[Mastery Rank] Accruing Mastery Is Fun, But Not Engaging Enough

[Lumireaver]

In my opinion, Mastery is a brilliantly designed mechanic with respect to how it ties into game logic. Tenno, natural born warriors, grow as individuals by studying different kinds of weaponry, and the breadth of their experience is rewarded/acknowledged with respect/rank. (Presumably from the Lotus?) ...Outside the game, it also serves to encourage people to try new weapons and probably buy some weapon slots. Primarily though, Mastery seems to serve as a content gate. This is (mostly) good for both players and DE. It gives you goals. Something to strive for. It also keeps you from tearing through all of DE's hard work over a weekend.

The only problem is that it's kind of mindless.

Whether the system is designed to be gating more powerful weapons, or just random cooler looking weapons isn't really clear. (It all seems too arbitrary.) A lot of people on the forums suggest making strong weapons mastery-locked to justify their power. (I believe this idea is not conducive to game balance and that it should be done very sparingly/carefully. I would very much like to hear dev thoughts on the matter.)

Content needs to be gated, but the current mechanic being used to gate it an obvious grind. (Grinds in general are okay, but they have to be handled with care.) I believe unlocking things would be more enjoyable if players got to interact in some small way instead of being forced to watch bars fill up over time.

I have a couple of suggestions to that end.

The first is that, upon ranking up, a player could chose a faction to "study." Their choice would unlock the first group of weapons for that faction. By the end of their journey, a Tenno would have unlocked every weapon. (Considering that Corpus weapons are all clan tech, and the Mire is like, the only Infested weapon, this idea doesn't really fly yet. Maybe later on down the line when there are more weapons in the game?

edit: The first idea kind of sucks the more I think about it. It would way too long before the weapon library becomes large enough to divide things in this way.

The second is to make an all inclusive weapon tree/web. (Not counting clan tech.) Each mastered weapon would give you a point/points to spend, and weapons DE wants to be harder to get would be placed towards the outside of the web/made more expensive. In this way, certain weapon could be designed to have a minimum amount of weapons required to unlock.

Giving us something to think about would probably take our minds of the grind. Maybe?

Edited August 9, 2013 by Lumireaver

[X3Evanescence]

I agree.

[NanoDecerto]

I agree.

I also agree.

[-Mr.Meeseeks-]

Pretty nice idea. Right now getting mastery rank up for weapons like Ogris or the Acrid is just a pain. Every time I'm carrying a new / useless weapon just to earn mastery points, I feel like i'm just carrying a Magicarp with me desperately trying to get it to evolve into a Gyarados. 

[khimera]

Agreed. This also brings us to slowly move up the ranks of different weaponry rather than jumping straight to something like the hek as soon as we're rank 4.

[litlit]

I like the idea. One misgiving that springs to my mind, though, is that I would like to see this done in a way that doesn't force or encourage players of the same mastery rank to use the same weapons in order to progress.

 

That's a problem right now, actually, because of the limited variety of resources available on the first few planets, plus the huge difficulty increase new players experience with the release of update 9.

[JollierThanThou]

Whether the system is designed to be gating more powerful weapons, or just random cooler looking weapons isn't really clear. (It all seems too arbitrary.) A lot of people on the forums suggest making strong weapons mastery-locked to justify their power. (I believe this idea is not conducive to game balance and that it should be done very sparingly/carefully. I would very much like to hear dev thoughts on the matter.)

I would like to see the game adopt two principles: One, that all weapons would be sidegrades. Two, that the mastery-locked weapons would be the situational ones, the ones that reward recoil control, and the ones with long reload times. So the rank 0 weapons might include Braton, Sobek, Snipetron Vandal, Lato, and Lex. The rank 5 weapons might include the Burston, Hek, Vulkar, Kraken, and Bronco.

[Carcharias]

I didn't mind at first, but after 489 hours and mastery rank 7 I now have an opinion.

 

Mastery sucks!  It's not just mindless, it's punishing to players who happen to be content and happy with what they have.

 

 

So why do I have so much time in game and was perfectly happy sitting a rank 6? Cause until the new dojo was released with the new weapons I had no reason to pursue mastery. Then the update. "Hey acrid looks like fun I think I'll try it." Nope, requires rank 7. So I've just spent the last week playing a bunch of weapons I do not like, and leveling frames that I  DO  NOT  LIKE just to get flipping mastery.

