A Postive Take On This Week's Nightwave Survival Challenges...

[(PSN)EyeGodZA]

Tenno, hear me!

Okay, I'll probably take some flak; I'm by no means a veteran and I'm still learning tons, but I'm still enjoying the hell out of this game. And - I must confess - when I first saw the two survival challenges this week I groaned, along with a ton of others, as is evident from the many threads that surfaced yesterday.

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realised that this challenge (challenge being the operative word in this sentence) was designed to get me thinking:

1. What frame would I use, and what build?
2. What makeup would the squad need to help us survive for 60 minutes?
3. Could we do both challenges in one go?
4. Could we do any of the other challenges?

The answer is a resounding YES:

1. I played Trinity Prime modded for strength; (At least insofar as I understand modding for strength; admittedly still a bit noobish over here!)
2. A good mate and fellow clan/alliance member and I decided to team up and ask for support; we got two guys from our clan to join, and in addition to my Trinity, we had a Nekros (for resource boost, Saryn (high DPS, I guess? Don't have the frame yet) and Volt (defense and damage). We all hopped on comms, and aside from my friend and I - both South African - we had a player from Netherlands and another from Wales. It ended up being a lot more fun and a lot less boring than I'd have imagined it would be, as there was now this new social dynamic to the game that I'd never experienced before;
3. Yes; we nailed both Survival challenges in one sitting;
4. Yes; we all got the Eximus challenge done, collected 4/8 mods, and some of us with cold modded weapons could work toward the daily challenge for 150 cold kills.

All in that was at least 10k standing, and potentially up to or in excess of 13k.

The takeaway for me was the game forced me to:

1. Think about how to approach these challenges;
2. Engage in a far more social manner with my clan than I'd ever done before;
3. Play a mission type I'd never played before: Kuva Survival. (Albeit without the reward that generally goes along with it, from what I understand.)

I just wanted to throw this into the pot and suggest that - while perhaps this may not be the case for hardened vets that are on the verge of (or presently suffering from) burnout - that for relative noobs like me, it ended up being pretty fun, engaging and rewarding.

[(PSN)KresTias]

it is "Elite weekly challenge", most important part is Elite. Not every single player should be able to complete Elite challenge, especially alone w/o clanmates/friends.

How the hell some people has no friends? Go get some, its not hard 

 

[krc473]

42 minutes ago, (PS4)EyeGodZA said:

The takeaway for me was the game forced me to:

1.  Think about how to approach these challenges;
2. Engage in a far more social manner with my clan than I'd ever done before;
3. Play a mission type I'd never played before: Kuva Survival. (Albeit without the reward that generally goes along with it, from what I understand.)

Different perspective here:

For me, I had to do none of this. My friend and I ran the Kuva Survival just as two people. We did it first attempt without ever coming close to failing. There was no challenge, and the mission was not enjoyable. It was simply just a waste of an hour for a fairly minimal reward.

 

I accept that what you describe is true for some people. But for many it’s just an incredibly boring and tedious way to waste an hour. DE should really consider this if they want Nightwave to last. I can imagine that people could get sick of this kind of thing quickly.

[(PSN)EyeGodZA]

22 minutes ago, krc473 said:

Different perspective here:

For me, I had to do none of this. My friend and I ran the Kuva Survival just as two people. We did it first attempt without ever coming close to failing. There was no challenge, and the mission was not enjoyable. It was simply just a waste of an hour for a fairly minimal reward.

 

I accept that what you describe is true for some people. But for many it’s just an incredibly boring and tedious way to waste an hour. DE should really consider this if they want Nightwave to last. I can imagine that people could get sick of this kind of thing quickly.

Out of interest, for how long have you been playing, what MR are you, and what are your short and long term objectives with the game?

And, have you not been enjoying any of the Nightwave content? What were you doing before Nightwave?

[krc473]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)EyeGodZA said:

And, have you not been enjoying any of the Nightwave content?

For me, most of it is just fine. Its just these pointlessly long missions. A 60 minute mission is no harder than a 10 minute mission really. The only difference is how long you have to stay.

4 minutes ago, (PS4)EyeGodZA said:

Out of interest, for how long have you been playing, what MR are you, and what are your short and long term objectives with the game?

