I have a problem with Tauforged Shards | Warframe 

having psychologists quoted in my wf content was something I never knew I wanted until now

And this is why The Kengineer is THE Kengineer. Loving this kind of discussion videos.

The problem I have with these shards is that, even though they are direct upgrades from having none of add-ons, we perceive normal shards as flawed or imperfect outcomes because Tau forged versions exist. In my opinion, keeping that 20% chance for tau seems ok to reward the lucky ones, but to those who are unlucky, they should still be able to make one by taking the normal shard to quill onko and forging it with all three types of sentient cores of set amount.

With the most recent devstream revealing 4 shards merge to 1 tauforged, its the right direction, particularly with more drops from netracells, but 4 feels a little harsh, perhaps 2 or 3 would have been a more reasonable grind.

I feel like tao forged should be determined once, for everyone. E.g. randomly the shard awarded could be taoforged and so everyone will then go "its a taoforged week, make sure to get your archon hunt done!". EDIT: After watching the video, I like option 2

Have you seen the one where they had monkey or birds press/peck a button and after a while it would give them food Then they made the time for the food random Then they removed the food entirely and they kept on pressing the button over and over again The psychology behind these things is amazing but also kind of scary, because we are the monkeys/birds

As someone with 0 tau shards and bad luck in various aspects of life, I dont expect a tau shard until next summer

This is an incredible break down. I hope DE can hear voices that are this analytical above the people who are just shouting "this sucks" without offering an alternative. I think that there are obviously a handful of great ways to fix this, and DE is usually pretty responsive to community feedback. Wonderful analysis happening in this video.

I knew you were a man of culture and it was confirmed when you wanted Ammo Drum for mods you give to other players. I have really been into your videos lately and I like the way you compress the important information into easy to watch and understandable Videos. Keep up the good work!

It's really disappointing when you don't get one. I'd like a system where if you don't get one 3 times in a row the 4th will be guaranteed, I know that idea has its own issues as doss crafting them. The MIGHTY SEER helps you get more tau forged

They could have Chipper sell a Tauforged shard each week for more stock, and let you replay the archon hunts with a very low drop chance of one. This would give players a way to save up for the guaranteed shard that they want and also give the players a way to chase them if they want

In hindsight (as the system is now changed to have a mounting chance of 20%+20% per normal of a type), this problem has been fixed with a pity system. The only thing I would like beyond this, however, is the ability to turn regular shards to Tauforged in some manner, as after a certain amount of time (and effort), players will end up with enough tauforged shards and have no more use for the regular shards in any of their main builds. At this point, allowing the fusing of multiple shards into a tau shard would be a reasonable improvement in my opinion. Granted, maybe not right now, but within a short timeframe, it would make regular shards have some value as well.

very great video, thank you for explaining why it's bad RNG all around and explaining some helpful changes. i have 4/5 tau forged but i really love that tauforged fragment idea

In my opinion, we should either have a way to Tau forge existing shards through a mission or something, or have a system similar to Kahl's stock where we could "buy the Tau forging" for selected shard with currency earned by doing certain tasks within hunts.

Seems like I'm so lucky I'm in the 10% of players that have 0 tau from 10+ archon hunts.

Guess That Im Part Of That 11%, Since I Have Done All Archon Hunts And Havent Got Even 1 Tauforged Shard Yet

Leaving a comment just to boost engagement, but I totally agree. The system does not work in being very rewarding. It's disappointing to wait an entire week only to get a guaranteed-to-be-replaced item. It would be much more rewarding if we could instead maybe fuse them with Endo and create Tauforged versions, as with many veteran players, it's quite common to have accumulated hundreds of thousands of Endo - myself included - especially with the drop tables on Zariman bounties (3k-4k Endo every few bounties + extras). That, or some way to use our many unused resources would be fantastic, though I doubt DE has anything in the pipeline for this system in the near term. It might be a year or two before they elect to validate a way forward for all the shards which will be replaced, regardless of drop rates, albeit slowly, by all endgame players.

It’s not even “Come back next week.” It’s “Come back in 2-3 weeks.” (depending on when you do the hunt) since the shards are on a rotation and you may or may not want a tau forged version of the next one.

Fantastic play throughs on screen.

