DE's Handling of the Latrox Une Bounty Stage Feedback and Many Other Things is Tone-Deaf and Worrisome.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

Bugs aside and bonus aside, this bounty is flat out horrible.  Enemy spawn feels like it slows down and spreads out.  This is especially egregious considering the literally constant flow of enemies that follow me around when I'm trying to mine/hunt/fish.  That's not me joking or exaggerating.  They know your position as soon as they spawn and come right for you in a steady flow.  Yet for some reason that flow stops and the auto-aggro stops as soon as this bounty starts and suddenly you're having to hunt completely idle packs of infested just chilling on the other side of a mountain to pray for a sample drop.  The difference in enemy aggro when you're trying to do non-combat activities and this bounty is like night and day, and is different to the point of making me question if bounty enemies are running on a completely different AI system.  I would not be shocked in the slightest to learn that there were two different AI settings for free-roam infested and bounty infested and that they accidentally got them switched on release.  It would make so much sense if that was the case.

But it's not just the tiny trickle of barely aggressive enemies that make this a gigantic pain.  The sample drop rate code appears to have been lifted straight from reactant drop rate in survival fissure missions.  I and many others have literally had it take 3-5 minutes for just the sample collection phase which is about the same drop rate over time for survival fissures.  This is completely and totally unacceptable.  This is one stage in a multi-stage bounty and the whole stage should take a maximum of 2 minutes.  Instead just collecting the samples takes twice that on average.  Every single enemy should drop samples.  There is far too much arbitrary waiting and time-gating in this update as is.  You don't need to squeeze us every little place you can.  There is no benefit to the player experience by putting in time-grind like this.  It only serves to pad the engagement numbers; which will be short-lived if people just stop running these bounties.  I have seen so many people just flat out quit as soon as this bounty starts.

And then there's the bonus.  It didn't work for many at first, though I didn't experience that.  Then it worked for everyone and for some reason you saw this as the only problem.  Not the player complaints.  Not the frustration this stage was causing.  Just the fact that the bonus for this stage was easily obtainable.  So the only change you put in for this nearly universally despised bounty was to make it worse.  Players get chastised by Devs and a certain other players for immediately becoming hostile when something is bad, rather than providing softly worded criticism as feedback.  This situation right here is exactly why that happens.  People despise this bounty stage because it's mechanically awful and instead of responding to that feedback in a way that makes it not awful, you made it worse ON PURPOSE.  This is why everything immediately turns into a dumpster fire.  Nothing else works.  You refuse to listen to feedback until that feedback comes with torches and pitchforks.  No one wanted longer wait periods on Iso Vaults.  No one wanted a harder bonus req on the Latrox bounty stage.  None of that was asked for, but you did it anyway because it slows us down which helps YOU out.  You're looking out for yourselves, your bottom line, and your engagement numbers and you're ignoring what players want.  There are mechanical issues with many of the bounty stages (like trying to kill enemies near the bait for the assassinate stage.  They just sit outside the bubble and lob crap at you.  That's mechanically sound and totally fun.  Absolutely.) and you're ignoring literally all of the feedback on those things. 

Unless the feedback is something that's in line with what you already wanted to do you seem to be ignoring it completely.  Major UI issues and nearly universal wants from players?  No acknowledgement or response.  But you'll remake the entire Mission Summary screen and somehow manage to make it worse.  Major complaints about arbitrary waiting periods and time gates?  You literally made them worse and put more in.  Complaints about ability nerfs while also not buffing obviously bad abilities?  Worth mentioning that they're bad by player standards and even bad by your player-use-spreadsheet standards which you showed on a devstream.  What did you do?  You nerfed more abilities and outright refused to acknowledge there was an issue on a live stream.  Everyone sat there silent and stone-faced while Rebb asked the question on if anyone was planning on doing anything about these bad abilities by following through on the promise to buff them.  What is even the point of having forums with feedback sections if you're just going to ignore all of it?

[(XBOX)DarknessZeref]

16 minutes ago, (XB1)TehChubbyDugan said:

ignore all of it?

[DE]Rebecca responded herself to another post regarding the Latrox Une bounty and stated the team is looking at improving the quest. You're on console with me, so we'll be waiting awhile until anything happens- but they know. 

[Rawbeard]

the best feedback is to stop playing. I am not sure I have been on Daimos in a month now.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

Just now, (XB1)DarknessZeref said:

[DE]Rebecca responded herself to another post regarding the Latrox Une bounty and stated the team is looking at improving the quest. You're on console with me, so we'll be waiting awhile until anything happens- but they know. 

