Nitain Alerts: More Problem Than Solution

[Critik]

Nitain (Alertium) is a resource that is time-gated to solve a particular problem the developers felt they had with Warframe's newer items, namely: How can we make sure our players play on days besides content drops? Warframe, like a lot of F2P games has a "flocking" problem, where the player count spikes dramatically just before and just after an update drops, and then it hits a rapid cliff of decline when you get about 3 days to a week away from the update on either side. As a result, DE has tried a few times to force players to "actually play" the game rather than just stockpiling resources ahead of time.

Arguably, Oxium was the first attempt at this; Introduced in Update 11, Oxium ospreys dropped teeny tiny amounts of this, making it difficult to stockpile. Of course, players did so anyway, even when ridiculous Oxium sinks like Trinity Prime and Vauban Prime came into play specifically to zero out these stockpiles.

Argon Crystals were the second attempt at this, introduced in Update 13; they're a resource that decays over time, making them difficult-to-impossible to stockpile and making sure that the area they drop in, The Void, is always going to be semi-relevant as long as new items requiring it exist. This resource was tied to a specific area because, at the time, void key missions were the endgame. They aren't any more, so the void tileset itself has become less important, and as a result DE needed a new fix.

 

Argon Crystlas had two problems at the point when DE decided to try a new fix.
1: Argon Crystals are a farmable resource, so even though they decay, players could find hyperefficient ways to farm the required amount in basically an hour, maybe two. While they could not be stockpiled, they would have to either be required in ridiculous amounts, or they would not guarantee players playing on 'off' days.

2: As mentioned above, Argon Crystals were far too focused on the void tileset; with DE moving away from the void as the endgame, they wanted their main 'actually play the game' resource to do so as well, or it would split the playerbase's focus in ways that were kind of weird (and still are, if you're building items from the argon crystal age).

Enter Nitain Extract, also known as Alertium. Being an alert resource, it isn't linked to any specific tilesets, and while it can be stockpiled, it cannot be farmed in any efficient ways; you either get it from hitting one of the four alerts that drop it each day, or you find yourself exiled to an obscure mission type nobody enjoys, forced to hunt down all three randomly-placed time-consuming caches for, at best, a 2% droprate. I don't know about you, but to me that sounds like someone on the dev team said an irritated "just try and farm THIS" before they implemented it. (2% dropchance lol, you may as well just call 'farming it' the exile it is.)

Nitain solves both of the problems DE needed to address, the difficulty is that it introduces a new problem: Time management. Because Nitain is tied to alerts that happen in random portions of the day, exist for an hour, and then disappear, most of the playerbase does not get their "guaranteed" 4 nitain each day; in fact this is almost impossbie, because out of the 24 hours in each day, most of us need to be unconscious for about 8 of them. Chances are at least one Nitain is going to drop while you're asleep, and that's not counting hours you might be working, bathing, engaging in romantic endeavors, studying, or yes, even enjoying other games. As a result, most players are lucky to get 2 nitain in a day, with many players getting 1, or even being unable to get any nitain due to the alerts popping up outside of the hours they can, or are willing to play. For DE's purposes this is fine-- they wouldn't have left it for something like over a year otherwise-- but it is immensely frustrating and unfair to players, and can be impossible to feasibly or justifiably acquire for players, effectively locking them out of content for having a busy schedule.

That is unfair.

DE, I would make of you a simple suggestion: Pick a number. It doesn't have to be the 4 we get now, it doesn't even have to be all of the Nitain you give us each day, but pick a number, and make a "daily alert", or several, that last the whole day and drop a nitain. You can still have your time-gating, you can still have your off-day player counts, but it is not fair to your players to expect their schedules to revolve around Alert RNG for a resource that realistically only comes from alerts and is required in quantity. With an alert that lasts the whole day and drops the resource once, it is not 'farmable', and it is still timegated since you, the developer, can limit how many of these daily alerts exist. You lose nothing by making this change, but you make it so that some of your unluckier or busier players can finally have a sane and sensible method for acquiring this resource.

Thank you for your consideration.

Edited July 11, 2018 by Critik

[OptimumBow0]

Yep.

When you're only missing that one nitain, having to wait up to an extra 4 days for a manageable alert to appear is not nice. I like this.

[BiancaRoughfin]

Hmm, this image is abit outdated but...

