Mirror Defense vs Conjunction Survival

[MobyTheDuck]

After a long while without playing Mirror Defense, I returned to it to try to farm Citrine and to my lack of surprise, it is still the same unrewarding, boring and repetitive mission in the game.

Both Conjunction Survival and Mirror Defense have the same purpose, a mission created entirely to focus the grind on a particular frame update, yet Conjunction manages to be more fun and rewarding.

Lets see:

Conjunction Survival
- Two nodes, one easy and one hard. The harder one gives more tokens and has a better drop rate on weapon and frame parts. Steel Path gives slightly more tokens.
- Basically a regular survival mission, rewards each 5 minutes.
- Voruna parts have around 37% chance to drop on Rotation C.
- Each 5 minutes, 2+ Thrax spawns. Not only they drop more tokens (which are affected by resource boosters), they give 2500 Focus.
- Sentients spawn, giving you cores, rare mods and War parts.
- Steel Path Circulus gives 6 tokens per rotation, plus the ones dropped by the Thrax, 30 tokens on average for 4 rotations, solo.
- Each Arcane costs 15 Thrax, so you can get 2 arcanes average per 4 rotations.
- Voruna costs 350 Thrax, so about 12 runs. Plus 125 for crafting, so more 4 runs, 16 total.
- All dialogue is just a few short quips on the end of each rotation.

 

Mirror Defense
- One node. No other node with better drop changes and more token drops.
- Steel Path gives a bit more tokens, but you are now playing a defense mission, and the crystals are VERY fragile.
- You are on a timer rather than just killing enemies like a regular defense.
- Crystals spawn around the map, collecting 50 of them heals the Crystal a bit and gives you a few tokens.
- You can't heal the crystals with anything other than collecting the 50 crystals.
- Focusing on defense means you can't collect the crystals, which punishes you with less tokens.
- Each wave takes 6 minutes and 10 seconds.
- Not killing enemies stops crystal spawns. Killing enemies too fast doesn't increases crystal spawns.
- Crystal spawns are RNG, a few places spawn 8, but lots of places spawn 5 or 3.
- Citrine parts have around 27% chance to drop on Rotation C.
- No unique enemies spawn, so no other rewards while you play.
- You have to listen to the entire Belric and Rania story, every time you play it. (Unless you skip it with the Nightwave exploit)
- Crystals aren't affected by resource boosters.
- On a regular mission, getting a steady number of kills and collecting all crystals you can, you get an average of 100 crystals every 4 rotations (including end of wave rewards).
- Each arcane costs 60 crystals, so you can get 1 arcane per 4 rotations on average.
- Citrine costs 1500 crystals, so 15 runs IF you manage to keep the 100 crystals average per 4 rotations, but this number can fluctuate between 15 and 30.
 

So, overall, Mirror Defense:

- Takes longer
- Rewards are worse
- Requires more active playing to get an acceptable amount of tokens
- Items are more expensive
- Is a very focused grind
- Annoys you with repeated dialogue
- Is ultimately very boring

I know this is very at the bottom of the list of priorities, but can we get a few tweaks, if anything just on the numbers of tokens rewarded and drop rates, on Mirror Defense?

[Pizzarugi]

I don't mind Mirror Defense being on a timer instead of waves. Not everyone is rolling a nuke frame, which is the only time I find their presence tolerable, so normal defense runs could take longer than 5 1/2 minutes.

[0bsi]

Each to their own though - I really enjoyed Mirror Defence and I would play that over conjuction survival every time. 

 

I enjoy the parkour of collecting the crystals, but other things that make a difference to me:

MD
In a pub squad players seem to equally go on crystal hunting and defence roles, so there's always someone doing each role so it feels like teamwork. It's incredibly easy.  Each map part is small, so all players stay together.  Players mostly seem to stay on for the whole 20 mins, but you can easily see when they want to leave and can choose to also leave or stay on.

CS
(Admittedly all these are pub squad issues)
In a pub squad players often split up over the whole map, splitting the enemies (making density less) and often splitting up the Thrax that spawn - meaning that often you'll have them spawn where someone who can't deal with them is, and you have to race other there to help, but you also have to go over there anyway to grab the plasm from their Thrax.  You also get players going down and needing a revive while they are ages away. Loot gets spread out over the whole map.  Or you have the opposite, where players want to camp one hallway and just shoot from a doorway because that's easier - so you stand there with nothing to do for the whole mission (other than to run out to get life support, because not enough enemies will spawn) because the enemies all evaporate as soon as they spawn with everyone firing out a doorway at them.   Very rarely do you seem to get a squad who will stay in the same room.

And the main issue in a pub squad is that 9 times out of 10 you'll have people not staying for the whole 20min run - Too many people leave at stupid times too, like at like 8mins or 19mins - not even staying to the end of a 5 min round to get the Thrax spawning.  So you get host migrations or get left running the last part solo or with less people.  

[Pakaku]

I thought mirror defense was more interesting, kind of taking the Uranus defense mission and giving it a bit of a modern twist. Conjunction Survival did nothing new and was as boring as ever.

[MobyTheDuck]

2 hours ago, Pizzarugi said:

I don't mind Mirror Defense being on a timer instead of waves. Not everyone is rolling a nuke frame, which is the only time I find their presence tolerable, so normal defense runs could take longer than 5 1/2 minutes.

I'm totally ok with it being on a timer instead of kills. One of my main problems is that the rotations take longer than a regular survival, yet the drop rates are lower. Even if you want to grind relics there after getting everything unique, you are taking an extra rotation due the downtime between waves.

But what irks me the most is that I am supposed to defend the target AND collect the crystals, otherwise I am squandering half of my rewards. The time/effort/reward math is very different from Conjunction Survival.

[Pakaku]

21 minutes ago, MobyTheDuck said:

But what irks me the most is that I am supposed to defend the target AND collect the crystals, otherwise I am squandering half of my rewards. The time/effort/reward math is very different from Conjunction Survival.

Crystal collection seemed balanced enough that my squads never had to do as much actual defending. Even when it came to Steel Path, two people on point and two people collecting stuff worked out, and once the crystal was fueled, the defenders could even hop off for a bit to help with collecting as well.

[Pizzarugi]

10 hours ago, Pakaku said:

Crystal collection seemed balanced enough that my squads never had to do as much actual defending. Even when it came to Steel Path, two people on point and two people collecting stuff worked out, and once the crystal was fueled, the defenders could even hop off for a bit to help with collecting as well.

Judging by OP's response to my post, I'm getting the impression they play solo. I can see why they would have this problem in that case. With nobody to defend, they have to do that, but that also means they can't go out and collect crystals until at least the 30 second grace period.

[MobyTheDuck]

On 2023-07-08 at 2:27 AM, Pakaku said:

Crystal collection seemed balanced enough that my squads never had to do as much actual defending. Even when it came to Steel Path, two people on point and two people collecting stuff worked out, and once the crystal was fueled, the defenders could even hop off for a bit to help with collecting as well.

 

On 2023-07-08 at 12:44 PM, Pizzarugi said:

Judging by OP's response to my post, I'm getting the impression they play solo. I can see why they would have this problem in that case. With nobody to defend, they have to do that, but that also means they can't go out and collect crystals until at least the 30 second grace period.

I mostly play solo because I don't have luck with squads.

Every squad I joined on this node seemed to have 2 guys with slowing skills that AFK at the crystal, then instantly Void Sling to the other target once the wave ends, ignoring all the crystals during the downtime, and sometimes 1 guy that knows you need to grab the crystals, but has trouble doing so and has no idea where they are spawning.