Vacuum: Discussions Post Devstream #80

[MotherofHermes]

My kubrows name is kiwi. I love to take it on sorties and solo and basically everything. I would prefer not to have to pick between my buddy or vacume when I play nekros or use kohm. If it could be a generalized mod for all companions that would be great.

Oh. What happened to those kubrow in mission consumables that were talked about?

[CylustheVirus]

Look fellas, let's be honest here.  What we need, more than anything, is to preserve the pacing and flow of this very action oriented game.  Going round and round on foot to pick up space change in the proverbial couch cushions of the map isn't fun, fast, or consistent with the theme and pacing of the game.  I'm a Space Ninja, not a Space Janitor.

So how do we preserve flow and pacing while also retaining a reason for Carrier to exist and the need to make decisions about whether or not to pick up ammo?  Easy.

Award mods and crafting materials at the end of the mission. 

As soon as a mod or quantity of crafting materials is earned (by killing an enemy or breaking a container), throw a quick notification to reflect that (like you already do), but don't drop it as a physical item in the world.

Leave ammo, energy, and health pickups as-is.  Those need to exist in the world, since picking them up is a tactical decision.  Carrier's vacuum can remain basically unchanged and can apply to those things only. 

I don't see the downsides here, but the benefits are great:

1. Preserves/enhances the pacing and flow of the game.  This means Tenno can run and jump and bob and weave to their hearts content.  No more anxiety over missed loot.
2. Net-Zero impact on economy.  If players start to collect too many materials, scale drop rates down.  Results will be quite a bit more uniform, at least from drops from enemies (which I'd bet were the majority source of resource drops anyhow).
3. Less visual clutter.  Fewer nobs and baubles on screen mean what IS on screen can be more meaningful.
4. Carrier still has a unique niche for frames that want to be a bit more mobile while picking stuff up - particularly fragile frames.  This synergizes well with Sweeper, since anybody that comes close to that fragile frame gets a face full o' buckshot.  Also, there's no need to completely re-engineer how Carrier works.
5. Archwing missions suck significantly less, since there's no searching an enormous void in my floaty frame just to grab some resources

All right, maybe you miss out on sliding through a pile of loot, but I'd gladly trade that for getting that one damned Argon Crystal or Oxium drop that decided to fall through a crack in the map. 

Edited September 19, 2016 by CylustheVirus

[Larry_Foulke]

I seriously hope you guys try to actually listen to our feedback, no one wanted vacuum to be split into three parts, All we asked for is for this specific

mod to be usable on other sentinels. This is just 3 steps backwards in order to get more sentinel diversity with kurbrows/kavats as well.

Edited September 19, 2016 by Larry_Foulke

[Kensu]

I feel like all frames should have an innate Vacuum. Example: Mag's Passive. I actually find that I can play without Carrier while playing Mag. Maybe all frames should have a small innate Vacuum, and the Vacuum mod could create a larger Vacuum around your sentinels or companion. This way Kubrows and Kavats can collect loot wherever they are, while having a sentinel picks up loot in a larger radius around you.

I do not think splitting the Vacuum up into 3 different types will work well at all, because that'd be equivalent of making Vacuum an Exilus mod. It would become the most dominant mod and others would not be used. It would just overcrowd the mod pool for sentinels. In addition to that, splitting up the mod making you chose between different types of ammo or endo or mods is also going to be annoying - especially when you have to switch load-outs and forget to switch your sentinels mod to update it with your new weapon type.

Overall I'd be happy with a small innate vacuum (Mag passive size) on all frames, and the Vacuum mod be global for all companions. For Kubrows/Kavats we could have a "retriever" mod just for the sake of keeping things logical and not feeding your pet animal a card to gain an ability.

[SodapopKevin]

The thing about Warframe is in any given mission that you are actually killing things (not just rushing through missions like Capture or being stealthy in Spy) there are hundreds if not THOUSANDS of enemies killed. Not just in hallways too, but in wide open environments and rooms and all these enemies drop at least one thing (ammo, mats, energy, mods and credits). You know what's not fun? Jumping around like a ninja shooting, stabbing and blasting dudes then having to go around the room carefully sweeping up like a space janitor. There is no fun to be had doing it, it's tedious, and it slows down the fast pasted action of the game. Are the non-carrier sentinels secretly so unbelievably  powerful that you all feel like you need to stealth remove up to 3 slots from each with required mods (when 98% of the community uses a sentinel because of one mod that makes it effectively required)? Having Vacuum be base line would enhance the game, and maybe then we can all take out pets out of the freezer and use them instead of just having flying potatoes over our heads.

