Problem With Defense Mission Rewards

[NavalSpartan]

So apparently there may be a problem with defense mission rewards.

Because recently I played on Pluto in the Outer Terminus defense mission.

Ok, we did the first five waves, and a void key becomes a reward, but we wanted more, so we kept fighting...

After the next set, we got another void key reward, apparently none of us are interested in those keys, so we kept fighting

After that, another void key becomes an award, wasn't interested, so we went on...

 

by the way, all those keys were exactly the same

 

We fought through the next set, and the reward was ANOTHER void key! (that was the wave 20 reward) So we fought again.

 

We finally got to wave 25, and the reward was just a FUSION CORE... I flipped out...

 

My suggestion:

Categorize rewards in rarity/ tiers

1st tier: common mods with a small chance for an uncommon

2nd tier uncommon with small chance for a rare

3rd tier: rares with small chance for blueprints

4th tier: Blueprints

5th and up: Bundles of mods 

[Beldavid]

there is nothing wrong with the reward RNGs system you just got a very rare "set" of RNG numbers

 

this tells you everything you need to know about the defense reward RNG system and how it works.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Warframe/comments/1fwen5/defense_rewards_updated/

[DanPaul7]

Crap rewards from defence has been a problem since endless defence became available

[Mickey1779]

Not all that rare to get back to back Tier 2 keys as they have +15% drop chance.  Four in a row is rare though.

 

The uncommon unranked fusion core is also in that 15% bracket.

[PeterKha]

I don't see anything wrong with the defense tables as they are now. Since you're playing on Pluto, all defenses are tier 3 which means that the highest you will ever need to go is wave 5 to get a decent reward and rinse and repeat. The only reason that anyone would choose to continue would probably be to gamble, exp or more mods. Other than that, they're fine the way they are

[Phatose]

The tables themselves aren't a problem, but I do suspect there's an issue in how it's handled.

 

In particular, Navalspartan went through 25 waves and got 1 drop off the tier 3 list.  If he had instead gone to wave 5, quit, and repeated that a total of 5 times, instead of 1 drop off the tier 3 list, he'd have gotten 5 drops.  And it would've been far easier, since the enemies wouldn't have gained in level.

 

I can think of some ways to deal with the situation.  Most basic would be to make the awards cumulative - so, round 10 gets you round 5's roll plus another roll.  That shouldn't be any less balanced then doing 1-5 over and over again.  But it hardly provides an incentive to not just quit at 5 and restart, since the total reward would be the same except 1-10 is harder then 1-5/1-5.

 

Perhaps if rewards were cumulative, but tried to avoid duplicates.  Say, each time a bonus comes up, it gets compared to the list of currently earned rewards, and if it's already in there it gets rerolled.  Limit the number of times it will reroll, but have that increase with waves.  Wave 5 never gets rerolled, wave 10 can be rerolled once if it's the same as round 5, wave 15 can be rerolled twice (if it gets the round 5/10 reward both times).

 

It would at the very least give player a good reason to continue past round 5 on a tier 3 mission - each batch of 5 gives you a better chance at getting the drop you actually want. 

 

 

EDIT:  Hm.  Might be better to dispense with the reroll thing entirely.  Make rewards cumulative, and remove anything that's already dropped from the drop table.  That not only would mean that "Fight On" might be a good idea in Tier 3 defense - it never is now - and it would mean you could have a larger, more varied drop table without it becoming unduly frustrating since you could get common drops out of the way on early stage groups.  Gives room for expansion in addition to dealing with the always check out at round 5 problem.

Edited June 25, 2013 by Phatose

[Mhak]

lol, can't wait to see OP's face when he hits wave 50 and gets a crappy hellfire as a reward.

 

They're straight up random, OP. All the T3 void keys I've ever gotten have been the reward for completing wave 5. That's RNG for you, although I do also feel that the higher you go in defense, the better the rewards should be, even if the chance at getting really great rewards only goes up 1% per 5 waves. It's still something.