Jump to content
Dante Unbound: Share Bug Reports and Feedback Here! ×

Thermia Fracture Mixup - A "Burping" Challenge


SilverBones

Recommended Posts

3 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

When a new Coolant Canister is added,

So for solo players, they will have to go all the way back(perhaps) to get another coolant canister, while having the danger of the present one being busted by enemies while the players are away?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mm. The most aggravating part of how slow these were is the 100 point goal for the Opticor. If they aren't going to be faster until long-term goals for them are no longer even a reward on the table, there sounds to be a lot less point to even making the change.

but nothing wrong with making it faster for people who will just need to gather thermia for the boss, either, so sure, may as well. While the effects of the proposed change sound reasonable, the activation proposed sounds a bit messy. Even if the whole squad picked a coolant up, someone would have to leave and go grab a new one and bring it back every set of four fissures to get a thermia. And that's assuming you even have four people, and can/will only speed up each fracture once. In smaller squads, or if using several on one process is reasonable, this would result in an awful lot of people needing to repeatedly fly back and forth grabbing more coolant. Someone suggested having coolant raknoids milling about relatively closeby to fractures, which could fix the concern.

I'd say it would be more ideal to do something like Plague Star where people could use gear items, but that would have plenty of its own issues in terms of "what should they be made of", and adding another resource to farm before farming thermia to farm exploiter is a pretty unpleasant sounding cycle. And also kind of defeats the point of making that fracture step faster!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, kyori said:

So for solo players, they will have to go all the way back(perhaps) to get another coolant canister, while having the danger of the present one being busted by enemies while the players are away?

I'm adding this concern to the aggregated feedback to Dev. I have no answer for you right now, but it will be asked.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, kyori said:

So for solo players, they will have to go all the way back(perhaps) to get another coolant canister, while having the danger of the present one being busted by enemies while the players are away?

Not everything has to have solo players in mind. If solo players are always a concern, then multiplayer content will always be too easy. If you want to solo and be insanely efficient, you could still do so. Zenistar + Frost + Itzal seems like a good combo to start with. The tools are available, and being solo means you acquire the added difficulty of not having 3 helpers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

Greetings PC Tenno (and Console Tenno who will experience this later!)!

Operation: Buried Debts was introduced 14 days ago, and as part of its initial release, we have been considering changes to mix up the way Thermia Fractures are harvested. Thermia Fractures will be coming back on a roughly bi-weekly basis, but we wanted to add some changes that allow players to determine the challenge and rewards given because the simple root of all feedback about Fractures is: too long and boring.

The general plan is to allow players to spend additional Coolant Canisters to increase the difficulty of that Thermia Fracture, in return for faster completion. When a new Coolant Canister is added, the Fracture will “burp” and cause some interesting new effects, some examples of which are listed below:

  • Molten Spider swarm (brand-new look and stats)!
  • The next few enemies will be Eximus Units!
  • Enemy damage output will increase!

When Thermia Fractures become systemic after the event ends, their role is to give you Diluted Thermia and bring a bit of activity to the Orb Vallis. 

As of the time of this post, the Thermia Fracture Mixup is in development, and we are looking to deploy this change when the technical aspects are solid. We do not want to rush this deployment as any quality problems would continue to negatively impact the limited remainder of the current event.

As with any of our planned changes, we would like to see your thoughts on this new addition to Operation: Buried Debts. Remember to keep your thoughts and feedback constructive, but let us know what you think, or perhaps what kind of “burps” you think would work!
 

I don't think this will really help the issue about Thermia being long and boring to farm.

How will this help solo players? because this only benefits groups of 2 or more. And these groups will have to be pre-made because if you join a public match you will always spawn in or before the Exploiter orb fight. I think this change wouldn't have a major benefit like you want it to have. Yes it will benefit friends and clans who farm together but not everyone.

Another concern is how you are going to add more enemies in an attempt to address the issue of difficulty. Again, I don't think this will help the issue because what level will the enemies be? will they be lvl 45 like the usual enemies or will they be level 60,80,100? Most people who find the enemies easy are high mr and/or have some form of a meta build that gives ridiculous survival to enemies or ridiculous damage that melts everything in a few seconds. 

