Orokin Catalysts/Reactors NEED to Change: A letter to the Game Devs

[Cavman]

DeNA started as a game developer, and then started buying other companies. This is similar to what Tencent did to Riot. You can't use a small fish as an example of profitability. There is obviously a better way, otherwise Riot would have bought out Tencent. Here's a hint. If a company says how many users it has, but won't give out earnings, the profit per person is small.

F2P models have notoriously small profit per person ratios, and this only decreases with softer sales. People simply won't pay if they don't have to.

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with this discussion. Obviously F2P models have smaller profits than, say, EA who releases games continuously for 60 bucks a pop. No one said LoL is making more money than EA or DeNA. Keep the comparisons relative.

To add to that, LoL is definitely more popular than any EA game. And I'm willing to wager EA gets a lot more hate for its reputation of being greedy game killers than Riot gets for... having the best F2P game in the world?

Edited February 1, 2013 by Cavman

[Ced23Ric]

KGeddon, Cavman, you are going offtopic. Could you take it to a PM or get back to it, please? :(

[KGeddon]

• Equalize Platinum and real world money. US$10 = 100 Platinum. Odd conversions are carnie tricks for value obscursion and really grey area stuff. Shady, almost. It's certainly not consumer friendly to distort his perception of what he is paying when he spends the currency.
  
• Deal differently with slots. Unlocking slots with rank ups would be an idea, bypassable with cash. Also, stop it with odd payments for Revives and Weapon Slots. That is another carnie conning trick to sell more tickets. Don't do this because you see others do it. It's not smart business unless you like to label your customers suckers.
  

Agreed that the payment on frames/weapons in plat is excessively high.

The problem is the game developers have to consult with the business guys.

Earnest game developer:"We can sell this many warframes"

Purse string holder:"We need this much to continue operating. Set it at this price and we'll all have jobs next week"

This is an issue of not selling hard enough. Due to the fact that free players recieve so much for free, DE is forced to price things higher for those willing to pay. The development costs don't slide, the operating costs don't slide, and the dev salaries definitely don't slide.

[Ced23Ric]

I never said a word about frames/weapons. *blink*

[MrWednesday]

+ 1 to OP

To be honest when i just read the first few lines, i was like "Pffft, this guy is cheap, he always want free shjt" But when going through the post, he did make perfect sense

The Orokin catalysts/reactos system, right now, is too random, only based on luck and very frustrating.

Idk how to explaint this, but think of it this way. You want to buy a 1 mil $ car, you have 3 options:

a) Find a job and work for 10 years, knowing that you'll get 1 mil $ after those time of hard labor (<- farming, grinding)

b) Waste all of your life buying lottery tickets, hoping someday you'll won 1 mil $ (<- alert mission, daily rewards)

c) steal the car (for the sake of argument, let's just put this as buying orokin cat/reactor straight off by platinum)

What will you choose? Idk about you, but i'll choose to work. It's a long time, but at least i have a solid goal to pursue, rather than just hopping blindlessly that someday i'll randomly be the next 1 mil $ winner.

[KGeddon]

I never said a word about frames/weapons. *blink*

Sorry, assumed you were meaning $5=75 plat and 225 plat = warframe, which is not necessarily the most honest way of saying warframe = $15(you get some bonus, yeah. Doesn't help much unless you buy large amounts though)

[Gestalt]

I addressed this in one of my posts. This might explain why they choose not to use LoL's model, but it doesn't excuse them for using a deceptive one. If they want people to pay them money for their game, they should put a price tag on it.

Um... I wouldn't go so far as to call it 'deceptive', I mean, it IS free to play. Just because it is F2P doesn't mean real money can absolutely ONLY buy cosmetic and other non-gameplayer related items. We would all love to think all F2P games are like that, but that's just not the case in the industry. Calling them 'deceptive' is a bit on the 'eh~' side.

This matters for gameplay implementation or features maybe, we aren't asking for DE to make Warframe a MOBA. It has little bearing on the cash shop what Genre a game is. You shouldn't try to retreat to this. It isn't really the case.