I would definitely say that the Shards should be tradable. Because there are people like me who find some or all of the Shards pointless because you don't need them to do anything in the game, they are not required to hit any type of Content in the Game. But some people on the other hand, love them and like the benefits and utility they provide. Just taking me as an Example: i hate the blue shards and don't care about the red Shards either. I only like to use the yellow ones, and if they were tradable, i could just sell the other ones. That way i still have something from the Archon Hunt even if its a Shard i don't care about. I could also buy more yellow Shards if i don't get enough for my favourite Frames. That way, everyone can enjoy the system.

I recently came back to warframe. I like that DE listened. They did implement a pity system that will guarantee that one out of five shards will be tau-forged but also kept the aspect of luck alive. Though my first tau forged shard dropped on my second archon hunt, it sadly didn't even faze me. It was a blue shard and I have yet to put thought into how to use it. But maybe my mindset is wrong. I treat shards like Warframes. There is nothing wrong with a frame just because it's prime exists. And as such, I barely care if my shards are tau-forged or not, it's still an upgrade.

I like the option of building the tauforged version from an existing shard, but why add another resource for crafting ? We should just use Narmer Isoplasts and/or Sentient cores, and voila !

Dang I’m happy I have 6 tauforged, didn’t realize how rare it is to get them

In a way, burnout benefits me. I'm prone to addiction, so if I keep getting bad luck with drops, I'm more and more likely to pretty quickly hang the game up for the day and do something else. If I got constant good luck, I'd probably keep going so long as that good luck keeps up.

The Tyl Regor clip is a good reminder. they need a pity system for equinox, protea, tauforged and anything else that drops in similar manner. Just make Darvo accept 5 neurops for 1 systems, 5 systems for 1 chassis and 5 chassis for 1 neurop, and make a meter fill up for 20% per shard gained until you get a tauforged (would still allow randomization for which color you're able to get unless you sacrifice a week or two by skipping.)

ok my take on the rng part of the shards is, u get the normal shard for compleeting the mission the first time and then get a x% droprate on tauforged splinters*, on runs afterwards. and the normal shard + x tauforged splinters + something like argon or nitain, forges into a Tauforged shard. this doesnt remove the rng, but u can make up for it with grinding + u can chose wich shard to upgrade first depending on what u need.

Thank you for putting into words my thoughts!

I been ranting about this since tauforged shards system were announced (before we even got our hands on it).. You have the better idea than my "fix" of using multiple normal shards to make a tauforged.. I really like the idea of getting "archon slivers" to upgrade an archon shard to tauforged in a similar way that one would make a riven mod with riven slivers.. This way I can at least make some degree of progress instead of "spinning my wheels in the mud" by relying purely on RNGesus to bless me with a tauforged shard that week.. Especially considering the red tauforged are really useful on basically all frames.. I always like having a "Mercy System" in place to back up bad RNG so I can at least make some degree of progress.. Otherwise, the burnout tends to set in quickly as the feeling of hopelessness increases.. It makes things feel at least obtainable even though it will take some extra time if RNG is being "less than cooperative"..

i like how you implement the mathematic calculation in ur content its make it more fun for some reason

think my fav is the "5 shard fragments + shard = tau forged shard" thing

The BEST explanation of the situation, thank you!

I'm glad someone is voicing this. My main problem with this is, RNG is taken from a number generator and that is shared for everyone so chance to get one is only tied to which number you grab from the list, finish 1 sec later or 5 secs earlier and you might get it. Still with this system if 4 people get 10/10 non tau and 1 person gets 10/10 its still %20 average which is pos. I usually consider myself unlucky and managed to get 10/10 non tau, to make it worse I'm a bit picky about this if there is a good and a bad option for this system why should I settle for worse one, I'm just holding back till I get a tau one. Also for an idea I'd want a weekly tau upgrade BP, for 45 to 90 stock for instance...

I wonder how many hunt has there been since the release because I've never missed any week for a hunt and I only got one TauForged

An Idea I had was adding a "tau forge-inator" item to kahls garrison, which costs the same amount as a shard, is also limited to one a week, but you have to choose if you want that or the weekly shard. so if one week the shard isn't one you want/need you can buy the tau forge item instead to boost one you have. there is also the potential to scrap a shard for the item as well, but with how I've seen the community lean on what shards are good, that would really only turn blue shards into shard upgrade fodder, which is almost certainly not what DE wants. so I'm still in the air on that one.

