I hate "zone control" in bounties (Liberation), and likely nothing will change my mind unless changes are made

[Recyclotron]

Let's get some things out of the way first. This is MY perspective as a mostly-solo player who will never go into these open world areas in a group for anything other than the strictly necessary, ie. the Tridolons in my case. My computer isn't amazing to begin with and I'd hate to also have the random lag from actually being in multiplayer to "add" to the experience.

I really genuinely hate zone control missions, but only the actual bounty ones. What do I mean? Defense, Mobile Defense, Interception... Yeah, those are zone control missions. They exist, they're not terrible; I could point out how they could be improved just slightly but that would be a tangent opinion with pointless ramifications. Instead, I'm talking about the zone control mission exclusive to bounties: Liberation.

So what is wrong with these? As a solo player, a lot of things change doing Liberation. Here is a small list!

- Enemies spawn in smaller numbers/less frequency;

- You are NOT going to be covering the entire area on your own simply because your vision is not a 360º rotating camera, and even if you could congratz to you but you still can only shoot one thing at a time in general;

- You usually get a decrease of 3% every second but a kill only grants 10% control, meaning that for each kill you're getting about 4 seconds worth of time at worst, but missions are about two-minutes long or something;

So... What am I actually saying? I'm saying that not only is it significantly hard to stay above the bonus percentage (especially on Cetus, at 50%), but it's also possible to fail the mission unceremoniously for the dumbest of reasons: not a fast enough damage output or kill ratio. The worst of it is when you go back and review WHY you lost. You litterally had no enemies in sight but the percentage reached 0%? Great feeling! 

The dumbest thing is that my singular solution for the problem not only makes sense but would not be terribly hard to implement. Ready? Here it is: decrease the horizontal area where it starts counting enemies, accurately circle it in the minimap and remove most of the vertical calculation of area-presence, which get unfortunate consequences in some locations.

You can even see that this design philosophy works; just look at Interception, which conceptually isn't that much different, or Jupiter's Sabotage, wherein you must control 2 points for a certain duration. The common thing in those two missions is that points of interest are relatively close and usually easy to access. If a grineer unit shows up from a carrier and drops 100m away from your location, why is he already dropping you 1% out there? Don't forget that the AI also buggers up and they don't tend to actually run towards your location, instead camping specific nodes which may or may not be obvious and there are normally visibility blockages, whether from actual terrain or "decorations" such as structures. In the grineer missions you can get 10% per kill back, but if you have to be controlling five nodes of spawn/lingering to be effective you're always going to drop a significant number in control percentage. It's even worse with the infested: you get 5% control per kill and some of the recent enemy types are really annoying to kill (especially the "worms" in general, don't know if it's only me) and the vertical calculations can really mess everything with some of the pathfinding.

Again, everything would be fine if it was a SMALL (or at least significantly smaller) circle area which was clearly represented, visibly in the world if necessary, in which the enemy is trying to occupy or force you to leave its location for control pecentage points. You're not occupying the area? Fast drop of control percentage. The enemy is inside the area? Medium drop of control percentage. Kills? No percentage earned; instead you gain some from STAYING INSIDE THE CIRCLE while you're not being drained. Does this not sound more appealing than losing to enemies 200m away that you're not even aware were spawned on the Plains of Eidolon? Isn't it better/more in-line with the infested AI that they'd attempt to swarm a location to occupy it? "Oh look, there's 50 enemies in my radius, what should I do" AoE frames are not the solution: they're bad design being exploited for the sake of ease, not for engaging gameplay at all.

"But what about in multiplayer with what you're saying"? Why wouldn't the 4 people be inside the objective to prevent it from going down? Shouldn't they be cooperating, as intended in this game? It's not even an argument. My changes would not negatively impact games where people are actually cooperating to get the mission done. You can even do an interactible prompt to start the timer FFS, to deal with the random guy too slow to get to the mission location.

To everyone who dismisses this criticism with "it's a multiplayer game" argument: so what if it is? It's still bad design. Not all of us have friends or are comfortable playing with randoms with their own agendas and possibly lack of skill/interest in what you're supposed to be doing to get things over with. For people with slower rigs playing on any of the open-world areas can be a nightmare alone, and even more with extra people. It also doesn't help that playing in the SOLO mode does not actually pause the open world either: I understand that it's to make sure the timers for day/night-cold/warm-Vome/Fass cycles work the way they're intended, but it 100% sucks that if I'm on solo and want to take a small break you're basically encouraging me to not be in the middle of a bounty or just go back to town (which, for the Cambion Drift and the Isolation Vaults, is really not the number 1 option you'd take). Multiplayer does not fix the design flaws, it just makes them less obvious.

