Plague Star Quality of Life Feedback and Requests

[Voltage]

Plague Star could use many updates to this system that I believe would be healthy for the user experience without impacting the time investment/mission design too much. I respect the nature of this mission, but there are some issues/annoyances or simple changes that would make the experience more enjoyable. Dialogue is something that bothers me about the Operation as it is tied to objective pacing, but I have no solution on improving this aspect without just removing most of the unnecessary voice lines from Konzu, The Lotus, and Vay Hek.

Pre-Game: Eidolon Phylaxis and Infested Catalysts
This gear pre-requisite allows for additional Hemocyte encounters as well as additional standing. The cap in your inventory is 10 per session which translates to 2 solo runs, 5 duo runs, and 10 full squad runs. This cap should be increased to 200 (similar to restores and ciphers) to ensure both squads and solo players can stay as long as they like. I made a thread regarding this issue last Plague Star:

Plague Star: Stage One
Retrieving the mixer could use a few changes. Firstly, the waypoints in many caves need to be addressed and fixed. Navigating a few of the caves requires memorization as the waypoints are misleading depending on player position. Second, this bounty stage should have a bonus objective for additional standing. This objective could be to kill a specific amount of Grineer (15?) for example. This would entice players to slow down slightly to increase standing rewards. This would also bring combat gameplay to one of the least combat-oriented objectives as an option.

Plague Star: Stage Two
The mixing vault could use some changes as well. This is the longest part of the mission, and probably the most boring considering the Grineer are lower level. A bonus objective could be added for additional standing in which players must shoot down X drop-ships, or prevent the console from losing more than X% health much like Armored Vault bonus objectives.

Plague Star: Stage Three
The drone needs more standardized spawns. RNG can give you a 350 meter objective to over 1000. Having a range is fine, but this should be tightened to ~400-700 at the very least. The bonus objective that exists is most likely an oversight, but this should remain and give more than the measly 50 standing it currently does.

Plague Star: Stage Four
The Hemocyte encounter could use a bonus objective as well to give all stages a bonus for additional standing. This bonus could be "Finish this stage without any player dropping below X% health". This would reduce how mindless this stage is for most, and also give a sense of team-play of keeping others healed for more rewards.

Queuing Multiple Plague Star Runs
Please allow all tents in Plains of Eidolon to queue Plague Star. The closest ones are 700+ meters from the boil. This seems small, but it would streamline multiple runs as there is a tent right behind the boil, but unfortunately it only has T1 bounties listed.

Rewards
Plague Star rewards within the bounty are quite outdated:

Remove:

• Augur Message
• Cetus Wisp
• Revenant Chassis
• Vigilante Pursuit
• Gladiator Finesse

Keep: 

• 300 Endo
• Vaulted Neo Relic

Change: 

• Increase Kuva from 100 to 1000 (or something more relevant).

Add: 

• Zenurik Lens replacing the Augur Message (Common)
• 3 Ayatan Amber Stars replacing the Revenant Chassis (Uncommon)
• 30,000 Credits Cache replacing the Cetus Wisp (Uncommon)
• 3 Nitain Extract replacing Gladiator Finesse (Rare)

Completing all bonus objectives I proposed would give you an additional reward much like a normal bounty. The standing gained could equal somewhere around 500. This would not break the standing costs on Forma and other items, but it would make players have additional standing per run if they choose to complete side objectives.

Within Nakak's Operational Supply, add the Machete blueprint for 3,000 standing and 5,000 Credits much like the Ether Daggers blueprint and the Snipetron blueprint. This would give a solid means of aquisition for this weapon.

This is just a large list of things I noticed that would improve Plague Star and bring it up to date with the current game. I've run Plague Star each time it has released, and not much has changed or been updated.

Edited January 21, 2020 by Voltage

[(XBOX)EPOSSTYLE]

Give the hemocyte an update It moves like a robotic stick figure! And why doesn't it move. Its supposed to be a defense mechanism. It appears and proceeds to be not very interested in attacking u. Where is its mobilty gone. If it was a police it would arrive and throw tickets from the curb?

All non rate rewards should be removed. What 8s special about an event that give run of mill rewards. 

 

[MysticDragonMage]

also, add a more variety of infested bosses/mini bosses besides just the laphantis hemocyte 4 times in a row. its too repetitive and the difficulty scale depends entirely on the amount of heath and damage the next hemocyte has.

• juggernaut
• juggernaut behemoth
• phorid
• hemocyte

in that order. if fighting a juggernaut behemoth after a regular behemoth seems too repetitive, then i suggest including either vey hek's terra frame or Zealoid Prelate as a final boss since those two are the only ones remotely related to either the infested or this event. id also suggest that the jordas golem is an option if it is at all possible; transitioning from ground to aerial combat would be awesome.

Edited January 22, 2020 by MysticDragonMage

[zuraja]

On 2020-01-20 at 8:30 PM, Voltage said:

Plague Star: Stage Three
The drone needs more standardized spawns. RNG can give you a 350 meter objective to over 1000. Having a range is fine, but this should be tightened to ~400-700 at the very least. The bonus objective that exists is most likely an oversight, but this should remain and give more than the measly 50 standing it currently does.

They also really need to take a look at the thing's pathfinding.  So far I've had three runs die on this stage because the drone got caught on a rock and there's nothing that can be done to break it loose.