Mission Failure Imminent needs to go

[Loswaith]

While DE doesn't want players farming resources to the nth degree, most of the veterans and defiantly founders can say it doesn't matter.  If you play warframe long enough you come to a point that you could get billions of resources and it doesn't matter at all as there is simply a point where you will allways have more than you will ever need or use.

The timer (while I understand why it exists), typically does far more harm to people actually playing (those not just rushing through the mission, a factor DE doesn't care for) than any one that is AFK farming (as for AFKers it is time they aren't playing anyway, so even the smallest amount is a boost, and none isn't a loss).  It also doesn't address the issue of why people feel the need to farm non-endless missions to the nth degree, especially when eventually they will have all they need from enemy drops.

For the most part rather than having the timer boot players from a mission, simply have it stop spawning enemies, would successfully prevent AFK farmers whether the mission is completed or not, without harming those that explore or want to take their time.  Alternatively make spawns that don't encourage sitting in only one place.

[Hobie-wan]

8 hours ago, Loswaith said:

For the most part rather than having the timer boot players from a mission, simply have it stop spawning enemies, would successfully prevent AFK farmers whether the mission is completed or not, without harming those that explore or want to take their time.  Alternatively make spawns that don't encourage sitting in only one place.

As I said above, exterminate used to only spawn the exact number of enemies you needed to eliminate in the map. This was a problem when one or more spawned somewhere inaccessible and you either couldn't find the last enemy or they were in a wall and you could hear or scan them, but were unable to damage them. So it was changed that enemies will still spawn after you fill the requirement.

[sam686]

11 hours ago, Hobie-wan said:

So it was changed that enemies will still spawn after you fill the requirement.

Exterminate sometimes spawn enemies way too slow. Causing annoying waypoint problem. This really slow down exterminate missions. https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1006090-lua-plato-enemy-spawn-too-slow-red-marker-points-to-no-enemies/

Why mission failure imminent happens in other mission types like Rescue mission? https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1091730-stuck-after-melee-attack/

Why no alarms on "Mission Failure imminent"?

How about just have unkillable enemy ghosts kill Warframe that aren't killing anyone for more then 15 minutes, allowing players to respawn a few more times and maybe get unstuck?

 

[Teridax68]

From the looks of it, Mission Failure Imminent is a relic of the past, much like the "Ignore your original objective, kill everyone" mission type swap in Capture. Perhaps there was once a time where turning Capture missions into pseudo-endless missions was a problem, but as it stands this simply is no longer the case, and wouldn't be even if those aspects were removed. It would thus be better to remove the arbitrary mission failure timer, as it's essentially doing all harm and no good at the moment.

[Hobie-wan]

9 hours ago, sam686 said:

Exterminate sometimes spawn enemies way too slow. Causing annoying waypoint problem. This really slow down exterminate missions. https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1006090-lua-plato-enemy-spawn-too-slow-red-marker-points-to-no-enemies/

Why mission failure imminent happens in other mission types like Rescue mission? https://forums.warframe.com/topic/1091730-stuck-after-melee-attack/

 

The first looks like host/client issues possibly caused by lag that broke spawning and that video is 8+ months old. The latter looks like you hit an errant 'pit' that respawned you as you were doing the stealth kill. Neither relates to this topic.

[JudgeMagi]

I think they should give you a longer warning period before failing the mission due to time. When I first failed due to the time limit, I was searching for the 3rd cache on Uranus Sabotage and was at the beginning of the map. 1 minute is not enough time to reach extraction from the starting point of Uranus sea lab. 5 minutes would be much more reasonable!

[Absolute_Kriatura]

19 hours ago, JudgeMagi said:

I think they should give you a longer warning period before failing the mission due to time. When I first failed due to the time limit, I was searching for the 3rd cache on Uranus Sabotage and was at the beginning of the map. 1 minute is not enough time to reach extraction from the starting point of Uranus sea lab. 5 minutes would be much more reasonable!

