Scaling Rewards.. My opinion.

[eXotic]

The past month or so I've been watching the community argue about scaling rewards, essentially;

DE and the Endurance community proposed a change to the drop chance of rare items in endurance runs (1hour+ survivals etc..)

Link to a clip of devstream 110: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-ustwb9L_c

Now, people that do endurance runs know that rewards in a 1-2 or even 3 hour survival feel like a kick in the balls (most of the time), getting 2.5k credits as a reward when you're 1h15min in feels more like a punishment than an actual reward that is worth the time and effort you put in to the actual mission.. ( i think we can all agree that that's a bit unfair)..

So, after looking at multiple conversations and arguments on this topic, i noticed that there are two sides to this, People that are for the so-called 'scaling rewards' and people (i have noticed a recurring pattern that these players are called the 'bite sized?' community) that utterly despise this idea, their argument being that endurance runners DON'T DESERVE better rewards just because they:

 - Don't have jobs, school or a family to take care of

- Have the patience/skill to run such a long mission

Because that would create a gap in rewards between the people that run 20Min max runs and bail out (which is what i'm assuming is the 'bite sized community' origin)and Endurance runners .. And i think that these people are missing (or have decided to completely ignore) the fact of what DE/The endurance community suggested, which is: ''A BIGGER % CHANCE ( or reduced drop table) OF RARE ITEMS DROPPING in a mission, if decided to stay for an hour or more''..

Meaning that everyone still has the chance of getting the rare loot, but people that decide to put time/effort and skill to go beyond what a casual player can do, have a higher chance of getting the rarest items possible as a reward, which in my Opinion is quite fair..

But for some reason the sheer toxicity from some individuals on this topic baffles me, saying that endurance runs are not considered an end-game alternative stating that, when people complained that a 2.5k credit reward should not exist as a reward 2 hours in to a mission they decided to shut them down saying and i quote;

''If you're looking to Optimize your rewards... THEN DON'T DO A 2H SURVIVAL. LOL

You made the choice to go for the glory, enjoy the glory.. but remember it should be OPTIONAL.No one should be FORCED to do a 2hr run to optimize their rewards.''

Honestly, i agree that no one should be FORCED to do anything they do not enjoy doing, which they WOULDN'T BE.. it would be their choice and theirs alone to run a 2 Hour mission for a chance at a steadier income of rare rewards, there was no suggestion of removing rares from droptables and rotations until you reach 40 minutes or more, only to increase the CHANCE of rares or decrease the amount of clutter in the droptables which is quite reasonable in my humble opinion..

 

So, as a conclusion, I side with the endurance community, i wish to see better droptables the longer you stay in the mission.. because, in my opinion, if you put the TIME, SKILL and EFFORT in to something, it should give you rewards at least partly equal to the investment..

----------------------------

Some opinions by other people i had a conversation with and they put it in words better than i could have;

''The thing is most of these people that do 20 minute max runs don't do those because they lack the time they do it because they can't

 

 

 

Doing an hour or even a 2 hour run isn't out of reach for most people

 

 

 

They just lack the skill or willpower to actually do it

 

 

 

But if you're strong enough to achieve end game level content then you should be rewarded

 

 

 

If you play world of warcraft the higher level enemies you're fighting the better your rewards

 

 

 

Same in virtually anything

 

 

 

If you can go to a greater rift 100 in diablo 3 you get better gear than someone who can only manage a 60''

 

 

 

 

-------------------------------------

''i agree and don't think that all the game's content should be available to anyone, as this kind of mentality is going to maintain Warframe's status of not having a lot of endgame content outside of eidolons and raids DE does sort of want to make any of the game accessible to most people mainly so that they can still turn profits from development and to make an even playing field- that said, implementing scaling rewards doesn't require any new content be developed, and I believe there should be a disparity between more and less skilled players

 

 

 

i can also kind of see why DE would be worried about the concept of a 'skill gap' where the players who are better at the game get far better loot and thus improve more than the worse players (you see this in fifa if anyone ever plays it), but i'm not sure this wholly applies to warframe as there will always be a cap on how good your 'gear'/ builds etc can get

 

 

 

it isn't a simple issue tho for sure''

 

-----------------------------

'' if there is a change of people getting rare rewards with a higher change by doing something they could already do, but dont because it's not how it is. Again and again its been shown that people that min max stuff, go for the most rewards. If you give these min maxers too much too fast, it means they loose insentive to use money. These people also tend to be the "whales" of the industry. And im not saying it wont happen, im just saying its not as simple as "adding more rewards/higher changes of em". It's mostly about economics, analytics and numbers. ''

