Sorties, Fusion Cores, and DE... oh my!

[Silvus-Sol]

WARNING: This topic contains unconfirmed info and speculation, take it as you will.

 

So according to a Dev stream, DE wants to push players away from farming Fusion Cores on "normal" missions, and instead wants them to go to Sorties for Cores. How have they gone about prompting this change? By nerfing the chances of getting Fusion Cores as a reward on various missions, most notably Excavation. Now let me just say that this nerf is unconfirmed, but an overall decrease in Core rewards has been noticed and reported by other players. Though it really doesn't matter, confirmation either way isn't really necessary and it wouldn't change the relevancy of what I'm going to say.

DE, you need to stop taking away our options. If you want to push players into playing where and how you want us to play, you need to use the carrot and not the stick. Make those things more attractive and we will come. Continuing as you are now and attacking the alternatives is a very bad way to do things.

Let's use Sorties as an example. Instead of nerfing Core drops elsewhere, why not bring back the guaranteed 25 Core bonus reward you ran for a week last month? Right now, Sorties are a poor way to farm cores for two big reasons. Reason one, the fact that you can only do them once per day. The term "Farm" doesn't really apply to a Sortie like it does a repeatable mission. Especially when combined with the second reason, RNG. You don't know if you will actually get cores, you might get a lens, or a part. The uncertain reward coupled with the 'once per day' limit makes them a pretty s*** way to get cores. Providing a reliable 25 Core reward in addition to the RNG based seasonal rewards makes Sorties infinitely more attractive to those looking for Fusion Cores.

So, you have achieved your goal of attracting the targeted players to Sorties, congrats, but that's not all. You also get the additional benefit of gratitude. You just added rewards and improved the quality of life for Sortie runners. They, and others, will be thanking you for the change. You win, the players win, and everyone is happy. Why was this not your "go to" plan?

Now that we've discussed the carrot and it's benefits, let's discuss the stick.

So you nerf Excavation rewards. You take another option off the table and further limit viable choices. This is already a huge issue for the Starchart, and making that issue worse by taking some of the few worthwhile nodes and making them worthless, is bad for reasons that should be obvious. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that people will turn to Sorties for the Cores they can no longer get in Excavation. In fact, that outcome is pretty unlikely for the two reasons I already stated. The most likely response is people turning to Dark Sector Survival for it's Fusion Core rewards. Now what? They still aren't at Sorties, your objective is unachieved, so do you nerf the Survival reward chances too? It is the path you've laid out, so go ahead and finish it. Now you've doubled the damage and once again made the Starchart issues even worse.

Now players have no real reliable method of gaining Fusion Cores. Sorties are still as unattractive in as before in regards to Fusion Cores, but are likely a little more popular due to the lack of options. Meanwhile more Starchart nodes have been abandoned, and good ol' Draco with it's chance of dropping Cores on round 3 is more popular than ever. This would not be one, but several steps backwards in many different areas. Not to mention, people will be pissed. The forums will be on fire and players will be giving you all kinds of crap for constantly removing freedom and choice from the equation. This is by far the poorer of the two choices and should absolutely not be the path that you follow DE.

Please DE, re-evaluate the way you want to accomplish these changes and consider positive reinforcement and it's benefits instead of always turning to the nerfbat. Thank you for your time.

 

 

[AdunSaveMe]

Sorties should be popular because they're fun, not because it's the only way to farm cores.

[yiLuxiON]

Yes there is one place that R5 core drop rate is not nerfed.

ALL T4 VOID MISSIONS.

Yes i really love farming R5 cores using my semi rare T4 keys. Even T3 missions don't drop R5 cores as frequently (and never in non-endless missions types).

[TheFalseEclipse]

Wrong on some parts, like no reliable method of fusion cores. Say that to the @(*()$ rng drop at void.

Sortie is fun cause the difficulty, and some of us aim for rare reward

[MopUpCrewman]

Being someone who doesn't care about maximizing R10 mods, I've always found Fusion Cores as a reward for doing a Sortie to be quite annoying. Sure, they're still a good, useful reward and you can never have too many of them but it just feels like a dull reward.

Edited March 12, 2016 by Senpai-Pie

[Silvus-Sol]

9 minutes ago, TheFalseEclipse said:

Wrong on some parts, like no reliable method of fusion cores. Say that to the @(*()$ rng drop at void.

Sortie is fun cause the difficulty, and some of us aim for rare reward

11 minutes ago, AdunSaveMe said:

Sorties should be popular because they're fun, not because it's the only way to farm cores.

I know that there are currently other places to get Fusion Cores. The point was that if DE decides to keep nerfing Fusion Core rewards universally, because they want those players to do Sorties, then there will be few reliable methods left by the time they are done.

And yes, the appeal of Sorties is mostly the difficulty and the chance at a rare reward. I'm not disputing that. DE seems to have forgotten this, or has deemed that it is not enough of a reason, and has said that they want Fusion Core farmers to turn to Sorties as well. Whatever their reasoning, I just want them to stop and think before they get nerf happy.

