Vacuum: Discussions Post Devstream #80

[Vali]

1. Make it a universal passive.

2. Give Mag a new passive. 

 

Everybody is happy! 

[DEADSHOT456]

17 hours ago, [DE]Rebecca said:

The proposed division into 3 types isn't final, and it is something that is being reconsidered (this shouldn't come as a huge surprise based on the amounts of conversations that occurred).

Good. And I hope division into 3 types doesn't become final. It is a terrible idea, as many have said.

For all that Steve and Scott said about not adding mandatory mods, I hope you understand that all 3 of those mods would most likely be mandatory mods. I mean your own statistics say 89% of the players use Carrier. Both you and I can understand that majority of them will use all 3 mods.

I do not even understand why Scott liked the idea of splitting Vacuum into 3 types after all the discussions you said you guys have had.

Think about it - Is picking up loot in a easier manner too overpowered?

For a game that relies heavily on looting, I was always annoyed at the fact that Warframe did not have something like Vacuum. And that is the reason why your statistical data shows 89% players using Carrier. A mechanism like Vacuum is, more often than not, a necessity in a game built around looting.

17 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.

If your aim is to measure, you can do so by giving the Warframes or the Sentinels innate Vacuum, with a toggle option in the arsenal menu.

As far as I can understand, your goal here is to let every sentinel use Vacuum and then see if people start using other sentinels, right?

Then, just make it a innate passive of all the sentinels with a toggle(because having options is great). There is no need to split the effect into 3 mods.

Example -

Spoiler

These -

Instead of this -

 

 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2016 by DEADSHOT456
Can not embed Imgur Gif, does anyone know how to?...Nvm, fixed it.

[Asher42]

I don't normally post anything but I will admit this topic has been bugging me (especially since movement 2.0). I honestly have really been pleased with many of the choices you have made since I started playing so all I'm going to do is give you a bit of feedback on my behavior as a player, my desires as a player, and a simple way to achieve those desires. I have several Dogs and Cats- I want desperately to use them but every time I run them for more then 1-2 missions some rare mod falls into a wall or out of reach or down a pit and I begrudgingly go back to carrier. If vacuum is a mod that can go only on sentinels this will do nothing to let me use the companion I want, only the sentinel I might want. If vacuum is a mod for any companion (dogs and cats included) it will be another serration and I will run it on every single companion- it won't be a choice between this mod vs that. Vacuum is the only way in this game to obtain loot that has fallen in pits or out of reach for a vast majority of warframes. Getting mods and resources is rather central to the game (and obviously health and energy) so I will always consider a vacuum more valuable then any other companion ability(s). If carrier literally ONLY picked up loot for me I would still run it over everything ells - that function simply out weighs any and all other companion functions. If it becomes a warframe mod, I will simply run it on every warframe and have fewer slots for other things. I think splitting it into several mods would just mean I now run all of them eating out all the choices I might have made with the build otherwise. Those are my thoughts. If you have some idea that would let me A) get loot conveniently that would otherwise be unobtainable w/o vacuum, and B) use any companion I want while doing A (cats and dogs included) then ill be eager to try it out- but I suspect the easiest to implement way would be just giving all warframes a passive vacuum. That said there are other solutions that might be better- but probably not easier to implement.

 

Thems are my two cents. I think there is an underlying issue that is exasperated by this remaining a 'mod' though- but that is less about vacuum and more about mods and power/choice

[weirdee]

You post that picture of Scott watching the video, but all it seems to be doing for use of feedback is to dump it into the toilet with the ponies. When we are talking about universal vaccuum, we are talking about FREEING UP EVERY SINGLE COMPANION FOR USE by not tying an essential gameplay function to them. It's like any other piece of equipment in our arsenal: the moment you overcentralize a gameplay feature into one small part of the game, that's the place where the bottleneck forms and your game fails to stick to its core philosophy of players finding different ways to do things. If you want to turn an essential game feature into three bad choices that nobody enjoys picking, just play Mass Effect 3 instead. Just think about how THOSE developers, folks who probably get paid way much more than yall, decided that their personal opinion mattered more to the game design than the game design itself. Continuing to make it a mod will basically do the OPPOSITE of what you wanted for the game regardless of how much you want to make it work in its current proposal. There will always be other functions you can add to the companion mod slots and we certainly won't stop using companions, but there will never be a day when people will love or enjoy stopping to pick stuff up in a game about running and shooting all the things.

