Making Defense more consistent with mission pace

[Duality52]

Defense suffers from how all enemies must be killed (with the exception of "minor" targets like Arbitration Drones) to progress the wave. It gets worse if enemies get stuck in unexpected places or if they refuse to confront us.

To fix this, have it similar to the ending condition of Interception, where say that 5-10% of the current wave of enemies are left, the countdown starts to spawn the next wave. Once you reached the rotational wave (5 for most missions, 10 for Arbitrations) another countdown occurs this time to despawn the enemies similar to Interception. If there were too little enemies left, they despawn automatically.

Thoughts?

TLDR: Make Defense act like the ending round of Interception, where a new wave will spawn after killing enough of the current wave rather than kill all enemies of the current wave to progress.

[(XBOX)ShadowBlood89]

this is kinda pointless request as a deffense your suppose to protect the pod/target against waves of enemies.
you already kill a certain number of enemies to progress the round an yes enemies can get stuck as AI isn't always the smartiest

[Zectico]

Love this, especially since many Warframes have abilities that make enemies immune to player damage. 

What if we scrap the whole "having to kill enough enemies" thing entirely? The next wave just comes after a certain amount of time. Might make defending the target actually a challenge.

Would definitely make defense missions a little less monotonous to play

[Duality52]

17 hours ago, (XB1)ShadowBlood89 said:

you already kill a certain number of enemies to progress the round an yes enemies can get stuck as AI isn't always the smartiest

Thing is, current Defense requires all enemies to be killed. Then it's followed by a short countdown to the next wave. That breaks the pacing of the mission.

The suggested change makes it so that the next new wave will spawn as the current wave comes near an end. Think of Survival's constant rush of enemies with Interception's ending round phase.

[Lefract]

I had the same thought about modifying defense pacing. The next wave should spawn, even if there are a few stragglers left from the previous wave. Either that, or DE should fix AI pathing so enemies don't get stuck in: stairs, corners, barrels, walls, etc..

[DrivaMain]

I propose an alternative, instead of kill x amount of enemies how about we defend the objective for x seconds per wave? Enemies will keep swarming until the wave countdown ends and a small “breather” countdown before the next wave stars. It will make both CC and Nukers have a place in the new defense missions and not forced to speedva + saryn meta if they want to make the rotation length consistent.