As someone who hasn't missed a hunt and still no tau forged shards i cant agree more.

This will be a bit long winded, so apologies in advance, the idea comes from Transmuting mods, as you sacrifice mods to try and get another you want, but it still follows RNG. The system currently for Archon Shards (and Tauforged Archon Shards) is a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, it grants us better stats we can pick and choose from in a pool from each shard. On the other hand however, the drop rates render it incredibly painful to work with regardless of how lucky or not you are due to the fact once people have done the run and obtained their shard there is no reason to go back and do it again really if your main goal is to obtain said shard (Tauforged or not). That said, i know this may be a bit of a stretch, but maybe this system could point back to a previous part in the game where you have to hunt down all three. Weither the base drop chance is 20% per run or not isn't the focus of this, however similar to your first encounter with them first facing them in the story, perhaps each week you could face each one of them in your desired sequence (having access to all 3 and being able to pick which order) and subsequently after beating them, see the rewards you would get after returning to orbiter. Once there at the screen after the hunt at your orbiter, you get to see what rewards you would get, then be able to choose to take the rewards, or sacrifice them to bolster your next reward pool and increase the chance of getting said tauforged which stacks up to x2 (Being two hunts before the final one). A special note is if you managed to get a tauforged on first or second hunt, you could sacrifice it to guarantee the next one is tauforged so you could pick which one is taoforged, but once you pick up a tauforged, you cannot get another one that week regardless how many hunts you have remaining which puts the power of being able to choose which one you're after. In turn, this might grant an increasing risk/reward system. To choose between taking what you earn each hunt which results in one of each shard a week, or going for a chance for that elusive Tauforged shard and whatever remains. As of note, being able to buy the normal shard at the camp from Chipper might be replaced for say a special item or tool each rotation that might be useful for other things? Either way, the idea is to keep RNG, but put power into the player's hands on how much they value the tauforged over other shards and the other rewards from the missions so they can space out the hunts as they need to or just hammer them as they like. This technically raises the chances each time when sacrifice for each is done, and does not always guarantee things, but with the ability to sacrifice to increase chances for those tauforged shards, that lowers the chance people never get tauforged but means more work to do so. This idea is far from perfect, and i'd gladly hear any ideas that might change it to be a bit better. If the idea is bad though, be sure to say so, just let me know why as I am curious.

I think we should have a 4th archon fight, so 3 weeks we fight archons for a 20% chance of tauforged shards, and the new archon fight has a guaranteed random tauforged shard. Also it would help if we had some form of shard transmutation, where we can turn one type of shard into another, as getting tauforged shards but only the type you don't want might feel as bad as not getting them at all. Another idea: in weekly kahl missions, set up a challenge which gives you a point for each week you complete it. You need, for example, 3 points to activate a special kahl mission which is a hunt for a guaranteed tauforged archon shard. That way you have something worthwhile in kahl missions beyond a normal shard every week and rewards you'll ever pick up one time such as cosmetics or weapon blueprints.

Played archons every week, and still didn't get a tauforged... RIP.

I'd like to see a system where you can trade in a shard to unlock a rerun of the mission. This would allow 2 things. 1 you could trade in the shard you just got to try again for a tauforged shard and 2 you could trade in a shard earned on a red, yellow, or blue week to rerun the mission and get the color you would like on that week's hunt.

Option 2 but no change to 20% chance. You get the rush, and the pity.

What we don't have, is bad luck protection for relics which makes my blood boil every time I want to farm a prime.

Part of me just wonders if the Tauforged option was a bad idea in the first place: Archon Shards already were meant to be "icing on the cake" for your Warframes, the majority of their power and effectiveness is supposed to come from your mods and weapon selections. The Shards weren't supposed to be mandatory make-or-break enhancement, but rather little extra bonuses to give some extra OOMPH to your favorite frame. Having an RNG one that's just BETTER made everyone no longer WANTS the regular Shards in the first place. I don't know, maybe it's just because I still have to complete The New War and haven't gotten to the point where I can GET Archon Shards yet, and this is just sour grapes on my part...

