Area Control PoE when fixed?

[xombob89]

So the area control missions on Deimos seem to work a lot better because the area is much smaller.

On Plains of Eidolon, the control area is absolutely massive and the small grineer patrols are like ants inside the ring hard to see even from archwing. Sometimes single enemy stuck under a rock or in a cave can make you fail the mission. The area size doesnt seem to be smaller with smaller team either, I just did a bounty with just one other person and we had to defend a huge area which was extremely hard to do with two people but we barely managed it. This is not even actual difficulty, its just pure luck wether you find them in time or not.

Its been like this forever and people have complained many times, why did Deimos get a change but not PoE?

Either please shrink the size of the ring considerably or give enemy markers so we dont lose the mission because something is hiding nowhere to be seen. Im still missing some of the mods from PoE bounties because every time I decide to try them theres a high chance of failing because of this mission that is not reliant on player skill as much as its on luck and bugs. 

Bonus objectives need tuning too, because some of them are borderline impossible to complete right now like the "kill no other enemies" during commander capture mission.

 

PS. Today the area control mission directed us INSIDE a cave, but the enemies themselves started spawning OUTSIDE making us immendiately drop to 30% until someone managed to barely rush outside to kill enough of them. This is absolutely terrible and unfair.

[xombob89]

Another bugged part, theres no enemies to kill in this area most of the time it comes and if you go outside the ring to kill them the counter just goes past 30. We list this specific mission.

 

[(NSW)Conn1496]

This has been an issue for a long time, and while I don't think it's as excessively bad as a lot of players make it out to be, I will say that for a long time I felt very similarly that these bounties ruined the PoE experience as a solo player. They occasionally still frustrate me for being significantly stricter than all other types of bounty mission too, but I can typically at least clear them. So, true, PoE Area Control bounties have become significantly less awful over time for me, but mostly because I've learned to look out for where most of the enemies spawn - not to say that there isn't still the occasional spawn bug, but they're much rarer than people like to admit since most of the Area Control zones will have enemies dropping in from ships or in pods, which almost completely avoids bad spawns.

16 minutes ago, xombob89 said:

Its been like this forever and people have complained many times, why did Deimos get a change but not PoE?

Now when it comes to Deimos, I don't actually think they're any more or less worse from a tuning/balancing standpoint. Really, they feel more or less the same. Deimos didn't so much as "get a change" so much as the Area Control bounty just suits it a little better. The most obvious reason being that Infested typically run toward the player in large swarms, and aren't prone to wandering off as soon as they spawn in (Though I definitely have had certain stationary units spawn in notably far away locations - they are, however, huge and easy to spot. Thankfully.). Grineer tend to break up their groups, leaving individual enemies to take "cover" in the middle of nowhere, meaning that they spend half of their time hiding unless you spawn kill the entire group before they can split up. Even if infested get stuck on terrain, or for whatever reason spawn in the wrong place, they're a much smaller percentage of their force, so they count for much less of a control % and you suffer much less of a penalty for what is basically the AI being bad and taking one enemy out of the fight.

You could argue that finding the enemies is part of the challenge, and that's what Enemy Radar is good for - God knows that Enemy Radar is good for any timed objective where killing is important, like Index or survival - but in the case of PoE there definitely is way too much emphasis on playing hide-and-seek and not enough on actually killing the enemies. I don't think shrinking the zone would really change that because basically speaking, the Grineer would still split up and play much more passively than any other faction. Simply put: Grineer are chicken and a single Grineer counts for way too much of a control %, and that's obviously a problem when you have to kill them.

32 minutes ago, xombob89 said:

PS. Today the area control mission directed us INSIDE a cave, but the enemies themselves started spawning OUTSIDE making us immendiately drop to 30% until someone managed to barely rush outside to kill enough of them. This is absolutely terrible and unfair.

