Fixing Lone Wolves in Public Survival

[kapn655321]

People enter public survivals to be lone wolves, because the enemy spawn rate is considered better.
This results in the spawns splitting across the stage and being generally worse for anyone who came there to be in a party during survival.
A way to fix this might be, have the enemy spawn rate tied to Affinity range share count, instead of player count.
If you want more spawns, you work with the party, not compete against them. As a co-op game, that just makes good sense.

^{Going into survivals in public is a roll of the dice (with really bad odds..) either you find a good team, or you find players treating it as a solo, to mooch your spawns. This is the more optimal thing for them to do than to play solo, so they are incentivized to not work together if they don't want to. Due to how the spawns work in game, they're also more likely to split spawns in their favor by staying away from others and moving from room to room. Often, I find it necessary to bail out early, because all drops and spawns are being hoarded by a lone wolf, getting preferential treatment from bankrupting spawns for others. Could we perhaps, not do that? I have to leave at 5min every time this happens, which is Most of the time. Location of spawns preferring grouped affinity range players would also help.}

Edited March 22, 2020 by kapn655321

[Kidkilla]

Some people like playing that way. This is why you have the 'invite only' button before you go on missions. 

[LSG501]

Just going to say this....

It's called survival, not kill all the enemies.

 

Splitting up reduces the number of enemies so from a survival basis it's arguably better... and to be fair I don't think I know anyone that goes into survivals for affinity...

[kapn655321]

5 hours ago, Kidkilla said:

Some people like playing that way. This is why you have the 'invite only' button before you go on missions. 

And for players seeking solo playstyles with no cooperation, there is Solo. This is a cooperative game first and foremost, unless you opt out.

4 hours ago, LSG501 said:

Just going to say this....

It's called survival, not kill all the enemies.

 

Splitting up reduces the number of enemies so from a survival basis it's arguably better... and to be fair I don't think I know anyone that goes into survivals for affinity...

Loot, cooperation, affinity, party cohesion, all play a role in this game. The largest part of this game's survival is that you need regular life support to churn out. Part of the core of this game is getting loot from killing enemies. Those are compromised and/or foregone when there is no cooperation.

Now, if there were a mode for the spawns to be increased for solo players, this would help, too.. it's the only reason they're there in public, undermining a great deal of the intent of the mission type.

[MysticDragonMage]

affinity range restriction is a universal problem. somtimes in survival with lone wolfs and other times with speedrunners in more liniar missions.

however, this is how we combat afk affinity leeching.

kinda just wish affinity range were in the player's control.

it would be cool if players could pick which other players to extend their affinity reach too no matter the range. if one player suspects another to be afk, they would be able to unlink their affinity reach specifically to that player.

through the process of a mission, affinity reach would be limited as it is now by default at the start. players can decide during missions which players to link their own affinity with at infinite range, or, set it to infinite for all players by default initially. over time, if a player is suddenly afk during the mission, other players can un-link their infinite affinity reach with that specific afk player.

[kapn655321]

52 minutes ago, MysticDragonMage said:

affinity range restriction is a universal problem. somtimes in survival with lone wolfs and other times with speedrunners in more liniar missions.

however, this is how we combat afk affinity leeching.

kinda just wish affinity range were in the player's control.

it would be cool if players could pick which other players to extend their affinity reach too no matter the range. if one player suspects another to be afk, they would be able to unlink their affinity reach specifically to that player.

through the process of a mission, affinity reach would be limited as it is now by default at the start. players can decide during missions which players to link their own affinity with at infinite range, or, set it to infinite for all players by default initially. over time, if a player is suddenly afk during the mission, other players can un-link their infinite affinity reach with that specific afk player.

Affinity range isn't so much AFK control as it is incentive to keep together as a cohesive and cooperative unit. We have relative control over this, with Fosfor. You'll still have to chase them down if they keep running, regardless. Fosfors are more handy for keeping safe distance while someone does something stealth, running interceptions, etc.. so there's Some control, but they're certainly not the answer, either.

The linking and unlinking would be more of a bandaid favoritism/punishment to encourage/discourage behavior player side, but I don't think it would do much aside from seeming snide and demanding.. which, those kinds of options are not ideal for co-op... especially because they'd be trying to fill a void that the game mechanics/catches/balances should address natively.

[LSG501]

8 hours ago, kapn655321 said:

Loot, cooperation, affinity, party cohesion, all play a role in this game. The largest part of this game's survival is that you need regular life support to churn out. Part of the core of this game is getting loot from killing enemies. Those are compromised and/or foregone when there is no cooperation.

