Feeling Of Progression & Potatoes

[Orcao]

I seem to have hit an awkward spot in the game. To progress, I need potatoes. To get potatoes I need to... wait? Just wait. Either until the Login Rewards deem me worthy, or an alert goes up when I'm around to play, or I break down and decide I should spend some money on this F2P game. What seems off to me, is that there are no ACTIVE ways for me to try and get one. If it was like a .01% reward off of any alert (and I don't mean a .01% chance for it to show up as a ? reward) it would be better than this, since I could play the game to get it.

 

As-is it just seems weird to me that a very key part of the game can only be obtained by not (really) playing the game.

 

Edit: This is primarily for people that just read the OP and not the responses:

 

I'm not saying "make it a rare resource drop!" that would be WAY too common for a potato. I'm suggesting they add a grind for a small chance to get the potato sort of system. The current ways of obtaining Forma for F2P users, for example, are perfect. Heck, they could be rarer than that and it'd be fine. The main point of this post is that there's no in-game way of obtaining a potato. Saying "You just want them to be more common!" isn't really valid, since they don't drop to begin with. You have no active way of trying to obtain a potato in game, other than watching a twitter feed and hoping you're awake when it happens. Time-based events like that, with no advance notice will always leave players feeling screwed when they miss it.

 

I've heard the devs say that they don't want the game to make players feel like they have to grind forever to get things. But what would be bad about having a "grind forever" option along side their current "wait forever" option? It will keep those that don't like to grind happy (er, as happy as they are with the current methods, anyway), and would provide those that like to grind with something to do.

 

Edit2: I'll also attach onto the OP what I've mentioned a couple times in the thread. I actually really like the void key / forma system that was added for F2P users.

Edited June 4, 2013 by Orcao

[LaznAzn]

I kind of agree, the time spent should be proportional to the plat cost. You could spend less time getting some frames, which cost a lot more plat, even with the included potato and slot, then getting a potato. 

 

If it takes you longer to get a 20 plat item than it takes to farm up frame parts and build a frame, there's something funny about that.

 

Then again, DE does need some way to get paid. It's a troublesome balance.

Edited June 3, 2013 by LaznAzn

[yohaseo]

i know what you mean, my first potato was due to an alert i was lucky enough to still be awake for, and i recently got my first potato from the log in reward, but im also lucky enough to have a generous friend who gave me the money to get the hunter founder pack and a bit more, but it is all luck of the dice basicly, even more so since it seems the potatoes are not in the alerts as often as they were before

[CelsiusPrime]

As-is it just seems weird to me that a very key part of the game can only be obtained by not (really) playing the game.

 

 

You sir hit the nail on the head!

[Lady_Khaos]

Based on the complete avoidance of paying for it, I assume you don't yet have a job. That, or you don't believe the game is good enough to justify wanting to support the company that produced it. If it's the second case, then why waste your time on the forums complaining?

[LaznAzn]

Based on the complete avoidance of paying for it, I assume you don't yet have a job. That, or you don't believe the game is good enough to justify wanting to support the company that produced it. If it's the second case, then why waste your time on the forums complaining?

 

In my opinion you don't have to buy the cash shop items or plat to support the game, he's already supporting the game by playing it and providing feedback or as you aptly put it: "wasting his time on the forums complaining".

Edited June 3, 2013 by LaznAzn

[VKhaun]

In what way do you need a potato to progress?

I don't understand.

 

This is a side item for making a weapon you like more powerful. It's supposed to be rare and used carefully. Paying money just gives it to you 'right now' like everything else in the market for plat. It's not a gate of any kind, it's not a requirement for anything, and it sure as hell isn't 'very key' to the game. 

 

Half the time my potato'd weapons just lead me to be lazy, where I'll leave all four elemental mods in the weapon even though two or three of them hit for such trivial damage they don't even reduce the number of bullets it takes to kill on heavy weapons or noticably reduce the number on automatics.

Edited June 3, 2013 by VKhaun

[Orcao]

In what way do you need a potato to progress?

I don't understand.

 

This is a side item for making a weapon you like more powerful. It's supposed to be rare and used carefully. Paying money just gives it to you 'right now' like everything else in the market for plat. It's not a gate of any kind, it's not a requirement for anything, and it sure as hell isn't 'very key' to the game.

