Simplifying the Vauban "Crisis"

[(PSN)Silverback73]

So a deeper theme running through the thread is the dissatisfaction with drop table dilution and void under-utilization.

Do players see this as a WIP issue or a conscious choice by DE?

If a choice, do you think it is done (lack of drop locations, lower drop rates) simply to increase the time it takes as a necessary evil to keep the business model successful for PA purchases with a side effect being a more intense, less enjoyable grind?

Or do you think that a financial decision was made to purposely make the grind harder and less enjoyable in hopes of "breaking" players reluctant to pay?

[notlamprey]

22 minutes ago, Stratego89 said:

As I said in the other thread TWICE now- the cost is based on YOU. The people like  YOU that have a lot of stuff like YOU have said yourself. It's not the EXPLOITERS like you seem completely obsessed with believing that DE based the prices on. It's US. YOU and I. The so called "Veterans" that have tons of resources because they've played a lot. You have NO reason to complain when YOU are the reason it's happened. They don't want us getting stuff right away. Deal with it. That's the end of it. Done. Period. Over. You don't NEED IT RIGHT AWAY. You don't DESERVE it right away JUST because you play a lot. That's your opinion- and it's an asinine one.

This is entirely wrong, in addition to being hypercombative and not at all helpful to the larger discussion.

The cost is based on a serious flaw in the plan DE have decided to go ahead with for dealing with player resource stockpiles. Players shouldn't be blamed for making use of the systems in place; the onus is on the developers to design systems with rulesets that don't lead to mass heartburn down the road.

Singling people out for abuse isn't helping anything either. You might want to take a break, examine your personal stake in all this, and come back when you're in a better frame of mind.

[(XBOX)EternalDrk Mako]

4 hours ago, SirWolfen said:

An actual reasonable post in the forums.

ditto this ^

[Kevyne_Kicklighter]

3 hours ago, Gamer3548 said:

I still think 5% drop chance is BS.

It's better than 17 weeks of not getting anything, and 24 others competing for the same gear.

NICE, MY ITEM DROPPED!

MS/OS/Roll

You: 22

They: 9000!

YOU LOSE TO RNG TWICE FOR THE NTH WEEK!

That's it for the whole week, too.

Seriously, you guys are the guys after a losing to a roll, then badger the winner to give the gear to you, too.

No concept of even shame.
 

[(XBOX)Dr Desflurane]

2 hours ago, Psychus said:

I'll direct you to this thread. 

Inflation is the cause. Drew says it himself. 

Drew's argument is not a very strong one though as DE has all the tools necessary to control the flow & stores of resources in this game.  Inflation is present because they allowed it to happen.   Single resource sinks such as the Sibear and now Vauban are not solutions to inflation.    Proposed solutions: 

Monthly readjustments to not only resource drop tables but also the amount with each drop.

Community resource sinks: clan/alliance based - special dojo rooms , Lunaro arenas, return of solar rails?

Monthly market cosmetic item with costs based on market balance since nobody actually needs these items but everyone wants them

Change the resource costs on consumables (health, energy plates, etc...) more frequently to maintain balance

Using new event or tac alerts which require consumables such as Formorian disruptors for example.

These are just a few examples of means to control the resource economics within Warframe that DE has s at their disposal.  The current methodology is either misinformed, just lazy or part of a larger push towards players buying prime access.

[Kevyne_Kicklighter]

1 hour ago, (XB1)Dr Desflurane said:

Drew's argument is not a very strong one though as DE has all the tools necessary to control the flow & stores of resources in this game.

And they did. 2014 wanted Oxium it was a h-a-r-d farm. Now? Get over 1k in one night solo without effort.

DE is bending over backwards to give access to players. Even the mats are offered in a passive manner. No fighting over nodes, simply play and the mats are there for you to simply pick up.

[(XBOX)Dr Desflurane]

30 minutes ago, Kevyne_Kicklighter said:

And they did. 2014 wanted Oxium it was a h-a-r-d farm. Now? Get over 1k in one night solo without effort.