If there was an equivalent to Orokin items in LoL there would be an enormous outrage among the players, but that isn't even the point.

The angle Riot takes is simple. Focus on selling the player looks. Focus on selling the player time savers. Nothing else. If you don't ever touch the gameplay or progression people will feel better about it. You play to get better, you pay to look sexy doing it.

This doesn't change from one genre to another, even across pretty large genre leaps.

>TF2

>Firefall

>Path of Exile

>Warframe (They do this too. There is some focus on cosmetics. Orokin items are an outlier, not the norm.)

>LoL (But we've covered this one)

Would you argue Firefall and Path of Exile are similar? And yet they share a cash shop that wont get involved in gameplay directly. They let you play to get better and pay to be fabulous.

It WORKS. It is FAIR. Indesputabely so.

Just because LoL and Warframe are different genres, doesn't mean we automatically shouldn't compare them. I agree. But thinking what works in one F2P game can automatically work for another is a stretch too. This is why the Devs have time and again said they're weighing the options and trying to avoid copying straight up the cash-shop of another game.

Also, with the case of LoL, we have to remember this: Sadly, Warframe is likely never going to be as popular as LoL; probably not even close.

There, I said it and it pains me greatly, since I never got into the MOBA craze, outside of the games I played back in the original DOTA. But the market is just not in the mood for a coop-3rd-person-action-shooter-with-rpg-elements. In my mind Warframe is at least 10x superior to LoL, art direction wise, coolness wise, gameplay wise, but more than likely this is a game that will be remembered in gaming history as a slick, polished and somewhat revolutionary take on a dying (did it ever exist in the first place?) genre; it will not be remembered as that game that entered mainstream consciousness and was mentioned in a Time magazine article about the surging popularity of gaming. I could be wrong, and I'll be HAPPY to be wrong, but you get what I mean.

With that said, LoL can afford their F2P model exclusively selling skins (and some champions), because it is a successful game. Let's not twist it around and claim that LoL is successful because of it's superior F2P model, because that's just not true.

There are 'scholarly' articles explaining why the MOBA genre is so attractive, and coming from the Brood War/StarCraft 2 community, believe me I've read my fair share. Whatever the reason, it's still the truth, and we should think twice about comparing an almost old-school game like Warframe to LoL when it comes to what to sell to sustain the game.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Gestalt

[Blatantfool]

Listen man, I don't even gotta particularly quote the post to respond with this one.

Warframe and LoL already share a similar model. Mind = Blown right?

Warframe and Weapons Sales are the same as Champion sales. You pay to skip the earning period.

Game time and game play have no bearing here. Get what I mean? It is straight up. You pay for what you don't feel you want to take time to earn in this situation.

Then you've got skins. Skins are ignorant of Genre. They work in virtually any game. Being cosmetic in nature any developer with a cool art team, which by the way we probably agree DE has, you can easily pull off skins. Most games charge 5-10$ for them depending on what they do to the character.

You see man? It is already the same. I'm talking focus. Riot focuses on cosmetics. That is a healthy way to handle it. You don't want to effect gameplay with the cash shop, that aggravate most fanbases considerably.

This isn't a matter of 'Use their business model' it is a matter of 'You already use a similar business model. Now learn from them and share some of their focus too. It works. It works ridiculously well.'

[Gestalt]

The angle Riot takes is simple. Focus on selling the player looks. Focus on selling the player time savers. Nothing else. If you don't ever touch the gameplay or progression people will feel better about it. You play to get better, you pay to look sexy doing.

On this point, it would be great if devs can weight in. It would seem that it takes more time and resources to come up with a warframe skin, As it is highly detailed and has to conform to an overall style that fits the universe. LoL skins seem to be much lower resolution just because of size, and more importantly, the champions of their universe seem to not have any overarching style: from cartoon animals to knights in armor to anime type fighters to scifi dudes, making skins should be less constraining, right?

[MJ12]

LoL is the single most played game in existence. I get that you need to be careful in your posts, but saying you don't have the data to back up how successful LoL is is just silly. Now, there is definitely going to be a big difference in playerbases when compared to your game, but I feel that has little to do with what F2P model you choose to use.

