DE: Sibear and Vauban Prime just revealed a very important problem in Warframe

[Violetear]

Hello, mi name is Violetear and I have been part of the Warframe community since last autumn, I have experienced The Second Dream, three Prime Access and a variety of other things, but of that last batch the two most important are the Sibear and Vauban Prime.

With an astronomical cost of 30,000 Cryotic units to build the Sibear and 7,000 Oxium for Vauban Prime a conceptual problem in Warframe has come to light: the “endgame”.

But let us back up first and return to the Sibear; the requirement of 30,000 Cryotic translates to 30 excavation runs of 10 excavators each, a middle level mission (Zeugma, Phobos) takes around 24 minutes to complete 10 excavators in an optimal situation, 4 player squad with either a Vauban or a Frost and some weapons with at least a 6+ base damage mod. This 4-man elite squad would get the required Cryotic in around 720 minutes or 12 hours.

The counterargument that is usually posed against this is that this players more than likely already have the required Cryotic from doing other things is the game, such as Fusion Core farming. But this is a dangerous argument in the sense that is can easily be turned around. “If players have silos full of resources how much would it really cost them to invest those on a weapon or a Warframe?” says one group, “These weapons and frames should work like milestones” says the other.

But in these cyclic discussions the only group that matters are the ones we started with: highly experimented and specialized players.

As time has gone by, even before I came into the game, the game has been slowly balancing towards the more experienced players (as shown by DE[Glen]’s 2000 Cryotic experiment), this wasn’t a problem in the early days where the absolute gap between players was despicable, but Rathuum, the Sibear and Vauban Prime have demonstrated that the gap is big enough to become a problem. In a system where resources are stored infinitely the excess most either go circulate or be eliminated, and the game only allows the second option. The game is presenting something akin to an inflation problem, where individual resources and worth less and less as time goes on, and both the Sibear and Vauban Prime are answers to the stockpiles.

Ideas like resource caps are temporal solutions to a bigger problem that most be addressed as soon as possible. Since the beginning of Warframe DE has declared that they don’t believe in an “endgame” as is, I perceive as a result of the sentiment that doing so would create gaps and elitism in the community. The problem is that those factors have already cropped up into the game: not all players are equal, and it would be ideal having all of them be but we must accept that reality is different and treating players like if they are all the same only favors those who take advantage of the system and disfavors everyone else.

Warframe needs a real progression that allows differentiation between new and experienced players in a substantial way that goes beyond the mods or the insignificant MR system. Progression by story is a good way to introduce new mechanics, but it also can introduce things like resources and objectives whose value goes beyond filling up a bar with Affinity and can give experienced players a similar comparative value to the new ones so that then can both experience challenges that go according to their level, skill and time invested.

When U18 arrived and news that the Sentients would play a major role were revealed I hoped that that meant access to the Tau system, a new beginning for experienced players where they can face challenges created specifically for them and go beyond reducing your energy or limiting your weapon choices like Sorties do. That way each sector of the player base would have their own system balanced to their capabilities and both new and old Tenno don’t have to suffer thanks to the sins of the other. The problem has come to a point where veteran players exploit the system to the extreme in order to face a challenge and new players have to pay the consequence of that exploiting, at the same time new players struggle to pass Sedna and both the Starchart and Void have to be balanced around them so that they can play, but then the veteran players, being so far ahead from the new, have to go to gigantic lengths to find a place where they can feel challenged. It is a cyclic system, and the cycle is becoming larger as time goes on  

DE, players are not all equal and for the good of the game you should stop treating them like they are. Are they all capable of reaching the peak of the mountain? Absolutely. Should they all be treated like they are in the peak or at the bottom? Absolutely not.

[(XBOX)I Killed brunts]

7K oxium? Oh for the love of...

[Tizodd]

I totally agree that the shear amount of resources is way too high for new or more casual players.

It's my opinion that the resource costs of things like Vauban P and Sibear should be lowered.  For long-time or hard care players, they would be rewarded by not having to farm so extensively; for the new or more casual player, the resource farm wouldn't be so disheartening.

[(PSN)Clockwork_Kaiju]

Honestly I feel for you, I really do. However that being said I don't see what the huge problem is.  I sat down one weekend when I had a few hours to spare from life and worked to farm out the 30k cryotic. It was a pain sure at first. I was running them solo, then messaged a few of my warframe community friends and the grind became enjoyable.  The grind is what you make of it.  I don't think having such high resource requirements is a problem, gives you something to work towards. The problem is player attitudes that everything should be easy to get. All good things come in time as they say. 

