Warframe, and the tedium of re-ranking

[Giantconch]

Recently DE has altered the way you rank up weapons and warframes. Currently when you add a forma to a weapon or warframe, it is given a starting mod capacity based on your current mastery rank. If you are mastery rank 12, then your weapon starts out with 12 capacity, 24 if there is a potato installed. If you are rank 20, then the weapon or frame gets 20 base capacity, 40 if a potato is installed.

 

While this is a good change and it allows people to work on getting kills in higher level missions, it does not address the tedious, and often tiring, process which is re-levelling a weapon and warframe back to rank 30 so that the weapon or frame can be forma'd again to get your builds the way you want them.

 

In a recent devstream one of the developers stated they want to do away with passive affinity gain on weapons. If you arent using it, it should not get affinity or level up.

 

If the second change discussed in the devstream comes into play, I feel it will have a significant negative impact on a number of peoples enjoyment of the game. The finer points of a system that does not allow passive affinity gain on weapons you are not using have yet to be announced or discussed with the community, however I feel its time we started thinking about what it could and will mean for re-ranking weapons and warframes you are trying to get set up in a specific way.

 

Why do people use the lootcave to rank weapons passively?

 

This is simple to answer. It's faster. If you make videos for youtube, or simply want to test out a specific build with maxed out mods to test a weapons viability, you want a fast way to get all of those forma onto the weapon to be able to discuss its potential or lack thereof either for your video, Steam review, forum post, or to appear to be that smartypants to your friends and clan. Nodes like Draco, Sechura, Oceanum, and Hieracon are the best lootcaves in the game and complete this goal in the shortest possible amount of time. Though the process of "rinse and repeat" missions like these can also get tedious and boring, it is at least a method of excaping the tedium that would be an hour or seven of survival to rank up weapons and frames.

 

Say what you want about not burning out, or just taking your time enjoying the game. You cannot say you will burn out playing the lootcave to rank weapons, and in the same breath try and tell people they wouldn't suffer from burnout by playing hundreds of hours of survival trying to rank a weapon. The method which is faster, which has a lessened chance of causing burnout, is the method which allows fast ranking that allows you to move on and use that weapon to play the missions you want.

 

Draco, sit on a box, spam powers, get a weapon max rank in 2-4 interepts depending on your tower capture style. Sechura, 20 waves of defense. If your gear isnt maxed out by the end of that, it will at least be extremely close. Hieracon, you get T3 and T4 keys and R5 cores, and after 15-20 excavators completed your gear is max rank. Oceanum, 4-6 fast and undetected runs on the spy vaults with just the weapon you are ranking equipped and it will be maxed. You don't need to use that underpowered gear, as anyone with fully ranked gear is more than effective at killing enemies by the hundreds and the shared affinity gets your weapons maxed out very quickly. In the case of Oceanum, the bonus affinity from the undetected spy vault retrievals adds up onto weapons extremely quickly.

 

With the change to the mod capcity on unranked gear, the claim is made that now people can add mods to their gear that has been forma'd and that allows them to get the kills with that weapon or warframe to be able to rank up faster. Though this change clearly does make it easier to use that weapon on a higher level mission from the start, this has not solved the issue of how insanely tedious and slow re-ranking weapons and frames can be without running a lootcave type mission.

 

You still need to go from rank 0, back to rank 30, on a weapon or warframe before you can polarize it again. The drive towards the lootcave to get it finished faster, the tedium of re-ranking, has not been dealt with.

 

This brings me back to the devstream and the proposed change to affinity so unused weapons gain no affinity at all. A weapon that is severely underpowered, even in the hands of an MR 21 or 22, is not going to rank up quickly. It is going to be a tedious task on the user to get that weapon to rank 30, either to be sold as it is seen as MR fodder, or to get forma on it so it is not as bad of a weapon. Taking away shared affinity and passive affinity gain on weapons that are not used in my opinion would be an incredibly foolish decision on the part of the developers that would result in at least some people simply saying "no thanks" to making reviews, or even bothering with trying out new weapons that are mid-tier, if the re-levelling of these weapons becomes a week long process of slugging through hours of survivals or defenses using an inefficient method of unloading a full clip into a single enemy.

 

TL:DR

 

Passive affinity gain on weapons reduces the feeling of ranking weapons being almost unbearably tedious. Taking that away is a bad idea IMO.

 

Note, it is 1:30 a.m. for me when I am writing and posting this. I'll read it over again in the morning and probably correct a few things or expand on them when I have caffeine in my blood.

 

VVV NightElve's thread on forma no longer reducing rank

 

 

*** After seeing peoples reactions and arguments FOR removing passive affinity gain, I have this to say:

 

Yes, Warframe is a grind game, unless you pay and use platinum to buy your way through. The exception is in levelling and re-ranking weapons. This can only be done through playing. IF you want to reduce the grind, you make changes to the game, so that there is no re-levelling required. HOWEVER, you would be INCREASING the grind, increasing the tedium, if you remove passive affinity gain.

 

Thanks and have a great day.

Edited June 7, 2016 by giantconch

[MagPrime]

I would like to see a system implemented that DE has already put in place for the old PvP Rail Conflicts ( I honestly don't know if this feature exists anywhere else) that would allow us to make all changes (forma) that we wanted and then just play.