Say if for arguments sake, you made the "burp" enemies lvl 60 that still wouldn't pose much of a challenge to people who find the event enemies easy. Maybe if you push to lvl 100 it might become a challenge slightly but then that would just exclude people who can't deal with lvl 100 content. And those people who can't deal with lvl 100 content would still have the same issue of the event taking too long and this change/improvement or whatever you wanna call it will mean nothing to them.

This idea of a change to me seems like an attempt to try to cater to the veterans who want challenging content with no regard to new players or people who just don't or cant participate in more challenging content. All this will do is isolate the community more and pushing away from everyone else I feel.

 

Why not just reduce the amount of time it takes per thermia fracture for everybody regardless of their gear/skill set. Like cut it in half. I understand you timegate content so people don't burn out but look at this way, on day 1 of this event how many people grinded it out for 3-4 hours straight and got everything? A good amount did. The same happened on day 2, 3 and etc. The time it takes per thermia fracture is just too much and it didn't stop people from sitting down and getting the event done in one or 2 sittings.

If you really want to address the difficulty complaints you can keep this system of the thermia "burps" but just make the enemies that spawn lvl 100+ for those who enjoy tougher enemies. And then just double the reward for a thermia "burb" fracture. You would get twice as much farming done in half the time with the added benefit of tougher enemies.

This way everyone wins in a sense.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, dwqrf said:

Feels like transforming a mobile defense into an excavation. Problem will be : how and where to find the extra coolant canister for newish players ? Also, i've encountered a lot of new players trying to complete this event, but without an archwing launcher, moving around and finding rift is really hard.

If the newbies don't have one, they just need to keep grinding until they got one. You know, like everyone else.

And this thermia fracture sealing is going to be a recurring event like ghouls on POE, the newbies won't be loosing out on anything. They will just be late.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, [DE]Bear said:

I'm adding this concern to the aggregated feedback to Dev. I have no answer for you right now, but it will be asked.

If you make sure it's possible to solo efficiently and don't allow any other active objectives, what are the remaining 3 people in my squad supposed to do?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, phantasmalWordsmith said:

I think this is a nice idea but I find myself wondering - would it be possible to generate additional rewards for doing these more difficult harvests other than just being faster? It wouldn't have to be much, but I think something like some extra endo or maybe some Solaris United standing? Just to add a little sweetness to the extra spicy fractures.

Having an Operation shop like Nakak's would be more than enough reward.  Faster runs mean more of whatever standing or resource is spent in that shop.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

il y a une heure, V0ltHunter a dit :

If the newbies don't have one, they just need to keep grinding until they got one. You know, like everyone else.

And this thermia fracture sealing is going to be a recurring event like ghouls on POE, the newbies won't be loosing out on anything. They will just be late.



The ghouls event, or any other plains bounty, is already a succession of spots where to go, the quickest if possible, running from A to B. Fair enough, if you don't have a launcher, you are slow, but what evs, you can still complete the mission in a decent time.

Here we have devs talking about "how to make this event quicker and less boring" - well, let me explain to you and to everyone, that cutting the time of "thermia defense" in half IS NOT going to make the event quicker IF you have to run around the whole Vallis from north to south to find collant canister to keep the flow. Because you know, distance = time, and even if you have the best speed gear possible, it's still time - and if you don't have hyperion thruster maxed on your potatoed itzal; well, you are simply screwed.


And as the current situation, you HAVE to find a group doing ONLY fractures, to actually do them, because if you group with people doing bounty and other base defense, they'll block you from doing fractures. So you CAN'T do both thing in the same for more effiency.
 

That said, it's fracture run only; so a run about people going around, just doing that, moving around, from A to B, from B to C, etc with only a break of 1-3mn in each spot. How much time is spent moving, and how much time is spent defending ? On the whole average ? Adding another layer of "go find more stuff on the other side of the map to make the objective quicker" doesnt sound like a speed up for me.