[bad4youLT]

8 minutes ago, (XB1)I Killed brunts said:

7K oxium? Oh for the love of...

its not what hard i get thousands of oxium form pluto cerberus

[Tesseract7777]

This is not a problem at all. People are making a mountain out of nothing as usual.

You shouldn't be able to get the latest stuff without some grinding if you want it bloody free, or the game would die very fast. And don't say the grind will kill the game. Wf has always been  grind heavy and it's more popular than ever.

 

The real problem are all the entitled players who are used to either already having all the resources they need to build something, or at least finding it easy to get the rest. It's absurd.

 

You want new stuff in a free game? Either pay money or put in some serious effort.

 

Last point: people say grind has gotten worse but I disagree. Some resource requirements have gone up, but some resources drop in bigger quantities now and the vast majority of players have a lot of extra resources.

 

The people complaining about building mats are a loud group, but a very small minority with no leg to stand on. Either pay money or put in effort. Don't just expect stuff for free.

 

Seriously the people complaining are almost all "customers" who never pay for anything... and are complaining about free stuff being too hard to get. Do none of you see how utterly entitled and illogical that is? 

 

They already lowered the oxium a lot just to be nice to angry players that have mostly never spent a cent on the game. Go farm the resources and stop complaining or buy it. You don't need the latest prime right now anyway. You just want it right now.

Edited May 19, 2016 by Tesseract7777

[(XBOX)I Killed brunts]

1 minute ago, bad4youLT said:

its not what hard i get thousands of oxium form pluto cerberus

It's about 700-1000 oxium osprey kills, which aren't that common. If you don't happen to gold core farm which I don't and have since farming spent your oxium (grattler, mantis) it's an absolute PITA. 

[T7Alpha]

I have seen this exact thread so many times in the past 2 days... 

[SilvaDreams]

*clears her throat* Stop rushing to draco and play the star chart.

There is no issue other than lazy players who just power rush to MR21 tossing away weapons and not using them.

I'm a relative "new player" having only started in November and I have had no issues making anything because I worked my way through the planets mostly completeing them and seeing the need to collect resources for later.

And you can't claim I'm a no lifer because I work 40+ hours a week and play maybe 4-5 hours a day at best.. and casual player if you would.

[Kaotyke]

Just now, (XB1)I Killed brunts said:

It's about 700-1000 oxium osprey kills, which aren't that common. If you don't happen to gold core farm which I don't and have since farming spent your oxium (grattler, mantis) it's an absolute PITA. 

Mind you, it was 14k before they reduced it to 7k.

[RPGforDINNER]

okay so i see all these threads popping up about ooh building requirements for the new stuff are too high when we the community already complained about the 14k oxium for a single vauban part they halved it but you people don't wanna stop there nooooo let's make everything cost way less to craft and keep creating these rant/dissapointment threads

[(PSN)SupeBoss]

I guess a few people did not read your full post

Interesting point. But DE is in a very difficult situation.
In order to make any sort of progress on that end, they would have to do a complete balance overhaul; weapons, abilities, mods, frames, etc. EVERYTHING.

The way the game is now, is there any other way to challenge end-game players other than spamming nullifiers (which remove the point of the game), gimping our gear, and adding one-shot/infinite-health enemies (which ruin the point of loadout customization) at us?
The sorties are basically just 3 missions of specific gear checks. The raids are a longer form of CC check and a bunch of repetition.

On top of that, new players are just rushing to catch up to the late game players because the star chart is empty. Who the hell is playing Mars rescue missions? Everyone is on Draco. Everyone is doing sorties. Everyone is doing alerts on planets they haven't unlocked. Hopefully, progress for at least that is made in U19

[Rizubethu]

What if I told you you do NOT have to build a weapon/warframe right after you obtain its blueprint? Jesus! Everyone is like: "If I don't build sibear straight away, I'll sure as hell die tomorrow on my way to school/work/grocery store..."

[Tesseract7777]

1 minute ago, (XB1)I Killed brunts said:

It's about 700-1000 oxium osprey kills, which aren't that common. If you don't happen to gold core farm which I don't and have since farming spent your oxium (grattler, mantis) it's an absolute PITA. 

Nonsense without a resource booster or loot mods I've got over 1000 in four rounds cerberus easy.

 

This is completely dishonest over exaggerating the difficulty of farming oxium. It's not hard or even tedious at all.

