[*spoiler* System] Conflicting Considerations When Choosing Equipment: Here We Go Again.

[Chroia]

Disclaimer:

The following is all my opinion.

If I state a perception as fact - and forgot to note that it is a perception; and, in fact, my perception at that... well, that's what this is here for.

Disclaimer 2:

Tl;dr in bold. OP got rather long, and it's too late for me to boil it down well.

I'll look at it again tomorrow.

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A brief review of the Doings of DE:

In the beginning, there were Arcane Helmets.

And DE saw these Arcane Helmets; that they were bad.

And DE said: Let there be no more Arcane Helmets, only Cosmetic Helmets. And so it was.

And there was patch and there was hotfix, one iteration.

See nested quote in spoiler, below.

And DE said: Let there be new Arcanes. Which are totally not the exact same conflict-of-consideration as the Arcane Helmets, which were deemed 'bad'.

And DE put forth Raids, Trials yielding Arcanes; to imprint upon Cosmetics.

But DE saw that this was bad, for it impeded further Cosmetics.

And DE said: Let there be an Arcane Distiller (obtainable for Syndicate rep: a.k.a. incidentally with playing), to separate Arcanes from Cosmetic.

And DE (apparently) decided that it was good sufficient. And it was called 'done'.

And there was patch and there was hotfix, a second iteration.

And DE said: Let there be Lenses, to gather Focus (at very low ratio) from attached equipment.

And let these lenses be irretrevible once used, and lost once replaced.

And DE put forth Sorties, to possibly grant a random Lens; its daily reward.

And DE seeded the Market with Greater Lenses (obtainable for plat only), so-as to... idk what, actually.

And there was patch and there was hotfix, we're in the third iteration.

Yes, there are Greater Lens BPs available on the market for credits.

They require 4 normal lenses each, which you either get from Sorties (luck of the draw, now a max of 1-per-school-per-season) or buy lessers on trade chat.

If you buy them at 10p each or more, you're straight up better-off buying a Greater (40p each) from the market.

If you buy them for less, you still need to foot the various crafting costs and delays. Which is more-or-less fair. I'll just note that Forma BP seem to be feast-or-famine, and if you're purely crafting your Greater Lenses, you're looking at 1 a day. How many different pieces of gear do you use?

And while trades are possible, odds are you're going to have to shell out plat for a single-use, choice-limiting item, which is inconsistent with Arcane Distillers, the previous iteration.

Up to what point does 'saving every single plat you can' outweigh the inconvenience?

tl;dr -

So, there were 3 iterations of attaching bonuses to specific items.

The first two times, this was ultimately considered a bad thing.

Why is it any better this time around?

Moreover, the last two times, the thing was tied to cosmetics, which - cosmetic considerations aside (see spoilered quote) - you could add to literally anything with no gameplay restrictions.

How is this iteration not worse?

For the sake of the argument, however, let's ignore the previous iterations and just look at this one:

Each lens is single use and destroyed when replaced.

The bottom line is: 1) it is effectively a non-cosmetic/gameplay affecting system which will either lock you into always using very specific gear, or will - sooner or later - cost you plat unless you choose to opt-out of it entirely.

The only such until now was slots. (Which, incidentally, cost less each (half as much for a frame slot, a third as much for a weapon/sentinel slot.))

Given the last two iterations of 'gameplay affecting thing attached to an item', is that the intended outcome?

Note: I'm not saying it's P2W. The current iteration of Focus (like Arcanes), isn't that gamechanging.

But 2) given the rate of focus gain at the moment, even with fully lensed gear (and ignoring Draco),

- and I remind you, a new-ish player (Post 2nd Dream. How likely is that to be 'Sortie Ready™?') gets 1, lesser lens, and is quite likely to choose poorly -

it seems (to me. But I may be wrong.) less likely to be perceived as 'an enticing first taste', and more as an off-putting, prohibitively expensive bar of entry to "actual" (read: non-cosmetic) game(play) content.

And again: Am I seeing it wrong? If I am, please enlighten me.

If not: is this the intended outcome?

If yes, two things:

1) Let's consider our new-ish player:

They either:

A) Chose well, and are slowly gaining focus incidentally while playing.

Consider the ratio of exp-to-Focus. How long will it take until they gain enough - to have invested enough into; in order to get enough out of the Focus system for it to appear worth opting-in into?

B) Chose poorly.

Imagine, for instance, that - like their first Catalyst - they put it on their Mk1-Braton. (True story.)

Will they continue using it - because it has their lens - or change weapon?

How will this affect their play experience?

And if they do change weapon? Not even that trickle of Focus to get them started.

tl;dr - has our theoretical new-ish player gained anything positive from the addition of the focus system to his game experience?

2) Then let's take a look at the 'bar of entry':

A new player starts with 2 warframe slots and 6 weapon slots.

Straight off the bat, we're talking about (8*40) 320 plat, assuming they want to, you know, gain focus while using their gear.

Is this considered reasonable? (Straight question, no intonation.)