Not even Riot Games has data on how successful LoL actually is. It has a pile of subscribers but nobody has any idea, least of all the Riot Games CEO, of the average revenue per paying player, its conversion rate, and so on. It's certainly successful but the question is whether its model is at all scalable or if it only works because it has 70 million players and was built on an absolutely tiny budget (LoL cost less than $1 million to develop: A game like Warframe with a high-end engine and more complex art assets almost certainly costs far more).

Put it this way. If you think your game isn't popular enough to pull off a model similar to LoL's, then you should just stick a $20 price tag on it and get your money that way. The alternative is the current model (or any variation of walling players off from required game content), which in my opinion is a misleading and deceptive model. The only reason to call your game free-to-play, and then charge for progress, is to deceive. Hopefully, whatever alterations your team has in mind for the alert missions can change that.

The game is said to be "Free to play". Not "Free to play all you want with no restrictions". There is no deception here. If you think there is, take DE to court. If you're right, you'll even win. Battlefield Heroes despite being blatantly and unapologetically "pay to win" is a successful F2P game. And there's also the lessons from BF: Heroes, which is that, more or less, if you're not some kind of freakish accident (i.e. LoL) with unprecedented success you'll generally have to have some sort of 'pay to win' in there, whether it's indirect (it takes forever to grind for new and superior equipment whereas you could buy it quickly, i.e. Blacklight: Retribution or Planetside 2) or direct (BF:Heroes) or you will lose money, collapse, and then explode.

The examples the "Everything should be free" people keep using are things like TF2, DoTA2, and LoL. LoL cost absolutely nothing to develop in game industry terms and was freakishly successful irrespective of its free to playness because it was the first 'retail' DoTA-clone and was designed to be extremely newbie friendly. TF2 and DoTA2 are developed and published by Valve. This name might be familiar to you, because they created Steam. Everything about DoTA2 implies that it is literally a loss leader for Steam: Valve may well be losing money on it and not care because it gets people hooked on using Steam and thus buying stuff from them, which is where they make the vast majority of their money from. TF2 already made up its dev costs long before it went F2P (and thus literally could be making Valve $0.00 per year and still be a good investment due to the goodwill it creates).

People keep insisting that the ideal F2P model is something simple and blatantly obvious when it isn't really anything close to that.

[Gestalt]

Then you've got skins. Skins are ignorant of Genre. They work in virtually any game. Being cosmetic in nature any developer with a cool art team, which by the way we probably agree DE has, you can easily pull off skins. Most games charge 5-10$ for them depending on what they do to the character.

I see what you're trying to say, that cashshop should be purely for skins/other cosmetic stuff, and that those work for any games, and I'm saying it's not that simple.

Consider this: in the StarCraft 2 circle, a year ago when LoL first started to get real big, people were going apeshiz craaaazy over LoL overtaking it in streaming/pro-scene/playerbase, and other things. So then there were a lot of talk about the reason for SC2's dwindling numbers, and a LOT of people suggest it was due to SC2's pay-out-the-door sales method being out-of-date in a supposedly increasingly-F2P industry. Many suggested making future SC2 expansions F2P with multiplayer, and only charge for the single player compaigns, and there were other suggestions of microtransactions like giving ingame units unique skins (a feature previously limited to being part of the Collector's Edition bonus; Collector's Edition cost around 50$ more than standard).

Not many people cared for the added skins idea.

Okay, so others suggested selling rare battle.net profile icons (there is some demand for those, since there are ridiculous acheivements linked to unlocking rare icons already, through winning 100/500/1000/5000/etc online games, and yes people do grind for them), and not many people seemed to think it's going to work either (some players even scoff at people with Collector's Edition profile icons or ingame unit skins, "lol sucker, paid 50$ extra for THAT?" On the other hand, the icons you get from grinding an inordinate amount of games seem to bestow more prestige). Point being, SC2 players are just NOT that interested in skins/icons/other cosmetic stuff that makes them stand out. Now, being a RTS, there's good reason most players don't much care for cosmetic upgrades. It's just a very different genre, and the playerbase care about different things than those in games of other genre.