There is no difficulty in this decision. There is no nuances to examine. You don't have to do a research paper with thousands of subjects. You have spent more time on this issue than you have trying to settle on a final script for The War Within. We know you can change the default item gather range to be wide enough. You will not harm anybody with that change. Everybody will go back to what they were doing before Carrier first existed. It is both the most and the least you can do for the entire community, including yourselves.

If you straight up don't believe any player feedback anymore on this, just lock this thread already.

Edited September 20, 2016 by weirdee

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

46 minutes ago, (XB1)DarwinsPlanB said:

A passive vacuum of all companions sounds like the best option honestly. But, I keep wondering, what is carrier's new talent going to be?

Agreed, vacuum mod for seintinals and companions. Give the companions somthing that hangs off the collar. Make carrier a carrier..it could carry a separate load out, and ammo mutations. 

[Markerlight]

I also feel that the best course of action would be to increase the innate pickup radius for all warframes. 

The pace of the game is not conductive to backtracking for resources and pick-ups, and the game feels best when you can keep moving from one pack of enemies to the next and focus on killing and staying alive, not on cleaning up after enemies. 
There are also many cases of crates spawning inside geometry or resources dropping through the floor, where it's just frustrating not being able to pick them up. 

Extending the innate pickup radius would help keep the pace if the game similar for everyone who is currently using Carrier's Vacuum and would let everyone try out other sentinels or companions without feeling like they are wasting a ton of resources (which they are) by not using Carrier.

Thank you for your consideration.

[PhoeniixFiire]

Here's a suggestion for vacuum that I think would be a simple fix and would hopefully make everyone reasonably happy. I think the vacuum that carrier currently has should just be applied as a passive for all warframe, and the current vacuum for carrier could simply be a much increased range for the vacuum ability, or could be changed to an entirely different ability. The real problem is that picking everything up is so tedious that carrier is basically a necessity just to keep the game moving at a steady pace. There are plenty of other companions I'd love to bring along instead, but vacuum is simply too important to be without, so just make it an innate passive for all warframes and be done with it!

[SilentMobius]

Firstly: DE, I absolutly get why you haven't addressed carrier yet. I don't envy you in this one.

The community (at least the ones posting here and on Reddit) are nigh-on-laser-focussed on "Universal Vacuum" and the majority of those don't seem to be looking at the big picture at all.

1. Regardless of what is said here, you're right that the stats on Carrier use are a huge problem.
2. Vacuum needs to come off of Carrier, that much is clear.
3. "Picking up loot" is a mechanic, but it's one that many players wish to avoid at almost all costs
4. Players are very sensitive to what they consider "being penalised" for that desire

If we do get "Universal Vacuum" as a warframe passive (as many seem to want) what radius do people want? I mean obviously the focus is that the players just don't want to think about acquiring loot other than doing the killing... right?

So the next question is: Why is the game maintaining, rendering in-game loot positions and transmitting then across the network when the gameplay mechanic that this enables is unwanted by the players? What is the game-benefit for this expense?

We know that rendering, applying physics and coordinating across network for all that loot is expensive in bandwidth and CPU/GPU load because DE have had to limit loot persistence a few times to mitigate issues so if players don't consider the physical mechanic of picking up the loot to be worthwhile, why waste all of that?

There is a visceral feeling to actually seeing "mountains of loot" that I doubt DE wants to lose, but is it really worth all of the overhead if there is no mechanic, no strategy to the acquisition? could they not have a simple non-physics "loot beam-up" FX each time an enemy manifests loot so players see it, but it doesn't need to physics settle or get drawn to a player avatar (potentially creating more visual clutter, something Warframe could do with less of) then all that needs to be sent across the network is the "You got loot X" message and the "Play FX here if you can see it" message.

