Loot table economy with new warframe parts

[Miburec]

I noticed a trend in Warframe which worries me to some extend. (Beware the walls of text)

The observation:

Spoiler

Titania was the last frame released which had all her parts rewarded during the quest. Every other Warframe after her - although all of them having their own quest too, which is a huge bonus - had to be farmed after their respective quest by gambling on certain rotations of certain missions, because the quest itself only rewarded you with the blueprint.

Nidus led to an outcry in the playerbase because to some it felt as if DE forced players to grind the newly added salvage mission just to get their hands on the new frame.

With Octavia, the outcry was somewhat less loud - after all, her chassis dropped in a rather unconventional and new fashion and her Neuroptics having the highest drop chance of any reward in ODS Rot C.

Harrow on the other hand... Having to farm his neuroptics on the Kuva Spy produced enough salt among the players on its own. But farming his systems on Defection - a mission type which is apparently shunned by a majority of players - led to an outcry of rage as loud as, or even louder than in Nidus' case.

Gara has a weird place in this list, as she too is only farmable with Ostron bounties but since all of them take place in the plains and thanks to it being rightfully hyped playfield, most players don't seem bother that much about grinding her, as they would run around bashing Tusk units anyways.

But contradictory to what it might look like, this isn't about drop chances at all. Drop chances are a part of the grind after all.

No, it is about something else all of these frames have in common. Something which came to my attention the first time in ODS, when instead of an Axi relic the Octavia Neuropics dropped after I allready built her. Something which keeps irrtating me everytime I take a look at my inventory and notice the ever growing pile of Harrow chassis and neuroptics blueprints (yes, I play on Pago quite often). And it continues to irritate me every time I see the Gara parts in the lower tier bounties on Cetus.

 

The problem:

Spoiler

All of the aforementioned Warframes can only be build once, since their Blueprints only drop once from their quests - yet their parts keep droping no matter what as they stay in the loot table all across the solar system.

And in some cases the mere presence of their parts in the overall loot table makes certain missions undesireable to play.

While I don't really care about the Harrow chassis drops for example, as the corrupted have nothing else in their loot table yet and it is a welcomed 3.5K credit goodie, all other parts are to some extend watering down the loot tables of their respective mission/rotation, with Nidus taking it to the extreme, as his parts make up literally half the Rot C rewards, making this rotation basically as undesireable for someone who allready owns a Nidus, as most low level Rot A rewards are undesireable for MR20+ players.

And this is a problem, which will continue to grow. It might not be too noticable right now, but the more new Frames have their parts scattered across the loot tables, the more noticable it will become eventually.

 

The solution:

Spoiler

There are multiple ways this could be improved, but the easiest way (apart from returning to the habit of rewarding the component blueprints during the quest) IMHO boils down o a second loot table of some sorts, only responsible for distributing Frame parts, controlled by a conditional expression to check if the player needs the part blueprint or not, completely detached from any loot table the mission has. If: The player needs the component blueprint - Then: The player has a chance to get it - Else: The player doesn't get something he/she neither needs nor wants.

Let me illustrate:

Example 1:

A group of four runs ODS to the 20 minute mark. The reward is an Axi relic, as there are no other rewards in the table. Now the conditional system kicks in:

Step 1: In addition to the reward, the game first checks the players in the Group - do they have an Octavia blueprint?

• Player 1 doesn't have one. Player 2, 3 and 4 do.

So player 1 isn't eligible to receive the Neuroptics BP, as he currently doesn't need one, either bc. he allready built Octavia or hasn't finished her quest yet.

Step 2: Next step is to determine if the remaining players who do have her blueprint actually need the neuroptics - by checking if they allready have the BP or the built piece:

• Player 2 allready possesses either a Neuroptics blueprint or possesses an allready built Neuroptics part. Player 3 and 4 have neither.

So Player 2 also isn't eligible to receive the BP.

Step 3: Now that the System has determined who actually needs a Neuroptics BP for Octavia, a RNG dice roll checks if Player 3 and 4 actually get the BP from this rotation. (This could even be rolled individually, but to keep it as simple as possible, the roll counts for both). If the roll is successfull, both palyers receive the BP - additionally to the Axi relic they allready got for Rot C. If the roll is negative, nothing happens, you get only your rotation reward.

