The issue with Grendel missions

[DaLegends]

Allow me to preface this with the fact that I do thoroughly enjoy Warframe and have sunk multiple hundred hours into the game with no regrets. 

Now, on to the real topic. Grendel, and the missions required to farm him; Archaeo-freighter 20- minute survival, Icefields of Riddah 15- wave defense and Mine of Karishh 800-cryotic excavation. Now in concept, these missions are indeed a great idea, disabling mods adds an incredible challenge, one that I would actually like to see more in a more streamlined PvE mode perhaps in the future.

The main issue with these missions, is they are designed to be run in full squads, sounds fine right. Until you realize, that finding a full squad is near impossible unless you have 3 other close friends who want to do the mission. This is because plainly these missions are, as my friend puts it "painful", a tad extreme but the whole idea is that someone who completed this long ago, when the Grendel was introduced, many full squads wanted to be formed to get this new frame. On the contrary, nowadays players who missed the peak now have to play it solo a large proportion of the time.

This solo play, is again very un-optimized as it requires an unbelievable amount of effort, which is in most cases really not fun, and very time consuming. For example, a guide recommends allowing the defense target to regain health every few waves, this would be fine until you realize that to restore 30,000 health points would take easily 10-15 minutes, of just baiting one enemy around. 30,000 health points is around half of the health of the defense target. Which enemies can shred very quickly after the first five waves. 

How to combat this is an interesting issue, since that quite a number of people have already achieved the feat of getting this frame despite the many difficulties. So, simply "making the mission easier" would be incredibly unfair. I wish to suggest a system that scales difficulty with the number of players on the team, the idea for this system is from the Borderlands franchise in fact. And, if DE likes this idea, perhaps this could be implemented on certain modes, or even throughout the game.

Basically, the idea is to first lower the difficulty of the base level, so for Icefields of Riddah the aforementioned 15-wave defense. Keep the mode of disabled mods, but have the starting level be around 10-15. So solo players would still have to fight and try decently hard to beat the level. But the interesting part is if there are multiple squad members. So with each squad member, either the level (for simplicity) or health/ armor/ damage of the enemies increase by a certain percentage. Perhaps by around 10-20% per squad member. So missions do become more difficult, and perhaps to the original difficulty as designed in a full squad. But in a solo attempt, it would still be as difficult, but not to the point that playing solo would not be fun. Take into account how Borderlands raid bosses, though designed for a full squad, can be done solo, with similar approximate difficulty, of course with a few notable exceptions.

I hope DE can look into this minor issue regarding the continuity of these sets of missions. And perhaps look into my suggestion. If there are any questions, I would love to entertain them.

Edited January 26, 2020 by DaLegends

[kapn655321]

Spawn count may already scale to party member count.. but that aside, I would gladly run this with you. Haven't done it yet, and that big ol' bad boy is 100% going on my roster.

Edited January 26, 2020 by kapn655321

[DaLegends]

2 minutes ago, kapn655321 said:

Spawns may already scale to party member count.. but that aside, I would gladly run this with you. Haven't done it yet, and that big ol' bad boy is 100% going on my roster.

HAHA, would love to give it a shot, but definitely need a break. Also, thanks for pointing out the scaling. but I am suggesting of making the scaling a bit more drastic.

[kapn655321]

Just now, DaLegends said:

HAHA, would love to give it a shot, but definitely need a break. Also, thanks for pointing out the scaling. but I am suggesting of making the scaling a bit more drastic.

Sent a friend request in game. If you see me on later in the week or whenever, hit me up. Best of luck to ya.

[Buzlok]

I like your reasoning and wish more people on the forums thought like this. DE needs to put more balancing effort or even just attention into the game.