[CriticalVoid1]

Unfortunately most of the prior comments are correct. You can't have a free game without a little (or a lot of) grind. Warframe would've died out after it's open beta if people felt like they didn't have something to work for.

[Meice]

This is just stupid. You just can't get everything from the beginning. That would be idiotic. Want Vauban Prime? Fine, buy it. Want it for free? Play the game longer, get better weapons and get to farming.

[(XBOX)I Killed brunts]

2 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

Nonsense without a resource booster or loot mods I've got over 1000 in four rounds cerberus easy.

 

This is completely dishonest over exaggerating the difficulty of farming oxium. It's not hard or even tedious at all.

I feel this is a somewhat OTT reaction, considering my facts are true. If your getting that many ospreys in four rounds...well I'm checking that node out. 

[DeFragMe]

personally i can agree to some points up in the List, but mostly i can only say one thing..

 

If it only takes me 1 hour a day for a month to grind enough material to build the weapon, it is fair. Because you have a goal. If you dont have something to play for, even if it is just mediocore like the sibaris, you will leave the game anyway because you got nothing left to do.

 

and yeah, thats one thing, with multiple Sentences.

[Tesseract7777]

3 minutes ago, Rizubethu said:

What if I told you you do NOT have to build a weapon/warframe right after you obtain its blueprint? Jesus! Everyone is like: "If I don't build sibear straight away, I'll sure as hell die tomorrow on my way to school/work/grocery store..."

I read the ops whole post and that seems to be the main takeaway in the text wall. He wants there to be no effort at all to building stuff. He tries to make it sound eloquent but it comes down to entitlement. People want stuff for free and they don't want to work for it.

[Husla]

9 minutes ago, Tesseract7777 said:

You shouldn't be able to get the latest stuff without some grinding if you want it bloody free, or the game would die very fast. And don't say the grind will kill the game. Wf has always been  grind heavy and it's more popular than ever.

Done plenty of grinding and I still thought the requirement was high for Sibear.

[Tesseract7777]

3 minutes ago, (XB1)I Killed brunts said:

I feel this is a somewhat OTT reaction, considering my facts are true. If your getting that many ospreys in four rounds...well I'm checking that node out. 

I'm not saying your numbers on drop amounts are wrong btw. I'm saying that oxium ospreys spawn so thick and fast on cerberus that if you have the right squad to kill them for loot before they explode you'll make bank on oxium.

Sorry for being a bit OTT I'm just a little tired of seeing these threads.

Edited May 19, 2016 by Tesseract7777

[Madway7]

21 minutes ago, bad4youLT said:

its not what hard i get thousands of oxium form pluto cerberus

Took me a bit under 2 hours with a booster. Logged in, got the 3 hour booster and decided why not farm for the Oxium before getting the part.

Cerberus, Pluto

No farm frames (random squads)

Got 1.8k Oxium. 3 rounds. 3 Tower cap.

Went again same squad (stopped at 3 before because one of them had the wrong build) 

Got 3.4k Oxium. 4 Rounds. 3 Tower cap on first and 3rd Round.

Joined another random squad. (No farm frames) 

Got 1.2k in 2 Rounds. (Someone left at round 1 btw)

Total about less than 2 hours (or maybe a bit more it's hard to tell) of play. 

Strategy. 2 players kill everything they can on either side of the map. Then run to the other side and pickup the drops (carrier recommended) at about 99% completion.

Just half the numbers I gave and that might be roughly your result (without booster) with a competent squad.

Would post the screenshots here, but it's annoying to do on mobile.

Screenshots of first 2 runs on the page

 

Edited May 19, 2016 by Madway7

[(XBOX)I Killed brunts]

Just now, Tesseract7777 said:

I'm not saying your numbers on drop amounts are wrong btw. I'm saying that oxium ospreys spawn so thick and fast on cerberus that if you have the right squad to kill them for loot before they explode you'll make bank on oxium.

Thanks for the heads up, I wasn't aware of this. I'll go hit up about 32 waves then, that should do me for a good while. 

[S0V3REiGN]

So my question is how does DE go about providing content for the high end Tenno without having the rest of the community b!tch about "gated" content? There have already been numerous threads discussing whether sortie mastery rank should be raised from 4. There was also a sh!t storm about syndicate primaries being locked at MR12. You see, people will simply not accept that somethings should be out of their reach (Sybear) just to please a certain portion of the community (high end Tenno).

[Tsoe]

i never saw a game where yu can acquire the last gear for free in few days as a new player

but you can in warframe

and once it require more than few days to get ppl start whining all over the place