1. Too long. Since late 2013/early 2014.
2. Mr 25 (I think...)
3. Short/Long term is getting to R30 in the Nightwave. And maybe get an Akbolto Prime along the way somewhere 🤷‍♂️

 

I do not disagree with what you are saying. Some people will see this how you do. But DE needs to consider both sides.

[(PSN)EyeGodZA]

7 minutes ago, krc473 said:

 

1. Short/Long term is getting to R30 in the Nightwave. And maybe get an Akbolto Prime along the way somewhere 🤷‍♂️

 

 

But you can easily skip these challenges and still reach Tier 30, no?

[krc473]

Just now, (PS4)EyeGodZA said:

But you can easily skip these challenges and still reach Tier 30, no?

Yes. But what's the point? They are here, might as well do them. DE's guide said 60% of the challenges in 10 weeks. We have no idea if it will run for 10 weeks or not. It could run longer, it could run shorter.

• Its also 60% of the points, not the challenges I suspect. So deliberately skipping the tedious long missions may be problematic later on. We just do not know yet.

[(PSN)EyeGodZA]

Fair enough, but then mightn't it also be fair to say that this is a brand new system and DE will take into account not only forum complaints but stats? I.e. who plays what, when and with who? 

Certainly, every single aspect of Nightwave shouldn't be a breeze, then you'd just have people complaining that they're too easy!

I feel it's a very tricky space right now; a kind of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario.

I guess, the long term question is whether obsessive-compulsive completionism is a problem for you (it is for me, so I'm hitting it hard), or whether you can live without Tier 30 and the rewards, because certainly, you can: it's not gonna break the game or diminish your enjoyment of it in any way, just deprive you of some bragging rights, no?

[Steel_Rook]

21 minutes ago, (PS4)EyeGodZA said:

But you can easily skip these challenges and still reach Tier 30, no?

No. People have been repeating the "ONLY 60%!!!" line Jack in The Shining, but that misses how disproportionately weighed the system is towards Elite Weeklies. You have 7 dailies worth 1000 each, 7 Weeklies worth 3000 each and 3 Elite Weeklies worth 5000 each. Elite Weeklies constitute ~35% of all of the Standing you can ever get during the Season. And considering you need closer to 70% of all Standing for 10 weeks, that's a lot of lost points.

 

1 hour ago, (PS4)KresTias said:

it is "Elite weekly challenge", most important part is Elite. Not every single player should be able to complete Elite challenge, especially alone w/o clanmates/friends.

I think the word you were looking for there is "elitist." You have to remember two things. First of all, Nightwave displaced the Alerts system and rebranded some of its more valuable rewards. The Alerts system was easily and freely available to anyone at any level with a decent spread of hard and easy missions, with no real weighing of reward to difficulty beyond scaling resource amounts. People who used to play Alerts for those rewards are now having to play Nightwave, so arguing that Nightwave SHOULD be exclusionary is arguing that these people should be disenfranchised and straight-up lose a vector for earning rewards.

Secondly, the stated goal of Nightwave was to make Alert rewards easier to earn, especially for players "with a life" who couldn't camp the mobile app 24/7. A disproportionate amount of this population includes new players who haven't yet amassed enough Catalysts, Reactors, Forma, Nitain, etc. to be set for life. Nightwave being heavily exclusionary to the point of disenfranchisement runs directly counter to that stated goal.

Finally, rewards like Catalysts and Reactors are some of the game's most valuable, especially to a new player. While they were rare as Alert drops (I know, because I gave up and bought all of mine with Plat), at least they weren't exclusionary. One could still be lucky enough to randomly stumble onto a Catalyst Alert, and I've had that happen to me a few times. If the system is meant to be exclusionary, then a major reward is placed outside the reach of "non-elite" players, shifting the game substantially closer to P2W.

Nightwave's goal of providing a better vector for the frustratingly random Alert rewards clashes with this desire to make it elitist and exclusionary. It can be either one or the other, but not both at the same time.

[Xzorn]

13 hours ago, (PS4)EyeGodZA said:

1. What frame would I use, and what build?
2. What makeup would the squad need to help us survive for 60 minutes?
3. Think about how to approach these challenges;
4. Engage in a far more social manner with my clan than I'd ever done before;

 

Congratulations. This is what Endurance runners do.

It's a rare concept in Warframe these days to build a team and work together instead of competing for kills then scream nerf X cuz they take my kills.