IIRC, when you entered a match, all of your gear was at 0 and as you gained xp/kills, you advanced in rank.  What made this a neat feature was that as you advanced, you gained access to mods but only in the order that you placed them in your build.

i.e., if you dropped Redirection, Narrow Minded, Quick Thinking, Blind Rage, Stretch, Streamline into your set up, then as  you advanced from 0 to 5, Redirections effects would kick in and then from 6-10, Narrow Minded, 11-15, Quick Thinking, 16-20, Blind Rage, 21-25, Stretch, 26-30, Streamline. 

I think a system like this would greatly help how the community handles forma'ing it's gear. (obviously with some tweaks)  If we had the ability to map out how many forma and which mods are "activated" at which rank, then we could simply start a mission and play normally. avoiding the perceived need to sit and farm affinity.  This would avoid the frustration of a sudden damage fall off and having to do multiple missions to rank up, bail, mod, start mission, rank up, bail, start mission again.

It's 1:30a for me as well, so probably need some edits later.

[Datsher]

12 minutes ago, giantconch said:

Say what you want about not burning out, or just taking your time enjoying the game. You cannot say you will burn out playing the lootcave to rank weapons, and in the same breath try and tell people they wouldn't suffer from burnout by playing hundreds of hours of survival trying to rank a weapon. The method which is faster, which has a lessened chance of causing burnout, is the method which allows fast ranking that allows you to move on and use that weapon to play the missions you want.

I don't get why people would get burned out from skipping an annoying part of the game. Back when I didn't know about affinity farming and that kind of stuff I just played through parts of the starchart again until my weapon was thirty. But that burned me out a lot. Now I just hop onto Draco for 4 rounds and am done with leveling so I can have fun. I don't see how playing 15 minutes of farming exp would burn someone out. Yes, burnout happens through repeating things over and over, but by not choosing to level something quickly you would repeat things a lot more, plus most people burn out through void farming and not through affinity farming.

[NightElve]

36 minutes ago, giantconch said:

Recently DE has altered the way you rank up weapons and warframes. Currently when you add a forma to a weapon or warframe, it is given a starting mod capacity based on your current mastery rank. If you are mastery rank 12, then your weapon starts out with 12 capacity, 24 if there is a potato installed. If you are rank 20, then the weapon or frame gets 20 base capacity, 40 if a potato is installed.

 

While this is a good change and it allows people to work on getting kills in higher level missions, it does not address the tedious, and often tiring, process which is re-levelling a weapon and warframe back to rank 30 so that the weapon or frame can be forma'd again to get your builds the way you want them.

 

In a recent devstream one of the developers stated they want to do away with passive affinity gain on weapons. If you arent using it, it should not get affinity or level up.

 

If the second change discussed in the devstream comes into play, I feel it will have a significant negative impact on a number of peoples enjoyment of the game. The finer points of a system that does not allow passive affinity gain on weapons you are not using have yet to be announced or discussed with the community, however I feel its time we started thinking about what it could and will mean for re-ranking weapons and warframes you are trying to get set up in a specific way.

 

Why do people use the lootcave to rank weapons passively?

 

This is simple to answer. It's faster. If you make videos for youtube, or simply want to test out a specific build with maxed out mods to test a weapons viability, you want a fast way to get all of those forma onto the weapon to be able to discuss its potential or lack thereof either for your video, Steam review, forum post, or to appear to be that smartypants to your friends and clan. Nodes like Draco, Sechura, Oceanum, and Hieracon are the best lootcaves in the game and complete this goal in the shortest possible amount of time. Though the process of "rinse and repeat" missions like these can also get tedious and boring, it is at least a method of excaping the tedium that would be an hour or seven of survival to rank up weapons and frames.

 

Say what you want about not burning out, or just taking your time enjoying the game. You cannot say you will burn out playing the lootcave to rank weapons, and in the same breath try and tell people they wouldn't suffer from burnout by playing hundreds of hours of survival trying to rank a weapon. The method which is faster, which has a lessened chance of causing burnout, is the method which allows fast ranking that allows you to move on and use that weapon to play the missions you want.

 

Draco, sit on a box, spam powers, get a weapon max rank in 2-4 interepts depending on your tower capture style. Sechura, 20 waves of defense. If your gear isnt maxed out by the end of that, it will at least be extremely close. Hieracon, you get T3 and T4 keys and R5 cores, and after 15-20 excavators completed your gear is max rank. Oceanum, 4-6 fast and undetected runs on the spy vaults with just the weapon you are ranking equipped and it will be maxed. You don't need to use that underpowered gear, as anyone with fully ranked gear is more than effective at killing enemies by the hundreds and the shared affinity gets your weapons maxed out very quickly. In the case of Oceanum, the bonus affinity from the undetected spy vault retrievals adds up onto weapons extremely quickly.

 

With the change to the mod capcity on unranked gear, the claim is made that now people can add mods to their gear that has been forma'd and that allows them to get the kills with that weapon or warframe to be able to rank up faster. Though this change clearly does make it easier to use that weapon on a higher level mission from the start, this has not solved the issue of how insanely tedious and slow re-ranking weapons and frames can be without running a lootcave type mission.

 

You still need to go from rank 0, back to rank 30, on a weapon or warframe before you can polarize it again. The drive towards the lootcave to get it finished faster, the tedium of re-ranking, has not been dealt with.

