Why do Excavators not scale?

[Elementalos]

7 hours ago, TheGrimCorsair said:

Sorties are intended to reward good decision making and equipment choices for players. There's no reason for the Excavator to even be taking damage in the first place, fragile or not.

Only if you bring one of an extremely narrow selection of frames that have the sort of area denial skills that let you pull that off. Otherwise that's simply not true. That's literally the whole problem. There's a tiny fraction of warframes that can utterly trivialize the mission to the point of rendering them more or less mindless activities and if you don't have one of those the excavators have basically no staying power whatsoever.

That's not rewarding good decision making, that's just kind of a busted mechanic.

Edited January 24, 2019 by Elementalos

[DerGreif2]

Sorties are sometimes a pain... excavators should scale with the enemy's. Because I just kohra for excavation missions they where no problem for me but when I was not after 10 sec at one they did blow up... sometimes if they have bonus damage it is just a stupid gammeode where you have to use the best frame for that that you have or you lose. Its funny when you think that normal sorties are a joke normaly.

[JarodDempsey]

3 hours ago, Marvelous_A said:

go Vazarin and you can solo any given mission if your damage output is good

vazarins dash doesnt make excavators immune to damage, it only heals them and it really does little to help in lvls such as sortie 3 where they get 1-2 hit by enemies/bullets you cant even see because the game picks some pleb with dialup to be the host. 

[Veridian]

There's some old mechanic that DE has ignored and left as is?

...that's a first.

/s

[Marvelous_A]

1 hour ago, JarodDempsey said:

vazarins dash doesnt make excavators immune to damage, it only heals them and it really does little to help in lvls such as sortie 3 where they get 1-2 hit by enemies/bullets you cant even see because the game picks some pleb with dialup to be the host. 

Around half month ago I did with Vaz and the damage immunity worked. Not sure if it's patched out.

[Frenrihr89]

more important question, WHY OUR TURRET DONT SCALE??? ...yes u know what turret i'm talking about xd

[Loswaith]

The more important question is:
Given these drills drop from orbit without shattering and can drill hardened bedrock, why do bullets even do anything at all to them?  (obvious answer is "because it is a game" but its a rhetorical question to think about).

[Zeclem]

oh ic the usual people with the same wrong answer have arrived in the defense of DE. lets answer a bunch of false claims

1-excav missions dont give more rewards, their reward table is lot more dilluted for a good reason.

2-no other mission type in the game basically forces you to have a certain frame. except these ones

3-"being good" at something does not mean being mandatory so i'd suggest you defenders to stop with that narrative. its the cancer of these forums. 

[FlusteredFerret]

12 hours ago, Aldain said:

While this is generally a correct thing to do, it doesn't change the fact that if they scale on Fortuna as Tarinunit said above then it makes no sense that they can't scale in other missions.

It also doesn't help when Nullifiers walk up to your shield, negate it, and blow up the excavator in seconds.

Ah, sorry - misread the question. Not done any sorties with excavators.

Then again, as I understand it, they are meant to be very difficult, so maybe the lack of scaling is intentional?

 

[Xzorn]

The lack of Excavator Drills scaling is a good thing.

Defense missions only get fun when the objective is in danger which is usually like wave 80+ a time investment beyond reasonable for most.

You don't lose the mission if an Excavator dies but it's still got some of that risk as enemies scale.

Of course it would be nice if the rewards also scales with that risk but that's a whole other topic. It's hard to argue it isn't more complicated when the thing you're protecting dies in 1-2 hits. This also happens to be a place those dedicated CC frames player's have been claiming aren't useful can really shine. You can't just smash your DPS & eHP against the problem and make it go away like Fortuna and I say, good.

[Aldain]

59 minutes ago, FlusteredFerret said:

so maybe the lack of scaling is intentional?

Just as a note, in sorties even mobile defense targets scale somewhat, same with defense targets and rescue targets (e.g. The rescue target has about 1k shields and health rather than the 100 that they would at lower levels.)

If both defense targets can scale, even slightly, it makes no sense that the excavators don't even at least get a slight boost at higher levels, even disregaring sortie levels, they remain at the same durability from earth to eris.

The problem with the "difficulty" is that its not a difficult game mode, hell defending the excavators is actually a bigger waste of time in sorties than just running around dropping them and getting about 20-30 cryotic per drill. It isn't difficult to keep the excavators alive, its POINTLESS because of how fragile they are. It defeats the purpose of the game mode when you just run around and drop them not even trying to defend them.

Running defense frames is mostly pointless with excavators this fragile because it is often faster and safer to just drop and run, especially when you have enemies that can melt you if you aren't moving at mach 10.

[Xzorn]

6 minutes ago, Aldain said:

The problem with the "difficulty" is that its not a difficult game mode, hell defending the excavators is actually a bigger waste of time in sorties than just running around dropping them and getting about 20-30 cryotic per drill. It isn't difficult to keep the excavators alive, its POINTLESS because of how fragile they are. It defeats the purpose of the game mode when you just run around and drop them not even trying to defend them.

