Endless Spy Missions

[Animus_Nocturnus]

I know that I might be an outlier here, but I tend to enjoy spy missions.

I like to try and prob at an issue and find the most optimal way to overcome it.

I like to use different resources to circumvent layers upon layers of defenses and prepare the area for my next move.

That's why I would really enjoy it if Spy Missions would be made into endless Mission types, resetting (and upgrading) the security of the data vaults after each completion of a set of 3.

Most Data Vaults of any given faction look the same for the majority of the game anyway, just adding more active cameras, more laser barriers, and more security personnel, as well as limiting the access ways over the course of the game. So why not having the active systems reset and some of the security breaches be upgraded after a complete run?

Players like myself would certainly enjoy that a lot.

[NekroArts]

Nerf Wukong's Cloud Walker and Ivara's Infiltrate augment first.

[Oreades]

I could go for some endless spy Vaults. 

At the very least put 4 spy vaults in Spy missions so everyone has something to do. 

 

38 minutes ago, NekroArts said:

Nerf Wukong's Cloud Walker and Ivara's Infiltrate augment first.

And why would that be exactly? 

[Animus_Nocturnus]

vor 3 Stunden schrieb NekroArts:

Nerf Wukong's Cloud Walker and Ivara's Infiltrate augment first.

 

vor 2 Stunden schrieb Oreades:

And why would that be exactly?

Yeah, that seems unnecessary. It's not as if you're required to play them in Spy Missions, nor does it hurt you if another player uses them, so why would you need their abilities to be nerfed?

I mean... penis envy much?

Edited April 19, 2020 by Animus_Nocturnus

[NekroArts]

5 hours ago, Oreades said:

And why would that be exactly? 

 

2 hours ago, Animus_Nocturnus said:

 

Yeah, that seems unnecessary. It's not as if you're required to play them in Spy Missions, nor does it hurt you if another player uses them, so why would you need their abilities to be nerfed?

I mean... penis envy much?

 

6 hours ago, Animus_Nocturnus said:

Spy Missions would be made into endless Mission types,

Basically, no matter how hard OP makes them the two will always trivialize them. And it's not going to be on the same level like Limbo in Scarlet Spear, it's going to be worse. Plus, there's x100 blueprints for ciphers and energy restores. Did I really had to explain this?

[Animus_Nocturnus]

I still don't see the counterpoint of Ivara & Wukong being nerfed against giving spy missions an endless mode.

I also don't understand why you're having an issue with someone else trivializing their own spy mission experience.

It's not as if them trivializing their expirience would affect your own experience of a given data store.

[Oreades]

37 minutes ago, NekroArts said:

Basically, no matter how hard OP makes them the two will always trivialize them. And it's not going to be on the same level like Limbo in Scarlet Spear, it's going to be worse. Plus, there's x100 blueprints for ciphers and energy restores. Did I really had to explain this?

You say those things as if any other endless mission can't be cheesed with minimal effort. 

Even assuming maximum cheese endless spy vaults would require more complex player input than your average defense/Excavation or Interception. 

 

[NekroArts]

35 minutes ago, Animus_Nocturnus said:

It's not as if them trivializing their expirience would affect your own experience of a given data store.

Because it's not about "own experience", it's what it can cause the community to do. When players realize how good Catchmoon really was, they gravitated towards it; when Scarlet Spear drop, the frame that was almost immediately picked for defending was Limbo. DE doesn't like it when something is too good that the community follows it like a cult.

Since, you're OP is still an incomplete idea, there are questions that are left open. Are the rewards the same as what we have currently or do you intended to make them better? When you state "more cameras/laser/personnel" just how much is that increased for each success, is it capped or will it get convoluted? We know that players can become grind fanatics, (especially when it's easy), will this become similar to Draco?

15 minutes ago, Oreades said:

You say those things as if any other endless mission can't be cheesed with minimal effort. 

Even assuming maximum cheese endless spy vaults would require more complex player input than your average defense/Excavation or Interception. 

With Cloud Walker and Infiltrator for endless spy, they pretty much cancel out the complex input and make failing nonexistent. 

In scaling for defense players must kill to progress and ensure the objective doesn't die. With how players are complaining about the "planned" Vazarin nerf for defense targets, the threat of failing is exist. That's not present in OP suggestion. 