 

This brings me back to the devstream and the proposed change to affinity so unused weapons gain no affinity at all. A weapon that is severely underpowered, even in the hands of an MR 21 or 22, is not going to rank up quickly. It is going to be a tedious task on the user to get that weapon to rank 30, either to be sold as it is seen as MR fodder, or to get forma on it so it is not as bad of a weapon. Taking away shared affinity and passive affinity gain on weapons that are not used in my opinion would be an incredibly foolish decision on the part of the developers that would result in at least some people simply saying "no thanks" to making reviews, or even bothering with trying out new weapons that are mid-tier, if the re-levelling of these weapons becomes a week long process of slugging through hours of survivals or defenses using an inefficient method of unloading a full clip into a single enemy.

 

TL:DR

 

Passive affinity gain on weapons reduces the feeling of ranking weapons being almost unbearably tedious. Taking that away is a bad idea IMO.

 

Note, it is 1:30 a.m. for me when I am writing and posting this. I'll read it over again in the morning and probably correct a few things or expand on them when I have caffeine in my blood.

i've made countless threads about this same issue, to the point i find it useless, i made a similar post, and some group said the Forma system is still good and they don't use Draco((casual Forum users)), my main point is Warframe is tooo good of a game, but i almost quit and a friend of mine just quit, as in when you put soo much time levelling-revelling it's not fun anymore. i like Draco but i'm praying this cheese mechanics(Draco) get nerfed to the ground!! in the next update, so people can realise how levelling up the normal way is much of a pain!, so the whole community can realise what's wrong.

Edited June 6, 2016 by NightElve

[-CM-Emptiness]

The only negative I see with removing passive affinity gain is the obvious disadvantage to starter players.

I think DE wants to completely invalidate lootcaves, so the community may be divided based on that. After all, passive affinity only works for team-situations i.e. Draco, Void, ODD etc. Now, with the reworked MR system, it becomes more beneficial for solo leveling i.e. you don't have to start from Mercury/Venus since your weapons and frames will be better modded.

You brought up a nice point on making tutorial videos, but unfortunately for the majority of the community this is simply a means to bypass the grind of leveling. That is to say, MR20/21/22 in a few days or a week, after which content is really limited. Experiencing the weapon also isn't solely based on finding out how great it is with 5 forma and a catalyst, but how well the mechanics work for your own preferences.

1 hour ago, Noamuth said:

I would like to see a system implemented that DE has already put in place for the old PvP Rail Conflicts ( I honestly don't know if this feature exists anywhere else) that would allow us to make all changes (forma) that we wanted and then just play.

IIRC, when you entered a match, all of your gear was at 0 and as you gained xp/kills, you advanced in rank.  What made this a neat feature was that as you advanced, you gained access to mods but only in the order that you placed them in your build.

i.e., if you dropped Redirection, Narrow Minded, Quick Thinking, Blind Rage, Stretch, Streamline into your set up, then as  you advanced from 0 to 5, Redirections effects would kick in and then from 6-10, Narrow Minded, 11-15, Quick Thinking, 16-20, Blind Rage, 21-25, Stretch, 26-30, Streamline. 

I think a system like this would greatly help how the community handles forma'ing it's gear. (obviously with some tweaks)  If we had the ability to map out how many forma and which mods are "activated" at which rank, then we could simply start a mission and play normally. avoiding the perceived need to sit and farm affinity.  This would avoid the frustration of a sudden damage fall off and having to do multiple missions to rank up, bail, mod, start mission, rank up, bail, start mission again.

It's 1:30a for me as well, so probably need some edits later.

I don't really get this lol. How do you access mods? Is it from the order of pickup? Are we able to drop mods for others? Is there still the 8 mod limit? Interesting system, but how does it work in end-game?

You might want to suggest this in a new topic somewhere, and maybe we can refine it and even implement it :P

Edited June 6, 2016 by -CM-Emptiness

[Giantconch]

4 minutes ago, Skycook3y said:

I don't get why people would get burned out from skipping an annoying part of the game. Back when I didn't know about affinity farming and that kind of stuff I just played through parts of the starchart again until my weapon was thirty. But that burned me out a lot. Now I just hop onto Draco for 4 rounds and am done with leveling so I can have fun. I don't see how playing 15 minutes of farming exp would burn someone out. Yes, burnout happens through repeating things over and over, but by not choosing to level something quickly you would repeat things a lot more, plus most people burn out through void farming and not through affinity farming.

 

I think thats what peoples justification for saying "Powerlevelling causes burnout" is. I dont agree with it at all. Powerlevelling so your gear is set up to deal with high level mobs and acually have fun would definitely be better for not causing burnout, than slugging through hours upon hours of tedious levelling.

 

26 minutes ago, Noamuth said:

I would like to see a system implemented that DE has already put in place for the old PvP Rail Conflicts ( I honestly don't know if this feature exists anywhere else) that would allow us to make all changes (forma) that we wanted and then just play.

IIRC, when you entered a match, all of your gear was at 0 and as you gained xp/kills, you advanced in rank.  What made this a neat feature was that as you advanced, you gained access to mods but only in the order that you placed them in your build.

i.e., if you dropped Redirection, Narrow Minded, Quick Thinking, Blind Rage, Stretch, Streamline into your set up, then as  you advanced from 0 to 5, Redirections effects would kick in and then from 6-10, Narrow Minded, 11-15, Quick Thinking, 16-20, Blind Rage, 21-25, Stretch, 26-30, Streamline. 

