Survival Missions need changes. Some suggestions

[Rayatsu]

Hello there.

So, I like to play solo (Steel Path) with some non meta weaons (Prisma Grinlock, Braton Prime (wasn't meta until Incarnon), Kuva Karak and so on). I like to just jump on a mission and have some fun killing enemies... slowly, most of the time with those weapons.

The most "chill" mission to do this is survival. You just jump on it, lots of enemies come at you and you may move, or not.

The problem is, Survival missions leans a lot, and I mean, A LOT, on the enemies dropping the survival stuff.

See the problem here? Sometimes we like to use weapons that do not kills hordes of enemies, Prisma Grinlok doesn't have AOE, it's not that strong so you'll kill like 50-80 enemies per minute.

The only way to confortably play Survival is if you're using a meta weapon, Incarnon Lex, Incarnon Latron etc. so you'll kill 100+ enemies per minute to keep the survival support up.

In fact, if you only use a non-meta weapon, I'm pretty sure eventually you will not be able to sustain the life support.

 

My suggestion is:

Survival shouldn't lean on drops and the support bar shouldn't drop so quickly. Right now it seems like it drops 1% every 2.5 seconds.

• Decrease the support drop from 1% every 2.5 seconds to 1% every 3.5 or 4 seconds;
• Make drops less frequently. They should be a way to help you keep the support bar up, but not the main way to keep it up.
• Make the life support stuff that you interact with give more than 30%. Maybe 50%. The idea is to be able to sustain yourself only with the interactable life support... thing?
  • Right now you NEED to use life support drops. Ever got  that Riven to finish a survival without killing an enemy? You only interact with those things and when you leave, your life support bar is at 20-30% after 5 min.

 

What you guys think about this?

 

Edit: To answer most of you without multiple answers:

Guys, I would love to answer every single comment you put here, thanks for this! But I think that if I did, I would be breaking some rules or annoying someone by having a lot of sequential answers, so I'll try to answer most of it on this edit.

I do have meta weapons. I have most Incarnons I want, I have a lot of Kuva and Tenet Weapons, I have a thousand hours in this game and most Warframes.
I can edit my build to play any mission type at any difficult, and yes, the game is not challenging, specially with the addition of Incarnon weapons.

What I'm saying here is that sometimes I just wish to get to a high level mission (steel path) and test my non-meta weapons, like Prisma Grinlok which I'm using right now and having fun and actually is not a bad weapon, and play without the need to come back to my ship and enter the mission again (like a exterminate mission).

Survival is perfect for this. I can play as long as I want.

What I like about survival, that you guys asked? It's the better spawn rate. I'm talking about Circulus Steel Path. There's ton of enemies. You don't have those "do nothing" moments without action, there will always be enemies to kill.

Problem is, I just can't test those weapons here (or anywhere else because there is no "chill" mission like survival) and have some fun because of the stated above.

I think the best mission to test this is Exterminate missions because I do not run the risk of failing because I can't kill enough enemies. But like I said, once you finish, you must go back to your ship.

Maybe they could create a endless exterminate mission? Like "Kill those 100 grineers and then kill as much as you want. The more you kill, the better your reward" kind of mission?

Edited June 7, 2023 by Rayatsu
Edit section

[megastorm]

If you don't mind me just saying, take away all of your suggestions and just make a straight up horde mode seems like something they should have done anways. 

[Tsukinoki]

Ehh?  It's not really a problem since there are methods to work around this issue.  Such as loot frames that trivialize needing to use "meta" weapons with all the extra life support that they cause to drop.

Beyond that it's a fairly specific mode with a fairly specific requirement that is well known and can either be geared towards or worked around as needed.

Finally though I see DE having one issue with this:

5 minutes ago, Rayatsu said:

Make the life support stuff that you interact with give more than 30%. Maybe 50%. The idea is to be able to sustain yourself only with the interactable life support... thing?

At that point what would stop someone from getting into an area that the AI literally can't get to them in any way, and just popping out to use the life support, then go back to hiding and literally doing nothing to get infinite rewards for zero effort put into it? (And don't say "But it would be dangerous to activate the life support tower!" when kid mode exists and can use life support towers while invisible and invincible)

Simple fact is that having to kill en enemies at a certain rate to be able to continue the mission is largely so that you can't just AFK and hide forever while still pulling in the rewards rotation after rotation after rotation.

It's similar to how DE removed the hiding spots in the dog days events so you can't just AFK your way through the event and make progress on it.

They want you to be actively playing the game, not hiding in a corner where you can never be reached and just reaping the rewards.

