Index: dodgy timeouts and suggestion.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

After a weekend of credit boost I've been playing a lot of Index, and while it's lucrative it isn't a fun mode - it's a buggy mess with hard to follow mechanics (without even touching on the awful Glast Gambit 10 point limit thing).

Sometimes it just ends - often with well over 100 seconds on the clock, a final enemy score <10 and a Victory screen that's just plain confusing when you've actually lost your money. Often bots on your team suddenly decide to run in a small circle or run back to your own goal with a load of points (where they die and leave them on the ground). Enemy bots sometimes seem to disappear and not respawn, so you're left running around trying to find any way of scoring while the timer runs down.

The worst mechanic is the timeout mechanism - it just results in sudden frustrating game losses for no apparent reason. They're not a fun mechanic, they're not even a tense or suspenseful one, because they just happen at the whims of AI.

So, a suggestion: when the timer runs out you get a large on screen countdown (like a focus node running out) during which time you can try to bank points. Maybe 5s. Whatever time would count as negative - it would be taken off any time you bank.

This would create a mad dash to score with whatever points you have to try and keep the match going. If you fail, well, at least you had a chance and you saw the countdown. You understand why you lost.

I would also make the end screen say "Defeat” when you score higher but still lose, and make enemies constantly spawn and seek out players (not bots) so that you have something to do - losing because you fell under a hail of fire can be fun, running round an empty map never is.

[Talinthis]

have never had the game randomly end with 100 seconds on the clock in two years, maybe a glitch on xbox? only reason you run out of time is not paying attention, or the enemy banks a few points at the beginning.

and rules only take like 5 minutes to understand. i figured it all out in my second game so i dont see an issue for that.

[(XBOX)KayAitch]

7 hours ago, Talinthis said:

have never had the game randomly end with 100 seconds on the clock in two years, maybe a glitch on xbox? only reason you run out of time is not paying attention, or the enemy banks a few points at the beginning.

and rules only take like 5 minutes to understand. i figured it all out in my second game so i dont see an issue for that.

I had it happen twice over the credit weekend on XB1 - both times the timer on the left didn't deplete, and was high enough that the total enemy score shown at the end couldn't wipe it out.

It's entirely possible that it was a legit score - both times I wasn't playing defence, but if that's the case then the XB1 bug is not showing the timer and enemy score correctly. I should be able to see that Random Corpus Bot #4 killed Mag Spectre next to our goal and scored with the match full of points our bot was hoarding.

It's not that the rules are hard to understand, it's that they're a bit of a mess while they're happening - the whole asymmetric score Vs time dynamic is cheese (in that if you could play as Corpus you would just cloak/hide and wait out the match for an easy win), the whole you win but you lost thing just makes me swear at the game every time it happens.