 

''part of a good game is to keep people playing, and thats why sometimes giving too much stuff too fast can kill the player base. even if you would get alot more players, the core community can twindle and kill the overall atmosphere. But still, i dont know DE's numbers so i couldnt really say anything realistic. Im just saying that these are the problems that games tend to think before doing these kind of decisions and usualy there is a lot more to think about than what players usually think''

Edited July 25, 2018 by eXotic
Added some solid arguments from different people

[Misgenesis]

11 minutes ago, eXotic said:

SKILL and EFFORT

If going for hours actually took either of these perhaps we could see some form of scaling rewards like fissure survivals.

[Sormaran]

Just now, Misgenesis said:

If going for hours actually took either of these perhaps we could see some form of scaling rewards like fissure survivals.

Even "TIME" is debatable, since you can be afk 80% of the time.

[DrBorris]

I redact what I said, I should have eaten a Snickers. I'll just leave my irrelevant and frankly rude post in the spoiler below. Please don't read it.

Spoiler

I'm serious, I am only leaving it here because I am not a fan of people deleting what their prior comments.

Spoiler

 

I have the perfect idea to make sure everyone is rewarded equally.

 

In order to make sure that no single playstyle or preferred mission type is "better" than any other, there should be a 10 maximum AND minimum timer put on all missions. No matter what mission you do, it will take exactly 10 min. This is to prevent people from feeling left out when speed runners complete missions faster because some people just don't like to speed run. We should also go ahead and make the amount of enemies killed in any mission be entirely optional, not everyone wants to bring high DPS and they should not feel left out.

 

This is an extreme strawman, yes, but this dumb concept that because YOU don't like a certain mission type that it should not be rewarding to those that do like it is absurd. Rather than lump everybody into the same pile where everyone is a little bit uncomfortable, why not allow for niches to grow.

Make it so some endurance runs are rewarding endurance.

Make it so some missions more actively encourage speed running. Oh wait, they do.

Make it so some missions encourage and reward AoE spam. Oh wait, Onslaught exists.

Make it so some missions promote stealth. Oh wait, Spy and the stealth affinity multiplier exist.

 

Hm, it seems that Endurance is the only thing being shafted. Wow, that really makes you look like an a-hole. Let's just design the entire game around what you like, right? That sounds fun for everyone...

 

 

 

Edited July 25, 2018 by DrBorris

[Mr.Lemmi]

Im fairly new here and im not entirely into the context of the discussion. But playing the devils advocate here, they are already being rewarded by multiple rolls chances and, maybe im wrong, better resources drops from higher level mobs. IF you add better % chance for the rarer items, combined with the extra rolls from playing multiple consecutive rounds without stopping, you severely increase the probability of getting a rare in a run. This could have the very negative effect of changing the community mindset of being ok with "grinding missions" to "not worth it unless you go for 2h runs" and the huge backlash/consecuences that comes from it..

[eXotic]

39 minutes ago, Misgenesis said:

If going for hours actually took either of these perhaps we could see some form of scaling rewards like fissure survivals.

It does, but please, feel free to actually give out a constructive argument defended by facts and not just empty words, i'm down to have a conversation with you, otherwise, not really..

38 minutes ago, Sormaran said:

Even "TIME" is debatable, since you can be afk 80% of the time.

It is not debatable, you put in your own Time, out of your life, AFKing is not possible whats-so-ever unless you're leeching, and if so, that person is scum, but any dedicated team for endurance runs is there 95% of the time because they have their designated roles that they need to fulfill.

Also, please, show me your 2 hour endurance run where you AFK (not touch a SINGLE button on your keyboard/mouse) for 80% of the duration your time, then talk.

 

 

Stop jumping on to the bandwagon of blind biased criticism and actually put out some facts..

[eXotic]

3 minutes ago, Mr.Lemmi said:

Im fairly new here and im not entirely into the context of the discussion. But playing the devils advocate here, they are already being rewarded by multiple rolls chances and, maybe im wrong, better resources drops from higher level mobs. IF you add better % chance for the rarer items, combined with the extra rolls from playing multiple consecutive rounds without stopping, you severely increase the probability of getting a rare in a run. This could have the very negative effect of changing the community mindset of being ok with "grinding missions" to "not worth it unless you go for 2h runs" and the huge backlash/consecuences that comes from it..