[H8RAID]

4 hours ago, (PS4)tpesconi said:

Please, think out of the box and like was already said (by Quiette Shy mainly), consider giving this function as a additional passive to ALL Warframes, so we can use any companion or even no companion and still have all the fun.

Limiting this function to sentinels doesn't help new players and doesn't help any other companion.

I'm all for the approach of simply having the vacuum effect be applied to all Warframes as a passive ability.  If you cut up the utility into one or more mods that can be used by all sentinels it will simply become another "mandatory mod."  Universal vacuum has the potential to yield incremental mod diversity by introducing additional mods that can enhance or diminish vacuum effectiveness with trade-offs linked to other Warframe attributes.

[ADirtyMonk]

Please do not over complicate this. Making vacuum a mod for all pets only makes it so that we have another universal mod which is something you have stated several times you want to avoid. Bake a half or 3/4 range vacuum into all frames and change the programming so that it sucks up ammo/energy/hp ONLY when the warframe can receive the entire benefit of that drop not accounting for uncommon modifiers such as arcane energize/equilibrium. Leave carrier as is or even make it's vacuum precept further increase the range of its. Ammo conversion is a lot more powerful than what most other sentinels/kubrows have to offer depending on how efficient it's ammo conversion ends up being. Make the carrier's appeal be even easier loot pickups.

Edit 1: I've seen people mentioning  removing physical drops and giving them when the mission ends which is a decent idea but it takes away the rewarding feeling of picking up rare mats/mods.

Edit 2: I honestly feel that if DE wants a positive outcome from this situation they have no choice but to implement universal vacuum. Anything less than that they are going to experience some severe backlash from the player base. This is something that so many players have requested for such a long time and argued for passionately, multiple times. If DE pushes through with some half assed overcomplicated idea that's actually a nerf, it's going to show/prove to a whole lot of players DE doesn't care all that much or understands their own game to a lot of people. Same if DE goes back to ignoring this, especially now that they have addressed it in a devstream.

Edited September 19, 2016 by ADirtyMonk

[dwqrf]

Hi, I'd like to express my point of view on Vaccum; sadly I haven't watch dev stream and read all the topic, but nevertheless here is my feedback and opinion :

1 - If Vaccum is a Sentinel/Companion mod :

It should be a rare 14 (4 cost + 10points to rank up) points mod, with something unusual like a Zenurik polarity, increasing vaccum range by 0.6 or so per point. Making a new mod to drop, to polarize, and to grind for.

2 - Why wouldn't Vaccum be a Warframe mod ?

In the case where Vaccum is set on a running kubrow/kavats, it doesn't make much sense that the warframe actually vaccum thanks to the mod on the pet. Then it should be an exilus mod, with up to 11 points, with again a Zenurik polarity or so. Would that be mandatory ? People do like other new exilus mods from moon puzzle, but yeah, the choice would be easily made.

3 - If 1 & 2; Could two instances of Vaccum from both the warframe and the sentinel be set, to have a "normal" actual range of vaccum ?

4 - If Vaccum become a mod; i'd suggest a new mod to replace carrier actual vaccum mod :

"Dispenser : Penjaga polarity, 5 points at max rank : Allow your carrier to hold up Health orb (up to 5), Energy orb, (up to 5) and Ammo, (up to 5 for both weapons) and give it to the player in need at the rate of one drop/ 2 second.

[(PSN)tacitassassin25]

Please DE just give us innate universal vacuum on ALL Warframes. I love using the Kavats, but I keep having to go back to Carrier to use vacuum.

[ACorpse]

I'm glad this is being revisited. This would have been a horrible change. I use carrier because I can't be bothered looting, so now I have to fit 3 mods to it instead of one just to keep that level of performance?

I never use a kubrow, and only rarely a smeeta kavat. Helios sometimes when there's new content to scan. Carrier is 90% of my sentinel use, and it's being nerfed into the ground.

