Vacuum: Discussions Post Devstream #80

[(XBOX)freakytiki3]

Let Scott do his thing, I trust him.

 

[(PSN)Kosis181]

I agree with the comments about the pacing of the action and how manually looting slows things down. I also agree that the (at least percieved) need for vacuum is stifling build diversity/viability. 

I like the thought of it being a passive added to all sentinels. Use the kubrow/kavat for combat and the floaty pet rocks for utility. That would be a good trade-off. Also keep in mind that your floating pet rock stays with you all the time, "kubat"s do not. That could make the behavior of vacuum a bit awkward. Think about how shelter currently works when combined with attack precepts: the kubat is frequently out of position to activate the shelter precept. Imagine your kubat activating vacuum, running away and then deactivating it to attack. 

I also like the thought (you can probably tell from a couple of my posts ago) of putting the innate vacuum as a truly always-activated passive in a focus tree. 

The thought of non ammo/orbs just being auto-added to end of mission rewards, with vacuum only applying to ammo/orbs is... meh. Some of the fun is in seeing what you get as you go along. As long as I still get the scrolling list at the bottom of my screen, it's cool with me.

As I see it, there are three types of pickups. Stuff we use to keep fighting (ammo, orbs), stuff we use to get stronger (affinity, endo, mods), and stuff we use to build new things (credits, resources). Of those, the only ones we might want to NOT pickup, or at least pick up judiciously, is the first group. You might not particularly NEED more endo or credits, but you're not going to care if you pick it up now as opposed to later because it won't be wasted the way ammo or health might. As such, some kind of separation is certainly viable, but putting it into 3 mods? Maybe an "everything" mod and an "everything but ammo/orbs" mod would work, but needing to use 2-3 mods to get the same functionality I get now for only 1? 

 

[Insizer]

4 hours ago, rohcQaH said:

tl;dr of my post: IMHO the focus system would be the perfect place to let us earn true passive abilities like vacuum.

-snip-

How to get there:

As a short-term bandaid, just remove Vacuum's binding to carrier, and give carrier a new ability. Community is happy. Communicate the long-term plans. Start working on the focus system when U19 is out the door, and retire the vacuum mod (as well as guardian, animal instinct, sanctuary, ..) once the new focus passives are in place. Consider giving players a one-time chance to respec their focus points.

I respect the thought you put in there, but frankly your idea is the worst idea that I've read in quite a while. It is absolutely terrible. You are completely removing the point of having sentinels aside from their abilities, which are not nearly as important as things like Guardian, Animal Instinct, Sanctuary, and the like. Sentinels are support creatures, thus they are modded to support warframes, that is why they have support mods.

While I agree that your suggestion would make the less popular focus schools more popular (which is good, don't get me wrong) you are scrapping all sentinels.

4 hours ago, rohcQaH said:

Advantages:

1. the focus system gives a natural progression toward useful goals again. All schools are worthwhile, and veterans have an incentive to keep progressing even after unlocking the three mandatory ones.
2. companions are freed up again, players can mod them for their stated purpose instead of survivability and passives. It's going to be easier for DE to balance companions and give them their unique feel.
3. vacuum has to be earned. New players retain the joys of picking up their first drops without wondering why stuff keeps flying at them. Yay, progression. Also, vacuum can still be disabled, which a universal passive wouldn't allow.
4. important passives no longer disappear just because your sentinel ate a bombard rocket. No more suicides just to revive a companions, followed by frantic pleading in the squad chat to please stop reviving.
5. Since true passives are available from the beginning of the mission, and cannot disappear, they can now be relied on for builds. No more being useless for the first two minutes of a mission because your focus ability isn't ready.
6. A working focus system is an opportunity for further additions. Instead of dumping every idea into a random mod, now there's an option to choose between two systems, and use the one that fits best.
7. People can finally use skill 5 for the skill, not just to activate passives. Splitting the active from the passive focus skills makes it easier to balance the active parts. Both are requirements for making the active skills useful, balanced and fun.