- One of the possible solution to the proposed change would be to make coolant raknoid spawn in some fashion, close by the fractures, allowing people to start/speed up the process without having the NEED of using mandatory gear to move around, effectively reducing, then, the time, by having less down-time in between each fractures, and less time required to pick up/use thoses coolant canister.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, (XB1)RDeschain82 said:

You must be new to WF. Nothing is exclusive to a particular mode.

What's most likely to happen is EVENTUALLY the armor set will be sold for plat and the Umbral Forma(if even a bp) will be introduced in the game in a different way. That's just the WF way. 

And my suggestion for the UF is a different way to introduce it to players. 

You know what they say about assuming? Yeah...

Just because you want it to happen doesnt mean it will. and yes, things have remained exclusive. I could be an ass and just claim founders, but I wont.

Scorn Lacera skin from shadow debt still hasn't come back.

Rahk fluctus skin from eyes of blight hasnt come back.

Rakta syandana from specters of liberty hasnt come back.

Zebra paracyst skin from muralist incursions hasnt come back.

Polar glacier skin from cryotic front hasnt come back.

Primed Chamber hasn't come back.

Those are just what i can think of from the top of my head, i know I'm missing more. As for exclusive to a particular mode, you made me laugh. So I can get cryotic outside of excavations? I can get floofs without doing conservation? No. You cant. Same way as Umbral Forma will stay with NW, and the cosmetics, as they said. Exclusive.

As for your suggestion, it will make UF ALOT easier to get, and if DE locked it behind so many NW challenges it's clear they dont want it to be too easy to get. 

But, thanks for your time 🙂

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, (XB1)Zweimander said:

I don't think I will be running the Thermia Fractures ever again to be honest. So unless some unique and powerful rewards are added to them as well Their is zero incentive for me at the very least.

Pretty much this. Either I get the shocking step ephemera or I burn out of the exploiter fight soon. Either way, there is no need to do it again. At least Profit Taker gives credits, which we always need more of. Exploiter gives Fortuna resources, which I only need a finite amount of. Already, Exploiter has meant I will never need to visit Orb Vallis to mine or fish ever again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The time investment wouldn't be so bad if there was any sort of reward for it other than the overarching event rewards.  My reward for going out and sealing four fissures is a small amount of diluted thermia and whatever extremely common mods and light dusting of credits the enemies happen to drop.  Compare this to the ghouls which have bounty rewards or Plague Star with the reputation store, both of which provide rewards for doing the event at a much steadier pace to keep the player engaged.  I felt a lot better about doing Plague Star because I could set myself a clear, attainable goal and focus on earning the reputation I needed to get it rather than having this long term goal of a weapon I may not even end up liking.  I'm at 54 fractures sealed and I seriously question if I want to keep going.  I'm certainly not having much fun doing it.

As things stand I'm not certain this proposed solution really does all that much to alleviate the feeling of it being a slog.  It just takes some of the time from standing at the fissure and erasing anything that moves with Peacemaker, and moves it to zigzagging back and forth across the map to stockpile coolant canisters.  Unless adding extra canisters radically accelerates the process my fear is that this extra busywork of handling more coolant will actually make the process take even longer.  Only now it will be spent flying in circles instead of fighting enemies, which honestly doesn't sound like an upgrade to me.

Maybe it'd pay to do something like Plague Star where you can mix in an extra ingredient to increase the potency of the coolant the same way you improve the thrax toxin.  That'd provide a way to get the same increase in challenge without having to waste time going back and forth for coolant.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, [DE]Bear said:

the simple root of all feedback about Fractures is: too long and boring.

"Too long" is absolutely true, but that's a consequence of the "too boring", and that comes down to how, where or how far away and how many at-a-time enemies spawn, and is an issue shared with Plains of Eidolon, specifically in any MD-type bounty..

While the Fracture feedback is based on solo play (because I can't remain squadded in Orb Vallis), I know how it goes in PoE and fully expect the experience to be similar.

tl;dr is that, like, say, in an MD with a max slow/dur Nova, there's too much down-time where you have literally nothing to do but watch the timer. There's a reason that 'watching paint dry' is the colloquial embodiment of dull, boring tedium.