I think a system like this would greatly help how the community handles forma'ing it's gear. (obviously with some tweaks)  If we had the ability to map out how many forma and which mods are "activated" at which rank, then we could simply start a mission and play normally. avoiding the perceived need to sit and farm affinity.  This would avoid the frustration of a sudden damage fall off and having to do multiple missions to rank up, bail, mod, start mission, rank up, bail, start mission again.

It's 1:30a for me as well, so probably need some edits later.

 

Pretty solid idea, I quite like it.

 

Personally I'd like to see the change talked about either 2 or 3 devstreams ago where a new weapon starts at rank 0, but a forma being placed on the weapon would reduce the level of that weapon to your current MR, instead of the system that has been introduced. Dont get me wrong, the new system is decent for bringing forma'd gear into a higher level mission, but the system where the actual weapons level was reduced to match your MR would be helpful to reduce the re-ranking grind IMO.

 

Perhaps even a merge of the system you are talking about and what I'm referring to?

 

After forma'ing, the level of the gear is reset to match your MR, and the mods stay on the weapon, and as you level it up further it unlocks the slots in order so throughout the mission the mods you had on are unlocked. Might work well to not only keep the re-ranking grind at a reduced level, but also skip the "rinse and repeat"

 

Even if we couldnt select what order the mods were activated in, that would just mean you arrange the mods in the order you would prefer them unlocked as the rank allows.

 

4 minutes ago, NightElve said:

i've made countless threads about this same issue, to the point i find it useless, i made a similar post, and some group said the Forma system is still good and they don't use Draco((casual Forum users)), my main point is Warframe is tooo good of a game, but i almost quit and a friend of mine just quit, as in when you put soo much time levelling-revelling it's not fun anymore.

 

Indeed...

 

Perhaps with a few more well throught out threads and discussion on the subject it won't feel as pointless. If what I've stated in the OP sounds like what you have stated in your threads then it should be pretty clear there are people out there who feel the same as you =)

 

By chance, could you dig up some links to your threads? I'll add them to the OP so DE can see this is at least a moderate concern for users.

[DuskLegendary]

Re-ranking weapons and frames is honestly a pain for me now. The first month or two, I didn't really mind it, but it got old really fast. So now, every time I have a lot of weapons and frames I need to make builds for, what do I do you ask? I buy an Affinity Booster, and then head off to Draco... gg DE. I know we can do Spy missions and the like, but Draco is indisputably faster, and I don't want to spend ages sloshing through levels just to have to re-rank a weapon or frame 3-5 times. 

[MagPrime]

12 minutes ago, giantconch said:

-snip-

Pretty solid idea, I quite like it.

Personally I'd like to see the change talked about either 2 or 3 devstreams ago where a new weapon starts at rank 0, but a forma being placed on the weapon would reduce the level of that weapon to your current MR, instead of the system that has been introduced. Dont get me wrong, the new system is decent for bringing forma'd gear into a higher level mission, but the system where the actual weapons level was reduced to match your MR would be helpful to reduce the re-ranking grind IMO.

Perhaps even a merge of the system you are talking about and what I'm referring to?

After forma'ing, the level of the gear is reset to match your MR, and the mods stay on the weapon, and as you level it up further it unlocks the slots in order so throughout the mission the mods you had on are unlocked. Might work well to not only keep the re-ranking grind at a reduced level, but also skip the "rinse and repeat"

Even if we couldnt select what order the mods were activated in, that would just mean you arrange the mods in the order you would prefer them unlocked as the rank allows.

-snip-

I rather like the concept of merging the two but, I think I didn't do a good enough job of explaining myself.

The idea isn't to keep going back and applying forma, but rather to sit down and take 15 minutes to map out what you want done to that weapon.  You select how many forma you want to apply, say 3, those are "applied" ( you would have the ability to cancel your progress and get back any unused forma of course) to the weapon and you select your mods and what order you want them unlocked and then just play the game.  You never have to go back into your load outs and select the other 2 forma and go through the process of assigning which mods are activated, it's a one time deal and you'd be able to just, well, play.

[Giantconch]

1 minute ago, -CM-Emptiness said:

The only negative I see with passive affinity gain is the obvious disadvantage to starter players.

I think DE wants to completely invalidate lootcaves, so the community may be divided based on that. After all, passive affinity only works for team-situations i.e. Draco, Void, ODD etc. Now, with the reworked MR system, it becomes more beneficial for solo leveling i.e. you don't have to start from Mercury/Venus since your weapons and frames will be better modded.

You brought up a nice point on making tutorial videos, but unfortunately for the majority of the community this is simply a means to bypass the grind of leveling. That is to say, MR20/21/22 in a few days or a week, after which content is really limited. Experiencing the weapon also isn't solely based on finding out how great it is with 5 forma and a catalyst, but how well the mechanics work for your own preferences.

I don't really get this lol. How do you access mods? Is it from the order of pickup? Are we able to drop mods for others? Is there still the 8 mod limit? Interesting system, but how does it work in end-game?

