Nightwave: Replacement for Alerts

Nightwave is a replacement for the Alerts system, essentially a radio show hosted by a person named Nora Night. Standard Alerts will no longer appear, but the special ones like Arbitrations and Gifts of the Lotus will appear as normal. Instead of having random Alerts with random awards randomly start for a fairly short amount of time, Nightwave offers challenges that last for a set, much longer amount of time, with set, known rewards that you can choose.

Bit late to this one, but I wanted to get more experience in the system before posting. That and me being quite busy recently.

Nightwave offers a daily challenge that changes each day, with a whole bunch of different weekly challenges that change each week. Challenges include things like killing a certain number of enemies, or completing a certain number of a particular mission type. Completing each challenge gives Nightwave reputation, which at set intervals increases your Nightwave level, giving a particular reward for each level. Among the rewards are exclusive cosmetics and Augments, Forma, Kuva, an Arcane, and notably Weapon/Warframe Slots and an Umbral Forma. This is one of the few ways to acquire more Slots without spending Platinum, and is currently the only source of Umbral Forma - Forma that installs an Umbral polarity for the Umbral and Sacrifical mods.

Some of these level-ups reward "Cred", a special resource that can be turned in for a variety of other rewards. Many of the old Alert rewards like Aura mods, Vauban parts and different Helmets are now acquired by obtaining and spending Cred. After reaching maximum Level (30), you can supposedly continue to earn reputation and Cred, however you will not receive the regular level-up rewards again. For instance, you will not be able to acquire multiple Umbral Forma in the same season, even if you gain enough reputation to reach that level again.

Notably among the Cred offerings are Nitain, which is now no longer exclusively RNG-gated, and Orokin Catalysts/Reactors, a reliable non-Plat method of acquiring them. These Cred offerings appear to change each week, however I believe certain rewards will always be in the Cred offerings, such as the Vauban parts.

Nightwave operates on a seasonal basis, with each season supposedly lasting around 10-11 weeks. Both Nightwave reputation and Cred reset with each season. The first season is the Wolf of Saturn Six.

On top of the standard Nightwave challenges, occasionally you will also see some Saturn Six Fugitives spawn in a group of three in a mission. Each one is a Capture target, rewarding 50 Nightwave reputation upon successful capture. The Wolf of Saturn Six himself can also spawn as an assassin mini-boss, like Stalker. He has a number of unusual drops, including a very rare chance of dropping Nitain, as well as dropping parts and the blueprint for his unique weapon, the Wolf Sledge. I have seen multiple groups of Fugitives, but have yet to have the Wolf himself spawn.


It is very, very early to be making judgements on the whole system, given it is a nearly 3 month even that has been out for only a couple of days, but I do have a couple of opinions on the system so far.

Good:

• No longer subject to the RNG of Alert timing - No more cursing your luck when an Orokin Catalyst/Reactor Alert starts when you're busy, and getting nothing but rubbish Alerts when you're available. Or of course, the notorious Nitain, which has a habit of spawning only when you're busy.
• Ways to achieve gameplay essential items without Plat - Nightwave is the first system that straight up rewards Weapon/Warframe Slots (without weapons/Warframes to occupy them at least), and also offers a reliable method of obtaining Orokin Catalysts and Reactors without spenidng Plat.
• Offers a method to present powerful rewards, while also being able to limit their abundance - I'm speaking mainly about Umbral Forma and Arcane Energize here. Nightwave offers a way in which DE can award these rather powerful items to a relatively wide audience, while also limiting the number acquired through this method. Compared to typical Events, Nightwave lasts for much longer, and simply changes season rather than expiring and disappearing completely, so players are not as severely punished for missing out any one particular period of time. I expect that Umbral Forma and Arcanes will reappear in future Nightwave seasons. With this method however, DE can prevent players from acquiring too many Umbral Forma, while also giving newer/less experienced/less time-free players a decent chance at acquiring some themselves.
• Can encourage players to complete activities/use equipment they wouldn't otherwise - Some of the challenges this week include for instance scanning Simaris targets, completing a Tridolon run, and completing Cetus Bounties. These can encourage players to complete these activities which they may not have bothered with previously or otherwise, which can help to push up player counts in such missions. Of course, this has its limitations, for instance with many players simply opting for the fastest method to complete the challenge. However, I think it is overall much better than Alerts, which could only encourage players to complete a regular node mission, and only once.
• (Generally speaking) Most of the challenges can be worked towards progressively - Things like get x number of kills, complete x number of missions, these can be done in small doses and over a longer period of time. This works very well for those players who have very limited play time, with no RNG component compared to old Alerts.