My post is late to the game though.  We've already been through the stages of feedback with this.
 

1.  Provide feedback that something sucks.
2. Accept that the devs are ignoring you.
3. Make memes and jokes about the issue.
4. Boil over and make rant posts until DE notices

Pitchforks were already out before I got here, so my point still stands.  They don't listen until there's a dumpster fire.  If they are listening, they don't acknowledge and communicate that until there's a dumpster fire.  They had the opportunity to change things when they changed the bonus objective and instead opted with ignoring current feedback and made it worse.  Then the ranting started here and especially on the subreddit, and only after are they acknowledging that there's an issue and they'll try to fix it.

All other points I made outside of the ones pertaining to this bounty also remain.

[WiseGuard]

To be honest, Deimos has zero to none useful items outside of Deimos loop.

Trumna hype is high, but I think it will settle down within a month or two. It's not worth bothering, unless they will add something useful and interesting - meta defining.

Of course its mandatory for Helminth. Other than that - meh.

At least Kuva Lich weapons are useful.

[Katinka]

58 minutes ago, (XB1)TehChubbyDugan said:

And then there's the bonus.  It didn't work for many at first, though I didn't experience that.  Then it worked for everyone and for some reason you saw this as the only problem.  Not the player complaints.  Not the frustration this stage was causing.  Just the fact that the bonus for this stage was easily obtainable.  So the only change you put in for this nearly universally despised bounty was to make it worse.  

I don't follow this part.  As far as I was aware the only change to the bonus was to allow Latrox Une to stay uploading longer and that this was because he would either leave when he'd finished uploading (gets bonus) or after a maximum time (no bonus) and the amount he had to upload scaled with squad size while the maximum time didn't.  It was impossible for a 4-player squad to get the bonus because they had to give him so many samples that he couldn't upload them in time.  Extending the time allowed made no difference to smaller squads because he'd still leave after uploading all the samples.  Was there another change to it that I missed?

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

2 minutes ago, Katinka said:

I don't follow this part.  As far as I was aware the only change to the bonus was to allow Latrox Une to stay uploading longer and that this was because he would either leave when he'd finished uploading (gets bonus) or after a maximum time (no bonus) and the amount he had to upload scaled with squad size while the maximum time didn't.  It was impossible for a 4-player squad to get the bonus because they had to give him so many samples that he couldn't upload them in time.  Extending the time allowed made no difference to smaller squads because he'd still leave after uploading all the samples.  Was there another change to it that I missed?

On PC, the bonus is apparently keeping his shield drone alive now.  I've seen nothing but complaints about the change and it honestly sounds awful.  While I don't have personal experience with this particular change, general consensus seems to be that it's awful.  Considering the bonus didn't need to be changed at all, I have a problem with them changing it instead of working on the actually broken parts of the bounty, regardless of if the change is as bad as people make it out to be.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

35 minutes ago, WiseGuard said:

To be honest, Deimos has zero to none useful items outside of Deimos loop.

Trumna hype is high, but I think it will settle down within a month or two. It's not worth bothering, unless they will add something useful and interesting - meta defining.

Of course its mandatory for Helminth. Other than that - meh.

At least Kuva Lich weapons are useful.

Mandatory for Helminth AND Xaku.  If you want the MR from all the various items from Deimos as well as getting a second Xaku to subsume, that's a LOT of bounties.  Which is a lot of standing around staring at Latrox, wondering where all the samples are.

[baldy117]

standing from bounty's would be nice with the medals being a Bonus but thats just me

spawns do feel weak when doing bounties you get a Ton of em when in the iso vaults but even then the mob needed to lower the toxic is drowned out by the others

[WiseGuard]

7 minutes ago, (XB1)TehChubbyDugan said:

Mandatory for Helminth AND Xaku.  If you want the MR from all the various items from Deimos as well as getting a second Xaku to subsume, that's a LOT of bounties.  Which is a lot of standing around staring at Latrox, wondering where all the samples are.

Forgive me, didn't think of that.

Not sure Xaku or its Helminth ability is that useful, gamedefining or niche filling frame.
Also stopped caring about MR after 18 softcap.
But yeah, its from my personal perspective, for others it seems grind is mandatory then.

I hope DE will fix this mess within six months or so, so that players who do want to enjoy the content could play properly and enjoy it.

