15 Minute Survival - Impossible For Some

[Fulmir]

Anybody even slightly considering the possibility of implementing a system for guaranteed oxygen drop provided you don't just haphazardly shoot enemies? Anyone? I think it kinda makes sense to be able to harvest oxygen from corpses in the event you manage not to ruin their individual supplies. Grineer and Corpus get little oxygen backpacks and mask sets. Infested have little air bladders or something. Seriously, problem solved. No need to argue about RNG being viable or not, it reduces the need for efficient Lotus drops, and actually makes shooting enemies require a tidbit of conscious thought.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I could really be onto something here. Will it take a bit of time from the devs? Yes. Should it be difficult? No. It's like adding another headshot zone that you want to avoid shooting.

 

Honestly, not a fan of this idea for a couple of reasons.

 

* It punishes even slightly inaccurate weapons as well as mods that grant Puncture ( which is already less than useful). Plus what about melee weapons? I just sliced you in half, that's going to somehow not touch the oxygen tank I just sliced through?

 

* It implies that half the enemies for the Corpus (the robots) are suddenly not going to drop Oxygen while all Grineer enemies will? That doesn't sound balanced.

 

* It's likely to remove the danger of running out of oxygen for any player that's geared around getting Headshots in the first place, unless that's where you put the oxygen in which case high level Grineer is now impossible.

 

Plus all of this is more modeling, animation, and coding work for the devs all to solve a problem that doesn't, strictly speaking, need all of that.

 

That really depends on how the developers intended the maps to be played. It's not abusing anything if that's how they intended.

 

Do we have a livestream of them playing survival? Might be something to watch to see how they did it.

 

If the devs intended us to have to use knowledge that is in no way clearly communicated to the player in order to beat Survival to 15 minutes then that's horrible design.

[RaMeDaDa]

I've seen in the wiki that there's a bug that Loki Disarm will cause mobs not to drop any loots including O2 in T3 survival for now. Maybe this is the problem?

[Plutocola]

Hard = Fun

Easy = Booring

You want a esay game. Play Power Rangers

[Creovex]

I have two points to bring up about this....

 

1) 15 minutes is possible single player... Trust me, I have done it plenty lately.

2) Anyone else notice the following with survival:

    a) Enemies are now hard

    b) Enemies escalate faster

    c) Rewards are now tiered in the mission (5 mins is always now 1-2k, 10 mins is usually creds again if anything and 15 mins is usually just some part BP)

 

And I have to ask, wtf is with fighting Corpus in Surivial, then Ancients appear, and then more Corpus??? Wouldn't the Corpus be shooting the Ancients since they are INFESTED???

[taiiat]

Hard = Fun

Easy = Booring

in this case, it would be the other way round. because enemies aren't always spawning at the 'correct' speed, it gets 'hard' by you losing. not because it was actually difficult. which in turn, makes it easy, because the enemy count is too low.

 

so to make Survival match your equalities there, enemy spawning needs to have some changes, so enemies are always spawning in large amounts, which in turn makes it a more difficult gamemode, but an easier one at the same time, because being effective at combating the enemies means you'll be able to maintain the Oxygen.

 

but running out of Oxygen while you run around looking for enemies, is super easy and boring, but results in a loss, which means it's 'hard'. 

[serpentis24]

Dont you have some decent players that can play with you?

It really isnt that hard and dont tell me you havent Potatoed all your Frames (at least your most favourites) and some weapons, cmon youre a Grand Master, you should have more than enough decent stuff to survive even more than 15 Min. You could even carry some lower players which can additionally give the team a buff or debuff the enemys if they do not have the best DPS Weapons etc.

Whats wrong about some challenge in the game. This is exactly what this game needs : decent Challenges besides highlevel Defs.

Stop crying and l2p or search players that carry you through. Jeez

This.

[Kesella]

Its more about the rooms you have than the enemies droping stuff.  I have done two t3 survivals since the change.  The first one had our first room being a massive one with three floors needing a elevator to go from the second to the third floor and enemies spawning on all three floors.  We were down to under half oxygen before the second Life Support drop came due to how spread out the enemies were.  We barely made 10 minutes.  My second one had much more favorable rooms and we made it to 20 minutes.  Both times I was top kills on my Mag.  This can be fixed simply by removing the massive rooms so that enemies spawns are more compact making it easier to kill them faster thus forcing more spawns.  This way you are fighting more the enemies than fighting to get to them.