You can farm more effectively going for 20 minutes, jumping out and repeating this process, so running endurance runs is a bit less efficient when farming rotations, Enemy level DOES NOT affect drop chance% as far as i read up on, and if you watched the devstream snippet or read my post fully, i mentioned multiple times that removing the clutter from rotations after 40 min or 1h plus is a reasonable approach looking at the time investment..

lastly.. it will always be worth running 20 min rotation missions, but running 2h runs would be a bit more profitable..

[(XBOX)DEUS VUULT]

thats bull. i spent a decent amount of time in this game and rarely get anything good. btw were credits always so useless in warframe?

[FlamingCore]

I agree with exotic.
DE, do something!

[Oreades]

No thanks, I already get bored by wave 10..... I in no way want to feel obligated to sit around for 2hrs to "get the thing". 

So I'll quote your airquotes 

1 hour ago, eXotic said:

''If you're looking to Optimize your rewards... THEN DON'T DO A 2H SURVIVAL. LOL

You made the choice to go for the glory, enjoy the glory.. but remember it should be OPTIONAL.No one should be FORCED to do a 2hr run to optimize their rewards.''

 

[Lakais]

Endurance runs are rarely "challenges of skill". More often then not they are "challenges of risk". I say this because ALL these endurance runs rely on some mechanic or combination there-of that limit, break or ignore some function or mechanic of the game. Stunlocked enemies aren't a challenge of skill because to achieve this large scale shutdown of enemy capability to counter you, is a combination of three or four mods and single button press. So instead it's a game of risk where if even ONE of these enemies slips past the CC net, they can cause a cascade that wipes the squad. It's basically the WF equivalent of LoL's "big d**k play!" of someone using a Flash over a wall. 

An enemy that can't fight back isn't a challenge of skill. It's a risk that in all of them there's one that can. 

Now on a different note: DE did say in a devstream that they are thinking about implementing some sort of rotation limiter or booster. That past a certain point, rotation A will stop happening twice and then go away altogether, for example. Or that at some point you get two rolls per rotation. So options are in the works. 

Edited July 25, 2018 by Lakais

[eXotic]

57 minutes ago, DrBorris said:

I have the perfect idea to make sure everyone is rewarded equally.

 

In order to make sure that no single playstyle or preferred mission type is "better" than any other, there should be a 10 maximum AND minimum timer put on all missions. No matter what mission you do, it will take exactly 10 min. This is to prevent people from feeling left out when speed runners complete missions faster because some people just don't like to speed run. We should also go ahead and make the amount of enemies killed in any mission be entirely optional, not everyone wants to bring high DPS and they should not feel left out.

 

This is an extreme strawman, yes, but this dumb concept that because YOU don't like a certain mission type that it should not be rewarding to those that do like it is absurd. Rather than lump everybody into the same pile where everyone is a little bit uncomfortable, why not allow for niches to grow.

Make it so some endurance runs are rewarding endurance.

Make it so some missions more actively encourage speed running. Oh wait, they do.

Make it so some missions encourage and reward AoE spam. Oh wait, Onslaught exists.

Make it so some missions promote stealth. Oh wait, Spy and the stealth affinity multiplier exist.

 

Hm, it seems that Endurance is the only thing being shafted. Wow, that really makes you look like an a-hole. Let's just design the entire game around what you like, right? That sounds fun for everyone...

  Hide contents

Also, I think I know a video you watched recently...

 

I don't understand your thinking, could you please explain?

Because all i'm picking up from this is sarcasm? am i mistaken?

Edited July 25, 2018 by eXotic

[(PSN)Yes-Man-Kablaam]

So have you heard of the term saving the player from themselves? This is a case of that. Say things scaled and people pushed. "oh what if we go 3 hours for triple rewards? Oh ok what about 6? 9?" there WILL be people who do this honestly there already are and it's physically not healthy. The incentive to push in a survival or defense should come from you and you alone not the game dangling a carrot.

[eXotic]

4 minutes ago, Lakais said:

Endurance runs are rarely "challenges of skill". More often then not they are "challenges of risk". I say this because ALL these endurance runs rely on some mechanic or combination there-of that limit, break or ignore some function or mechanic of the game. Stunlocked enemies aren't a challenge of skill because to achieve this large scale shutdown of enemy capability to counter you, is a combination of three or four mods and single button press. So instead it's a game of risk where if even ONE of these enemies slips past the CC net, they can cause a cascade that wipes the squad. It's basically the WF equivalent of LoL's "big d**k play!" of someone using a Flash over a wall. 

An enemy that can't fight back isn't a challenge of skill. It's a risk that in all of them there's one that can. 

