An alteration to Defense missions to make them more challenging without annoying everybody

[JP3885]

Defense missions are farmed a lot in this game, and its a pretty cut and dry process with a kill frame even in arbitration.

This is because stronger enemies capable of resisting Saryn/Volt are pretty few and far between and they get cleared up easily while they are alone.

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The Nox is a good example of a counter to such tactics, since it is resistant to AoE and weak to precision damage. But its only a minor speed bump in most cases.

More enemies that are resistant to AoE but are weak to being shot precisely should be created in addition to the following change.

I propose making the waves more continuous by adding a kill counter similar to an exterminate where the next wave automatically starts when the counter is met, however more of the stronger enemies that are resistant to AoEs should be mixed in. This has a few implications:

• There should be enough of them spawning that they the can't "safely" be ignored, they should pose a mounting threat to the defense objective as they stack up.
• This keeps pressure on the players by having stronger units linger while weaker units reinforce them.
• This is similar to how old exterminate was changed to the current implementation, where instead of spawning exactly the number of targets to be killed it spawns continuously to represent a wave.
• Since there is a spawn limit to maps, the more strong units there are alive, the harder it is to speed through by AoEing all the weaker units down. Though maybe only a maximum of 40% of the units on the field can be the of stronger units, this allows AoEs to be useful but requires both AoE and precision weapons to be actively used to achieve optimal speed.
• The wave kill counter should vary from a quick to long exterminate from round to round, 80 - 220 kills per wave? This creates some variety from wave to wave, the ratio of strong to weak units can be adjusted accordingly (or randomly).

This would allow stronger/interesting units to exist without directly frustrating players since the wave doesn't require them to be killed to proceed (though it is a bad idea to let them stack up)

[Jutzo]

I don't see how that would make sense. It could spice up arbitrations but in normal missions your saryn would just cast her 1, wait 30 seconds and the map gets continuously wiped out without loss of her spores. I think that would make it even more boring and easier to afk.

[JP3885]

7 hours ago, Jutzo said:

I don't see how that would make sense. It could spice up arbitrations but in normal missions your saryn would just cast her 1, wait 30 seconds and the map gets continuously wiped out without loss of her spores. I think that would make it even more boring and easier to afk.

That is why more enemies that are meaningfully resistant to non-precision damage need to be created, the scaling of Saryn spores with lingering enemies is an issue but optimally it shouldn't be solved with damage immunity.

Like maybe a grineer unit that has an experimental nullifier device that only periodically activates to purge ongoing effects, this device could be breakable like the Scrambus' helmet being shot off to stop them to cancelling abilities.

[Jutzo]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb JP3885:

That is why more enemies that are meaningfully resistant to non-precision damage need to be created, the scaling of Saryn spores with lingering enemies is an issue but optimally it shouldn't be solved with damage immunity.

Like maybe a grineer unit that has an experimental nullifier device that only periodically activates to purge ongoing effects, this device could be breakable like the Scrambus' helmet being shot off to stop them to cancelling abilities.

It really still wouldn't work. Everyone would sit around with a sniper and saryns. The saryn would still have her spores go around the whole map, it would be like ESO survival for them, except that her spores still scale with the enemies and just make them die in one tick when they reach abnormal numbers. The grineer nullifiers wouldn't do the job as the spore are all around the map and it would be insane if they single handidly could cover that whole area. There is a reason we have break in between waves.

[JP3885]

59 minutes ago, Jutzo said:

It really still wouldn't work. Everyone would sit around with a sniper and saryns. The saryn would still have her spores go around the whole map, it would be like ESO survival for them, except that her spores still scale with the enemies and just make them die in one tick when they reach abnormal numbers. The grineer nullifiers wouldn't do the job as the spore are all around the map and it would be insane if they single handidly could cover that whole area. There is a reason we have break in between waves.

Well there still a break every 5 waves, but at this point in the discussion its more of an issue of Saryn being so overtuned limits that it limits design space.

"Precision" damage just means you have to aim to be effective rather than AoEing their whole body blindly, since the idea is to create a reason for combat diversity because the current set of enemies makes AoE frames and weapons very overwhelmingly optimal.

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The unit only needs to affect itself, this makes it resistant to DoTs and being perma CC'd. It would also incidentally be able to block some damage sometimes.

The objective is to expand the viability of other strategies and to give most of the other frames in the game some kind of use. 

As it is right now DE has designed themselves into a rather uninteresting corner where all they can do to make things harder is to give enemies outright immunity to things.

[Taiepii]

20 hours ago, Jutzo said:

I don't see how that would make sense. It could spice up arbitrations but in normal missions your saryn would just cast her 1, wait 30 seconds and the map gets continuously wiped out without loss of her spores. I think that would make it even more boring and easier to afk.

 

In that situation it doesnt make sense. But its only because of Saryn being Saryn. 

 

The actual idea of changing from wave to wave to a continious incoming enemy is great. And add up better gameplay to defense in my sense. 

 

Cause for player that dont want to use overkill Saryn/Volt for fun Frame. What most annoying than finding the last 3 mobs hiding smewhere on the map ?

His idea fix that problem.