Dev Stream 80: Carrier Changes feedback thread [Megathread]

[MartinVole]

8 minutes ago, Troll_Logic said:

Actually the groups are closer to "everyone" and "three players."

According to my poll, that is not too inaccurate. Of course, it doesn't include that option, one could reasonably assume.

Edited September 18, 2016 by MartinVole
Clarification

[EpicJakelor]

I can live with it being split into 3 mods. Sure, having just 1 mod is far better, but I can live with 3. Having innate vacuum on all warframes would be even better, but I don't see it realistically happening. What I don't understand is why they would limit it to sentinels only. Kubrows and kavats are much harder to get, mod, and upkeep than sentinels, and as of right now they are still less useful than carrier in most circumstances. Giving all sentinels vacuum and not giving it to other companions makes no sense. I just want to use my doggo, DE!

[robbybe01234]

1 hour ago, BHoth said:

In my eyes, taking a mod and dividing it into 3 (taking 3 slots,3 times as costly to upgrade and possibly 3 times harder to get) IS indeed a nerf. I currently use all slots in my carrier sentinel, if I had to give up two (initial carry - 3) i'll be pretty bummed and it will affect noticeably my setup.

I really just don't understand why they had to separate the mod into 3, it seems more work to me and it obviously is making many a player pissed.

I'm curious.  What would you take off if you had to use at least 2 of the vac mods?

[DAWGUNITALPHA]

Now, before I get into the meat of my post I want to talk about drop systems in other games. I've played online games for ages, I've watched as general game design ideals and philosiphy has changed to streamline the most basic parts of gameplay. If nothing else gamers are a group of people with short attention spans. This is not to say they're dumb, but if one game starts to feel like a chore to play there will always be competition ready to pick up the players who drop your game. People like to be rewarded the most for the least effort put in. You're free to call it lazy, but if it weren't true then people wouldn't run min/max builds designed to make even the hardest missions embarrassingly easy. So how does this relate to drops and looting? Well most MMOs over the years have steadily worked on phasing out the whole process. While most classical RPG loot systems had you click a corpse, open the corpse's inventory and pick what you want, as the years and console generations went on it progressed to clicking on a corpse and having it just disgorge everything it had, to everything simply being handed to you automatically. That's not to say every single game follows this trend as there are and will always be outliers to any given trend in design. But as a whole, looting in games is moving towards keeping the flow of games unbroken as the majority of players didn't like having to loot individual bodies, or sort through endless amounts of vendor trash which existed solely to sell when the game could have just awarded them the money anyway. It was tedium. It can generally be agreed upon that if your game relies on pointless tedium and padding then you're doing something wrong.

"But Warframe isn't an RPG!" you can easily say. And it's an argument you see a lot. However it does have "RPG Elements" which is a vague enough term even games like Call of Duty use. Most games with "RPG Elements" follow similar trends of streamlining their design so as not to interrupt the base gameplay. To compare Warframe to a game I feel is fairly similar to it at its core, Destiny. Destiny is big on the running, shooting and loot collecting though it definitely has a more FPS bend to it where as Warframe has a more hack and slash feeling. The reason I specifically compare them is that even Destiny nailed this down. If, upon finishing your mission, any items in the field haven't been picked up in Destiny, you get them dropped into your inventory as long as you didn't leave the mission before completing it. It is an amazing decision not to have to worry about missing a rare item that fell off a cliff, or that flew somewhere you couldn't see in the middle of an intense firefight because you can just enjoy the gameplay knowing once you finish the mission, it's still yours. Warframe, however, if I'm busy killing guys and a rare resource goes flying across a room I might never see it. Possibly no one on our team. How many argon have we mistakenly missed because it vanished in the middle of an intense firefight, never to be seen or picked up?

Which brings me to my second point. Even with Vacuum, warframe's loot system destroys the team based gameplay unless you're playing with a competent group of people you know well. Defense is especially bad about this. I can't count the number of times I've been left as the only person defending the pod while all three of my rando teammates ran off to all the furthest corners of the map to farm solo. I never  saw any of the items they got. They never mark anything. If anything rare or interesting dropped, no one would ever know but the selfish players. But if I dare step away for a second because I didn't want to be punished for protecting the objective, you can be I'd be the one yelled at once the capsule started to die. Even Vacuum doesn't alleviate this problem, countless times I've had a match end while I was mere feet from a rare resource or a mystery mod I will never know the contents of. The personalized reward lists in no way promotes or even encourages people to team up and help one another. Random strangers on the internet in the vast majority of interactions are not going to help eachother, time and time again online games have taught most developers this. Why is DE continuing to punish the few people who want to actually play the game, but reward the people who constantly go against the flow of the group and selfishly try to drag everyone else down?

