Survival rework suggestion ( Long Post ! )

[Bakahung]

Hello everyone .

In my opinion , survival is one of the most boring (next to Defection of course , which I will write a separate post ) . 
All player do is go in the mission and keep killing enemy over and over , while watching air meter slowly go up and down .
It's fun at the start , because Warframe's combat system is fun , but after a while it just become a boring task , with nothing changing over the entire mission . 
This lead to a lot of player just bring a squad and camp at one spot , and start chatting , playing mobile games or doing anything other then playing the game .

I want to change this .
And while doing so , also solve the problem of scaling reward , at least for survival .

Right now survival's reward is a static AABC rotation ( with some exception ) , and there is no reason to go over 20 minutes unless the player simply want to .
With rewards scaling , player will be willing to go for as long as possible to achieve the best reward , and be satisfied for it .

So , here is my change .
I will broke the concept down to smaller parts to make it easier to understand .

 

1) A simple solution to make survival more dynamic : Mini Quest .

This idea is simple . While doing Survival , Mini objective will show up on the map .
And if player finished it , they will get a reward that scales .If they failed , they got nothing .
Kind of like how a time ago , PoE would give us random objectives in day time .

Examples

The objectives can include :
kill X enemies in the area in X time
defeat a mini boss
protect a console for X time .
etc. 
the list can go on .
Mostly about killing , because those are what we do in survival .

Frequency

And about the frequency .
I think it showing up every 3~5 minutes will be fine , and start to do so at about 2:00~3:00 , and last for 2~3 minutes before they disappear ( If player didn't do it ) .

Addition note 

And don't worry , this feature may be annoying at PoE , but not in this case .
It's bad there because it interrupt our game play while we are not seeking it . When we want to fish , we want to fish , and not go protect a drone .
It will be fine in survival , because we are there to kill things . Adding things to kill is not bad .

With this change , survival mission can become more than killing for eternity , and also test the player's skill and team building to achieve these extra goals .

 

2) Rewards

The rewards should scale with time , as I state before . But what will they be exactly?

First of all , some nice air . ( Not stolen from Vay Hek . Maybe )

Doing objective is time consuming . 
player needs to run across the map , and take time to do the job .
And as we know , time is a very important resource is this game mode .
So if player didn't get their time back , this will discourage people to do them , or be very frustrated about it .
I think around 10% air will be fine , but it have to be determined by average completion time and some testing .

Next , the reward itself .

At the start ( first 20 min ) , the rewards may be very little . Maybe some cash , or some basic mods and endo .
Or maybe it can be a rare resource from that planet ?

But post that time , the rewards start to become something . 
I think refined relics will be best . going from Exceptional , to Radiant after 1 hour  . The relic's tier with be same as that mission .
This specific reward can also solve the problem of reactant farming being boring .

And if DE wants to , Kuva can also be add in . But this will be clash with kuva survival .

How to scale ?

I think the scaling should not be directly tied to time , but with complete times . 
Aka , the more time you complete the objective , the reward will be better .

First 4 time (~ 20 min ) , it will be little . And every 4 time ( 20 min) it will be better , and cap after 12 time ( 60 min ~ ) . 
Being every 4 time is to stay with the 20 minutes rotation .

The rewards don't have to go infinitely , just have to be good enough for players that stay. 

Why in this way ?

It can be scale with time but I want to change up a bit.
Also this will avoid some players exploiting the time base scaling , only doing objectives after 60 min .

Example

Let's say I'm doing MOT ( Void T4 survival ) , because I like Captain Vor and want to listen to his majestic speech .
I got to 35 minutes , and just finished my 6th mini quest .

In this case , I will got a rotation C from original reward , probably a relic .
Than I will also get 10% air for my time .
Last is an exceptional AXI relic .

 

3) Special Note .

First of all , I don't think all survival should be like this . I'm talking about kuva survival .

Kuva survival already have it's mini objective : kuva harvesting . And It's basically the same thing I just said except scaling . 
Players will occasionally go there for a long time for kuva . Maybe make it scale in some way to let people stay .

Next is arbitration .
Since arbitration already have a lesser version of scaling reward ( ABCCCCCC.... ) , I don't know if adding this addition will break the reward system .
Also it have a seperate drop table , so maybe being relics will not fit it .
I'm not sure , maybe relics will be fine .

 

4)The END

This is my suggestion of both making survival more fun and make rewards be better .

How do you guys think ? I hope DE will see the post and think about this , or even better if they already have their version of this topic .

DE is already starting to fixed the game , and they are doing great . They probably will start to look at reworking missions .

 

Thanks for reading . I'm now going to write about defection now .

Edited March 9, 2020 by Bakahung
Adding a idea for reward before 20 min ( rare resource )