(To me) the game is almost entirely about making your loadout better. My loadout is missing out on 30 mod points per potato'able piece.

 

"It's supposed to be rare and used carefully" That's just it. "It's supposed to be rare" implies being able to obtain it in a rare circumstance. My issue is that that rare circumstance is encountered through waiting; not playing the game.

 

As a clarification, and this is more because it's late and I'm somewhat incoherent, this is not a "Give me a potato every 10 runs!" post. I'd be more than happy with something that takes a month of grinding to get, along side the current waiting game (to keep those that like that system, but don't like grinding forever, happy).

Edited June 3, 2013 by Orcao

[VKhaun]

(To me) the game is almost entirely about making your loadout better. My loadout is missing out on 30 mod points per potato'able piece.

By that rational you only need six potatos for the life of the game. If you're so against spending money on plat, you wouldn't even have more slots for extra weapons and would need <20 or so potatos for the life of the game.

Obviously you plan to have more than one loadout and obviously you plan to sell some of your weapons that you just leveled for rank and want the slot back so you're not just sitting there still Rank2 next year. So the obvious course of action would be to set aside your favorite core loadout and level other things you wouldn't waste potatos on to rank up. While you do that, watch for potatos. I promise you'll have PLENTY more than six or twenty before you are max rank.

Edited June 3, 2013 by VKhaun

[MetalGerbil]

at the end of a livestream they will usually do a potato alert for 12 hours. thats about as reliable as you are going to get. (every two weeks just about)

ive always had this problem with the alert system. even if you had to kill a boss 200 times to get something. you were actively engaged in the game. alerts? no skill involved, no effort, no sense of accomplishment. you kinda just get it, or you kinda dont. depending on what time you got on. :/

Edited June 3, 2013 by MetalGerbil

[Orcao]

Based on the complete avoidance of paying for it, I assume you don't yet have a job. That, or you don't believe the game is good enough to justify wanting to support the company that produced it. If it's the second case, then why waste your time on the forums complaining?

 

Money is tight, so I'm always reluctant to pay for a f2p game. This is actually the first one in a while that I've seriously debated dropping some money on (for frame/equipment slots) in some time. However, an item obtained through waiting instead of gameplay is a step in the wrong direction, which makes me question how long I'll be interested in the game, especially if the game veers further in this direction.

[crow-k]

at the end of a livestream they will usually do a potato alert for 12 hours. thats about as reliable as you are going to get. (every two weeks just about)

ive always had this problem with the alert system. even if you had to kill a boss 200 times to get something. you were actively engaged in the game. alerts? no skill involved, no effort, no sense of accomplishment. you kinda just get it, or you kinda dont. depending on what time you got on. :/

I have no pony in this race but this last time was  a forma. Maybe a new trend? No clue, just FYI

[Xylia]

In what way do you need a potato to progress?

I don't understand.

 

This is a side item for making a weapon you like more powerful. It's supposed to be rare and used carefully. Paying money just gives it to you 'right now' like everything else in the market for plat. It's not a gate of any kind, it's not a requirement for anything, and it sure as hell isn't 'very key' to the game. 

 

Half the time my potato'd weapons just lead me to be lazy, where I'll leave all four elemental mods in the weapon even though two or three of them hit for such trivial damage they don't even reduce the number of bullets it takes to kill on heavy weapons or noticably reduce the number on automatics.

 

A Potato'd weapon vs non-Potato'd weapon makes a pretty LARGE difference, same goes for Warframes.

 

Ever entered a mission with Lv30 weapons and notice that dude standing beside you is using the same weapons, and you're nailing all of your shots, but at the end of the mission he does 2-3x your damage? Yeah, he's got a Potato'd weapon(s) and maxed mods.

 

You know a player who eats his potatoes -- stuff just dies in a split second around him and you rarely get a chance to actually shoot at anything until the much higher missions and even then you empty a whole clip and kill something... he kills 2-3 mobs in the same amount of time.