Forcing every player to manually walk over every single item is just going to make it even less fun and interesting to play the game with other people. I know I'm sure not going to want to do corpus missions with Johnny Bumbles over there killing all the oxium osprey in a tunnel far enough away that if I tried to get any oxium myself, the objective would die. I won't even be able to just quickly dash over there anymore, then run back because now I'd have to stop and make sure I'd walked over every. single. item. Why, in a game all about the pacing and flow, do you want to do something that further stops and disrupts the groove of the mission? This is why I propose an automatic loot system once the mission ends. No more missing mods, no more lost re sources and no more lone wolves standing in hallways hoarding everything while the rest of us finish the mission for them, then wait another minute for the timer to run out. We get what we earn.

[Catacomb]

can't see how any of that is caused or even related to vacuum. 

[Chipputer]

17 minutes ago, DAWGUNITALPHA said:

This is why I propose an automatic loot system once the mission ends.

It's a good idea. No more resource drops, just powerups like health, energy, and ammo.

Carrier gets to keep its vacuum, everyone gets to switch to different companions without feeling "gimped," unless they need that constant intake of powerups, and the, "it disrupts the flow," argument gets taken out back and put out of its misery.

[DAWGUNITALPHA]

Just now, Catacomb said:

can't see how any of that is caused or even related to vacuum. 

Vaccum is at best a bandage on the issue. They see that a majority of players who play past the beginner ranks use it but they don't understand why, at all. The loot system is trash and no one wants to spend twice as long in a mission trying to find out if a resource dropped, and where they have to walk to pick it up. God help them if it fell off a ledge and got stuck below the death pit or glitched into a static object. Without vaccum they can't get that one back at all. Farming is a persistent part of this game, arguably it is the core gameplay. They shouldn't be trying to make it more tedious and less enjoyable.

[(XBOX)freakytiki3]

Please stop with the Carrier drama it's like the Mesa rework (nerf) all over again.

I challenge Carrier companion mains to try using other companions  for a week of playing. So you can actually see the difference that carrier makes in mod/resource collection. To be honest my most used companion is still Carrier Prime 21%   my second most used is Carrier at 18%.  But recently my go to sentinel has been Wyrm  he activates Crowd Dispersion and ere'body in the club drops. Almost every missions i still have the most mods collected or tied for the most mods collected playing with teammates using Carrier.  It's going to be alright we will survive.

[blazinvire]

I must admit, the reasoning is valid but for some reason some part of me actually enjoys running around collecting the loot.

It's like Mario games where you have to run around and collect all the coins etcetera.  Maybe those style of games brainwashed me into enjoying the practice O.o...

[NinjaKitsune56]

16 minutes ago, Chipputer said:

"it disrupts the flow," argument gets taken out back and put out of its misery.

I think you mean it gets put out of OUR misery...

[notlamprey]

This is something I'd really like to see happen.

We can use the UI itself to make loot acquisition feel good and be informative, without requiring players to run around rubbing against every sparkly thing on the play field. The general idea has been kicked around quite a bit in clan chat; it might neatly cleave out the rotten core of this "utility" debate.

Right now, loot collection is a chore that different players tolerate to different degrees, and there's no compelling reason that the "chore" should stay in the game. Acquiring loot is integral to the Warframe experience, but it doesn't have to be a chore that players argue over.

It could (and should) be a joy that everyone enjoys taking part in.

[AhkNemet]

42 minutes ago, DAWGUNITALPHA said:

This is why I propose an automatic loot system once the mission ends.

I suggested this for archwing a long time ago, since its virtually impossible to find the things you want to pick up, as they are wildly spinning off into space never to be seen again lol, but I can see its application for other missions as well - especially the def/intercept ones which never give you enough time to pick up loot before the exit/stay options are applied.
A friend of mine is often the frost.. we have to keep 1 enemy alive just so she has time to loot, but that's a team of people who know and respect each other, you don't get that in public teams.