You might want to suggest this in a new topic somewhere, and maybe we can refine it and even implement it :P

 

How is passive affinity gain a negative thing for new users? How exactly does it leave them at a disadvantage? Understandably it is harder for a newer player to find lots of other people on the "Easy" nodes so it leaves them at a disadvantage there, but on the whole a new user being in a team of people and having affinity sharing passively ranking up that Lato or MK1 Kunai isnt going to be a negative thing.

 

As stated in the OP I do see the benefits of the new MR system as you can bring your now unranked gear into a higher level mission than before, but it doesnt actually help to reduce the tediousness of re-levelling gear. It still has to go from rank 0 to 30. The passive affinity gain allowed users to go to high level missions in a squad and get their gear maxed faster so they don't suffer any burnout from re-levelling taking as long as it does. As far as solo play goes, there is no shared, or passive affinity gain, so the users who always solo would feel no difference if passive affinity gain is removed. My concerns move away from the solo user at that point as since they notice no change, its going to be better to focus on the people who the change would effect.

 

The third part of what you say... I'm gonna attempt to run a situation past you here, apologies beforehand if I can't hit the point right away.

 

Alright so, you take your weapon, rank it to 30 the first time and decide you like it just enough, and either through a weapon builder website, a youtube video, or advice from a friend, you come up with a certain build that you think is going to make the weapon even more fun to use. You need to add say 3 forma to the weapon to make the build work. Now you need to re-rank that weapon 3 times over just to make that one build, for that one weapon, work just so you can see if that specific build is going to be right for you.

 

Tragedy strikes, and after grinding through survivals for 4-5 hours re-ranking that weapon you discover the weapon isnt performing in a way you would like. Thats now 4-5 hours of time wasted, and now you need to re-forma one of the slots to fit in a different mod you think will get the performance of the weapon to the point where you like using it.

 

The alternative is to run a Draco meta for 1 hour as the frost, buffer, or EV. You can get the weapon maxed out 3 times, realize it doesnt work, 20 more minutes to make the change and get the weapon to the point you would like it at, then go back to your regularly sceduled genocide galactic balance maintenance >_>

 

The mechanics of the weapon can change with forma'ing for a specific build. Initially a wepon starts with a 25% status chance or 25% crit chance and without a catalyst or forma you can only expand on it so much. A weapon you think may have potential with enough work and a primed mod or two may in fact not perform as you would expect it to, so you want to find the fastest way to get to that final conclusion. Passive affinity gain and powerlevelling is the best way to do this while suffering as little burnout as possible in the process.

[Giantconch]

4 minutes ago, Noamuth said:

I rather like the concept of merging the two but, I think I didn't do a good enough job of explaining myself.

The idea isn't to keep going back and applying forma, but rather to sit down and take 15 minutes to map out what you want done to that weapon.  You select how many forma you want to apply, say 3, those are "applied" ( you would have the ability to cancel your progress and get back any unused forma of course) to the weapon and you select your mods and what order you want them unlocked and then just play the game.  You never have to go back into your load outs and select the other 2 forma and go through the process of assigning which mods are activated, it's a one time deal and you'd be able to just, well, play.

 

Fair enough and that actually makes it sound even better at being a tedium-reducing method of ranking/forma application. So if I'm understanding right, get weapon, rank to 30, map it out one time only, re-rank from 0 to 30, two-shot deal to get the weapon from brand new unranked, to fully forma'd and ready to rock?

[MagPrime]

Just now, giantconch said:

 

Fair enough and that actually makes it sound even better at being a tedium-reducing method of ranking/forma application. So if I'm understanding right, get weapon, rank to 30, map it out one time only, re-rank from 0 to 30, two-shot deal to get the weapon from brand new unranked, to fully forma'd and ready to rock?

Pretty much.

[Giantconch]

Just now, Noamuth said:

Pretty much.

 

Ok cool, so it wouldnt even need a combining with a "Reduce rank to current MR" to be effective, and it would even possibly work well with the currently implimented system of "MR gives starting mod capacity" so you could take that weapon to Sedna or Uranus and have it still be effective from the start, and become more effective as the levels progressed

[MagPrime]

5 minutes ago, giantconch said:

 

Ok cool, so it wouldnt even need a combining with a "Reduce rank to current MR" to be effective, and it would even possibly work well with the currently implimented system of "MR gives starting mod capacity" so you could take that weapon to Sedna or Uranus and have it still be effective from the start, and become more effective as the levels progressed

Yes.

[Giantconch]

24 minutes ago, DuskLegendary said:

Re-ranking weapons and frames is honestly a pain for me now. The first month or two, I didn't really mind it, but it got old really fast. So now, every time I have a lot of weapons and frames I need to make builds for, what do I do you ask? I buy an Affinity Booster, and then head off to Draco... gg DE. I know we can do Spy missions and the like, but Draco is indisputably faster, and I don't want to spend ages sloshing through levels just to have to re-rank a weapon or frame 3-5 times. 

Understandable. My personal preference is the Oceanum spy mission on Pluto. It might not be as hyper-effective and speedy as a two-round Draco run, but I quite like the dual stat mods, covert lethalities, and t2/t3 keys that are recieved as my Loki pretends hes a James Bond spess nemjeh. Either way, Draco or Oceanum, much faster and less burn-out inducing as hours of survival.