Hell it only just started working properly in the first place!

Please let carrier retain its onmi-suck. I couldn't care less about the ammo capacity (it's a worthless change tbh, since you never get through a mission with a single load of ammo, so carrying more means taking a few seconds longer before running out anyway). Making me micro-manage my loot will only get me more frustrated.

Edited September 19, 2016 by ACorpse

[DEDENX]

4 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

What we want to do is measure. We know where Carrier sits in usage compared to the rest of the options. We want a calculated release of a change that will deliver on giving Sentinels the function of Vacuum, and see how it affects the usage of content in that category. The results are something we'll be sharing as it should be very interesting to everyone invested in this particular topic. The shovel in the ground on this will apply to Sentinels first, but Pets aren't off the table.

While I understand the desire to get some metrics on sentinel usage before making a very large (and potentially irrevocable) gameplay change in the form of a universal vacuum, I cannot understand how the data we've already seen can be misinterpreted.

The vast majority of experienced players are using the Carrier (Prime) for one -- and only one -- reason:  it improves their quality of life.

It's not about game balance and its not about sentinels or kubrows or kavats;  it's about the sheer volume of loot dropping in the levels, the speed of movement, and players not wanting to have to perform the chore of manually zig-zagging through an area to collect it all.

Universal vacuum shouldn't be a mod -- let alone three.

It should be an intrinsic capability of every warframe.

Mods could then be implemented to improve the effectiveness and/or range of said capability. For example, an aura that increases everyone's collection radius or a companion mod that causes them to pick up everything in the same way that the warframes now do.

It's simply a better way to do things.  Players don't have to pick a specific type of companion or sacrifice a lot of the capabilities of their (already way too fragile) companions in order to get a basic quality of life improvement;  they get an assortment of new mods which come with their own pros and cons, which would have to be farmed and which they might hem and haw over installing;  and no-one has to deal with the chore of manual collection again.

 

 

On a related note, I've seen a few people talking about how they don't run a Carrier (Prime) because it sucks up items as they drop and doesn't account for wastage.  For example, they might be running a channeled ability and have only a few energy below their maximum, but the Carrier (Prime) collects every energy orb in the vicinity anyway.

There is a very simple solution to this problem:  the vacuum should never automatically collect health orbs, energy orbs, ammunition, or other items where there would be any kind of wastage.  If a player still wants to collect such an item, he could simply walk over them to collect them as he would now.  Otherwise, he'd just have to wait until he reached a point where there was no more wastage (after he took damage, lost energy, reloaded, or whatever).

[flamedance58]

Perhaps give Carrier a passive bonus to all Vacuum mods if you do split it into 3? Though personally I prefer it if Vacuum was kept as a single mod.

[TheDandyLion]

The problem with vacuum is that it over centralizes the meta, not that it is OP. It is an essential game mechanic, so people need to use Carrier and they need to keep it alive. If you split vacuum into 3 mods, then there is no space to make use of something else since it is still just about vacuum. In that case, there is no reason to use anything other than Carrier Prime since it has the most survivability and there are less mods to keep it alive.

 

Universal vacuum needs to be a passive game mechanic for every frame so that we can just stop thinking about vacuum rather than thinking about it even more.

[Admoniter]

Put me solidly in the camp of this issue being made much more complicated than it needs to, vacuum should be an innate ability to all Warframes. Vacuum is such as huge QoL boost and tying it to companions means that if your companion dies you are back to having to play space roomba; which while fun in some games really doesn't mesh well with Warframes speed. This isn't Diablo or other ARPGs where we have a limited inventory for what we can haul out of a mission, there is no comparing stats between things you either pick something up or you don't and there is no variance in quality of what you pick up. Hell many MMOs these days have area loot as a feature or just directly deposit mob drops directly in your inventory. What purpose does having to walk over every damn drop even serve in WF? Other than the whole psychological it feels good to see your character pick up loot. 

[Arithin]

I'm perfectly fine with any solution that allows vacuum pickup and kubrows/kavats.  Even the 3 mod solution.   And how will solve the forma issue if they go ahead with changing the vacuum mod itself?  I don't mind spending 3~4 forma to get my carrier the way I want it, but spending more just to fix polarities rubs me the wrong way.

If the door is open to all suggestions, I'd like another option to be considered.