[ScorpioneITA]

 

[notlamprey]

Just now, AhkNemet said:

A friend of mine is often the frost.. we have to keep 1 enemy alive just so she has time to loot, but that's a team of people who know and respect each other, you don't get that in public teams.

Too true, and that's probably the biggest reason why I'd like to see manual loot collection done away with completely. It adds an unnecessary element of tension between players, in an experience that is supposed to be cooperative.

Ideally, players "cooperate" in helping each other find all the loot to pick up, but Warframe is a game that more experienced players want to play efficiently. It's an ugly word to hear if you're a designer, but it feels so good to move quickly and cleanly through maps and objectives with grace and power.

Right now, the desire to pick up loot is directly in opposition to that goal. We need to seriously consider removing manual loot collection as a barrier to making fast play feel great.

Who would benefit from this? For starters, players who care more about picking up everything would no longer be in tension with players who just want to cruise through a mission without looting thorougly. Sentinels would be much more equally useful, without needing as much 'required mod space.' Kubrows and Kavats would be unshackled from one of their biggest issues.

I'm just spitballing right now, and this is far from a complete exploration of the idea, but I really want DE to give it serious consideration. I'm imagining a game where UI itself is showing us all kinds of shiny good stuff as it goes into our inventory, and it seems kinda great.

[CY13ERPUNK]

um... what? like srsly wtf?

-1 OP... am i doing this right?

vacuum is COMPLETELY unnecessary and imho it has always been a detrimental feature in the game =/ [aside from some small niche uses, like for example mag's passive]

[Tizodd]

The Destiny idea is okay for resources and mods however, we're still left with ammo, energy orbs, and health orbs.  The only real fix, is innate area looting for all frames (there's no reason to tie this basic QoL feature to a companion or mods).

It really does baffle me how needlessly complicated DE is making this.  The simplest solution is to make area looting and option either in Arsenal, or in the pause screen.  That way, the handful of people who actually enjoy running over every single piece of loot on the map can still do that if they please.

Your third paragraph, where you mention group members running off to solo, is related to the Mission Summary screen, not looting.  The Mission Summary screen serves absolutely no positive purpose in a co-op game like Warframe.  The Mission Summary screen causes teammates to compete with each other so they can have the highest damage/kills numbers...it does nothing for group cohesiveness.  I would love for the Mission Summary screen to get trashed but I doubt that will ever happen...people need to have their epeens rubbed.

[Obviousclone]

y'know right now I'm looking at my carrier prime (1 forma)

 

maybe i don't own all the mods. but, there's room to replace some of the sentinel mods I've put on him.

I don't need looter (the majority of my carrier use was without looter, and breaking open crates/lockers is very slow. Also I think it breaking the crates actually breaks stealth). Coolant leak is as garbage as Frost's passive (Actually, after a small consideration, I've changed my sentinel build to not include that mod and instead use the shield recharge one). Regen, well, if something pops my sentinel and regen triggers, it usually dies shortly after that anyways.

 

and then the ones that I am iffy about.

Sanctuary is only good if I'm not playing solo and I have bad teammates (and most of the time the shield get's popped anyways while I'm resing cause it's only 600 hp so it tends to be better to just pick a tank frame/cc frame for res purposes). Striker's kinda a preference thing, I sometimes like to unequip the weapon all together for stealth purposes. But using the corrosive/blast proc sweeper prime build I have going for it is kinda nice.

 

Animal instinct, vacuum, guardian, medi-ray, enhanced vitality are the only ones I've found being mandatory. That's 5/10 mod slots.

Steel fiber is an extra 50% health which is about another 600 EHP on my carrier prime.  I could also bother with redirection which is another 200 EHP. Neither of which scale very well. And these are just defensive mods that are non-mandatory that you would stick onto your sentinel because there are literally no better options.

Fired up is a damage mod and I don't care about my sentinel doing damage (which is why carrier is used over say, the deathcube, so I don't see other people running fired up on their sentinels either). Spare parts is garbage.

just checked the wiki, I don't own self destruct, but by god that mod looks bad. Seriously stuff that triggers on death=useless. No one uses provoked or undying will or any other bleed out mods either, even on Inaros.

For me, personally,  I don't think I'm gonna be affected by the change given how much garbage there is in the sentinel mod pool. Literally the best flex mods that I've found you can run, are the extra defense ones that aren't even efficient like Redirection and fast deflection.