...and now it's 2016 and he is saying there is resource inflation.  I'm not really sure you got my point.  I feel that measures they are taking to control resource inflation are ineffective. I do think 7k oxium is a bit of a grind for the average player but that is not the real problem DE is addressing.  Grind was addressed in reducing the requirement from 14k to 7k.  One-off resource dumps will not fix the problem they contend to want to fix.

Edited May 21, 2016 by (XB1)Dr Desflurane
Clarity

[(PSN)robotwars7]

5 hours ago, Hesyol said:

No sorry I still don't understand their logic here. Sink? Why nitain? Why oxium? I never had excessive amount of any of those. From my point of view 500k alloy plates or 70 orokin cells would make more sence. I don't care about parts, will get them sooner or later, but that choice of resources is just strange

^this. if you're gonna have resource sinks, they need to be sinks for things we ACTUALLY have an excess of, not a rare material that we farm for more frequently. I'd love an Alloy  Plate/Orokin Cell sink, but we end up farming rare resources while clinging on to a massive Surplus of Common ones.

ultimately as far as mind-set goes, I will be honest and say I'm somewhere in-between "gimme now" and "I can wait". I will grind desperately as much as I can for what I want, but I do end up feeling the burn when RNG swallows all my keys and doesn't give me anything remotely useful in return. I do try to see the brighter side 9I won't run out of Cores or Ducats any time soon), but it does irk me when I get that 55th Carrier Carapace.

ultimately it's just a case of Give unto the void, but I think that as long as RNG is in a position to shaft us as hard as it does, we shouldn't ALSO have to worry about having a ridiculous amount of a less common resource. it used to be "you have the resources, now pray", but now it's "farm for X, farm for Y, and pray". obviously not everybody is going to appreciate this, and we all know it goes directly against "reducing the grind", which DE have only ever lied about.

I'd rather the next primes be just like the good old days, where it all depended on how much RNGsus hates you.

 

[Apricity--]

When people cant get what they want, when they want it

 

They yell at the developers until they are able to get it easily

[Kevyne_Kicklighter]

1 hour ago, (XB1)Dr Desflurane said:

...and now it's 2016 and he is saying there is resource inflation.

There is. R5 core farming has players upto their eyeballs in Cryotic, as it is. Oxium, the players -- and not whiners -- have it already. Same with the Nitain, as the week before the new PA the Nitain alerts were so much I fled elsewhere. DE offered ALL the components to upgrade the Frame and weapons AND Nitain 1/2 weeks in advance. News bulletins told folks Loki was going into the vault, so the new primed Frame was near.

As they say, the early bird gets the worm. The guy late to the party better hope he's a bear for the long winter!

[Hypernaut1]

A month from now DE will see a ton of VPs crafted without a problem and nothing will change.  

[TehGMMan]

1 hour ago, kanslor said:

When people cant get what they want, when they want it

 

They yell at the developers until they are able to get it easily

Feel free to farm every part for me then. <3 RNG

[SoulSpectre]

I understand the crafting requirements and all that. I get how we should 'work' for it, and farm for a long time for it and all so it feels exclusive and worthy, sure. But how about for busy people with work or other non-video game related responsibilities filling their lives? What if they like the game a lot, like Vauban Prime a lot? It's either buy the super expensive Prime Access or farm until January 01, 2035.

The option of going into void for a few hours/days and getting the parts and craft is never gonna happen again. I assume the next whatever item would need like 500 argons and 5000 neural sensors because that's the direction DE is going to now. 

Another thing bothering me is the 7,000 oxium requirement. I mean for Zephyr, it's as I quote: "Being mostly composed of Oxium, Zephyr is a significantly lighter Warframe when compared with other warframes, suffering less gravity and thus falls slower." So what, Vauban Prime is made of gas now? With this amount of oxium shouldn't I be floating in the air permanently? In my opinion, that didn't come to the devs' mind when they designed the requirements. They only thought of how the players should have to log in and play this game non-stop and check in every few hours because hey, I might get one single Nitain Extract!