Nor 1min nor 5min timer should be there in 1st instance, forcing a failed mission stopping your progression to complete a junction, something that's necessary to progress and unlock further planets in the star chart, shouldn't be the solution for those that are exploring and learning the game yet. There is no thing more demotivating that making a player to fail something on purpose when it's clear that person didn't do anything wrong and was basically exploring.

[MindWard]

just got the same message and eventual failure while facing alone the ropalyst , sad part i was really close to kill it

 

[LuckyCharm]

Legit have never had this happen in regular missions, even with exploring. I didnt even know it was a thing. I can see why they did it though, people used to farm sabotage etc like that endlessly since enemies wouldnt scale up. 20s timer seems a lil overkill though without warning

[Drasiel]

So after 2 years I can now say I have run into this too. It happened when I was trying to solo steel path Ropalolyst and it feels god dam awful as hell. These needs to be removed.

3 hours ago, LuckyCharm said:

Legit have never had this happen in regular missions, even with exploring. I didnt even know it was a thing. I can see why they did it though, people used to farm sabotage etc like that endlessly since enemies wouldnt scale up. 20s timer seems a lil overkill though without warning

There's already another fix for that kind of behaviour in the game already because people would farm endless spawns on captures missions. if you stay in a non endless mission too long after a certain point enemies just stop spawning. This kicking solo players out of missions because they haven't killed something in 20 minutes is unnecessary.

[Element47]

would like to add my voice to this. encountered this today for the first time when trying to find the vault on a particularly messy map. would prefer to not have that timer if I am actually active, and not afk.

Edit: two days later, I just have been booted out of Ropalolyst fight after 35 minutes total mission time. Getting  timed out mid-fight.

The amount of frustration is hard to put in words right now.

Edited August 10, 2022 by Element47

[Ebonmourn]

Just kill that hidden timer, or whatever it is. I had FINISHED that mobile defense mission, I was exploring for more loot, and I had managed to loot a Ayatan sculpture, only to have the whole thing fail on me because of some idiotic "Mission Failure Imminent" feature I wasn't even aware existed.

Edited August 2, 2023 by Ebonmourn

[Hobie-wan]

22 hours ago, Ebonmourn said:

Just kill that hidden timer, or whatever it is. I had FINISHED that mobile defense mission, I was exploring for more loot, and I had managed to loot a Ayatan sculpture, only to have the whole thing fail on me because of some idiotic "Mission Failure Imminent" feature I wasn't even aware existed.

Well now you know.

Explore before you finish the last defense terminal so there are still enemies spawning.

[Drasiel]

8 minutes ago, Hobie-wan said:

Well now you know.

Explore before you finish the last defense terminal so there are still enemies spawning.

I don't think that getting screwed over by this hidden mechanic at least once so that you can learn about it and try to figure out how to avoid it is an acceptable scenario by any means. 

When you're solo, there simply isn't any need for the game to have this behaviour, especially after they added the code to stop enemy spawns after a certain point.

[Ebonmourn]

 

Il y a 2 heures, Drasiel a dit :

I don't think that getting screwed over by this hidden mechanic at least once so that you can learn about it and try to figure out how to avoid it is an acceptable scenario by any means. 

When you're solo, there simply isn't any need for the game to have this behaviour, especially after they added the code to stop enemy spawns after a certain point.

Exactly my point ; I can understand the validity of that timer while on a team, but as far as solo play goes, this is just asinine.

Edited August 3, 2023 by Ebonmourn

[Hobie-wan]

3 hours ago, Drasiel said:

I don't think that getting screwed over by this hidden mechanic at least once so that you can learn about it and try to figure out how to avoid it is an acceptable scenario by any means. 

That's a bit disingenuous. If the game suddenly just ended the mission and failed you, that'd be one thing, but the game gives you a warning and a timer so that you can extract. The AFK timer is 2 minutes, I'm not sure the length of the timer after you haven't killed any enemies in 15 minutes, but I'd think it's about the same? I encountered it once a long time ago, probably while searching for medallions and I think it is 1 to 1 1/2 minutes? Considering it is possible to complete an entire capture mission in well under 1 1/2 minutes (for the Nightwave challenge), players who have mastered the movement should be able to get to the exit in nearly all situations if they have to run to the exit and don't encounter any enemies.