• Both sentinels and kubrow/kavats being usable at the same time.

Sounds weird, but would stop the two classes of companions from competing with each other (chesa woes), enhances fashion frame possibilities(coordinating a color and armor theme between frame, kubrow and sentinel will be fun!), and get the playerbase excited about using kubrows again.  

[WagnerianSlip]

After playing the game for around 1000 hours i left the game when kavats were released. i left cause i liked the kavats a lot but with that map size and the amount of drops it was just not fun to run around and collect stuff when the game is about fast movement and lots of loot. not only i could not use the kavats i could not use any of the other sentinels or the kubrows. universal vacuum is necessary with the size of the maps and the amount of loot that drops, it should not be another mandatory mod. Thanks for 1000 hours of fun and i would like to do it again if there is universal vacuum.

[Mak_Gohae]

5 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

What needs to be mentioned right away is that a 'Universal Vacuum' is not off the table.

If universal vac is not off the table then what's the point of loot drops? This is the question you should be asking yourselves.

If all sentinels are going to work like Carrier works now you might as well just get rid of vac and have all loot automatically awarded to us.

What happens to ammo when you are full? Disappears. That could bring use to Ammo Drum and is going to stop some lag goofiness like this.

Or maybe have everything awarded to us at the end of the mission when it comes to mats, mod, cred, and endo.

For energy, health, and ammo we would have to pop those restores that will no longer some stationary thing. You just pop it and it slowly refreshes whatever your health/energy/ammo.

 

[FAZZWARFRAME]

My perception of this whole "vaccum outcry" post devstream #80 is the result of an unfortunately combination between the recent community unrest regarding the lack of end game content and DE's anxiousness in doing damage control.  Addressing the vaccum concern is a good approach to appease the player base but the implementation (being the 3 mods solution) was prematurely communicated and not properly framed as a work-in-progress.  Community thus took the message negatively assuming this is the finalized decision.

I agree with the majority in that universal vaccum is probably the best proposal and the end-state everyone is targeting for.  I cannot help but wonder however, if what was said in the devstream about keeping vaccum as a sentinel mod is due to this being a low hanging fruit from a development standpoint, something that DE can turnaround quickly without much resource drain; keep in mind that they are crunching to deliver TWW after all.  The proposal to break the mod into 3 categories may have something to do with DE wanting data on the types of items that players prefer to "suck", or, simply because of how things are "flagged in the back end".  3 mods is definitely over the line but I personally would have accepted 2 (as many prior have stated), but it must come with a beneficial trade off over the current vaccum. (maybe one of these 2 new mods can also vaccum reactants?)

Expansion of the vaccum to all sentinels is a good interim step.  The request to have this apply to the cats and dogs needs to be thought out.  With the current setup vaccum sucks items towards the sentinel and not the warframe - it just so happens that the warframe is within pickup range of the sentinel.  Having a trail of items snaking behind a dog doesn't make much sense if the warfarme is not in range to collect, and if DE makes it so the pet version of the mod flies the item back to the warframe, then they might as well have implemented universal vaccum from the start, but then again, somewhere along the line this might have stop being a low hanging fruit.

It is important to note that we as players doesn't have as much information as the developers, so sometimes what we ask for may not be done due to considerations of what is coming ahead (and not because they hate you).  As much as I can speculate, maybe universal vaccum will break TWW / the new system they're introducing behind the infested door.  Time will tell, for now, DE already said they'll do something about it, let's give them some breathing room.

[yakri]

While it's great that you guys are actually listening to us about the vacuum issue, and some of the ideas in dev steam 80 do make some sense, in any form similar to that which was brought up I don't think they would resolve the issue.
 

•  The decision to break vacuum up into three parts seems to be to keep symmetry with the three sentinels. However, there are really two types of things that get picked up by vacuum. In mission power ups (ammo, health, energy), and loot (everything else). Picking up loot is a convenience, the convenience we've all been clamoring to have on at the very least all companions, or preferably as a warframe universal passive for months. Power ups actually affect balance to some degree, and there's a reasonable argument for not letting us suck those up for free. In the three mod split that was discussed, pickups that affect balance and pickups that are a convenience would be mixed together, which if the mods were unique to each sentinel (i.e. you can't equip all three), would strictly nerf the convenience feature we've been begging for. 

