Lack of Universal Vacuum Hinders Companion Diversity and Pet Updates

[(XBOX)Evilpricetag]

I still agree with UV, but its how its implemented is important to me. I don't fully understand the reason behind a manual scale for a mod-less vacuum, just to satisfy those that don't want it? They'll eventually adapt to it and always have it maxed. Unless the scale borders with something else. Less vacuum = more affinity(experience)/drop rate. Otherwise a manual vacuum seems worthless to me.

 

Even sentinels bring you your items, so much the companion and with their AI how much is to much, how close must they be to hand it off? I'm still stuck on possibly both you and your companion having a 'vacuum only' sentinel. Simple design, no combat, companion maybe can keep health pick-ups but its sentinel will occasionally travel to the owner's warframe to deliver goods.

 

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On the topic of Chesa Kubrow. Chesa simply doesn't work. Its precept says that it could only pick up stuff when there's no enemies around. Meaning that she never picks up anything. Dogs have like 33 meter enemy sense.

 

I wasn't talking about Chesa, but in the event of an appropriate 'UV' Mag's passive & Chesa's Mod would both deserve replacements. Potentially other things of this nature as well.

Sahasa Kubrow has a mod for 280% dig, which has a very fair chance of giving 50-75 energy, which is a little overkill for allowing a vacuum on top of it, was my argument. It is a fantastic kubrow, but easily would be the most picked, adding its increased finisher damage mod, damage + energy.

Huras, is capable of making any warframe stealthy for a spy, and is specifically capable last I've notice of keeping you invisible for the entire spy room. Where as Shade simply has a range of how far away an enemy is, with a cooldown once that condition is met, but can get you caught really fast.

I have yet to properly test the shade pistol/prisma pistol, but if its any good, take it toss shade in trash.

 

I apologize for late response I actually had most of this typed out.. on console, but it's quite easy to accidently destroy lots of controller typing with a simple button... "XBOX"

I hope this Vacuum thing gets resolved soon, I recently heard in the last devstream about a bird companion that's been in the think-tank for some time, but with all the issues it may not get much of a great appeal, at least Carrier has a cool teaser skin for a bird for now.

Edited November 23, 2017 by (XB1)Evilpricetag

[Soul-scar]

Add mod "Fetch" for animal pets would solve the entire issue. I would probably still use carrier because of the ammo drum but at least it would be realistic to bring a hard earned pets to missions when using ammo efficient weapons.  

[BlackCoMerc]

Tried playing Survival the other night with a Kavat. The Cat devastated the enemy...but I left in 5 minutes.

With UV, the Experience was miserable.

[AperoBeltaTwo]

17 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:

Tried playing Survival the other night with a Kavat. The Cat devastated the enemy...but I left in 5 minutes.

With UV, the Experience was miserable.

With UV? Or you mean with the 3m pickup range...?... no, that's not UV. 

 

Edited November 24, 2017 by AperoBeltaTwo

[AperoBeltaTwo]

17 hours ago, Soul-scar said:

Add mod "Fetch" for animal pets would solve the entire issue. I would probably still use carrier because of the ammo drum but at least it would be realistic to bring a hard earned pets to missions when using ammo efficient weapons.  

Fetch doesn't work and has a lot of inherent problems that can't be solved easily. It's just a very bad mod. Probably the worst companion precept in the game. Even nerfed coolant leak is more useful than fetch. You should try it yourself in a mission, you'll see what I'm talking about. 

 The only easy way to solve this issue is to increase the range of the passive UV we already have in the game.(3meters to 12 meters)

And it's much easier than fixing Fetch.

Edited November 24, 2017 by AperoBeltaTwo

[AperoBeltaTwo]

On 23.11.2017 at 5:30 AM, (Xbox One)Evilpricetag said:

I wasn't talking about Chesa, but in the event of an appropriate 'UV' Mag's passive & Chesa's Mod would both deserve replacements. Potentially other things of this nature as well.