Bad:

• Cred seems rather slow and restrictive to earn - From what I've seen of the rewards, you typically earn Cred only ever three or four Nightwave levels - that's roughly a full set of Weekly challenges if you are able to complete them all. You also earn Cred more easily after reaching Nightwave Level 30, however these both take quite a while, especially for newer players. Furthermore, some of the Cred prices and the sheer number of items seem quite high relative to the rate at which you can earn Cred, especially for a newer player who cannot complete all the challenges. At least compared to when I was a newer player, it currently feels like it takes a lot longer to earn all the Cred offerings than it did to get them from Alerts. This does vary from item to item, for instance the Nitain price at 15 Cred for 5 Nitain is great given Cred comes in packs of 50, however most of the other items feel expensive. I think that dropping most of the Cred prices a little, and awarding a little Cred either for each level before 30, or even a small amount for each challenge, would feel a lot better.
• Restrictive Cred earnings mesh poorly with the changing weekly Cred offerings and Cred expiring at the end of a season - For newer players with less Cred, there is little way for them to know whether to spend their Cred in the current offerings rotation, or wait for the next week's offerings. This is especially bad when close to the end of a season, since if they do not get the offerings they want, that Cred is potentially going to get wasted, either on rewards that they don't need or are less valuable, or just expire and disappear. To be honest, I would be fine with dropping the whole rotating offerings thing, and just offer everything at once (at least within a given season).
• Most challenges expire in one week, hard limiting players on their potential reputation earning if they can't complete it in that week - For a newer player, there's no way you can say kill/capture a Hydrolist, or perhaps complete a Sortie, at least without being completely carried. Yet if you don't reach that content within the week, you will permanently lose access to those reputation points. Alternatively, you might be a player capable of completing all the challenges, but you simply don't have time, and again permanently lose the amount of reputation you could potentially earn. A simple alternative would be to simply let the Weekly challenges accumulate rather than expire. For the newer player, this gives them potentially up to 10 weeks to gear up for the challenge, a much more reasonable timeframe for some of the tougher challenges. It also greatly reduces the amount of reputation you would permanently lose out on (only Dailies, which award the least reputation) if you don't complete every challenge all the time - if you don't have much spare time this week, but know you do have time next week, you can still mostly catch up to everyone else for reputation. This system would also help out brand new/returning players who join/rejoin part way through a Nightwave season - instead of losing out on all that potential reputation just because they're late, and potentially being completely unable to earn all that season's rewards, they have an opportunity to work their way back in and (mostly) catch up.
• No ability for players to quickly grab a guaranteed resource (e.g. Orokin Cell, Oxium) - Something that worked well with Alerts is that on occasion it offered resources that were difficult to farm, or found only on later planets. For instance, being able to snag guaranteed OCells, Neurodes, Neural Sensors and Plastids occasionally, while still not having passed Phobos, was really helpful in my early game. Especially for those less versed in Warframe's best farming spots and equipment, the chance to get resources from Alerts could be really useful. I honestly think that these could be ported straight into Nightwave offerings, with a small amount for a low price.

EDIT: With the two 60 minute Survival challenges in this week's challenge set, I thought it worth a quick comment on them. Personally, I generally don't like sitting in a mission for more than four rotations, since for the most part there is no benefit to doing so rewards wise. I typically play Warframe for the power fantasy and customisation, not to test how long I can last in a given mission (usually). As such, I naturally am opposed to these sorts of challenges, though was able to comfortably complete the Kuva Survival one solo (which timed nicely with a daily login Resource Booster).

However, my bigger problem with these challenges is that they seem to conflict with the general design of Nightwave, and the apparent stance of DE with endless missions. For the most part, DE has intended that Warframe be playable in short sessions, with relatively few gamemodes giving increasing rewards for staying beyond the fourth rotation (endless Fissures and Arbitrations). For Survival, the fourth rotation is awarded at 20 minutes. With these challenges, you need to last 60 minutes in a single Survival mission, which is far beyond this point, and any failed attempts, regardless of progress, do not contribute to the challenge at all - whether you failed at 1 minute or 59 minutes, you get 0 progression to the challenge. Personally, I feel it would be far more appropriate and enjoyable if the challenge was something along the lines of:

• Complete 60 minutes worth of Survival - allows incremental progress towards the challenge
• Survive at least 20 minutes in a Survival mission three times - a balance between allowing incremental progress and challenge for newer players
• Survive at least 30 minutes in a Survival mission twice - requires players to stay in a mission longer than they usually would
• Survive a total of 60 minutes in Survival missions, lasting at least 30 minutes in each mission - allows you to do 2x30 or 1x60 minute runs, for those who enjoy endurance runs

The overall requirement is similar, but I feel much more in line with most of Warframe's design philosophy, and also a lot less punishing for failure.