Running defense frames is mostly pointless with excavators this fragile because it is often faster and safer to just drop and run, especially when you have enemies that can melt you if you aren't moving at mach 10.

 

Which is why partial Excavations should reward nothing in Sorties.

Then again Sorties hardly matter and in the rest of the game if a drill doesn't finish you don't get a rotation reward.

I'd say everywhere but Sorties; it works.

[Aldain]

1 minute ago, Xzorn said:

I'd say everywhere but Sorties; it works.

I'd be willing to concede that, though I still believe the shielding on these drills could at least scale up to 1k at higher non-sortie levels.

But if partial excavators were changed to reward nothing in sorties, they would need to scale so that defending them doesn't require a Limbo, Gara and Frost all dropping shields around it for it not to get grazed by a stray bullet.

[Xzorn]

10 minutes ago, Aldain said:

I'd be willing to concede that, though I still believe the shielding on these drills could at least scale up to 1k at higher non-sortie levels.

But if partial excavators were changed to reward nothing in sorties, they would need to scale so that defending them doesn't require a Limbo, Gara and Frost all dropping shields around it for it not to get grazed by a stray bullet.

 

For those who don't want to partake in the endless mode style of the mission I don't see a problem with that.

Sorties won't let you go past a set point anyways and eventually no amount of health will keep a drill up going endless.

In Sorties giving partial credit but also trying to make it harder with low HP seems like a confused concept at best.

[Kebast]

I went 36 extractors on pluto last week using limbo. We only left then because everyone was bored. Sortie is no different, one limbo makes it easy. Two limbo make it easy and fast. There are other frames that can provide similar support.

Someone mentioned above, sortie is all about bringing the right tool for the job. This is a non issue. 

[(XBOX)Hyperion Rexx]

You don't want to use the ideal load out because that removes any challenge.  Yet at the same time you want the armour increased which by default would then remove the challenge you're looking for. 

The challenge is to keep them alive.  Not being bullet sponges is what creates the challenge.  You can cheese it with frost/gara etc or not, up to you.  If not then you need to be on your toes to make sure nothing is shooting them.

You can't have it both ways imo. If you don't want to use meta that's great, use another method.  Mesa will kill everything before they can get in range, quake banshee will keep knocking enemies over so they can't shoot, disarm loki will mean they won't have guns.  Lots of ways to defend them without using frost.  If one gets destroyed that's because you didn't rise to the challenge that you say you're looking for.

[(NSW)Evilpricetag]

This is where tiny Limbo bubbles help. They encase the target, most units will remain a distance including nullifiers, anything that does go in can't do anything. 

[Kebast]

This latest sortie excavation, I wasn't paying attention to the mission type and just brought my normal volt P loadout. I spent a good part of the mission keeping volt shields up around the extractors. Wasn't optimal, but no extractor was destroyed, and was kinda a fun challenge. 

There's always a non - meta approach. 

[VentiGlondi]

If you're going to argue that sorties are supposed to be harder, remember that defence replaces the crypod with a guy that can be revived and is affected by healing abilities

[Aldain]

54 minutes ago, VentiGlondi said:

remember that defence replaces the crypod with a guy that can be revived and is affected by healing abilities

Also not only can they be healed, they can be REVIVED. Other defense missions are instafail if the defense target is destroyed, if anything the defense sorties can be EASIER because of this room for error.

[Elementalos]

6 hours ago, (XB1)Hyperion Rexx said:

You don't want to use the ideal load out because that removes any challenge.  Yet at the same time you want the armour increased which by default would then remove the challenge you're looking for. 

The challenge is to keep them alive. 

Yeah, because the only two options are making excavators invincible or making them die almost instantly in missions like these. There's absolutely no middleground that could be created whatsoever. Definitely not.

[trst]

16 hours ago, (PS4)psycofang said:

Because to solve a faulty system, instead of fixing it you introduce a problem

You must have X Y or Z warframe/focus/weapon for this mission

Oh but it also sucks up any iota of challenge and concept of the mission and deletes it.

People complain the game is too easy, even sorties, telling people to counter a broken system with an even more busted system that trivializes the content is never a good answer.

So your answer isnt to modify the excavators to scale up or be given okish armor so they dont die in 1-4 shots or less depending on faction so other warframes become viable and thus creates various team comps

Your answer is to simply overpower the situation into pointlessness and have specific warframes required or deal with the faulty design.

 

 

Its faulty.

Deleting any form of difficultly, challenge or even interaction from any unique mission type down grading it or in most cases utterly trivializing it is faulty.  

Hm. Thinking emoji.

Except if you make the multiple ideal frames for this type of objective not mandatory then you introduce another issue in which these frames become even more overpowered in the mode.