They needed a replacement with or without UV. Mag's passive is S#&$. You can't call that a vacuum. And Fetch doesn't work, as I said earlier.

On 23.11.2017 at 5:30 AM, (Xbox One)Evilpricetag said:

I still agree with UV, but its how its implemented is important to me. I don't fully understand the reason behind a manual scale for a mod-less vacuum, just to satisfy those that don't want it? They'll eventually adapt to it and always have it maxed. Unless the scale borders with something else. Less vacuum = more affinity(experience)/drop rate. Otherwise a manual vacuum seems worthless to me.

The reason for a manual control is to simply give people a choice. We didn't have a choice for years in regards to vacuum, I don't want the same thing to happen to others. 

 I don't think "less vacuum = more affinity" is a good idea. Vacuum shouldn't affect other aspects of gameplay more than it already does. You gotta consider, what it would add to the expierience. "Less vacuum = more affinity" would effectively force players into turning vacuum off whenever they level up or farm focus? What would be the point of that? And the tedium of constantly going to the menu to switch it on and off; forgetting to turn it on when you need a vacuum etc.

 There's no reason to put any drawbacks to Universal Vacuum. Any drawbacks would only cause more problems.

 What we need is to optimize the looting mechanics of the game. 12m range UV would do just that.

On 23.11.2017 at 5:30 AM, (Xbox One)Evilpricetag said:

Sahasa Kubrow has a mod for 280% dig, which has a very fair chance of giving 50-75 energy, which is a little overkill for allowing a vacuum on top of it, was my argument. It is a fantastic kubrow, but easily would be the most picked, adding its increased finisher damage mod, damage + energy.

Except while Sahasa is digging you'll be 100 miles away in any normal mission. And Sahasa only digs occasionally and incredibly unreliably. Simply not worth swapping a vacuum for. It would be fine, if we didn't have to lose vacuum, tho.

On 23.11.2017 at 5:30 AM, (Xbox One)Evilpricetag said:

Huras, is capable of making any warframe stealthy for a spy, and is specifically capable last I've notice of keeping you invisible for the entire spy room. Where as Shade simply has a range of how far away an enemy is, with a cooldown once that condition is met, but can get you caught really fast.

Huras is actually the only pet in the game worth swapping out the vacuum for. But personally I only do that in missions where I know I'm not going to engage the enemy at all (and to be fair, there's a lot of missions in warframe that don't require combat at all, which I don't think is a particularly good thing in general).

On 23.11.2017 at 5:30 AM, (Xbox One)Evilpricetag said:

I have yet to properly test the shade pistol/prisma pistol, but if its any good, take it toss shade in trash.

It's pretty f@cking good. I suggest building it for firerate, punchthrough and status. It should have about 60% status chance on each shot, whith about 4shots/second firerate. It's gonna proc a lot of status. I used blast and corrosive, but virus and radiation is also fine. Especially with Diriga. 

 Shade... could be useful, but it needs invisibility to be reworked. Honeslty, one thing that would set sentinels and companions apart would be an option to use sentinel abilities at will on a hotkey. It kind of makes sense, but might create certain problems... I'll have to think about it some more.

On 23.11.2017 at 5:30 AM, (Xbox One)Evilpricetag said:

I apologize for late response I actually had most of this typed out.. on console, but it's quite easy to accidently destroy lots of controller typing with a simple button... "XBOX"

I hope this Vacuum thing gets resolved soon, I recently heard in the last devstream about a bird companion that's been in the think-tank for some time, but with all the issues it may not get much of a great appeal, at least Carrier has a cool teaser skin for a bird for now.

Bird-companion thing probably isn't going to happen anytime soon. Same as the promised "Zanuka"-ish companion. The whole Devs talking about vacuum on the stream certainly sounds promising, but I wouldn't keep my hopes up. At all. This UV issue had been unresolved for at least as long as I play the game (two years). So we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

[BlackCoMerc]

5 hours ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

With UV? Or you mean with the 3m pickup range...?... no, that's not UV. 