[PapaKicks]

If the devs intended us to have to use knowledge that is in no way clearly communicated to the player in order to beat Survival to 15 minutes then that's horrible design.

 

You _assumed_ how you thought the game mode should be played. Maybe your assumption was wrong.

 

Note the distinction between the words "survival" and "exterminate"...

[luanle21]

solve its by spam rhino stomp and nova MP works like a charm

[Fulmir]

I have two points to bring up about this....

1) 15 minutes is possible single player... Trust me, I have done it plenty lately.
2) Anyone else notice the following with survival:
a) Enemies are now hard
b) Enemies escalate faster
c) Rewards are now tiered in the mission (5 mins is always now 1-2k, 10 mins is usually creds again if anything and 15 mins is usually just some part BP)

And I have to ask, wtf is with fighting Corpus in Surivial, then Ancients appear, and then more Corpus??? Wouldn't the Corpus be shooting the Ancients since they are INFESTED???

Regarding numbers A and B, yes, sort of, I don't think they've changed the enemies much, they're just pushing you to stay longer so you run into harder enemies and more of them.

C was flat out in the patch notes. Void Survival now doesn't drop its Prime stuff until 15 minutes, the others are credit drops (with maybe a small chance for a Rare Mod, though I'd need confirmation as that's mostly speculation on my part).

I have no idea what's up with Corpus having Infested Ancients pop up in Survival, never seen it happen. If you're talking about the Void that's not Corpus or Infested, it's all Corrupted which are their own faction.

We (or at least me) are not saying 15 minutes is impossible flat out, but things like the randomly generated map layout have a massively adverse affect on your ability to succeed by affecting how air drops are dispersed. This is very very noticeable on Void missions, probably because of how the tile-set is laid out and how it distributes spawns.

You _assumed_ how you thought the game mode should be played. Maybe your assumption was wrong.

Note the distinction between the words "survival" and "exterminate"...

I'm going off of what I know to be good game design (from things that have been written on the topic). As a designer you shouldn't make a "par" level of play dependent on mechanics you're not going to explain to the player, like map generation and enemy spawn mechanics. It's fine to have a high level of play make use of meta-knowledge like this but since these aren't explained mechanics they can change without the devs having to inform the players what changed. If DE wanted us to make use of this knowledge it would be presented in game. If they do require us to make use of this to hit 15 minutes in Void Survivals and the knowledge isn't presented to the players anywhere that's bad game design. Edited October 18, 2013 by Fulmir

[CyklonDX]

This /\

Pluto > Palus

This was 3 man stand. Nekros ppl... nekros.

Edited October 18, 2013 by CyklonDX

[Fulmir]

[iMAGE REDACTED FOR POST SIZE]

This /\

Pluto > Palus

This was 3 man stand. Nekros ppl... nekros.

 

Nekros shouldn't be required for Survival though >.> Honestly I'd be in favor of removing his ability to generate extra Life Support since that makes it easier to balance the game mode since you don't have to take him into account. He'd still be useful because ammo, energy orbs, and Health Orbs but he wouldn't be required.

[PapaKicks]

I'm going off of what I know to be good game design (from things that have been written on the topic). As a designer you shouldn't make a "par" level of play dependent on mechanics you're not going to explain to the player, like map generation and enemy spawn mechanics. It's fine to have a high level of play make use of meta-knowledge like this but since these aren't explained mechanics they can change without the devs having to inform the players what changed. If DE wanted us to make use of this knowledge it would be presented in game. If they do require us to make use of this to hit 15 minutes in Void Survivals and the knowledge isn't presented to the players anywhere that's bad game design.

 

 

You mean like boss strategies are explained? You have a very close-minded view of game play design in my opinion. Sometimes games want you to experiment until you find strategies that work. Not walk in and fail and decide it's broken without trying other options.

 

Nekros shouldn't be required for Survival though >.> Honestly I'd be in favor of removing his ability to generate extra Life Support since that makes it easier to balance the game mode since you don't have to take him into account. He'd still be useful because ammo, energy orbs, and Health Orbs but he wouldn't be required.

 

Nekros is not required. Our team was Ash, Loki, Frost, and one more I can't remember (but wasn't one of the "omg must have" frames).