Example 2:

Player 1 just finished the Glast Gambit and is now the proud owner of a Nidus blueprint. Teaming up with a friend, Player 2, who allready owns a Nidus, they immediately jump to the Infested Salvage and start grinding for the parts. Now the Nidus parts have a drop chance of lets say 15%, 15%, 10% for chassis, neuroptics and systems respectively - each on Rot C. This means the first time Player 1 reaches Rot C they have an overal chance of 40% to get one part.

Lets assume the player in question and their friend have strong A.F builds and are absolute 1447-players, so they have literally no trouble in playing this game mode almost indefinitely. Everything works smoothly and Rot C is done the first time. But RNG isn't that kind; the roll neither lands on 1 to 15 for the chassis, nor on 16 to 30 for the neuroptics and not even on 31 to 40 for the Systems. So Player 1 doesn't get any Nidus part at all - the overall chance stays at 45%. The second time they hit Rot C, the eager Nidus farmer actually gets a part, the neuroptics. This leaves them with an overal chance of 25% to get another part - either by rolling a 1 to 15 or a 31 to 40. But this was just a lucky shot, they have a streak of bad luck and don't get any more parts.  More often than not his roll hits the 16 to 30 -  the RNG range the neuroptics had before. After some hours of grinding, they get bored and extract from the mission.

Player 1 has atleast one Nidus part. And despite Player 1 hitting the Nidus Neuroptics BP sweetspot multiple times, both get their fair share of Endo, Metal Auger, Stretch and Vital Sense for all the Rot Cs they managed to complete, instead of both having their inventory cluttered with countless Nidus Neuroptics, for which both have little to no use after all - Player 2 even less than Player 1.

 

The pros and cons:

Spoiler

Pros:

• Streamlining the loot tables and keeping them clean in the future.
• Providing "on demand" rewards only once and only when needed.
• Adding new WF-Parts to rotations doesn't require adjustment to drop chances of regular rewards
• Additionally providing an easy way to distribute the drops to different rotations, not only to Rot C - if wanted
• Parts have individual and therefore individually adjustable drop chances.
• More than one part of the same Frame or even different Frames can be added to the same rotation without interfering with eachothers drop chance (either by rolling on all parts simultaniously or by RNG choice which part gets rewarded).
• The same part can easily be appended to multiple different nodes and mission types, each with a unique drop chance (akin to Harrow systems, but not restricted to the same mission type), leaving players the choice on which mission(type) they want to farm a speciffic part.
• Might increase the willingness of other players to help farming, as they aren't affected by the WF part drops and therefore aren't at loss if the part in question drops, which they have virtually zero use for - instead of a relic/mod/endo which they could have way more use for.
• Eliminates (to some extend) the need to reassign older frame parts to the market/dojo in order to make room for new parts.
• Enables Boss drops to be repurposed for a "second tier" of Frames without interfering with the "first tier" i.e. the currently dropped frame parts.
• Opens up new means of obtaining parts, for example as a bonus drop on Sorties with a higher chance than regular missions - without watering down the actual sortie rewards.

Cons:

• Although only happening once per part, the player gets two items as a reward for a single rotation. Swapping the reward on demand only for speciffic players would be way to complicated, so this "double reward" might be the only practicable way.
• Since I highly doubt the inventory state of each player is checked on loading a mission, boolean variables for the possession of each eligible Frame Blueprints need to be added and switched true/false when the mission loads to enable the system to work. This might increase loading times.
• A second "loot table" needs to be maintained by the devs, albeit with less work required, as most of the time only the addition of new parts is required.
• Depending on connection and/or how the system is implemented, the additional RNG roll and list check might cause a hickup on weak connections.

I'm sure there are more pros and cons to this system, but that is all I can think of right now.

It shouldn't touch the "temptation" to spend plat to get something you just don't have the nerve for to farm. If DE implements this system but keeps the drop chances and drop locations the same, it results in exactly the same distribution propability as it is right now. For example: Appending the Harrow Systems BP with this system to T2/T3 Defections with a chance of 11.28% keeps the overal probability exactly the same - you'll just get a Life Strike or a relic on top if you happen to get the Systems BP.

It doesn't per se eliminate the posibility to encourage players into playing certain mission types either.

Any ideas, remarks and constructive criticism in general is much appreciated.