Coming from having hit a 1/19 million chance 3 times in a row, having a pity system means a LOT more then people realize.

I made a whole system, with visual UI prototype and all. I hope DE at least took note of it's existance. I posted it at forums. In short how it works: First, you built a Chipper's workshop at Kahl's Camp for 200 stock. That workshop allows you to do 2 things - 1. Normal Shard fusion - 3 Normal shards of the same color, 200 Stock, 1mil Credits = you get 1 Tau Shard of the same collor, as the one you spent. Crafting time - 12 hours, can be rushed by plat. Can be used at any time, any ammount of times. 2. Weekly Special Offer - 3 Normal Shards of any color and 50 plat = instantly get Tau Shard of the Week. Usable only once per week, you have to wait untill Monday to be able to use the next offer. Every week it's the new color.

I’m actually totally for a transmutation system here. Just like for mods. You can trade 4 base ones and get a random tau forged one. Still a gamble but you get at least one guaranteed.

I think the one catch with a pity system is that there are 3 types of shard rotating weekly and people who did not get a tauforged one in the set number of weeks would potentially feel incentivized to skip a hunt or two in order to get the type of shard they want to have a tau copy of the most. Would that be a fair trade-off? I don't know, but maybe it'd be safer if the pity counters were 3 separate ones, tracking each color of shard individually.

I would make it to where you only get a tau sliver when you get a normal shard, and no tau sliver when getting a tauforged shard. That way the overly lucky aren't able to pull ahead even faster.

I've done every single archon hunt, including the first one twice thanks to a bug, and have yet to get a single Tau. feels bad man

This is the issue I have with random loot tables. It only sounds good on paper. When the roulette wheel says, " Not today " a few dozen times, it stops being funny.

You could have an outside resource be able to upgrade shards. Off the top of my head, the stuff you get from doing arbitrations in a suitable amount would work. Once you have everything you want there is no need to do these, but people would grind the heck out of them in order to upgrade.

I think it'd be pretty neat to be able to sacrifice an Archon Shard in order to summon an archon of whatever type of shard you used, then the reward from that could be a 1/5 chance at a Tauforged, and the weekly Archon hunts would serve to add to the total number of Archon Shards you possess plus the extra reward from the hunt. This way you could do the hunts at your own pace and go for the shard you want - perhaps if DE really felt merciful to us you'd only have to do the Archon assassination rather than all 3 missions lol. I'd imagine this'd preserve some of DE's intended pacing and the whole luck aspect while simultaneously making Tauforged shards not some mythical garbage that there's a good chance you never even have a chance to see in a reasonable amount of time. Or if DE wants to be lazy just make it a daily thing rather than a weekly thing lmao.

I keep wanting to get back into Warframe, but then I watch videos, see all the stuff I'll have to catch up on, and think "maybe I'll just play Dark Souls again"

Thank you for the deep dive into the psychology of RNG

didnt get a single forged so far :(

Great topic to bring up. I've not delved into Archon hunts yet but reading all the feedback about it - mostly negative - doesn't incentivize me to all that much. The topic at hand is but one more example (if need was) about how broken RNG can be in Warframe. The sad part is, it's been so for years and DE never did a thing to address it. There's been a glimmer of hope with the recent change of personnel at the key positions, with the departing guy clearly being fun police always saying No to anything good and thus being the anchor that dragged the game downwards, so this was good news per se. But we've yet to see any real commitment from DE to truly improving the game and making it more balanced and fair, and so far we're not there yet. Let's hope that great videos such as this one help push things forward faster in the right direction.

6 months later and the 20% pity system has been in effect for a while. I think I know the answer but I’ll ask anyways: have your opinions on Tauforged Shards changed now with the introduction of this pity system?

Put three regular shards into my main warframe, with the idea being that I'll save the last two slots for tauforged ones. 10 weeks in and no tauforged later, they remain unfilled.

The rng in this game can be brutal. I started farming saryn prime back when she released in like 2015-2016 (dont recall the exact date) but even after hours and hours and hours of farming her, it wasnt until late 2021 that her systems finally droped for me, that is the longest ive ever farmed a warframe with the second being gauss which also took me 3 years to farm (4 days each week dedicated to farm him during 3 years) because his parts refused to drop.