Edited March 12, 2016 by Silvus-Sol

[Jakorak]

on a slightly related note, plenty of people have remarked on the stick being waved all over the place, eliminating high quality focus farm everywhere but ''draco''

[PnOyLeeT]

then the Fomorians come flying in again to bring more R5 cores...

[Cray]

I've been noticing a trend at DE lately. It's the reason why I've stopped putting money into this game: They seem to be increasing the grind, while decreasing the farm. In other words, requiring more grind while getting less out of it.

[Maicael]

If the info on Core drop rates is correct, then perhaps it's getting ready for being able to convert duplicate mods to fusion cores that was discussed in a Devstream.

I think I've got about 30k-40k duplicate mods ready to become fusion cores.

[Fionntan]

On 3/12/2016 at 2:10 AM, Maicael said:

If the info on Core drop rates is correct, then perhaps it's getting ready for being able to convert duplicate mods to fusion cores that was discussed in a Devstream.

I think I've got about 30k-40k duplicate mods ready to become fusion cores.

That would be welcomed on my book. <3 

Edited July 21, 2016 by Fionntan
Just ignore it, must posted half asleep -.-;;

[Cray]

8 minutes ago, Maicael said:

If the info on Core drop rates is correct, then perhaps it's getting ready for being able to convert duplicate mods to fusion cores that was discussed in a Devstream.

I think I've got about 30k-40k duplicate mods ready to become fusion cores.

This strikes me as at best a sidegrade, and at worst a downgrade.

Right now, with a good setup, we can get cores as rewards. A change like this, we aren't just losing out on cores, we're making up for it by spending our duplicates. I can only be okay with this if we get more out of our duplicates this way than if we used them directly.

Edited March 12, 2016 by DeltaPhantom

[Zhendar]

The rate of Fusion cores has surely gone down...  This is very depressing.  I hope DE has an answer to this.   If they are going to take away the drop rate of fusion cores, at least give us another way to get them. I do not have the time to put 40 hours of game just to get fusion cores. I do have another life.  

Edited March 13, 2016 by Zhendar

[izzatuw]

So in order to reliably get cores we should only be able to get a chance to get 25 R5 cores a day but to maximise one Primed mod we need roughly 500+ R5 Cores to do so. Not only that, you can only do one sortie every 24 hours, so how is this making grind anymore tolerable?

 

They seem to have a habit to make the game much more favorable for people that can freely spend hours on the game while making progress for people that can only spend 1-2 hours on the game feel very insignificant to others or miniscule.

 

If say each sortie mission guaranteed you 25 R5 cores a day that would be more than wonderful and you would still need a few days to farm them to max a primed mod.

 

Or just make 25 R5 cores guaranteed on last run and another item from the drop table.

Edited March 13, 2016 by izzatuw

[kubbi]

On 12-3-2016 at 7:08 AM, Senpai-Pie said:

Being someone who doesn't care about maximizing R10 mods, I've always found Fusion Cores as a reward for doing a Sortie to be quite annoying. Sure, they're still a good, useful reward and you can never have too many of them but it just feels like a dull reward.

I also find them annoying. To me it seems that core stack rewards drop on a lot of wrong places. For example I play sorties for the lenses and item parts. Core stacks also drop from high tiered void missions while I go to the void for prime item farming not cores. Cores are okay in A and B rotations. But not on one reward missions such as exterminate, capture and C rotations.

Imo core stacks should be a regular reward in normal nodes. That will give people to play them more rather than playing the same nodes over again and void missions for the majority of the time.

[Romalic]

remember not last devstream but the one before scott said you will be able to change normal mods into cores of the same rarity eventually to allow you to more easily use the masses of duplicate mods we all have, cores will become less farmed when this eventually happens, if it does

[Blades_In_The_Dark]

I've always felt that in any endless mission where fusion cores DO drop, they ought to be of a quality relative to the mission (tier 1 is bronze, t2 is silver, t3/4 is gold) and the quantity ought to be relative to the wave (at 5 minutes its 5 cores, 10 minutes its 10 cores, etc). I always felt that IF you survived beyond the 20 minute mark its at least worth your time because you MIGHT score 50 cores on that 50 minute mark.

As it stands now, I think there is a penalty beyond 20 minutes because your chances of item X don't improve, and the scaling effectively prevents you from having an easy time rolling again for the same pool you already rolled for

 

Sorties were likewise an unattractive lure for me and my static. Not only are the rewards random, but the conditions of the sortie limit your choice so it forces me to play a certain way. I HATE being told how to play, so on principle I avoid sorties because they screwed up sniper rifles so badly I'd rather quit the game entirely than pick another one up (despite loving them before the rework and having 3+ forma on every sniper rifle) on a Sniper Only sortie. 

