The main reason I don't do more on Plains of Eidolon: Defend the Area sub-mission

[(PSN)Unstar]

I don't go to the Plains of Eidolon anymore except for Nightwave.  That's because if at any time during my Bounty the "sub-mission" changes to "Defend the Area", it feels completely out of my control whether I will succeed or fail the sub-mission and hence my entire Bounty.

To make sure I'm using the right terms, the Defend the Area sub-mission I'm talking about is the one where there's a big yellow circle on the map, and then for X amount of time you need to keep your "influence" in the area above 0%.  It starts at 100% and if there are enemies in the yellow area the percentage will drop.  Killing enemies seems to make it go up.

I have lost count of the amount of times I have lost these missions without even knowing where the enemies that were in the zone were.  It's an incredibly frustrating way to lose.

I also feel like I'm using all the tools I have at my disposal.  My weapons are capable of destroying packs of enemies in split-seconds.  My Sentinel has the Primed mod for enemy radar, but even with its large radius it's not enough to consistently detect the enemies in these spaces.  I use Mobilize and other speed-boosting mods on most of my frames, so that I can try to move around the area quickly to find enemies I can't yet see.  I try to watch for the drop-ships in the sky, but if one comes and leaves while I'm dealing with other enemies then I have way of telling where the enemies are.  And the landscape of these areas is often filled with obstacles and hills, and the enemies are colored so that they blend in with the terrain.

But none of this is enough.  If I can't find the enemies, I just lose, and often I can't find them.  I feel powerless in the face of this mission, like the best I have to offer will never be enough.

I feel like it doesn't have to be this difficult.  Could a "nearest enemy" icon be added to the mini-map/HUD, similar to Exterminate missions?  Or maybe just slowing how rapidly the percentage is capable of dropping?  I'm not sure what change would stay true to the vision of its original design, but hopefully "lose because you don't know where the enemy is" isn't a desired part of the design. 🙂

Thanks for hearing me out.  I'd really love to go do more bounties in the Plains of Eidolon; I've just recognized that this sub-mission kill my mood, and unfortunately there's no way for me to tell whether this sub-mission will appear in any given Bounty so I can't opt out of just the Bounties that contain it, instead I have to opt out of all Bounties entirely.

 

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

Yeah, in certain spots that area can get quite massive to cover, specially solo, and can be difficult even with some cheese frames. Definitely so if you're aiming for extra objective completion.

Then we also have issues like the no-kill capture, which is very unreliable. PoE bounty handling feels very lazy and poorly thought out compared to Fortuna. Even after the PoE remaster. Which makes it feel heavy, convoluted, and not really worth the effort.

[Duality52]

19 minutes ago, (PS4)Unstar said:

To make sure I'm using the right terms, the Defend the Area sub-mission I'm talking about is the one where there's a big yellow circle on the map, and then for X amount of time you need to keep your "influence" in the area above 0%.  It starts at 100% and if there are enemies in the yellow area the percentage will drop.  Killing enemies seems to make it go up.

Indeed it is, but I prefer to call it "Liberation" since you're liberating it briefly from the Grineer and how the game calls it too.

What frustrates me about this bounty since April 2019 where the Plains got remastered, the control mechanic somehow got butchered:

• Grineer sitting on their dropships (Firbolgs or Bolkors) while also being outside  of the "control circle" as depicted on the minimap will still actively drain the control meter. This gets more noticeable if the bounty is at the large Grineer base on the Ostwan Range. Firbolgs will spawn towards the lower hills far away from the base, yet their troops still actively drain the meter.
• Tusk Grineer spawning out of thin air is just as bad. If you try to pursue the Firbolgs or Bolkors, you'll somehow find Grineer back at the base without any notification other than the meter getting drained. The base at Er-Phryah's Vigil is a terrible example of this, where Grineer can spawn inside the cave without any warning.
• Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Firbolgs and Bolkors themselves (dropship and gunship respectively) will count towards draining the meter.

20 minutes ago, (PS4)Hikuro-93 said:

PoE bounty handling feels very lazy and poorly thought out compared to Fortuna. Even after the PoE remaster.

