Defense gamemode need to be reworked - No more Hide'n'seek

[Bakaguya-sama]

Every time DE rework a tileset, Defense mode get worse. 

Old, smaller and simpler maps are replaced with larger and much more complex map, with more cover and multiple levels of elevation.  First the Gas city map, now the corpus ship map, both used to be the best farming spots, are now converted to nightmares. 

This isn't a new problem either. The Uranus caverns. That corpus base map with the giant chasm in the middle. Even Earth defense. These are famous maps that have frustrated players for the longest time, with random mobs being stuck in some obscure corner of the map. Experienced players have been avoiding playing defense on these maps like the plague. A wave on these maps take significantly longer to complete than other map types. With the reworks, the number of "good defense map" shrink, and bad map increases.   

Most of the time there will be couple of mobs that get stuck behind terrain, and then it becomes a game of hide and seek, where players have to flip the map up side down to find that last mob. Defense on these maps are virtually unplayable without a warframe that can nuke the entire map through terrain like Saryn, Mirage or Volt etc.  And of course, arbitration drones and nullifier bubble complicate things.  

Either pathing have to get significantly better, or the whole concept of defense need to be revised. The game mode need to move away from "Spawn X number of mobs" and "End when all mobs die".  Aside from high level arbitrations, this mode doesn't even feel like defending anything.  

An idea: Wave keep spawning mobs until X number of mobs is killed, then wave end (all the mobs die in an emp pulse or something).  This allow for much denser mob spawns, and it does not matter if couple of them are stuck somewhere. You should see as much enemy coming at you as you would playing modes like Survival or Excavation.  Defense should actually feel like you are defending and objective, and not a game of hide and seek.    

 

 

 

 

[DarkRuler2500]

I dont run Defense anymore at all because of this very reason.
Interception is much more chilled because you can hold a point each and enemy count does not matter.
And if i am forced to do defense, i will take a nuker like Saryn.

[Joezone619]

Defence definatly needs something to make it better, i dont do defense anymore, takes too long to hunt them all down. interception is ehh, i dont like having to kill everything at the end. moble defense is a flat out no. at that point why not just do normal defense? (as a side why is the uranus defense not considered moble defense since it moves on its own?)

[Leyers_of_facade]

Another suggestion. Wave counts as "complete" once the number of enemies drop below a threshold (say, 5 enemy), and next wave will proceed until every 5 wave where rewards are collected. This should speed things up a little, hide and seek only would matter once every 5 waves when reward drops.

 

Or even just make the threshold like 3 enemies and these enemies just die off at each 5 wave similar to interception.

[DrivaMain]

I made a thread about it on misssions and levels section, I will paste my proposal. 

On 2020-06-27 at 11:07 AM, DrivaMain said:

Most if not all of us really dislike defense missions. Defending an object in 1 room, constantly hunting for that last enemy to start the next wave, and most importantly the very terrible reward/time ratio with Meta vs Non Meta setups. For a quick example, if you don’t have a nuke frame or a speed nova 1 rotation can take you up to 8 minutes, which is significantly longer than all of the endless missions in the game. A rework or tweak of this mission type is long overdue

My proposal for this game mode tweaks.

1.  A defense wave is now time based instead of kill based. 1 Wave last 50 seconds with 10 seconds downtime, making it consistent with other endless mission types. Left over enemies from the wave will just retreat and despawn.
 

2. You can speed up the mission pace by interacting with a special “Call Enemy Reinforcements” button. It will summon a demo unit that will instantly destroy the object when one of them reached the object but it will instantly end the wave when killed. Each enemy reinforcement call will increase the demo unit level by 10.

 

[Aadi880]

Tbh, this "hunt down the crewman" thing can be easily fixed with improvements to the AI pathing. No need to hunt down when they are already in front of you. As of now, AI tends to get stuck on seeminly the smallest of things (wedges, ramps, jump-overs.)

[hippokrene]

Bad AI pathing is how I'm   able to solo defense missions as it lets the objective's shields and health ramp up.

I wish it were more like excivation or hive salvage where there was an active way to heal the objective.

[BlackCat500]

Bad AI is one thing, but it is the mission type itself that is designed in a way you can only kill as fast as enemies appear. The whole thing is in need of a desperate review and I personally wish waves were comprised of a certain number of "kills needed" rather than just "wave, figure out when it ends". Then give players a console to spawn extra hard units, more units or other stuff to reduce the overall kill count needed in exchange for making the wave more difficult, or healing a percentage on the objective but making the wave take longer, so you can adjust the speed and difficulty yourself and tune the reward cycle and drop chances to match your squad's performance like disruption does to reward endless.

 

If you can make defense more exciting for yourself, then it'll not matter as much if a single guy gets stuck somewhere. Although that should still be fixed.

[MorteNexus13]

Idea: It could be like a "survival" mission. Each wave lasts 5 minutes and at the end of the round you have to kill all the enemies remaining (to be more sure, a 20-second timer will appear that will disappear when you kill them all, or will make everyone disappear when it runs out, equal to Infested Salvage).

Edited June 28, 2020 by MorteNexus13

[Miyabi-sama]

Did you ever asked why it is so? Why enemies spawn so slow? Why enemies run around in a maze-like maps prolonging your enjoyment?

Well I'll tell you. Mesa. Draco.

They were trying to patch out the problem of EZ fast 60 waves standing in one sweet spot covering entire map. First they slowed the spawn rates to slow kills per second. Later they started to patch every hidden place where you could hide from danger, add ceilings to open maps and some cover for poor cannon fodder you kill. And only later they nerfhammered both Greedy pull and Peacemakers.

