Solo triple Eidolon capture mission/bounty

[SupaFlyWF]

The Eidolon battles are not challenging in a group.  I am not here to necessarily argue to make it more challenging, though the case could easily be made.  Instead I want to propose properly rewarding what is a challenge: the solo triple capture.

There are many things that are needed to successfully solo triple capture the Eidolons in any kind of reasonable time, including:

• A powerful, heavily forma'd rifle.
• A good Riven for said rifle.
• Unlocked and maxed operator passives for most trees.
• Heavy focus tree investment (for abilities like Void Strike and Unairu Wisp).
• High tier amp components with maxed arcane set.
• Maxed arcanes for operator and warframe.

You don't need everything in the list, but you will hard pressed without some large subset of it, especially if you want to do it in a single night.  However, none of these are really needed when in a group.  You are not restricted by a limited revive count.  You have access to a larger set of group synergies which include weapon damage increases, amp damage increases, status immunities, etc.  Just having more than one person means things like collecting lures does not equal 100% damage loss on the Eidolons.  If you have a group optimized in a similar fashion to what is needed for solo, you are killing Synovia in under 5 seconds (still, nothing in the re-balance really fixed this), have 75% damage reduction, complete status immunity, and passive healing/auto-res that completely trivializes the encounters.

If you accomplish a solo triple capture, you are currently rewarded with the basic set of rewards, which does not reflect the time investment and challenge needed to pull it off.  So I am proposing this solo triple capture mission reward something like 4x the base triple capture rewards, mainly the Brilliant/Radiant shards and the inevitable arcanes.  This is based off of similarly prepared/equipped, heavily optimized groups, doing 3 full triple captures in the course of a night.  The bump to 4x rewards is a very modest given the challenge increase from not having access to 4 players, 4 warframes, and 4 sets of abilities/synergies.

As it is right now, there is no reason to solo triple cap, other than to prove that you can.  It is far more economical to do it in a group, and unfortunately far more trivial and boring.  The addition of a solo triple capture mission/bounty would be a step in the right direction of challenging content being properly rewarding.  It is a quick and easy way to take current content and turn it into something EVERY player could prepare for, attempt, and be properly rewarded (aka endgame content).

[krc473]

2 minutes ago, SupaFlyWF said:

It is a quick and easy way to take current content and turn it into something EVERY player could prepare for, attempt, and be properly rewarded (aka endgame content).

So, design a system to give rewards to people that have no use in said rewards? That is a totally pointless system. A triple solo capture should be rewarding, I agree. But giving someone 1million of something they have no use for is not rewarding. If you’ve nearly maxed most focus trees, and have maxed quills, what are you giving these people?

 

What reward(s) could be added to encourage people to solo capture? I do them just for the statues. But you would very quickly hit your (placement) cap for them. Arcanes (If they get added) would Then be grossly unfair on people that could not colo capture it, because people that could would control the market (so DE won’t do that).

[SupaFlyWF]

28 minutes ago, krc473 said:

But giving someone 1million of something they have no use for is not rewarding. If you’ve nearly maxed most focus trees, and have maxed quills, what are you giving these people?

 

What reward(s) could be added to encourage people to solo capture? I do them just for the statues. But you would very quickly hit your (placement) cap for them. Arcanes (If they get added) would Then be grossly unfair on people that could not colo capture it, because people that could would control the market (so DE won’t do that).

I gravitated toward maxing focus nodes/trees that seemed to provide the most benefit.  It doesn't mean that I have maxed every node on every tree.  Things like Void Strike and Unairu Wisp started looking appealing back when Eidolons first came out, while many other trees/nodes don't look as worth pursuing.  But that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to continue to get focus to work toward getting them eventually.  I have to believe I am not alone in how I approached focus 2.0 in a priority-fashion, but I would definitely think the group of people that are at the point where focus has zero use is extremely small.

Focus points (brilliant/radiant shards) and the inevitable arcanes are the two rewards I specifically mentioned because I think should still be useful, even if it is just trading arcanes for platinum.  If they are not useful, then sure, they are past the endgame point where Eidolon capture is something they would be doing.  I specifically don't mention statues or riven transmutations because I don't really see those as progression rewards.

