Attention De_Steve: Rare Mats Stuck In Limbo.

[EdwardMarlus]

DISCLAIMER: Before I address myself to DE_Steve on the issue of rare materials not exactly dropping from bosses, I would wish to inform forumers about the intent of this post. This is not a QQ about something not going in my favor, RNG hates me kind of topic and if you get the rare materials you desire from the bosses you're farming, that's great too. This is meant to hopefully make farming for rare materials much more reasonable given that they have become the new plastids in terms of ratio distribution and the like. Be warned, actual ideas are being explored here, and please no flaming. Additionally, wall of text inbound. 

 

 

 

Now, I would like to address the main segment of my post to DE_Steve:

 

Greetings Mr. Steve!

 

Unlike my fellow players and the remainder of the community I don't exactly know when this started, but bosses are not a consistent source of rare-level materials anymore. I've been closely keeping an eye on Loot Tables 2.0 of course, especially hoping that this situation will be remedied, but unfortunately bosses have yet to be consistent sources of things like Orokin Cells, Neurodes, Control Modules once more... These three materials and more aren't simply gateways for all things early to late-game equipment, they are the BUILDING BLOCKS of crafting in Warframe, and not having them readily available is a gamebreaker.

 

Right now, the only consistent way to obtain something along the lines of an Orokin Cell is to sift through high amounts of waves on endless defense missions, and even then these drop rates are low enough versus the amount of time invested. Assasination Missions, while they were dropping rare materials, were the go-to missions to get rare materials for crafting, and this made PERFECT sense. They required the least amount of time to invest into for simply acquiring an Orokin Cell and the like, and that was great. This has nothing to do with laziness and everything to do with efficiency, because some items actually require 10 of a rare material for example. Whether or not the boss is easy or hard is actually irrelevent, it's actually the ratio of runs versus picking up a rare mat that should also be looked at on top of drop rates. If you have a Glaive you wanna make for example, you wanna take at least 1 run per morphic but if you don't get even 1 most of those runs that's bad. Additionally, I feel like increasing the number of rare mats per bundle means having to make it even rarer, which is actually doing it a disservice.

 

Overall, if it's possible, bosses need to come back as the premiere source of rare materials in Warframe. Any other way that's in the game at the moment either involves time-inefficient practices that don't convert into effective results such as rummaging through containers or doing endless defense missions hoping that mobs randomly drop such mats. While I won't deny that you can acquire ONE of these mats in either method, I know it to be ineffective when working with multiple items with a quantity of 10 on a rare mat each. I would have hoped this to be fixed because it effectively halts production in my foundry, but alas, no "hotfixes" have addressed this issue so far. This is an issue that needs resolving at the soonest, and I'm surprised the community has yet to pick up on this. 

 

Either way, I eagerly await your feedback sir.

 

EDIT: While I don't see people necceserily disagreeing with my statement, I notice they would not mind other alternatives to the Assasination type missions being the premiere means of obtaining rare materials. I make this edit to say that while I'm essentially lobbying for Assasination missions to once again yield effective means of giving out rare materials, I also support refining or adding other ventures into acquiring these rare materials.

Edited August 15, 2013 by EdwardMarlus

[X3Evanescence]

Well, organized and thought out. I am currently still forming and organizing my response. I will edit this post later.

[Xylia]

I was OK with Bosses dropping rare materials, but they simply CANNOT be the only reasonable source of Rare Materials.

 

Boss Missions get old quick (especially since they are much harder to solo). For example, Control Modules. Not every newbie should have to face the Hell of fighting Raptor 10+ times to get their first Control Module. These things need to drop reasonably from crates, containers, and normal enemies as well.

[LegitGhosty]

Researved for something to say. :o

[EdwardMarlus]

I was OK with Bosses dropping rare materials, but they simply CANNOT be the only reasonable source of Rare Materials.