IMHO asking for "Universal Vacuum" is just a symptom of a larger problem, and I don't think that getting it will solve that problem, there is also a cost to this proposed solution.

As an analogy: If people are running barefoot on gravel and complain of the pain and ask for painkillers (in fact they're already taking painkillers, but they'd like they available by default), do you give them what they ask for or do you give them shoes, or even, get them to run on grass instead?
 

N.B. and this is without even considering the issues with collection of non-loot items that we may not want to pick up at a specific moment that have varying mechanics (Life support, reactant, energy, health, power cells)

Edited September 20, 2016 by SilentMobius

[Icebreccer]

My opinion about this is to give it either as a universal feature for all Warframes or make it available on ALL pets. Gating it behind sentinels only will just make every Kubrow and Kavat owner pissed and will make the furry companions even more underused.

Best solution: Default on all Warframes, 2nd best solution: available as a mod for ALL companions.

[Fylas]

Why not make it A short ranged base value of 5 meters radius, we know you can do that because archwings have a innate item vacuum range. Then the 3 mods can be Utility, Aura, Companion variants that top up the range of item vacuum. the 3 mod limit never said it will be 3 mods it could also be 3 types of mods. By making the Companion variant general like Animal Instinct  EVERY pet can shine be it sentinel, kavat or Kubrow The real question is what happens to the Carrier and kubrow looting precept?

Loot bonus for the kubrow kills? A silent AOE pulse of X size that does 1 damage to objects? that would give carrier the ability to destroy containers in a big area while stealthed or speed running so it wouldn't lose that loot character completely  speaking of loot, that Looter precept is utterly broken, its loud, it doesn't work when stealthed, and it is utterly slow no matter what weapon is used so its borderline useless save for bragging rights :<. Carrier takes 4-5 seconds to kill ONE container and that only if it hits properly which attracts everything in 30 meters even if silenced...

Other ideas:

If the 3 Loot mods are mod types like Aura, utility, companion it allows for variants later on like corrupted mods or nightmare alert mods that penalize a stat in return for twisting universal loot into something different. If it's a general Base value there is nothing that speaks against adding modifiers to mods that affect other things like loot amount/ ammo conversion etc in return for changes in loot range :O!

Ammo Matrix: The sentinel converts unused ammo into the currently active or if full (or melee) the other weapons ammo type with a weaker conversion rate then dedicated ammo conversion mods. if Equipped in tandem with the actual ammo mutation mod the boost is added to the converted amount. Example 10 sniper ammo  sentinel  mod = 50%, non primed rifle ammo conversion : 150%  so sentinel gives 5 rifle ammo or 20 if used together with rifle ammo mutation.

Short sighted greed: Corrupted mod type, Reduces base vacuum range to zero on max in return for loot like credits and ressources up to X percent, if below 100% rare ressources are unaffected  1.75 orokin cells stays 1 cell etc. so that you either have to manually or burn further mod space for utility aura or companion slots to replace the lost vacuum range. Resulting in more specialized less powerfull farm builds :O

Self Damaging Gluttony : Inverse of scavenger auras, greatly increases loot range in return for penalized ammo pickups,

 

PS: if it becomes a Universal base thing can we just call it Loot range or something? O_o?
 

 

 

[aerosoul1337]

The only thing I can 100% sure:

Needing 3 mods to do what Vacuum did, this is absolutely a bad move.

Increasing universal pickup range is actually more helpful.

I have seen too many people killed themselves and said "don't revive me I want my carrier back".

 

Edited September 20, 2016 by aerosoul1337

[Shaonia]

It's refreshing to see that the reign of Carrier as pretty much the sole king of companions is going to end. However, splitting up Vacuum into three mods is a bit dodgy. It homogenizes Sentinel builds by a lot having to sacrifice three mod slots to get the full Vacuum function. Plus it would serve as a major nerf to Carrier itself: people who intend to use Carrier even after the change would have to use three mods just to have the same function as the Carrier before the change.