2 minutes ago, Rayatsu said:

Ever got  that Riven to finish a survival without killing an enemy? You only interact with those things and when you leave, your life support bar is at 20-30% after 5 min.

Ivara makes that trivial with her pick pocket ability...which causes enemies to drop a decent amount of life support without ever having to kill them.  Makes that Riven quite easy to do with 40%+ O2 remaining.

[-Krism-]

12 minutes ago, Rayatsu said:

The only way to confortably play Survival is if you're using a meta weapon, Incarnon Lex, Incarnon Latron etc.

Wrong, like, absurdly wrong

[AntifreezeUnder0]

Well normal starchart survival is fine, first 20 mins you just kill how you want and you be fine. 

SP survival with increased enemies have adjusted the hp drops and you must maintain certain kill per minute to sustain it. 

But even then its just rng on luck. If with khora and nekros you have to use life support in 5 mins because enemies simply did not drop them...

And yea i would just like survival as in-  i have 5 mins to survive the wave and enemies swarm me in large numbers. 

Not just i have to nuke 5 galaxies in minute in hopes to be able to have enough life support to no use delivered ones.Since drops aint consitent.

[Rayatsu]

25 minutes ago, Tsukinoki said:

Ehh?  It's not really a problem since there are methods to work around this issue.  Such as loot frames that trivialize needing to use "meta" weapons with all the extra life support that they cause to drop.

Beyond that it's a fairly specific mode with a fairly specific requirement that is well known and can either be geared towards or worked around as needed.

 

But what if I don't want to use those frames? See, you are telling me to play a specifically way and that's exactly my point.

This mode enforces you to play a certain way, with meta weapons or with drop frames.

 

26 minutes ago, Tsukinoki said:

At that point what would stop someone from getting into an area that the AI literally can't get to them in any way, and just popping out to use the life support, then go back to hiding and literally doing nothing to get infinite rewards for zero effort put into it? (And don't say "But it would be dangerous to activate the life support tower!" when kid mode exists and can use life support towers while invisible and invincible)

 

Well that would be extremally not fun. I do not play the game only for the rewards. Sometimes I just want to have fun with a specific, non-meta weapon.

 

21 minutes ago, -Krism- said:

Wrong, like, absurdly wrong

How so? It's polite to, when saying that someone's wrong, to say what's wrong. This comment helps nothing. Could you elaborate?

 

29 minutes ago, megastorm said:

If you don't mind me just saying, take away all of your suggestions and just make a straight up horde mode seems like something they should have done anways. 

Maybe you're right. Do not change the surival mechanics but create other gamemodes for the game.

[Tiltskillet]

One change I've seen suggested that I'd like is for headshot kills to have a higher chance of  life support drops, higher still in the case of eximus.   Or, to be more creative about it, special uncommon Survival enemies that are highly resistant to AoE damage (and maybe somewhat resistant to high RoF weapons too) that are guaranteed to drop multiple LS. 

56 minutes ago, -Krism- said:

1 hour ago, Rayatsu said:

The only way to confortably play Survival is if you're using a meta weapon, Incarnon Lex, Incarnon Latron etc.

Wrong, like, absurdly wrong

I'd say it depends on what they mean by "comfortably".   I can do a SP Survival incursion with a Veldt for 5 minutes.  Longer than that and I'll want to be very careful about having some combination of priming / gas / electric / armor strip / grouping / rivens and maybe being pickier about the single target weapon I'm using.  Bullet hose types generally being easier than slow semi types.  And it still gets very "uncomfortable"--for me--very fast, especially with those slow ST weapons.  Snipers and Chakkhur can push this further, but it's still an issue.  (edit: forgot Chakkhur has AoE.)

I've seen videos of people using some very non-meta ST weapons in SP to 4 digit levels, so I know it's possible to take things pretty far.  But definitely outside my personal comfort level.

Edited June 6, 2023 by Tiltskillet

[Mr.Holyroller]

Survival is extremely easy.
Like you can mostly go afk with prowl ivara and only kill things when needed.

If they made any changes to survival, I would want them to allow you to destroy life support pods to speed up the timer or something so you're not hard locked into 5min rounds.

[-Krism-]

7 minutes ago, Rayatsu said:

How so? It's polite to, when saying that someone's wrong, to say what's wrong. This comment helps nothing. Could you elaborate?

What do you think it could mean? You don't need meta weapons to play survival, simple

[megastorm]

5 minutes ago, Rayatsu said:

Maybe you're right. Do not change the surival mechanics but create other gamemodes for the game.

I honestly would like a horde mode at times or survival with nothing extra but to just kill.