Now, to bring it back to topic, Warframe has HEAVY rpg elements in it, so it stands to reason that cosmetic sales would be tons more popular and successful than if SC2 were to go F2P and start selling skins. But, you cannot deny that different types of games, with different playerbase filled with people with different mindsets and different priorities SHOULD NOT be simply equated. The issue of Warframe's cashshop isn't a trivial one.

People keep insisting that the ideal F2P model is something simple and blatantly obvious when it isn't really anything close to that.

Exactly what I meant but in much fewer words -_- We're just saying that it's not that simple, hence the devs are working out solutions.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Gestalt

[Foxbyte]

I used to play a lot of STO and, really, seeing that little daily advancement towards a ship I *really* wanted is what made me stay in the game and spending a bit of real money here and there. Reactalysts are just too rare right now, and we should be encouraged to spend our real money on rushing construction and optional unlocks, not something that is so vital to the game. Make the blueprints expensive, or only available randomly from some mid-to-high tier bosses. I'd spend a million credits for a BP easily, and then blow fifty bucks on new skins and helmets before I'd blow fifty dollars on game-necessary items.

On inventory slots, I'm torn. On one hand, they're pretty cheap; but on the other hand, it discourages people from paying for both inventory slots and things to put them in. I'd like to see the warframe slots brought down to 10p each, and weapons 5p per. That would be an impulse buy for most.

[CY13ERPUNK]

It isn't a great deal. There is no real quantity you can put on the RNG that decides Events. You have set odds of an event happening and that event has set odds attached to its reward.

You have a chance to have a chance. This random nature means you could wait a day or a week. This isn't good enough.

This is crap. The reasons that the Monetization in LoL and DotA2 are so good have nothing to do with the game. That is WHY it is so good. It literally has no bearing on the game.

In fact, the DotA2 monetization plan is identical to the Team Fortress 2 setup. The method is SO good it works in two drastically different genres of games.

It WORKS because there is 0 focus on selling you something that changes gameplay. You buy the ability to stand out. Nothing more. Because it is ignorant of gameplay entirely it works anywhere. The same ideas can be taken in by absolutely any game and used to great effect. Cosmetic items can be sold at fairly high prices and they just don't cause trouble among the people playing.

Congradulations. You got to abuse a beta glitch so the problem doesn't have to bother you. Why are you even posting then? Because of that exploit how you feel isn't even valid anymore. You have plenty over a bug. You don't need to worry about having to wait an indeterminable amount of time between Orokin drops.

Also, not a damn soul at DE is making this game for free. They are paid. They have real jobs. The game has a F2P model, that isn't the same as the devs making it free, I'm not sure what the hell you even want to imply with that. Should I just be okay with this because the game is free then? No. I shouldn't feel bad or hold back my criticism of this system because they aren't some big AAA company or some such nonsense. I hold them to the same standards I hold any developer behind a F2P game of this quality to.

It isn't enough anymore for a game to simply be free, it needs to be fair. I shouldn't have to pay to feel like my progression isn't in a choke hold. There are Developers out there who refuse to understand this and their games, as good as they can be, end up a nasty ghost town full of the same few people who've always been around. Ever heard of Brawl Busters? I loved that game but ended up singing this same tune. They sometimes beat 200 players online at once on good days now. All the same guys typically. Game doesn't stand up, no one is going to deal with progression that favors constant spending.

People wont play a game they feel doesn't treat them right when they could go find a game that does. That matters for a F2P game. You can't just not bring in fresh players. You can't just have guys giving up early.

geez dude, just wow

you really live up to yer name dontcha?

clearly you did not understand my post, but whatev's

"it is easier to fool a fool than to convince them that they are being fooled"

i just hope others dont see how you replied to my post and actually think you have any clue of what you are talking about

[Cavman]

...TF2 already made up its dev costs long before it went F2P (and thus literally could be making Valve $0.00 per year and still be a good investment due to the goodwill it creates).

