Feedback on the Zariman Missions

[Erasculio]

I was on a break during the Angels of Zariman release, and have just come back for Veilbreaker, so only recently have I played through the new missions in the Ten Zero. Here’s my feedback about them:

 

All missions:

+ I like the new Zariman titleset. It’s easy to navigate for general movement (unlike, for example, Europa and Eris), while having a few mini-puzzles (like the locked doors and the secret passages). It also has side activities for those who want them – people can hunt for collectibles, fight the dormant angels, look for power-ups, etc.

+ I applaud DE for making new mission types, and specifically new mission types that are not meant for speedrunners. I don’t like playing missions such as exterminate and capture with other players because it often feels like most of the community is made of speedrunners, and if you take too long to load the mission you’ll spend the entire mission just trying to catch up. Missions like mobile defense offer a better scenario for players to actually enjoy the game at their own pace, and most of the new mission types offer something similar.

- Extraction is really bad. Using the elevator console to extract individually is a good option, but it’s completely unintuitive – no other mission in the game works like that. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people don’t know that’s an option, and thus some issues arrive. In the extraction zone, we cannot use any ability, much like when leaving the Plains of Eidolon or Orb Vallis. The thing is, in both those areas, there are gates between characters and the open world; in the Zariman, the elevator stays open, and often enemies spawn directly in front of it. Our characters become basically sitting ducks when waiting to extract. Also, when someone extracts through the usual way (waiting the timer while on the elevator), everyone extracts together, even though the new missions are of the endless kind – so if I start an open game, someone joins, and later that person extracts by waiting at the elevator, I’ll automatically extract as well. I know both those issues are fixed by using the console at the elevator, but not everyone does that (and many people don’t know that’s even a possibility anyway; even when telling them, some just ignore it).

- The rotation C rewards are really, really bad. I mean, the smallest Focus lenses? Really? I have exactly 109 unused lenses right now; to me, this is one of the most useless rewards in the game. I would prefer almost anything else to them, and yet they’re in theory the biggest rewards of the new mission types. I’m happy I already got all weapon parts I needed, because reaching rotation C has mostly felt useless.

 

 

          Void Flood:

+ My favourite of the new mission types, if not by enjoyment, at least by design. Granted, I have always played them as Titania, so I may have bypassed issues with the parkour. But the mission feels like an interesting new idea, hunting for the vitoplast is fun, and Yonta is Warframe’s best girl.

- My only issues are of the technical kind: often, when not playing as the host, the drone’s look doesn’t change based on how much vitoplast you have (it just stays the entire mission looking as if it were empty). A few times, vitoplast just won’t spawn. But other than those two points, no criticism here.

 

          Void Cascade:

+ The most dynamic and fast-paced of the new mission types. It nicely combines warframes and operators, and is a nice way for people to farm the Thrax for the new arcanes.

- But all the running around is really annoying. The exolizers spawn in groups of 3 or 4 in an area, then 3 or 4 in another area, and so on. Each group has exolizers close to each other, which makes protecting/releasing them at the same time comfortable. The issue is when more than one group spawns at the same time – exolizers from the previous group are still there, and the next one spawns very far away. This forces players to either stay protecting the previous group, allowing the newer set to fill the corruption gauge, or to move to the newer group and risk having the previous exolizer just be taken away (and then having to move back anyway). Moving back and forth like this is annoying, especially when playing solo. This mission would be much improved, IMO, if a new group of exolizers would only spawn when all in the previous one were retired.

 

          Void Armaggedon:

+ The idea behind the turrets is interesting, it gives a bit of a tower defense feel to the mission…

- …But the implementation is lackluster. They are basically ways to do damage, paling in comparison with what the players can do. If they were more useful (preferably not by doing more damage, but rather by having more interesting roles), this idea would have been a lot more interesting. It’s also very annoying to coordinate turret placement – since the entire squad shares the same pool of argozine, if the placement of armaments were important, it would be easy for someone to ruin the mission for everyone. Ideally, each players would have his/her own argozine (this looks a lot like how railjacks used to work – everyone sharing the same pool of resources, and all the griefing that came from players unknowingly wasting most of it).

- And the running around and around and around here is EXTREMELY annoying. More than waiting for a new wave to begin, running back and forth between the exodampers is what bothers me the most. It would have been far, far better if each round were at the same exodamper, and we only had to change from one to the other between rounds. Incidentally, this would also remove the need to wait so long between enemy waves, and it would also fix the issue with the next wave beginning before all enemies of the previous one have been killed.

[BamboozledBob]

Just starting out on those missions as well, and I'd REALLY like to know whose idea it was to put a 6 minute timegate as bounty objective on an exterminate mission where you are supposed to run around and search for void plumes and Lanthorns. Here I was hoping I could just wait for the exterminate rotation on every bounty tier while farming Gyre.

[(PSN)FunyFlyBoy]

3 hours ago, BamboozledBob said:

Just starting out on those missions as well, and I'd REALLY like to know whose idea it was to put a 6 minute timegate as bounty objective on an exterminate mission where you are supposed to run around and search for void plumes and Lanthorns. Here I was hoping I could just wait for the exterminate rotation on every bounty tier while farming Gyre.

Regular Star Chart Exterminate is for searching for Voidplumes. Bounties are for Bounty objectives. I get why you are bringing it up but I am of the camp I came to do the bounty, not sidetrack sight-seeing. At most, will stop for a Void Angel but I am here to farm bounties, which means time efficiency. Get in, get out. Get my part, or my ENDO, go back in for another round. Waiting for people to find all 8 plumes plus the Cephalon plumes can take 20min or more just for the search. I could have finished multiple exterminates in that time and gotten multiple rewards.