Syndicate revamp

[(PSN)OriginalEquinox]

Right now I feel the syndicate system is a bit messy and not thought through properly.  The whole rival syndicates and attack squads might be interesting at the beginning because it adds a layer of unpredictability to missions but once you level up a bit those attacks become a minor annoyance and nothing more (won't even talk about Steel Meridian and her meatballs of doom), so I have a couple suggestions on how to maybe improve it a little.

So right now if you choose New Loka then Steel Meridian will be your enemy, why? How does a group of people wanting to protect civilians be hostile towards a group trying to repopulate Earth, but allied with a cult hell bent on murdering everything? It doesn't make sense. So let us either,

A- max out all the syndicates, which will hit the market a little but add more replayability, or,

B- choose a couple syndicates that we want to support at the beginning of the game, this way the other syndicates will be hostile towards you not because you're helping their enemies but because you didn't choose them. This wouldn't affect the market or the hit squads but it'll give players more choice in the matter. Or,

C- same as the above, you choose a couple syndicates to support but the rest remain neutral towards you at first but become more hostile if you decide to help allies fight off hit squads sent after them, because right now you could murder even your own syndicates hit squads with no repercussions, this will add more weight to your decisions.

[peterc3]

46 minutes ago, (PS4)Equinox21697 said:

C- same as the above, you choose a couple syndicates to support but the rest remain neutral towards you at first but become more hostile if you decide to help allies fight off hit squads sent after them, because right now you could murder even your own syndicates hit squads with no repercussions, this will add more weight to your decisions.

You call the existing system messy and not well thought out, but this is a suggestion to change it? Sorry new guy, fight those Parasitic Eximii by yourself, I'm allies with them. This doesn't fly in a co-op game.

48 minutes ago, (PS4)Equinox21697 said:

B- choose a couple syndicates that we want to support at the beginning of the game, this way the other syndicates will be hostile towards you not because you're helping their enemies but because you didn't choose them. This wouldn't affect the market or the hit squads but it'll give players more choice in the matter. Or,

49 minutes ago, (PS4)Equinox21697 said:

A- max out all the syndicates, which will hit the market a little but add more replayability, or,

You aren't going to have ready access to every Augment. The system was set up to either force you to have to keep bouncing between hated and liked by Syndicates to get what you want, or find someone that has what you want and trade for it.

Remove those and you will find the resulting system is not what you think you'd get but does what DE wants it to do and you'd be forced to trade or grind for other reasons.

How does being able to max all the Syndicates add replayability? You've immediately gained access to anything they ever add into the system and without any need to grind anymore, at least until something else was added.

[Xaxma]

They should expand on the lore of the syndicates to explain why they either ally with or hate each other. They all seem pretty good in intentions but ...

My guess is that there is a difference of opinion concerning methods? In the case of Red Veil vs Arbiters, perhaps the Red Veil just disapprove of the strict honorary code of the Arbiters and are more gun/slash happy as to Steel Meridian hating on Perrin Sequence for the historical tension between Grineer and Corpus? I think some dialogue between the leaders of each syndicate should be exchanged to help clarify what is it exactly that they're trying to accomplish.

Moreover, I would prefer if there were more quests that lets you choose between syndicates with varying outcomes as opposed to the current system we have now with affinity, sort of like alignments in The War Within quests. And through these quests, it would solidify which one you more strongly align with based on your choices rather than arbitrarily picking and choosing them.

It would be quite the project, but it would fill a lot of the gray areas out and make the system seem more alive. Perhaps we could even have syndicate vs syndicate events like we do with invasions.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Xaxma

[o.0-]

I can still remember being confused when I first learned of Syndicates existing and how they interacted.

Overtime, I sought to craft they whys for antagonism and came to see a tribal basis, used for their hard differences. Now I can appreciate the nuance found in the intentions, and the need to fit them into the structure they exist in now.

As I did spends countless hours seeing how a new faction or two could maybe or maybe not allow Steel Meridian and Perrin finally see a common ground to be on at least neutral terms, so that they'd oppose the Grineer, granted before quests told us of the Queens and Operators. But meh, such a scenario would have required quite the paradigm shift even if both were against the same overarching enemy. Thank you my Poli Sci degree I guess? And the devs with such forward thinking in establishing such nuance.

[(PSN)OriginalEquinox]

35 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

You call the existing system messy and not well thought out, but this is a suggestion to change it? Sorry new guy, fight those Parasitic Eximii by yourself, I'm allies with them. This doesn't fly in a co-op game

Thing is,it isn't mandatory to defeat hit squads, they're dumb and slow enough to ignore unless you're in a defence mission or something, and even now there are plenty of people who just abandon teammates who are being attacked by Syndicates or the Stalker even, idk if that's ignorance or selfishness but it happens a lot.

40 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

How does being able to max all the Syndicates add replayability?

You don't 'immediately' gain access to anything, each syndicate has to be individually ranked up, which means you have more incentive to do missions.

I appreciate the input but please think things through before criticising someone just because they're newer than you