[Tiltskillet]

1 minute ago, Rayatsu said:

But what if I don't want to use those frames? See, you are telling me to play a specifically way and that's exactly my point.

This mode enforces you to play a certain way, with meta weapons or with drop frames.

 

Well, to an extent, game modes that encourage us to use certain frames are a good thing IMO. 

I'm certain this isn't what you're suggesting, but to put it in the most extreme way for illustration:  the more we can do all modes equally easily with any frame and weapon, the closer frame and weapon choice gets to a  soup of functionally meaningless choices.

Just saying I think there's a good balance to be struck between the extremes.

[ant99999]

Idk, seems more like a problem with the weapons balance not being in line with the game's direction as a horde shooter.

I mean, if we're changing Survival, why not change Exterminate and Defence, where mission time is proportional to your efficiency? Those seem to be even more egregious. And then there's Sanctuary Onslaught as well.

As far as I see we're better off reworking weapons not gamemodes.

[Felsagger]

Titanfall 2 Frontier gives a lot of lessons and hints on how to improve game modes. 

I think DE must improve the game modes a lot. There's a lot that can be done with them. 

If farming is 99 percent of the game then you expect more work on making farming more entertaining and memorable. 

[(PSN)Nierou]

Even with mass killing weapons it's pretty common to have long periods of time without life support, at least in my experience. Unless I am running Khora it's a real pain to play SP survival and honestly i just do quick 5 minute runs for the acolytes, if at all, anymore.

I'd be happy with survival removing life support but then I don't know how they would balance it since there would essentially be no fail-state other than dying 4-6 times. A system similar to arbitrations where you only get 1 life could work if they find a way to still give you some way to keep a percentage of rewards if you died. While I don't do multi-hour runs i know that people do and getting 0 rewards would ruin it for them so keeping like 65% resources would be pretty fair.

[Tsukinoki]

58 minutes ago, Rayatsu said:

Well that would be extremally not fun. I do not play the game only for the rewards. Sometimes I just want to have fun with a specific, non-meta weapon.

The problem is that DE doesn't want people to infinitely AFK rewards...and that is what your idea would lead to in the end.

People used to abuse capture missions by downing the capture target and then just setting up a simple AFK script to kill enemies and farm resources....and some people set this up to do it for 15+ hours straight and farm infinite rewards for zero input.
It was a large enough group of people doing this that DE put a stop to it by limiting how long the capture target can be "downed" before they die and the mission auto-fails to stop people from farming the infinite rush of level 3 enemies for however long they wanted to.

Your idea would have pretty much the same issue.
If there isn't some mechanic or failure state that said "if you don't engage with and kill enemies you fail...." then people will AFK farm it to oblivion because you could just leave it running all night and come back to a mountain of rewards for sleeping with the game running.

DE isn't trying to make an idle game here.

Unless you have some clever idea that avoids the issue of people AFK farming the mode for literally infinite rewards for zero effort then your idea as a whole is a non-starter.
And good luck doing that while also avoiding the exact issue your facing where you're eventually pushed out unless you are using meta weapons or frames.

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

3 hours ago, Rayatsu said:

Hello there.

So, I like to play solo with some non meta weaons (Prisma Grinlock, Braton Prime (wasn't meta until Incarnon), Kuva Karak and so on). I like to just jump on a mission and have some fun killing enemies... slowly, most of the time with those weapons.

The most "chill" mission to do this is survival. You just jump on it, lots of enemies come at you and you may move, or not.

The problem is, Survival missions leans a lot, and I mean, A LOT, on the enemies dropping the survival stuff.

See the problem here? Sometimes we like to use weapons that do not kills hordes of enemies, Prisma Grinlok doesn't have AOE, it's not that strong so you'll kill like 50-80 enemies per minute.

The only way to confortably play Survival is if you're using a meta weapon, Incarnon Lex, Incarnon Latron etc. so you'll kill 100+ enemies per minute to keep the survival support up.

In fact, if you only use a non-meta weapon, I'm pretty sure eventually you will not be able to sustain the life support.

 

My suggestion is:

Survival shouldn't lean on drops and the support bar shouldn't drop so quickly. Right now it seems like it drops 1% every 2.5 seconds.

• Decrease the support drop from 1% every 2.5 seconds to 1% every 3.5 or 4 seconds;
• Make drops less frequently. They should be a way to help you keep the support bar up, but not the main way to keep it up.
• Make the life support stuff that you interact with give more than 30%. Maybe 50%. The idea is to be able to sustain yourself only with the interactable life support... thing?
  • Right now you NEED to use life support drops. Ever got  that Riven to finish a survival without killing an enemy? You only interact with those things and when you leave, your life support bar is at 20-30% after 5 min.

