Survival - Bugs, Or Tests To See Which Works Best?

[Lothario]

As the topic title states, I'd like to just understand what is the case with this - just to quickly list the following things which have comprised the survival missions so far:

 

Infested Survival:

Regular zergs of enemies, constant spawns, low oxygen drop rate decreasing over time and in numerous cases completely stopping at around 20-30 minutes.

 

Corpus Survival:

Regular zergs of enemies, constant spawns, high oxygen drop rate which does not appear to decrease over time. Effectively enabling players to continue until they choose to end the mission or end up being overwhelmed and dying.

 

Grineer Survival:

Regular zergs of enemies UNTIL 20 minutes, when in a large number of cases you will be facing no more than 10-15 enemies at a time. Oxygen drop rate seems decent with these, the problem you will encounter is that there are so few enemies that they don't provide enough oxygen to sustain gameplay. Game time regularly ends at borderline 30 minutes due to this.

 

Feedback/Thoughts:

Now... given that there are teams which have managed far past the above stated times, I'm going to take a shot in the dark here and assume bugs possibly host related? I.E. something to do with the code for the hosting in some way which prevents oxygen drops/regular spawns. Or, as mentioned, these are possibly tests to see how things worked/which worked best?

 

Some feedback from DE would be greatly appreciated with regards to this. I don't have a problem being a test guinea pig on Warframe so long as I know about it, and don't go about thinking 'oh great, another bug'.

 

Feedback from myself with regards to survival mode though - it's a great game mode, excellent for farming (normally, until the grineer one where salvage was more or less all you got) which is fairly enjoyable but does get old quickly. If brought in as a replacement for raids as has been suggested then it does need some work. A topic on here stated that things should be 'kept fresh' as it gets boring after a bit (which is true, it does become extremely monotonous), and I agree with this. Perhaps have different areas where we are told to defend ourselves, or have numerous tilesets as you currently do in maps where we have to work our way through defending ourselves, i.e. move after 10 minutes/20 minutes/30 minutes etc.

 

Also, rewards should be saved every 5 minutes instead of condemning us to no rewards upon death, or half rewards gained - whichever currently applies. We're letting our oxygen run out, that's still dying regardless of an enemy beating us down as an alternative.

 

Perhaps even having missions/tilesets specifically made for survival, i.e. having us defend some kind of Orokin fortress. Expand group size to more than 4 people and you've got one hell of a game potential on your hands there. The main problem with that idea is the hosting issue again.

 

Enemy wise... I suspect that we need more enemy types for infested, which can provide a unique challenge. Throwing an army of toxic ancients at us to provide a challenge is a bit cheap really. I can actually picture the discussion surrounding this: "Well, infested aren't really a challenge, so how about we just send an army of toxic ancients whose goal it is to hug the warframes to death to provide a challenge?" "Plan, lets do it." Just no, please. I'm certain that any number of the brilliant minds on these forums will be able to provide you with suggestions for new infested to spice things up.

 

And final feedback suggestion - oxygen levels, please don't implement these into regular survival missions. For the alert, that's fine, but it's not overly enjoyable when you're being screwed over in a mission due to RNG not gifting you with oxygen. Success should be defined by player skill with a little RNG, not the other way around.

 

That's my 2 cents on the matter anyway.

Edited September 1, 2013 by Lothario

[Lifeshield]

I think in Survival that DE should just drop the Oxygen gimmick altogether when it goes live as a standard game mode or Alert game mode.

[Hallorann]

I think in Survival that DE should just drop the Oxygen gimmick altogether when it goes live as a standard game mode or Alert game mode.

 

With defending only the players, until last man standing, people could go on for days if they find a corner to hide in.

 

Or 3 trinities constantly blessing everything, while a saryn ults.

[Lothario]

I think in Survival that DE should just drop the Oxygen gimmick altogether when it goes live as a standard game mode or Alert game mode.

I am inclined to agree with you, which is why I'm hopeful that it's just being used currently as part of the event storyline.

 

 

With defending only the players, until last man standing, people could go on for days if they find a corner to hide in.

 

Or 3 trinities constantly blessing everything, while a saryn ults.

This is also why it needs to be changed somewhat, to prevent that. With that in mind, it doesn't become a matter of survival for the warframes - it'd be called survival because it'd be a challenge to see who can go the longest without food/sleep/water before dying.

Edited September 1, 2013 by Lothario

[Argenex]

Corpus was the most fun, getting overwhelmed and staring at a screen swarmed with a vertible army was awesome; it really made it feel like 'Survival'.

 

With Corpus there was plenty of O2, so it became more of a 'manage your energy, ultimates, and pick your battles' survival, instead of 'Scramble to find things to kill to replenish the O2 meter.' Which this happens with Grineer and Infested because they just don't drop enough of it, at least that is what I kept experiencing.

Edited September 2, 2013 by Argenex

[Lothario]

Corpus was the most fun, getting overwhelmed and staring at a screen swarmed with a vertible army was awesome; it really made it feel like 'Survival'.

 

With Corpus there was plenty of O2, so it became more of a 'manage your energy, ultimates, and pick your battles' survival, instead of 'Scramble to find things to kill to replenish the O2 meter.' Which this happens with Grineer and Infested because they just don't drop enough of it, at least that is what I kept experiencing.

Exactly, definitely was. Which is why I'm hoping to be able to understand whether its bugs causing the differences between the number of enemies/number of oxygen or whether its DE testing different forms of the mission.

[Vextrus]

Support.

[TunaMayo]

I am inclined to agree with you, which is why I'm hopeful that it's just being used currently as part of the event storyline.

 

 

This is also why it needs to be changed somewhat, to prevent that. With that in mind, it doesn't become a matter of survival for the warframes - it'd be called survival because it'd be a challenge to see who can go the longest without food/sleep/water before dying.

To counter people standing in a corner we need new enemies, some "oh F***!" Enemies.

Enemies that disable powers, or are immune to powers, or land you in a S#&$storm (commanders), or render you immobile, or send you flying (see vauban bounce), or drain energy (not like disruptors, more DoT).

In essence we need a variety of new enemies with unique AI that makes them a challenge. This would breathe new life into a lot of the game for a lot of people I believe.

[Lifeshield]

Just throw in some bosses every now and then.

[Lothario]

Agreed with the above two. But still wondering about whether these oxygen drop rates/spawn rates are bugs or test runs, as doing infested survival once again I'm still finding oxygen spawns dropping off completely at around 20 mins in >.>