Which devstream did DE mention making mission failure more common in?

[Orrion_the_Kitsune]

I know it was an offhand comment from one of their devstreams involving the ease at which people nuke everything, but since there are 156 of them and the streams are an hour or longer each, I really don't want to have to watch half or more of them to find an answer. Can someone with a good memory and/or a deep interest in the devstreams help me (and someone else who's curious) out here?

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

[trthorson]

I don't know, but wanted to comment in agreement with that dev's desire. Long comment just highlighting my thoughts on this over my 7-8 years in WF. 

I think mission success should still be the majority of end results, but a real threat of failure in most missions would be nice. 

The downside I see is implementation. How do you create mission failure that transcends a matchmaking system where MR1 can be matched with LR1?

It would have to not necessarily tied to enemy strength. The only real missions that have historically caused issues are Spy (which does exactly that) and Disruption (and maybe Defection to some extent).

I think those last two, which happen to be the two new mission types, were a good direction to go for failure-implementation: partial failure where the player can mitigate or ramp up difficulty based on how fast they want to play and risk rewards.

To implement similar partial-failures (or at least give players options while in-mission to meaningfully modify difficulty in exchange for better/faster rewards) in current game modes might require quite a rework. How do you make missions like exterminate and capture more likely to result in mission failure without just making it a game of "have better weapons"? Interception/mob def/ref could have better rewards/likelihood of rarer rewards based on how little damage taken, while making complete domination in them much harder (enemies like detonators from disruption).

[CephalonCarnage]

Defence missions have failed before now - stalker can one-shot the defence objective if you're unlucky, and I've seen missions where everyone runs off killing and forgets to defend the target, one enemy can take it out quite easily if nobody notices to stop them.

How to make exterminate or capture work? Stealth options perhaps - get noticed, fail. Or, the make it easier, get noticed and you have a few seconds to kill all nearby. You lose a rotation reward level for each time you're noticed - so you can do the whole thing and ghet RotC, be noticed twice and get RotA. if they turn on the alarms then you fail completely and enemies will go to turn on the alarms with more urgency. Exterminate could also be changed to "kill 3 high profile targets" and there's a time limit for each to escape, rot rewards based on how many of them you get. Which should please the speedboys while being a challenge for newer players.

An alternative for capture - forget the "teleport target thing", instead they turn blue and you have to escort them out like a rescue hostage instead. Only they do not teleport to catch up with you any more, they only move to the extraction if you're nearby (to prod them with a bayonet), a bit like a hijack mission. Every time you go too far away from them, they turn around and run and you lose a rotation reward level too each time. 3rd time, they get away.

If you make defence type missions reward according to damage take, you will encourage Limbo or Frost to do those missions and they'll be just as easy as before. You could have multiple defence objectives though, rather than the ones that move location. Or get rid of the shield on them so they slowly get whittled away by the enemy unless you really defend them.

You'll encourage nuking if (say) interception varies on enemy %, nuke everything will be the go-to game. However, you could do interception lke volatile - you have to keep the enemy message transmission within bounds for Lotus to intercept and decrypt it rather than just kill everything as soon as they show up.

[LucianDeRomeo]

18 hours ago, trthorson said:

How do you make missions like exterminate and capture more likely to result in mission failure without just making it a game of "have better weapons"?

Exterminate - Make excessive use of force a deterrent for the otherwise considerable outpouring of enemies. Neither faction is stupid, if you have some crazy lunatic that just broke onto your ship and nuked an entire platoon with a Disco Ball then why would you just keep throwing troops at it? Make it an endurance run not a NOS fueled sprint. Spread out the enemies and have them wait in ambush or ready to run at a moments notice when the tide shifts too greatly. And there's always the semi taboo scaling damage idea, have the damage you take effected by the mods you bring to the table so you have to play a sort of balancing game with yourself. Or the ol classic, suicide bombers, and not of that Demolisher BS where they're a flashing timebomb you generally hear from rooms away before you ever see em.

Capture - Give the targets some actual DEFENSE, whatever small bonuses they get now are a joke. I remember when I first started playing YEARS ago a capture target would actually make it a good several rooms away from me before I finally got them down. Now with everyone having bullet jump and Primed Up the NOS VALVE Kuva Ogris's(just one of my favorite flashy weapons don't get hung up on this) the targets even on SP missions are generally nuked before they reach their first door. Give them CC Immunity, Void Mode(ala the operator style) instead of just some 'cheap' invisibilty where an AOE attack or Melee spam will still down them. Once they're down give them a 'new life bar' where their comrades are now set on killing them instead of allowing you to capture them and the several recommendations gbjbaanb made.

There was a time where it took some thought and skill to do things in this game, and not just the simple newb learning curve(because it takes far less time to figure out how to navigate a tileset then it does to create one) instead of it being mostly a 'gear check' system. Now we're 'space ninja' that use pocket nukes, orbital strikes and assault saws with no concern for stealth or skill at all Leeroy Jenkinsing our way across the star chart.