The process of Endurance runs has always been one of the more enjoyable parts of Warframe for me. Theory crafting concepts and team comps. It's sad this play style has also been a long neglected and therefor problematic part of the game with disconnects and every increasing time investments.

[(PSN)Aneres_Omega]

@Steel_Rook sadly your legitimate counter argument falls on deaf ears.

[Kontrollo]

Thread title sounds fitting -- sorry for just dumping this here without engaging in your discussion.

 

Here's my anecdote:

I just did the Survival challenges in the Kuva Fortress. I went to Recruiting and with the first three people who messaged me, we made a group. Took us 5 minutes to prepare and friend each other, then we went there and ran it for an hour. Went pretty smoothly, all in all. We had a Hydroid, a Nidus, a Garuda and myself as Nekros.

Well, I did not come entirely unprepared. Yesterday and today, I finally brought myself to bring my Nekros up to speed -- usually I just do Floods with whatever, and not Kuva Survival -- so I hadn't played with him in a while. We had only one Corrosive Projection (I used Enemy Radar myself), but I also used a Saryn Specter (lowest one of my four) and Garuda's 4 was quite useful later on.

The haul:

• 13'150 standing from 3 challenges (surv, surv, rare mods) and 3 fugitives
• 17'200 Kuva (because luckily, I also got a double resource login reward)
• some Axi Relics
• 35 Neural Sensors (lol)
• (rare) mods, some Endo, etc.

 

I'd say overall it was well worth my time. 😄

Edited March 6, 2019 by Kontrollo
typo

[Steel_Rook]

5 hours ago, Xzorn said:

It's a rare concept in Warframe these days to build a team and work together instead of competing for kills then scream nerf X cuz they take my kills.

Actually, Nightwave is VERY prone to kill-stealing. I finally managed to catch up with a friend of mine for some random missions tonight, and we were CONSTANTLY competing for Daily and Weekly missions. He needed Eximus enemies, but my "shoot first, aim later" approach meant I was accidentally mowing down a lot of them, denying him kills. At the same time, he had to pull back on killing regular enemies because I needed a total of 450 of them for the three 150 elemental kills challenges. As it is right now, an aggressive player can all but deny their team-mates all the "Kill X with condition Y" challenges for a substantially long time.

[Xzorn]

47 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Actually, Nightwave is VERY prone to kill-stealing. I finally managed to catch up with a friend of mine for some random missions tonight, and we were CONSTANTLY competing for Daily and Weekly missions. He needed Eximus enemies, but my "shoot first, aim later" approach meant I was accidentally mowing down a lot of them, denying him kills. At the same time, he had to pull back on killing regular enemies because I needed a total of 450 of them for the three 150 elemental kills challenges. As it is right now, an aggressive player can all but deny their team-mates all the "Kill X with condition Y" challenges for a substantially long time.

 

It's more a reference to the experience and they're a newer player so the bar is lower.

The high end bar is closer to lvl 300+ Solo and even further for teams but the higher the enemies scale the more team work and synergy between team comps is required. Hallway Heroes will die or cause their team to die which is how "Elite" encounters should be. Cooperation in a PvE game.

60 minutes is still Sorties level range. Something I've done Solo with no mods as mockery to the system but I can assure you the aggressive kill stealing behavior stops after a point. unfortunately as I mentioned about the neglected Endurance play style. That point for teams is well past 2 hours at this point with even basic setups.

I recall when the Void first came out 40min was a good Solo. Power Creep without compensating has slowly drained the Endurance community.

[Thrymm]

19 hours ago, (PS4)EyeGodZA said:

Out of interest, for how long have you been playing, what MR are you, and what are your short and long term objectives with the game?

And, have you not been enjoying any of the Nightwave content? What were you doing before Nightwave?

I can second the boring sentiment on "challenges" like this, I can solo a 60 minute survival pretty easily.  All you have to do it bring weapons that'll kill the stuff and a handful of survival items in case you goof your health bar up(which probably won't even get used, truth is I probably won't even use a revive).

Which ties directly into my long and short term objectives in this game.  Long term, I'm an MR 23 player with enough stuff sitting around unranked to hit 24 and probably 25.  Long term, I've stopped doing things I don't like and that's why stuff like that---and these mindless 60 minute slogs--will go undone.  If I feel like it I'll do it, if I don't, no carrot will entice me anymore.