 

It really is ridiculous. Especially the people who go with Boltor, Braton, or Gorgon with tricked out Multishot mods with the appropriate elemental damage, armor pierce, maxed Hornet Strike/Serration... that crap gets ridiculous and it is very hard if not impossible to do this without potatoes, as the cost of some of these mods is quite high.

 

Do you NEED Potatoes?

 

No I guess not.

 

But do you ENJOY being dead last or 2nd to last on the Damage Done meter at the end of every mission?

 

Probably not.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Xylia

[VKhaun]

A Potato'd weapon vs non-Potato'd weapon makes a pretty LARGE difference, same goes for Warframes.

 

Ever entered a mission with Lv30 weapons and notice that dude standing beside you is using the same weapons, and you're nailing all of your shots, but at the end of the mission he does 2-3x your damage? Yeah, he's got a Potato'd weapon(s) and maxed mods.

 

You know a player who eats his potatoes -- stuff just dies in a split second around him and you rarely get a chance to actually shoot at anything until the much higher missions and even then you empty a whole clip and kill something... he kills 2-3 mobs in the same amount of time.

 

It really is ridiculous. Especially the people who go with Boltor, Braton, or Gorgon with tricked out Multishot mods with the appropriate elemental damage, armor pierce, maxed Hornet Strike/Serration... that crap gets ridiculous and it is very hard if not impossible to do this without potatoes, as the cost of some of these mods is quite high.

 

Do you NEED Potatoes?

 

No I guess not.

 

But do you ENJOY being dead last or 2nd to last on the Damage Done meter at the end of every mission?

 

Probably not.

 

 

You're inventing your own problem with who and where you group.There's nothing logical about any of this. You can go to Pluto with a 7/10 damage mod and electric damage in an MK1-Braton and slaughter anything you point it at. Potatos are not a gate of any kind and they are dirt cheap if you want them. Heck you could even say the game comes with two free ones since you start with 50 plat.

[Xylia]

You're inventing your own problem with who and where you group.There's nothing logical about any of this. You can go to Pluto with a 7/10 damage mod and electric damage in an MK1-Braton and slaughter anything you point it at. Potatos are not a gate of any kind and they are dirt cheap if you want them. Heck you could even say the game comes with two free ones since you start with 50 plat.

 

Slaughter everything in Pluto with an Mk1 with just a Serration and Electric Damage? Yeah, I'd love to see that. I doubt it. Highly. And even if you could kill a couple mobs like that... you'd be out of ammo after a few mobs and you'd be facing a ship full of nasties and you'd have no ammo to kill them with because you were wasting whole clips on single mobs.

 

And uh, those 50 plat you start with? Considering you start the game with only TWO Warframe Slots and only what was that again, 8 weapon slots? You're probably going to want to buy slots instead of potatoes, because as a newbie player who doesn't know much about the game, you can understand that "8 Slots = I'm going to be out of room very quickly" when you see how many different weapons there are in the marketplace.

 

As you play the game you'll probably notice how you'll want a minimum of 3 main guns (Shotgun, Sniper, Machinegun) and once you get Gorgon then you'd probably be like "Eh, Gorgon is more for a boss, I need a non-Gorgon fast rifle" so that's 4 Main Guns.

 

Pistols? Probably want at least two or three.

 

Melee? Probably want minimum of two: a two-hander and a glaive.

 

Yeah, slots get to be painfully few.

 

I doubt you're going to want the spend the starting 50 plat on Potatoes when you can make those, but slots.... you can't get slots without Plat.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Xylia

[DirkDeadeye]

You're inventing your own problem with who and where you group.There's nothing logical about any of this. You can go to Pluto with a 7/10 damage mod and electric damage in an MK1-Braton and slaughter anything you point it at. Potatos are not a gate of any kind and they are dirt cheap if you want them. Heck you could even say the game comes with two free ones since you start with 50 plat.

 

LOL

[Xylia]

LOL

 

Well said.

[DAWGUNITALPHA]

 

Then again, DE does need some way to get paid. It's a troublesome balance.