Honestly if they do go through with this change, I hope maybe they also add some other useful precepts for the sentinels. A lot of them are just plain jane bad.

Edited September 18, 2016 by Obviousclone

[Tsukinoki]

The only qualm I have with this idea is that since everyone gets all the loot it just further encourages and rewards AFK leechers.

After all, they now get 100% of the loot even if all they did was run to extraction and barely move more than is needed to avoid AFK from marking them.  And right now the not getting loot thing is really the only thing that even minorly hurts them.

Further it gives all the loot to the people who play perma-invisible just rush through the mission, do the objective and then sit at extraction whining and yelling at everyone for taking the time to kill things.  They get 100% of drops even though they have 0% damage dealt or taken and 0% pickups.
All they did is rush though and never interacted with any enemies or other players.  Why should they get any loot from the mission for essentially doing nothing?

All I see this idea doing is rewarding the AFK leechers and the ones who rush to extraction and sit there and then moan and complain that people weren't able to keep up and are busy killing enemies as they do absolutely nothing to help or kill any enemies.

[.--Seiryu--.]

I suggest having carrier to carry unused ammo or additional health/energy orbs when player has a max energy/health. I think that would be a great addition. 

[polarity]

Personally I think all dynamically placed pickups, that have effects that persist beyond the end of the mission, should be replaced by some kind of big loot pinata animation at the end of the mission.

Those yellow Focus Convergence Orbs show pretty much the biggest reason why dynamic drops work poorly - because you can't expect players to stay in one location, or in a single group.  How many times do those things spawn, and it's somewhere miles back through corridors you, or your team-mates have cleared?  Why would you go to the trouble of essentially doing an in-mission-mini-UPS-mission, when you will be missing out on the action while going to get it, and its timer will be running out with no chance to get kills, while you're running back?  With loot it's the same.  The stuff that drops from what the other players kill can be miles away, and you might be too busy to get it before the mission ends.

Really loot drops / reward boosters break the game, in that they give players a huge distraction from playing the objective.  How many missions fail because people are too busy running around picking stuff up, to defend objectives?  How many people need to be rezzed, because they had to leave cover to go and pick something up? How much loot just doesn't get picked up because the mission ended before you could get round to grabbing it?

 

Instead have every kill have a chance at giving group loot, along with every locker/chest, but instead of having everything spawning into the game (adding to the number of assets in the game world, increasing load on the host), have a loot screen at the end of the mission that shows a tally of how many of each type of mob was killed/ container was opened (plus personal contribution), and what they dropped.

Like a big animated picture of a Grineer Heavy > Number killed / personal contribution > Credits dropped > Mods dropped > Endo dropped > Resources dropped > Blueprints dropped > Big picture animates over to an icon in a table as the next mob type is displayed.

As for the focus thing?  Just give the buff a chance to apply to the whole group when each enemy is killed, with that chance disabled while the buff is active.

Is this a 3rd person shooter, or a 3rd person running around-and-picking-things-up game?

[polarity]

12 minutes ago, Tsukinoki said:

The only qualm I have with this idea is that since everyone gets all the loot it just further encourages and rewards AFK leechers.

After all, they now get 100% of the loot even if all they did was run to extraction and barely move more than is needed to avoid AFK from marking them.  And right now the not getting loot thing is really the only thing that even minorly hurts them.

Further it gives all the loot to the people who play perma-invisible just rush through the mission, do the objective and then sit at extraction whining and yelling at everyone for taking the time to kill things.  They get 100% of drops even though they have 0% damage dealt or taken and 0% pickups.
All they did is rush though and never interacted with any enemies or other players.  Why should they get any loot from the mission for essentially doing nothing?

All I see this idea doing is rewarding the AFK leechers and the ones who rush to extraction and sit there and then moan and complain that people weren't able to keep up and are busy killing enemies as they do absolutely nothing to help or kill any enemies.

So what?  Sometimes you have to put up with things that have no effect on you personally, in order to get rid of considerable personal inconvenience.

As for AFKing, there are pretty simple tests for that kind of thing, that really should be implemented.

Percentage damage done can't be used, because you get people like me with a perfect loadout and a very aggresive playstyle, getting for example, 81% of the damage, one player getting 16%, and the other two on 2% and 1%, because their gear wasn't that good, and they're still learning the basics.

