Corpus Railjack gave us a grim reminder of how bad Defense is

[Bakaguya-sama]

Around this time last year I made a thread voicing my concerns about how the new map reworks is making Defense increasingly frustrating to play:  

Then I just stopped caring about it. Because honestly, this is self-solving problem: Just don't play Defense on these maps. With the introduction of Steel Path and T5 Fissure Kuva Survival as highly efficient Kuva farms, the popularity of Arbitration took a sharp hit. There just wasn't any reason to stop by these atrocious Defense nodes more than once or twice (for Steel Path completion).  

But now, since these Defense nodes are added to Railjack, I think this is a topic needed to be brought back up. The problem remains: Newer defense maps are too big and too littered with terrain noise. Especially the Corpus Ship tileset, which so massive that even Defense specialists like Nova and Saryn cannot bring the completion time down to reasonable level (1 minute / wave). And of course, it take forever for the elevator in the middle to move up or down. This makes it problematic whenever a Void Storm sits on top on one of these nodes. It's also problematic that Ash parts are now moved to these nodes, which has significantly increase the time requirement to obtain him. I feel bad for any new player trying to obtain Ash now. And I dread any kind of future contents being hosted on these Corpus RJ Defense nodes (like Corpus lich for example).  Railjack phase already take awhile to complete, add on the nightmare that is Corpus ship defense and it now takes an eternity.  

My suggestion remains the same: Maybe it's too late to change the maps themselves. So rework Defense gamemode to something more reasonable. Maybe spawn more enemies but don't require you to kill all of them to avoid having to look for 1 stuck one. Maybe just combine 5 wave into 1 so enemies spawns are more dense and we don't have to wait. There's many way to go at it. The ideal scenario is something like Hydron, taking around 1 minutes to complete a wave, but can be much faster if you bring the right tool. 

[(NSW)Greybones]

1 hour ago, Bakaguya-sama said:

Around this time last year I made a thread voicing my concerns about how the new map reworks is making Defense increasingly frustrating to play:  

Then I just stopped caring about it. Because honestly, this is self-solving problem: Just don't play Defense on these maps. With the introduction of Steel Path and T5 Fissure Kuva Survival as highly efficient Kuva farms, the popularity of Arbitration took a sharp hit. There just wasn't any reason to stop by these atrocious Defense nodes more than once or twice (for Steel Path completion).  

But now, since these Defense nodes are added to Railjack, I think this is a topic needed to be brought back up. The problem remains: Newer defense maps are too big and too littered with terrain noise. Especially the Corpus Ship tileset, which so massive that even Defense specialists like Nova and Saryn cannot bring the completion time down to reasonable level (1 minute / wave). And of course, it take forever for the elevator in the middle to move up or down. This makes it problematic whenever a Void Storm sits on top on one of these nodes. It's also problematic that Ash parts are now moved to these nodes, which has significantly increase the time requirement to obtain him. I feel bad for any new player trying to obtain Ash now. And I dread any kind of future contents being hosted on these Corpus RJ Defense nodes (like Corpus lich for example).  Railjack phase already take awhile to complete, add on the nightmare that is Corpus ship defense and it now takes an eternity.  

My suggestion remains the same: Maybe it's too late to change the maps themselves. So rework Defense gamemode to something more reasonable. Maybe spawn more enemies but don't require you to kill all of them to avoid having to look for 1 stuck one. Maybe just combine 5 wave into 1 so enemies spawns are more dense and we don't have to wait. There's many way to go at it. The ideal scenario is something like Hydron, taking around 1 minutes to complete a wave, but can be much faster if you bring the right tool. 