P.S. I'm not salty about this: I don't care about Vauban and I'm not gonna waste my time doing all those stuff,  these thoughts actually just popped in my mind when I heard of the 14,000 requirement. My only concern is the direction that DE is going. I have real life responsibilities, so does a LOT of the player base: If every single weapon/frame/mod will take weeks or months to make/acquire, then we'd either have to be rich and can just throw away money every single time something good comes up, or give up the responsibilities to play, or ultimately just give up on the game because everything good is locked up behind 30 years of non-stop farming.

[(XBOX)Solargeo]

2 nitan per part and 4k oxuim intead of 7k 

[(PSN)Tsion]

People are always going to want it "now". If you're a veteran who's stockpiled the resources needed then you reap the rewards to build things. If you can't, or don't, play for days and hours on then you yourself have to work up to it. The choices of resources that the Vauban uses are things you could have been sticking up on. Are they ideal resources? Heck no. But if you've been around with Warframe long enough you should know that if they implement a "new resource" you can be darn sure it's gonna be used in a lot of things to come. Stop asking for things to be handed to you. Earn it. These are not new concepts.

[_jorgi_]

There is no spoon....

[KiteoHatto]

10 hours ago, TehGMMan said:

Feel free to farm every part for me then. <3 RNG

Stuff like this actually happens lmao

[-KoreanPotato-]

*insert thank you gif here*

[CaliburxZero]

Oh look, a thread that panders to (most) of the elites of this game and a strong generalization of how people who aren't ok with how vauban was dealt with as basically being "always entitled" essentially.

Now, let me point out just for the record:  The "elites" I speak of aren't founders, MR20+ people, or people with insane posting counts... It is EVERYONE ON THESE FORUMS.  If you didn't figure this out yet, anybody who comes here let alone posts are people who care alot more about this game then the average guy.  When it comes to the biggest grinds and hardest content, its going to be no secret a good majority of the people here don't even need to worry about 7 or even 14k oxium.  I am even one of those people.  Of course not all of the "elites" will agree, but still, if there was ever a time to try to win points with the vast majority of the high-end players on this game, coming here to do it is the way to go.

Now, i'll go into depth on my viewpoint that frankly, this thread pretends doesn't exist.  Vauban prime is disgusting on DE's part for two very good reasons:  They ignore most of their own game, and they are "testing how much they can make off us".  

I will start with the fact that they "ignore their own game" now:

So.  Ladies and Gentlemen,  I give to you...  the REST of the void.  Was it really necessary to put everything into Rotation C, let alone Survival 3 like it always is?  No, of course not.  Almost all of the "good stuff" is all packed into the same drop tables, while even more disgustingly, we have items being "vaulted to prevent drop table dilution".  No.  If you need to dilute tables to slow down how easily you can get things, they could have easily filled up these items in all of the drop tables and mission levels that didn't have a ton with the older stuff, and more evenly distributed the nicer, new things.  And if you feel that's not possible.... I present to you the section of the game that is almost completely empty, the derelict runs.  And its not like you can't put Prime parts there.  Remember where Kama Prime Handles drop?  Pepperidge farm does. (Its Orokin derelict defense)

Now, the second half of what I initially said in the Vauban megathread regarding the situation... This is a disgusting practice in flexing just how far they can multiply the grind before the community breaks.  See, that's okay to have grind creep.  But sorry DE, you got waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too greedy and your greed was showing.  When you plopped down that 14k oxium requirement... sure, by MMORPG grind standards, that's still not that huge.  Proportionately speaking though?  That was a gigantic middle finger.  And for those of you going OMGYOUNEWBSWANTEVERYTHINGNAO just keep quiet, please.  If you really want to support this then how about we all grovel at DE's feet and let them multiply the grind.  I don't care how much you play this game, if they start raising the bar of double or triple what the last requirement is, or keep on inching it forward at the pace Vauban prime jumped versus other content, even the most "no-life" player here will start to be in trouble very quickly.