I farmed the Hammer Shot mod out of t1 nightmare mod for over 2 months and gotta say the level of adrenaline when it dropped was worth way more than just plat buying it

There should be an internal counter that counts from 0-4, 0 just stating the player has not done a hunt on this counter cycle. Every hunt the player does where they receive a base archon shard, the counter will increase by 1 If player receives a tauforged shard, the counter resets to 0 again If the counter reaches 4 before the player receives a tauforged shard, the next archon hunt guarantees a tauforged, then the counter resets after that next hunt In my opinion, this is what should be done.

You don’t need tauforged archon shards. You want them. The base archon shards are actually decent enough as they are. I wish there was six slots for two of each kind but that’s beside the point. The upgrades some of them give on non tauforged will get you by until you receive one. Not every frame needs an archon shard.

RNG gods were effers for me with Despair. I started WF 2014. I've logged almost 3k hours ingame. I finally got Despair last July. "Despair." Yeah. I sure felt that every now and then. 😆 At least it's done now.

if I didn’t get something for difficult and complex actions, then I will give up this thing and start looking for a way to live without this thing, but I won’t return to the way to get this thing, the first time is enough for me to experience, I know my abilities

Id say a way they could go about this is that you don't actually get the shard upon mission completion. you get an update about whether or not you'll receive the tauforged. you can then repeat the hunt once a day to reroll the shard chance. that way you'll only get 2 shards a week(1 from chipper, 1 from archon) but the chance of getting a tauforged is greatly increased. and most crucially it gives you the option every day to earn a tauforged instead of every week.

Love how you worded everything, deservers a subscribe

Years ago, when I was farming Nyx, it took 28 tries to get the systems...

Personally I believe that shards in general should function similar to upgrading lenses, with a few changes of course. I feel that five archon shards is too much per frame considering the number of frames we have to work with, three slots in my opinion is a better amount. If shards were to be upgraded along with their stats multiple times (even if only twice for diminishing improvements) not only would it give players the agency to choose which shards get upgraded but to further ease the difficult choices of where to use the shards earlier in shard farming.

how about combining 3 archon shards gets you 1 taoforged shard of a random color you used to craft it (e.g. 3 red shards = gaurunteed tao red, and 1 of each color = random tao of any color). also they should buff blue and amber shards (or nerf red)

I have been playing around with my excal umbra and have three armor shards and two crimson shards for strength, and the difference between two and three blue shards is 3% damage reduction to health, from 84%.

9 minutes 39 seconds, appreciate you👊

I have, one, tau shard (amber) Ive never missed a hunt week, every shard from chipper too for whatever thats worth. Rng really said no bro

One thing left out is how desirable Crimson shards are and how undesirable Azures are. Even a pity system would result in burning your pity Tauforged on a color you have no interest in getting unless you just skip a week.

now that reb is at the helm i hope we get more fixes

Today was my 11th Archon hunt and still haven't received a single Tau Shard. They should do it so that every 5th rotation must me a Tau Shard universally.

As soon as I saw the Tauforged shards i got Vietnam flashbacks from WoW. I refuse to believe nobody at DE knew about Warforged/Titanforged gear and how people hated the mechanic. At this point I think the best way to go is remove Tauforged shards and buff all current shards to Tauforged stats. That way, people don't feel "robbed" or something and everyone can move on.

I got burn out after the ammo. Nerfs back to Skyrim for a bit

Low-key a pity system would be nice like a guaranteed tauforged shard after your fifth archon when one hasn't dropped

Speaking of rng, I’ve done maybe about 50 isolation vaults, maybe 15 of which being tier 3 and I haven’t had a single necramech engine and it’s driving me insane

The only problem I see with a pity system is it can make players skip blue weeks entirely unless they add a valuable stat like range or efficiency to azure shards

i'm 1 of the lucky player you mention. 1. In the first Archon Hunt, for an unknown reason, i can redo the mission and still get the shard. 2 shards for me that week. not tauforged though. 2. I have all type of tauforged shard already. mission complete

1 week try with full rng? I'm so happy I left Warframe about a year ago....