I hope to have demonstrated my point of view in a comprehensible manner. This is not a back-and-forth discussion either, it's me presenting my reasons and proposed changes to make something that is in my view terrible into something somewhat better. You're entitled to have your opinions too.

Appreciative of your time,

 - A frustrated Tenno

[WindigoTG]

3 hours ago, Recyclotron said:

- You are NOT going to be covering the entire area on your own simply because your vision is not a 360º rotating camera, and even if you could congratz to you but you still can only shoot one thing at a time in general;

The game gives you an enormous array of tools that let you shoot all things at once. And enemy radar gives you 360º awareness of the situation.

 

Not to disregard your entire post, and it's not like the mission doesn't have issues I would complain about myself, but if you don't use the options given to you to your advantage, that's kinda on you.

[JackHargreav]

Unless the game doesn't spawn enough enemies this bounty is more than doable.

I did many steel path runs and more r5 bounties.

The only reason i ever failed is because the game just decided to not spawn enemies and of course the percentage went down. Or an enemy was hiding somewhere.

[Killa_Byte]

20 Tenno bucks to any one that read that all..

[JackHargreav]

1 minute ago, Killa_Byte said:

20 Tenno bucks to any one that read that all..

Meh from what I read op wants the "keep territory" missions to be like interception missions because he can't solo these bounties. Or something like that.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

AoE frames exist and we have far too many of them infact. 

Protip: if you want more than a 2 line answer to your essay try posting such things in Feedback where it belongs, not General Discussion. Have a pleasant day.

[SneakyErvin]

On Deimos those missions are an issue since radar and AoE wont always cover where the enemy spawns. It happens very often that the mission takes place under high infested roots, making a large amount of mobs spawn ontop of said roots. And we only have 2 frames that will effectively kill at that range while also being able to do it outside of line of sight. And I dont know about the rest of you, but I dont really enjoy either of those two frames for bounties or in general either.

But that is all more of a spawn behavior issues tied to DEimos, which could be tweaked to be more consistant, or have mobs atleast try to jump down to you. It doesnt make sense that the mobs gain influence that far off from the zone. A melee race gaining control from a location when they cant even threaten you from that point? Logic.

[Cloud]

8 hours ago, Recyclotron said:

Again, everything would be fine if it was a SMALL (or at least significantly smaller) circle area which was clearly represented, visibly in the world if necessary, in which the enemy is trying to occupy or force you to leave its location for control pecentage points. You're not occupying the area? Fast drop of control percentage. The enemy is inside the area? Medium drop of control percentage. Kills? No percentage earned; instead you gain some from STAYING INSIDE THE CIRCLE while you're not being drained. Does this not sound more appealing than losing to enemies 200m away that you're not even aware were spawned on the Plains of Eidolon? Isn't it better/more in-line with the infested AI that they'd attempt to swarm a location to occupy it? "Oh look, there's 50 enemies in my radius, what should I do" AoE frames are not the solution: they're bad design being exploited for the sake of ease, not for engaging gameplay at all.

I think from reading all your post that this could summarize your point.

Since you took the time to articulate such a post, you deserve more than a 2 lines comment, even if this is general discussion, not the feedback one where such articulate thoughts have their place.

In my experience I never struggled with liberation, I almost never drop from 80% and I play half of the time alone, mostly not using AoE frames. Sure, there are times when the spawn rate of the enemies bugs out and this brings some difficulty since as you said, it's not that you can't keep up but more like there are no enemies to kill at all, but frankly those episodes are quite rare to be so extended to let you lose the bounty.

In my modest opinion your problem is more in your set up and arsenal and how you choose to approach said mission. Even if you don't want to use AoE frames, you have multiple other tools to have territory control and high kps, for example Enemy Radar, Enemy Sense, Animal Instinct on your pet if you don't want to ruin your wf build, an huge variety of Aoe Weapons or unique perks ones as the Zenith who permits you to shoot through obstacles, or even Sniper rifles to cover big areas from strategic pov. Don't forget you can also use archwings which give you high mobility and perfect visibility on all the area. 

Now instead turning to your suggested points, I don't agree they would improve the mission, instead I think that some of them would be an actual detriment to it:

- Making the circle smaller  would remove the need to remain mobile during the mission, encouraging camping and making it even more boring. Not to mention that AoE Frames would become even stronger in such circumstances being able (depending on how small the area is) to cover the entire playing field with their skills.