[Enno69]

You are absolutey right, OP. Ranking up weapons and frames isn't part of the problem, but re-ranking them over and over again very much is. I used to run Void defense for that, and while it's fine the first time, it eventually lead to burnout indeed. Being forced to max out both Gorgons and Oberon for mastery fodder was a very painful experience. Nowadays I go Draco like everyone else, takes one-two rounds  with a good team to fully max out the weaps, yes it's a bad habit but the boost in effectiviness compared to the "normal" way is just too great. Players can't be blamed for using such exploits.

There are several ways this could be improved, for ex. by introducing special formas that do not reset the item to unranked. However I really like Noamuth's idea about " mapping out what you want done to that weapon " before playing normally.

[-CM-Emptiness]

4 minutes ago, giantconch said:

 

How is passive affinity gain a negative thing for new users? How exactly does it leave them at a disadvantage? Understandably it is harder for a newer player to find lots of other people on the "Easy" nodes so it leaves them at a disadvantage there, but on the whole a new user being in a team of people and having affinity sharing passively ranking up that Lato or MK1 Kunai isnt going to be a negative thing.

 

As stated in the OP I do see the benefits of the new MR system as you can bring your now unranked gear into a higher level mission than before, but it doesnt actually help to reduce the tediousness of re-levelling gear. It still has to go from rank 0 to 30. The passive affinity gain allowed users to go to high level missions in a squad and get their gear maxed faster so they don't suffer any burnout from re-levelling taking as long as it does. As far as solo play goes, there is no shared, or passive affinity gain, so the users who always solo would feel no difference if passive affinity gain is removed. My concerns move away from the solo user at that point as since they notice no change, its going to be better to focus on the people who the change would effect.

 

The third part of what you say... I'm gonna attempt to run a situation past you here, apologies beforehand if I can't hit the point right away.

 

Alright so, you take your weapon, rank it to 30 the first time and decide you like it just enough, and either through a weapon builder website, a youtube video, or advice from a friend, you come up with a certain build that you think is going to make the weapon even more fun to use. You need to add say 3 forma to the weapon to make the build work. Now you need to re-rank that weapon 3 times over just to make that one build, for that one weapon, work just so you can see if that specific build is going to be right for you.

 

Tragedy strikes, and after grinding through survivals for 4-5 hours re-ranking that weapon you discover the weapon isnt performing in a way you would like. Thats now 4-5 hours of time wasted, and now you need to re-forma one of the slots to fit in a different mod you think will get the performance of the weapon to the point where you like using it.

 

The alternative is to run a Draco meta for 1 hour as the frost, buffer, or EV. You can get the weapon maxed out 3 times, realize it doesnt work, 20 more minutes to make the change and get the weapon to the point you would like it at, then go back to your regularly sceduled genocide galactic balance maintenance >_>

 

The mechanics of the weapon can change with forma'ing for a specific build. Initially a wepon starts with a 25% status chance or 25% crit chance and without a catalyst or forma you can only expand on it so much. A weapon you think may have potential with enough work and a primed mod or two may in fact not perform as you would expect it to, so you want to find the fastest way to get to that final conclusion. Passive affinity gain and powerlevelling is the best way to do this while suffering as little burnout as possible in the process.

Sorry, forgot to add "removing" to the sentence lol. Well that clears that up.

As for the tediousness, Warframe itself is an extremely repetitive grind, and honestly, I don't expect the majority of the community to be putting forma on a lot of weapons to test them out. Maybe a few, but that's it. Reason being, the number of 'best gear' threads here on the forums suggests players enjoy cheesing through content, and that's just how it is. So typically you will find your average player only putting forma on weapons like the Tonkor etc and disregarding the rest as only MR gain. So typically the burnout is really limited to say, 4 or 5 weapons x Number of forma. Equating to around 12 or 15 MR fodder weapons, but sustainable for basically your whole WF experience out of 339 weapons. If you tire of that same weapon after 10 missions, it should be regarded as your fault for investing the time into modding it. The argument here being that, you want to reduce the time consequences of bad investments by allowing the majority a means to complete nearly all content in an extremely short matter of time. Its essentially burnout vs boredom, except you're only slowing down the burnout, not eliminating it. 

Your example is also flawed, because you are suggesting two things:

1. The weapon becomes useless, hence the waste. It's actually just underperforming relative to your expectations. Any weapon with say 3 forma is definitely not a waste, given say, complete armor mitigation (except for a few, like the Panthera, but thats really terrible design).

2. Time wasted = Number of forma on weapon. Unfortunately, in your example, you said 4-5 hours (by the way, that's a bit too high for an estimate) wasted to add 3 forma, yet in the same sentence you said re-forma a slot to correct it. Let me help you out here: The waste is actually the time taken to level up for the cost of one forma, which was used to re-forma the slot. Which by your relatively high estimates, gives 1-2h. But that one or two hours lost can sustain you for quite a long time with a good weapon.

As I stated previously, removing the passive gain is really terrible for new players, but that's all I can see. I'd like to add, that once you are out of that terrible mess i.e. you have forma on your preferred frame/weapon, alternatives become available to you to reduce the grind. For example. completing Raids for the associated affinity boosters 30m/1h. Not to mention, Youtube videos and other players can inform you of how viable 3 forma builds on specific weapons are, since you will already know if it matches your preference, just not how well it performs with forma.

[Soulden]

So using a weapon at junk, before you set up for review is not common practice?