And the shortsighted toxic of lashing out against players unhappy only hurts yourselves, the community not to mention approval of what happened here.  Yeah... casuals need to work for things and slowly, and the hardcore players should have the nicer stuff quick because we work hard.  That's fine.  But if you make the gap too large, you upset the casuals.  And hate to break it to you all:  There's way more of them than us.  Population-wise... the people on these forums are what?  Maybe 10% of all of us?  Who knows, i don't have the numbers in front of me.  However, this doesn't change the fact that widening the gap too much too quickly will hurt the game's overall population, it makes it look like you're trying to get the little guy to pony up money or else, or seriously spits on people who want nice things but can't spend a ton of time on the game.

 

Last and not least to people feeling like everyone entitled for not being happy with Vauban, just remember... "You" are not above "me".  Everyone is equals here, with an opinion and you don't have to agree.  Generalizing and trying to nicely come after people in creation of a thread to insult people without the same opinion is kind of disgusting.  

PS OP, trying to claim you're a "casual" when you have some 1,400 posts in the community I giggle to myself.  Come on now, you aren't a real casual.  I'm sorry but that claim was merely to take a pot-shot at people who are truly casuals.  A real casual player maybe plays a handful of hours a week and never even looks at these forums.

Edited May 22, 2016 by CaliburxZero

[Hypernaut1]

23 minutes ago, CaliburxZero said:

.

Now, i'll go into depth on my viewpoint that frankly, this thread pretends doesn't exist.  Vauban prime is disgusting on DE's part for two very good reasons:  They ignore most of their own game, and they are "testing how much they can make off us".  

 

"Disgusting"? Really?

Disgusting would be if we didnt even have a chance at grabbbing the latest prime 1 week after release. DE could very well make primes something exclusive that most of us have to wait for if we dont pay...and they would STILL be fair because primes arent a huge upgrade to begin with.

Some of you are so ignorant to the depths DE could sink to, to nickel and dime us and still remain fair. 

Ive seen gamers except far worse systems and the players just accept it. Any other games could've locked primes away to only paying players, or make us wait months to access it for free. And we would all accept it because the truth is, primes aren't game changing for the most part. 

[(PSN)Silverback73]

On May 21, 2016 at 4:19 PM, notlamprey said:

This is entirely wrong, in addition to being hypercombative and not at all helpful to the larger discussion.

The cost is based on a serious flaw in the plan DE have decided to go ahead with for dealing with player resource stockpiles. Players shouldn't be blamed for making use of the systems in place; the onus is on the developers to design systems with rulesets that don't lead to mass heartburn down the road.

Singling people out for abuse isn't helping anything either. You might want to take a break, examine your personal stake in all this, and come back when you're in a better frame of mind.

Stratego IS right, and I believe his post was one of emphasis to drive the point home and not a personal attack.

At this point in the game's lifecycle, vested/invested players make up a very large % of $$$ invested.

New players certainly are important, but a large portion has become very much like an annuity business.  Warframe survives by building a repeat customer base and through revenue stream diversity and monetization.

This is backed up by one thing more than any other: PA  BOOSTERS.

DE examined previous Prime Access to see where the threshold is for profitability, and if veterans have pushed the limits of acceptable effort to the detriment of PA profitability (I suspect this is the case for Saryn Prime), then drop rates and crafting requirements will go up in an attempt to drive both types of PA sales.

My belief is that Vauban Prime's Access and Accessories sales are the most critical of any thus far, because if the increased grind has the opposite of the intended effect of righting the financial curve, then you now have a confirmed downward trend in sales over 6 months.

And I want Warframe to continue to succeed.

[(XBOX)Papa Requiem]

You know what people COULD do? Stop complaining and farm Nitain as it pops up because news flash, a lot of new stuff needs it! Why, I have 40 of it stocked up. I just need to go out and grind the parts. I don't even do all the Nitain alerts anyway. If it's something like defense or interception I'll pass but if I happen to as a sabotage, exterminate etc alert for Nitain I'll do it. Why? Because I like to be prepared. People are simply too lazy to do their prep before they need it. It's the same problem with people who complain about the void trader visits being too short.

[Omnimorph]

Speaking personally, I'm the same, I just play casually and get a thing when I get it.