Now on a different note: DE did say in a devstream that they are thinking about implementing some sort of rotation limiter or booster. That past a certain point, rotation A will stop happening twice and then go away altogether, for example. Or that at some point you get two rolls per rotation. So options are in the works. 

First of all, it does take skill and knowladge on how to use those abilities and the synergy between frames/weapons and teammates to make that kind of CC viable, dodging bullets, large waves of enemies and keeping them effectively stunlocked while killing them for life support or not letting far away enemies snipe the defense target is a considerable feat after 1hr and 30 minutes in to a mission..

Second of all, after the first few lines of my post i posted a link to the very snippet of that conversation, seems like you haven't read my post?

[DrBorris]

7 minutes ago, eXotic said:

I don't understand your thinking, could you please explain?

Because all i'm picking up from this is sarcasm? am i mistaken?

Because I'm talking about Long mission runs yet the first part of your comment mention speed-runs and how people suffer because of speed runners?

Then, you go on about how every mission type except endurance have optimal rewarding systems

And then you make a complete 180- by admitting how endurance is being overlooked and proceed to call me an A****** trying to push a game designed how i like it? i do

I'm sorry, I did the thing I hate when other people do. Just... pretend you did not read what I wrote, I did the dumb.

[eXotic]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)Yes-Man-Kablaam said:

So have you heard of the term saving the player from themselves? This is a case of that. Say things scaled and people pushed. "oh what if we go 3 hours for triple rewards? Oh ok what about 6? 9?" there WILL be people who do this honestly there already are and it's physically not healthy. The incentive to push in a survival or defense should come from you and you alone not the game dangling a carrot.

As you said yourself, there are people that already do these kinds of runs, i'm one of those people, but i only go for longer than 2 hours when i have an actual dedicated team..

I'm not saying DE should implement this feature to incentivize endurance missions, i'm saying that DE should implement this feature for people already doing these runs so they get better rewards from the kick in the balls punishment they are getting now,

But i also do realize it creates an incentive for people not running it, but that is their choice if they want to run those missions or not..

[eXotic]

Just now, DrBorris said:

I'm sorry, I did the thing I hate when other people do. Just... pretend you did not read what I wrote, I did the dumb.

No worries my dude,

I started writing after i read your post once, then after i finished typing i read it again and added the sarcasm question, guess i forgot to delete the other part of me misunderstanding that message, unless it was actually meant like that, then i am also interested in your opinion, but i digress..

 

[Ekspresija]

I am with my both hands up for better rewarding system after a longer amount of time spent in mission! Atleast removing the A rotation after like 40 minutes or so, because, as already mentioned, getting A rewards is just ridiculous when running for more than an hour long survival and dealing with high level enemies. Don't like staying long? - Then don't. This topic is not about forcing you to stay long for good rewards as you could still get them in the first 20 mins or 20 waves (AABC) and repeat the mission countless times. It's about the ones who want to stay for 2 hours in, dealing with harder enemies and just not getting the silly first rotation rewards anymore and maybe get a little bit higher % chance for the good ones. It's not that much of a deal to make such fuss about it and yell that it's not fair other than just letting people who enjoy long runs and want some endgame have their thing. 

[eXotic]

24 minutes ago, (XB1)DEUS VUULT said:

thats bull. i spent a decent amount of time in this game and rarely get anything good. btw were credits always so useless in warframe?

Depends on what you use them on, you need a ton of credits to rank up primed mods for example, even trading  etc..

[Ekspresija]

28 minutes ago, (PS4)Yes-Man-Kablaam said:

So have you heard of the term saving the player from themselves? This is a case of that. Say things scaled and people pushed. "oh what if we go 3 hours for triple rewards? Oh ok what about 6? 9?" there WILL be people who do this honestly there already are and it's physically not healthy. The incentive to push in a survival or defense should come from you and you alone not the game dangling a carrot.

I understand the concern about peoples health that's why I wouldn't suggest having 4x, 5x etc. reward scaling. Just NOT getting bad rewards anymore (first rotation ones) after a little longer amount of time spent in mission could be a good start of change. 

Edited July 25, 2018 by Ekspresija

[Illithar]

Honestly, the rewards system for endless missions needs to be improved overall. I don't do endurance runs but I do run these missions to level stuff. So, admittedly, I am not there for the rewards but who would be? With the exception of relics most of them are useless. The mods are nice for new players for sure, but the resources, endo, and credits you get from these missions (barring perhaps the credit reward for Dark Sectors) is negligible. I do Endless Kuva runs because I don't like the normal Kuva missions, but I will readily acknowledge that it is less efficient.