Should all weapons/frame come with reactor/catalyst and 3 Forma minimum, with an additional option to change polarity included just because you are either a youtuber/theoricrafter?

I mean, why stop at the shared affinity? Why have affinity and ranks? Why even have Catalysts, reactors or Forma?

 

 

[SilentMobius]

Well just like your opinion I have one of my own. I'm currently missing the Akstiletto Prime and the Vauban Prime, I have everything else with over 200 forma spread around them so I've done the 0-30 run a few times now.

I do not Draco, did not Viver, I do not rely on unearned affinity gain from teammates. I welcome this change.

You know how you avoid getting burned out with running the same missions over and over to level gear?

Run different mission, in fact just run the missions you would normally do, just take your new/forma'd weapons.

Burnout is exponentially more likely when you're running the same content over and over with minimal interaction and minimal extra reward.

This Saturday, I tested out the new "Starting drain" and it was amazing, in one sitting I maxed the Spira Prime, put two Forma of my Kohm, put another forma on Limbo and Inaros and finished maxxing a furis (I consumed my furis for the akfuris a long time ago).

Less than one days play, no boosters. I did a few void missions, one set of sorties, about 9 syndicate missions, a couple of dark sectors  and a few Nitain alerts.

It is not hard! It's actually really rather rewarding and nowhere near the actual problem with Warframe's "Grind".

Requiring people to actually use a weapon to level it can only be good for the game.

Edited June 6, 2016 by SilentMobius

[Giantconch]

1 hour ago, -CM-Emptiness said:

Sorry, forgot to add "removing" to the sentence lol. Well that clears that up.

As for the tediousness, Warframe itself is an extremely repetitive grind, and honestly, I don't expect the majority of the community to be putting forma on a lot of weapons to test them out. Maybe a few, but that's it. Reason being, the number of 'best gear' threads here on the forums suggests players enjoy cheesing through content, and that's just how it is. So typically you will find your average player only putting forma on weapons like the Tonkor etc and disregarding the rest as only MR gain. So typically the burnout is really limited to say, 4 or 5 weapons x Number of forma. Equating to around 12 or 15 MR fodder weapons, but sustainable for basically your whole WF experience out of 339 weapons. If you tire of that same weapon after 10 missions, it should be regarded as your fault for investing the time into modding it. The argument here being that, you want to reduce the time consequences of bad investments by allowing the majority a means to complete nearly all content in an extremely short matter of time. Its essentially burnout vs boredom, except you're only slowing down the burnout, not eliminating it. 

Your example is also flawed, because you are suggesting two things:

1. The weapon becomes useless, hence the waste. It's actually just underperforming relative to your expectations. Any weapon with say 3 forma is definitely not a waste, given say, complete armor mitigation (except for a few, like the Panthera, but thats really terrible design).

2. Time wasted = Number of forma on weapon. Unfortunately, in your example, you said 4-5 hours (by the way, that's a bit too high for an estimate) wasted to add 3 forma, yet in the same sentence you said re-forma a slot to correct it. Let me help you out here: The waste is actually the time taken to level up for the cost of one forma, which was used to re-forma the slot. Which by your relatively high estimates, gives 1-2h. But that one or two hours lost can sustain you for quite a long time with a good weapon.

 

You claiming my example is flawed contains some strawmaning (that, or I didnt make it clear what I wanted to). I did not say "the weapon becomes useless" I stated "the weapon is not performing as you expected" and that makes the time you just put in to it wasted as you need to go back and change things around and re-forma, and re-level yet again. Tedious level increases. Passive affinity gain and lootcaving help alleviate the tedious grind that this process is. Removing passive affinity gain, new user or old, would not help and would make the process more tedious and contribute to burnout. Yes, I am suggesting retention of mechanics such as passive affinity gain to slow burnout, because admittedly WF is a grindfest, so slowing the burnout is the only thing thats really possible as it would be impossible to eliminate altogether.

 

Are you saying >my< argument is that I want to reduce the time consequence of a bad investment? If so, thats not what my goal is. What I want is less tedium in re-ranking and re-levelling should you forma a weapon and decide you want to change it around.

 

Your claim that "only 4 or 5 weapons can sustain you through your whole WF life" also indicates that there is massive imbalance in weapon damage output. Forma'ing less than OP weapons and being able to quickly re-level them is one of the few things that has a chance to get some of these lessed used weapons more playtime. Obviously Lato and Prova are going to be trash-tier no matter what you do to them, they will never be sortie-capable, but getting the weapons to mid-high tier playability with forma would get those less used weapons more playtime and not burn a user out in the process.

 

I look over my inventory and found 97/115 weapons in my inventory are multi-forma'd. If it weren't for passive affinity gain and lootcaving on Oceanum to powerlevel, just grinding out that would probably have been enough to push me away from WF. Coming from a guy who ran a paintrain on Phorid 100 times one day, and 300 the next, just to spite that boss killing me once, that should tell you something about the level of grinding reptetive things I can tolerate.

 

Yes, WF is a grindy, farmy good ol' time, but too much tedious repetition causes burnout and is simply not fun. When grinding for resources, short of neural sensors and Nitain, you have numers options available to you. Prime part farming is a little more concentrated and limited in mission types available, regular warframe parts is just "kill boss X number of times for parts..." and removing one of the tedious aspects of the game, IE re-ranking and re-levelling, through passive affinity gain, will not harm the experience in the game.