 

What you guys think about this?

I'm assuming you're taking about SP survival. Even still, I don't share the same issues, not even remotely close. However, this does mean that SP is doing its job correctly: punishing builds that are not optimized for the mission.

High fire rate, ammo drums, ammo converters and punch through are the tools that will help keep the life support nice and healthy. That said, you entire arsenal should be used to survive. Trying to focus on only a single weapon, for example, SHOULD give you a harder time. I think attempting to trivialize the mission so you can better play to your advantage is actually an overall disadvantage for the long term experience, IMO.

[Alukawaii]

I want to shorten the rotation times to 4 minutes and make it abc instead of aabc, I would also like that on the steel path, the acolyte would appear in the middle of the rotation and not when he wants, if the rotation was 4 minutes he would appear at 2, and then the next one would be at 6 minutes. Speaking of the path of steel, when you do extermination or capture, the trick of the path of steel is to get said essence but if you finish the objective very quickly the acolyte does not appear, they could do something there

[trst]

Making it viable to use the absolute least possible effective loadout is a very bad direction for anything. The game is already painfully trivial with minimal effort, making it take even less isn't a good idea.

Just changing any one aspect about your playstyle is literally all you need to deal with this "problem". Use better weapons (even a generic automatic weapon can kill fast enough), switch to one of the four looting frames, use any nuke frame, or use a frame with any grouping ability (or subsume one) while putting punchthrough on your guns. If your playstyle is too inflexible to do any one of these things then the problem is your playstyle, not the game.

[Lord_Drod]

If there was a pure horde mode with no life support, how would rotations work? 

I'd rather have endless extermination using some of the awesome invasion tiles that never get touched.  Have a large enough pool of tiles like eso but unlike eso you're forced to navigate a tile and not stuck in one room, plus it's SP, so plenty of enemies.  

After running through the void you take a portal through to an invasion tile and do the same.  The portal has a timer so you have to keep up and the enemies scale as fast as the circuit.  Every 2 portals is a rotation.

I'd like to see every tile in this mode including old gas, old ship, new ship etc and even underwater archwing.  You don't have to finish the mission in a certain time.  It's just pure killing variety and not eso.

Also, very important: the acolytes, thrax guys, and kuva tarkorian guys spawn here and maybe even sentients.  Decrees could be here as well.  And you'd have to get full access to your gear.  The faction should stay corrupted though.  I'm open to that though.  

Maybe even increase the chances of g3 and zanuka and just have these bosses invade you at a high frequency. Og wolf too. Not whatever he became.

 

Edited June 6, 2023 by Lord_Drod

[Veridian]

I'm gonna start off with noting that I hate survival with a burning passion because I find it the most boring mode.

We're not trying to survive from an endless horse of enemies. We're hunting for life support.

OP's idea would make it even more trivial and even more boring, potentially bordering on afk.

What would be a way to incorporate what OP wants is reducing LS from enemies, reducing how much LS the towers give, but vastly increase their spawn rate.

Me? I'd throw LS out the airlock and make the enemies an endless wave of 4 digit lvl eximus with fast nova debuff and the arbi insta death mode. 

Edited June 6, 2023 by Veridian

[(PSN)robotwars7]

5 hours ago, Rayatsu said:

See the problem here? Sometimes we like to use weapons that do not kills hordes of enemies, Prisma Grinlok doesn't have AOE, it's not that strong so you'll kill like 50-80 enemies per minute.

it doesn't need AoE, it can crit very well and with the proper elemental modding for the faction you're fighting against, it works fine. of course, it is a weapon that needs headshots to perform at it's best, but that's why you take the Grinlok with a frame that can CC effectively. Harrow's a great choice because his 1 stops enemies in their tracks making for easy headshots and you can boost the Grinlok's damage tremendously with the buffs from his 2 and 4.

as nice as a straight-up horde mode would be, we're simply too powerful and that mode will just be way too easy. there will always be some additional factor added in that's designed to curtail an endless run: Disruption is pretty close since you can use the Conduits on your own terms, and the spawns are high, but it's still a mode that isn't focused on killing: you can easily do disruption without killing any enemies other than Demolysts.

 

[(PSN)Unstar]

6 hours ago, Rayatsu said:

But what if I don't want to use those frames? See, you are telling me to play a specifically way and that's exactly my point.

This mode enforces you to play a certain way, with meta weapons or with drop frames.

