The Silver Grove

[enizer]

2 hours ago, chuckdm said:

Again, I really don't understand how that makes it harder.  Ok, so now SOME of the units in the endless survival mission are corrupted units.  Before, they were ALL corrupted units.  We're in agreement that plain old Grineer or Corpus are easier than Corrupted so...again, this seems easier, not harder.

As for key efficiency, this is a red herring.  Yes, a Sabotage key COULD, in hypothetical theory, give 4 prime parts.  In over 200 runs of Void Sabotage it never gave me more than 2 per mission, and usually only 1.  (Only 1 at least 50% of the time.)  The other rewards were credit caches, cores, and of course, the dreaded key-for-a-key.  Speaking of that, nearly every single reward from almost every T1 mission I ever ran was another key.  T1 Defense yielding T1 Capture, T1 Capture yielding T2 Capture, etc.  So actually, the odds that you'd get even ONE prime part for your one void key were not 100%.  Now they are.  I'm not saying efficiency is up.  I'm saying that, in actual practice, it's about the same.  The difference is that, now, you get whatever you're going to get in about 5 minutes and can GTFO unless you simply WANT to stick around.

As far as the rarity of relics (and previously keys) are concerned, this is something I never understood.  I was swimming in keys and now I'm swimming in relics.  Earth Excavation grants loads and loads of these, and if that's not your style, then just go run Syndicate missions.  The relic packs they sell are where about half my spent rep with them went because there's only so many times you actually need to buy a Vaykor Marelok.

Finally, if corrupted units are spawning in the spy vault itself, it's either because A) Someone in your squad hasn't collected all 10 of their reactant yet or B) A bug.  Once everyone in the squad collects enough reactant, the map is supposed to quit spawning new fissures, as long as it's not an endless mission, which Spy and Rescue certainly aren't.  You can't blame the game for their inability to walk over and pick up reactant any more than you'd blame them for bringing a Rhino and trying to hallway hero the spy vault.  Stupid players happen.

All that said, the system has its faults, but I just can't see how this isn't an improvement.  It's more complicated for sure.  But I do feel like it's still an improvement.

If only I could say the same thing about Star Chart 3.0... (which is certainly more pretty but holy hell it's a nightmare to navigate for a pre-existing player.  I'm sure it's helpful to newbies but boy is it just bewildering to me...)

I got two primes closer to 90% of the time from sabotage, at least T2sab+, T1sab was kind of meh, as were all of T1 maps really, low chance of actual primes in T1, never ever got more than two in sab though.

Relics are clearly down, or being spent faster compared to keys, I used to be gathering keys rapidly, to the point that even baro grinding didnt knock me significantly, my friends, who dont do syndicate daily missions for key/relic packs, were usually very low on keys, though still gathering them, now they are all simply OUT of relics, and I myself, am not really gaining relics, I'm just kind of averaged in place, WITH regular grinding for relics, which I didnt do religiously before.

Spy units spawning in vaults is usually because most of the time, teams do NOT finish grinding reactant and then do the vaults, I keep seeing people run to vaults, like the standard was in group spy missions before this.

 

Overall, the new system has a TON of flaws, which for many overshadow the improvements, it's a perspective thing, glass half full/empty and all that.

Flaws that quickly come to mind are:

New map is somewhat confusing, almost everyone I know was very confused on day1(and progression bugs did NOT help)

Silent credit nerfs, which are now slowly being reversed, I went flat broke in the first two weeks and was forced to buy a credit booster to be able to play normally.

The very awesome looking void tileset now pretty much has no reason to exist, I go to the lowest level void defense for argon, and that's kind of it. Suggestion: how about adding relic drops here? that would make sense wouldnt it?

Deception missions? especially since some kuria only spawn in deception, I still lack the ones that are only in the corpus gas city deception tileset.

New arcwing? oh god, I had to end task the game and lie down for over an hour.. it's been somewhat fixed, but still very floaty and much LESS responsive than it was.

And last but not least, the rift missions get really grindy VERY fast, I have been grinding void for 6 months, and mostly got sick of survival, I'm pretty much fed up with the rift missions, it's always the same.. over and over and over..

 

And yeah, the whole day 1 thing being a complete mess, because, as they admitted, the expansion was NOT released because it was ready, they had promised someone important that it would be out before tennocon, and so, the day before tennocon, out it went, incomplete.

Edited August 23, 2016 by enizer

[Khunvyel]

I'd like to mention my positive surprise about the patch, minus one little thing. I'm grateful by principle that DE chose something much more reasonable than fusion cores. I have yet to check how much of a disparity there is between the previous "mod power" versus current "Endo cost" in terms of energy required to go to the next level and in comparison to credit cost. I'd like to think for now it's about even, give or take. I haven't noticed it being suspiciously expensive in either direction so I'm willing to let some minor discrepancies slide for the better of the general system.