If anything I think your expectations are unreasonable. Yeah, the game lets you do it in one minute, but you'll note that you're not anywhere near reaching the game's failstate at that rate. If you've effectively broken the game, I'm not sure what leg you're standing on to say that the game needs to cater to those who break it.

edit: Probably something grind-related and how it's not efficient grinding and that the game should make the grind more efficient because The Game Is The Grind, not some sort of video game we play for space pirate ninjas and third person shooting and fun. Could be wrong, though

[covan12]

defense hasnt had that much of a issue to me even in the new tilesets, only one, keep that number in mind ONE problem has arised, and they patched the heck outta it when the second update for tempestarri hit. that was the void sinks and storms, both dont effect defense targets anymore

[Kaotis]

hace 2 horas, Bakaguya-sama dijo:

My suggestion remains the same: Maybe it's too late to change the maps themselves. So rework Defense gamemode to something more reasonable. Maybe spawn more enemies but don't require you to kill all of them to avoid having to look for 1 stuck one. Maybe just combine 5 wave into 1 so enemies spawns are more dense and we don't have to wait. There's many way to go at it. The ideal scenario is something like Hydron, taking around 1 minutes to complete a wave, but can be much faster if you bring the right tool.

I agree with your sentiment 100% but there are some technical reasons behind some decisions they made:

1. As far as i know the host pc/console is in charge of the npc AI. This ain't a problem if you are rocking 6 or 8 core cpu with 16 gb ram (surprisingly ram also prevents a lot of common bugs as well) but if you are with a 4 core withaut hiperthreading or 4 core with HT cpu(let's remember that not too long ago this where the norm and technically more common still) you will have a hard time to run more NPCs.

2. Consoles. Current gen is hard to get your hands on and you have to have a somewhat coherent game. DE from a coherence and creative point of view can't have the pc version be a diferent game than the PSX or Xbox n versions... not to mention nintendo that's well known for using 3 gen old tech in their consoles ....

3. Npc AI has troble right now to be responsive when there are many of them in the same spot....

4. And probably most important DE doesn't like misions that are 1min long... 

[covan12]

22 minutes ago, kaotis said:

I agree with your sentiment 100% but there are some technical reasons behind some decisions they made:

1. As far as i know the host pc/console is in charge of the npc AI. This ain't a problem if you are rocking 6 or 8 core cpu with 16 gb ram (surprisingly ram also prevents a lot of common bugs as well) but if you are with a 4 core withaut hiperthreading or 4 core with HT cpu(let's remember that not too long ago this where the norm and technically more common still) you will have a hard time to run more NPCs.

2. Consoles. Current gen is hard to get your hands on and you have to have a somewhat coherent game. DE from a coherence and creative point of view can't have the pc version be a diferent game than the PSX or Xbox n versions... not to mention nintendo that's well known for using 3 gen old tech in their consoles ....

3. Npc AI has troble right now to be responsive when there are many of them in the same spot....

4. And probably most important DE doesn't like misions that are 1min long... 

cant argue with the nintendo thing, theyve made a monopoly on obsolete tech making it look new and the switch is literally best example. but they r also so much more durable than the other company brand consoles. (this being bc nintendo was and always will have their focus more on kids than adults using their crap )

[Voltage]

4 hours ago, (NSW)covan12 said:

defense hasnt had that much of a issue to me even in the new tilesets, only one, keep that number in mind ONE problem has arised, and they patched the heck outta it when the second update for tempestarri hit. that was the void sinks and storms, both dont effect defense targets anymore

This issue is more apparent the older you are as a player. I'm not saying it's impossible to have issues with Defense tiles, but as new players approach the scene, this is all they know. 

6 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

If anything I think your expectations are unreasonable. Yeah, the game lets you do it in one minute, but you'll note that you're not anywhere near reaching the game's failstate at that rate. If you've effectively broken the game, I'm not sure what leg you're standing on to say that the game needs to cater to those who break it.

Corpus Ship Defense is literally a "wait for enemies" simulator due to its scale. It looks beautiful, but it has terrible design from a gameplay perspective for Defense. I'm not sure how OP is unreasonable for pointing out how terrible tileset reworks have been towards Defense and asking for something to alleviate this.

[(NSW)Greybones]

33 minutes ago, Voltage said:

Corpus Ship Defense is literally a "wait for enemies" simulator due to its scale. It looks beautiful, but it has terrible design from a gameplay perspective for Defense. I'm not sure how OP is unreasonable for pointing out how terrible tileset reworks have been towards Defense and asking for something to alleviate this.

They're speaking from a "Rounds taking 1 minute is a reasonable expectation" perspective, right?

