Thousands of eager Tenno plunged back into the Void this week to begin their hunt for the new Vauban Prime parts which were released in Update 18.12. Shortly after the update arrived, controversy broke out as players discovered the crafting costs for Vauban set record resource requirements in almost every category. Digital Extremes has already taken some action to appease the Tenno by reducing the Oxium requirements from 14,000 to 7,000 (Hotfix 18.12.1) but many players still feel slighted by such high costs. In addition to steps already being taken specifically to the Vauban Prime Access update, Digital Extremes has announced a long-term solution to re-establish trust with the community.

As of the time of this report, Vauban Prime’s crafting costs remain the highest in terms of raw quantity and combined rarity relative to any other warframe by a significant measure. The Oxium and Nitain requirements alone are nearly half of the combined costs of all other crafted items across warframes, weapons, and companions. Our research team reports that it would take approximately “a lot of time” to farm up the resources and “probably a couple of weeks” to collect the Nitain necessary to craft Vauban Prime. The shock of not being able to acquire and craft the latest additions to the Void has resulted in a hailstorm of posts on the official forums and social media pounding against Digital Extremes. A common cry among the Tenno is that the massive leap in resource costs is meant to lure players into buying the Prime Access rather than playing to earn the new equipment as has been the status quo for past updates. Players feel betrayed by expectations of resource costs in line with other similar items in previous updates.

Though there are a considerable number of Tenno upset with the current Vauban Prime crafting requirements (and overabundance of Rotation C placements for items in this Prime Access update), a subsection have remained loyal to DE in the face of the controversy. Our Senior Apologist Correspondent reached out to several Tenno who find the current acquisition and crafting requirements to be reasonable. “No one should be complaining about Vauban Prime because you can farm for his parts unlike the original Vauban. You should all be thanking DE.” said Better11, one of the Official Warframe Forums Community Moderators. “You should all be grateful DE didn’t add Platinum as a crafting requirement.” When questioned on his opinion regarding Nitain being alert-based, Better11 replied “Just be thankful Nitain alerts are much more frequent than Vauban. Besides, you can always farm Nitain from Sabotage 2.0 missions.”

Though Digital Extremes’ staff typically avoid confrontation on these matters, they have made an exception on this topic in order to reassure players that their concerns have been heard first as an update to the Oxium costs and later as an official topic on their forums posted by [DE]Drew: “Vauban Prime & Crafting Costs“. Today DE announced the next steps planned to improve the updating and feedback process: Design Council Prime.

The Design Council Prime forums will be separate from the Design Council forums and is intended to be the true voice of Warframe. Tenno within the Design Council Prime forums will be given the power to veto any changes made to the game until a unanimous vote is made. At least two members from various development teams will be active on the DCP forums at any given time to ensure time is not wasted developing things the wrong way. DCP access will be made available only to the most loyal of the Tenno and requires the purchase of a Prime Council Key for 50,000 Ducats and a tribute of 500,000 Cryotic, 100 Argon Crystals, 100 Neural Sensors, 2,000,000 Nano Spores, and 1 Control Module each week.