Edit: To clarify, the intention is not about gaining advantages as a player. It is an idea solely focusing on the technical aspect of how Frame parts are rewarded. If the current system would be replaced 1:1 with my proposed system, the only difference the majority of players would notice would be a lack of abundand frame parts. Basically giving DE a method to distribute new Frame parts in a more efficient manner - without giving players even the slightest benefit if they don't want to.

Edited October 24, 2017 by Miburec
Changed wording to avoid sounding condescending

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

How about "IF one of the players needs it THEN it can roll for the group ELSE it will not drop at all".

Sure, you might get some parts you don't need, but only if someone else in the squad needs it.

The reasoning behind this being, 1) I'm not sure the game is capable of changing the drop table during a run, and 2) I know it is the Host that rolls loot for the entire squad (at least for rotations/caches), so I don't know about changing tables 'per player', as it would likely bug out often.

[peterc3]

DE is likely well aware of one of the first things learned in any programming class. I would be interested, to say the least, if they managed to build a game without hearing about If statements. Dial down the condescension if you want to be heard.

Subsequent drops of the part BPs, as you have pointed out, are free credits. If you do not like the grind, buy it with Plat, which you can buy from DE or trade for it by getting other things in-game. If neither the grind nor the price of the frame appeal to you, don't get the frame and demonstrate your frustration with the system.

[Miburec]

It's not about changing the table during the run or per player, quite the contrary.

It is more about a second loot roll parallel to the common one, but only cashing out the BP to the ones who need it. It is not per se about getting parts you don't need, but about those parts taking up space in the common loot table.

My Idea is to take them out of the loot table completely and roll them seperately. While your suggestion goes in the same direction it (atleast that's what I understand) would require two almost identical loot tables per mission/rotation - one without and one with the BP in it. It would work similarly but despite loosing the versatility, it would also require constant mainenance. If a new mod for example gets introduced to the table, you'd have to change both loot tables to match the new drop chances, whereas with my idea you'd only have do adjust the common table, since it focuses around being able to change both the loot table and the "Blueprint table" individually without one affecting the other at all.

[Yitin]

i still dont understand your problem; have you got to many warframes parts? looks unusefull to you? sell them

[Miburec]

2 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

DE is likely well aware of one of the first things learned in any programming class. I would be interested, to say the least, if they managed to build a game without hearing about If statements. Dial down the condescension if you want to be heard.

Subsequent drops of the part BPs, as you have pointed out, are free credits. If you do not like the grind, buy it with Plat, which you can buy from DE or trade for it by getting other things in-game. If neither the grind nor the price of the frame appeal to you, don't get the frame and demonstrate your frustration with the system.

first of all it wasn't my intention to sound condescending nor did I want to imply that DE devs never heard of If statements. As you hinted, it would be extremelydifficult to write a SC as complex as a game like WF without using a single conditional - and even then you would just circumvent conditional by using indirect conditionals. It was a humorous remark on the fact that for one the most simple solutions are often the ones you don't come up with without a nudge from outside, since you start missing the forrest for the trees the more complex your code gets, and about problems you might overlook because of that complexity and because they don't seem to be problematic at the moment (thinking about an MMO from a BIG publisher which had to have quite large portions of its SC rewritten, bc the devs never thought of item stacks of more than 99 would ever be neccessary).but I'm gonna edit that to make it more clear.

Despite that you got me wrong on my suggestion, too. It is not about grind, drop chance, player market price or anything. Its about efficient usage of available resources, in this case spots on the loot table. (answering your question too, @Yitin ). It is about economy of available space, if you will.

DE is emphasizing on making all mission types apeal to the majority of players, giving them a reason to play them. but the more "useless" items they add to the drop table, the less appealing this particular mission gets. Infested salvage is a good example, as Rot C consists of Nidus parts and 3 mods you can get a lot easier than that - making Rot C loot even less valuable than Rot A and B.

But at the current state DE will eventually reach a point where they either have to make entire rotations of certain missions consist entirely of frame parts - or to have so many frame parts added to a rotation that the drop chances of anything else becomes diminishingly small. It might take a long time, perhaps even years. perhaps even longer than this game actually lives. but it will happen if given enough time.

what I'm proposing is not some changes in the grind or the dropchances, what I'm proposing is a more dynamic system to add new frame parts to the loot without touching the actual loot tables at all. a system which is not limited by the amount of mission types/tiers you have and is not forcing you to water down any drop chances while still having an option to make the frame parts somewhat scarce if you want to.