Now they could certainly make this information more obvious by presenting it somewhere in the game. Maybe during the quest that introduces the mobile defense mission type since that's the most likely place people are going to run into it. Or at least as one of the tips on the loading screen, though most people would miss it there.

3 hours ago, Drasiel said:

When you're solo, there simply isn't any need for the game to have this behaviour,

 

51 minutes ago, Ebonmourn said:

Exactly my point ; I can understand the validity of that timer while on a team, but as far as solo play goes, this is just asinine.

They don't want people loitering in missions forever tying up server resources that are better served to people who are actually playing the game, not those who might pause the game for more than a bathroom/drink/phone call break and then forget they were playing because they were distracted.

Now perhaps Ebonmourn is a newer player who is a bit starved for endo, but in the long run one ayatan statue isn't going to matter that much. Just remember to search for secret loot before finishing all objectives in future. Whether it is the 3 hidden caches, medallions, possible ayatans, or data fragments, try to get them done first. Remember that sabotage missions also sometimes give you an escape timer before the reactor/ship explodes. Also is possible, don't nuke all of the enemies until you're on the way out if it isn't an endless type of mission.

[Drasiel]

22 hours ago, Hobie-wan said:

That's a bit disingenuous. If the game suddenly just ended the mission and failed you, that'd be one thing, but the game gives you a warning and a timer so that you can extract. The AFK timer is 2 minutes, I'm not sure the length of the timer after you haven't killed any enemies in 15 minutes, but I'd think it's about the same? I encountered it once a long time ago, probably while searching for medallions and I think it is 1 to 1 1/2 minutes? Considering it is possible to complete an entire capture mission in well under 1 1/2 minutes (for the Nightwave challenge), players who have mastered the movement should be able to get to the exit in nearly all situations if they have to run to the exit and don't encounter any enemies.

Now they could certainly make this information more obvious by presenting it somewhere in the game. Maybe during the quest that introduces the mobile defense mission type since that's the most likely place people are going to run into it. Or at least as one of the tips on the loading screen, though most people would miss it there.

It's not disingenuous, that's literally how I first encountered it, The ropalolyst fight in steel path has barely any enemies in it, and for whatever reason, intentional or bug, the ropalolyst will fly outside of the range of even the longest range amps and get stuck there until you suicide operator dash out to it and force it to reposition. The afk solo timer triggered while I was fighting it because of this and yeeted me right out of the mission just as the second set of minions was spawned. It didn't matter that I was damaging the boss's shields and actively playing I didn't meet its kill-an-enemy standard and it removed me despite actively playing the game.

22 hours ago, Hobie-wan said:

They don't want people loitering in missions forever tying up server resources that are better served to people who are actually playing the game, not those who might pause the game for more than a bathroom/drink/phone call break and then forget they were playing because they were distracted.

Now perhaps Ebonmourn is a newer player who is a bit starved for endo, but in the long run one ayatan statue isn't going to matter that much. Just remember to search for secret loot before finishing all objectives in future. Whether it is the 3 hidden caches, medallions, possible ayatans, or data fragments, try to get them done first. Remember that sabotage missions also sometimes give you an escape timer before the reactor/ship explodes. Also is possible, don't nuke all of the enemies until you're on the way out if it isn't an endless type of mission.

This game uses peer-to-peer architecture to play with others and only communicates with the server in very specific instances such as starting a mission, ending a mission, collecting something from the foundry, etc. There's a reason when people play together they use the terms Host and client, if this was done on a server there wouldn't be a host because the server would be hosting and every player would be the client. Playing a solo game isn't adding to server load. Your pausing example is incorrect as well, the afk timer doesn't trigger solo if the game is paused. I know this because I've had sudden attacks and had to lie on the floor for over an hour with it paused and was never yeeted out of the mission. 

