still would. Instead, since we need to complete the mission to keep our stuff anyway, and it was brought to my attention that even in high level areas there is little incentive to fight the enemies rather than rush to the end, I've come up with a reward system of drops based off of kills in the case of standard missions, and waves in the case of defense missions.

 

The idea is, on standard missions 50 kills(total team kills, not just your own) might amount to one drop worth for everyone, one drop worth of each common and uncommon resource on that planet. 60 more kills beyond that is worth another drop, 70 more beyond that is worth another, and so on and so forth, effectively creating a diminishing return. The idea is, people should be encouraged to fight enemies(and explore lockers), but not to the point where you have some people just trying to farm respawning enemies, holding up other people on the team.

 

On defense missions, it works a bit differently, mostly so that ending at wave 5 doesn't become the best strategy, and so that getting to high waves has a reward associated with it. The concept is, wave 5 has no bonus drops, that's just your first ticket out and a chance at a mod. Wave 10 and onwards each add one additional drop. At first glance, this may not seem that worth it, with every five waves only being worth one extra drop worth, however remember that defense missions scale enemy levels, which in turn means that the amount per drop should scale. As an example, say you're playing Xini, and make it to wave 15, which is around level 55-ish enemies. At that point, you could leave to get 2 drops of 42 plastids, and 320 nano spores, so 84 and 640 respectively.

 

 

 

The last suggestion I have related to drops has to do with Warframes. I want to do away with the randomness, and replace it with completion, the time it takes isn't the problem so much as the frustration of getting nothing most of the time. Instead of farming the same boss over and over again, potentially for days, and relying on a random drop, every boss associated with a Warframe should have a guaranteed drop of the chassis blueprint. Then each defense mission in the region should drop the systems on wave 20 or so, once again, guaranteed. The last piece, the helmet, could drop from an extra, harder mission that is unlocked from completing all/x number of missions on the planet, called a Challenge mission. The idea is, each piece requires a different sort of challenge, and completing a Warframe means completely finishing a planet. This also means Europa could use a boss and Banshee should be tied there rather than being random everywhere.

Edited April 21, 2013 by Xrylene