 

Why should players be forced to play with things they have already determined that they do not like just to get mastery?!? I already have my favorite frames and weapons, most of them 3 stared. Let me play with what I like. After playing the game, liking the game, and supporting the game with dollars, mastery just held me back for no good reason.

 

Mastery is also counter to forma. Mastery encourages you to try new stuff because you get diminishing returns when you forma a weapon or frame. Forma encourages you to find a favorite weapon / frame and stick with it to make it better.

 

At the very least I think you should earn 100% mastery whenever you forma anything. I just paid for forma, why would you penalize me in game when I just spent money?!? Besides that, the more time you spend with a weapon the more of a master you become. Talk to anyone in martial arts, there is no perfect. If anything you should get more mastery when you have forma'd something!

 

-_-

 

Like the game. Hate mastery. (especially the diminishing returns)

Edited August 9, 2013 by Carcharias

[BadAimbot]

If they want weapons to be sidegrades, then Mastery is fine as is. Experimenting with new weaponry makes sense as the reward is more weapons to experiment with. If they want progressive weapons, then Mastery is a dumb way of gating people and should be reworked, and your idea would work for that.

[Numot]

I think a subset of the problem has to deal with weapon viability and usefulness. Part of that issue is a weapon with no mods at all is pretty worthless, and the other is just what you can fit on a gun with no potato. Unless you want to potato every weapon you acquire, you'll need to hit rank 9/7 (for primary/secondary respectively) to put your armor piercing mod on (unless you have a stack of various ranked ones you're constantly swapping or blessed polarity slots), then another 9 or so for your damage mod.

 

This means that ranking any gun you don't plan on supercharging (save a few) feels like junk for a large portion of the time you have it on. And worse, it drags on until it can make kills under its own power in reasonable time. Then, when you finally can fit stuff on it, you're done and on to the next weapon.

 

A fantastic example of this is the Lex. The gun, while powerful with a potato and mods feels unwieldy until it actually is rank 30 and you can fit everything on it. Its a slow, awkward slog with the gun till you get there, then its a killing machine (well it was till level bump...buff no return please...).

 

Contrast with any throwing weapon (or the bolto, etc.). All able to kill under their own power from rank 0 (if inefficiently) these weapons level quickly, and rank up at a good rate from you using them constantly. All the while you get use to the travel time, ark and how many to toss to score kills. You actually master it.

[Tingnok]

I also agree.

i also also agree

[Lumireaver]

I would like to see the game adopt two principles: One, that all weapons would be sidegrades. Two, that the mastery-locked weapons would be the situational ones, the ones that reward recoil control, and the ones with long reload times. So the rank 0 weapons might include Braton, Sobek, Snipetron Vandal, Lato, and Lex. The rank 5 weapons might include the Burston, Hek, Vulkar, Kraken, and Bronco.

 

I mostly agree on this point. Tricky to use weapons should be acquired later on so that accruing mastery gradually becomes more difficult in a more legitimate feeling way. This should apply whether we're using using rank unlocks, or an unlock tree/web.

 

I didn't mind at first, but after 489 hours and mastery rank 7 I now have an opinion.

 

Mastery sucks!  It's not just mindless, it's punishing to players who happen to be content and happy with what they have.

 

- snip -

 

Like the game. Hate mastery. (especially the diminishing returns)

 

350+ hours, and Mastery Rank 11. (Steam says 500+) 

 

Ranking up is not a punishment, it is task you complete for rewards. In it's current form the player has no choice or influence on the outcome which makes it difficult to become invested in. I imagine this is why you think of it like a punishment. (You're not playing for rewards you want.)

 

Players (Tenno) should be forced to play with weapons they don't like for the same reason people have to learn math in college even if they bloody hate math. It's part of the Tenno curriculum—A Tenno who only plays around with a Boltor is ultimately an inexperienced, nascent little sprout. It's until a Tenno has proven themselves worldly and cultured by taking the time to intimately consummate their understanding of the three forms through the use of wildly different (mechanically and culturally) weaponry. As Numot says, part of the problem is that certain weapons can be much less useful than others, or just unappealing for some reason. Turning the system into a kind of web could allow players to circle around certain weapons they really don't want at the cost of additional time investment. Even if they decide to power play through the undesirable weapons, because they chose to use those weapons instead of having them imposed upon them, it will make the grind less irritating. 