It really is not just about the lost loot, it's a stupid mechanic that was clearly added to stop infinite enemy farming in single-objective missions. After DE made the changes so that the enemies stop spawning after a certain point in all non-endless missions that check and balance was no longer needed as they had a better method to prevent it entirely. It's an archaic leftover anti afk farming measure that is completely unnecessary in a solo mission. A solo missions that creates no additional server load, doesn't inconvenience anyone else, and can't be abused for xp and loot farming. 

[Hobie-wan]

19 hours ago, Drasiel said:

his game uses peer-to-peer architecture to play with others and only communicates with the server in very specific instances such as starting a mission, ending a mission, collecting something from the foundry, etc.

Mostly, but not entirely true. There is still a heartbeat check to the server. If your internet is flaky while solo, you can still get the network problem popup and if it drops for too long, you'll get booted from the game entirely and dropped at the login screen*. It's possible that loot rolls are also done by the server since they'd be more susceptible to hacking if local.

But anyway, I'm not saying that having the timer go away wouldn't be nice, but knowing it is there, ways exist to work around it.

_{*I know for certain this happens because last week I was still up playing at 4AM or so at one point and my ISP provided router did an automatic firmware update and reboot while I was in the middle of a mission.}

[Drasiel]

On 2023-08-04 at 4:59 PM, Hobie-wan said:

Mostly, but not entirely true. There is still a heartbeat check to the server. If your internet is flaky while solo, you can still get the network problem popup and if it drops for too long, you'll get booted from the game entirely and dropped at the login screen*. It's possible that loot rolls are also done by the server since they'd be more susceptible to hacking if local.

But anyway, I'm not saying that having the timer go away wouldn't be nice, but knowing it is there, ways exist to work around it.

_{*I know for certain this happens because last week I was still up playing at 4AM or so at one point and my ISP provided router did an automatic firmware update and reboot while I was in the middle of a mission.}

That doesn't necessarily mean it's a server ping. In your situation, your internet connection would have entirely disconnected, which could mean the game is just checking for an internet connection. It would be the kind of thing that is hard to check without packet sniffing to see what's been sent, if anything, for that check. I'm given to believe warframe is very hostile to such packet sniffing and would be reticent to test it out for fear of a ban.

There is one server check I know that you can manually trigger though, and when you are logged into Warframe and in a solo mission that check is not made until you finish the mission. If you have the mobile Warframe companion app logging into it counts as being logged into the game with your account and Warframe only allows you to have one login instance active at once. If you have Warframe on your computer (never tested this on a console) and load into a solo mission then open the mobile app it will tell you it needs to log you out to open the app. When you click yes it logs you out of the game and into the app. In your solo mission on your computer, nothing will have changed you can play the mission as normal, you will not get any pop-ups for disconnecting from the network nor will you get booted from the game, it doesn't matter how long you spend in the mission (barring the solo afk timer) which means the solo mission is not checking in with the server to check account state during the mission. Once you complete the mission everything goes to hell, you are logged out so it can't save to your account and has no idea how to deal with a user account that is somehow playing the game and logged out at the same time. You get permanently stuck in an attempting-to-save-to-account loop that won't even force log you out since you are already logged out as far as it is concerned. This says to me that solo missions are not communicating with the server for the duration of solo missions, since in order to do so you would need to have the correct credentials to give which you do not in that scenario. All of the other server communications seem to require the correct credentials to activate as well. 

The one exception to this is of course, open-world solo missions where the game communicates to the server after specific activities to save progress. 

[Shok-NAw]

Hate to say it, but I'm in the same boat as a solo player- love exploring, go to scan for collectibles and lore items (like Curios, Cephalon scans, Syndicate Medallions, Looking for the cave tileset for the Silver Grove quest, etc.) and then screwed over by a mission imminent failure timer. Honestly, in 2024, Warframe has more than enough of a playerbase after the largest Tennocon in the game's history to not have to dated mechanics in the game. While I respect the amount of work DE has been putting in to pushing massive new updates, the Quality-of-Life on a lot of older mechanics, tilesets, and enemies feels... Lacking. 
 