From my understanding, they're complaining that the rounds aren't going as fast as other tilesets, and that the expectation they've set for defense missions comes from them utterly breaking the game with their power, since their expectation is based on an approach that eliminates or practically eliminates any failstate chance that the game may have (of course it's going to be faster if there's no threat of failure). And it sounds like they're expecting missions to be balanced around this broken-game-expectation, so that, just like everywhere else for them, the rounds last ~1 minute.

As an aside, I'm in the middle of doing some testing, approaching the defense tileset at the level of the content to see what it's like. There could be something in what's said, but I'm definitely approaching it from a different perspective than the OP. I've already recently done a defense mission on the Orokin tileset, and when I failed at wave 3 (due to making wrong crucial decisions), I was already pushing 8 minutes (not saying this is definitive. Needs more samples).

[DebrisFlow]

The trigger of each new enemy wave should be timer-based (optimally each minute) if the primary condition of complete enemy clearance is not met before. Guaranteed 5 waves in 5 minutes, with enemies accumulating if you're not clearing fast enough. This would help normalize defense duration with other mission types and alleviate the main annoyance of the current "whac-a-mole" design

[Bakaguya-sama]

6 hours ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

If anything I think your expectations are unreasonable. Yeah, the game lets you do it in one minute, but you'll note that you're not anywhere near reaching the game's failstate at that rate. If you've effectively broken the game, I'm not sure what leg you're standing on to say that the game needs to cater to those who break it.

1 minute per wave = 5 minutes per round of reward. That's equal to Survival. That's the benchmark here.  Interception is similar, taking 5 min per round on average, but can be faster if your team lock it down tight. And then you have Excavation and Disruption, which are even faster if people know what they're doing.  

Relative to other gamemodes, non Hydron Defense takes the significantly more time to complete, for essentially the same rewards. Thats the issue here. I can only hope that they don't put any unique rewards in there in the future. 

[(NSW)Greybones]

42 minutes ago, Bakaguya-sama said:

1 minute per wave = 5 minutes per round of reward. That's equal to Survival. That's the benchmark here.  Interception is similar, taking 5 min per round on average, but can be faster if your team lock it down tight. And then you have Excavation and Disruption, which are even faster if people know what they're doing.  

Relative to other gamemodes, non Hydron Defense takes the significantly more time to complete, for essentially the same rewards. Thats the issue here. I can only hope that they don't put any unique rewards in there in the future. 

Why is that your benchmark? Even when I overpowered Defense on any other tileset, it was always slower than Survival. Defense was the one that I avoided if I was trying to level fast. And if it's engaged with on its level, it's going to take longer still. What are you doing differently?

edit: So far the enemies have successfully navigated their way to the defense target on the Corpus Ship and tend to be within reach; they're not instantly dying, and so the time it takes to kill what's around (while staying alive) gives any others on their way a chance to get to the objective. More testing needed, though. A Treasurer appeared miles away and was an outlier

Phew! 11 minutes on that one, just to complete 5 rounds. And it was pretty down-to-the-wire.  Now to try and go for 20 rounds, which will require a higher TTK and higher survivability. 🤔 Maybe

[Teridax68]

There are generally three issues I take with Defense:

• Enemies often come in only as a slow trickle, which makes the mode trivial to complete at most levels, yet also feel painfully slow.
• Basing wave completion on killing every enemy in the wave clashes horribly with broken AI pathing that consistently gets units stuck in level geometry, as we end up having to play hide-and-seek at the end of every wave to see where the stragglers got caught.
• The completely static nature of the game mode makes it feel pretty boring to me after a while, as we're stuck on the same tile until we quit.

For this reason, I find Defense to be among my least favorite game modes. While this wouldn't fix everything about it, I'd like the following changes:

• Increase enemy spawn rates.
• Change progress to be based on time spent, rather than waves completed. Five minutes of Defense should be scored the same as five minutes in Survival. This should make advancing through the mission far less choppy, and mitigate problems with the enemy AI.

With the above, hopefully Defense could become a lot smoother, if still a bit boring. Ideally, it'd be nice for defensively-oriented frames to become a bit more valuable, instead of nuke frames dominating almost everywhere.