P.S. I fed my first Xaku to Helminth as it's not useful frame (for me) and have blueprints for another one if someone finds some cheese and unique build.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

Just now, WiseGuard said:

Forgive me, didn't think of that.

Not sure Xaku or its Helminth ability is that useful, gamedefining or niche filling frame.
Also stopped caring about MR after 18 softcap.
But yeah, its from my personal perspective, for others it seems grind is mandatory then.

Oh, you absolutely weren't wrong.  Deimos can certainly be ignored.  It's just that for me, I'm max rank and I tend to chase MR.  I also don't have a lot left to do aside from screwing around (which is what I actually enjoy doing in this game lol) so if new content drops, I want the bits it comes with and it's something new for me to do.  This new update has been super disappointing for me so far though, and the Dev's response to the complaints is totally under my skin at this point.  It feels like they've responded to nearly all complaints with spite.  Aside from Xaku.  Console doesn't have any of the Xaku changes yet, but it looks like they're actually listening and doing a good job there.  Everywhere else, not so much.

[(XBOX)DarknessZeref]

3 hours ago, WiseGuard said:

To be honest, Deimos has zero to none useful items

*Laughs in Panzer Vulpaphyla*

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

This genuinely feels kind of spiteful.  People have complained about how long, tedious and boring this bounty is since day one, and how did you fix it?  You've made the bonus nearly impossible to complete without extremely specific loadouts.  I've been in squads so effective at keeping the map clear that we completed the Grineer ally bounty stage with them getting 0%.  We still had the shield drone die.  You put this new bonus stage in, replacing a functioning bonus stage, while completely refusing to address how unbelievably awful the main portion of the bounty is.  The drop rate on samples is far too low.  Enemy spawn is actually okay right now on Xbox, but that only highlights how awful the drop rate is for samples.  You can map wipe for over two minutes and still not be done with just the first phase of this stupid bounty, and then you have to do the upload phase.  All while Latrox babbles incessantly.  

On top of that, I've hit this god forsaken bounty stage in very literally every single bounty I've run since the update dropped, and all I'm doing is farming for a second Xaku and Mother Tokens.  Either it's bugged to just always have this horrible bounty stage, or you made it far more common on purpose despite how much people have complained about it.  What's the rationale here?  People hate something you stuck in the game so just make it worse and stick it in every single bounty then release an event that requires you run bounties to get the FOMO stuff in the store?  Maybe not, but that is what it feels like at this point.  

Until you figure out how to not make this bounty suck and feel terrible, it really needs to be taken out of rotation.

[Chol-Airth]

Yup, this bounty is the worst. The fact that both Latrox and the drone are wandering around AND in different directions doesn't help either! If you let the drone die, you don't get bonus rewards. But if you let Latrox die, you fail the mission. So you're basically stuck with half the squad protecting the drone and the other half protecting Latrox, several minutes on top of that... And that's without the upload phase.

I would imagine the fix to be along lines of fixing sample drop rate (so that players don't spend excessive amounts of time on this particular stage; whereas they spend far less time on other stages), as well as pathing, so that Latrox and drone stay next to each other, instead of wandering away from each other. Drone also replenishes shields (at least the one generated by 2 on Necramech) and provide overshields. Don't know if this is a bug or intended. If it is intended, it would be much more useful if the drone actually stuck close to Latrox and provided him with additional shields...

Needs fixing ASAP either way.

[xombob89]

On 2020-10-04 at 8:42 PM, (XB1)DarknessZeref said:

[DE]Rebecca responded herself to another post regarding the Latrox Une bounty and stated the team is looking at improving the quest. You're on console with me, so we'll be waiting awhile until anything happens- but they know. 

Yep and I do hope they actually make it fun this time around. Its not only that the stage is very long to begin with, but there isnt even really any enemies attacking so its like just waiting around doing next to nothing for 15mins. I think the small spawns there are only follow one player or something so only one guy gets an occasional few enemies to kill and the rest are just fish watching.

Same problem with the cauldron mission once youve collected the parts, feels like enemy spawns just go down and takes ages for anything to get inside the ring even if you use abilities to pull/push em in. At least the first stage of that mission drops a lot of parts to make it feel more interesting.

[Duality52]

This is the thread/suggestion that Rebecca responded to:

The idea is to integrate Index Capitalization mechanics as the central Bounty objective. You deposit a certain amount of samples (which are guaranteed to drop from the Infested now) to Une, you finish the Bounty. The Osprey gets a boost in having Armor and using something similar to the Amprex like the Juno Oxium Osprey.