Cave objective spawns, however, are definitely an issue that needs addressing, and not just in PoE. Ironically, giving Deimos praise for this is pretty moot, since I've encountered this bug while entering Iso Vaults more than I ever have in PoE, with multiple VIP infested (the ones that raise the toxicity levels) spawning over 200m away, basically destroying any chance of ever beating that stage even if I wasn't solo, even though those enemies are marked. I know that it's early days for Deimos and that could possibly excuse the bad spawns out in the Cambion Drift, but given that DE have had the chance to fix an identical issue with PoE enemy spawns for years, I feel like this should have been something that they hopped on, or were at least aware of much faster. It's not like I haven't seen threads about this exact problem before.

I should also point out that Deimos has much worse objectives for AI luck being a factor, IMO. Low level "beat the Grineer kill count" bounties spring to mind, given that the Grinner squad will often snap-shot and insta-kill low level enemies that spawn closer to them before you even have a chance to see them, with the only upside being that sometimes the Grineer are dumb enough to focus fire on the few targets that they're far too weak to kill, or on enemies that they just can't hit instead. At least in PoE the Area Control objective is usually only stressful for a solo player to do consistently, and not a cakewalk or a nigh-impossible nightmare based on what way the AI decides to be stupid that day. Doesn't really excuse it, just pointing out that it's not an issue exclusive to Area Control, and that the AI (especially Grineer) might be due for a much needed rework, as opposed to just putting a band-aid over the couple of current cases where it destroys the balance and fun of the objective.

DE also recently patched a PoE bounty that was making a drone's pathing run it into a wall forever (meaning that if that happened to you it was literally impossible to complete the objective). So it could, hopefully, be indicative that they're looking into general bug-fixing in open worlds in general as well as Deimos, especially given that Xaku encourages players to go back to the other two, despite being mostly based in the Cambion Drift.

So... At least the 'worse, luck based bounties' aren't literally impossible, and there's that... Small victories I guess, but it does of course still irk me that they're drastically tougher than other content for all the wrong reasons.

 

52 minutes ago, xombob89 said:

Bonus objectives need tuning too, because some of them are borderline impossible to complete right now like the "kill no other enemies" during commander capture mission.

As for this bonus objective: This is typically only an issue if your companion or teammates are murdering things while you aren't looking. More often than not, this will be because of your companions, so I would definitely check that they're not murdering things behind your back. If you're talking about melee units crowding you while you're trying to kill cap the target, or the occasional units dropping in right on top of the target's head, which are both things I struggled with for a while as well, I feel like this is intended to be part of the challenge and incentives using low damage CCs or precision weapons to get around not killing before you cap the target - but even then you can typically rush in with your Archwing, then find and cap the target before anything has a chance to go wrong (Worth noting that Archwing will pretty much disable your companion's AI, as far as I know).

I think there's also a slight delay between the end of the capture and the bonus objective confirming, so... Watch out for that, I guess. I've definitely killed things in the second or so that it takes to confirm that you actually didn't kill anything during the mission.

[xombob89]

34 minutes ago, (NSW)Conn1496 said:

As for this bonus objective: This is typically only an issue if your companion or teammates are murdering things while you aren't looking. 

 

Yes I know whats causing this, but its still bad design. In public games, theres ALWAYS one person who either doesnt know or doesnt care about the bonus so its auto-fail. Even if people try to do the bonus its easy to accidently kill something.

Personally I always just fly in archwing around the area looking for the commander, so my pet isnt killing anything. But I dont do solo (I find it really boring), so I cant do anything to stop this problem.

[(NSW)Conn1496]

2 minutes ago, xombob89 said:

Yes I know whats causing this, but its still bad design. In public games, theres ALWAYS one person who either doesnt know or doesnt care about the bonus so its auto-fail. Even if people try to do the bonus its easy to accidently kill something.

Personally I always just fly in archwing around the area looking for the commander, so my pet isnt killing anything. But I dont do solo (I find it really boring), so I cant do anything to stop this problem.