Excavation has a 100 seconds to complete and rewards are given out every hundred cryotics obtained. With how fast we can get from each vault, especially with Cloud Walker, and the use of ciphers, we pretty much get rewards in most safest and fastest way possible. And that's assuming solo; in a squad they each can pretty much take one vault, finish almost at the same time in quick time, wait for however long it takes for the vault improve itself, and be done it practically the same time because the "increase difficulty" didn't do anything at all. Sortie rescue made it so that when you open the holding area the execution timer immediately starts, but we're so fast that timer means nothing and that's the only difficulty change to it.. 

Interception has players wait for the points to accumulate. Yes, you can cheese it with minimal effort, but the wait time is what balances it out. No matter how much effort player(s) are at holding the capture points, the amount of time they'll have to wait will be the always be the same relative to the number of players present.

The problem with OP suggestion is that it's all out way too easy. If the rewards in this endless spy is the same as the other endless mission, he gets a veto. 

[Oreades]

27 minutes ago, NekroArts said:

With Cloud Walker and Infiltrator for endless spy, they pretty much cancel out the complex input and make failing nonexistent. 

In scaling for defense players must kill to progress and ensure the objective doesn't die. With how players are complaining about the "planned" Vazarin nerf for defense targets, the threat of failing is exist. That's not present in OP suggestion. 

Excavation has a 100 seconds to complete and rewards are given out every hundred cryotics obtained. With how fast we can get from each vault, especially with Cloud Walker, and the use of ciphers, we pretty much get rewards in most safest and fastest way possible. And that's assuming solo; in a squad they each can pretty much take one vault, finish almost at the same time in quick time, wait for however long it takes for the vault improve itself, and be done it practically the same time because the "increase difficulty" didn't do anything at all. Sortie rescue made it so that when you open the holding area the execution timer immediately starts, but we're so fast that timer means nothing and that's the only difficulty change to it.. 

Interception has players wait for the points to accumulate. Yes, you can cheese it with minimal effort, but the wait time is what balances it out. No matter how much effort player(s) are at holding the capture points, the amount of time they'll have to wait will be the always be the same relative to the number of players present.

The problem with OP suggestion is that it's all out way too easy. If the rewards in this endless spy is the same as the other endless mission, he gets a veto. 

Until you get well past sortie levels you can pretty much sleep through every endless mission type, forgot to include survival but it doesn't really matter. I also forgot to mention Disruption but praise where praise is due DE hit that game mode out of the park. 

So outside of Disruption and MISC past Sortie level most endless modes are already beyond braind dead to the point that just getting to the spy vault IMO is more effort than people are putting into (insert endless mission). That is what I mean by complex input, cause in every other mode once I/We are set up I'm playing another game on my 2nd screen or watching youtube. While still pummeling the hecc out of things as required. 

As far as Ciphers go, I don't care if they block them or not. Personally I think it's kinda dumb that you can use Ciphers in the Spy MR test, so I'd be strangely OK if they blocked them in an endless spy mode. As for Warframe powers, unless they are going to block them in other endless missions there seems little point in being petty with endless spy. 

Now I'm definitely down for them giving endless spy some sort of interesting angle, not sure what, maybe it unlocks a mini boss like a Lynx or something in a central arena per cycle. That'd be kinda cool. However if push comes to shove at the very least a strait endless spy vault run would save people on loading time. Cause if I'm going to run a dozen spy vaults, I'm going to run a dozen spy vaults it's just going to include 4-5 loading screens. Might as well cut out the loading screens. 

Edited April 19, 2020 by Oreades

[NekroArts]

13 minutes ago, Oreades said:

Until you get well past sortie levels you can pretty much sleep through every endless mission type, forgot to include survival but it doesn't really matter. I also forgot to mention Disruption but praise where praise is due DE hit that game mode out of the park. 

So outside of Disruption and MISC past Sortie level most endless modes are already beyond braind dead to the point that just getting to the spy vault IMO is more effort than people are putting into (insert endless mission). That is what I mean by complex input, cause in every other mode once I/We are set up I'm playing another game on my 2nd screen or watching youtube. While still pummeling the hecc out of things as required. 

As far as Ciphers go, I don't care if they block them or not. Personally I think it's kinda dumb that you can use Ciphers in the Spy MR test, so I'd be strangely OK if they blocked them in an endless spy mode. As for Warframe powers, unless they are going to block them in other endless missions there seems little point in being petty with endless spy. 

Now I'm definitely down for them giving endless spy some sort of interesting angle, not sure what, maybe it unlocks a mini boss like a Lynx or something in a central arena per cycle. That'd be kinda cool. However if push comes to shove at the very least a strait endless spy vault run would save people on loading time. Cause if I'm going to run a dozen spy vaults, I'm going to run a dozen spy vaults it's just going to include 4-5 loading screens. Might as well cut out the loading screens. 