I'm also giving an appreciative nod to the fact that we are able to "dissolve" existing duplicates, but I'm not exactly sure how it pans out compared to previously. Because in the past I've been collecting the mods until I could rank up the mods by duplicates alone in about 90% of all cases. I believe that we're losing out on that now, but it might end up being a zero-sum thing since now we don't have to use the same polarities / fusion cores if we lack the duplicates. So that also means that it's no longer worthless to use other polarities, since now we have one common resource. As said, I haven't done the numbers set, but it looks and feels good so far. Thank you dearly for that.  I'm still waiting for a massive overhaul of the mod system itself, but getting rid of fusion cores and managing one unique resource is definitely a start.

The nuisance about this patch is more about the acquisition of Titania. If it wasn't for the forum, I wouldn't know where to get her. Don't make the mistake that every warframe player uses the wiki or reads the forum. There is no pointer to the quest. No inbox message, no popup when visiting the solar rails. I don't have any business with new Loka, I'm not even getting near them when visiting any Solar Rail for any reason. Only having that minor quest symbol on the brink of minimap perception is absolutely not enough for a nice, ingame, reasonable experience to activate the Titania quest. Please consider having a more immersive connection to the start of the quest, thank you.

 

1 hour ago, chuckdm said:

1) Again, I really don't understand how that makes it harder.  Ok, so now SOME of the units in the endless survival mission are corrupted units.  Before, they were ALL corrupted units.  We're in agreement that plain old Grineer or Corpus are easier than Corrupted so...again, this seems easier, not harder.

2) As for key efficiency, this is a red herring.  Yes, a Sabotage key COULD, in hypothetical theory, give 4 prime parts.  In over 200 runs of Void Sabotage it never gave me more than 2 per mission, and usually only 1.  (Only 1 at least 50% of the time.)  Speaking of that, nearly every single reward from almost every T1 mission I ever ran was another key.

3) So actually, the odds that you'd get even ONE prime part for your one void key were not 100%.  Now they are.  I'm not saying efficiency is up.  I'm saying that, in actual practice, it's about the same.

4) The difference is that, now, you get whatever you're going to get in about 5 minutes and can GTFO unless you simply WANT to stick around.

5) As far as the rarity of relics (and previously keys) are concerned, this is something I never understood.  I was swimming in keys and now I'm swimming in relics.  Earth Excavation grants loads and loads of these, and if that's not your style, then just go run Syndicate missions.  The relic packs they sell are where about half my spent rep with them went because there's only so many times you actually need to buy a Vaykor Marelok.

6) All that said, the system has its faults, but I just can't see how this isn't an improvement.  It's more complicated for sure.  But I do feel like it's still an improvement.

7) If only I could say the same thing about Star Chart 3.0... (which is certainly more pretty but holy hell it's a nightmare to navigate for a pre-existing player.  I'm sure it's helpful to newbies but boy is it just bewildering to me...)

ad 1) Difficulty of enemies themselves has fairly little to do with it. I never had a problem with the fact that corrupted are a mixed bag and don't care for faction damage mods. I enjoyed the "tier up" so to speak. Before they changed Fissures to what they are now, it was definitely more difficult for solo players, since so little enemies spawned that you often ended up not getting enough reactants, even if you basically instakilled everything, including Eximus units, in quick succession. It's certainly better now, but I still have to question the fact what we have gotten now. Before the Fissure change, we had all-out baby excavation missions. Okay. Now we have a paper chase / scavenger hunt. On EVERY SINGLE FISSURE mission. Where is the diversity in that? My problem with that is, that the Void in essence has gotten completely useless. The only thing it's good for now, is collecting Argon crystals and grabbing Void-exclusive mods. If I remember correctly, way back in the day when it was teased to "kill the Void", they said that you'd be getting something extra if you still wanted to grab your prime parts in the Void. Well, nothing like that it seems. We've been teased with "rifts into the orokin past" and what do we get? Nothing like that. I thought it was like those Moon-Spy missions where you moved through rifts (which was a nice nod to Soul Reaver in my opinion) but the units those Fissures spew out are just the same old corrupted story.

ad 2) It's not a red herring. First, you apparently seemed to be on the unlucky spectrum of the game. I've (or rather we, my small clan) have been speedrunning T1 missions like capture, exterminate and mobile defense together for prime parts. About 8/10 were prime parts. That didn't change with solo running. Same with Sabotage. It was rare when we got 1 prime part. 2 was the norm, 3 was every now and then. About one in five runs. Second, in the past if you ran a mission with 3 other people, everyone got the same key. So you could do 4 individual runs before you had to try and grab another key (the desired T4 in this case). Now, anything requiring a T4 Relic means extra time if you want something from there that is NOT common, because it's every key for every person. Sure, the chances go up if everyone uses the same key and has the same refinement level. Yes, the chances are increased and as a tradeoff the time to get to that point has been increased too. Not only did I run the numbers hypothetically but I also stopwatched the missions done with my clan. On average, it takes longer, and since it's only an increased chance, it means you still can be way out of luck.
It would be better if each roll on the same key occupies that slot, so the next roll can't have that slot any more. But that would be too much to ask for.
Another thing; We are forced to one prime part per mission today. Back in the days we could run survival or defense as long as we wanted and got multiple prime parts (guaranteed every C wave even) for just a SINGLE key. Nothing like that nowadays. That is certainly another point for past key efficiency. Plus you only needed one key for the entire squad, not one key per member.

