How to improve Defense missions?

[No_Quarter]

Been thinking about it for a while trying to pinpoint just what's making me not want to play these missions, think I may have pinpointed few things that could be improved.

For those who do not want to watch here's the entire script (not 1-1 with the video because editing but jist is there):

Spoiler

DE defense.... Alright, this has been a long time coming and this will be a slightly different video than usual because usually there is
enough sauce for me to make a compliment sandwich but here it would seem that all the compliments seem to be about some rather lucky mistakes
DE stumbled upon.

Because there's only a small portion of defense tiles where DE did some good things and made them fun but it's mostly very old ones.
Newest ones are unbelievably atrocious to play - especially ones in Duviri's undercroft. So this is a downward spiral trend I'm not a fan of.

In this video I want to try to break down what went well and what went wrong hoping to get to the bottom of it and get some understanding
why things were like they were and now are as they are. And I guess I'm hoping this video will reach someone at DE but that's a long shot.

Anyway, let's start with what DE nailed right on the money and that everyone's favorite Grineer Galeon defense, or commonly known as Hydron.
Many people use it to level up their stuff and it's a fun tile and I attribute most of that fun to tight packed tile with good timings.

Which means is that action is never far away and spawns are close enough so Ai does not get to do stupid things they do and get stuck on
nothing.

But there's also another thing DE did there and seemingly forgot to do it ever again - defense target is a defense mission that actually has
a lot of cover around it that prevents enemies from engaging it willy nilly from 50+ meters away. I think that's the key that puts
Hydron above all others in Warframe because what that does is create a couple of chokepoints which players can control and not worry about
exposing the objective to too much scrutiny.
But chokepoints are also well designed so that if you do not control them - enemies will go through and engage.

Good example is this area because it provides a lot of cover to the player and allows you to pick out a couple of spawns at will, while letting
other spawns group up on the objective side. But it's not like you can't defend the objective from there, you have a line to deal with
enemies that threaten it. Which lets you control the flow of it letting each spawn group up enough to engage with them. And it works.
Spawns are close so timings are easy to get used to. It works for a horde shooter

Now let's compare one of the tiles from The Undercroft, I recorded this in captura but the objective is here and notice how there's little to
no cover for the objective. Even worse, DE made it so that enemies have a lot of cover and have means to engage objective from quite a distance.
On top of that, if you apply the same strat from Hydron and try to control one flank while letting the other flank get to the objective -
they just don't do that. They stay in cover shooting an open objective and some places DE created for enemies to sit in are just too
overpowered and you have to go out of your way and ignore everyone else in order to deal with one or two enemies who are sitting like 30
meters away from the objective and spraying it down. Who thought this was a good idea?

DE's defense on undercroft reminds me of how DE_Mirage works in counter strike. It's just a complete misapplication of the concept because
in counter strike goal is to prevent opponents from positioning themselves on the objective and planting the bomb.
Let's take A site for example, the very site and the objective is very open, making it a risk to go out and take it which is a part of what makes it fun. And because
of that need, positions that are usually taken by defenders in CT and in jungle or con, those positions are very potent and we get a fun
dynamic on our hand. But what if I was to place a big ol objective in the middle and the goal was to shoot down its HP? Then everything goes to
waste, defenders would have no usable positions to prevent attackers from doing that.

That's exactly what DE did in Undercroft and it doesn't work because to almost no-one's surprise, CS and Warframe are very different games.
Yes, in Warframe you have a few abilities that are quite overwhelming in their destructiveness and some that are very good at protecting,
but should players be forced to use them? You can't even force it in Undercroft as choice is randomized, you usually wont get a
nukeframe.

With how attempted rework on Copus ship defense looks it would rather seem like DE is trying to combat that overwhelming nuke spam. Just
without actually addressing it, they just made a map so big that it needs its own spaceship.
In that defense enemy spawns are like 100+ meters away and there's a lot of verticality involved which does not sit
well with Ai, that defense is one of the most recent ones and it is down right one of the worst in the game. They copied the elevator from
Hydron and bottom part has a lot of cover, but still it sucks because spawns are too far which makes timings feel bad and unengaging.
SImilar things can be said about Earth defense, there's cover, just enemies have spawns too far away and their pathing is so terrible that
it ends up feeling frustrating to play.

For undercroft it rather seems that they first created a tile and then slapped a defense objective on top hoping it will work. Many developers
do these things, some even created maps from satellite images and tried to create a balanced experience on top of that. It doesn't work, not
consistently.

So to add some constructive criticism, defense objectives in horde shooters need to have some cover around them, for objectives and for
the players. Put some walls around. There needs to be a human number of angles to worry about and effective ways of isolating those angles
without too much sacrifice. Because in undercroft there's like 7 angles plus 2 vertical angles
plus Thraxx can fly up and there's no way of isolating any of those fights without sacrificing a huge chunk of objective's HP. That's
just overwhelming number of things to do even with the strongest weapons, unless you get some crowd control going then your run will
end quite early. But this problem is nothing new, I remember when I started Warframe that I got stuck at the old Corpus ship defense and
failed it quite a few times. Because again, the objective is too open, no cover for the player, I'm new and not strong and there's 7 angles
to worry about.

If we go back to Hydron, you rarely have more than 3-4 angles to worry about which is fine in Warframe. And for humans.

Enemy pacing is also a very important thing, Ai in warframe is terrible and if we are to give it one thing it's that if it ever comes down to Ai
taking over this planet we can be damn sure that Digital Extreme won't be one to blame. Joke aside, main limitation is that Ai needs to run
on your computer. But if Ai is dumb then make easier paths for them, make their spawns closer.
Because timing is important, if you have built your game to condition players to believe that one rotation should be 5 minutes, you can't
expect players to enjoy a defense that takes 10 minutes for the same reward. On top of it, the same amount of action you get in a 5 minute defense
is just stretched thin across those longer ones, it's not more fun.

I get that we all want missions that are harder and harder, but defense missions are increasingly becoming less fun and more unfair.
I am all up for the challenge, but I also failed a few Circuit runs because I lost focus for a few seconds and forgot about some op positions.

Challenge is fun, but battling against a rather flawed design is not fun. My heart sinks a little bit each time Defense comes in the circuit,
that's not supposed to be how I feel about a video game. DE should look at stats, how many people leave when the next mission is defense?
I'm willing to bet more than half the runs end at a defense stage.
I outright skip sortie missions when stuff like Corpus ship defense, lua defense, corpus outpost and such are in rotation.

DE's inability to understand what defense should look like in a horde shooter is seen in other defensive missions, Excavators and mobite defense
terminals are slapped in some atrocious places, again using the same logic as we mentioned above with Counter Strike and leaving it in the
open while allowing enemies to get very easy shots on the objective.

So it's a systemic thing, definitely not a one off. Duviri was just a spark to get this work done.