In every one of the endless missions there's always an enemy trying to attack the players. Spy endless will have none of that due to the nature of having unalerted state. With Cloud Walker and Infiltrator being able to keep that unalerted state, undetectable from cameras, and unaffected by lasers, players basically wiped out the entire difficulty.

Disabling the use of ciphers will be in the right direction to balance the speed of completion, but I'm not convinced it'll be enough. If it ends up resulting in some form of disabling Warframe powers, perhaps in a form where a few sections in the vault where it does this. At least one of them must be in way to the console.

A strait will help with generating the next set of spy vaults while players are occupied with what's going on in the central arena.

[Oreades]

1 minute ago, NekroArts said:

In every one of the endless missions there's always an enemy trying to attack the players.

The key word there is trying, sometimes I just feel downright bad for them. 

[Animus_Nocturnus]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb NekroArts:

When players realize how good Catchmoon really was, they gravitated towards it; when Scarlet Spear drop, the frame that was almost immediately picked for defending was Limbo. DE doesn't like it when something is too good that the community follows it like a cult.

Oh please. If it'd be an issue that every player aims to make the same thing, the whole game would've been set up entirely different.

The real issue with any one of the points you've given is that it always affected the game style of the other - often random - players in the squad.

Limbo has been a point of contention since I've started playing, and as far as I've read up on it, even since he was introduced into the game. So having him be one of the most effective frames for the Scarlet Spear event was bound to rub some people the wrong way. He's not an issue in squads who like to play with Limbo, but only in those where it clashes with the expected experience of one or more of the other players.

Same goes for the catchmoon. It's certainly a powerful weapon. But it's only an issue when the player using it is making so much more kills that it affects the fun of the other players.

If everyone would be fine with those options being part of their play experience, DE wouldn't mind jackS#&$ about it. It's only when people start complaining that there is an issue, because complains means unhappy players, means potentially less players, means potentially less revenue. If there was a Warframe that would be impossible to kill while it's damage would scale with the level of the enemies, but it could only be used in single player and not for opening relics, DE wouldn't care about it because it wouldn't affect the fun of anyone other than the people using it.

As Oreades pointed out, most other endless mission types already allow for quite some amount of cheese. Those other endless missions however always affect the playstyle of everyone in the squad. You don't like it that Ember incinerates 85% of the enemies in survival? Well tough luck, buddy, get some frame that can out-DPS her then. Don't like it that Frost can hang back in his bubble to shield excarvators and fight off attackers? Well, try to stop him! Can't do that while in the game? Better whine about it in the forums.

In Spy missions however it's more common for one player entering a vault by their own. Everyone runs to one of the vaults and tries to crack it. Mostly, more than one player just means more risk of triggering an alarm. And if everyone enters a vault by their own anyway, then there is no effect one players playstyle can have on another player.

As for your concern about the speed by which those spy missions can be done, there are ways to limit the amount of vaults a squad can open in a given amount of time without nerfing WF abilities. Most higher level spy rooms already have some passageways closed off, thus reducing the possible ways into the vault and maybe even having the player run into a dead end in the process. You could also force them to stay away from the vaults for a number of minutes, maybe even by having them stay out of sight of a security team that swipes the area in preparation for a new data transfer to happen.

[GreyDeath789]

11 hours ago, Oreades said:

I could go for some endless spy Vaults. 

At the very least put 4 spy vaults in Spy missions so everyone has something to do. 

 

And why would that be exactly? 

Four vaults makes a lot more sense so all squad members have something to do...

As for the augments nerf suggested...perhaps if this 'endless' concept is implemented then as the 'waves' of spy runs goes on then the augments could stop working. But to nerf them completely would be a big 'no' for me.

While an 'endless' spy is unlikely...perhaps changes to spy missions based on context would provide even more challenge for players.

For example...

Normal spy mission - as it is now (maybe with a 4th vault)

Nightwave spy mission - as is now but enemies protect the vaults with more outside/inside the vaults...making them require even more stealth or having to kill as least some enemies to successed

Sortie spy mission - disable augments (Ivara, etc.) and make them at the Nightwave level

Nightmare spy mission - whatever the nightmare theme is plus sortie/nightwave changes listed above

This would make spy missions a little different depending on the type of spy mission being ran. New players experience 'normal' spy missions to learn them...Nightwave spy missions give a bit more challenge...sortie spy misisons more challenge...and nightmare are...well..a nightmare.

Shrug...