 

Without normal Vacuum (sentinel mod) Survival is an awful experience. Thanks for pointing that out. 

[Xolotl]

Well if they dont want To give us the 12m UV maybe they could just change how looting works?

i.e. : Ammo, Life orbs and energy would have to be picked up manually.

Ressources and mods would only have To be picked up once by one member just like credit ?

 

BTW if only Syndicate insignias could work that way... or like Caches.

these missions are a pain because everyone has To pick medals on their own...

 

Edited November 24, 2017 by Xolotl

[AperoBeltaTwo]

11 hours ago, Xolotl said:

Well if they dont want To give us the 12m UV maybe they could just change how looting works?

i.e. : Ammo, Life orbs and energy would have to be picked up manually.

Ressources and mods would only have To be picked up once by one member just like credit ?

 

BTW if only Syndicate insignias could work that way... or like Caches.

these missions are a pain because everyone has To pick medals on their own...

 

The problem with that is, it won't solve the main issue, it's harder to do and wouldn't satisfy anyone. First of all, for me personally (I can't speak for others), picking up combat loot like ammo and energy orbs is the most important service vacuum provides. Without the vacuum you have to look for ammo pickups of the certain colour - otherwise they're all the same and tiny, so you have to take attention away from combat and focus on looking for the ammo just to shoot. And if the weapons you use are high firerate, you're basically forced to look for ammo all the time. Energy is a similar issue, but worse in a sense that a lot of warframes' survivability depends on the constant flow of energy, which forces you into vacuum or rage or zenurik, or all of it combined. There is a reason why Zenurik even in it's nerfed state is so popular - Zenurik is a focus version of Vacuum.

 For argument's sake, it doesn't mean there is no way to play warframe without Vacuum. There is a way to engineer around UV. It would be a worse solution at this point, but it would be a solution, I suppose. Basically, it boils down to changing three things:
1) the size and shapes of ammo pickups and pickups in general, to make them much easier to spot (the new loot item models were actually a downgrade from the old ones in that regard);
2) to change the way combat pickups like health and ammo work - ammo gives a fixed amount of ammunition no matter the weapon you use. If ammo pickups gave us a % of total ammo capacity of the weapon type, it would be a huge improvement in my opinion. Same thing could be done for health and energy pickups. Or health and energy orbs could give us energy/health regeneration for a duration of, say, 15 seconds after the initial pickup on top of the straight up giving us energy.
3) Loot clusters. If you noticed, loot pickups are often clustered where enemies hoard. If, say, by picking up one item out of a cluster you would automatically pick up the rest of the pile, it should improve the looting expierience.

So, yeah, there are ways to engineer around Universal Vacuum. But it would require more effort, more testing, more time investment and much more work in general for no real benefit/difference in the end.

So I don't say there couldn't be other solutions to the issue, but UV is the best and fastest solution we have.

UV could be done tomorrow.

Edited November 25, 2017 by AperoBeltaTwo

[DeltaPangaea]

I mean, since the topic is about picking things up...

Why exactly do we have separate ammo drop items anyway?

Like someone brought up the thought of 'why do we actually need to run out of ammo' as a question, but even outside of that. Why does the game need to drop shotgun ammunition for me when I'm not using a shotgun? Ammo drops are all instanced, what is the actual point of it? Why do we not just have Primary/Secondary ammunition drops, with each giving a proportionate amount of ammo to the gun it's refilling. After a while in the same area, during survival or somesuch, the floor is LITTERED with ammo boxes. Mostly for guns I don't have equipped. Why? So that Ammo Mutation is allowed to exist?

One of the issues which Vacuum helps solve is that of FLOOR CLUTTER. Cut ammo drops down to just primary/secondary, reduce the overall amount that drops (So you're getting the same as before, but only for guns you have equipped), and change the Mutation mods to... I dunno, constantly regenerate ammo or something. Or just cut it down to just generic 'ammo' and have it give a bit to both primary and secondary. One item on the ground rather than friggin four, and it's never useless to you.