Plains, like Railjack Phase 2, is a prototype. Fortuna, the Orb Vallis, and their economy was a lot better on launch than the Plains economy. The Plains remaster's unnoticed appeal are the additional changes and improvements to the Plains economy. Conservation, less usage of Cetus Wisps, Tusk Thumpers, and other ones are good examples of the improvement to the economy.

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

Quote

Grineer sitting on their dropships (Firbolgs or Bolkors) while also being outside  of the "control circle" as depicted on the minimap will still actively drain the control meter.

Funny thing here is that today I did this, and the bounty stage covered a large area. I ended up being pushed to the vicinity of the yellow area. I ended up losing the bounty. Why? Because I was killing grineer (ground, dropships, capsules) that were both outside the marked area and inside, yet on the verge of the yellow area. The only thing I saw was the control status decrease until it hit 0. I did it with Ember and was killing enemies as they spawned. They did not count towards progression. Was it a bug? Irrelevant, imho, as it's still a bummer that is unfixed to this day.

1 hour ago, Duality52 said:

Plains, like Railjack Phase 2, is a prototype. Fortuna, the Orb Vallis, and their economy was a lot better on launch than the Plains economy. The Plains remaster's unnoticed appeal are the additional changes and improvements to the Plains economy. Conservation, less usage of Cetus Wisps, Tusk Thumpers, and other ones are good examples of the improvement to the economy.

I'll be honest here... You can sprinkle glitter on poop, but it'll still smell and taste like poop.

Not necessarily PoE, but the way bounties work. They are mostly fine, except for some specific issues like the ones I mentioned. And those were not thought properly, nor corrected after deployment.

As for the economy if DE is going to implement a new coat of paint over the old PoE using the techniques they learned from OV then they should have known what not to do. In other words, two rights don't excuse one wrong - which is fine, so long as they later return and fix those wrongs.

I do like PoE as a map, but it feels like while DE did improve the overall economy, they did it at the cost of butchering the PoE gameplay. Which is more important than the Cetus economy, at least in my eyes.

Edited June 27, 2020 by (PS4)Hikuro-93

[BlackCat500]

This and the no-kill capture are a nightmare. I failed the no-kill capture one yesterday after capturing the target without killing anybody, because you need to wait for a few seconds for it to actually complete before resuming to kill, even though the capture is already done. Yeah, great.

 

These are not my only problems with PoE bounties though. They feel absolutely unfun and unrewarding (possibly because I had to do them a zillion times to get a single augur secrets, not sure anymore, it's been years since I enjoyed doing them). You have a max level bounty that rewards you so much junk, isn't fun to do in itself and takes around 10x as long as a normal mission because of all the super long timers.

EDIT: and don't get me started on lotus and konzu talking for 2 hours before the first objective actually spawns and you can start working on the bounty while listening to all the damn mindless blathering

Edited June 27, 2020 by BlackCat500

[Aurora3500]

I have to agree with this one. Out of all the potential objectives in PoE bounties, each time I hope "please don't let the liberation one come up". I can generally work with any bounty on the PoE except for this specific one. Like you I have the tools needed to take care of enemies and survive on even the highest level bounties, but the issue comes to locating the enemies in large areas. It is frustrating needing to kill enemies as fast as possible when it is difficult to find enemies to kill in the 1st place. Even when using radar mods, the radar range generally isn't big enough for the large areas as you say. It feels like this mission sets one up for failure since it makes enemies very difficult to locate.

I also only do bounties in the Plains of Eidolon or Orb Vallis solo or with friends. It effects solo players greatly that way.

I think this bounty would be better if one of a few things happened. The area control decreases slower, the enemies would be guaranteed to spawn very close to the player and not far off in the distance. Or if it worked instead like a pseudo-interception. There would be 3 areas of interest, you spend time clear the area of enemies and wait to capture a point of interest. The point of interest would remain captured and you would go onto the other 2 and repeat. I would enjoy that more than what the liberation sub-mission is now.