People keep insisting that the ideal F2P model is something simple and blatantly obvious when it isn't really anything close to that.

See, you've already got it figured out. That IS the most ideal F2P model. An investment into good faith. I'm sorry, but this is a good game. And DE is a pretty reputable company. If your argument is that they can't trust their playerbase to willfully invest into their game, that they have to block game progress to coax people into spending money on their game, then I just can't concede to that.

Honestly, I'm gonna just have to see what they decide to change about alert missions. For all we know, the problem could be getting fixed :)

[Blatantfool]

geez dude, just wow

you really live up to yer name dontcha?

clearly you did not understand my post, but whatev's

"it is easier to fool a fool than to convince them that they are being fooled"

i just hope others dont see how you replied to my post and actually think you have any clue of what you are talking about

Cute Ad Hominem. Now try to post something that contributes.

[Blatantfool]

Changing it up to be about something like Starcraft2 doesn't support your argument properly. Stick to what we've got in front of us.

Like I stated, rather clearly, it isn't that Warframe should adopt the LoL model. It already follows a similar setup.

The only thing Warframe does that other successful games don't is this silly Orokin item system, which if you'll notice happens to be the part a ton of people, particularly new players, are getting really caught up over. Quite a few people are even a little burnt out on the game over it.

I actively encourage DE to take the setup they have and turn the boat around in the water a bit to shift away from things like Orokin items, which cause frustration over the fact that money can start to overlap gameplay, and move towards a much more consumer friendly situation where they focus on getting into the right situation to get enough skins and similar purchases and such in the game to support it that way.

You can argue the LoL model wont work all day, but in the end you can't be right.The two games are already very similar when you look towards the cash shop. They sell a lot of the same things in roughly the same way. People buy the items for roughly the same reasons. My argument is supported by what is already in the game. I'm not seeing what you figure backs you up.

At no point in our little back and forth have I been trying to imply they should just copy/paste a setup. I just want them to go roughly the same route.

And for the things Warframe does that League doesn't by the way? No problems. Path of Exile is a great example of a fair F2P business model and they sell bank slots which is actually very similar in importance to Warframe and Weapon slots.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Blatantfool

[MJ12]

See, you've already got it figured out. That IS the most ideal F2P model. An investment into good faith. I'm sorry, but this is a good game. And DE is a pretty reputable company. If your argument is that they can't trust their playerbase to willfully invest into their game, that they have to block game progress to coax people into spending money on their game, then I just can't concede to that.

Honestly, I'm gonna just have to see what they decide to change about alert missions. For all we know, the problem could be getting fixed :)

You are misunderstanding the post. The TF2 F2P model (which is literally "we already made all the money we can from the game as a paid game, no significant numbers of people are going to buy this game at this point unless a miracle happens, making it f2p is just conceding this reality") is inapplicable if you aren't a juggernaut like Valve.

http://www.jeffwofford.com/?p=943

Look, Valve Software's profits are so high they could literally give all their employees 365-day-a-year all-expenses-paid vacations to Cancun and Hawaii and still make a profit. They don't need to monetize TF2 or DoTA2 because they can already make their desks out of solid gold. They could pay you to play their games and still make money. I don't think you understand that DE isn't anywhere near this big and can't act in the same way they could.

Pre "Pay2win", BF:Heroes had an extremely fair unlock method for stuff with ingame benefits. Keeping a fair arsenal of guns with ingame cash was pretty easy. It was extremely friendly to free players. So logically, the game should probably have been a huge goldmine of money, right? Nope. It was hemorraging money. It was a pretty significant annual loss, and this was with a handful of employees in EA's Free To Play division. So they got a bunch of market analysts and econ guys, did a bunch of polls and research, and found that a fair amount of people actually wanted Pay To Win elements.

And they added those in. According to your narrative, this should have turned a dying game into a dead one. People should have left in massive droves, never to return, boycotting EA forever... did that happen? Nope. The playerbase growth was unchanged, the churn was unchanged, and they made more money.

Would I love to have everything for free? Sure.