 

Boss Missions get old quick (especially since they are much harder to solo). For example, Control Modules. Not every newbie should have to face the Hell of fighting Raptor 10+ times to get their first Control Module. These things need to drop reasonably from crates, containers, and normal enemies as well.

 

Hello Xylia,

 

I won't disagree with your statement that bosses cannot be the only reasonable source of rare materials.

 

During the Grineer Commander bug I have to admit... I did hunt those commanders, but I DID NOT do it for the Trinity blueprints. I did it because they dropped rare materials according to the system they were in. I do believe that making specific rare enemy types drop these rare materials would be an interesting concept and an interesting alternative to boss drops, though I am certainly not opposed to either. 

 

And about boss missions being hard to solo, the only reason I generally disagree with you on that statement is due to the fact that most of the key missions are particularily easy if your know-how and choice of warframe line up, though I'm not sure i'd want to tackle the issue of getting the right warframe for the job in this particular topic. I agree that Control Modules are hard to obtain though.

Edited August 15, 2013 by EdwardMarlus

[Loswaith]

I agree with Xylia, sure bosses can have rare resources but they shouldn't be the only source of them. 

 

In fact they never used to be boss only, somewhere around late update 8 or update 9 (about when I realy noticed the drop off), they stoped being something you could reliably get about one on average per mission from containers and kills.  I use to actually just clear out normal missions rather than run bosses unless I needed blueprints as well.  This was even when few weapons needed more than just one rare material too.

 

I agree they are the staple material in the game without them you will get very little progression in weapons, warframes and anything that can increase their power level along the way.

 

Likewise there is little point in having 100s of other common or uncommon resources without them, as everything requires atleast some rare component.

Edited August 15, 2013 by Loswaith

[BigSchmexy]

I was OK with Bosses dropping rare materials, but they simply CANNOT be the only reasonable source of Rare Materials.

 

Boss Missions get old quick (especially since they are much harder to solo). For example, Control Modules. Not every newbie should have to face the Hell of fighting Raptor 10+ times to get their first Control Module. These things need to drop reasonably from crates, containers, and normal enemies as well.

hyena also still drops control mods and isn't very difficult to solo

 

as for the OP I agree I have recently acquired the 4 prime weapons that require cells (new primes) and it is way more difficult to get cells than it should be I used to get a cell every second or third run now I'm lucky to get one every five or so sometimes it takes 10 runs and I understand having to work for the good weapons but I think this is a bit much same thing with control modules and neurodes and neural sensors 

[Krirub]

I was OK with Bosses dropping rare materials, but they simply CANNOT be the only reasonable source of Rare Materials.

 

Boss Missions get old quick (especially since they are much harder to solo). For example, Control Modules. Not every newbie should have to face the Hell of fighting Raptor 10+ times to get their first Control Module. These things need to drop reasonably from crates, containers, and normal enemies as well.

 

Hmm, control modules drop from normal enemies and containers, thats why the best way to farm materials is doing defense missions.

[EdwardMarlus]

hyena also still drops control mods and isn't very difficult to solo

 

as for the OP I agree I have recently acquired the 4 prime weapons that require cells (new primes) and it is way more difficult to get cells than it should be I used to get a cell every second or third run now I'm lucky to get one every five or so sometimes it takes 10 runs and I understand having to work for the good weapons but I think this is a bit much same thing with control modules and neurodes and neural sensors 

Lol, I was in your boat a few days ago man. I just finished getting my last prime item and the amount of time I spent waiting in-between the time I got my Bronco Prime part and the time I was able to press the "Craft" button was not cool.

[EdwardMarlus]

Inb4doublepost

 

Hmm, control modules drop from normal enemies and containers, thats why the best way to farm materials is doing defense missions.

 

That's a very sound principle, and it definetily works on common-level materials and uncommon-level materials alike seeing as some planets' most common drops ARE uncommon-level drops. However, my problem with this method is that it is not consistent enough to produce desired results, especially given the drop rates on Morphics/Gallium/Neurodes/Control Modules/Neural Sensors/Orokin Cells.