 

None of what  you mentioned there, except affinity, is necessary to be together for....

Also as I said no one I know does survival for affinity, there are far better and faster options.

It really does sound like you're expecting a public group to play how YOU want to play... that's not how public works, if you want YOUR vision of survival you have invite and recruit chat.

[(XBOX)OdinAsteroid]

Are you talking about pure survival or survival fissures? Because it's annoying the hell out of me if people don't stick together until everyone has gotten 10 reactants. If you split up, reactants are going to be all over the place which results in people parkouring around in panic for the last minute trying to kill everything they see, corrupted or not (that state where enemies drop reactants), only further increasing the issue.

If you're talking about regular survival, I couldn't care less. It's not rewarding enough for me to play 🤷🏻‍♂️

[kapn655321]

13 hours ago, LSG501 said:

None of what  you mentioned there, except affinity, is necessary to be together for....

Loot and party buff mechanics cannot be obtained from 5 rooms away. Thought that was obvious.

[LSG501]

51 minutes ago, kapn655321 said:

Loot and party buff mechanics cannot be obtained from 5 rooms away. Thought that was obvious.

I said none of what you said is necessary ,.. I thought my comment was pretty obvious....and if you specifically wanted 'a loot party' then you have invite..

You shouldn't be expecting public groups to play exactly how YOU want to play....

 

Edited March 24, 2020 by LSG501

[kapn655321]

2 hours ago, LSG501 said:

You shouldn't be expecting public groups to play exactly how YOU want to play.

Ok, you keep banging on that note, so let's talk about it.

This is a cooperative looter/hoard shooter. Thousands of hours of my playtime in this game is survivals. How is it that you think I'm off base to think cooperating/looting/shooting aren't intended to be put together? What's your goal in a survival in Warframe? Is it... split up, not get loot for the party? Does that sound like it's working as intended?
 

[LSG501]

8 hours ago, kapn655321 said:

Ok, you keep banging on that note, so let's talk about it.

This is a cooperative looter/hoard shooter. Thousands of hours of my playtime in this game is survivals. How is it that you think I'm off base to think cooperating/looting/shooting aren't intended to be put together? What's your goal in a survival in Warframe? Is it... split up, not get loot for the party? Does that sound like it's working as intended?
 

So once again you're expecting players to play how YOU want them to play....

Not everyone wants to do it in the same way and in public groups that is entirely their choice.  As I (and others) have said if you want people to play exactly how YOU want, then you can go to recruit chat, use invite etc... it really is simple.

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

1 hour ago, LSG501 said:

So once again you're expecting players to play how YOU want them to play....

Not everyone wants to do it in the same way and in public groups that is entirely their choice.  As I (and others) have said if you want people to play exactly how YOU want, then you can go to recruit chat, use invite etc... it really is simple.

 

so ur saying because they want to play any way they want when games have set rules and mechanics, granted in single player and board games u can just cheat or make up rules as u see fit, in online games u cant

my point is, the one wanting to play the game incorrectly is playing incorrectly, i didn't make up the rules, they didn't make up the rules, and u didnt make up the rules, DIGITAL EXTREMES made up the rules, and if u want to negatively impact other players because somehow u can 

being forced to chase u 1000m across the map when ur a gause, that happend to move the spawns in an axi fissure survival and causing me to not get 10 reactant in 5 mins is some how  makes"they should play the way they want" a correct statement how? it literally makes the mission unplayable at times....

so before u chime in with ur entitled elitist attitude, plz think about what ur saying before u say it, because ur sounding pretty dumb right now

im not expecting people to play the way i want, im expecting to win the mission if its a level 10-15 mission, with mastery 10+ players, not run out of life support at 15 mins and have no reactant 

Edited March 24, 2020 by (PS4)Spider_Enigma

[LSG501]

9 minutes ago, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

 

so ur saying because they want to play any way they want when games have set rules and mechanics, granted in single player and board games u can just cheat or make up rules as u see fit, in online games u cant

my point is, the one wanting to play the game incorrectly is playing incorrectly, i didn't make up the rules, they didn't make up the rules, and u didnt make up the rules, DIGITAL EXTREMES made up the rules, and if u want to negatively impact other players because somehow u can 

being forced to chase u 1000m across the map when ur a gause, that happend to move the spawns in an axi fissure survival and causing me to not get 10 reactant in 5 mins is some how  makes"they should play the way they want" a correct statement how? it literally makes the mission unplayable at times....

so before u chime in with ur entitled elitist attitude, plz think about what ur saying before u say it, because ur sounding pretty dumb right now

im not expecting people to play the way i want, im expecting to win the mission if its a level 10-15 mission, with mastery 10+ players, not run out of life support at 15 mins and have no reactant 

The issue is the person (and you) making the thread is expecting people to play how they want to play in a public group when public groups do not have a set of rules to follow in regards to how you do the mission and as such you shouldn't expect others to do as you do.  Yes we hope that players might follow the unwritten rules for maximum return but that shouldn't be expected or complained about if someone chooses not to do so, that is why there is invite/recruit option in the game...