Everything for you. Enjoy plz. Spend your time with us. No need to hurry.

[Steel_Rook]

If I could remove one mission type from the game forever, it would definitely be Defence. That's definitely by far the worst, most reductive, most BORING mission in the game... And that's saying something considering Sanctuary Onslaught exists. Even the likes of Interception and Survival at least offer the opportunity for positioning an relocation. Defence literally boils down to standing in one spot and nuking the map over and over again. It also heavily benefits from barriers in ways that few other game modes do.

I've said this before, but I'd like to see Defence redesigned into something closer to Jupiter Sabotage, where enemies need to hack consoles manually, rather than shooting a thing remotely. Bonus points if the active consoles move around, so we're not always defending the same one location. And yes, I'm in agreement that waves ought to be limited by time, not by killing all enemies. Warframe pathfinding is too unreliable for that.

[(XBOX)DA ZACHYZACHY]

I just want the waves to not have that awkward intermission. And make the wave end before we finish killing everyone, there  is always that one enemy stick on a bit of the geometry.

[(XBOX)DA ZACHYZACHY]

2 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

If I could remove one mission type from the game forever, it would definitely be Defence.

Not defection?

[Steel_Rook]

3 minutes ago, (XB1)DA ZACHYZACHY said:

Not defection?

No, not at all. I love Defection. Yes, it has similar pathing issues, but it's one of the few game modes in Warframe which actually manages to keep me awake. It offers a complex set of objectives with a mix between preparation and escort and it always has me thinking about some kind of objective, rather than just mindlessly gunning down enemies until I nod off. If anything, I'd like to see an update to Defection across more tilesets and more factions. And yes - some easier means of getting escortees unstuck would be nice, as well.

[(XBOX)DA ZACHYZACHY]

16 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

I love Defection.

You be you.

[GKP_light]

and/or just remove the wave, to only have 1 wave 5 times longer with 5 time more ennemis.

[Avienas]

2 hours ago, GKP_light said:

and/or just remove the wave, to only have 1 wave 5 times longer with 5 time more ennemis.

Have an enemy count displayed plus a timer on how long the enemies will be around till the wave complete, Done deal. This is literally the same function as how PSO2 does its `mining base defense urgent quests`.

Where the downsides to taking too long is usually the suicide enemies rush the defense targets if times up or you have less time to prepare for the next wave since there is a lot more brain power present in pso2`s defense missions such as setting up turrets to assist in the defense. Healing the defense targets, purifying defense nodes so enemies cant spawn `SIEGE TOWERS` which are used to fire high damage beams directly at defense targets and also time for people to collect energy crystals to unlock more charges for the various defense actions.

Honestly, this acts as a continuous reminder to me on how warframe could vastly improve its game modes such as the ability to hack consoles to lock out certain pathways to restrict enemy pathing to take them down more easily in things like defense missions. Plus no, warframe abilities do not count, i am taking about in-mission elements, like how atleast void defense has the laser sweepers to gib a bunch of on-coming enemies, cept more defensive in nature.

[(PSN)Lei-Lei_23]

RIP Old Draco. That map was small, compact, not a lot of cover nor having drastic elevations on tileset geometry, and the enemy spawns felt livid and uncapped.

That tileset was the only fun I ever had in a Defense or Interception mission. Now that most of these maps are larger and cover more space, it just feels like a slog sometimes.

[Bakaguya-sama]

So smaller map means AoE nuke frame can just stand in 1 spot and power through the waves. And DE don't want that. But by making maps larger and have more cover, DE have made AoE nuke frames the only way to complete Defense on a reasonable timeframe. A bit ironic.  

The old Corpus ship defense map was perfect. The pathing was simple. And the mob timings are good too. You clear the mobs down stairs just in time for the one upstairs to start reaching you. It was large enough that clearing it quickly require teamwork (each person camp a spawn area) and not just a single nuker. Which is why is was considered one of the best arbi map. You can quickly clear it with guns and melee without relying on nukers.  

Now... that map is gone forever... mobs literally spawn more than 100m away from the center  and take their sweet time getting to you on the new Corpus ship map.  Not even Saryn can make it better.

But at the end of the day, I don't hate the new maps. I kinda like the variation it brings. Main problem is still the Defense gamemode manually capping the rates which you can kill mobs, which makes it a chore to play. Pathing can improve, but I dont think that will be enough. What I really enjoy about the new Corpus map rework is that other modes like Survival dump a horde of mobs on you to kill, which makes it fun. I wish something like that can be done for defense (without making us hailving to kill every single one of them to clear the wave).  

Edited June 29, 2020 by Bakaguya-sama

[DemonStrikerX]

 

On 2020-06-28 at 10:30 AM, Bakaguya-sama said:

An idea: Wave keep spawning mobs until X number of mobs is killed, then wave end (all the mobs die in an emp pulse or something).  This allow for much denser mob spawns, and it does not matter if couple of them are stuck somewhere. You should see as much enemy coming at you as you would playing modes like Survival or Excavation.  Defense should actually feel like you are defending and objective, and not a game of hide and seek.    

 

From what you have mentioned the issue is with the map more than the gameplay itself, but yes the game mode needs to be reworked entirely and I agree with your idea because I actually thought of this concept aswell 😆. I would describe the game mode more like stand in a spot and  kill all the enemies (mainly cuz i play nuke frames). In my opinion all game mods like mobile defense, defense, excavation need to be removed or changed to be more interactive.