[Krirub]

Lol, I was in your boat a few days ago man. I just finished getting my last prime item and the amount of time I spent waiting in-between the time I got my Bronco Prime part and the time I was able to press the "Craft" button was not cool.

 

General Sargas Ruk drops Orokin Cells all the time, go farm him.

[Anatolius]

Ill agree. One xini match MIGHT yield one neurode.

Might.

The chances of that happening are moderately low plus no one wants to run 20 for a mat you might not even get.

Also some bosses I'd prefer not to fight ever again *cough* kril *cough*

[Loswaith]

Hmm, control modules drop from normal enemies and containers, thats why the best way to farm materials is doing defense missions.

While this is the case you can still regularly do defence missions to wave 15 or 20 and you wont reliably get a single rare resource.  It is also quite tough expecting a new player to actually reliably be doing defence missions to the wave 15-20 point (without catalysts/reactors) when many people drop out long before then.

[EdwardMarlus]

General Sargas Ruk drops Orokin Cells all the time, go farm him.

 

With all due respect, that's how this topic came to be. Were they dropping sufficient amounts of Orokin Cells I would not have come and posted here in concern.

[Hrodgrim]

My two cents to add is, for almost two weeks I haven't seen a single rare material. After loads of missions, countless waves in defense, and dozens of boss fights, the rarest thing I've found is plastids (I've found a lot of them too). I'm reluctant to use the materials I already have for fear of not being able to build anything cool that might be added. At this point I'm led to believe that all the resource stuff may be broken. Help your people please, oh merciful DE.

[TheHeraldXII]

Yeah I'm against making bosses the main source of resources again because, hey, they already drop blueprints and we could do to give people a reason to run missions outside of Mobile/Defense and Assassination. How about instead of giving them back their drops, bosses no longer drop rare mats reliably but sabotage/rescue missions have a material reward at the end. Or even simpler, make them more readily available from random drops.

 

As for whether or not the drop rates have gone through the floor, no they probably actually haven't. In the last hour I got 8 Neural Sensors doing random runs of Jupiter. A range of missions, Raid, Rescue, Spy, Sabotage, Assassination. Yesterday I got more than 10 Control Modules over the course of a number of alerts on Neptune, getting 2 a mission on average and 3 quite often. Lately Neurodes have been raining from the sky as well, enough to build a Vasto and 4 alternate helms. All this without even bothering to grind.

This means that either I am the chosen champion of the RNG gods or that the RNG is actually being nice for once but people are too busy grinding the same old for nothing.

P.S It was pretty common before U9 for bosses to drop common materials instead of rare. This isn't even U9 new, this is old hat.

[Xylia]

I'll try some Europa here soon (NOT Raptor, though, he's too dang hard to solo because my highest DPS weapon is a Flux Rifle which has limited range. Nice damage, but not exactly the best gun to try and kill Raptor with).

 

Neptune is uncomfortably high level for me to solo just yet.

 

I'll also point out I did a Eurasia (after 9.5), and didn't get a single Neurode. 350 mobs +an assortment of crates/lockers, 0 neurodes.

 

But yet I can go to Uranus and get 4 Gallium out of 5 Titania runs and I killed about 50 mobs total on those runs.

 

Seems like Rare Materials = Bosses still to me.

Edited August 15, 2013 by Xylia

[EdwardMarlus]

Yeah I'm against making bosses the main source of resources again because, hey, they already drop blueprints and we could do to give people a reason to run missions outside of Mobile/Defense and Assassination. How about instead of giving them back their drops, bosses no longer drop rare mats reliably but sabotage/rescue missions have a material reward at the end. Or even simpler, make them more readily available from random drops.