What can be checked regularly is their activity compared to the rest of the group (not just long periods of inactivity), because anyone actually playing, is going to be attacking things, even if they aren't doing much damage per hit, or at least moving large distances, chasing after the people who are (actual conditions can be tuned according to mission type, with some tracking time spent attacking, some distance covered).

Then when it's triggered there's a warning that pops up saying that their rewards may be reduced at the end of the mission unless they start doing more.

[Arkvold]

29 minutes ago, Tsukinoki said:

The only qualm I have with this idea is that since everyone gets all the loot it just further encourages and rewards AFK leechers.

After all, they now get 100% of the loot even if all they did was run to extraction and barely move more than is needed to avoid AFK from marking them.  And right now the not getting loot thing is really the only thing that even minorly hurts them.

Further it gives all the loot to the people who play perma-invisible just rush through the mission, do the objective and then sit at extraction whining and yelling at everyone for taking the time to kill things.  They get 100% of drops even though they have 0% damage dealt or taken and 0% pickups.
All they did is rush though and never interacted with any enemies or other players.  Why should they get any loot from the mission for essentially doing nothing?

All I see this idea doing is rewarding the AFK leechers and the ones who rush to extraction and sit there and then moan and complain that people weren't able to keep up and are busy killing enemies as they do absolutely nothing to help or kill any enemies.

AFKers in particular are already taken care of.  If you're AFK for too long, your rewards get wiped at the end of the mission.

Leechers are a different problem, but the trick there is that if you make use of the ignore list, they can only bother you once.  Once they're on your ignore list, not only will you never have to deal with them again, but you won't be automatically matched with them, either.  Works with AFKers, too!

Edited September 18, 2016 by Arkvold

[polarity]

Just now, Arkvold said:

Once they're on your ignore list, not only will you never have to deal with them again, but you won't be automatically matched with them, either.

Unfortunately no.  Ignore only affects chat.  I've left a mission, put someone on ignore, and gone right back into a mission with them.  Others have seen the same.

[Arkvold]

3 minutes ago, polarity said:

Unfortunately no.  Ignore only affects chat.  I've left a mission, put someone on ignore, and gone right back into a mission with them.  Others have seen the same.

That's weird - I've never been matched with someone on my ignore list unless I use my friends list to jump into a game and they happen to be in it, or I accept an invite from a team that has someone on my ignore list in it.  Automatic public matching has never put me in a team with an ignored person, even if I know that person's running missions on that node.

It's possible that it was mistakenly explained to me, and that I've been lucky.  If that's the case, then I'll go ahead and suggest, right here, that putting a person on your ignore list should prevent you from being matched with them if you join or host games on Public mode.

Edited September 18, 2016 by Arkvold

[Azrael]

3 hours ago, Padre_Akais said:

With not one ounce of disrespect to her, I saw her comment as spit-balling (not a unique occurrence on the Devstreams...It's why I gravitate to Bunny's posts instead typically).

Example: "We are blowing up the Void..."

I have no doubts it'll get split into 3 different mods...I highly doubt that it will be split by what gets picked up though.

There are too many incomparables that can seperate the value of the mods to choose from only to choose such a petty course instead imo. 

I think she and the devs will internally playtest a bunch of different setups and arrive at something balanced and reasonable in the end.

DE_Scott doesn't mince words much and if he was really going to make Vacuum an onerous mechanic to use he would have described it directly (remember, this is Mr. "Yeah, I Broke Snow Globe 'Cuz it needed to be Broken").

The assumption, at it's core is bad business and I don't see that being consistent with DE as a general rule.

Needless to say, I am hoping I am right and this isn't a case of me giving DE too much credit. 

*sigh*... okay...

 

From the official devstream overview:

Universal Vacuum

This overview is guaranteed free of vacuum puns. Those who watched the Devstream were not so lucky. Why all the Dyson jokes? We’re adding Universal Vacuum, of course.

What we're playing with right now is this idea: Vacuum will be transformed into 3 new mods that can be used by any sentinel, with 3 different types of Vacuum:

· Health and Energy

· Credits and Ammo

· Mods, Endo, and Resources/Miscellaneous

Carrier and Carrier Prime will now be given a new precept, which buffs your Ammo Capacity (increasing with the precept level). Unused ammo types will be converted into the ammo of the currently equipped weapon over a small period of time.

 

 

*Edit: here's the link: https://warframe.com/news/devstream-80-overview

Edited September 18, 2016 by Lord_Azrael