Further, given that MR is derived from ranking gear, and that new gear is the most common game addition, would it be fair to say that DE seem to consider 'trying out all the shiny new stuff' to be a key attraction of their game?

Now, owning gear requires available slots.

Buying slots costs plat.

Buying lenses costs more plat (twice as much per 'frame slot, 3+ times as much per weapon slot).

The more lenses a player needs, the more the easiest solution becomes to buy Greater Lenses.

Assuming a player only ever uses 3 different loadouts, that's more than the price of most Warframes on the market.

(Anecdote: If I were going to put lenses on all my gear, I'd be looking at upwards of 100$s worth of lenses.

For one school.)

So, between MR being derived from gear ranked, and slots being plat-only; this seems to be strongly incentivizing people to use-and-keep as little gear as possible.

Which, I think, is counter to the 'try all the cool new stuff' mentality of new Warframe content.

tl;dr - 'sh*t gets expensive, yo.'

Combined with the previous tl;dr, is it 'reasonablely expensive' or 'off-puttingly expensive'?

Is there enough value in it for to be deemed worthwhile?

Alternatively, I can just use the same 5 pieces of gear all the time, forget avoiding monotony, the increased burnout, the (further) systemic incentivsation of metagame over gameplay or experiencing new gear.

Alternatively alternatively, I could just say - "You know what? I can live without this."

None of which seem to be a beneficial outcome.

So then, why and how is this a beneficial thing?

The 'official' reason that Arcanes were deprecated, quoting [De]Drew:

Why the change and what does it mean for cosmetics in the long term?

Colour pickers were the first cosmetic items, then (in Closed Beta) alternate helmets were added to the game as cosmetic item - but with stats. Some stats felt arbitrary and others felt mandatory for build optimization. Dev has commented that putting stats on helmets was not a decision they felt is right in the long term. We cannot make a definitive statement on the future of stats with cosmetic items, because ultimately, there are some players who still want stats (or other boosts/customizations) to play a role with cosmetics, and there are other players who want cosmetics to remain purely cosmetic.

imo, the only choice in cosmetics should be 'do I like how this thing looks'.

Once you tie game stats to them, you set up a conflict in the player: "Do I wear the scarf that looks nice with this frame/color scheme, or do I use the one that has the Arcane Enhancement I want on it?"

This undermines the entire point of cosmetics: (Pure) aesthetic choice.

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Edit:

There. Done.

For now.

I think.

Edited February 17, 2016 by Chroia

[direcyphre]

"DE made Arcane Distillers so they have to make something that removes lenses!"

 

Nah.

[Guardian_Legion]

hard to take you seriously when you don't even take the time to realize that greater lenses have bps that can be bought for credits, and that said greater lenses can be made in the foundry

[Chroia]

"DE made Arcane Distillers so they have to make something that removes lenses!"

Nah.

If that's your only take-away from my post, clearly I've expressed myself poorly.

If you can point out what gave you that impression, I'll try and do it better.

If anything, it's more like:

If it wasn't a good idea the first time, or even the second time, why is it a better idea now?

Also, see next, from "Bottom line".

(I've added fairly extensively to the OP based on it.)

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hard to take you seriously when you don't even take the time to realize that greater lenses have bps that can be bought for credits, and that said greater lenses can be made in the foundry

And they require 4 normal lenses each.

Which you either get from Sorties (luck of the draw) or buy lessers on trade chat.

If you buy them at more than 10p each, you're better off buying a Greater.

If you buy them at less, you still need to foot the Argon, Forma (and crafting time) - which for some people is a problem.

And while trades are possible, odds are you're going to have to shell out plat for a single-use, choice-limiting item.

How far does 'saving every single plat you can' outweigh the inconvenience?

The bottom line is - it is effectively a non-cosmetic/gameplay affecting system which will - sooner or later - cost you plat unless you choose to opt-out.

The only such until now was slots. (Which, incidentally, cost less each (half as much for a frame slot, a third as much for a weapon/sentinel slot.)

Given the last two iterations of 'gameplay affecting thing attached to an item', is that the intended outcome?

Note: I'm not saying it's P2W. Focus (like Arcanes), in its current state isn't that gamechanging.

But given the rate of focus gain at the moment, even with fully lensed gear (and ignoring Draco),

- and I remind you, a new-ish player (Post 2nd Dream. How likely is that to be 'Sortie Ready™?') gets 1, lesser lens, and is quite likely to choose poorly -

it seems (to me. But I may be wrong.) less likely to be perceived as 'an enticing first taste', and more as an off-putting, prohibitively expensive bar of entry to "actual" (read: non-cosmetic) game(play) content.

And again: Am I seeing it wrong? If I am, please enlighten me.

If not: is this the intended outcome?

So. Perhaps I should have spelled that all out in the OP (will edit), but having said that... I'm not sure I understand what point you're making.

Edited February 17, 2016 by Chroia

[Liminal]

I'm still quite annoyed at arcanes.