 

Also Forma doesn't give mastery in the same way that repeatedly taking a course to get As doesn't affect your GPA.

 

I think a subset of the problem has to deal with weapon viability and usefulness. Part of that issue is a weapon with no mods at all is pretty worthless, and the other is just what you can fit on a gun with no potato. Unless you want to potato every weapon you acquire, you'll need to hit rank 9/7 (for primary/secondary respectively) to put your armor piercing mod on (unless you have a stack of various ranked ones you're constantly swapping or blessed polarity slots), then another 9 or so for your damage mod.

 

This is certainly partially true, but given that enemies give you comparable levels of experience on early systems as they do on endgame ones, you can just go to earlier planets to level up new stuff. (Just some advice, not a solution.)

 

That said, enemy armor could probably stand to be looked at, or at least its reasoning explained.

Edited August 9, 2013 by Lumireaver

[BadAimbot]

I think a subset of the problem has to deal with weapon viability and usefulness. Part of that issue is a weapon with no mods at all is pretty worthless, and the other is just what you can fit on a gun with no potato. Unless you want to potato every weapon you acquire, you'll need to hit rank 9/7 (for primary/secondary respectively) to put your armor piercing mod on (unless you have a stack of various ranked ones you're constantly swapping or blessed polarity slots), then another 9 or so for your damage mod.

 

This means that ranking any gun you don't plan on supercharging (save a few) feels like junk for a large portion of the time you have it on. And worse, it drags on until it can make kills under its own power in reasonable time. Then, when you finally can fit stuff on it, you're done and on to the next weapon.

 

A fantastic example of this is the Lex. The gun, while powerful with a potato and mods feels unwieldy until it actually is rank 30 and you can fit everything on it. Its a slow, awkward slog with the gun till you get there, then its a killing machine (well it was till level bump...buff no return please...).

 

Contrast with any throwing weapon (or the bolto, etc.). All able to kill under their own power from rank 0 (if inefficiently) these weapons level quickly, and rank up at a good rate from you using them constantly. All the while you get use to the travel time, ark and how many to toss to score kills. You actually master it.

 

I agree with this, but the shared xp going to all of your equipment from allies helps a lot. I think that later Mastery weapons should be thrown polarities to help them catch up easier, but DE seems fine with putting them in randomly.

[Lumireaver]

I agree with this, but the shared xp going to all of your equipment from allies helps a lot.

 

Shared affinity helps, but some people like to fly solo. (DE should release some stats if it's not supposed to be confidential for some reason.)

[InsomniacOvrLrd]

Mastery : Grind missions to get credits to buy blueprints to grind materials to build the thing to wait to grind xp to level your new item to grind mastery xp.

Having ground up your mastery, you are now allowed to buy exclusive gated blueprints to....

 

Above : A large problem with the whole game

[arisaka]

Mastery: a way to force players to either forma their weapons/frames or force them to buy more slots with plat. I want to be able to unlock all the weapons and warframes in the game (eventually) without having to py a cent, but right now that isn't an option, unless I'm missing something.

[Lumireaver]

Mastery: a way to force players to either forma their weapons/frames or force them to buy more slots with plat. I want to be able to unlock all the weapons and warframes in the game (eventually) without having to py a cent, but right now that isn't an option, unless I'm missing something.

 

Well, DE has mentioned the idea of granting a handful of slots for Mastery Ranking (which could work well enough with a weapon tree idea,) but it's also worth mentioning that you can master everything without paying a cent. You've just got to part with some of your old favorites for a while.

 

They also mentioned allowing us to sell our own mods for plat, which would alleviate this for others all well.

Edited August 10, 2013 by Lumireaver

[JollierThanThou]

Mastery: a way to force players to either forma their weapons/frames or force them to buy more slots with plat. I want to be able to unlock all the weapons and warframes in the game (eventually) without having to py a cent, but right now that isn't an option, unless I'm missing something.

As far as I know, there are only 12,000 mastery points that cost money: Excalibur Prime, Skana Prime, and Lato Prime. An additional 12,000 points are completely unattainable if you didn't get them already: Lato Vandal, Braton Vandal, Snipetron, and Snipetron Vandal.