Intercepting incoming dropships (is not usually a viable tactic due to being a DPS check,) or more frequently Coildrives is fun ('Can I pull this off, will I make it...?') and rewarding (*BOOM* and the knowing that you've nipped an attack in the bud).
Having a squad of Corpus port in ~113 meters away (in one case I noted) and have them plink at you as they advance is rather than building tension, is anti-exciting.
The same situation but with 3 squads is little different.

Further, while I quite like the geography of OV (certainly more interesting than PoE's, and it feels less visually obstructive, re: elevation and lines of sight/fire), it's often too steep to be a pleasant shooting experience.


Part of this is how it interacts with the alert level.
Yes, starting at A3 means you occasionally start with a heavy mech attacking, but letting the alert level escalate is too dangerous, so you destroy any and all beacons.
And when there are no beacons, the alert level drops - which, as detailed above, is too easy/boring.
While I'm not sure this is implementable in the current code, I'd be curious how a fracture felt while under a static Alert Level 2.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Basalto said:

You remind me why I stopped coming to this place in the past. Apparently making content on the second planet accessible to new players is a hindrance, and you need to insult people to try to get your "point" across. The archwing launcher was one of those cases where DE just tossed darts at a board to figure out what to do next, and ended up with something that was bad, but more than what they had a minute before, which was nothing. Doesn't make it good, of course, but there's always an intellectual juggernaut to dispute such things, and I don't judge fetishes.

 

On the topic, the solution just sounds kinda half-assed to me, and also a certain blind eye to solo players, since you can't exactly carry two coolant canisters at once. Even players who can handle the increased difficulty (because this game's broken design allows so) still will be limited to the standard glorified mobile defense template, which is painfully boring. An idea to mend the solo aspect would be to spawn coolant spiders, specially since hunting them makes for a completely unnecessary hindrance to the flow of an already slow and tedious event.

If you feel insulted it's your problem not mine. If you think i was advocating for not making anything accessible you're wrong, read again what I said, I'm advocating for content to be a scale of natural progression, let players figure out what they need to make things easier or efficient for themselves because the tools are already provided in game. In short for you to understand saying that not everything needs to be accessible doesn't mean that everything shouldn't be accessible, these are not mutually exclusive, correlation doesn't mean causation etc. Don't reply to me again with strawmans.

I don't think archwing launchers are a bad idea AT ALL, and I doubt DE though about them randomly when they were released basically at the same time as the first large open map, this is not a coincidence. You don't have a single argument on why it's bad, so I assume your point is that you don't like them. Too bad for you, I don't really care.

Solo players are already handicapped on other aspects of the game, I'm mainly a solo player and I accept this, because the game is meant to be played in groups, I accept these disadvantages and move on, because it was me who choose to play solo mostly. I suggest doing the same, move on. On a side note you CAN carry two canisters at once as solo player, I won't feed you and let you figure how to yourself. 

I agree with your last point and only your last point, spawning coolant spiders is a good idea, this doesn't mean the other ideas proposed by bear are bad at all. Again one doesn't exclude the other.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, taiiat said:

i would have to point out, that 'normal' Missions still have plenty of real estate.
we easily cover more than a Kilometer or Kilometer and a half over the course of a 'normal' Tileset based Mission. it just doesn't look like it since the paths wind and turn and the walls are a lot closer.

It's not so much the technical distance, but rather the aimless flying around trying to find another fracture.
It's inconsistent, and experiences heavily vary as a result. Sometimes I find like 3 fractures right next to each other, other times they're all spaced out. Other times it can take forever to find more fractures.
Either way, there's no exact certainty in where they will show up, where-as in mobile defence missions you can always rely on an objective marker showing up. 

A simple solution would be to make map markers for fractures while you're holding a canister. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The thermia eruption suddenly halts, quiet for a moment. Then rumblings, growing stronger, until it spurts out a wide and dense jet, hurtling a massive plug of stone and ore into the sky, right out of sight! Keep your eyes peeled as lethal meteors fall back towards the area, threatening to obliterate the unaware. By whatever means available, shatter them before they touch down for a chance at whatever previously-buried minerals they may contain.