 

[HollowExistence]

Whether we have an issue at hand or not, it is clear imo. That game modes and especially the win conditions should not be rng based. If you blame bad oxygen drops on spawns then this is somewhat of a bad design. On the other hand if you get no drops of oxygen at all, the game stops being fun nor challenging. I think someone should look into this

Edited October 18, 2013 by HollowExistence

[Fulmir]

You mean like boss strategies are explained? You have a very close-minded view of game play design in my opinion. Sometimes games want you to experiment until you find strategies that work. Not walk in and fail and decide it's broken without trying other options.

 

Maybe I should clarify what I mean by "explained". In this context when I said "explained" I mean "communicated to the player in some way". Things like where to hit a boss, and the basics of their attacks *are* explained to the player, and from this you can develop a strategy. On the other hand the spawn mechanics for enemies are entirely black-box (black-box meaning information goes in and comes out but what happens inside is completely opaque), the player isn't given any information about them so anything they managed to determine should be incidental to the gameplay, not a requirement of it.

 

Nekros is not required. Our team was Ash, Loki, Frost, and one more I can't remember (but wasn't one of the "omg must have" frames).

 

Sure, not in all situations, but if you get a bad map setup or just get unlucky with air drops you're very very *VERY* likely to fail without him and are even likely to fail with him.

 

As an example I ran a couple of T3 Survivals yesterday with a very solid team. Same people both times, both times we had a Nekros. The first one we got a good map setup and breezed through to 25 minutes before leaving.

 

The second time, same team comp, same strategy we had to make a mad dash for the exit at 15 minutes just as our air ran out because we got unlucky with the maps generation. Very linear map, maybe one room had more than two active doors, we were just flat out screwed over by something outside of our control. If we hadn't had the Nekros there was no way we could have made it to 15 minutes and as it was we ran out of air at like 15:30.

 

That's a huge disparity and it's almost entirely outside of the player's control, that's frustrating not challenging.

[Makemap]

Its more about the rooms you have than the enemies droping stuff.  I have done two t3 survivals since the change.  The first one had our first room being a massive one with three floors needing a elevator to go from the second to the third floor and enemies spawning on all three floors.  We were down to under half oxygen before the second Life Support drop came due to how spread out the enemies were.  We barely made 10 minutes.  My second one had much more favorable rooms and we made it to 20 minutes.  Both times I was top kills on my Mag.  This can be fixed simply by removing the massive rooms so that enemies spawns are more compact making it easier to kill them faster thus forcing more spawns.  This way you are fighting more the enemies than fighting to get to them.

+1 Seems like everyone is complaining about the drops, but not even complaining about the rooms. I think they are ignoring the room issue.

[taiiat]

+1 Seems like everyone is complaining about the drops, but not even complaining about the rooms. I think they are ignoring the room issue.

probably because it is less apparent to the player while you're fighting for your life. yno, you don't notice the trees and grass that much while you're having a drag race on the road. 'cause it you look at the scenery, you might die.

[PapaKicks]

Sure, not in all situations, but if you get a bad map setup or just get unlucky with air drops you're very very *VERY* likely to fail without him and are even likely to fail with him.

 

As an example I ran a couple of T3 Survivals yesterday with a very solid team. Same people both times, both times we had a Nekros. The first one we got a good map setup and breezed through to 25 minutes before leaving.

 

The second time, same team comp, same strategy we had to make a mad dash for the exit at 15 minutes just as our air ran out because we got unlucky with the maps generation. Very linear map, maybe one room had more than two active doors, we were just flat out screwed over by something outside of our control. If we hadn't had the Nekros there was no way we could have made it to 15 minutes and as it was we ran out of air at like 15:30.

 

That's a huge disparity and it's almost entirely outside of the player's control, that's frustrating not challenging.

 

Maybe you need to re-read the thread's title? I'm not arguing RNG has no affect on the gameplay. I'm arguing that 15 min is possible for pretty much everyone, with any setup. Assuming they are properly ranked.

 

Speaking of... To the OP: What is your Mod rating? Maybe you don't have a big enough mod collection to be "max level players" like you think you are. A rank 30 frame and weapon is just as weak as unranked until you add mods.