If they really wanted to stop camping without punishing more dedicated fans of the game (I've been on and off my various accounts for the past 7 years), there are a number of fixes fully within their power to do (speaking as a programmer):

• Extend the timer to a longer time (literally change one number in the code running after a check for mission failure imminent conditions (i.e. "AFK" because the primary objective isn't being completed- For simplicity I'll abbreviate this to MFIC))- This is lazy, but takes a couple keystrokes before rebuilding/recompiling the game.
• Insert a Pop-up dialog after setting an MFIC timer that alerts the player that mission failure is imminent (There's already appropriate voice lines for this, and copypasting the code that brings up a dialog video would take almost no time. It's even less if the dialog is just text).
• Change code after an MFIC is met to replace the multiplier for enemy level. Again, only a few lines of code. Bonus points if there's some blurb about reinforcements (oh wait, there's a few voicelines for that..)
• Spawn a boss in the same tile as players after MFIC is met. Copypasting code, people (get a common theme here?). This further increases the difficulty of AFK farming as some bosses *cough* Lech Kril *cough* as of 2024 are not vulnerable to certain campy abilities. Plus, it adds some depth to those hunting side objectives.
• And for our first non-"Just reuse your code" option, DE could actually review and address the way side objectives are treated by mission completion conditions. Every major title that has side objectives has them displayed, shown on UI, and most importantly, something that can be pursued prior to exiting a level. Hold up, didn't Warframe used to do exactly that? Or still does it with bonus objectives in open world missions? Yup, it's something DE could (and should) standardize like their approach to damage type changes in the past few updates.

Of course, DE probably doesn't care about QOL or aging the game gracefully/cohesively or retaining player interest fixing minor but wide-reaching bugs. Unfortunately, there are three big reasons they won't follow through:

1. Time. Maybe they're working on the kinks in the newest update, maybe they prefer to work on big flashy new gizmos for us to farm for. I don't blame them for not allocating time to what are seemingly small bugs, but that mindset makes the game age faster than On-Lyne in the Tennolive trailer. These bugs are the primary reason players often leave to play other games for months at a time until the next update drops (myself included), but until the statistics show that fact as clearly as the Infestation on Deimos, DE will not allocate time to fix things like this.
2. Testing. Ok, this is kinda the same as above, but it DOES take a really, really Vay Hekkin' long time to get to that point in a mission. What can I say except I want every shiny thing in a game that teaches you to grab every shiny thing? But unless they go with one of the later options on the list to make mission closure fun instead of punishing, the trade off from their dev perspective won't feel worth it. I actually sympathize with them on this one.
3. Technology. Right now, doing nothing makes more technical sense for DE because adding extra time not only costs money to pay the dev actually coding in the fixes, but there is also probably more traffic they would have to process if people stay in their session longer and sync all those new items and stats to whatever cloud service DE Uses. Maybe my complete ignorance of Warframe's networking makes this one moot, but either way, there's no meaningful, logical, profitable incentive for DE to fix this (very Corpus, amirite?).

I doubt anyone cares about this issue anymore, but the fact it's been in the game so long alongside other minor issues on these forums indicates that this is the tip of the iceberg that is unoptimized, unpatched issues. If DE wants to take this seriously, they should include this in patches, or at the very least reply to these issues with a short, single-sentence acknowledgement that yes, they know it exists but they do/don't care about the problem in the greater context of other issues or updates. Still, if DE actually fixes this issue or even better starts focusing some of that primary development effort on optimizing/improving the game's foundations, I may have to eat my words. If any DE respond, I have a gauntlet to throw down in challenge.

[TheReaverOfDarkness]

On 2019-06-12 at 7:51 AM, Tsukinoki said:

Its a mechanic to avoid AFK farming of missions.

That doesn't track. AFK farming methods always involve killing enemies, which will prevent the timer from expiring. This mechanic won't affect AFK farming.
The timer only expires if you don't kill enemies for long enough. That can happen for many reasons but none of them involve any sort of obscene or unbalanced farming.