I see comments like this a lot when it comes to more-or-less any game, and calling something bad design because bad teammates ruin the experience isn't really a fair point. Frankly speaking, any game is bad with bad teammates in the same way that any game can be fun with fun teammates, etc. As boring as it is for you, the best solution to constantly getting bad teammates is to unfortunately go solo and do it yourself. It absolutely is possible to play completely solo if you need to (I'm sure you know that), though I'd argue in this case it's not really necessary - missing a bounty bonus isn't too much of a loss IMO if it's part of the more fun alternative for you.

Of course you can always go looking for more reliable squads that you will have fun with - there's more than enough Tenno out there who are, frankly, very good at the game and will respect that you wanna try and get the bonuses - but, obviously finding people is a whole other struggle (Hence why I typically play solo. I only have myself to blame then since everything AFAIK is viable solo.). Either way, you totally have the means to work around the objective (unlike some of the really bad spawns mentioned earlier), even if it is an inconvenience or less fun. So... I think the bonus objective is fine. Though admittedly, some might see it as a little counter-intuitive to a lot of the other content in Warframe (where murdering whole rooms is pretty much the game), which I do understand, but variety objectives and modes in Warframe are a staple at this point, so I personally can't really complain since I like that side of the game myself, even if it asks me not to kill something for a change.

Back to the point about companions though - it's totally possible that teammates' companions are the ones killing things and they just aren't aware either, which kinda brings me back to my point about AI, since expecting a whole squad to play around their companions' frankly bad AI is bad design - but that's really more of a companions and AI thing rather than a mission thing (and companions ruining objectives because you can't control them properly definitely has precedent - pretty sure they used to ruin stealth all the time, though stealth is absolutely it's own conversation too). Anyway, companions messing things up will ideally get addressed with companions 2.0... You know... Soon^TM. _{(Please release companions 2.0, DE.)}

My ultimate point is - relying on teammates and AI to play nice definitely isn't necessary most of the time, but there definitely are rare cases of that (like Area Control, as mentioned), and those are typically the missions that suck most TBH, and since you can't control the AI like you can choose your teammates... Then the AI (including their spawns) really needs a change, ideally... I just think that would sort out a lot of the issues brought up in this thread and prevent them in the future too, rather than slapping a band aid on it by re-balancing parts of the game it causes problems in. A complete AI overhaul is maybe admittedly a lot to ask of DE for enemies that in 99% of content die before they make their first move, but... I feel like it is prooobably a necessary one since it's very clearly a problem that comes back from time to time.

[Zi-Sui]

I too find it hard to complete the "control the area" part of the bounty if I use a normal build, as well as the bonus objective for the capture the commander if I use a normal loadout. That why I got a specific loadout for Plains of Eidolon, Wukong with extra enemy radar and a bit of duration making it much easier to spot and deal with the enemies in time in area control part. The capture the commander's bonus objective is a no-brainer as has been said, and it's too aggravating for me to do it in public with such uncaring folks you encounter there that I naturally solo it if I go there. Which is sad, since despite leechers and whatnot I did enjoy the PoE bounties before they were made to be like this. This has been a case of fixing what ain't too broken, and making it more broke in the process.

I think the control the area part would be much more tolerable if the area control loss was capped at 1% instead of at 3%, like it is in Deimos now. That alone is not enough but still.

[xombob89]

On 2020-09-12 at 4:03 AM, (NSW)Conn1496 said:

something bad design because bad teammates ruin the experience isn't really a fair point.

You are right, but its not only bad teammates that cause it to fail its a number of other things as well like both of us mentioned. And warframe is a game that relies a lot on teamwork so if you are pretty much set to fail as a team 99% of the time by the design, I still say its bad design (and when I say 99%,personally Ive never gotten that objective done in squads so that 1% seems generous to me :D). 

While you can always solo, its very boring alone and I try to avoid solo as much as I can. I dont even play Single Player games anymore because of that, with very few exceptions. 

And lastly, regarding squading up through the recruitment chat for the bounties, they arent exactly the most popular gamemode to squad up for so I can imagine struggling to find a squad, especially a somewat competent one. At least personally I dont remember seeing a single "LF Plains Bounties" message in a long time but I guess its possible I just haven't paid attention.