In my opinion, it would be smart to keep Vacuum as a single mod. Or even better, to do away with 'essential' mods, just make it a baseline for all companions (or frames.)

[manub]

please no dividing vacuum into 3 mods

though i can understand the balance concerns, this would limit the loadouts available too much in my opinion

[MordaxPraetorian]

15 hours ago, KirukaChan said:

Splitting it into 3 is a bit overboard, but 2 would be reasonable. One for things that refill you (health, energy, ammo), and one for loot (resources, mods, credits). I'd use Vacuum if it only picked up loot. I don't like how it wastes ammo and energy pickups currently.

This, do exactly this

I do not want to be forced to waste tons of energy like most of the community seems happy to be doing

A mod that vacuums loot while leaving me to pick up energy selectively would be something I equip

[LSG501]

As long as there is a universal companion vacuum.... ie same vacuum (including slot polarity) as we have now but can be put on ANY companion including kubrows and kavats (like animal instinct) I don't mind what you do. 

If you want you can add split ones too so people can have ones that say don't pick up health/energy orbs if they want but to be honest three is a bit much, 2 would be better because credits and ammo should be 'automatically' sucked up no matter what.

So if you want to do split as well (note 'as well' because I still prefer just one)

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

Mind you, like many others I'd actually like to see the entire range of sentinels, kubrows, kavats looked at in more detail as it isn't just down to the vacuum that we mainly pick carrier.  There's a complete lack of balance between abilities and how effectively they work, I've got all but the prime versions of sentinels and I literally only use 2 of them as my main companions (smeeta and carrier) even though I like the kubrows. 

Shade would be a great sentinel to use for spy missions example IF it actually turned me invisible before I've killed the target.... it's considerably worse than say using a Huras kubrow too.

You've got kubrows/kavats that can be 2-3 rooms back from you because of the way the AI works, part of this is also down to them being slower than the warframe (they really could do with being made faster)... meaning if they get killed you have to go a LONG way back, not to mention the Chesa literally doesn't pick up any of the items dropped unless we've got some random 'perfect' situation for the AI to activate.   Sunika also isn't any good for catching a capture target if it doesn't get there before I've stopped the target, in an ideal situation a sunika should be running off ahead of the warframe to catch the target as soon as they've been 'spotted'... not running behind me.

Also another reason to pick sentinels over kavats/kubrows is the 'cost' of running them, you can literally just pick and swap between your sentinels (don't change this) but EVERY kavat/kubrow has a 30min cooldown or 10,000 credit cost to use (after incubator add on), then there's the 75,000 credit health packs.... while I appreciate the maintenance aspect of a live animal we have an AI on the ship that I'm sure would be able to maintain them.   Ideally you would get rid of this cooldown/credit expenses to make the kavats more equal in terms of usability to sentinels.  As it stands I either need to plan in advance or pay 10k to get a kavat/kubrow for a mission.... versus a sentinel which is pick and go.

 

EDIT: Just had a thought - it would be nice to have some sort of 'bleedout' option for sentinels like kubrow/kavats have, the amount of times my sentinel has been killed by the bugged flamethrowers (think they're the scorch grineer units) in derelict is ridiculous. 

Also for the record - I like the idea of extra ammo (assuming it doesn't get the bug where it doesn't activate) by using carrier and I also like the mutation idea too but am a little concerned this idea would still make carrier the 'defacto' sentinel.

Edited September 20, 2016 by LSG501

[(XBOX)BULLS 0N PAR4DE]

 How about just removing vacuum altogether. I have not used it much in months and I truly do not see that great of a drop off in resources to be honest.

[TychusMechanicus]

Just to put out my two cents on the table in this matter:

I hope that the final solution that will get released won't upset the current balance too much.
I am one of those rare weird tennos who manually collect the drops. If there is a universal vacuum I hope you can either toggle it off or ensure that it only grabs specific items:

• I wait to pick up sniper ammo for weapons that use it manually: I don't want an ammo drop to be used up for replenishing only 1 shot fired when it can replenish 10 shots just because an overzealous carrier sucks it up prematurely.
• I want to decide when I pick up energy and health orbs - similar reasons as above, however, with Health Conversion in mind, even more so.