- Percentage linked to "staying in the circle": so many uncertainties about this ... you say "if you stay out of the area you get fast drop of control percentage", but what if, for example, as many times happens, while you are doing the mission and you are on the area, other teammates decide to leave it, for example going for a mining adventure or other sub-activities? Are you doomed to lose the bounty without being able to do anything? It would be the most effective way of griefing I've ever seen. 

Also when you say "you get percentage staying inside the circle when you're not being drained" do you actually mean when there are no enemies in the whole area? Because that would require an even more maniacal control over the territory if you don't decide to resort to easy tactics.

 

I appreciate the fact that you have come up with ideas instead of just complaining in a non-constructive way, but I feel that they are not appropriate to improve this mission which I certainly recognize needs some change, but not for its difficulty, but in its intent to involve the players more.

 

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

I agree with the sentiment as a fellow primarily solo player. It's one of the bounties that I feel least able to control the outcome of with my own actions (a close second being any escort/defense mission where failure is the death of something that's not me - unless I'm playing a frame like Oberon, and I don't like playing Oberon.)

Much like powering up excavators, there needs to be a constant flow of the resource you need to complete your objective (be it energy cells in excavation, enemies in survival for life support, and enemies to kill within the zone of control in Liberation)... with the flow especially looked at for solo missions. (They seem to be the most impacted by these conditions... I consider team play to be easy mode in Warframe... solo mode is hard mode.)

In these zone control bounties, all enemies should be marked in a clearly obvious way, even if you don't have enemy sense. They need glowy indicators showing their positions once they're interacting with the zone of control. I don't know if this is possible, but it feels like it: If enemies can influence the zone control meter from outside the zone, that needs to be gone as a mechanic.

This is one of the areas that Warframe needs a balance pass of spawning mechanics overall, in more than just this area. It's just really obvious that there are issues in Liberation bounties and their ilk.

[Monolake]

And the whole mission premise is misleading as a lie - it has nothing to do with control or defending, its more like a tightly timed exterminate so yeah when they dont spawn or spawn away behind a hill you are screwed despite technically 'controlling' the area and having it free of enemies.

Also its another of a wait-walled parts to waste your time regardless of what you do - you can't speed it up.

[Loza03]

IMO, it's a fine mission type, but enemies tend to get caught in nooks and crannies too often, or spawn outside the radius, but still be counted for some reason.

 

The rate at which it drops is related to how many are in the area, so if you can't see anything but it's dropping, that means you've missed one. On Deimos where spawn rates are absurdly low, I've had instances where it's stayed at 100% for a good several seconds.

[ReaverKane]

12 hours ago, WindigoTG said:

The game gives you an enormous array of tools that let you shoot all things at once. And enemy radar gives you 360º awareness of the situation.

 

Not to disregard your entire post, and it's not like the mission doesn't have issues I would complain about myself, but if you don't use the options given to you to your advantage, that's kinda on you.

This...
OP is conflating is lack of ability to cope with the mission with the mission having a problem. Sure there are pacing and repetition issues with the mission (as with all missions in warframe in general), but from my experience nothing the OP says rings true.
First time i did that mission (granted was a T1 bounty) was during the beta test, and i remember mostly doing it with Bonewidow and the new (barely modded) archgun, which means, i used the archgun only... Yes there's some issues with enemies coming from above the area and sometimes getting stuck up there, and still counting as contesting, but then again, a grenade to the ground and, enemies gone...

And as far as the "there's only one direction you can attack"... Saryn, Equinox, Banshee, Excalibur, Nezha, Rhino, Frost, etc. would like a word...
I'm sorry to say this, and don't mean to disparage OP, but this is a clear case of "git gud". At least as far as he's portraying his complaints.

Also, there's a case to be made for not playing exclusively solo when you can't really handle it. I understand having a poor connection, been there, but still...

[(PSN)robotwars7]

defending territory is not that difficult though. there's a myriad of frames and setups that either stop enemies reaching you via barriers and CC (Gara, Limbo, Vauban), or just kill everything before it can get close (Saryn, Mesa, Ember). Voidrig Necramech does a great job too if you full up on energy: cast 2, find a good vantage, then press 4 and shoot at everything around you and the Arquebex's damage and AoE takes care of the rest.

the problem is enemy spawns: there's never enough and they don't always enter the area where they're supposed to, and get stuck or stranded on the terrain as a result. that, and it's also boring as hell when most Bounty Stages are focused on defensive combat.