This wouldn't change the fact of Vacuum being a very very nice QoL improvement with only minor, fringe downsides in extenuating circumstances, but it'd still be nice and improve the overall looting experience of Warframe.

[AperoBeltaTwo]

9 hours ago, DeltaPangaea said:

I mean, since the topic is about picking things up...

Why exactly do we have separate ammo drop items anyway?

Like someone brought up the thought of 'why do we actually need to run out of ammo' as a question, but even outside of that. Why does the game need to drop shotgun ammunition for me when I'm not using a shotgun? Ammo drops are all instanced, what is the actual point of it? Why do we not just have Primary/Secondary ammunition drops, with each giving a proportionate amount of ammo to the gun it's refilling. After a while in the same area, during survival or somesuch, the floor is LITTERED with ammo boxes. Mostly for guns I don't have equipped. Why? So that Ammo Mutation is allowed to exist?

One of the issues which Vacuum helps solve is that of FLOOR CLUTTER. Cut ammo drops down to just primary/secondary, reduce the overall amount that drops (So you're getting the same as before, but only for guns you have equipped), and change the Mutation mods to... I dunno, constantly regenerate ammo or something. Or just cut it down to just generic 'ammo' and have it give a bit to both primary and secondary. One item on the ground rather than friggin four, and it's never useless to you.

This wouldn't change the fact of Vacuum being a very very nice QoL improvement with only minor, fringe downsides in extenuating circumstances, but it'd still be nice and improve the overall looting experience of Warframe.

 Oh, right.

 Actually, I have no idea, why we have separate ammo drops. I completely forgot about this. It's ridiculous, when you think about it. I mean, having different ammo types for different weapons is reasonable IRL but what does it really add to the game? Complexity? Not really. Only the tedium of looking for a specifically coloured piece of dust on the floor among hundreds other pieces of loot dust. Vacuum solves this problem, yes. But the root of the problem is actually in the way looting was designed in the first place. Hm. The more I think about it, the more complicated of a topic it turns out to be.

 Vacuum does solve the current problem in the most efficient way possible, but the more I think about it, the more of a bandaid, I understand, it is. It's a working bandaid tho, so it should be applied until and if we ever get another working solution (which I doubt will happen anytime soon).

 

Edited November 26, 2017 by AperoBeltaTwo

[DeltaPangaea]

8 hours ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

 Oh, right.

 Actually, I have no idea, why we have separate ammo drops. I completely forgot about this. It's ridiculous, when you think about it. I mean, having different ammo types for different weapons is reasonable IRL but what does it really add to the game? Complexity? Not really. Only the tedium of looking for a specifically coloured piece of dust on the floor among hundreds other pieces of loot dust. Vacuum solves this problem, yes. But the root of the problem is actually in the way looting was designed in the first place. Hm. The more I think about it, the more complicated of a topic it turns out to be.

 Vacuum does solve the current problem in the most efficient way possible, but the more I think about it, the more of a bandaid, I understand, it is. It's a working bandaid tho, so it should be applied until and if we ever get another working solution (which I doubt will happen anytime soon).

 

I mean honestly, I'd personally be satisfied if the inherent Vacuum that all warframes have only worked on things like materials and mods. Stuff that you actually don't want to miss. I don't care if I miss ammo, since it's just ammo. Ditto with Energy and health. Maybe that would be a good combination? Resources, credits, and mods are automatically collected, the sentinel mod extends that to ammunition, energy, and health?

And then cut down ammo to just 1/2 types since there's little reason for the floor clutter. With less floor clutter, it's easier to see anything you might actually need.

Cuz the thing is, you'll always be picking up resources, credits, and mods. Always. And missing them sucks. But there are times you won't be picking up health or ammo or energy. And missing them doesn't matter in the long-run.

So basically, long-term item drops should have a wider pickup radius than short term drops, because short term drops don't MATTER. I can see how the act of 'picking up energy' can be an actual part of gameplay, since it's relevant IMMEDIATELY, but its relevancy only extends to that mission.