For the exact same reasons people are taking Chroma into the Profit Taker fights while he isn't necessary to defeat it people will be taking Frost and Gara into excavations while they're not necessary to defend them. Excavations would go from "don't let anything enter the Frost bubble and where are those damn power carriers" to "where are those damn power carriers"; an entire aspect of the mission type is just removed.

And being able to build multiple viable comps for something isn't a solution to difficulty either. Being required to get a specific set up is more difficult then being able to take whatever you feel like using today into a mission. Or even taking something that isn't designed for said mission and forcing it to work is even more difficult than either of those.

If excavators scaled and had a permanent nullifier bubble on them then we can start to consider the mode gaining any difficulty but we've now introduced an entirely different issue of these defensive frames losing a mode they were good in and are now slightly less useful to own in the first place.

[Aldain]

7 minutes ago, trst said:

For the exact same reasons people are taking Chroma into the Profit Taker fights while he isn't necessary to defeat it people will be taking Frost and Gara into excavations while they're not necessary to defend them.

Considering that in sorties most people drop and run it's already not necessary to defend them.

That sortie meta defeats the purpose of the mission, there's no fail state as people have mentioned so you can just drop, run, drop, repeat.

I'm not saying they need to be turned into some unbreakable installation that you don't even need to cover or to be scaled as the enemies rise up mid-mission, but the current opposite extreme shows the issues it has as levels go higher.

In normal starchart missions this seldom appears as an issue until enemies start hitting about late 20s to mid 30s with those enemies scaling up mid mission making the excavators have diminishing durability, which is fair and working as intended.

But in sortie levels it STARTS at 50-60 for sortie 1 and ends at 80-100 for sortie 3 which means there is no diminishing durability, they simply start out worthless and get worse by the second. Which causes the entire mission to become a mockery of its original purpose and the exact opposite of difficult, it becomes "run around for about 15-20 minutes until you get 500 cryotic", this is not a challenge, and the fact that most people DON'T BOTHER defending the excavators shows me that it isn't working as intended.

[Eirshy]

54 minutes ago, Elementalos said:

Yeah, because the only two options are making excavators invincible or making them die almost instantly in missions like these. There's absolutely no middleground that could be created whatsoever. Definitely not.

17 hours ago, (PS4)psycofang said:

And yet...they will. The most common answer to faulty design in this game is usually to counter it with an over powered answer. 

It shouldnt be this way.

21 hours ago, (PS4)sister-hawk said:

Believe it or not, requiring a very specific set of gear to complete (and i mean within reason, not drop an excavator, mine 4 cryotic, and then move to the next one) a gamemode is not a good way to design a game. There is no reason for any of you to defend this.

The entire point of the arsenal screen is so you can choose which tools you're bringing. The primary difficulty in this game is picking the correct tools for a job. I don't bring Titania into Arbitrations because she's extremely squishy and can't splash drones while in Razorwing, for example. Even if they remove the drone immunity to the Dex Pixia (which they really should, I wanna get to giggle at a 500-549% blitzwing when she's on power-up), I still wouldn't bring her outside of screwing around, because she's extremely squishy, and thus far too likely to be downed by a(n) (un)lucky shot or two.

It's not DE's fault you didn't bring enough damage, CC, or defense. It is you and your party's fault for going into a mission that required protecting something and not bringing what was necessary to do so. It's not like they surprised you with what you were tasked to do, it was right on the mission label.

You have more than just a hammer, try acknowledging that your problems aren't all nails.

The fact that multiple people in this thread have referred to bringing a frame that is actually good at Excav as "cheese" tells you all you need to know about how braindead easy these missions are without the turbo-squish nature of the excavators.

 

 

23 hours ago, FlusteredFerret said:

Or you could just use Frost or Gara to put a shield round them...I've found this helps in Orb Vallis.

As a note on this, Limbo and Gara both cannot make an extractor 100% safe, as the AI can stick the barrel of their gun into the bounded field. Frost can stagger his bubbles a little so as to have multiple "layers" they have to poke through before they can skip the shield, but that does mean he has to actively defend against it, and he's still vulnerable to the enemy just walking in. About the only frame that doesn't have to "deal" with this idiot-savant solution to tenno powers that the AI accidentally uses is Nyx, and that's because her entire bubble is her hitbox while using Absorb, meaning poking your barrel through the edge doesn't let you shoot the things inside. This might also work with Amesha's Decoy's nucleus if we ever have a similar situation with Archwing access- I'm not sure if that's treated as a bounded field or a hitbox.

For completeness, Volt can do the same thing Frost does if he gets creative with shield placement and the terrain allows for less-than-360-degree protection, but suffers from all the same problems as Frost and has drastically less shields to do layers with. And Atlas can sort of build a wall around it. Kinda. Good news, though, his walls are thick enough to all but negate the barrel-poke (iirc).

[JarodDempsey]

14 hours ago, Marvelous_A said:

Around half month ago I did with Vaz and the damage immunity worked. Not sure if it's patched out.

maybe it has been bc i always thought it did the immunity too but dont see it as of the recent sortie 3