This is after having built everything that uses them and contributing to researches of the clan im leader of.

It is true Nitain alerts are hard to come by, specially for people that work most of the day. Maybe [DE] could make some kind of daily tactical alerts that had modifiers and different difficulty levels like Sorties for players to earn some Nitains in addition to the normal alerts. This would prevent players who have very little time from being locked out of obtaining them. Perhaps 3 or 4 of them per day would be good.

Edited July 11, 2018 by BiancaRoughfin

[(PSN)FurryZenJustice]

Hmm. Admittedly this has never been a problem for me, personally. I generally average one per play session and I almost always have a bunch available when I need them. Actually I usually find myself short on Oxium or Cryotic, though now that I'm done with Trinity and Vauban Primes, that's not going to be as much of a problem (though Sibear -- ugh).

Something they could implement is alerts that stick around until they are replaced with a different version with the same reward. In essence the Nitain alert would have a cooldown that would have it disappear right before the next Nitain alert appears.Though if they do that I suspect the delay will be 8 hours between Nitain.

The question becomes, how quickly should it be farmable? To date, you only need 158 for personal building. How many per week do you think should be available? One a day on average means you're done in less than 6 months. Five a week means you're done in about 8 months. Two a week puts it around a year and a half. How long do you think it should take to farm all the Nitain you'll need?

[Critik]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)FurryZenJustice said:

How long do you think it should take to farm all the Nitain you'll need?

Honestly? I don't have the statistics and heuristics tools I would need to make that decision. DE would need to make it. The main thrust of my argument here is not "We want more/faster nitain in general!", the problem I seek for them to address is the schedule-screw nature of nitain currently. They could adjust the total per day down, if necessary, or up if they wanted; I just feel it's wrong for players to be effectively locked out of the resource because they aren't on for the 4 magic, random hours.

Edited July 11, 2018 by Critik

[(PSN)FurryZenJustice]

5 minutes ago, Critik said:

I just feel it's wrong for players to be effectively locked out of the resource because they aren't on for the 4 magic, random hours.

The schedule-screw is the point though. It's designed to get people to play during non-peak hours. It's designed to get some percentage of people to pop on Monday-Thursday in order to meet the minimum number of players to make the game work.

I understand that some players literally can't play during the week it's an awful situation. You're gated more than was intended. Perhaps they could have a once-a-week reward like Clem or Maroo. But whatever they come up with it can't take too much pressure off the need to play during the week. If we get to a point where the during-the-week population drops too low then squad-based missions become too hard to fill (e.g. sorties, nightmare missions, fissures, etc).

My fear is that there is no solution to the problem of nitain lock-out, because nitain unavailability is it's purpose.

[Critik]

8 minutes ago, (PS4)FurryZenJustice said:

My fear is that there is no solution to the problem of nitain lock-out, because nitain unavailability is it's purpose.

I feel like everyone involved would be fine with a slower but always-available drip of nitain. Also, thanks to sites like Deathsnacks's stuff, the argument that nitain "promotes off-hours play" is fundamentally flawed; many people just see the alert pop up on their phone or browser or whatever, open the game, do the alert, and then shut the game off. It's tedium of the real-world sort, and it's not necessarily creating a "constant player level" or anything like that, all it does is create 4 alerts a day that are played more than most of the other ones.

EDIT: Also, short of checking for a nitain alert before you log in, there's no guarantee that playing in the off-hours will get you a nitain; I've been online today for about 4 hours (not actively playing all of them, mind you), and not a single Nitain alert has showed up.

Edited July 11, 2018 by Critik
Additional stuff

[(PSN)FurryZenJustice]

12 minutes ago, Critik said:

the argument that nitain "promotes off-hours play" is fundamentally flawed; many people just see the alert pop up on their phone or browser or whatever, open the game, do the alert, and then shut the game off

That's entirely possible. That's not mine or my friend's behavior, but I have no particular evidence that you're wrong in general.

13 minutes ago, Critik said:

I feel like everyone involved would be fine with a slower but always-available drip of nitain.

I'm not arguing against that. I mentioned a weekly Clem/Maroo-type Alert for Nitain or even other options that could implemented that would provide Nitain in a steady, but slow stream. If it isn't really driving people to play more, then I have absolutely no qualms about it. As I said, it was "my fear". If it's a solvable problem, power to those to do so.

I wish you luck in getting DE's attention on this.