PDS (Primed Disappointment Syndrome) and a possible remedy

[PanzerYeena]

Ok, as you all probably know by now, Baro Ki'Teer is something that should probably be discussed in detail.

Every two weeks Mr. Fancy Shoes brings a selection of random things with what appears to be a teeny-tiny chance of one of the items to be something new and interesting. For many veteran players he is one of the things that keeps the game interesting since there is a constant hope that he brings a new primed mod that makes new builds possible for weapons and frames or even just that one new cosmetic that would make a certain frame look amazing, while for newer players he is the best source of the must-have mods like the Primed Flow and Primed Continuity. On paper he sounds great but then you realise his inventory is an RNG mess with next to no chance of him bringing something you need.

Boosters that cost so much that you could sell the prime parts for plat and buy twice as much on the market (not to mention the credit issue many new players have), cosmetics like the Eos Prime and the Prisma Daedalus/Edo that keep on endlessly looping every two or three months, Assassin Beacons that you buy a few times to get the drops you need (might as well not bother with the Stalker ones since his drop table is so dreadful that you'd need a hundred of the damn things to get one of the rarer drops), etc.

Then there are the Prisma, Vandal, and Wraith weapons. They are definitely nice but there are so many of them that DE seems to feel the need to keep on re-releasing them for the newer players to have a chance at getting them. Now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely want newer players to have the ability to acquire the special weapons, but if you combine all the re-releasing with the things listed above, that leaves no space in Baro's inventory for new things. You know, things that veteran players who already have everything he's sold so far would want to see. I'm talking new Prisma weapons (they seem to have pushed Vandals and Wraiths into Sorites, which would be fine if they didn't put a certain pair of sidearms in there that we've seen twice in events already. Bet you 5 plat Gorgon Wraith is next on the list), new armour sets, Primed mods, special cosmetics and skins for weapons that I know I can look forward to with every visit. A Xiphos skin is nice but I kinda wish I'd know about it before I spent plat on the market ones...

What do I think should be done about it? Well, my idea probably needs some work but overall I think it could work as a way to cater both to newer players and veterans. So hear me out, please;

Baro is the sort of merchant who deals in very unique items and oddities. He is a collectable and relic hunter and I believe his system should reflect that. 

Now imagine having a long list of everything Baro has brought so far hanging beside the Ducat Kiosk that any player can see and read through. So a new player goes through that list and thinks "Hmm, a Primed Flow seems like a must-have mod. Oh, and that Prisma Skana and the Eos Prime armour look awesome!" And then our good friend Baro shows up and that newer player comes up to him, tugs at his skirt and asks: "Mr. Baro, my MR20 friends tell me you've brought some of these items before, so you obviously have a huge stockpile of them somewhere in your ship. Could you please check if you have a Primed Flow, a Prisma Skana and an Eos Prime armour set and bring them for me next time you come around? I can pay you the Ducats in advance!" And Baro takes the bag of Ducats, smiles down at the rookie Tenno and says "I'll see what I can do." And he does so for all the Tenno that wish to get specific items.
Two weeks later, Baro shows up again and sends the player a message saying that he has what the new player wanted and that he can come claim his order at Whatchamacallit Relay. The player then shows up at the Relay, looks at Baro's inventory and sees all the things he's ordered and already paid for, along with one, maybe even two completely new items that Baro has not brought before. He doesn't get to see what others have ordered, all he gets are the new thing and the few items he wished to get.

Alright, so the new player is happy. He got what he wanted and since it's been two weeks he's already managed to farm enough Ducats to order another batch of items for Baro's next visit as well as buy whatever new things were available. What about the veteran player that already has everything from that list? Well, he got the new things as well and he also had a chance to order something specific. Maybe one of his low MR friends feared he wouldn't be able to get to Orcus Relay in time so he asked him to order a certain Primed mod or a Prisma weapon for him. Maybe he's missing only one or two old items that haven't shown up in ages and now gets to order them. Or maybe he's like me and he's happy with two new cosmetics every two weeks and maybe even a new weapon or mod once a month.

In summary:

I'm proposing a requisition system for Baro. Every visit each player would get the chance to order something specific from Baro's existing inventory as well as get a new item or two. GUARANTEED NEW, not rehashed from half a year ago. Every player would have his own unique shop inventory each visit with only the new things beings shared across ALL players. 

This would eliminate two of the biggest problems the current system causes:

1) The frustration of the newer players having to wait for RNG to bless them or having to buy Primed mods from people who will charge hundreds of plat for them + at least a million credits in trade tax when Baro doesn't feel like bringing a damn Primed Flow for two months

2) The frustration of the veteran players who visit after visit shake their fist angrily at Baro and yell "Primed Disappointment again!" because all he's been bringing for three visits in a row are old things that they already have with maybe one shoulder emblem so he can say he has something new.

