Some Critique on issues in the Plains, and suggestions

[Evanescent]

Reputation Gain:                                                                                        

The rep-gain in Cetus is in the state all syndicates were initially in: a massive sink for points with only a trickle of points that can be gained.

Playing in a healthy way, there is no way to max out a day's cap. That is frankly, horrible.

Fishing and mining barely make a difference in gaining reputation. This should not be the case. 

Vomvalysts offer pathetic amounts of standing for the Quills. Besides killing Eidolons there is no realistic way to gain reputation with them. I'm sorry to contradict Steve but no, it's not possible to break into the Quills with farming Vomvalysts.

Vomvalysts need to give more standing. Killing Sentients should give standing with Cetus as well, as it is stated in a fragment that they are concerned with the Eidolons becoming whole again. Fishing and mining need to give more reputation.

Bounties need to give more reputation as well.

It all just needs a buff, very, very badly. 

 

Ranking up the Quills and, Time:                                                             

I think you should be able to find vomvalysts roaming in in deep, dark cave systems guarding cores in the daytime.

This would reward exploration and let you make progress even when it is not night, without taking away the main place that nighttime has in gaining rep.

As cool as the daytime cycle is, I find myself consistently finding daytime and not not being able to stick out until night falls.

 

Bounties:                                                                                                     

I had the impression that Bounties would be individual objectives spread out among the Plains that you could gather in a bunch of, and go around checking them off one at  time as you enjoy the Plains.

As it stands currently, Bounties are quite time consuming and hardly rewarding. 

They don't give enough reputation. Bounties meant for veterans cater more to new players with their rewards. It is quite disheartening.

Bounties need more variety and information.

I think it would be better to outline which missions are set out for the players before they go out into the Plains, like sorties. This way if there are mission types you would rather avoid, you can do other bounties instead.

In addition to multi mission Bounties, there should be single mission bounties as well. Currently Bounties are like mini sorties you cannot pause in the middle: although you can do stuff in between sorties, you are committed once you start a bounty.

That in itself, is not bad. I can appreciate feeling a sense of responsibility. But one of the reasons I like Warframe so much is the flexibility it offers, of being quick and easy to get in and out of.

Including single mission bounties would let players with more wiggle room. Sometimes I want to explore the Plains and do a few jobs all over without having to go back to Cetus. Sometimes I want to do quick forays into the Plains and gain rep and rewards at the same time.

I want to grab a number of bounties, mixing long and short ones, and get the rush of completing objectives in a row. 

This would also address another issue: Bounties need to be more rewarding.

As they are now you spend a long time for not so good rewards. This makes grinding out bounties feel like a chore.

Long Bounties should roll a reward for each completed stage,

Short Bounties will be good for this as completing a lot in one go can give you a sense of accomplishment by giving you a lot of loot.

A streak system to increase rare item chance, resource drop and xp drop can be introduced to incentivise and reward players to triumph consistently.

In addition to these the reputation gains for bounties needs to be boosted greatly, at least for the more difficult ones.

A cap on number of jobs can be an excellent incentive for ranking up the Ostron 'syndicate' as well, luring players with an uncapped number of jobs at max rank.

Bounties need to extend to other stuff as well, such as sacking Grineer camps, hunting wildlife, and bringing Eidolons down.

 

Bounty Loot:                                                                                                 

Eidolon Lenses are excellent, but a blueprint is disappointing. Why? Because you need to use 4 lenses to craft a greater lens, wait for the build, repeat 4 times, then wait again using 4 greater lenses to craft one of these. In return for grinding, you are handing me more grind for a small percentage increase in focus gain.

Please no.

Bounties should give you built Greater lenses and Eidolon lenses.

Stance mods are excellent, I really like this. 

The new set mods being rewarded in this way are great as well.

Why is control module, the most common rare resource, a rare reward? This is mean even to newer players!

Credit caches are outdated. They need to give a lot more credits, and there need not be so many of them in the drop table.

50 Endo is not an acceptable reward for any level of players. Ayatan statues would be better instead.

Speaking of Ayatan, single stars aren't cool either DE!  >:(

There needs to be more relics, in packs.

Lenses should also come in packs of 3. Making them more plentiful lets us experiment, lens more equipment, and use them for greater lenses if needed.

Mutagen Masses, Fieldrons and Detonite Injectors should not be in higher tier Bounties.

Packs of Forma, Exilus Adapters, Nitain, would suit them better instead.

 

Mining Camp/Grineer Camp Loot:                                                           

For how well fortified and well defended they are, they are quite unrewarding! 

Assaulting and looting mining camps should feel more rewarding. 

Doing so would give an added incentive to go out into the plains and strike out to find the grineer.

Examples:

Mining camps could give ample caches of gems, or lead to rich gem deposits!

Looting chests in the camps could give rolls at items from the bounty table, to give more chances at loot.

Rare crates could spawn in high level camps.

Supplies of food could be looted to give to ostron families for standing.

Supplies of fuel could be looted to reduce grineer air support and use for archwing*.

At night the Grineer could be moving precious excavated cargo, and breaking into camps could give rare resources and chances at random prime parts(?), eidolon lenses, rare mods, special Ayatans, etc.

Valuable VIPs could be liberated for large amounts of Ostron standing.

