Nightmare Variety

[DaWolv]

When it was first announced, I loved the idea of Nightmare mode, I was let down however.

 

The biggest issues I see with Nightmare is this:

 

1) It's difficult, not because it's difficult, but because it $&*^s you over, while at other times its way too easy.

Time? Vampire? Those two are easy as hell. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that, provided you have enough enemies, Vampire is even easier than regular play, as Health Orbs are very few and far between, here you can just replenish your health by the best means - killing.

 

On the other side, you go in with a Frame that has high survivability and good skills, then get stripped of all shields, energy and to top it off, the enemies do only crits.

 

It is not that either of these mods is 'unfair'. Dealing in a mission without shields is a form of challange, so is dealing without the frequent use of skills. But don't do always the same modifiers at the same time!

A lack of shields can only be compensated by skills, but in the current rotation you can't use either.

 

This doesn't even get to the point of it being difficult simply because the game is stripping you of mod capacity that you had a 50/50 chance of utilizing. It also makes Frames like Frost really suboptimal, when stripped of the two things he does well: Globes and Shields.

 

Why not vary it up? Do No Shields and Vampire! Do Energy Degen. and Low Gravity!

The current system is too bipolar, one side being effectively easy mode, the other destroying you

 

2) Rewards aren't balanced.

This is an easy one:

Split the modifiers in different groups: Energy Degen. and Crit Damge amplifier being a high difficulty,

Vampire, No Shields and Time being a less difficult one, and then use numbers on it to calculate the 'difficulty' of the mission and spit out both drops and end-of-mission rewards accordingly.

 

3) Nightmare Alerts!

The Event was genious! We get so few Alerts on a daily basis, why not throw in some special Nightmare Alerts every once in a while?

 

4) Player motivation

Why does noone play Nightmare? Well, since you don't know what you will get in terms of difficulty, people generally don't run with pugs. Understandably. But also the rewards are of issue. Players love loot, but the nightmare modes offer just a very narrow reward that is not really repeatable. Once you have the mod you want, you quit. Maybe you go for it a few more times, so you have duplicates, but that's it.

Maybe adding a chance of Forma BP drops or even Catalysts/Reactors to the modes could help bring in some players to try their luck.

This will also broaden the endgame a little more and away from just doing T3 missions day in and out.

 

What do you guys think?

[MeteorKing]

I think that you're 100% correct on the power drain mode. I don't even bother with that one anymore. If I do a NM and it's power drain, I just leave. It's tedious and not fun. The game was made with a regenerating shield in mind, when you do away with that, and then remove the abilities of a frame to make up for that loss, what you're left with is incredibly imbalanced.

I feel that people don't waste their time on NM because it's a toss up of what you'll get. I understand this train of thought. I don't have a real solution for it, though. I still like doing NM now and then, and I've got all the mods ranked to where I want them.

Edited September 12, 2013 by MeteorKing