[quxier]

5 hours ago, kaotis said:

1. As far as i know the host pc/console is in charge of the npc AI. This ain't a problem if you are rocking 6 or 8 core cpu with 16 gb ram (surprisingly ram also prevents a lot of common bugs as well) but if you are with a 4 core withaut hiperthreading or 4 core with HT cpu(let's remember that not too long ago this where the norm and technically more common still) you will have a hard time to run more NPCs.

So, If I'm playing solo I'm Host, hence I"m in charge of AI. I get it right? So it's the same as I would do with 3 people?

The thing is... I have not good PC. In one defense there are a lot of enemies around you (e.g. infested Hydron or other infested defense that were used for leveling). On the other hand I've played defense on the corpus ship. I have to look for every enemy one by one. If I have seen more than 2-3 enemies then it would be exception.

So don't tell us that you need some good device to run defense. The maps are problems not your machine. At least maps are responsible for major AI stuffs.

8 hours ago, Bakaguya-sama said:

Then I just stopped caring about it. Because honestly, this is self-solving problem: Just don't play Defense on these maps.

If that would solve issues then there would be more content less RJ, sprinting would be fixed and Sevagoth would get some "touch".

I avoid this tileset (not only defense) unless I'm on Void fissures or Kuva hunt. Those have better spawns.

[Bakaguya-sama]

1 hour ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

Phew! 11 minutes on that one, just to complete 5 rounds.

This sounds about right. Average 2 minutes+ per Defense wave is normal for this tileset.

By extrapolation, its gonna take you 45 minutes to get to Rotation C (wave 20), assuming that you take the same amount of time to finish the later waves (a very bold assumption).  

45 minutes for a 10.3% chance of getting an Ash component.  Do you not see how insane this is?  It makes Asian MMO grinds look reasonable by comparison.  

[(NSW)Greybones]

29 minutes ago, Bakaguya-sama said:

This sounds about right. Average 2 minutes+ per Defense wave is normal for this tileset.

By extrapolation, its gonna take you 45 minutes to get to Rotation C (wave 20), assuming that you take the same amount of time to finish the later waves (a very bold assumption).  

45 minutes for a 10.3% chance of getting an Ash component.  Do you not see how insane this is?  It makes Asian MMO grinds look reasonable by comparison.  

That's extrapolating off of 5 waves, mind. I just barely made it through that one, and tried again with a similar loadout and failed at wave 7. If I'm going to make it to 20, I may need to start hitting harder, which will undoubtedly shave off some minutes (though they may be balanced out by tougher enemies towards the end).

I'll be honest; even if 45 is the worst, that still doesn't sound that bad. Once it's got, it's got, and if I had fun each chance I took to get it, that's alright (the 5 and 7 waves were pretty fun; I expect pushing to 20 is gonna be an emotional rollercoaster 😋).

I wouldn't rush myself to get it, mind. I'd set aside some playtime to give it a go every so often, maybe once or twice a week, and if I didn't get it, well, I did choose to go for that amount of time, knowing what I was getting myself into, potential failure included. If I did feel like I needed to rushrushrush, where each time I didn't get it I'd swear and hate the game and hate the grind and hate the level and basically make myself miserable, I'd consider that a huge warning.  Then I'd need to think whether I want to keep doing it, give up with potential to try again later, or just pay the plat (DE need to keep the lights on somehow, or trade with another player for plat, though that’s less likely for me personally)

I tend to avoid Asian MMOs. I didn't even do Destiny's "Eriana's Vow" catalyst when it first came out, that was a yikes grind

[Kaotis]

hace 3 horas, quxier dijo:

So, If I'm playing solo I'm Host, hence I"m in charge of AI. I get it right? So it's the same as I would do with 3 people?

The thing is... I have not good PC. In one defense there are a lot of enemies around you (e.g. infested Hydron or other infested defense that were used for leveling). On the other hand I've played defense on the corpus ship. I have to look for every enemy one by one. If I have seen more than 2-3 enemies then it would be exception.

So don't tell us that you need some good device to run defense. The maps are problems not your machine. At least maps are responsible for major AI stuffs.

