Plains of Eidolon Bounty Stage Bonuses Rebalance

[MARALOHK]

To preface, the Plains of Eidolon bounty stage bonuses are exactly what they say, a bonus. If the topics discussed below do not get addressed, the world will not suddenly end.

There are, however, the following 2-3 specific stages are irritants to myself and players I have talked to, and could stand to be polished off a bit.

1. Liberation: Liberation as a fight against the inner workings of the game
Liberation has the bonus challenge of keeping the control percentage above 50% for the duration of the liberation timer.
Control decays while enemies are within the radius of the control zone.
Control decays faster the more enemies are within the zone.
The size of the zone is not determined by the number of players in the squad, and is larger than can be monitored by one player.
Enemies on dropships count as being within the zone, even before they land (potentially even before they reach the zone).
Dropship pathing has improved, but is still not perfect. Dropships can rarely still get stuck.

This is a short list of factors that in chorus produce the result of a solo player or small group struggling to complete the bonus challenge. The working strategy seems to be "Stand exactly where enemies drop and kill them as they touch the ground or, even better, take out the Firbolgs before they reach the zone." Liberation winds up feeling like you are fighting the underlying structure of the game, and not the enemies.

Verdict: This challenge is not impossible, but the difficulty is a couple steps above all of other challenges. In addition, the difficulty of the challenge does not stem from the challenge itself, but from the challenge amplifying an underlying imbalance with the bounty stage.

Potential solutions: Vary the size of the zone or control decay according to the number of players in a squad, or at least remove control decay from enemies still on dropships?

2. Capture: Capture as a race against your squad
Capture has the bonus challenge of capturing the target without killing any enemies.

I can keep this one brief; this bonus is trivial, but also trivial for a player to sabotage for their squad intentionally, or unintentionally. I have also heard reports that a latcher exploding counts against the challenge as a kill.

Verdict: This challenge is easy for a prepared squad; however, this challenge does not bring any ease of mind, as you constantly anticipate a troll/unknowing player.

Potential solutions: Increase the threshold for failure from just one kill, only count kills within the active zone, or at the very least ensure that latchers exploding do not count as kills? Honestly, this one does not seem to have immediately obvious, thorough solutions while maintaining the same challenge.

3. Assassination: "Kill what now?"
Assassination has the bonus challenge of drawing out the assassination target within one minute.

This one is also pretty easy to discuss; the struggle is not killing the enemies, it is finding the enemies to kill. In some cases, the number of enemies necessary for the challenge do not exist within the active zone within the time of the challenge. A full squad rarely has trouble with this challenge as squad members can divide focus, and even find and kill enemies outside the target zone.

Verdict: This challenge is easy for a full group, but can be difficult to nearly impossible for a solo player or a small group, depending on spawns.

Potential solutions: Increase the the challenge time by up to 30 seconds, or just ensure that there are a few more enemies within the zone at the start?

[(PSN)AbBaNdOn_IGN]

Have to agree with all of that. 

I was doing alot of PoE bounties before the Saints update to farm stuff,  sadly I havent done much since the update.  But Liberations are my most hated objective lol.  Not because they are hard but because they are to easy to fail.  

I also really hate Defend in PoE and OV while solo.  

[DukeCatfishJr]

On 2019-09-24 at 3:40 AM, Nomayonnaiseinireland said:

1. Liberation: Liberation as a fight against the inner workings of the game

.....

Potential solutions: Vary the size of the zone or control decay according to the number of players in a squad, or at least remove control decay from enemies still on dropships?

perhaps make it so that control only decays whenever enemies attack you? existing on a territory of something doesn't really make you in charge of it, that's not how it works grineer =/

 

On 2019-09-24 at 3:40 AM, Nomayonnaiseinireland said:

3. Assassination: "Kill what now?"
Assassination has the bonus challenge of drawing out the assassination target within one minute.

nuh-uh buddy, in reality the bonus is to draw out AND kill the target. even if the target is here and a minute passes the bonus objective fails. at higher level bounties this is sometimes just humanly impossible to do this objective alone considering the circumstances accompanying said challenge.

[(NSW)JayronAuron]

On 2019-09-23 at 3:40 PM, Nomayonnaiseinireland said:

1. Liberation: Liberation as a fight against the inner workings of the game

Liberate the camp is the only part of warframe ever that I would use the word "hate" with, because it always feels like I never have any control over the outcome, and it's just disheartening to fail an entire bounty run because of it. A few things I want to add regarding its issues/possible solutions. I personally would just prefer the remove it entirely and replace it with a more sane objective kinda like supply drop retrieval in Orb Vallis, but oh well.

The fundamental flaw I find with Liberate missions is the fact that enemies can be wandering around the point with no clue of where you are and yet somehow their presence causes you to lose control from enemies you can't locate. That just makes no sense.