The Ostron could reward large amounts of standing for freeing zones of Grineer control and pushing them back.

They could give a big chunky XP reward and boost to further entice players, and this could help in getting focus as well.

Et cetera.

 

Enemy Encounters:                                                                                   

Grineer Tusk

Enemy encounters feel meaty and relentless, which is excellent. But the factor of 'what just killed me?' is increased tenfold with the long range nature of attacks and the increased axes of enemy approach on the Plains.

There needs to be better indicators.

Like archwing, LOCKED ON notifications would be great when being targeted by artillery.

In the hectic nature of fights, overhead enemies can escape notice and carpet bomb you to death easily. AERIAL UNITS INBOUND warnings and INCOMING BOMBARDMENT warnings

would be great as well. They can be implemented similar to the red out of bounds message already present in bounty missions.

Additionally, they should have unique icons on the minimap to further draw your attention.

 

Eidolon Cores:                                                                                           

They are similar to the reactants before they were changed. They are too easy to miss in the grass at night, can roll down into slopes, can get lost in water, appear to vanish after a time, and have tiny pick up radii.

In addition they appear to be client side so each person finds it in a different spot. 

Please make them easier to see (big and glowing), have them stop rolling down slopes, stop despawning and drop predictably!

 

The Minimap in the Plains:                                                                        

Please mark all enemies that need to be exterminated in the zone.

Please mark all enemies in control the zone type missions.

Please correctly show whether enemies are underground or overground, preferably using different colors such as purple/bluish markers when underground.

 

 

 

Exploration on the Plains:                                                                                                     

Archwing

Or, the lack thereof. 
As an essential part of movement in the plains, I was let down when it was introduced locked behind a research time-wall and a consumable sink.

Why?

Players are already hurtling all over the place, just in a more annoying way. Grineer have a distinct aerial advantage over us.

We'll stop to smell the roses when we want, don't worry DE!

If you guys keep doing things like this it is going to drive people further and further away from the feature. It's already hard enough for enthusiasts like me.

Make Archwing calldown available from the get-go, and remove the consumables associated. 

*(This change makes the fuel point moot)

Custom markers

I think being able to set custom waypoints and markers on the map would make navigation a lot easier.

Extraction

Right now returning to the landing craft makes you lose everything you have.

This needs to go.

You should be able to call in landing craft extraction in free roam whenever you need it, like how archwing calldowns work now.

 

Cetus:                                                                                                          

Cetus feels great and full of life. Love it.

Unfortunately the huge influx of players means that for lower end rigs the load times and frame rate stuttering is insane even though the Plains feel great.

Please allow an option to solo load Cetus for players like this. 

If this is not possible, 

Allow Konzu's Bounties to be accepted from the ship once you have reached the first rank, so you can jump directly into the Plains and get stuff done without the lag. 

Then, when we want the social experience, we can hop on down to Cetus.

 

My two cents for now.

 

[Smilomaniac]

This is a very, very good list. I came to many of the same conclusions and I can't imagine why DE didn't, other than to drag out the gameplay for as long as possible, to keep people logged in.

Personally I can't invest any significant amount of time there as long as a single crash (good old memory leaks) will delete all progress earned.

[Evanescent]

Just now, Smilomaniac said:

This is a very, very good list. I came to many of the same conclusions and I can't imagine why DE didn't, other than to drag out the gameplay for as long as possible, to keep people logged in.

Personally I can't invest any significant amount of time there as long as a single crash (good old memory leaks) will delete all progress earned.

Thanks!
Yeah man, that's a big concern for me as well, added to the quitting to liset losing all progress.

[Smilomaniac]

6 hours ago, Evanescent said:

Thanks!
Yeah man, that's a big concern for me as well, added to the quitting to liset losing all progress.

This thread really needs a sticky note.

As an addition to the list, you can add being able to craft/cut more gems at a time at the foundry, because doing them one by one is tremendously tedious. This F2P timegate crap to circumvent with plat is outdated for anything that takes less than a day to craft anyway.

Also, 1 hour for the lumination dye? Really? All the crafting times need tweaking as well as the reputation costs for single-craft blueprints. 2000 for bait that barely nets you two fish per charge... what a joke.

[TenStorms]

Very good Points.

I think DE just released all Stuff with super "defensive" values...i will wait until i can make reasonable progress with "healthy" playing (max 5 hours per Week).

So waiting for balancing and hotfixing next Week(s).

[Genitive]

So many good points I can't even. You could  add separating Cetus and Quills reputation cap to the list, it would make things better. I like the idea of receiving rewards after each step of a bounty. It would make the diluted loot tables more bereable. We could have a chance for better loot the further in the bounty we are.

Regarding the archwing beacon, I wouldn't mind it as long as it would require us to build it just once and then use it as many times we want, rather than have 10 charges. At the very least crafting costs should be reduced and 

I also have a problem with grineer air support, especially with these ships with gatling guns that are difficult to avoid. You can't really see that they are shooting at you until it is too late. I wouldn't have that much of a problem with them, but there is a lot going on already when engaging enemies; their damage should be toned down slightly or they could simply leave battlefields earlier.

Finally, enemies need a damage falloff as we have. Snipers shooting at you from far away are fine, but ramparts having the same range are not.

[Cloverdew]

Very good Points. But DE will stay on their decisions. Remember Hema research cost