This is the problem though. What incentive is there to give them my money, when their entire game just revolves around waiting? Waiting for the RNG to give you things, waiting for your stuff to finish and waiting for alerts to pop up. The gameplay is fun, but DE seems to be so far up their own rears right now they don't realize that it's the gameplay people like and we want more to do with it instead of just...waiting. Then they turn around and go "LOL IF YOU WANT TO PLAY MORE SOONER JUST PAY US"

[Sumnus]

So, to summarize this thread: *Plays in a Beta environment. Doesn't want to wait for things.*

[Orcao]

So, to summarize this thread: *Plays in a Beta environment. Doesn't want to wait for things.*

Beta doesn't mean that bad practices should go unmentioned. If anything, beta is the time to discuss them. Now, if your post was meant to imply that there will be more ways to obtain them in the future, then that would have been something useful to mention. As far as I can see (which I haven't gone through every Dev stream just yet, so I could very well have missed it) there's no discussion going on, or plans mentioned, about alternative ways of obtaining a potato.

[Xylia]

And the "Fun" thing about Potato BPs is that when you FINALLY get one, you can have fun farming THREE Rare Mats for said potatoes.

 

Okay, 1 Somewhat Rare and 3 Rares.

 

Morphics are Easy.

 

Neural Sensors? lol. Ya such fun when the only place to get em is Infested...

 

Neurodes? My God I'm so sick of farming Neurodes. Nearly every stinking gun takes them, Potatoes take them, Forma takes them.......Arrrrrgh. Enough with the stupid Neurodes already.

 

Gallium? My whole playtime and I've seen -ONE- Gallium, despite me living on Mars long enough to get enough Salvage to make not only the Glaive but also have most of what is needed for Despair. Oh, and a Gorgon too. I think Mars is that planet that drops Gallium or was that Saturn? I forget. Either way I did LOTS of missions in that world. And these were Resource Runs; I was breaking and opening everything.

 

Orokin Cells?

 

Hit-or-Miss, sometimes you'll do a mission and get 2 Cells in one mission and then do another mission and get another 1-2 of them. Other times you can do 10+ missions in a row and not see a single one.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Xylia

[Orcao]

I like the rare materials where they are to be honest.

 

After putting some more thought into it. I could start Forma farming, and just think of them as an alternative for now (in theory, a fully forma'd item should be similar enough to a potato'd item w/o polarizations). Though the problem still stands that I'll once again hit the "Gee, a potato sure would be nice about now, wish I could do something about it" phase eventually.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Orcao

[dukelego]

Wait for live stream or use part of your starter plat that's how I've gotten all but two of my potatoes (6 catas and 2 reactors or summit like that)

Point: not that hard to get, go kill stalker a couple times

Edited June 3, 2013 by dukelego

[Orcao]

Wait for live stream or use part of your starter plat that's how I've gotten all but two of my potatoes (6 catas and 2 reactors or summit like that)

Point: not that hard to get, go kill stalker a couple times

How is the stalker relevant to potatoes? I have the BP for all of his weapons, with some duplicates...

[Kedlaw]

(To me) the game is almost entirely about making your loadout better. My loadout is missing out on 30 mod points per potato'able piece.

 

"It's supposed to be rare and used carefully" That's just it. "It's supposed to be rare" implies being able to obtain it in a rare circumstance. My issue is that that rare circumstance is encountered through waiting; not playing the game.

 

As a clarification, and this is more because it's late and I'm somewhat incoherent, this is not a "Give me a potato every 10 runs!" post. I'd be more than happy with something that takes a month of grinding to get, along side the current waiting game (to keep those that like that system, but don't like grinding forever, happy).

 

Wow 20 plat is like a $1. I don't understand. You don't mind  grinding for a month? You have a pc and access to internet so I'm guessing you don't live in the third world country. Did you considered a part time job ? Paper route ? Washing your parents car. 1 dollar. You could find that on the street and it would probably take you less than an hour. Aluminum cans after saturday? You could get 10 potatoes for 1kg of those.  

 

I personally think its brilliant that DE left potatoes at such a nice low price. I would understand if they were 100 plat.

 

I have a lot against DE, this is not one of those things.

 

Free to play == free to play basic content. You want fireworks you need to pay.

Free to play devs do not work for free.

 

1, one, ooonnneeee dollar. 70 fecking pence. Void keys yes greedy manipulative sales. This is not.