Additional problems:

• As far as I can tell from my experience running PoE bounties, enemies in caves may possibly be counting towards control decay. DE would need to confirm this, but if true this is completely and utterly unfair, on the level of dropship enemies counting pre-drop.
• Certain areas are all but impossible to complete solo with height differentials to the area. Areas with extremely uneven terrain can cause enemies to get stuck on stuff, be nowhere in sight for most of the time, be too far away to get to in time, or just be up a mountain you have to scale, wasting precious time. Sure certain warframes can do it, but there are far more that cannot. If this were endgame content requiring specific warframes to be prepared I could understand, but nothing else in the bounties lends to this premise, causing artificial difficulty spikes just due to which camp you have to liberate.
• Night time was always hard to do liberate objectives on, but ever since the PoE remaster the enemies are far harder to see at night on any of the missions. I get that they are supposed to blend into the terrain, but this is supposed to be an assault on the camp. You have plenty of markers to find those in the camp initially after all.
• Lately on the Nintendo Switch version the bounty stages show up multiple times in a single bounty run. This just makes a bad situation worse. I was so discouraged when I managed to complete a miserably hard liberate run only to have a second one show up back-to-back in a different, harder area that I was unable to complete.

My take on this is simply that for solo players, this challenge is very poorly designed. The design issues rip control from a solo player's hands in certain circumstances. To be fair I can't really give an assessment of the bonus objective or the actual intended substance of the bounty stage itself until DE fixes the bugs and design flaws so that the player's own capabilities determine success or failure, not everything else.

Additional solutions:

• I will echo the OP's suggestions, as they are all really good. At the very least the design flaw fixes are a must; the only thing that should drop the control are enemies that enter the area after the timer starts when entering. If enemies in caves are causing issues, require their death prior to starting the countdown or despawn them for the duration of this bounty stage.
• Please DE, add markers to the closest enemies to the player, similar to exterminate missions. I know marking every single enemy coming in would be a bit much, but this is very necessary for night missions where solo players are having a miserable time trying to see anything.
• Remove the bug of duplicate stages.
• For the bonus, maybe change the "Don't let the control fall below X level" to a "Keep the control at X level by the end of the stage" so that if issues arise outside the player's control, they are at least given time to recover from them and salvage a bonus.
• Review and redistribute camp spawn locations...certain camps are not good choices for this bounty stage due to control zones being one or more camps located on the side of a mountain, valley, or body of water leading to a lot of problems from time to time. It's liberate the "camp", so why are we often dealing with control zones so large that they consist of multiple distinctly separate yet adjacent Grineer camps?

On 2019-09-23 at 3:40 PM, Nomayonnaiseinireland said:

2. Capture: Capture as a race against your squad

I would add that the bonus for capture really needs to not include companion kills. It's ridiculous how hard I try to avoid my companion doing something, and yet it always happens. Orb Vallis doesn't require completely reordering your loadout to complete bonuses, so I don't feel like PoE should either.

 

I'm gonna add one more: Sabotage the Supplies. Enemy counts for that one are occasionally not high enough on solo to complete without things getting difficult. I would like to see a slight reduction in the enemies required to kill from 30 down to 25 or 26, or an increase of enemies by a bit. It would also help if there was a slight delay on the game counting the stage as complete so that enemies around the last supply crate have more time to be kills, as people in a group can often attack the crate first accidentally or intentionally, and prevent group members from getting the bonus.

 

-JayronAuron

 

 

Edited October 17, 2019 by (NSW)JayronAuron

[Donfs]

Liberation

As a solo player Im happy Im able to finish this stage. Few months back it was near impossible to finish this at all when solo, so thanks for the fix, that said for a solo player the bonus is nearly impossible to get.

Assasination

That one minute time limit is brutal honestly. I run multiple bounties and I got to 14/15 once with 2 seconds on the clock. The problem is I think, not enough enemies around. And I just hope that this: 

On 2019-10-16 at 9:40 AM, DukeCatfishJr said:

nuh-uh buddy, in reality the bonus is to draw out AND kill the target. even if the target is here and a minute passes the bonus objective fails. at higher level bounties this is sometimes just humanly impossible to do this objective alone considering the circumstances accompanying said challenge.

is wrong. Because if that is true, Im lost for words.

 

I dont know how this goes for groups but for solo I would say adding more enemies might help here. I didnt have that much problem killing the enemies even on bounty 5 but there where non around with the assasination and in Liberation the area to search for them was so big and again not that many enemies and add to that I had hard time finding them anyway. I would even ask for enemy radar boost when in the open worlds, but it just might be Im getting old and others dont have problem seeing enemies.

[DukeCatfishJr]

On 2019-10-23 at 2:32 AM, Donfs said:

is wrong. Because if that is true, Im lost for words.

You're gonna have to double-check. Bonus objective DOES fail after that minute even if the target is present.

[RelentlessLogic]

On 2019-10-23 at 5:32 AM, Donfs said:

Assasination

That one minute time limit is brutal honestly. I run multiple bounties and I got to 14/15 once with 2 seconds on the clock. The problem is I think, not enough enemies around. And I just hope that this: 

is wrong. Because if that is true, Im lost for words.

The text on the bounty is in fact, incorrect. You must both draw out AND kill the assassination target within one minute.

Edited November 10, 2019 by Exodus3v5
spelling error