You know what I'd love more? Having a game to still play. And having everything I want for free is secondary to that.

Edited February 2, 2013 by MJ12

[Blatantfool]

What makes you think there would be less game if something like the Orokin items went away MJ12?

Lets just pretend they don't exist. That items just go straight to 30 no problem.

What gameplay do you figure you lose out on?

You used the phrase

You know what I'd love more? Having a game to still play. And having everything I want for free is secondary to that.

So what do you lose? All of the gameplay is still there, perfectly intact. The Orokin items don't give you an advantage in game by letting you rank up, you can already go straight to 30 on any item. The only thing the Orokin items actually do is allow you to allocate the last 15 points into your item. They don't actually have a gameplay function, you just can't play at full strength without them.

They serve no purpose in gameplay but they DO happen to strike at a players heels by throttling progression.

I love how quickly these conversations turn to Strawman arguments of this particular type. You see a bunch of guys who hate the arbitrary Orokin system and you figure suddenly we want the whole game to play itself - or that we don't intend to buy anything or never intend to support the game.

Saying the Orokin items are awful is simply not the same as saying we want the game to be easier or we want all the content for free.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Blatantfool

[MJ12]

What makes you think there would be less game if something like the Orokin items went away MJ12?

Lets just pretend they don't exist. That items just go straight to 30 no problem.

What gameplay do you figure you lose out on?

The increased (and if BF:Heroes shows anything at all it is that by not monetizing the desire for players to have power you lose a fairly large chunk of potential revenue) chance that DE will not make enough return on investment to continue supporting this game? Because that exists, as much as you want to refuse to believe it can happen. A lot of games I've liked have had subpar financial performance.

In the end, this is a game released by a company, and if it doesn't make enough money it will die and I will be very sad. And if I have to pay $1.33 per weapon or Warframe I want to fully unlock unless I get lucky? Well, I won't be happy about it, but I'll be happier than if the game died.

Maybe if you actually read what my post said instead of just arbitrarily saying I was making a 'strawman' about how you wanted the entire game for free (of course you do, everyone does, everyone wants free stuff, it's irrelevant) you'd have understood that my point is that:

1. "Pay2Win" makes money.

2. Totally free to play games like LoL, DoTA2, and TF2 generally can exist because they're either massive lucky hits (and reliance on being that one megahit is basically rule #1 of 'how to screw up your financial planning') or are funded by a company which could give all its employees solid gold toilets.

3. If the choice is between reactors/catalysts being really really hard to get or the game dying because it isn't making enough money, I'll choose #1.

Anyways, my point isn't specifically that I like the current system. I don't. My point is that the current system is better than no Warframe, and people citing LoL or DoTA2 should keep in mind just how anomalous they are.

Edited February 2, 2013 by MJ12

[Gestalt]

Like I stated, rather clearly, it isn't that Warframe should adopt the LoL model. It already follows a similar setup.

[...]

The only thing Warframe does that other successful games don't is this silly Orokin item system, which if you'll notice happens to be the part a ton of people, particularly new players, are getting really caught up over. Quite a few people are even a little burnt out on the game over it.

[...]

At no point in our little back and forth have I been trying to imply they should just copy/paste a setup. I just want them to go roughly the same route.

Then there's really no substantial disagreement between us O_O

I mean, I agree they can move the current reactor/catalyst acquisition away from the terribly random and luck-based login reward + ?alert system. At the very least make it so it's given out at a low % chance from all the normal alerts. Make it more like the grind for boss drops. I'm not sure on making it a straight grind (with no chance/luck involved), but as some people suggested, costing an obscene amount of credit might work.

I still maintain that however close the current Warframe and LoL system of cashshop are (minus orokin), this still doesn't mean anything. The devs will have to figure it out, with the help of threads like these of course, eventually, whichever way they choose to go with regard to platinum items.