These changes encourage the player's mobility on killing and collecting. Bounties like the "Hive Extermination" and "Anomaly Retrieval (Purifier)" help emphasize speed in getting the bounty finished, with its bonus objectives having the same emphasis in mind. Not to mention that the bonus objective should be fair to obtain that is in the player's control.

[_R_o_g_u_e_]

On 2020-10-05 at 1:24 AM, (XB1)TehChubbyDugan said:

Bugs aside and bonus aside, this bounty is flat out horrible.  Enemy spawn feels like it slows down and spreads out.  This is especially egregious considering the literally constant flow of enemies that follow me around when I'm trying to mine/hunt/fish.  That's not me joking or exaggerating.  They know your position as soon as they spawn and come right for you in a steady flow.  Yet for some reason that flow stops and the auto-aggro stops as soon as this bounty starts and suddenly you're having to hunt completely idle packs of infested just chilling on the other side of a mountain to pray for a sample drop.  The difference in enemy aggro when you're trying to do non-combat activities and this bounty is like night and day, and is different to the point of making me question if bounty enemies are running on a completely different AI system.  I would not be shocked in the slightest to learn that there were two different AI settings for free-roam infested and bounty infested and that they accidentally got them switched on release.  It would make so much sense if that was the case.

But it's not just the tiny trickle of barely aggressive enemies that make this a gigantic pain.  The sample drop rate code appears to have been lifted straight from reactant drop rate in survival fissure missions.  I and many others have literally had it take 3-5 minutes for just the sample collection phase which is about the same drop rate over time for survival fissures.  This is completely and totally unacceptable.  This is one stage in a multi-stage bounty and the whole stage should take a maximum of 2 minutes.  Instead just collecting the samples takes twice that on average.  Every single enemy should drop samples.  There is far too much arbitrary waiting and time-gating in this update as is.  You don't need to squeeze us every little place you can.  There is no benefit to the player experience by putting in time-grind like this.  It only serves to pad the engagement numbers; which will be short-lived if people just stop running these bounties.  I have seen so many people just flat out quit as soon as this bounty starts.

And then there's the bonus.  It didn't work for many at first, though I didn't experience that.  Then it worked for everyone and for some reason you saw this as the only problem.  Not the player complaints.  Not the frustration this stage was causing.  Just the fact that the bonus for this stage was easily obtainable.  So the only change you put in for this nearly universally despised bounty was to make it worse.  Players get chastised by Devs and a certain other players for immediately becoming hostile when something is bad, rather than providing softly worded criticism as feedback.  This situation right here is exactly why that happens.  People despise this bounty stage because it's mechanically awful and instead of responding to that feedback in a way that makes it not awful, you made it worse ON PURPOSE.  This is why everything immediately turns into a dumpster fire.  Nothing else works.  You refuse to listen to feedback until that feedback comes with torches and pitchforks.  No one wanted longer wait periods on Iso Vaults.  No one wanted a harder bonus req on the Latrox bounty stage.  None of that was asked for, but you did it anyway because it slows us down which helps YOU out.  You're looking out for yourselves, your bottom line, and your engagement numbers and you're ignoring what players want.  There are mechanical issues with many of the bounty stages (like trying to kill enemies near the bait for the assassinate stage.  They just sit outside the bubble and lob crap at you.  That's mechanically sound and totally fun.  Absolutely.) and you're ignoring literally all of the feedback on those things. 

Unless the feedback is something that's in line with what you already wanted to do you seem to be ignoring it completely.  Major UI issues and nearly universal wants from players?  No acknowledgement or response.  But you'll remake the entire Mission Summary screen and somehow manage to make it worse.  Major complaints about arbitrary waiting periods and time gates?  You literally made them worse and put more in.  Complaints about ability nerfs while also not buffing obviously bad abilities?  Worth mentioning that they're bad by player standards and even bad by your player-use-spreadsheet standards which you showed on a devstream.  What did you do?  You nerfed more abilities and outright refused to acknowledge there was an issue on a live stream.  Everyone sat there silent and stone-faced while Rebb asked the question on if anyone was planning on doing anything about these bad abilities by following through on the promise to buff them.  What is even the point of having forums with feedback sections if you're just going to ignore all of it?

I honestly want to copy this entire thread and post it again myself. THANK YOU. This is absolutely true.