Atlas is overjoyed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This would be a fantastic idea in a non-instanced MMO. I remember "Thumping" back in Firefall with a high tier extractor that would attract very strong opponents, and anyone who passed by could just run over and help me out, getting a share of the minerals themselves. It's a nice case of complete strangers helping each other and both get a payout.

17 hours ago, ntyd1s said:

Just make each kill in the area speed up the process similar to the bounty. Time reward will encourage fighting, make squad actively balance their defense and offense.

I agree with this suggestion, though. Have enemies drop something like "coolant packets" to accelerate the sealing would be good, but it should be significant, similar to Jailers dropping keys. Picking up four or five keys from the Jailers make those bounty stages very short, which is how I see bounties: going in and out quickly without wasting too much time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

51 minutes ago, ScarecroM said:

simple solution would be to make map markers for fractures while you're holding a canister. 

yeah sure, you're right about that. could just show you where they are in a non-intrusive way like only when holding a Canister.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a super cool idea, I would love some diverse encounters to spice up the fracture sealing proccess and make it more frantic.

The exploiter orb tells her children to get thermia for her in her dialogue in the regular map. Perhaps coolant raknoids could start to show up once the process gets started in order to facilitate these burps.

As for burp ideas:

  • Tectonica wildlife - much bigger more badass versions of the Valis fauna seeded by the coolant towers' coming back to life they have been corrupted by the reaction between thermia and coolant and emerge howling with blinding rage. They could be designed somewhat like assassins, giving out a howl which prompts dialogue from the business warning which one is coming. Unlike other creatures of the Valis these ones are going to require some subdual before they can be tranqed. Similar to scyto raknoids they could have two-phase fights, one where they deal high damage and a second where they have high damage resistance but can be tranqed. Once put to sleep the business should mention that they will be out for a while and to focus on the fracture or send a number of conservation drones automatically to collect it with a rare resource pop up to indicate that the tag was acquired. I'm picturing blood red stovers with eyes that leave a glowing trail, horasques with scythelike claws and a poison aoe attack, sawgaws that let out a staggering shriek affecting the tenno and corpus alike, bolarolas that curl up and run tenno down like coil drives, verminks that bound around the battlefield like sabretooth tiger sized kavats, fire belching kubrows and pobbers that attack like those leaping moas. In addition to their availability through burps they should probably also be available through conservation during fracture events.
  • Thermialysts - Buried beneath the valis the thermia has unearthed and evolved a version of the standard battalyst/conculyst variety of sentient fighter. Drop thermia sentient shards which can be consumed for focus like synthetic eidolon shards and thermia sentient cores which can be used for either quills or vox solaris standing.
  • Thermia servofish swarm - Adapted to the flows of thermia these shoals of servofish emerge and thrash about like walking catfish attacking with their superheated appendages. Fishing spears could work to capture and disable them. Linked shields between the school of servofish could reduce incoming damage based on the number of servofish remaining so a swarm of these flopping menaces could be more formidable when they first emerge and gradually become an annoyance as they are picked off.
  • A Ravenous Golden Maw - because why not? There seem to be a number of orokin secrets sleeping beneath the Valis' surface. Perhaps they could be defeated by certain tenno and turned against Nef Anyo's reinforcements.
  • Thermia mushroom infested - a corruption of the Valis fungal spores takes hold over the hapless corpus stationed on venus. A large boil of fungus appears and disgorges infested colored to match the giant mushroom growths of the valis. For a time the Terra reinforcements can become infested with spores and reanimate after death as additional infested. They could have a chance to drop the helminth charger mods.

Additionally, I would like to see diluted thermia be used for kitgun parts and/or even zaw strikes. They could be traded for pax arcanes and/or exodia arcanes to do AOE napalm bursts on headshots or slams.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

any word on making raptors, jackals, hyenas, and the larger raknoids of the vallis respect the rules of certain warframe powers?

Currently their power immunity drastically reduces the number of frames viable to use on the orb vallis in content like this, and I don't even understand why they have the immunities to begin with, it makes sense for their boss variants, but these aren't those boss variants, these are more akin to elite/heavy units not a boss or mini boss

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...