I'd go for making them tradeable. It'd be consistent with most other systems. It'd take a bit for the supply to fill out, but it gives an alternative route to them (whichever plat farm you like best) while also making shards a route to other things as well. Make the game more interconnected.

Yeeep. I actually almost submitted a bug report to DE cause the first weeks after the hunts came out I got a Tauforged *every week* IN A ROW. I have FIVE Tauforged shards & 10 regular shards. A patch came out after those first few weeks that changed the Archon hunts to reset on Sun instead & I haven't seen a Tauforged since.

While not perfect, I think that simply trading a few shards for a tauforged would be the most practical solution. Yes, it forces unlucky players to choose between having more shards or having better shards, but I think that's fine. You can only have 5 per frame, and most players only play a few frames, so we don't really need a ton of regular shards. Many players will soon reach a point of not needing more of them, if they aren't at that point already. I know myself, and many other people, no longer buy the regular shards from Chipper. There's not much point atm as they can never be tauforged. This change will make those shards, and also the sortie ones more valuable

(Best Warframe creator on RU-vid.) I'm surprised they did it this way considering how many systems are in the game to compensate for RNG, why would this one be different?

never knew tauforge shards existed lol 😄(I did, I'm mad I don't have any)

A week is a very very long long time for rewards in archon hunt compared to a day for sortie. The pity system would be nice.

I also had to grind for the Harrow. I think I was in the .0001%, because it took me WAY too many runs to get him. Haven't been back to Warframe since.

As one of the lucky 0-shard-players, I would like to see the rng removed. Why does a system that is intended to keep me playing for years designed with rng? I really like how you broke the psychology down to a digestible level. I would like a "Tau Forge" Orbiter station. You need 5 "tau" power cores. You select the shard you want to upgrade, it takes it from your inventory and you can claim it next week (best make it 6 days, not 7). No rng, just asking the player to play every week, like the system seems to designed. It leaves room for decisions like: I need all my blue shards for my meme build, but I really want that tau forged one because I can then drop mod X. You explained it very well, RNG is fun when you can just "go-again". With Archon Hunts, I can't. I feel bad every week because I dislike Kahl and have gotten unlucky on hunts, I still come back every Monday morning. The system is working, but I would prefer measures to make me just this tiny bit happier. Knowing that I will get the thing I want eventually, is way better than coming back every week to roll a dice. Even if it averages out, I'm not sure that I want to wait for that, especially with 3 colors.

Alternatively, we could have the current system PLUS Tautouched Fragments. It wouldn't be the first time DE has been that generous.

I honestly don’t care about tau vs normal shards. It’s a long term grind and everyone is trying to finish it ASAP…..which is silly. Normal is just fine to make frames powerful.

okay so there's a better way to keep the 1:5 tau to normal ratio maybe: increase the chance of getting a tauforged based on how much you are below the 1:5 ratio, and decrease the chance if you are above 1:5. this happening exponentially the further u go

Maybe adding together 2 normals to make an Archon would be a nice option. In the larger scale it's wasteful if you don't know breakpoints, but it would make some peeps feel better.

I'm part of the 10% of people who have gotten 0 archon shards so far and I do agree that a pity system should exist without removing RNG, getting a random amount of shards per mission that you can forge into a tau forged shard would mitigate this problem in my opinion.

i feel they should let us use 2 (or 3 of different colours) to upgrade a shard that makes it so 2 red becomes 1 tau red and 1 red and 2 of blue or yellow or 1 of each to make a tau (i think i need one color to be used in the upgrade to be of the color u want so cant make 3 shards of blue or yellow to be red)

Imo it would be interesting if you could redo the archon mission to potentially upgrade a shard, or have a separate mission.

I’ve never had more burnouts in other games like WF.

I think that tauforge sistem is balanced, because we don't need it to make a strong build, it's a plus. If everyone get 5 tauforge shards easily for every warframe, the DE need to upgrade the difficulty for balance the game. Infact we are just able to one shot the archons, the most powerfull bosses.

I think the only reason to run the missions again is to get the Shedu faster than going into Railjack. I did all the work and grinding to get everything maxed out for that, but I completely understand people not wanting to go to the fourth content island (I count it after the open worlds and how isolated the content there has always felt).

I like option 2. DE needs to listen more.