I meant if we get 5 waves of enemies into 1 single rotation. The problem with npc AI is that it needs procesing power not gpu or graphics power. You can run the game in 720p or lower and hit 200 fps on most (ofcs not all but pretty high  nrs) semi modern gpus (pretty sure integrated gpus can hit 60+ at that resolution as well) but if you throw in 200 npc in the same zone you will see the limit of the cpu realy fast. <-- there is a reason the npc have a spawn cap of about 20~30

Also for some reason DE limits the amount  of npc when solo and not in arbitration.

Map design is not realy the big issue... if Enemy AI stoped hiding in a corner and actualy went for the defense target there wouldn't be a problem would it? 

The true problem is that AI is dumb as a bat and do things like:

1. Hide in a corner when no 1 is shooting at them and where it can't shot no 1.

2. Run from point A to point B then back at point A.

3. Forget they are your enemy and stop atacking you or the defense target.

4. Spawn and dont move... etc

Etc etc...

Fixing this needs more hardware because of the vastly more complex code ... it's as simple as that.

 

[bubbabenali]

Well Gara Prime just got released. Add a subsumed Protea and there is your reason why defence maps won't get shrinked anytime soon... At least until the next Primed Frame is released mass vitrify won't be changed and 60m mass murdering will be happening 24/7

[quxier]

45 minutes ago, kaotis said:

but if you throw in 200 npc in the same zone you will see the limit of the cpu realy fast. <-- there is a reason the npc have a spawn cap of about 20~30

Sure, but we are talking about 1-3 enemies near you (in solo case). There will problems when you put hundreds NPCs however such low amount is not a problem even for low-end pc.

49 minutes ago, kaotis said:

Map design is not realy the big issue... if Enemy AI stoped hiding in a corner and actualy went for the defense target there wouldn't be a problem would it? 

The true problem is that AI is dumb as a bat and do things like:

1. Hide in a corner when no 1 is shooting at them and where it can't shot no 1.

2. Run from point A to point B then back at point A.

3. Forget they are your enemy and stop atacking you or the defense target.

4. Spawn and dont move... etc

Etc etc...

Fixing this needs more hardware because of the vastly more complex code ... it's as simple as that.

It depends how good you want AI to be. If you want just make them stop "hiding" and go to defense object or something then it won't require too much more power

And if you AI is dumb (as you said) then map design has huge impact on game. Old maps (grineer defenses, Jupiter Oxium farm etc) haven't got such problems. All those things use probably similar AI. And even we have newer AI... then it's even worse.

[Steel_Rook]

I'm personally of the opinion that Defence missions suck ass in general and should either be drastically redesigned or taken out entirely. All of the "arena" game modes are pretty bad, but none is as bad as Defence, in my opinion. Quite literally all I end up doing on those missions is sitting in one spot behind a barrier waiting for the AI to jump on my sword and checking my watch. Even stuff like Interception or Survival at least allows me to move around without failing the mission, but defence is just so static. I'm honestly shocked this was one of the first missions to make it into Railjack. It's not even all that simple, since it has a full-screen quit/continue select menu.

Personally, I've done my best to avoid Defence missions whenever I can. It doesn't help that that's half of what new content is, though. Pretty much everything in most open worlds is some flavour of defence or mobile defence...

[Zeddypanda]

I don't really mind Defense being this static mode where I hold the fort and shoot guys. That's how I like to play! Frost is somewhere in my top 5 most frames, with two of the other top 5 being Vauban. Camping in one place shooting dudes coming through the door is how you play survival.

Defense's problem is that it's too sparse, and too slow. The only danger to my defense objective is me getting impatient and hunting nooks and crannies for enemies that just refuse to come out.

My favourite action game of all time works a lot like Defense missions, so there shouldn't be any reason for me to dislike it. Here's some cool things that game did that could help:

- Increase enemy spawns a ton. It needs to at least match survival spawn rates at any given time.

- Cycle is currently 5 waves, reducing to 4 would go a long way to make the mode feel snappier.