 

It was just a random thought I had one day and I'm curious what the rest of you think about it. Too far-fetched? 

p.s.

Sorry for the long post. I don't have much to give you so just look at the adorable kubrow on my icon.

Edited August 26, 2016 by K9Fenrir

[Cyborg-Rox]

You know the main reason for Baro's constant disappointment? People constantly expecting him to bring stuff like Primed Streamline, Mara Brakk, and Prisma Soma.

[Renathy]

Just now, Cyborg-Rox said:

You know the main reason for Baro's constant disappointment? People constantly expecting him to bring stuff like Primed Streamline, Mara Brakk, and Prisma Soma.

It's basically like hype. People expect everything even though there might be nothing to expect.

[Inarticulate]

1 hour ago, K9Fenrir said:

Now imagine having a long list of everything Baro has brought so far hanging beside the Ducat Kiosk that any player can see and read through. So a new player goes through that list and thinks "Hmm, a Primed Flow seems like a must-have mod. Oh, and that Prisma Skana and the Eos Prime armour look awesome!" And then our good friend Baro shows up and that newer player comes up to him, tugs at his skirt and asks: "Mr. Baro, my MR20 friends tell me you've brought some of these items before, so you obviously have a huge stockpile of them somewhere in your ship. Could you please check if you have a Primed Flow, a Prisma Skana and an Eos Prime armour set and bring them for me next time you come around? I can pay you the Ducats in advance!" And Baro takes the bag of Ducats, smiles down at the rookie Tenno and says "I'll see what I can do." And he does so for all the Tenno that wish to get specific items.
Two weeks later, Baro shows up again and sends the player a message saying that he has what the new player wanted and that he can come claim his order at Whatchamacallit Relay. The player then shows up at the Relay, looks at Baro's inventory and sees all the things he's ordered and already paid for, along with one, maybe even two completely new items that Baro has not brought before. He doesn't get to see what others have ordered, all he gets are the new thing and the few items he wished to get.

This is probably one of the better suggestions out there, though I'd personally limit it to one or two items per visit.

There's also the trouble that newer players may not be able to reach him on his next visit due to not having unlocked the planet or not having met the MR requirement. It might be a good idea to also require players requesting items to have all Relays unlocked before being allowed to make requests.

[Flirk2]

Baro pre-order service? Why not mailing the pre-paid items to the player then? Along with the new ''I'm here'' mail he sends now. I would be all for it even if I would need to go and take the items myself, while he is perfectly capable to mail them to each and every customer.

But.

Too nice to be implemented. Since even the certainty of getting a relic on B rotation of an excavation mission was deemed unacceptable, and we now have about 40% chance of Neo on B and about 70% chance of Axi on C rotations of Hieracon, so you sometimes don't get relics at all on those rotations, if you are going for shorter runs.

So far RNG is piled upon RNG and then covered with an unhealthy dose of RNG on top. Making Baro work like a v-bay (v for void) would be too out of the current line of RNG stacking. I'm waiting for him to bring those ''special relics'' with vaulted items in them (along with Forma blueprints and everything). For 300 ducats and 150k credits each....

[PanzerYeena]

10 hours ago, Cyborg-Rox said:

You know the main reason for Baro's constant disappointment? People constantly expecting him to bring stuff like Primed Streamline, Mara Brakk, and Prisma Soma.

He could bring some of the less used Grineer and Corpus weapons and actually make the special versions good. I don't care for overpowered crap, I just want something i know I can look forward to whenever he visits. Right now it's a gamble between a cool cosmetic or nothing at all. 

[Cyborg-Rox]

1 minute ago, K9Fenrir said:

He could bring some of the less used Grineer and Corpus weapons and actually make the special versions good. I don't care for overpowered crap, I just want something i know I can look forward to whenever he visits. Right now it's a gamble between a cool cosmetic or nothing at all. 

I'm just saying, if you set your expectations low every time he comes, and just sort of 'check in' on what he brings, instead of ramming your hype train right into him, you're gonna be more accepting of him overall. If he brings bad stuff, you can just go "eh..." instead of "OH, CMON DE!!!!", and you'll be genuinely surprised and happy when he actually brings something good.

[ashrah]

ppl set expectations to high then stuff go wrong...and they blow up.....its a lot new players...lets think about them too....we will get new stuff at some point anyway.....rage is not productive at all

[rynocerator]

I feel like you (OP) expect brand new content every 2 weeks from Baro on top of normal updates, which seems a little nonsensical. 