 

TL;DR, Ammo, Health, and Energy to remain unvacuumed without the mod, since they're part of the actual mission's gameplay.

Credits, mods, and resources to be automatically vacuumed, since they're NOT part of the actual mission's gameplay, but are of longer-term importance.

Edited November 27, 2017 by DeltaPangaea
TL;DR

[AperoBeltaTwo]

13 hours ago, DeltaPangaea said:

I mean honestly, I'd personally be satisfied if the inherent Vacuum that all warframes have only worked on things like materials and mods. Stuff that you actually don't want to miss. I don't care if I miss ammo, since it's just ammo. Ditto with Energy and health. Maybe that would be a good combination? Resources, credits, and mods are automatically collected, the sentinel mod extends that to ammunition, energy, and health?

And then cut down ammo to just 1/2 types since there's little reason for the floor clutter. With less floor clutter, it's easier to see anything you might actually need.

Cuz the thing is, you'll always be picking up resources, credits, and mods. Always. And missing them sucks. But there are times you won't be picking up health or ammo or energy. And missing them doesn't matter in the long-run.

So basically, long-term item drops should have a wider pickup radius than short term drops, because short term drops don't MATTER. I can see how the act of 'picking up energy' can be an actual part of gameplay, since it's relevant IMMEDIATELY, but its relevancy only extends to that mission.

 

TL;DR, Ammo, Health, and Energy to remain unvacuumed without the mod, since they're part of the actual mission's gameplay.

Credits, mods, and resources to be automatically vacuumed, since they're NOT part of the actual mission's gameplay, but are of longer-term importance.

Vacuum's biggest impact is through the combat pickups. Resources and mods are secondary. Think about it, picking up resources doesn't change anything in regards to gameplay. The change of pace that vacuum provides for the gameplay comes from energy and ammo pickups. Not from resources. If universal vacuum would only pick up resources, what's the point of having it at all? It wouldn't change anything. You're overcomplicating it. And "short-term drops" are the only ones that actually matter for the gameplay. You're missing the whole point of having vacuum in combat.

Vacuum is a tool that allows you to focus on gameplay. 

Vacuum isn't there just to let you pickup more resources. It's not the main gameplay function of Vacuum. I know it probably seems a bit counterintuitive, but resources aren't where Vacuum's biggest impact is focused.

Vacuum changes the pacing of gameplay by optimizing interactions with gameplay pickups (like ammo and energy orbs). 

Allowing players to freely engage with the combat system of the game. Without distractions.

 

 

 Warframe combat without vacuum would only work if serious changes were made to the looting mechanic and the pickups themselves, as I mentioned in the other post. But for the current game build passive UV solves the same problems faster and with less steps required. Yes, in general vacuum is a bandaid for certain bigger issues. But it's been in the game for a long time and it works. So at this point just letting people use it with all companions is the easiest working solution to go with, without overcomplicating the issue at hand.

Edited November 27, 2017 by AperoBeltaTwo

[DeltaPangaea]

6 minutes ago, AperoBeltaTwo said:

Vacuum's biggest impact is through combat pickups. Resources and mods are secondary. Think about it, picking up resources doesn't change anything in regards to gameplay. The change of pace that vacuum provides for the gameplay comes from energy and ammo pickups. Not from resources. If universal vacuum would only pick up resources, what's the point of having it at all? It wouldn't change anything. You're overcomplicating it. And "short-term drops" are the only ones that actually matter for the gameplay. You're missing the whole point of having vacuum in combat.

Vacuum is a tool that allows you to focus on gameplay. 

Vacuum isn't there just to let you pickup more resources. It's not the main gameplay function of Vacuum. I know it probably seems a bit counterintuitive, but resources aren't where Vacuum's biggest impact is focused.

Vacuum changes the pacing of gameplay by optimizing interactions with gameplay pickups (like ammo and energy orbs). 

Allowing players to freely interact with the combat system of the game. Without distractions.