So, going to scaling, what (other than maybe Kuva, which isn't part of any rotation) is scaling? Getting more stuff I don't need? Before scaling is addressed I think the base rewards need to be addressed. Because right now, the only reason I'm running non-dark sector, non-kuva endless missions, is for vaulted relics. Once I have all prime bits I need, I'm not going to be running them. Because, there's nothing I need, scaling or no.

[(XBOX)DEUS VUULT]

10 minutes ago, eXotic said:

Depends on what you use them on, you need a ton of credits to rank up primed mods for example, even trading  etc..

primed mods? didnt even know that was a thing. sure ill never get one because this game hates me XD

i guess if i ever need credits there will be a ton of them there to use.

[eXotic]

1 minute ago, Illithar said:

Honestly, the rewards system for endless missions needs to be improved overall. I don't do endurance runs but I do run these missions to level stuff. So, admittedly, I am not there for the rewards but who would be? With the exception of relics most of them are useless. The mods are nice for new players for sure, but the resources, endo, and credits you get from these missions (barring perhaps the credit reward for Dark Sectors) is negligible. I do Endless Kuva runs because I don't like the normal Kuva missions, but I will readily acknowledge that it is less efficient.

So, going to scaling, what (other than maybe Kuva, which isn't part of any rotation) is scaling? Getting more stuff I don't need? Before scaling is addressed I think the base rewards need to be addressed. Because right now, the only reason I'm running non-dark sector, non-kuva endless missions, is for vaulted relics. Once I have all prime bits I need, I'm not going to be running them. Because, there's nothing I need, scaling or no.

Ah see, what was proposed on Devstream #110 was not scaling rewards % wise, but the removal of the needless clutter like credits and useless bronze mods, removing certain rotations or adding all new rotations in to the mix to make the actual droptable more 'profitable' and filled with better drops

[eXotic]

5 minutes ago, (XB1)DEUS VUULT said:

primed mods? didnt even know that was a thing. sure ill never get one because this game hates me XD

i guess if i ever need credits there will be a ton of them there to use.

They're essentially buffed versions of their normal counterparts

You get primed mods from  an NPC that comes bi-weekly named Baro Ki'Teer, running fissures and getting primed items/parts you don't need can be used to sell for DUCATS, Baro's own little currency. you sell these prime parts at any relay you can access, there's two terminals in the main hall of any relay, as soon as you go past the statue there's one to the left or to the right, most of these items he brings are primed mods, accessories, weapons and beacons, he also sells the Inaros quest..

You can gain credits by running index missions, that are located on Neptune, there's 3 types of index runs, low, medium and high profit ones, where you can get up to 200k credit profit, you do have to invest your own credits though, it's not a lot.. high risk only needs 50k credits 😛

Edited July 25, 2018 by eXotic

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

From what I gather from the "endurance players"... they want somewhere to test their builds and skill against stronger content, but the only place they can do that, is in endless missions where enemies start scaling after over an hour into the game. Due to taking all this time, slaughtering monsters effortlessly, they finally reach a point where they have to stun/control monsters and kill them with a "little" more effort. And due to this, they want better rewards because they stayed in the mission forever and a day...

DE clearly doesn't want players spending forever and a day in missions. (This opens up the risk of bugs that wipe out all that play, and don't save the rewards, host migrations, etc)... With that in mind, they set up Sanctuary Onslaught to have a soft-cap that prevents that from going on too long. Get in, get out, fast missions, is what it's always been about. 20min seems max (and only if you need the C rotation's rewards), 40 is an extended thing that you really need to organize to make happen. Random public groups should never be expected to even stay past 1 wave to clear a node - even on planets where it's common to go longer.

SO...

There should be new nodes (or all nodes with a new option, or a new optional setting that makes all nodes this new option) that starts all enemies off 100+ levels higher than normal... or whatever level they get to at 1hr in. This way, you bypass all the easy stuff, and get right into the hard content. This content could have a simplified rotation of ABC, and no filler drops in the loot table. STILL, I'd say these nodes shouldn't have people expecting them to be endless. (the reward table has been adjusted to provide the better rewards without the time investment, with a higher tier of "challenge" from the scaled enemies.)

 

Honestly, I don't think "endurance" runs should be promoted or rewarded by DE. Get to the real point of why people want the endurance runs in the first place. If it's the higher challenge as the enemies scale up, just give people the scaled up enemies. If it's just more rewards... pulling out at the 20min mark and starting over is MORE efficient than killing stronger enemies for the same rewards... common sense here people. Stop wasting your time 😉