New approach to clan research suggestion

[Shockwave-]

**This is general feedback about clan research that has bothered me for a long time and over several item releases. It is NOT specific to the new weapon and does not deserve to be merged into that thread and lost on page 60 of a long thread that is only about whining about the high costs of the new weapon, specifically. This is not about that weapon or reducing the costs or complaining about the costs. This is feedback the coalesced because of the Amesha Systems, but simply waited until the next high cost item to come out to be topical. So I am re-posting this.**

This is something I've been rolling around in my head for a while whenever a new research comes out with high costs (sibear, Amesha, etc). In a smaller, and only semi-active clan, some research items have sat for a long while before enough materials were donated, usually by the same people. Amesha Systems  sat for a few weeks over nitain if I recall.  I actually traded for the bps from someone in another clan while they were trad-able because it took our clan so long. In smaller or more inactive clans, it is very hard to get research done if the expectation is the work is divided among the entire clan.

While on the one hand i like the idea of clan working together to do research it is extremely unfair to clans that have a large number of casual or inactive players, small clans like ghost clans with 1 or 2 people in them, clans that are 1 player over the tier and slowly building, and solo players. Warframe is forcing people to join clans to get this research in the first place and let's face it, it's ALOT of content locked behind clans. With the costs seemingly on the rise,  they are forcing players to join active clans and clans to purge inactive members immediately. This strongly discourages players from taking a hiatus from the game and coming back, or clans admitting low level players at all.

Solution: Individual research in the dojo. Each member gets an interface for research that lists 1 member's total cost (for a ghost clan 1/10 of current ghost clan research costs, for shadow 1/30th etc). Once you have donated your costs you get the research.

Now to simulate clans that do want to work together and get for everyone, once you have donated your materials, you can donate another person's worth (always in 1 full person share increments). Or mats can be donated to the clan bank and the bank can donate them in 1 person bundles.

Option 1  - when you (or the clan bank) donate to the research,  you get the clan list and can choose a member to donate "for" and they get the research.

Option 2 - additional donations don't give research to an individual but simply count toward the clan goal.

 

When the total number of donated bundles = the total number of people in the clan, the entire clan gets the research unlocked for everyone in the clan and all future joiners, just as they do today.  To prevent abuse, set a "goal number" on the research the day the item is released that is equal to the number of players in the clan, but is fixed regardless of changes to clan membership after it is set, so dropping members, doing the research, then adding the members back wouldn't be possible. If your clan had 50 people when it was released, you need 50 donation bundles to get the research clan-wide.

 

This system would do the following:

Allow individuals to get the research if most of their clan is inactive if they donate their fair share of the research.

Allow solo players to band together in research only clans to equitably get all the content locked behind clans and research individually.

Encourage more people in clans to donate materials for research instead of the same handful of people donating it all, and discourage clan freeloaders.

Allow clans to remain newb friendly. If high costs are a trend, clans will stop admitting low level / new players that have few materials. This would allow them to admit anyone and let them donate to get their research, or allow older clan members to donate for say everyone under MR 5 in the clan but not other MR 23s (were option 1 adopted).

Reduce costs for research to the actual number of people in the clan, and not be unfair to an 11 member shadow clan, etc.

Still allow a handful of people to donate all the mats for a research as they do today if they so choose. In addition you can donate once for yourself and not donate a second time until you see enough people donating on their own, then a third time when you see even more donations etc.

Your material  donations will never "go to waste" if you donate first and nobody else donates and the research sits there, you still got it for yourself.

 

Drawbacks (that I can think of)

No research item could be less than 10 items for a ghost clan, so 10 neurodes, 10, detonite, etc. You can never require 5 of something for a ghost clan. all research materials would need to be divisible by 10 in a ghost clan /  a minimum of 1 per clan member.

Since costs are spread out, they won't seem as bad, leading possibly to higher "acceptable"  costs across the board, but then this game needs a materials sink anyway. IN addition overall clans will spend less unless they are 100% capacity for membership when the research is released. While Something that would have been 5 neurodes is now 10, it still ends up being 5 for a 5 man clan.  DE could raise overall costs to compensate since most clans aren't at peak membership today. .I'm sure a balance can be figured out.

The research progression would be a sticking point (needing X before Y). However you could keep the prerequisites as "clanwide unlocked". meaning the clan has to unlock Research X clanwide before anyone can donate to and receive research Y individually. This would force clans to eventually get 100% of the items donated before they could move up the tree but they'd have all the time until the new research comes out to get this done (by hounding existing members or adding new ones willing to donate). This would retain a single prereq tree for the clan instead of each member, but would still force a clan with a large number of inactives to pay alot of materials cost to complete prereqs.

[--Valkyrie--]

This actually isn't a bad idea, it lets people research at their own rate while still contributing to clan research goals. It lets clans keep idle players and makes new players farm up the same contributions as vets without a freeloading tracker or punishment for those that can't or won't contribute and it frees people from choosing between funding the tech for someone else who is freeloading or getting it themselves, while preserving some income stream from DE for those who buy it.

I would add buying it from the market would count for that player's contribution to clan research so if newer players wanted to play to skip the grind that's fine but other clan mates don't still have to contribute their share. This way buyer and researchers can coexist in a clan.

 

This shoudl be implimented