Survival Mode, Things To Add/change For When It Replaces Raid Missions

[leonvision]

greetings forum, i would like to speak my mind about things that i think should be added or changed in the survival mode when it replaces raid missions after the event is finished.

- tiered rewards -

much like defense, there should be tiered rewards for survival missions on completion. the level of the missions starts at should determine the tier of rewards it should start at. and higher tier rewards should be granted based on how long the player(s) has survived for. i think it should be like this:

<3min - no rewards

3~6min - starting tier rewards

6~12min - +2 tier rewards

>12min - +3 tier rewards

there would be 5 tiers of rewards pools in total (this could apply to defense missions too, when they update it), if playing a missions that start at tier 1, it would only ever go up to tier 3 reward pool, so it requires players to participate in more difficult survival missions if you wish to have items from the Tier 5 rewards.

this could also bring in new possibilities, for example, if a updated drop table were to make defense missions have better chance for void keys, and survival missions have better chance for rare mods. this would allow players to better influence their farming results by farming the optimal place.

- lotus' oxygen supplies -

remove the randomness from them. give us 4 oxygen supplies, and always 4. one per 2min30sec. this is an unnecessary randomness which in turn screws over some players. also, at the time the last oxygen supply has been delivered. the lotus to mention the "alpha team has done their job, proceed to extraction(more in the next section) or continue thinning their numbers". at this point, it marks the point no more will be supplied by the lotus, and will purely come from killing.

- extraction -

add a extraction to the missions, which can only be accessed after the 10min mark, when alpha is done. right now, the only way to purposely end a missions without losing the rewards and mods. is to hide and wait for the oxygen to slowly count down. give a means for players to extract when they want to. oxygen hitting 0% will still result in a successful missions, but proceeding to extraction will end the mission immediately. this would also allow players to leave before the rest of the team wants to.

currently players are forced to stick around till the rest of the team wants to leave, or until they fail. give players a choice to "ditch" the rest of the team. i understand this will make pugs harder to play, but i still think it should be a feature. but right now many players hide on top of boxes and afk if they do not want to participate any more. i do not believe there would be much different to the team if a proper extraction was available.

i will add more to the list if more ideas comes up.

edit -

more ideas:

- oxygen drops -

most people would agree that they should be less random. a easy way to remedy this is to make every Nth enemy guarantee a oxygen drop. enemies in between will still have a chance to drop.

another problem with oxygen drops right now is each one is marked with a waypoint, and the screen quickly becomes covered in waypoint markers, especially if there are nukers in your squad. my suggestion here is to only have the closes 5 oxygens drops marked. also, since oxygen drops are marked with waypoints, i think the current model for the drop may be a tad too big, they could be resized to around the same size as a energy orb.

more miscellaneous stuff i think should be added/changed:

- possibly unique maps for survival instead of sharing the same maps as defense.

- a outro, instead of being shot at while we stare at our game results

Edited September 2, 2013 by leonvision

[Shion963]

Lotus-dropped tanks are random? I thought there's always five by the time you reach 10 minutes.

 

I agree with unlocking the extraction room and allowing players to leave if they want to, though. Host Migration might play some havoc if the Host decides to leave, but what else is new.

[TheGambler_BR]

Solid ideas, I think

 

I'd also prefer if the supply dropped by enemies wasn't random, too. RNG screws people over, sometimes.

 

Something like every 7+2*(players^2) enemies killed (or 9/15/25/39) for every supply to drop. Eliminates randomness, and mitigates the increasing AoE of death due to numbers and increased enemy spawns.

[leonvision]

Lotus-dropped tanks are random? I thought there's always five by the time you reach 10 minutes.

 

I agree with unlocking the extraction room and allowing players to leave if they want to, though. Host Migration might play some havoc if the Host decides to leave, but what else is new.

yes, from my experience, it's usually 5 but it could be as few as 3. there's also no indication to which is the last supply.

good point about the host migration. this could be remedied by simply removing the extraction option for host, or for host to extract, all other players will also have to extract.

Solid ideas, I think

 

I'd also prefer if the supply dropped by enemies wasn't random, too. RNG screws people over, sometimes.

 

Something like every 7+2*(players^2) enemies killed (or 9/15/25/39) for every supply to drop. Eliminates randomness, and mitigates the increasing AoE of death due to numbers and increased enemy spawns.

i would have suggested to remove the randomness from drops as well, but that would probably lead to the suggestion of further simplification and remove having to pickup as well.

[leonvision]

updated the OP with a few more ideas.

[Gravefire]

Might want to up the times on the rewards you can easily solo 25 minutes.

[leonvision]

Might want to up the times on the rewards you can easily solo 25 minutes.

my reasoning behind having the top tier rewards so easily earned is to have it in line with defense missions. currently in defense missions, it's very easy to solo up to wave 5 in a T3 defense, any faction. doing so takes about 8 min max. having survival missions at 12min mark still means you'll be getting per reward more far apart than defense missions. the reason to have the two being relatively equal in farming efficiently is to not have one side completely ruled out by the other in terms of purely farming. alternatively, the defense mission could be bumped up to, say, 15waves to get highest tier of rewards, but i suspect a huge backlash if that were to happen.

[Gravefire]

Will have to wait and see how easy these are after the damage change. Then I'll give more feedback to this.

[Wallace24]

great ideas, the extraction would be great, although, as you said, some people would just bail as soon as they can. which is where the reward tiers come in. guess we'll see how things change after update 10, but as it stands at present, the times definitely need some adjusting. I suggest that for now, the tiered rewards should match the time requirements for the even rewards: 5 min for tier 1, 10 min for tier 2, and 20+ min for tier 3.

 

I also like the idea of multiple tiers past 3, where you need to do a survival (or defense) mission with a higher base level, AND survive for longer to get the best rewards, not just do the mission that is toughest at onset and bail out after 5 min to get the good stuff.

 

final note, definitely need to eliminate the randomness of the lotus drops. the randomness of oxygen drops, that seems reasonable at the point. its part of the survival challenge, you need to get some lucky drops. oh, actually, didn't read that you addressed that with the O2 drop after N number of enemies guaranteed. assuming that wouldn't be hard to code in or keep track of, then yeah, i'm all for it. but if enemies die all at the same time, such as in a novasplosion, miasma, or other AoE ult, then the timing aspect of the deaths would be tough to calculate

[EganMC]

Support this idea 100%.

[leonvision]

great ideas, the extraction would be great, although, as you said, some people would just bail as soon as they can. which is where the reward tiers come in. guess we'll see how things change after update 10, but as it stands at present, the times definitely need some adjusting. I suggest that for now, the tiered rewards should match the time requirements for the even rewards: 5 min for tier 1, 10 min for tier 2, and 20+ min for tier 3.

again i will re-iterate, the reason why i set the time so low is to set it inline with defense missions's rewards, so both will be relatively viable ways of farming. if each run of survival to get top rewards takes 20min, and defense missions (as it stands) about 7min, either survival has the offer much more per reward, or no-one will farm it, since doing defense missions will be more efficient. yes, one could argue survival is already better for farming mods, because of the absurd amount of mob you kill in the same time frame, but the rewarding scheme should still be equal.