1.  No, not all schools would be useful. The only schools that would be used after your change would be: Zenurik, Naramon, and Unairu (just because of the Guardian passive)
2. Freed up to do what? Again, Sentinels are support creatures, you'd be freeing them from their support capability to mod them for support? Even the stated purpose of each sentinels are support by nature (except "Deth"cube and the jellyfish (I forgot its name). DE needs to make more support mods for sentinels so that people can't just mod all of them and will be forced to choose.
3. Vacuum being earned... ok... Vacuum being capable of being disabled is a good thing, but this can also be done by a universal mod. Frankly, it's easier to disable Vacuum if it were a mod.
4. I'll agree with you on this.
5. Focus passives being available at the beginning of a mission is a different issue entirely. We are talking about stripping the purpose from sentinels and divvying them up among Focus schools as passives. At least this what is related to what this thread is discussing.
6. Dumping every idea into a mod is what the modding system is about. In a well balanced modding system the user has to make decisions because they only have X number of slots. Also, a working Focus system is something different.
7. This has nothing to do with a change related to Vacuum or sentinels. It is related more to a change to the Focus system, which is needed. If we were talking about this on a thread about changing the Focus system, I'd agree 100% with this point

I'm sorry for sounding so angry and the like. It is unintentional. I'm just trying to make it clear how opposed I am to your proposition. I completely respect your opinion and the time you took to develop this decently detailed proposition, but I'd be damned if I agree with it.

I will say this though: your change would allow kubrow and kavat users to use Guardian and such, which might be good.

[Dell_the_Engie]

47 minutes ago, FierceRadiance said:

So "extremely popular" does equate to "broken"??  And I don't use Carrier in place of other sentinels, I prefer Carrier over other Sentinels - because of vacuum.

Unfortunately, at least on it's face 'give people a reason' seems to look more like 'we put these other assets in the game, we want to encourage/force players to use them'. And I'm not sure at all that I like that approach.

It looks like they're coming to their conclusion from a strictly top-down datasheet view, where they see usage statistics and say, "That number is too high; we have to make that number smaller."  Their current idea seems distinctly unaware of just what Vacuum does for their game.  Where was Scott's undercover boss work on this one?

And then the result is a carrot-stick approach; incentivize the use of other sentinels, but now Vacuum may be somehow overpowered? so we should also fragment its functions, making players pick and choose from their precious mod slots.  Worse yet, if each vacuum type has its own precept, and sentinels only work from four different precepts, then three of four precepts would be taken just for a fully-functioning vacuum.  In that case, all your sentinel would be good for is Vacuum.

The entire proposal smacks of unawareness; unawareness of why players use Carrier so much, unawareness of why players are asking for Vacuum to be universal, and just what "universal" means.  And they only seem to overcomplicate things just for the sake of diminishing Vacuum, because somehow it's Vacuum at fault, and not the game for requiring it as a mod in the first place.  And all after refusing to address universal vacuum several times in the past.  That may not be how it is, but it is how it looks.

I really hope that this absolute deluge of comments are setting the record straight, of what so many players have been asking for, and why.  I understand that development isn't a democracy, I understand that players don't make the game, developers do.  But players play the game, and that means they can have an invaluable insight into what's going on underneath the numbers.  While developers usually have a bird's-eye view of their game, the players provide the worm's-eye view, the essential second half to a comprehensive picture.  Players don't always have the right answer, but sometimes they do.  I hope DE's taking the feedback seriously.

[Inarticulate]

My personal take is the following:

• Carrier should keep Vacuum as is as a precept.
• Other sentinels, and possibly other companions, could receive Vacuum in its split up components.
• If the mentioned ammo mutation precept is to be added to the Carrier, it could be done as a third precept (Diriga also has three precepts instead of the usual two).

This would allow Carrier to remain unique while still giving the other sentinels some of the benefits and also leaves the option open for the ammo mutation precept.

It might even be possible that the partial-Vacuum mods could still be equipped on top of Carrier's Vacuum for extended range on that type of item drop, though this is subject to balance issues.

Actually, all other sentinels should also be given a third precept while we're at it.

[lZerul]

Universal Vacuum becoming innate to all Warframes would be the ideal.  Maybe half the range of the current Vacuum then turn the mod into a range increase for this Innate Vacuum.