[Famecans]

Most RPGs give us the option to escape to a safe zone from any enemy or map precisely because RPGs have many hours of gameplay. Escape is an old and welcome mechanic since the 8-bit era games. However, Warframe tries to approach platform game mechanics like Sonic The Hedgehog, where time is limited to failure and the player only collects their points after passing the map with all their lives.

Spoiler

I already made two topics about this a few years ago, I was criticized by the forum community and here we are again. I changed some ideas from the past.

• 1st The player has the right to extract any resource collected as long as the character is alive with all their lives. This means that the time played is rewarding. This encourages the player to try again and live longer in the mission, since the extracted resources serve to significantly improve their character progression. Sometimes the player only needs the Orokin cell to manufacture a weapon from the forge, but the game penalized the collection, because the mission failed and stole everything that was collected without any rational logic.
   
• 2nd The player can travel the entire map with his Parazon, so he can start ignoring or failing the mission and will be free to extract after finding the extraction tileset. all doors must be hackable by Parazon. This is essential for the player to be able to access locked extraction zones. An example is the fight with Kela De Thaym. The player can escape through some generic tileset.
  
  The only way to fail the mission and be completely penalized by the game is to lose all your lives. This means that an enemy's nuclear explosion will not prevent you from failing the mission and will also not prevent you from escaping through the extraction gate, as you will have lives to respawn and extract your resources.
   
• 3rd Every map needs universal mechanics and animations for extraction, every map needs tilesets to introduce and extract the characters and in some cases like Railjack or Plains there is the navigation console or gate that activates the extraction zone, this extraction zone needs to be cancelable and must work for one or multiple players at the same time.
  
  There are missions with locked tilesets like the Rapopalyst boss, in this case we have the archwing animations, the entry and exit animation with archwing in sentient maps is incredible, the player just needs to call Ordis to extract with his archwing.
  
  There are also mandatory nuclear destruction missions where the entire tileset is locked and everything starts to explode. In this case, you must use the Railjack's "Omni" teleport animations. Basically, when the countdown ends, the Warframe calls Ordis and automatically triggers an Omni extraction animation. Then, the game takes us to the resource summary screen as if we were extracted from the map.
  
  My old suggestion in previous topics was that the Railjack's "Omni" be an extraction consumable that can be used in any locked tileset. However, this is complicated to program, as it needs to have several triggers to prevent players from entering the extraction timers.
  
   
• 4th some standard extraction tilesets need technical and aesthetic improvements, it's ugly to arrive at the Fortune Gate and realize that there is no technology killing enemies, as they cannot reach the gate; it's strange to arrive at the Grineer or Corpus extraction tileset and realize that there are no autoaim Tenno drones guaranteeing our safety, but there are enemies with dumb AI blind in front of our extraction point; the Zariman elevator door also has this same unfinished aesthetic, there is nothing killing persistent extraction enemies, we cannot shoot the enemies outside the elevator, but the enemies can hit us; Bonewidows Voidrig Mazuka Faradon Corralizer Giottica... these are the ideal models for the mechanics.

I know your topic complains about the forced extraction mechanic, but I feel like this ties into what I just wrote above because apparently your goal is to farm on any map without being penalized by the game.

Edited August 17 by Famecans

[Famecans]

On 6/11/2019 at 7:14 PM, NoSpax said:

I just came out a spy mission on Jupiter  timed 1h 10m 1s.. I was whopping 70 Minutes in there, no timer at all. Also did some secret labs.

This was the first time I played the new Jupiter, so I have no idea, how those vaults work. -> Explore Mode engaged.

 

Back in the day I cleared all the maps, opened all the lockers and rooms and avoided squad missions(obsessive-compulsive disorder), I remember the first time I sold a lot of Ayatan Stars, I had more than 1200 units of blue stars and hundreds of yellow stars, it was my worst trade in game, I would love for them to be in my collection as game points.