I feel like if I participate in that system, it encourages DE; and since its piss-poor design (in my opinion) I simply refuse to go, nor do I even click on the tab.

[SYL3NZR]

On 12.3.2016 at 7:01 AM, AdunSaveMe said:

Sorties should be popular because they're fun, not because it's the only way to farm cores.

speak for yourself mate

i consider most sorties quite the opposite of fun, gamemodes i already don't like being made more "difficult" (in the wrong way of difficult) and very timeconsuming with very little reward for the effort put in

[Chaosdreamer]

On 12/3/2016 at 7:01 AM, AdunSaveMe said:

Sorties should be popular because they're fun, not because it's the only way to farm cores.

Sortie is not always fun , remember the bursa ? now they add'ed fog on interception ...

Actually just that all mission is not random is not a fun factor like 3rd cannot be extermination etc ,there is also false difficulty add'ed on extermination instead of 100/120 ennemy as usual you get 300/400 , all you had to do dunno make ennemy level 3/4x on 2 nd sortie en 6 to 8x on 3rd sortie (Ok 60 x 8 =level 480 that should still be ok to kill )

Oh btw since they did that I'm getting tons of core from sortie , I don't even have to wonder what I'm getting its either 25 or 50 whatever difficulty of sortie

[AdunSaveMe]

3 hours ago, SYL3NZR said:

speak for yourself mate

i consider most sorties quite the opposite of fun, gamemodes i already don't like being made more "difficult" (in the wrong way of difficult) and very timeconsuming with very little reward for the effort put in

 

2 hours ago, Chaosdreamer said:

Sortie is not always fun , remember the bursa ? now they add'ed fog on interception ...

Actually just that all mission is not random is not a fun factor like 3rd cannot be extermination etc ,there is also false difficulty add'ed on extermination instead of 100/120 ennemy as usual you get 300/400 , all you had to do dunno make ennemy level 3/4x on 2 nd sortie en 6 to 8x on 3rd sortie (Ok 60 x 8 =level 480 that should still be ok to kill )

Oh btw since they did that I'm getting tons of core from sortie , I don't even have to wonder what I'm getting its either 25 or 50 whatever difficulty of sortie

I didn't say they ARE fun. I said fun should be the deciding factor on whether or not people play them.

[armlesspotato]

DE mentioned they are working on a method to convert pile of junk mods into fusion cores. They mentioned it in one of the latest devstreams i don't remember which one.

I look forward to it, as long as they work on it so it wouldn't give an unranked common core for like 50 junks mods.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

agreed, Core Drops are in the stupidest of Places. and nobody will do Starchart Excavations unless it's an Alert or they need Cryotic.  there was no harm whatsoever in letting cores drop there. I'm also fine with them dropping in Sorties, as long as it's a large quantity. I am NOT OK with them dropping in T4 Exterminate however, because they are more challenging, and those keys are very hard to come by. same with most other T4 and T3 keys. Void Cores should only be a thing on the lower towers; less risk, less reward, so it's fair. the same applies Vice Versa: harder to complete missions should ALWAYS give better rewards than easier ones, NO exceptions.

thank goodness for Formorians and Tac Alerts that practically throw Cores at you. and thank you to all the enemies who are kind enough to drop an R5 Gold Core, even though we just violently murdered them. without them, a lot of people would be struggling.

[(PSN)Lord_Gremlin]

What they want is for people to farm for a year to max one primed mod and to trade legendary cores for 1000+ platinum. What they will achieve is massive drop in player numbers because game is turning into trash. That's how it looks like to outsider anyway. 

Sorties played just for fun.. Remove interception and energy reduction (since you are forced to spam powers anyway).  Suddenly much better. Eximus stronghold is a godsend for rare eximi scans. That's how I finally scanned arid seeker eximus. So rare otherwise. 

[KIREEK]

Excavation core probablility on rotation A remains at 25%

There are plenty of core % nerfs topics already, each and single update has someone complaining about that, your best bet would be to contact the other clueless players that made similar topics, the rest of us take facts into account, not rng based facts

As for getting cores, you can get them pretty much everywhere, from sabotage, fomorian sabotage, tactical alert, survival, interception (both rotation C and rotation A in archwing), spy and void missions.

Meaning that by playing the game you get cores at a decent rate and i have to say the rate is to dam high compared to how hard it was to get them initially.

r5 fusion cores are pretty much everywhere now, they were placed to promote players to do certain missions (like archwing interception) or to do fomorian sabotage after getting the parts of imperator vandal.

Edited March 13, 2016 by KIREEKPSO

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

I really want to like sorties, but realistically, lately it has devolved into wasting an hour every day for an unlikely chance to get a legendary core... The rewards are bad, the payoff is terrible, and at the very least, every mission should give you one drop from the drop table...

I second the bringing back of the 25 cores when you completed Sortie 3. That thing made it feel like it was actually worth completing sorties.