- Give a dozen or so npc squads to the Tenno side, refreshed between each cycle (the reinforcements lotus mentions). These help deal with stragglers so you don't have to shoot every single one. Usually they might be Tenno operatives or locals, but during syndicate missions they could be (more than usual) syndicate operatives. Keeping these npcs alive as distractions and bullet sponges presents tactics for buff frames, which is nice.

- Next wave spawns when you're about 75% through the current one, with complete annihilation only required every complete cycle.

 

[RazerXPrime]

Is this a complaint that the mission lasts more than 5 minutes? It is isn't it?

[torint_man]

47 minutes ago, RazerXPrime said:

Is this a complaint that the mission lasts more than 5 minutes? It is isn't it?

If you are referring to the first 5 waves taking more than 5 minutes and every 5 waves after that inevitably taking longer than the previous, yes, that is a full on problem. Every single other endless gamemode is 5 minutes per rotation at most, but then you have certain defense tilesets taking 5 minutes per rotation at minimum.

[RazerXPrime]

6 hours ago, torint_man said:

If you are referring to the first 5 waves taking more than 5 minutes and every 5 waves after that inevitably taking longer than the previous, yes, that is a full on problem. Every single other endless gamemode is 5 minutes per rotation at most, but then you have certain defense tilesets taking 5 minutes per rotation at minimum.

Yes, sounds like the end of the world

[(NSW)BalticBarbarian]

Defence is not my favourite mode in the game, but it's usually OK. The issue is that the specific new Corpus ship defence tile highlights all the issues that exist with that game mode! Enemies spawn too far away - Corpus ship is the biggest defence tile (or feels that way), with enemies spawning further away than on any other! Enemies get stuck in weird corners of terrain - this tile has more such corners than any other tile in-game! Enemies keep hiding in a far corner of the map - again, biggest defence tile, with furthest away corners!

And no, this is not a complaint about missions lasting longer than 5 minutes - it's the complaint that you spend 70% of the mission's time running around the whole map looking for an enemy to kill! And that just isn't fun! And before someone suggests that moving around the tile is the problem - I'm actually one of the people who likes the new volatile missions (done solo) - precisely because they make you move around the map!

As for whether the map tile or the AI is the problem - that doesn't really matter. The map tile was designed for Warframe, with the enemy AI being in the state it is in. If it was designed for better enemy AI - then the AI should have been improved to that level before the tile was released

[OwlOfJune]

On 2021-06-08 at 6:30 PM, (NSW)BalticBarbarian said:

And no, this is not a complaint about missions lasting longer than 5 minutes - it's the complaint that you spend 70% of the mission's time running around the whole map looking for an enemy to kill! And that just isn't fun! And before someone suggests that moving around the tile is the problem - I'm actually one of the people who likes the new volatile missions (done solo) - precisely because they make you move around the map!

Yup. I don't mind jumping around the map. Parkour with ridiculus bullet jump is actually the main reason I play this game.

 

But being forced to play hide n seek with idiotic AI that got suck in who knows where is just not entertaining. In fact it makes me furstrated.

[Zeddypanda]

On 2021-06-08 at 7:37 AM, RazerXPrime said:

Is this a complaint that the mission lasts more than 5 minutes? It is isn't it?

Yes, but actually no. In 5 minutes of survival you fight a bajillion dudes. 5 rounds of defense sees less action than 3 minutes of exterminate, so the complaint isn't only that the mission is long.

The accusations leveled (by at least me):

• Too long.
• Too little rewards compared to time.
• Not enough happening.
• Too much AI breakage.
• If you get this hecking mode in a sortie I just skip it because you can go 9 waves only to have the guy clip through the floor and fail you.
• No seriously, why is that a thing.
• Like I get the clipping is hard to fix, but they could simply respawn the dude?
• Jesus christ.
• That freaking one shield drone that just waits 500m down a corridor to waste your time.
• One time I tried this game on Switch and you had to do a Defense node on Earth. It took me 20 minutes to do 5 waves because the game doesn't have an enemy radar by default and the enemy kept being stuck in some random bit of scenery. I have not since tried playing this game on Switch.

I agree it's not the end of the world. We can simply never play Defense the way we don't interact with all the other dead content this game has.