 

1 hour ago, -CM-Emptiness said:

As I stated previously, removing the passive gain is really terrible for new players, but that's all I can see. I'd like to add, that once you are out of that terrible mess i.e. you have forma on your preferred frame/weapon, alternatives become available to you to reduce the grind. For example. completing Raids for the associated affinity boosters 30m/1h. Not to mention, Youtube videos and other players can inform you of how viable 3 forma builds on specific weapons are, since you will already know if it matches your preference, just not how well it performs with forma.

 

This statement of yours contains some issues (its why I seperated it). Passive affinity gain hurts new users as it is difficult to get exp. in lower level missions, but does nothing to older users? The older user is more likely to have an idea of how they want to get a weapon set up to make it fun to use, to make it how they want it, and if you removed passive affinity gain you're going to increase to amount of grind on that user for them to get the weapon re-levelled 3 or more times. The older user is also more likely to be suffering from burnout as they will have gone through the process a hundred or more times. The new system of "MR = starting capacity" helps with the issue, but if you remove passivel affinity gain from a squad all killing thats going to be hurtful to the older user as well, and also contribute to the relevelling burnout.

[Giantconch]

16 minutes ago, SilentMobius said:

Well just like your opinion I have one of my own. I'm currently missing the Akstiletto Prime and the Vauban Prime, I have everything else with over 200 forma spread around them so I've done the 0-30 run a few times now.

I do not Draco, did not Viver, I do not rely on unearned affinity gain from teammates. I welcome this change.

You know how you avoid getting burned out with running the same missions over and over to level gear?

Run different mission, in fact just run the missions you would normally do, just take your new/forma'd weapons.

This Saturday, I tested out the new "Starting drain" and it was amazing, in one sitting I maxed the Spira Prime, put two Forma of my Kohm, put another forma on Limbo and Inaros and finished maxxing a furis (I consumed my furis for the akfuris a long time ago).

Less than one days play, no boosters. I did a few void missions, one set of sorties, about 9 syndicate missions, a couple of dark sectors  and a few Nitain alerts.

It is not hard actuall really rather rewarding and nowhere near the actual problem with Warframe's "Grind".

Requiring people to actually use a weapon to level it can only be good for the game.

 

Awesome stuff, thanks for the input!

 

I cannot say I haven't used the shared passive affinity to get extra ranks on weapons, and though I cannot quote exact numbers I'm quite sure a lot of users out there do use it and in fact almost rely on it. Speeding up and reducing the tediousness that is re-levelling a given weapon 3-6 times is not a bad thing and taking it away from users would definitely contribute to burnout IMO.

 

53 minutes ago, Souldend78 said:

So using a weapon at junk, before you set up for review is not common practice?

Should all weapons/frame come with reactor/catalyst and 3 Forma minimum, with an additional option to change polarity included just because you are either a youtuber/theoricrafter?

I mean, why stop at the shared affinity? Why have affinity and ranks? Why even have Catalysts, reactors or Forma?

 

 

 

Not quite sure what you are trying to say here, care to elaborate? You...want the option to change polarity if you are a youtuber/theorycrafter? You want to eliminate affinity and ranks altogether?

[(PSN)robotwars7]

if they get rid of passive affinity gain, then will that not mean everybody will be trying for kills? won't that mean that everybody will just bring Ash in the hopes that their Bladestorm will get all the kills? I'm not sure DE have thought this one through. or if they have, I don't think they're telling us enough.

[Giantconch]

7 minutes ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

if they get rid of passive affinity gain, then will that not mean everybody will be trying for kills? won't that mean that everybody will just bring Ash in the hopes that their Bladestorm will get all the kills? I'm not sure DE have thought this one through. or if they have, I don't think they're telling us enough.

 

I see your point. It wouldnt play out exactly like that (warframe powers getting kills = 0 exp for weapons right) but yeah it would create more try-hards trying to find a spawn to camp near. Less focus on staying near the squad and being part of a team.

[DeFragMe]

13 minutes ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

if they get rid of passive affinity gain, then will that not mean everybody will be trying for kills? won't that mean that everybody will just bring Ash in the hopes that their Bladestorm will get all the kills? I'm not sure DE have thought this one through. or if they have, I don't think they're telling us enough.

actually it propably mens the same as it is now for solo, if you dont have weapon in your hand , you wont get affinity...

so you could still leech for your lato, but you would have to have it in hand the whole time.

[SilentMobius]

1 hour ago, DeFragMe said:

actually it propably mens the same as it is now for solo, if you dont have weapon in your hand , you wont get affinity...

so you could still leech for your lato, but you would have to have it in hand the whole time.

Or each time your teammate earns affinity you get the same amount in a "bank" when you earn affinity then a multiple/fraction of your earned affinity is removed from the bank and added to the affinity award you just got.

Basically as you kill you get bonus affinity from your teammates.

 

[DeFragMe]

1 minute ago, SilentMobius said:

Or each time your teammate earns affinity you get the same amount in a "bank" when you earn affinity then a multiple/fraction of your earned affinity is removed from the bank and added to the affinity award you just got.

Basically as you kill you get bonus affinity from your teammates.

 

hm.. reminds me of the "usefull" coverganve or how it is called for focus...