If not that, at least make it a universal companion mod (as in one) not just limit it to Sentinels and splitting it into 3 for no good reason.

The original proposed idea (Sentinel Only, split its functionality into 3 mods) is a terrible nerf to the Vacuum itself and does nothing to make Kavats or Kubrows more attractive then Sentinels.

Edited September 20, 2016 by lZerul

[Phaxtolgia]

I think what needs to be done is to give all warframes a mini-vacuum of 10m, and rework Carrier's Vacuum to work at a MUCH much larger radius, but only works on regular intervals.

[rohcQaH]

1 hour ago, Insizer said:

I respect the thought you put in there, but frankly your idea is the worst idea that I've read in quite a while. It is absolutely terrible. You are completely removing the point of having sentinels aside from their abilities, which are not nearly as important as things like Guardian, Animal Instinct, Sanctuary, and the like.

It's ok that their remaining abilities are less important than Guardian. If we want companion diversity, then they must not be strong enough that any single one becomes mandatory again, or that you need to think about suiciding when your sentinel explodes. One point of diversity is the ability to choose not to bring a companion without crippling oneself. In most situations, if given the choice, I'd rather unequip my primary weapon than my sentinel, and I don't think that's a good thing.

That being said, moving functionality from sentinels to focus does not take anything away from you. And the sentinel abilities are strong enough to keep companions relevant.

Have you ever seen a fully offensive kubrow bite into a poor grineer? Have you ever brought a Sunika to a capture mission and enjoyed the squealing of your target? Have you ever had Shade save your bacon in the stupidest of situations? Have you ever marveled at a perfectly placed AoE-stun just as you needed to reload? Have you ever unloaded a full clip of a crit weapon into a crowd right after your cute Adarza blinked her eyes? I want those builds to be viable, but right now, they aren't. Vacuum's exclusivity is just one part of the problem, the other is mod pressure.

Companions have 10 mod slots and like 7 mandatory mods; more if we're going to fit 3 different vacuum mods in there. By moving some of the mandatory passives somewhere else, we would free space for interesting builds involving Fired Up, Coolant Leak and/or Medi-Ray. Or Bite, Maul, maybe Pack Leader and Scavenge. Or Detect Vulnerability. Or Looter. All of these are a lot of fun, but they are rarely used because you insert the mandatory passives first, then the mandatory survival mods, and before you get to the fun stuff your sentinel is full.

Moving the mandatory passives to a different system like Focus would solve both the problem of vacuum and of mod pressure. Even though companions would not be needed for certain passive abilities any more, I think the change would increase the companion's usefulness by allowing better and more diverse companion builds.

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

Give us a small side quest that allows us to "unlock" a telekinesis ability?! and there u go. A innate passive "universal vacuum" ability for our frames. 

Edited September 20, 2016 by (XB1)FCastle74

[Unibu]

The reason I use Vacuum is that loot/drop gets lost. This is what makes Vacuum almost mandatory in my opinion.

I think that the best way to go would be if we only had to pick up manually health, energy and ammo while resources would either be shared drops (one person picks them up, everyone gets it) or every resource dropped would simply be picked up automatically by all players without even physically dropping on ground.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Unibu

[CloudyPard]

The best course of action would be to create auto loot pickup from any enemy or crate on the map, and changing the carrier and chesa kubrow abilities to something reliable. Why we should pickup loot from the ground when we can do many other things? Let the players get some dignity...

[ACorpse]

@[DE]Rebecca, I bet you've been in a long mission where someone got downed and said "Don't revive me.". Nobody ever says that if their Wyrm or Helios dies. It's only ever if their Carrier dies.

Please don't remove the only reason people will literally die for their sentinel. Leave Vacuum as a single precept for Carrier. Don't nerf Carrier in order to buff neglected sentinels. Give the others access to their own individual vacuum mods if needed, but leave Carrier's own Vacuum precept as a combined/single slot item.

[aegof]

1 hour ago, lZerul said:

Universal Vacuum becoming innate to all Warframes would be the ideal.  Maybe half the range of the current Vacuum then turn the mod into a range increase for this Innate Vacuum.