Arcanes will become widely available regardless of if you solo captured or grouped captured.  A group capture may be giving each player an arcane (or chance at an arcane) and groups are completing them at 3 times the rate (so 12x the arcanes generated).  Even without adequately rewarding the solo capture, the market would be flooded by the optimized groups farming the Eidolons.  Giving a solo player 4 arcanes, as in my proposal, is still not where near as much as the 12 arcanes being generated by a group in that same time.  At that rate, they could become cheap pretty fast, which coincidentally further discourages the solo capture without improved rewards because it becomes just so much easier to buy the arcanes than earn them... The market aspect is always hard to predict, but this solo capture proposal will not be the major influence on it.

Edited February 13, 2018 by SupaFlyWF

[krc473]

21 minutes ago, SupaFlyWF said:

I gravitated toward maxing focus nodes/trees that seemed to provide the most benefit

Many people are already talking about “what to do with excess focus points once everything is maxed”. What do these people get from it? What about the people not interested in farming focus?

 

The problem with the concept tends to revolve around the current rewards actually being desirable. For me, they are not. For others, they are not. I would like to have something that actually makes the solo capture worthwhile. I like fighting Eidolons, I want to solo capture all three, but the rewards tell me not to bother. Myself (and many others I suspect) fight the Eidolons more for fun/something to do than the rewards. To really encourage people to solo them (because it is harder as you’ve said) the rewards should justify the time investment. 

 

Your proposed system basically seems to be a way to ‘compensate’ people for not running in a squad. To me, that’s not a good enough reward. Because I could have grouped and not really got much less, but for significantly less effort. With just this reward, I would still be doing it just to prove I can. Perhaps a new reward for solo capture should be added, something that makes it worthwhile for people to do (I don’t know what, a customisable riven or something?)

[SupaFlyWF]

If you do not need or are interested in focus, then sure, this whole Eidolon part of Warframe is not for you.  This is about wanting to enhance the gameplay loop centered around the operator for those that are interested in it.  This happens to be where I see an opportunity for gameplay to be added without having to really create any new content.  I farm Teralysts to get Quills rep and focus.  I use the Quills rep to craft better amps and make arcanes to improve my operator and amp.  I use the focus to improve my operator.  Now I need a harder challenge, so there are new, stronger Eidolons to take on.  Killing them gives me more Quills rep and focus so that I can use to continue to improve my operator so I can kill them faster.  Eventually, as I await the next Eidolon-like content, I get strong enough to look to challenge them solo, but that path quickly reaches a dead-end.  The best way to keep getting stronger at that point is to go back to killing Eidolons in a group.  There is no gameplay incentive to work toward solo capturing them faster.  This isn't about wanting any special "solo-only" recognition or rewards, I am merely asking for the opportunity to extend this gameplay loop a bit longer by allowing me to work on improving my ability to solo capture without having to go back a step.  Solo capture doesn't need to be on the required path to whatever the next open world's Eidolon equivalent is, nor should it be the better path, only a viable option for it. 

Not to distract from this topic, but if done right, I would like to see a similar gameplay loop form in the Dark Sector rework centered around the warframes.  Solo and groups players alike should be able to challenge themselves for equivalent rewards (which very well may be nothing more than leaderboard placements).  I hope that the added challenge of doing it solo will be equally rewarded and at no point should group Dark Sector runs become the better solo advancement path than actually running solo.

[SupaFlyWF]

I feel an opportunity was lost here with how Arcanes were added.  Arcanes could have been tied to a "once per night" kind of reward (similar to their trial implementation).  It would have been available to get however you wanted to, whether it be in 10 minute steamroll with a meta comps or in 40 minute chess match going solo.  I wish Warframe would take this concept from the game that inspired Eidolons in the first place.

But instead, the best way to get them is to cheese the fights as fast as possible or through the market, both of which provide me very little enjoyment.  But thankfully, since there remains no reason to do anything challenging, what would I really need Arcanes for anyway?  I guess nothing changes for me and I will go back to waiting for something that remotely resemble a viable end-game gameplay loop.  Maybe Dark Sectors will have a shot at it.  Either way, my feedback is in.

[-skimmer-]

Well, have you considered that maybe the current eidolons are not supposed to be the very end game bosses meant to challenge the players with maxed out rivened gear? I mean, its on earth. There are more open maps coming with more eidolons in them. Those shall be yet tougher.