[Gestalt]

This just in: Essence Loki Helmet BP from ?Alert :OOOOOO

[Kyuzo]

world of tanks look at its f2p model can play through the whole game tier 1 to tier 10 without paying a dime

[Blatantfool]

Then there's really no substantial disagreement between us O_O

I mean, I agree they can move the current reactor/catalyst acquisition away from the terribly random and luck-based login reward + ?alert system. At the very least make it so it's given out at a low % chance from all the normal alerts. Make it more like the grind for boss drops. I'm not sure on making it a straight grind (with no chance/luck involved), but as some people suggested, costing an obscene amount of credit might work.

I still maintain that however close the current Warframe and LoL system of cashshop are (minus orokin), this still doesn't mean anything. The devs will have to figure it out, with the help of threads like these of course, eventually, whichever way they choose to go with regard to platinum items.

Imagine how puzzling it has been reading some of your responses. As far as I could tell I was being pretty clear. It is no big deal though.

More on topic..

There really is very little to figure out. DE seems to be doing fine.

They've got out their first round of skins and that stuff is pretty nice. Each Helmet is 5$ and they even felt the need to make them obtainable in-game. I was actually a little puzzled about the fact that they decided to opt away from those skins being purely cosmetic though. That is a conversation for another topic entirely.

The parts of their Cash shop all operate perfectly fine. Just need content (Good thing they are working on that then, right?) and it'll get really good.

As for the orokin items? In a perfect world the entire system would be scrapped and all the Plat spent refunded. The whole setup doesn't afford any positives to the game at all. The more I think about this the stronger I feel. There isn't a single GOOD thing the item does. You can't argue it lets you level since technically it doesn't. You level without it. You just have to get one in order to allocate points for levels you've already earned. It is like having to tip your boss for him to give you your check.

But yeah. Ultimately something needs to happen. I don't mind what so long as it strays away from the heavy RNG.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Blatantfool

[Jatgeirr]

I think this system works well. The catalysts and reactors can be achieved via grind and by straight up playing the game, but still incentivise buying platinum. If you can't afford to or refuse to buy anything, it'll be tougher for you. Thats how FTP works with the only acceptions being oddities like LoL which is far out of the norm and very rarely succeed, or PTW games which are just horrible. The thing is, in order to get you favored loadout supercharged its just 4 the 20 platnum items, meaning 80 platnum, $10. Its not much to ask for and you can just drop one of the weapon mods and limit it down to $5 if you don't want to go through the grind.

Saying somthing like "to buy all the..." comes off as just stupid because if your seriously going to buy all the reactors and catalysts for every weapon and warframe, Then level them all up to max your already going to be grinding from here to OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb (furthest known planet from earth) and probably get tons from daily or mats + schematic. For most players who actualy spend wisely its pretty easy to get your favorite warframe and weapons supercharged for only $5 - $10.

I guess it comes down to this, the game is free. All the best stuff is aleast planned and hopefuly will be achieved through playing the game. And hell, you can even get all the items with the exception of skins and helmets just through playing.

If you don't want to pay to play the game, your experience will be worse than those of us who do, thats FTP in a nutshell. I pay to lessen the grind because I benifit from it and keep a game that I really like in business and free for those who don't want to or can't pay. The reactors are just one way of really lessening the grind and rewarding those of us who do play, without making it buying power. and hell, they even give you 50 plat for free so you CAN buy a reactor for atleast your starting warframe and a weapon.

So if you don't want to pay, grind

If you don't want to grind, its only $5 to supercharge your loadout.

Ask your self this, is $5, the cost of a meal at a cheap fast food joint really going to turn you off of a game thats so good? a game thats still in early beta with many of its features and content still being added and yet, to me atleast, more enjoyable then several full AAA releases that I've seen in recent times.

If you find yourself unable to grind up the cataslysts and have already found your ideal warframe and weapon combo then just take it easy on the game for a bit and save up.

But above all else, enjoy the game, thats what we are here for folks.

[Blatantfool]

This just in: Essence Loki Helmet BP from ?Alert :OOOOOO

Too bad I didn't start a Loki. I nabbed it anyway. Someday they'll add a BP drop location. They really ought to just hotfix his BPs into the drop pool for Pluto for the time being until they have a better home for the BP drops.

It'd be better then nothing at all.