Short term, I'm doing the nightwave stuff that I feel like doing.  Finally making the alert items a "token" system is a great idea to me, because unless a person is chasing the full award carrots, this is a system that simply lets you get stuff over time(ironically, I already have all the stuff except the even exclusive trinkets, such is the way with four years of play).  I haven't decided how I feel about the whole thing yet, there is alot to like, and some things that cause me some alarm---things like trying to dump a 60 minute grind in my lap, for example.

If they keep the challenge points "real", I think it'll give me an excuse to play more.  If they try to make me wear out my computer chair....eh, back to other things.

[(PSN)EyeGodZA]

Thanks for all the comments, guys.

Clearly some real unhappiness from some corners, but I maintain that you don't have to max out Nightwave to Tier 30 to enjoy the game, just like you didn't really have to play alerts all the time?

Interestingly it seems like it's vets that have the hardest time with the way these challenges are set up, which is definitely not a good thing; you don't want to alienate the core audience that has given your product enough traction to attract the likes of players like me - relative noobs.

I guess, after reading through all of this, the question is whether it's at all possible for DE - nay, any dev for that matter - to produce a title that ticks every single box and pleases every single player? Sadly, I think not.

[(XBOX)THANOTOS OMEGA]

There is nothing positive about adding a pay wall to a game that already lies about being free to play, stop being so obsessed with justifying the errible classest BS that they impose on the game, some people don't have the money to pay for all time high speed internet, or the online subscriptions for their consoles, so this makes poor people alienated to try and make whales hand over more money, the entire thing is a cold calculated effort to get more money, that's it, and the sooner you realize that and stop giving these people money until they can at least show basic comp[asion for the entire player base the better,

[(PSN)EyeGodZA]

Are we even playing the same game? Nightwave has a paywall? The game isn't free to play, yet I played it for months without paying a cent (and to date, if I've spent maybe $20 it's a lot, and that's after about 600 hours in) and without a PS+ sub?

You don't have internet, but you're complaining about it... On the internet? And you don't feel DE is entitled to monetize the product that they, you know, produce as a business, to like, you know, pay their employees and stay in business?

Okay.

[krc473]

23 hours ago, (PS4)EyeGodZA said:

Certainly, every single aspect of Nightwave shouldn't be a breeze, then you'd just have people complaining that they're too easy!

You appear to be mistaking “being hard” and “taking too long” for the same thing. The 60 minute challenges were incredibly easy (for my friend and I). But they took ages. I cannot find a single challenge this week that I would consider particularly difficult. The hardest one for me are the Syndicate missions - I have four syndicates, so I have to be careful not to drop a rank in any of them (I loved it when I found out I was being given more than the mission said I should!). The rest just take a while.

 

Yes, I would like DE to completely overhaul the Nightwave system. I have reasons, but that is irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Edited March 6, 2019 by krc473
Typo

[Klokwerkaos]

MR 26, sitting on a mountain of plat, everything done, almost 5k in mission hours.  Some people might call that being a veteran.

I didn't find the challenge boring, I was actually happy I had a reason to log in at all.  Got 5 challenges in one on that run.  It wasn't hard, and I certainly wouldn't call it challenging, but it gave me a reason to play, which is much more than I can say for most of the last several months.  Arbitration?  Done, 1 week casual.  Vallis?  Done, two weeks, plus a couple more days later when they added new floofs.   Orbs?  boring.  ESO?  dead to me.  Running relics?  What for?

That said, the umbral grind is too long.  To do five frames and weapon would take over 4 years, and that's assinine as a time gate, especially when they are completely unnecessary as no content needs them to be completed.

Additionally, nora needs a mute and it kind of sucks that new players can't get alerts for bundles of resources anymore, though they can get slots for free now, so that's a megaplus.

All in all, nightwave is good.  I'd say it needs tweaking, but only in those areas.

Like you said, OP, challenges are meant to be CHALLENGES.  Especially ELITE CHALLENGES.  Not everyone can be elite, sorry, not sorry, and not really sorry either about not being sorry.  They already baked in several participation trophies along the way.  I swear if we let everyone have what they want the game would just play itself for you.  I'm so sick of being babied to death in gaming.  Started back in WoW, continued ever since.