That extra Vacuum range would probably be enough to make the mod mandatory.  No need to try and balance utility like that.

[devlkore]

1 hour ago, rohcQaH said:

It's ok that their remaining abilities are less important than Guardian. If we want companion diversity, then they must not be strong enough that any single one becomes mandatory again, or that you need to think about suiciding when your sentinel explodes. One point of diversity is the ability to choose not to bring a companion without crippling oneself. In most situations, if given the choice, I'd rather unequip my primary weapon than my sentinel, and I don't think that's a good thing.

That being said, moving functionality from sentinels to focus does not take anything away from you. And the sentinel abilities are strong enough to keep companions relevant.

Have you ever seen a fully offensive kubrow bite into a poor grineer? Have you ever brought a Sunika to a capture mission and enjoyed the squealing of your target? Have you ever had Shade save your bacon in the stupidest of situations? Have you ever marveled at a perfectly placed AoE-stun just as you needed to reload? Have you ever unloaded a full clip of a crit weapon into a crowd right after your cute Adarza blinked her eyes? I want those builds to be viable, but right now, they aren't. Vacuum's exclusivity is just one part of the problem, the other is mod pressure.

Companions have 10 mod slots and like 7 mandatory mods; more if we're going to fit 3 different vacuum mods in there. By moving some of the mandatory passives somewhere else, we would free space for interesting builds involving Fired Up, Coolant Leak and/or Medi-Ray. Or Bite, Maul, maybe Pack Leader and Scavenge. Or Detect Vulnerability. Or Looter. All of these are a lot of fun, but they are rarely used because you insert the mandatory passives first, then the mandatory survival mods, and before you get to the fun stuff your sentinel is full.

Moving the mandatory passives to a different system like Focus would solve both the problem of vacuum and of mod pressure. Even though companions would not be needed for certain passive abilities any more, I think the change would increase the companion's usefulness by allowing better and more diverse companion builds.

Moving it to the Focus system is a terrible idea. New players who need it most won't have access to it and it will just create a must-have Focus tree instead of a must-have sentinel. No need to over complicate this, just make it an ability of every frame. 

[MostlyUseless]

On 9/19/2016 at 2:22 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

What we want to do is measure.

I want an innate vacuum on warframes.  I don't understand why baby-steps seem to be the only means of getting there, but oh well.

Whatever changes come about will undoubtedly result in an optimal loot collection build that most players will put on all companions.

I don't care if Kubrows and Kavats get a vacuum, because they don't reliably stay near the player like sentinels do.  If they're off doing whatever it is they do, I'm still going to be picking up nearby loot manually.

I'm not saying that no action should be taken unless it's the implementation of an innate vacuum, but I am saying that anything less would be annoying.

[Shockwave-]

4 hours ago, (PS4)Kosis181 said:

I agree with the comments about the pacing of the action and how manually looting slows things down. I also agree that the (at least percieved) need for vacuum is stifling build diversity/viability. 

I like the thought of it being a passive added to all sentinels. Use the kubrow/kavat for combat and the floaty pet rocks for utility. That would be a good trade-off. Also keep in mind that your floating pet rock stays with you all the time, "kubat"s do not. That could make the behavior of vacuum a bit awkward. Think about how shelter currently works when combined with attack precepts: the kubat is frequently out of position to activate the shelter precept. Imagine your kubat activating vacuum, running away and then deactivating it to attack. 

I also like the thought (you can probably tell from a couple of my posts ago) of putting the innate vacuum as a truly always-activated passive in a focus tree. 

The thought of non ammo/orbs just being auto-added to end of mission rewards, with vacuum only applying to ammo/orbs is... meh. Some of the fun is in seeing what you get as you go along. As long as I still get the scrolling list at the bottom of my screen, it's cool with me.

As I see it, there are three types of pickups. Stuff we use to keep fighting (ammo, orbs), stuff we use to get stronger (affinity, endo, mods), and stuff we use to build new things (credits, resources). Of those, the only ones we might want to NOT pickup, or at least pick up judiciously, is the first group. You might not particularly NEED more endo or credits, but you're not going to care if you pick it up now as opposed to later because it won't be wasted the way ammo or health might. As such, some kind of separation is certainly viable, but putting it into 3 mods? Maybe an "everything" mod and an "everything but ammo/orbs" mod would work, but needing to use 2-3 mods to get the same functionality I get now for only 1? 