With respect, every game mode enforces the way you play in a certain way.  Disruption demands that you be able to quickly locate and dispatch tanky targets.  Rescue requires either perfect stealth or a fast-paced scramble to complete the puzzle in less than a minute.  Mobile Defense requires the ability to in some way keep your terminals from dying.  And so on.  The Survival game mode requiring that you do whatever it takes to maintain life support is no different in this regard.

My biggest takeaway from reading what you've written is that it doesn't seem like you want to play Survival, but rather that you have decided that Survival is the closest you can get to the experience you want to have.  My most genuine advice would be to pick a different game mode that isn't so at odds with the game experience you're looking for.  Something like a solo Extermination seems like it would be more in-line with your needs, as it would give you all the time in the world to kill the enemies at any pace you desire.

I hope this helps you get closer to that happy game experience you're seeking!

Edited June 6, 2023 by (PSN)Unstar

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

Hello there too! 

I sympathise with your situation, I think there are a few different issues we have to consider though too. Like what is it about Survival you find chill exactly, are we talking about Steel Path or normal starchart? Are you almost advocating for a new and different mode, how much do you invest into your weapons? Another important factor, how would you address the issue of AFK playstyles and players attempting to exploit a mode. 

Like the following is not insistence, or opposing your suggestions, but more consideration. Like, if you like killing enemies at a slower pace, why not choose Exterminate? There is no timer, granted, you do usually have to make your way through a level, but why is that considered not chill? Though a new mode where the enemies swarm you and more aggressively pursue you like in Survival, but without the pressure for life support, could be interesting and fun... but that would probably be better as a different mode. One that would have to have figure out ways to avoid AFK farming. Like for a sincere player who wants an endless mode, where they just want to use certain weapons that may struggle in Survival, sure... but you also have to remember not all players are sincere and some would love a mode they could AFK in, with minimal effort to farm certain resources and a "chill" mode, where enemies comes to them, but are easy to kill with "off meta weapons", you see where this is going? 

Also again, which modes? IIRC normal mode is more chill as far as life support drops and all that. So are you struggling with normal mode or Steel Path? If its Steel Path, why not do the normal mode instead? Have you also considered taking in a Warframe or other weapons that can assist? For example, I have taken all the weapons you mentioned, I like them too, I have used them in Steel Path Survival, I think they are decently capable, but not necessarily chill... There are things you can do though, like using corridors and punch through and aiming for headshots should make the Grinlok viable. So I disagree that you have to use the meta or AOE. That being said, its not necessarily chill nor can you necessarily stay a long time. My own personal solution is to bring an assist weapon. So there is the fun or interesting weapon I want to use (like say a Grinlok), and then a more effective group killer enemy, like say I might bring Nidus and a Stropha. Something that can quickly kill 20 enemies in less than a few seconds. Then you just alternate, the weapon you want to use, and then the weapon that has a higher KPM. 

Also to be clear, I am not saying that because I can use non meta weapons in Survival for a while, you have to or should be able to, again though I don't know what Survival missions you are talking about. Whether SP or normal Star Chart, do you think in two weeks you will be stronger than you currently are? Which enemies are you fighting against? Do you use punch through mods, are you good at lining up enemies etc 

Basically if they did introduce a new endless mode, they'd have to be careful around making it too passive, for those that may want to exploit it. 

Also for consideration? There is one Lua Exterminate which is a cross faction Exterminate. Its pretty chill in the sense, the enemies keep respawning in a short distance, so you can stay in the first few areas and get a lot of enemy and enemy density, if you don't like moving around too much. 

[ReddyDisco]

Eh, it's not hard to keep up lifesupport in sp survival even with single target slow weapons, real challenge of survival is the sheer boredom of it. Defense and survival are snooze fests, i skip every sortie that has these two and few other missions.

[TARINunit9]

17 hours ago, Rayatsu said:

Survival shouldn't lean on drops and the support bar shouldn't drop so quickly. Right now it seems like it drops 1% every 2.5 seconds.

Ah, my old friend, the "I just want to fight unlimited enemies without worrying about the life support meter" forum post. Haven't seen one of these threads on a long time. At least this one's honest, you say right up front you just want to chill out, that's respectable.

Anyway as for the Life Support drain rate: 20% is 30 seconds (so 1% is 1.5 seconds), and enemy drops grant 5% (7.5 seconds). And to my knowledge those four numbers have never changed. DE has said in patch notes they instead tweak the enemy spawn rate and enemy drop rate, both of which steadily decreased between about 2015 and 2019. Yes they patched Survival to be harder. So with that in mind, let's just say I wouldn't hold my breath for Survival getting easier