 

• The point of getting "universal" vacuum for a lot of people wasn't just to get out of using carrier specifically, but to actually feel like we have to option to take a kubrow or Kavat into a mission. Smeeta is at least SOME competition if you want that missions rare resource but vacuum is still virtually mandatory for a lot of various activities. Personally I know my goal is to never ever equip a sentinel again if we can get real universal vacuum. I've always hated them, but never used anything else.

 

• We need some kind of actually universal vacuum. Not a more limited version. Universal vacuum means only two things to the players asking for it. 1) Vacuum as-is on all companions. 2) vacuum on warframes as a unique passive. I'd imagine most of us would drastically prefer the second option we just don't expect you guys to give us the change we really want.

 

• While you're it it, vacuum in Archwing could be quadrupled, or even quintupled, or hextupled in range. Really no multiplier is too large. Archwing might as well not even have a vacuum effect as is ffs. The pull speed ought to be a lot faster too.

 

Edit: Unfortunately, I'd been away from the game for a few weeks and missed some updates, so I implied the Smeeta Kavat could in some ways rival the power of Carrier. That is wrong, Carrier is king. Sorry for the mix up.

Edited September 20, 2016 by yakri

[Rioma]

You want players to be able to choose what stuff they're vacuuming right? Why does it need to be a mod/mods? Just make it a natural thing and in the options menu you can toggle on / off what you're vacuuming. Those 3 mods you made could simply be the 3 options you can toggle on/off. 

Remember back in a dev stream when you said you didn't want to make a cover system in WF because you liked WF having fast paced flow of battle. Welp IMO killing an entire room of enemies faster than you can pick up all the drops is also slow and breaks the flow of battle. The combat and movement mechanics are why people play the game. Being stuck to the floor trying to sweep up all your drops when we are able to bullet jump and fly meters off the ground is pretty unfun imo. just my my thoughts on the issue : [

[Raikaze]

I just wanted to throw in my two cents.  I also keep going back to Carrier because I just hate thinking I might miss a good mod, even with Animal Instinct.

I for one hate having to find mods on my radar in Archwing, which may be one of my biggest reasons for not playing Archwing missions. 

[letir]

Stop trying to pull something smart. Just make it simple, wihtout bandaid mods and such.

Innate vacuum for every frame, with toggle on/off in options.

That's all.

[Synitare]

1 hour ago, Mak_Gohae said:

If universal vac is not off the table then what's the point of loot drops? This is the question you should be asking yourselves.

The point is that loot drops are interesting. It's cool killing an enemy and seeing that gold beam of light fly out. What isn't interesting is having to carefully walk exactly over the items hitbox in order to pick it up. All frames already have vacuum in a sense. The range is simply much smaller than it needs to be. The primary issue here is the pacing and flow of movement gets interrupted due to the ridiculously small loot radius. It's fine to have a small loot radius or even click to loot in a game like Diablo or Path of Exile because those games have a much slower pace. Even in Diablo though, players complain that looting resources (crafting materials, gems, etc) should be as automatic as gold, leaving the actual click-to-loot stuff solely for weapons and armor.

Looting every little inconsequential thing is tedious and entirely unnecessary. It adds nothing whatsoever. Not to a game like Diablo that literally revolves around the concept of loot, and certainly not to a game like Warframe where the extremely fast paced combat and movement is the core.

[Coincidentally]

Vacuum's addition to the game was an unintentional band-aid fix for one of Warframe's every present problems. It should be an innate ability that all warframes have. Even as vacuum is now, there are some minor problems with it, because the items are drawn to your sentinel rather than to your warframe. If you're moving quickly enough, you won't loot the items your carrier has picked up until you stop. I see this as only being exacerbated by allowing all companions to use the mods, and I honestly don't think that vacuum is something that needs to be a mod in the first place. It's a mechanic that is seen by a large percent of the community as so important that they use carrier, even though it doesn't directly impact your stats. That points to a flaw in the games design, not the players.

[Aniawn]

I like the idea of splitting Vacuum into multiple mods.

Though, I think we could do with splitting Vacuum into just two mods:

• Health, Energy, and Ammo
• Credits, Mods, Endo, and Resources/Miscellaneous