I've scarcely purchased anything from Baro, so for me his visits are always interesting. And I feel like new players wouldn't have the ducats to benefit from special orders anyway. If they're new, they'd be better served actually building their prime stuff. 

[PanzerYeena]

1 minute ago, rynocerator said:

I feel like you (OP) expect brand new content every 2 weeks from Baro on top of normal updates, which seems a little nonsensical. 

I've scarcely purchased anything from Baro, so for me his visits are always interesting. And I feel like new players wouldn't have the ducats to benefit from special orders anyway. If they're new, they'd be better served actually building their prime stuff. 

If you have a system like the Void Trader and he constantly brags about his "new finds", why shouldn't people expect him to actually bring something new? It's one of the ways to add things besides updates and also one of the ways to keep players interested once they reach the point where new content is actually what keeps them going in the game. 

I said in the post I'm fine with cosmetics but it would be nice to get something more every three or so visits. Is it that difficult to take an unused weapon, slap a skin onto it and tweak a few stats? If they really want ignored weapons to get attention, then this is one way besides syndicates to make them good. 

Just to be clear, my original post is a suggestion. I'm not demanding new content, I'm saying it would be nice to not have to give up on all expectations. 

[PanzerYeena]

16 minutes ago, Cyborg-Rox said:

I'm just saying, if you set your expectations low every time he comes, and just sort of 'check in' on what he brings, instead of ramming your hype train right into him, you're gonna be more accepting of him overall. If he brings bad stuff, you can just go "eh..." instead of "OH, CMON DE!!!!", and you'll be genuinely surprised and happy when he actually brings something good.

I love Warframe and enjoy playing it, which is why I don't want it's endgame to require me to lower my expectations to zero. 

As for new players, The stuff he has already sold could cost less for them. And hell, they can, for the most part, only afford one or two things from his inventory at any point anyway. It would be nice if they could at least make sure to get some of the must-haves without relying on the RNG of Baro's inventory. 

[steelblueskies]

8 minutes ago, K9Fenrir said:

If you have a system like the Void Trader and he constantly brags about his "new finds", why shouldn't people expect him to actually bring something new? It's one of the ways to add things besides updates and also one of the ways to keep players interested once they reach the point where new content is actually what keeps them going in the game. 

I said in the post I'm fine with cosmetics but it would be nice to get something more every three or so visits. Is it that difficult to take an unused weapon, slap a skin onto it and tweak a few stats? If they really want ignored weapons to get attention, then this is one way besides syndicates to make them good. 

Just to be clear, my original post is a suggestion. I'm not demanding new content, I'm saying it would be nice to not have to give up on all expectations. 

the bit about slap a skin on it, sure not too strenuous.

change stats? so its not just a skin. sounds like that would mean another weapon entry toward mastery rank, which is supposedly only ever going up to 30, so slapsticking more prisma might not be ideal.

as tot he original concept, i'd love it.

on the one hand people are like but teh newbie player won't haz teh ducats mang!

to which i say, define new player.

in 60 days you too can be an mr 17-18 with minimal investment. if you mean someone who still might not know the difference between a damaged normal and primed mod yet, well sure, but then they might not have access to any relays yet. think i broke out of that state the first week and was approaching saturn.

i went into this week with a little over 1k ducats. was just about praying for credit booster,  if not primed mods (trade for a mil each if you can find a seller, and thats just the tax! yay).

the real stress with his appearances of late is the credit costs, though with the recent punishing changes to relic rewards in dark sectors those have slowed the relic fodder feed too.

no a better point of argument would not have been about lack of. its a goal new player can clearly work towards with some control instead of , hey this rng grind? its done purely in raw time, and if you don't like it, get dunked son.

the better argument would have been that things like reactors have been in his lists too.

to which i peremptorily respond, that is NOT a bad thing.

its another grind path, and a slow one to boot. (furthermore the places one can actually use a reactor are limited to a few syndicates, and your pets/frames/wings, which is a piddling pool compared to catalysts with their pet weapons, arch weapons, and tenfold more regular weapons, to say nothing of forma at up to 8x per equipment and 2x into exilus per frame.