 

As for whether or not the drop rates have gone through the floor, no they probably actually haven't. In the last hour I got 8 Neural Sensors doing random runs of Jupiter. A range of missions, Raid, Rescue, Spy, Sabotage, Assassination. Yesterday I got more than 10 Control Modules over the course of a number of alerts on Neptune, getting 2 a mission on average and 3 quite often. Lately Neurodes have been raining from the sky as well, enough to build a Vasto and 4 alternate helms. All this without even bothering to grind.

This means that either I am the chosen champion of the RNG gods or that the RNG is actually being nice for once but people are too busy grinding the same old for nothing.

P.S It was pretty common before U9 for bosses to drop common materials instead of rare. This isn't even U9 new, this is old hat.

 

Why not throw in multiple avenues on top of Assasination though? Even Steve supports diversity.

 

As for Material Rewards for certain mission types, they are also a probable avenue, but one of your choices is one I heavily disagree with. Rescue is far from being a simple matter as is. I wouldn't want the stress of taxi'ing an NPC around for mere resources. 

 

As for your personal experiences, you randomly got them and that's fine, but that doesn't help the fact that there are currently no surefire effective processes by which one can obtain "rare" materials.

 

Finally, as for your P.S., bosses drop common-grade materials and that's fine too, but back in update 8 I was guaranteed a control module every 10 runs from hyena for example. This isn't about what they drop exactly, but how frequently they drop "it", "it" being pretty much the materials in question.

Edited August 15, 2013 by EdwardMarlus

[-Kittens-]

Actually wouldn't Scott be the guy you wanna talk to?

[EdwardMarlus]

Actually wouldn't Scott be the guy you wanna talk to?

 

Well, you'll have to excuse me for my lack of familiarity with who's in charge of what but... Sure I guess. 

[Danakar]

Bosses should have a 100% chance to drop 1-3 rare materials upon death as specified by the planet overview in my opinion.

 

But all the other regular missions associated with the planet should also retain a chance to drop those materials from crates, cabinets and high ranking mobs (like Commanders, Ancients etc).

[EdwardMarlus]

Bosses should have a 100% chance to drop 1-3 rare materials upon death as specified by the planet overview in my opinion.

 

But all the other regular missions associated with the planet should also retain a chance to drop those materials from crates, cabinets and high ranking mobs (like Commanders, Ancients etc).

 

Yeah, that's something worth looking into as well. I liked that commanders were dropping rare mats.

[notlamprey]

I don't have a lot to add here, other than that I lean towards the "Agree" side of the fence regarding the OP.

I also did a small bit of Commander Hunting while the bug was in effect. It was interesting that the bug turned the enemy I despise most in the entire game into a worthwhile target. I WANTED to feel that derpy switch teleport. All the Commanders ever do is cast one troll power and run away; it triggers some deep-seated primal killer instinct within me, and it was fun to have a good reason to indulge in a bit of virtual bloodlust.

My takeaway from the Commander bug was that it would be interesting if DE decided to implement some sort of rotating resource/item drop rate increases. It would take some effort to do, but the Commander bug had me doing things in Warframe that I normally loathe, and it felt worthwhile to do. I would have gone Commander Hunting at half, and probably even one-fourth, the resource/item drop rates.

Personally, I think temporary "loot buffs" for certain locations and enemies wouldn't have to be huge to incentivize varied gameplay. Just knowing that their time would be "spent more efficiently doing X, at Y time" would be enough for many people. You never know; you might see a lot less boredom and burnout if a system like this were added.

Just a thought.

[FatRefrigerator]

We should have sweatshops in our dojos where all those capture targets are slaving away and creating rare materials for us.

[Xylia]

After doing some farming on Earth, the Neurodes drop rate doesn't seem That bad.

 

Did Vay Hek once, he dropped a Neurode.

 

Did Four E Prime runs, found another two Neurodes.

 

All of this in one night just leveling my new Acrid.

 

This might be a huge stroke of luck, but hey. I'll try this again in Europa and see if Control Modules actually something close to reasonably often.