 

Sanctuary always activates for me on my kavat no matter where it is and since Sanctuary is before any attack modes the cat never attacks anyone while it's shielding me.

[(XBOX)LexaHex]

On 9/19/2016 at 2:44 PM, (PS4)IIIDevoidIII said:

I'd rather propose a preset toggle between the three types of Vacuums in the Loadout menu.

I agree with Devoid, this would not only remove this whole hassle with modding and what not, but also give players enough freedom to play whichever way they wish to. Weather they love to gather everything at once, save health/energy for later, or just not suck up anything at all. 

On 9/19/2016 at 2:28 PM, Danjal777 said:

Consider getting rid of pickups, running around to pick up items in a firefight is silly.  What if...you just got the items when you kill enemies, open cabinets, and break boxes?

 

I agree with this to an extent, but I feel like the only thing we shouldn't run around for is mostly credits, thats the only thing that should be obtained instantly. 

On 9/19/2016 at 2:35 PM, Zanoza-chan said:

Shade "Ghost" precept need fix!

If you want to make other sentinels more popular by making Vacuum (or couple vacuum mods) for every sentinel, you need to think about fixing Ghost. Invisibility + Resource gathering will push Shade closer to the top!

 

This is major key, the practicality that shade, dethcube, djinn and even wyrm to an extent lack is very sad. It doesn't matter if vacuum becomes universal, and other sentinel usages go up, because those less practical sentinels will still remain as the least used. they should be buffed or reworked to be more fitting and 'popular'

Also, if we do get universal vacuum, Chesa will need to be looked at. 

Love you guys over at DE!

[(XBOX)TexasBotHurt]

 

1) Make Vacuum a "Universal Effect" by making it a toggle option in Gameplay settings.

2) Give Carrier a new precept, something like... Ammo Mutation

3) Give Mag a new passive, something like Mag's abilities POP Nullifier Bubbles **!!GASP ZOMG!!** (a new reason to FINALLY use Mag)

Edited September 21, 2016 by (XB1)BroadCalf292227

[(XBOX)SEE MR TOLKIEN]

Please don't break Vacuum into 3 mods... that is just a bad idea. 

Also be great if Kavats and Kubrows get their own vacuum, I would love to get my Kubrow out of the house, but guess what? vacuum is too much of a convenience to pass it up. 

Also the stats/abilities of some sentinels need to be looked at, like Shade's Ghost its quite buggy. 

[TwistyReptile]

How about you just apply vacuum to ALL sentinels? 

[Piichii]

my question is how would it be implemented on the kubrow and kavats, right now carrier sucks them up then basically dumps them onto us for us to collect (if u are banished you can see carrier holding pick ups till you come out before dumping them on you), will kavats and kubrows suck them up then you have to chase them down to get the drops or they bring them to you or will it basically be a vacuum centered around the warframe its self modded through the companion

[Nutoru]

"A picture is woth a thousand words"

In this case is a video. I just wanted to share it in hopes that the changes spoken in it can be implemented because in my opinion, there's no losses and most people would be happy with it, well at least that's what I think, if you think that change would not be helpful for whatever reason, you can point out the problem for everyone to consider it.

 

Edited September 21, 2016 by Nutoru

[Jonneh]

Hi.

So, I think I can sum up the desire and objectives of "universal" vacuum and why these proposed changes don't come close.

1) It should be the default loot behavior in the game, for new players especially, and old without any mod slot, upgrade or anything else. 

Why? Well because the fun part of the game is running around stabbing and shooting things with sweet parkour moves. Worrying about and having to look around for mods and other drops. Seeing the stat at the end of the game telling you that you missed about 10 mods that someone else in the run managed to pick up is *horrible*. As a new player, I hated it and even now as a veteran I find it irritating.

2) Tying the function to your sentinel makes it a poor experience on harder content where they often die, and again for new players

What is the advantage of this? The disadvantages are obvious. You have no way to force a recovery your sent if it dies, which can be often.