 

[PanzerYeena]

3 minutes ago, steelblueskies said:

the bit about slap a skin on it, sure not too strenuous.

change stats? so its not just a skin. sounds like that would mean another weapon entry toward mastery rank, which is supposedly only ever going up to 30, so slapsticking more prisma might not be ideal.

as tot he original concept, i'd love it.

on the one hand people are like but teh newbie player won't haz teh ducats mang!

to which i say, define new player.

in 60 days you too can be an mr 17-18 with minimal investment. if you mean someone who still might not know the difference between a damaged normal and primed mod yet, well sure, but then they might not have access to any relays yet. think i broke out of that state the first week and was approaching saturn.

i went into this week with a little over 1k ducats. was just about praying for credit booster,  if not primed mods (trade for a mil each if you can find a seller, and thats just the tax! yay).

the real stress with his appearances of late is the credit costs, though with the recent punishing changes to relic rewards in dark sectors those have slowed the relic fodder feed too.

no a better point of argument would not have been about lack of. its a goal new player can clearly work towards with some control instead of , hey this rng grind? its done purely in raw time, and if you don't like it, get dunked son.

the better argument would have been that things like reactors have been in his lists too.

to which i peremptorily respond, that is NOT a bad thing.

its another grind path, and a slow one to boot. (furthermore the places one can actually use a reactor are limited to a few syndicates, and your pets/frames/wings, which is a piddling pool compared to catalysts with their pet weapons, arch weapons, and tenfold more regular weapons, to say nothing of forma at up to 8x per equipment and 2x into exilus per frame.

 

Regarding the addition of weapons, I doubt it would hurt the game. The current requirement for ranking up from 22 to 23 is, what, 120000 mastery? Assuming that doesn't increase with each rank (which it probably does), that would mean that it would take about 320 weapons to get from 22 to 30. And that's twice as much as we already have in the game right now.

And what happens when we reach 30? Does DE just stop putting out new content so we can't rank up anymore? Doubt that as well. Content will keep coming, there just won't be a "rank up" button anymore. 

[Racter]

You don't know what happens when we reach 30? Obviously we forma our accounts and start over again.

 

Jokes aside, it'd be nice to get something new. I took a break for ~6 months and missed nothing

[(XBOX)Skode]

2 hours ago, K9Fenrir said:

He could bring some of the less used Grineer and Corpus weapons and actually make the special versions good. I don't care for overpowered crap, I just want something i know I can look forward to whenever he visits. Right now it's a gamble between a cool cosmetic or nothing at all. 

That's what he did back in day - been a while since we've had a new Prisma item but Shade was decent, Skana and Dual Cleavers were liked (as they also had augments available) and it was the only time you saw tetras and gorgons for a while lol.

Same with old event awesome - no one could accuse the Machete Wraith or Prova Vandal of being power creep lol but they were the only upgrades to machete type weapons in the game so I liked seeing them in his inventory. I think it's just been too long since he had new weapons - we've seen plenty enough mods and cosmetics new from him. In fact I want to see less primed mods on him for a bit save maybe AW or Companion ones, people are too obsessed with them as is without him encouraging belief he will add even more to make OP frames even more cheesy (which a Primed Streamline or Primed Intensify would).

[steelblueskies]

9 hours ago, K9Fenrir said:

Regarding the addition of weapons, I doubt it would hurt the game. The current requirement for ranking up from 22 to 23 is, what, 120000 mastery? Assuming that doesn't increase with each rank (which it probably does), that would mean that it would take about 320 weapons to get from 22 to 30. And that's twice as much as we already have in the game right now.

And what happens when we reach 30? Does DE just stop putting out new content so we can't rank up anymore? Doubt that as well. Content will keep coming, there just won't be a "rank up" button anymore. 

theres sidereal advancement paths.

take focus schools.

you can work those all day. zero mastery rank impact. ditto any deeper frame mod development than currently exists. nothing stopping a new growth slot similar to exilus, and other things.

also you seem to forget them specifically commenting "we could just keep releasing more weapons forever, but we don't want to do that" when discussing the topic of success and plans.

also don't forget the "umbra" line.

weapons may only be 3k mastery per, but frames, wings, and pets are double that, and we have a number of primes yet, the noted umbra line, and a lot of space in the pet sector slowly being fleshed(prisma/prime, the recent kavats with only 2 variants vs 5 for kubrows yet).

it adds up. but my main point was cautionary, mostly raised by the rate.

simple consider how long they could keep it up before capping mr30 leeway, if they simply added ONE new weapon a baro appearance.

short answer says we will be hurting for mastery space in two years, with over 100 new weapons that aren't really new weapons just reskin/stats.

[Voltage]

why don't lock requesting with MR 14? this allows players less than that to get stuff the normal way and are rewarded for being higher mastery with the privilege to order special items. 

EDIT: also, so players don't order somethings at Mr 7 and he ends up on Orcus relay

Edited August 27, 2016 by -Voltage-