In fact, pretty much only mods, endo and resources are the items I could enjoy using a vacuum effect for. The rest can be just as much a hindrance as an advantage, purely situational whether it works for you or against you and with the carrier sentinel the choice is taken away from you.

This is why I haven't touched the carrier for over 2 years now.

 

 

^{Yes. the Carrier still shows as the most used companion in my profile because my kubrows and kavats don't show up there.}

[Zendadaist]

My 2p:

The proposed Carrier changes are good - making Vacuum not specific to Carrier and instead turning it into an ammo bag. It's a hardy, powerful sentinel in its own right as a utility babysitter and when I use my Kavat/Helios/Huras instead I really do notice the drop in ammo pickups.

The proposed Vacuum split into 3 (mutually exclusive?) precepts is a huge QoL nerf. The best QoL option would be making it innate to all frames (and giving Mag a new passive). If that's considered to be too OP, keep it tied to companions but have a single Universal Vacuum precept that can be equipped on any sentinel, kubrow or kavat, and tweak Chesa's passive.

[devlkore]

Where do I begin? First, let's not call what has been suggested in dev stream 80 "Universal Vacuum", as it's not at all. Let's also remember that people (a substantial amount of them) have been asking specifically for "Universal Vacuum".

I believe the ideal solution is as follows:

• All frames have innate vacuum ability akin to what Carrier has now.
• Consumables (ammo, health, energy, life support, etc.) are not vacuumed until their full value can be redeemed.
• Players can manually walk over pickups to override the above effect.
• Vacuuming energy is disabled while mag procced.
• Add an option to disable vacuum for the small minority who are against it.

Many ideas have been proposed for alternative Carrier features and Mag passives. There's no point in me bringing them up as even if Mag had no passive and Carrier fell to the bottom of the companion usage chart, the game would still feel better than it does now and companion diversity would increase substantially. Any problems this would create are smaller problems than the ones we have now (use Carrier or get left behind in most missions, use Carrier or miss out on loot you are near, use Carrier if your connection is janky, etc.).

Any mention of "balance" in this discussion is disingenuous as the game is already balanced around the 89% of people using Carrier already, or the game isn't balanced around them and that issue would need to be looked at regardless. As others have said, this issue really is about how the game feels. There are corridors in Warframe that have a split in the middle that without Carrier you have to literally run up and down both sides of to collect everything. 

I would really like to see someone at DE play the game as it is now (with and without Carrier) and then with the change suggested above tell me (and everyone) that it isn't straight up better.

[LSG501]

Coming back to this after a few more bits being read :)

I should have really added this in my previous post but I agree the dev's should look to include a 'rule' that ammo/health/energy is only collected when it will use by at least 75% of it's value or something similar during replenishment to stop 'wasting' ammo/health/energy.  Mind you this is a double edged sword because often as not, when I need stuff it's not there lol

[stanscut]

I want a universal Vacuum detached from companions or mods

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

17 hours ago, Momaw said:

Reasons why proposed solutions from community don't make sense:

• Loot should never be recovered without the player taking some kind of action. Gaining items automatically as the mission progresses is just begging to be abused by bots and AFK players.

There's an AFK detection system that already handles this. It's possible to also make it more resilient against bots.

17 hours ago, Momaw said:

• If you're hiding in a safe hole and nuking enemies before they can get to you without being able to get to where the loot is being dropped, you do NOT deserve to get the loot because you don't actually have tactical superiority. You're hiding and immobilized.

There's no need to hide and nuke in this game. This game is broken; you can just nuke right out in the open. So I question how often this even becomes relevant.

17 hours ago, Momaw said:

• The portion of loot that you get with Vacuum (basically 99% of everything that's dropped) should be a luxury, which has a cost, and not the baseline. There is a more than sufficient amount of energy and ammo, and gaining items which permanently increase your power like resources and mods should require at least a tiny bit of effort.