There are no set rules for any mission in this game other than the basic basis of the mission, in the case of survival that is to survive, in capture that is capture the target, you don't need to go round killing the enemies etc (in fact there is a riven challenge which specifically says not to kill enemies)...trying to make out there are other enforceable rules outside of the mission basis is just farcical. 

 

And LOL at me being the entitled elitist attitude and sounding dumb... have you read what you've written...your entire argument is literally I want people to do it my way so your way is wrong....that is the definition of elitist/entitled....

How am I being entitled/elitist when I'm saying players in a public group can play the missions however they want to play them and if I or another player wants a specific experience in the mission we have invite/recruit to get a squad of like minded people.... 

 

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

2 hours ago, LSG501 said:

The issue is the person (and you) making the thread is expecting people to play how they want to play in a public group when public groups do not have a set of rules to follow in regards to how you do the mission and as such you shouldn't expect others to do as you do.  Yes we hope that players might follow the unwritten rules for maximum return but that shouldn't be expected or complained about if someone chooses not to do so, that is why there is invite/recruit option in the game...

There are no set rules for any mission in this game other than the basic basis of the mission, in the case of survival that is to survive, in capture that is capture the target, you don't need to go round killing the enemies etc (in fact there is a riven challenge which specifically says not to kill enemies)...trying to make out there are other enforceable rules outside of the mission basis is just farcical. 

 

And LOL at me being the entitled elitist attitude and sounding dumb... have you read what you've written...your entire argument is literally I want people to do it my way so your way is wrong....that is the definition of elitist/entitled....

How am I being entitled/elitist when I'm saying players in a public group can play the missions however they want to play them and if I or another player wants a specific experience in the mission we have invite/recruit to get a squad of like minded people.... 

 

so next ur going to tell me to play a co-op game solo if i dont like how players are playing, thats how these convos always go

and i should let 1 random ruin the spawns of a public fissure so no one can even open relics, heaven forbid im forced to abort to find another squad, when it happens 99% of the time that one guy runs off and everyone is forced to chase them around the map

so if u can play the way u want... y do i have to follow u around the map and not play the way i want, or even play at all most of the time when im forced to chase drops so i can even do the mission?

what exactly is ur counter point that isnt a "NO YOU!" response?

the set rules of a survival are to not run out of life support or the mission is failed 

splitting up ruins spawns, making less life support drop, ergo failing the mission

how hard is that to understand?

every game mode has objectives, those objectives are the rules of the mission...

when a mission is failed, u clearly did something wrong to make the mission fail did u not?

Edited March 24, 2020 by (PS4)Spider_Enigma

[LSG501]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

so next ur going to tell me to play a co-op game solo if i dont like how players are playing, thats how these convos always go

and i should let 1 random ruin the spawns of a public fissure so no one can even open relics, heaven forbid im forced to abort to find another squad, when it happens 99% of the time that one guy runs off and everyone is forced to chase them around the map

so if u can play the way u want... y do i have to follow u around the map and not play the way i want, or even play at all most of the time when im forced to chase drops so i can even do the mission?

what exactly is ur counter point that isnt a "NO YOU!" response?

the set rules of a survival are to not run out of life support or the mission is failed 

splitting up ruins spawns, making less life support drop, ergo failing the mission

how hard is that to understand?

every game mode has objectives, those objectives are the rules of the mission...

when a mission is failed, u clearly did something wrong to make the mission fail did u not?

See this is where my point is being proven for me... you're trying to make out I'm the entitled one again and all you're doing is showing that you're the one who wants players to play YOUR way... that is acting entitled... YOU CAN NOT EXPECT A PUBLIC GROUP TO ALL ACT AS YOU WANT THEM TO... what's next on your list of rules that don't exist, expecting everyone to bring a farming frame to survival so you can all get extra drops...