[lolRebel]

- Get Nova

- Get Trinity

- Last as long until you get bored

- Profit 

[Retrikaethan]

ok so *be me, grab mah nova, dang that is a sweeet nova. confirm presence of le carrier, le enemeh radrr queeck theenking, RAAAAGE*cough*, lots an lots of vitaliteh, dat prime skeel, and all teh power efficiency you could hope two muster. ze game plan? F*** everything ze F*** up. F***. load gemes. be immortal. shoot things faces. get teh bloo. FIRE ZE MISS- PRIME TEH ENEMEH shewt teh tings runse roopeet ooonteel boaard or every ded*

 

(i apologize to all of the non-english speaking people of warframe for this abomination of a sentence. ^_^;;;;)

[Cryp2Nite]

...i apologize to all of the non-english speaking people...

 

Like yourself? oO

[Retrikaethan]

Like yourself? oO

i'm not sure i had a point in writing that out as i did, i was mocking the incompetence of the original threadmaker who apparently can't kill S#&$ to save his life (litterally!)

edit*oh i guess what i meant by that is that it is so horribly mangled, no one but someone who speaks english would really understand what i was saying past it being gobbledegook. Edited October 19, 2013 by Delano

[Fulmir]

Maybe you need to re-read the thread's title? I'm not arguing RNG has no affect on the gameplay. I'm arguing that 15 min is possible for pretty much everyone, with any setup. Assuming they are properly ranked.

 

The experiences of myself and a fair number of others seem to indicate that this is demonstrably not true.

 

Speaking of... To the OP: What is your Mod rating? Maybe you don't have a big enough mod collection to be "max level players" like you think you are. A rank 30 frame and weapon is just as weak as unranked until you add mods.

 

That's kind of really really insulting. I mean, given that the OP has the Grand Master founder's package I'd hazard a guess that he has fairly good equipment, everything filled with Reactors/Catalysts and is just generally fairly well equipped.

 

I mean, no one here is claiming that enemies at 15 minutes in a T3 Void Survival are too hard, that's not the issue at all. The issue is that room layout, enemy spawns, and to a lesser extent oxygen drops can completely screw you over in ways that are largely out of your control. Hell I've found enemies spawning behind sealed areas that don't open until Extraction is ready. Not just a few enemies either, a good 20 or so guys just hanging out behind a door taking up "enemy space" in the level and preventing other things from spawning.

[DBHAShadow]

Just wanted to add I too have had this happen, it has nothing to do with skill. I've got a pretty serious tank / dmg build rhino, and my clan has some fairly good warframe setups as well. We can go for a fairly long time in any non void survivals, averaging 35+ minutes per non void. Every attempt on the void though and it just seems like the lotus pods don't come fast enough and we just don't have the supplemented drops. Kill rate is not an issue, as my stomp has a max stretch attached and I can easily clear rooms at a time (at lower levels which I mean seriously I can still one shot things with roar + stomp combo to about 25 ish minutes depending on faction) as well as dmg from clanmates. The large rooms could be a problem, though with abilities like stomp it does manage to hit most enemies regardless of where they are positioned. 

 

It just simply seems the life support pack drop chance from mobs in Voids are lower than standard survival. Like I said non void survivals are easy, most times I can stomp and get anywhere from 4-8 life support packs from a nice group of what ever faction, but that just does not seem to occur in the void. 

[PapaKicks]

That's kind of really really insulting. I mean, given that the OP has the Grand Master founder's package I'd hazard a guess that he has fairly good equipment, everything filled with Reactors/Catalysts and is just generally fairly well equipped.

 

My bad. I combined two topics and mistook which was which. (don't ask)

 

I mean, no one here is claiming that enemies at 15 minutes in a T3 Void Survival are too hard, that's not the issue at all. The issue is that room layout, enemy spawns, and to a lesser extent oxygen drops can completely screw you over in ways that are largely out of your control. Hell I've found enemies spawning behind sealed areas that don't open until Extraction is ready. Not just a few enemies either, a good 20 or so guys just hanging out behind a door taking up "enemy space" in the level and preventing other things from spawning.

 

Actually that is the 'spawn mechanic' that you wish was explained better.

 

Those enemies only spawned because you got near. They did not exist until you moved towards them. Once spawned, enemies will run towards players. So no they weren't taking up space nor preventing anything else from spawning.