I highly disagree here. This philosophy punishes mobile players more than anyone else because if you're constantly moving between kills, you lose track of some items. In a game where some things have drop rates of >1% on enemies that show up >5% of the time, it's absurd to potentially punish players for not noticing drops when they're focusing on playing, particularly if those drops are rare.

17 hours ago, Momaw said:

• Speed-running is a way to play the game, and should never be as rewarding as deliberately spending the effort to pick up all the loot.  Speed running is when you are trying to get end-of-mission rewards as quickly as possible. If you want the rewards from playing, then play.

The way to incentivize slowing down isn't to make the game as unfriendly to users as possible. It should be to make lockers and crates worthwhile. It makes little sense to tell players to slow down just because when the game allows the capabilities to go faster, especially if there's no benefit to slowing down.

17 hours ago, Momaw said:

Reasons why Vacuum can be legitimately useful:

• Clients can have extreme difficulty picking up items if the connection to host is slow or unreliable. Vacuum bypasses this.
• Sometimes there is an excessive number of individual drops, each worth very little individually, leading to a sense of wasting loot if you don't pick it all up or a sense of wasting time if you do

You forgot:

- Teams being spread-out (either because of the mission type or just because you PUG'd).

- Missing drops due to screen effect clutter (especially Corpus).

- Missing drops because Defense/Interception ended with the last enemy dropping something potentially important.

- Missing drops because you prefer moving around to standing in one place.

- Missing drops because of ability usage killing off-screen.

17 hours ago, Momaw said:

To me, the real solution for Vacuum isn't even Vacuum as much as it is reducing the perceived 'need' for Carrier:

• Improve client-side detection for item pickups over slow/bad connections
• Reduce the number of drops, but increase the amount that you get from each drop, to reduce the "carpet of loot" problem. Rather than 10 resource pickups that give 100 resource each, make it 2 pickups that give 500. Same for ammo. This makes it more streamlined for players to work item collecting into their gameplay by dramatically reducing the number of times they need to think about where they are moving.

Client-side detection is easier said than done.

Reducing the number of drops would have almost no effect. For the few people who might decide they no longer want to use Carrier because they don't have to grab anything, there would be as many that don't want to risk missing out on important drops, now that missing each one is more costly.

To me, the obvious solution is to

1) improve the AFK system so players are more aware of when they're labeled AFK, and so that others can vote-kick players if and only if they're marked AFK.

2) Increase the pickup range to 5+ meters, and probably closer to 10 meters, if you aren't marked AFK.

3) Give Carrier new functionality as proposed, and balance companions.

[FriendlyFire]

Just make vacuum innate to all Warframes with the same range as Carrier's current vacuum. There's many reasons for it:

• It means the vacuum will properly pull items to the player even if playing with a pet (making vacuum a pet mod would require changing the mechanic, otherwise it'd just pull items to the pet).
• It prevents mod creep on companions, which is already a problem. Sentinels and pets have a lot of mods already, and you want most of them to be effective. It's already difficult to fit tank mods on top of all the utility mods and precepts, having 1-3 more mods would push it over the limit and render the more offensive companions far less useful, skewing things in favor of a select few again.
• It helps new players who won't have a companion for quite some time. Since new players also happen to be the ones who need drops the most (need all the resources, credits, mods and endo they can get, less ammo/energy efficient, etc.), the current system or any new system revolving around companions would still penalize the people who need the feature the most.
• It means players don't have to slow down to pick up drops in a game all about moving fast, jumping around, and generally avoiding walking on the ground where all the drops are.

[TenGaugeBoson]

Break Vacuum into 3 parts?! ok

1.Vacume up stuff

2.Does laundery.

3.Cleans out the Kavats litter box on my ship and walks my Kubrow

[hidden_squid]

Make Vacuum innate, or, as so many people have suggested, just have resources, credits, and mods go straight to my inventory.

This is not rocket surgery. There is nothing that can possibly be gained by splitting a basic, quality of life function, into three mods, unless you feel like harvesting ever more player salt.