There was a time when there was no save and you got three tries to beat the game.  If you failed, too bad.  I'm not saying we should go back to that, but to compare how coddled gamers are these days.  To me it's embarrassing to call yourself a gamer and be that coddled and still cry it's too hard when literally nothing in this game is hard.

Edited March 6, 2019 by Klokwerkaos

[(PSN)EyeGodZA]

35 minutes ago, Klokwerkaos said:

I swear if we let everyone have what they want the game would just play itself for you.  I'm so sick of being babied to death in gaming.  Started back in WoW, continued ever since.

 

☝️ THIS!

Welcome to the age of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the age of opinion and outrage...

[Klokwerkaos]

1 minute ago, (PS4)EyeGodZA said:

☝️ THIS!

Welcome to the age of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the age of opinion and outrage...

it's different when it's my outrage 😉  that makes it justified 😛 

[(PSN)EyeGodZA]

1 minute ago, Klokwerkaos said:

it's different when it's my outrage 😉  that makes it justified 😛 

☝️AND ALSO THIS!

[Kontrollo]

57 minutes ago, Klokwerkaos said:

... There was a time when there was no save and you got three tries to beat the game.  If you failed, too bad.  I'm not saying we should go back to that, but to compare how coddled gamers are these days.  To me it's embarrassing to call yourself a gamer and be that coddled and still cry it's too hard when literally nothing in this game is hard. 

Aah, sounds like someone is ready to start playing Conclave. 😄

Jokes aside, I agree with the general idea, maybe not as much with the tone.

Elite alerts are meant to require a bit more, and only some are required to max out Nightwave, it's 60-65% standing over the ten-ish weeks, as Steve has stated (without capturing any fugitives). And the end rewards are mostly fluff, anyway.

Here's how I see it: Umbra Forma is coveted now, but only because it's its first appearance. The last reward that makes a real difference in terms of progression is at rank 27, the 3x Forma pack (market value: 35p). I make 45p on the side just by passively levelling Syndicates and selling Augments @ 15p each, and it doesn't take me a week at all.

Let that sink in for a bit.

The rewards that really count, however, are Slots, Potatoes, Formas, Mods, Wolf Credits (Nitain, more Potatoes) and end at rank 25 with that Arcane Energize.

 

It's a nice incentive to do things you'd otherwise not do, and I completely agree there's still a lot of room for improvement. But if anyone feels pressured into doing these or thinks they need to accuse DE of creating a money grab (that one had me grin), they should really just take a step back and reevalute this whole thing.

[Klokwerkaos]

14 minutes ago, Kontrollo said:

Aah, sounds like someone is ready to start playing Conclave. 😄

Jokes aside, I agree with the general idea, maybe not as much with the tone.

Elite alerts are meant to require a bit more, and only some are required to max out Nightwave, it's 60-65% standing over the ten-ish weeks, as Steve has stated (without capturing any fugitives). And the end rewards are mostly fluff, anyway.

Here's how I see it: Umbra Forma is coveted now, but only because it's its first appearance. The last reward that makes a real difference in terms of progression is at rank 27, the 3x Forma pack (market value: 35p). I make 45p on the side just by passively levelling Syndicates and selling Augments @ 15p each, and it doesn't take me a week at all.

Let that sink in for a bit.

The rewards that really count, however, are Slots, Potatoes, Formas, Mods, Wolf Credits (Nitain, more Potatoes) and end at rank 25 with that Arcane Energize.

 

It's a nice incentive to do things you'd otherwise not do, and I completely agree there's still a lot of room for improvement. But if anyone feels pressured into doing these or thinks they need to accuse DE of creating a money grab (that one had me grin), they should really just take a step back and reevalute this whole thing.

I would play conclave if it wasn't atrociously bad.  Unfortunately, it, lunaro and a host of other things are simply trash code at this point.

The key thing here is that nightwave is 100% optional.  People keep talk about fear of missing out like it's some new thing.

DE has been doing this for years with primed cosmetics, and those cost CASH, unlike this stuff you just get for free.

I've been thinking, while I find nora super annoying when she's patting me on the back every five seconds like I'm a toddler that needs constant encouragement so I don't throw a tantrum on the floor, what kind of message does this display about what DE has subconsciously learned about it's fanbase in recent years?