Oh I totally get it. Vacuum for everything would be the smartest, cleanest result (Along with that ammo thing). I definitely agree that running around collecting ammo and such manually is an unnecessary chore.

I'm just saying that I could UNDERSTAND someone considering having to pick up ammo and energy as part of gameplay, even if I don't agree with it as something to be retained. What I could NOT understand however, is someone considering picking up resources and credits to be part of gameplay, since they don't actually impact it in any way.

Picking up one thing is technically gameplay, even if it's not good gameplay. The other is not gameplay. Thus at the VERY LEAST, the aspect that isn't gameplay AT ALL should be autovac'd.

If you get what I'm saying.

[AperoBeltaTwo]

1 hour ago, DeltaPangaea said:

Oh I totally get it. Vacuum for everything would be the smartest, cleanest result (Along with that ammo thing). I definitely agree that running around collecting ammo and such manually is an unnecessary chore.

I'm just saying that I could UNDERSTAND someone considering having to pick up ammo and energy as part of gameplay, even if I don't agree with it as something to be retained. What I could NOT understand however, is someone considering picking up resources and credits to be part of gameplay, since they don't actually impact it in any way.

Picking up one thing is technically gameplay, even if it's not good gameplay. The other is not gameplay. Thus at the VERY LEAST, the aspect that isn't gameplay AT ALL should be autovac'd.

If you get what I'm saying.

 I think I do understand what you're saying, but at this point we're talking about percentage of the percentage. Percentage of people who like playing without vacuum and of that group percentage who like playing without vacuum but don't want to pick up resources manually. Such an option never existed in the game in the first place, so adjusting the looting mechanic for this specific hypothetical group of people would be a bit too much, I'm afraid. Option to turn vacuum off should partially satisfy even them, but there has a to be a line drawn somewhere. It's just a very specific preference that could only be covered in a game with a free2all Modding Kit, and Warframe simply isn't built for that kind of optionality.

[DoomzDay313]

I would love to see a universal vacuum one day in-game for the simply fact that:

1. I Need all and every resource that I can get

2. I would much rather focus on murdering enemies in the void or PoE and not literally have to walk over every resource I see, and miss out on the ones that my be hidden behind something or out of sight.

3. It makes for a much more fluent and efficient  game play experience.

4. Having a  universal vacuum would make my companions a viable option when going on missions.

As things stand the way they are in it's current condition... My Kubrow, Kavat and Charger were just MR fodder and will only serve as Orbiter decoration. 

Edited November 27, 2017 by FuriousMonk

[AperoBeltaTwo]

1 hour ago, FuriousMonk said:

I would love to see a universal vacuum one day in-game for the simply fact that:

1. I Need all and every resource that I can get

2. I would much rather focus on murdering enemies in the void or PoE and not literally have to walk over every resource I see, and miss out on the ones that my be hidden behind something or out of sight.

3. It makes for a much more fluent and efficient  game play experience.

4. Having a  universal vacuum would make my companions a viable option when going on missions.

As things stand the way they are in it's current condition... My Kubrow, Kavat and Charger were just MR fodder and will only serve as Orbiter decoration. 

At this point it's actually only 4 that you would get from UV. Cause vacuum is pretty much ubiquitous anyway. It's only pets that don't have it and it only hurts that portion of content. The rest of the game is happily running sentinels only, which only hurts oddbals like me who like "variety". Variety? Pff, who is Variety? What is even this Variety?.. ahem

[Nocontents]

UV when.

[AperoBeltaTwo]

1 hour ago, Nocontents said:

UV when.

I have no idea. It could be done tomorrow. Easy. The basic framework is in the game since PoE, according to Scott. It's only a matter of changing one value in the code (from 3 meters to 12 meters) 

 I'm worried that instead of just plain out giving people UV they'll try to be "smart" and engineer around it, instead of fixing the issue directly. Ending up not doing UV anyway. Again.

Edited December 7, 2017 by AperoBeltaTwo