Your entire expectation of how a mission should be run is why there is recruit/invite options, it's so YOU can get the sort of squad you desire in a mission.... that isn't what public groups are for and clearly that is far too hard for you to understand.

[kapn655321]

6 hours ago, LSG501 said:

So once again you're expecting players to play how YOU want them to play....

Not everyone wants to do it in the same way and in public groups that is entirely their choice.  As I (and others) have said if you want people to play exactly how YOU want, then you can go to recruit chat, use invite etc... it really is simple.

It's about what the optimal course is. If it's more optimal to abandon your party, take scatter all the spawns and loot to the wind, ignore mechanics and affinity.. people will, and are. It makes good sense that there is greater incentive for players to work together, rather than to benefit them leaving others high and dry in a co-op game.

I'll put it this way. Ever been in a defense, where people just aren't defending the defense point? They're just playing how they want. I'm not saying we punish those players, but we certainly don't give them the upper hand to encourage that.

Edited March 24, 2020 by kapn655321

[LSG501]

44 minutes ago, kapn655321 said:

It's about what the optimal course is. If it's more optimal to abandon your party, take scatter all the spawns and loot to the wind, ignore mechanics and affinity.. people will, and are. It makes good sense that there is greater incentive for players to work together, rather than to benefit them leaving others high and dry in a co-op game.

I'll put it this way. Ever been in a defense, where people just aren't defending the defense point? They're just playing how they want. I'm not saying we punish those players, but we certainly don't give them the upper hand to encourage that.

I already said it might be optimal approach but at the same time it still doesn't change the fact that in a public group there is nothing that says you have to do it the optimal way or even in any particular way....  if you want that approach the best way to get it is via invite/recruit. 

[kapn655321]

10 minutes ago, LSG501 said:

I already said it might be optimal approach but at the same time it still doesn't change the fact that in a public group there is nothing that says you have to do it the optimal way or even in any particular way....  if you want that approach the best way to get it is via invite/recruit. 

I agree that a player is not obligated to play the optimal way... I rarely if ever do, myself.

The point being, when the optimal path undoes the intent of cooperation, leading the party the step on each other's toes more than help. If the resulting playstyle isn't fitting to the design and intent of the game, then it could use some refining.

Railjack was built with a cooperative balance in mind, and changed aspects of how playstyles are incentivized and accentuated, to better fit this intent. Survival, being a much older design, has fallen away from this by no fault of it's own.. but has fallen away none the less.

The feel I get from playing a survival is that, it's every man for themselves, loot, affinity, and cooperation is a foregone notion, since it will be scattered across the total map. Kills and spawns aren't reliable, as anyone who feels like treating it as solo, can strip you of spawns.. so ideally, everyone ignores everyone and competes for spawns by being farther and farther apart. ...That just doesn't seem like it should be the optimal solution, to me.

[LSG501]

Just now, kapn655321 said:

I agree that a player is not obligated to play the optimal way... I rarely if ever do, myself.

The point being, when the optimal path undoes the intent of cooperation, leading the party the step on each other's toes more than help. If the resulting playstyle isn't fitting to the design and intent of the game, then it could use some refining.

Railjack was built with a cooperative balance in mind, and changed aspects of how playstyles are incentivized and accentuated, to better fit this intent. Survival, being a much older design, has fallen away from this by no fault of it's own.. but has fallen away none the less.

The feel I get from playing a survival is that, it's every man for themselves, loot, affinity, and cooperation is a foregone notion, since it will be scattered across the total map. Kills and spawns aren't reliable, as anyone who feels like treating it as solo, can strip you of spawns.. so ideally, everyone ignores everyone and competes for spawns by being farther and farther apart. ...That just doesn't seem like it should be the optimal solution, to me.

This game doesn't have cooperative balance.... most missions are everyone for themselves to see who can get the most kills, at least in public groups...

Railjack, that might have been designed with cooperation in mind but it has very little in reality in public groups. 

The only sure fire way to get any sort of cooperation is to play with a pre arranged group, it just won't work any other way. 

As to survival, as I said the main goal of survival is to survive, it's not about how many you kill or the loot you get, it was players that made survival about loot farming (with the right group of frames) because it was faster and more efficient in most cases (you can blame DE for that one) but if you're not there to specifically farm something there's very little reason to stick together if you just want to go as long as you can. 

[Ecclessia]

Let's be honest, today in most cases survival is about farming stuff, sticking together and getting more oxygen, affinity, loot, creds and literally survivability, specifically if there's Nekros in party or some other augmented in drop-oriented way frame.