ad 3) The odds of getting a prime part nowadays are only 100% if you picked a key with no forma in it. So sure, you can farm for ducats much better (in theory, I haven't put down that math) but for anything you want that actually requires a refined key, things become much worse. Because at that point you have to use up relics to get traces in order to refine the desired relics. The first refinement stage basically doesn't make any sense. Only the second and third are of use, and at that point you have to ask yourself which tradeoff one thinks is more appropriate, and of course, which slot to shoot for. Some feel better with the second refinement, running the desired keys more frequently and wasting less other keys. Others like the opposite.

ad 4) It's 5 minutes only if you're having the appropriate missions which you can't always guarantee. Granted, it's better now that the Fissure alerts don't run out prematurely and you were limited to one run per alert. Still, you have to do X number of runs for Traces (thus using X amount of relics) which also requires time. Using my clan as the measure stick, and we're certainly not bad players, we average on needing more time to get the thing we aim for, than with the previous system. Although that gap has closed to be honest, after the first inception of Void Fissures. I'm glad DE changed things up. Now it's closer, but not to the point where I can comfortably say "it's worth it".
Also, you have to consider that there was a different time-span for old void missions. It needs less than 2 minutes for a capture mission in the void. Sure, on the other hand the C rotation was up at 20 minutes, but until that you had 3 other chances to get another prime part. Sure, I always question why it was "AABC" rotation. I would have appreciated a cut down to ABC, thus causing the rare rotations to come more often. Or just do ABCD.

ad 5) You are now only swimming in Relics because you've been swimming in keys before. Just by logic alone, now that you require relics to get traces to refine the Relic with a Prime part of your desire, it means your stashes will automatically deplete over time when playing the same way as you did before. This means you will need to do more runs for throwaway relics and will have to use more syndicate reward relic packs. This is why, by all accounts, the new system still requires more time because you have to factor in the time to get the additional relics required to grab the traces to refine your other relics. Another thing is that a T4 key previously was a T4 key. Period. Now you have to refine it at least to the 2nd stage to be on par with an old key in terms of drop chances. Only the 3rd stage actually makes an improvement, but the question is again if that's worth the time invested to even get there.

ad 6) It's more of a sidegrade. It brings some new things to the table, but is lacking in other things. Objectively speaking, it's not an upgrade, since not every aspect of the previous system has been objectively improved.

ad 7) Starchart 3.0 is just another slap in the face to people who played with Starchart 1.0 since they made it somewhat look like the old starchart, but it's still not as fast and still not as visible and still not as easy to maneuver. If they get rid of the newly introduced issues and nuisances, it can actually get better than Starchart 2.0 ... I mean, finally I can see ALL mission nodes at one glance. But what gives if I can't even decipher what is what and where because now they thought it was a splendid idea to get rid of colours *groans* It's a nice sentiment that they realized, the old starmap was just superior to the second one. Now we just have to hope that they will bring much needed improvements.

This is why I was so surprised about the change to fusion cores and the introduction of "Endo". It was the first thing since a long time that were genuine steps forward instead of 2 to 3 steps forward while making 2 to 3 steps backward, which seems to be the usual progression of development.

[Prime_Reckoner]

Unless intended (though I don't see why), please restore the Tikal and Coba (dark-sector nodes) on Earth to their previous location. Thank you.

 

[Darkvramp]

where is the silver grove post quest?

 

[BloodForTheBloodGods]

1 hour ago, Darkvramp said:

where is the silver grove post quest?

 

I believe it appears on any node on Earth. I used the capture, but sometimes it doesn't spawn. idk why.

[TR-Rarog]

Верните старую систему поиска отрядов на PVP , это очень не удобно , мы с кланом хотим вместе друг против друга играть но ни чего не выходит из за этого " исправления ". 

Bring back the old units search system of PVP , this is not convenient , we want to clan together to play against each other but neither of which does not come out of this " fix "

[z_Valkyr_k]

On 19/8/2016 at 1:33 PM, Wolfnrun said:

YES!!! TITANIA!!! Waffle mAFFLE

 

[StrifeSan]

so any word on "War Within"?

[BloodForTheBloodGods]

2 hours ago, StrifeSan said:

so any word on "War Within"?

Soon™

[ShendivaScarlet]

I love it <3