It encourages more experimentation earlier on and provides the player with more tools, such that they can find a play style easier... it could also be used to have them graduate from T1 earlier if they should choose, since T1 is kind of a mediocre area to farm for anything but 2* orbs.
Keep the current rates, but add on to them
S2 = 2* orbs
S3 = 3* orbs + the 2* orbs that dropped before
S4 = 4* orbs + S3's 3* orbs + half S2's 2* orbs
S5 = 5* orbs + S4's 4* orbs + half S3's 3* orbs + rarely 2* orbs
S6 = 5* orbs till D27, half 4* orbs, rarely 3* all at lessened drop rates.. enter radiant fire crystals
This doesn't actually change the 'amount of grinding' for something, just the amount of stuff they get from it
If my goal is as follows:
Acheron
Blitz
Chaos
Shield
Then I'm going to be looking for 2* orbs then 3* orbs then 4* orbs then Shinning Fire Crystals then 5* orbs then Radiant Fire Crystals in that order. That's how players function. I've seen it.
By the time I grind for the 12ish eternal orbs I need (some come as mission rewards I believe) I will have found approximately...
2* orbs x 30+
3* orbs x 30
4* orbs x 24
5* orbs x 12
Which means that my arsenal would contain around-
5* items x 5
4* items x 5
3* items x 3
a handful of 2* items
This is about where players should be. They just "downgraded" their weapon by giving up heat level 10 at 4*, so their weapons would be about the same in terms of power, and they would have a good deal of options for dealing with the end game.
This also scales depending on how quickly the player progresses. If I skip half my grinding every time I don't get less 5* items, I get less 4* items and so on.. but always more than we have now.
This would be interesting. I feel like orbs are the weird thing that should drop all over the place, but still need to remain the "rarest" rarity.
This gets me thinking... What if the drop rates for orbs of lower tiers actually got a bit higher as you progressed in the game? Then perhaps we could upgrade orbs, sort of an inverse to fire crystals and downgrading.
I do like the idea of giving players more gear to play with, especially lower starred stuff. At the same time, it makes farming at the end game a bit too good (I can farm FSC for all orb flavors now, why should I play other tiers?).
Having the grind's objectives follow the player's grind would be a good move too. Perhaps tier 3 could drop more fire crystals in general and many less orbs, making tier 2 the orb gathering tier and tier 3 the fire crystal tier. That would be super cool.