But you can understand the frustration for a specific sub-class of players: those who determinedly play f2p and don't buy anything (or much).  If you've been playing the game for a long time in that way and really want the new shiny, it's bound to be really frustrating if you get a bad RNG run.  Nobody minds grinding some for things, it's actually fun, and you do get a sense of elation when you get the thing.  But if you get a bad RNG run, keep doing missions, and don't get the thing after some ridiculous number of missions, that's got to be pretty horrible.

[CaliburxZero]

3 hours ago, Hypernaut1 said:

"Disgusting"? Really?

Disgusting would be if we didnt even have a chance at grabbbing the latest prime 1 week after release. DE could very well make primes something exclusive that most of us have to wait for if we dont pay...and they would STILL be fair because primes arent a huge upgrade to begin with.

Some of you are so ignorant to the depths DE could sink to, to nickel and dime us and still remain fair. 

Ive seen gamers except far worse systems and the players just accept it. Any other games could've locked primes away to only paying players, or make us wait months to access it for free. And we would all accept it because the truth is, primes aren't game changing for the most part. 

Arguing "it could be worse" doesn't excuse what it is.  Sorry, you tried, but, you basically have no legs to stand on.

Okay, comparison time.  I'll use Mechwarrior online as an example, where I've dropped hundreds and a founder.  When they release a new mech, they make you wait X amount of weeks for a mech to be available for premium currency, then finally to earn for free.  Something you cite as being bad.  Which when it does finally become "Free to earn" its pricing is the same as other mechs within its weight class.

If you're trying to say that system is worse, i'd frankly take it over what Vauban's bullcrap policy is of multiplying build requirements on top of very obvious awful drop locations.  If waiting a few weeks up to a couple months AFTER Prime Access holders get their prime stuff in exchange for a fair grind is the pricetag called "patience", i'll pay it.  At least when i do finally go to grind for it then, it wouldn't be tedious and boring waiting for Rotation C all day long.

But hey, with your logic I guess having your kneecaps shot out is a pleasant experience if the guy next to you is having his arms sawed off.  

Oh and PS, I know you have no legs to stand on because you went after me calling it "disgusting" rather than a single point i actually had to make.  lol.

Edited May 22, 2016 by CaliburxZero

[notlamprey]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)Silverback73 said:

Stratego IS right, and I believe his post was one of emphasis to drive the point home and not a personal attack.

At this point in the game's lifecycle, vested/invested players make up a very large % of $$$ invested.

New players certainly are important, but a large portion has become very much like an annuity business.  Warframe survives by building a repeat customer base and through revenue stream diversity and monetization.

This is backed up by one thing more than any other: PA  BOOSTERS.

DE examined previous Prime Access to see where the threshold is for profitability, and if veterans have pushed the limits of acceptable effort to the detriment of PA profitability (I suspect this is the case for Saryn Prime), then drop rates and crafting requirements will go up in an attempt to drive both types of PA sales.

My belief is that Vauban Prime's Access and Accessories sales are the most critical of any thus far, because if the increased grind has the opposite of the intended effect of righting the financial curve, then you now have a confirmed downward trend in sales over 6 months.

And I want Warframe to continue to succeed.

I think we're gonna have to agree to disagree on a lot of these points, and I'm not exactly clear on how boosters are related to the profitability of PA.

Are we simply forwarding the idea that 'repeat customers' of Prime Access are purchasing it for the boosters? Without access to any of the hard numbers, it's hard to see how the inclusion of boosters is related to PA profitability.

What hasn't really been talked about is the effect of PA sales on the supply of blueprints/parts generated for trade. I'm sure it's not a simple relationship, but I'd be interested to know how PA sales correlate to the supply of these goods.

Vauban Prime Access will definitely be looked back on as a pivot point; I couldn't speculate beyond that. Players may want to keep track of the platinum trading value for the items included in this round of Prime Access, especially compared to Saryn.

How long will it take for a Vauban Prime Set to fall to 200pl? Will it not even sink that low before the next Prime Access arrives?

That's the question I'm particularly interested in for the time being, since a lot of other posters appear to be either insiders or business experts. I just can't compete with that kind of expertise. ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