3) We want to use any/all pet options, not be tied to carrier/"a sentinal" or anything else.

I'd love to use a kub/kav or anything else really, but it feels like the game wont let me. I hated mastering the other pets for the same reason. It detracted from my enjoyment of the game while I used all those other sents to 30, knowing full well I would *never* use them again in their current form. To some extent that is the warframe deal, you level crappy weapons you hate all the time and will never use, but this felt like I was doing it with one arm while I had to pick up the loot manually along the way.

 

I don't really see why the changes have to be so complex. Just make the loot come to us and let us get back to stabbing things with our kitty companions. =)

[(PSN)Onyxflamegod]

One thing that no matter what should just be universally a warframe passive is a vacuum that works on resources, credits, and endo. These are things that are literally needed to progress in the game and there's no reason not to have this. Crafting things and leveling mods use these for every single player.

This removes one topic of debate into a feature that nobody could possibly dislike due to those not being "tactical pickups" but instead being mandatory items.

This then only leaves mods, orbs, ammo, and life support as the drops. These should be affected by a Vacuum mod.  These are all items that people can either live without getting, or sometimes want to pick up at specific times. (not everybody wants vacuumed life support by the dozen when they're at 99%) This means people can control whether or not they get unwanted tactical pickups without being penalized on things that every player needs like endo/creds/resources. As for the mods being included in this category, mods can be lived without, those you can get from alerts/trading/events/baro/etc, those aren't ABSOLUTELY mandatory, especially once  you have the ones you need.

On a further note, instead of making 3 vacuums, just make it the one (with the creds/mats/endo removed because those are universal passives with this idea) and make it a mod that can be used on every companion.

[(PSN)Crazy_Mr_J]

Separate the vacuum effect in 3 parts will be a real problem for sentinels. I love to play sentinels much more than Kubrows or Kavats because i like playing with a robot companion (or insect companion in other games). You have released Kubrows and Kavats, and it's a good thing, but Sentinels haven't got a rework, one of the Prime variant have disappeared (Wyrm Prime), and the Sentinel is killed when we playing HL and we can't revived it. So, the actual real interest for playing Sentinels is the Vacuum effect on Carrier, so, if you separate it in 3 parts, we must removed 2 important mods for his durability, and if you look the Sentinels' stats, Carrier Prime have the best durability with armor and health, so players will continue to played it.

I think, for satisfy all players who wants playing the companion they wants playing :

- all companions must have the complete Vacuum effect (like the actual Vacuum mod) and reanimate effects (like for reanimate a Tenno) like passives

- create a Vacuum effect mod for Warframe (an Exilus mod, if u don't want a companion or more XPs for your Warframe and/or weapons, with this mod, you can)

- creates new sentinels weapons mods, because we have a lot of problems with the actual modding of the sentinels weapons (this interfere with our own Warframe weapons modding)

- adds new sentinels Prime variants

- the sentinels are robots, so why don't creates a system with upgrading parts ? for give effects to the sentinel if we equip one or more parts in slots, and each slots have a list of mods you can equip depending the slot and the type of upgrade using (ex : a slot can be the propulsion slot, and in this slot you can equip legs/wings/reactors or others, and equip mods for this slot in the propulsion table, with the limit to equip mods using by the propulsion type choosing). And you can choose upgrades (modules ?) depending on the sentinel too (ex : Djinn will have infested modules found on Infested ennemies like drops and Bio Lab (Red Veil offers, Market), same for Deathcube with Grineers and Chemical Lab (Steel Meridian offers, Market), Helios with Corpus and Energy Lab (Simaris and Suda offers, Market)...). So, with my idea, you can have, for example, a small Moa like we can see in the Perrin Sequence (not exactly the same but it's the idea), a small infested Dragon... and it's a small example of you can do, because it's living robots after all, and i think they will be happy if we can upgrade them ;) i've a lot of ideas for this system. I imaging Sentinels variants in syndicates offers too (not only for modules), with new sentinels added to the game too, and space modules for used them in space :)

Edited September 21, 2016 by (PS4)Crazy_Mr_J