 

Yes, potentially people can try and run away in solo survival, but they have SOLO mode for that kind of gameplay. It's okay to go alone and do stuff like kuva siphon, when other squadmates do base mission objectives, but it's completely not okay, when you just come and reduce outcome for others. Maybe survivals need rework in next way - you start survival when you come near first and only one life support, which provides slowly degenerating oxygen, but in one room only. Room's doors get kind of forcefields, which hold oxygen, but not enemies and tenno. When life support runs out of oxygen (while being actively refilled by getting same oxygen canisters from enemies), it gives tenno another 20-30-40 seconds to run to next life support, which appears only after first one is depleted. And appears only in single copy. If player goes away from room with active life support - he starts to get hard health degeneration like in current survival, when all oxygen runs out. If some player failed to get to new life support tower before he got run out of after-lifesupport-tower 20-30-40 second oxygen - he gets same health degen.

Tl;dr - you come in room, survive there as long as you can get enough oxygen to refill constantly lowered level of oxygen, after tower finally depletes - you run to next just appeared tower for a short timespan; if you go out of the room while tower is "online" - you start losing health, if you fail to run to next tower in timespan after current tower is depleted - you start losing health too.

 

This would keep players together, this would still be survival with literally same way of killing as many enemies as possible, and this would also make players to change places sometimes to prevent complete boredom of spamming e, 4 or whatever crowd-killing frame/weapon would be brought into mission.

[Sadraven]

On 2020-03-24 at 5:21 PM, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

so if u can play the way u want... y do i have to follow u around the map and not play the way i want

It's always like this in multiplayer games, if you don't like it play with friends.

On 2020-03-24 at 5:21 PM, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

99% of the time that one guy runs off and everyone is forced to chase them around the map

I bet that guy would say: "99% of the time one guy trying to force everyone to camp in some corner. How boring is that?"

Edited March 25, 2020 by Sadraven

[LSG501]

14 minutes ago, Sadraven said:

It's always like this in multiplayer games, if you don't like it play with friends.

 

you quoted the wrong person.... that's not from my posts...

[Sadraven]

Sorry, that was quote from quote of your quote or something like that.

 

[kapn655321]

5 hours ago, Ecclessia said:

Let's be honest, today in most cases survival is about farming stuff, sticking together and getting more oxygen, affinity, loot, creds and literally survivability, specifically if there's Nekros in party or some other augmented in drop-oriented way frame.

 

Yes, potentially people can try and run away in solo survival, but they have SOLO mode for that kind of gameplay. It's okay to go alone and do stuff like kuva siphon, when other squadmates do base mission objectives, but it's completely not okay, when you just come and reduce outcome for others. Maybe survivals need rework in next way - you start survival when you come near first and only one life support, which provides slowly degenerating oxygen, but in one room only. Room's doors get kind of forcefields, which hold oxygen, but not enemies and tenno. When life support runs out of oxygen (while being actively refilled by getting same oxygen canisters from enemies), it gives tenno another 20-30-40 seconds to run to next life support, which appears only after first one is depleted. And appears only in single copy. If player goes away from room with active life support - he starts to get hard health degeneration like in current survival, when all oxygen runs out. If some player failed to get to new life support tower before he got run out of after-lifesupport-tower 20-30-40 second oxygen - he gets same health degen.

Tl;dr - you come in room, survive there as long as you can get enough oxygen to refill constantly lowered level of oxygen, after tower finally depletes - you run to next just appeared tower for a short timespan; if you go out of the room while tower is "online" - you start losing health, if you fail to run to next tower in timespan after current tower is depleted - you start losing health too.

 

This would keep players together, this would still be survival with literally same way of killing as many enemies as possible, and this would also make players to change places sometimes to prevent complete boredom of spamming e, 4 or whatever crowd-killing frame/weapon would be brought into mission.

I could see something like this for open worlds. ..heading deep into a base, and triggering a state where they lock you in and try to choke you out. As for normal survivals, there's a few reasons this wouldn't really work out.. 1, the spawns, 2 the maps, 3 the intent to shake up, "hallway hero," where a party just camps.

I think part of why survivals are as they are now, is that they had to do something to counteract the hallway hero meta. Something I might suggest to shake that up is, something like boarding parties in Railjack. Can't stand with your back to the wall, when the wall also spawns enemies. ..something to this effect could be used to shake people out of comfort zones when they've been too stationary. It's good to keep players on the move, but Together, on the move. It's like Disruption has the right formula for keeping a party working together, while being able to spread out.. but not so far that it's a detriment to overall coop quality.