Disappointing To See That PC-Console Spawn Rate Discrepancy Won't Truly Be Addressed

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, Arbitrary said:

Don't know how to break this to you, but people generally don't care about defense reward rotations so much as the "rewards" from killing enemies.

Do console defense spawns per wave even differ from PC?   

[SneakyErvin]

1 hour ago, Arbitrary said:

Don't know how to break this to you, but people generally don't care about defense reward rotations so much as the "rewards" from killing enemies. If you are playing defense, you  care either about the affinity gain (playing Hydron in 2024 is a bit strange though) or enemy drops (Arbitrations). Rotation rewards are just a side bonus.
The obvious odd time out is when you don't actually want to be playing defense (Sorties/Archon Hunts).

The modes that suffer the most are popular ones, so saying that unpopular modes don't see as much of an issue isn't particularly relevant.

That depends on why you do the defense. I tend to run arbitrations these days soley for the aura forma and other defense only when mandatory for some other rotational reward i.e like frame parts etc. It isnt something I'd remotely consider for resources if I want to farm, since the density, even when at max is horribly low compared to disruption, survival or alchemy. Yeah it might be wonky with low spawns for newer players, but so are connection issues in general.

1 hour ago, sunderthefirmament said:

This is a bit too narrow. 
 

Affinity and enemy drops are also affected. So if you’re trying to rank up something in ESO, a swirly console host logo is an absolute buzzkill. Or if you’re a newer player farming resources (or a veteran farming the latest content island’s resources), console hosts mean you’re in for a longer grind. 

But we also have far more places to effectively rank things up these days to not have to rely on "leeching". I'm also not sure how much ESO spawns are effected either, nor defense, since the maps themselves require less of a load from the host due to being very limited in size compared to a full other endless tile. ESO also doesnt have dynamic spawns in the same sense, since they are based on pre-determined locations.

One thing I'd like to ask next gen consolers is also. Are you positive your spawn rates are lower than PC? Have you made sure to check it across all factions/tilesets? Since some of the tile and faction combos are currently bugged across all platforms since there is broken pathing among other things that hinder proper flow. Infested for instance on "new" corpus ship tiles are a mess, where certain units can end up in a passive state and halting spawn in other places.

Play for instance Palus and then compare it to uhm Wahiba (think that is the name of the dark sector) on Mars. Same tileset, massively different spawn flow.

[Arbitrary]

1 hour ago, Tiltskillet said:

Do console defense spawns per wave even differ from PC?   

The short answer: it depends.

The longer answer: Depends on what console gen are you playing on, is it SP or not, do you only care about total kills or also about how fast they spawn.

[Tiltskillet]

1 hour ago, Arbitrary said:

The short answer: it depends.

The longer answer: Depends on what console gen are you playing on, is it SP or not, do you only care about total kills or also about how fast they spawn.

Yeah, I was curious about possible differences in how spawns were throttled too, but that would have required more samples and more controlled testing.

Edit: I thought I'd mentioned this but apparently not, but I did one solo comparison in SP last year that ended up with equal spawn count. I think my partner  had an older console but I wish I was certain.

 

Edited March 23 by Tiltskillet

[SneakyErvin]

21 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

Yeah, I was curious about possible differences in how spawns were throttled too, but that would have required more samples and more controlled testing.

Edit: I thought I'd mentioned this but apparently not, but I did one solo comparison in SP last year that ended up with equal spawn count. I think my partner  had an older console but I wish I was certain.

 

Just gonna weigh in here quickly. There was a thread a good while back, sometime after crossplay was added where KPM was discussed. And the KPM between a PC and a next gen console on the same solo SP survival tile were nearly identical with the same frame. Where the slight shift in numbers could be written off to be caused by KB+M vs Controller, since it was that close. And iirc the slight difference also came down to the console player heading towards EZ prematurely while killing on the way, and the PC player stayed in place until the rotation was over, and then headed to EZ without killing.

But yeah, you arent alone in ending up with equal counts.

[Tiltskillet]

4 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

Just gonna weigh in here quickly. There was a thread a good while back, sometime after crossplay was added where KPM was discussed. And the KPM between a PC and a next gen console on the same solo SP survival tile were nearly identical with the same frame. Where the slight shift in numbers could be written off to be caused by KB+M vs Controller, since it was that close. And iirc the slight difference also came down to the console player heading towards EZ prematurely while killing on the way, and the PC player stayed in place until the rotation was over, and then headed to EZ without killing.

But yeah, you arent alone in ending up with equal counts.

Well Arbitrary and I were talking about Defense.   And while  I don't read more into  a single a-b Defense comparison than "interesting...more testing needed" I'd be far more cautious drawing conclusions about Survival.  Even if it were the same player doing the comparison and duplicating everything in each sample besides platform.

[SneakyErvin]

33 minutes ago, Tiltskillet said:

Well Arbitrary and I were talking about Defense.   And while  I don't read more into  a single a-b Defense comparison than "interesting...more testing needed" I'd be far more cautious drawing conclusions about Survival.  Even if it were the same player doing the comparison and duplicating everything in each sample besides platform.

This was survival with high KPM, if it was with low kill rates it wouldnt really tell us anything, but since it was high rates it clearly shows the next gen consoles can keep up with PC.

And with defense it isnt odd if the total spawn rate is the same, since it is all based on x number of enemies to complete a wave. This means that you might have experienced lower density, but as you kill new mobs spawn until the wave requirement is met. There might be a slight difference in wave clear time, but the amount of mobs killed should be the same, since the total number doesnt impact performance, just the simultaneous amount of enemies does.

Edited March 24 by SneakyErvin

[Tiltskillet]

34 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

And with defense it isnt odd if the total spawn rate is the same, since it is all based on x number of enemies to complete a wave.

It wouldn't be surprising, but it's better not to assume it in the absence of testing that verifies it.  Working out that wave sizes are the same in Defense is just a case where testing may be relatively simple.   On its own it doesn't answer questions like whether those spawns are throttled differently on different platforms, let alone what happens in other game modes.

[MrDugan]

On 2024-03-22 at 5:51 PM, Jarriaga said:

They can't do anything about it. Hardware limitations are hardward limitations.

For the Switch, and mobile, maybe.  I still had my Xbox One, not my Series X when SP hit, and even solo, the spawn rate in SP mobile defense was a sea of red triangles.  Which then noticeably was absent when I was in an SP survival.  The proper amount of spawn was already in the game for last gen consoles, and my console ran that fine, solo or not.  The problem is they won't put that same spawn rate into the missions that need it.

[MrDugan]

6 hours ago, Tiltskillet said:

It wouldn't be surprising, but it's better not to assume it in the absence of testing that verifies it.  Working out that wave sizes are the same in Defense is just a case where testing may be relatively simple.   On its own it doesn't answer questions like whether those spawns are throttled differently on different platforms, let alone what happens in other game modes.

Anecdotal evidence (but a lot of it.) would suggest that they're the same.  XP on Hydron is fairly static, regardless of host, which suggests static spawn rates.  The only time that XP increased was the change to Eximus units.  If there is a difference, it's not enough to change average XP gains across countless defense missions that I've ran leveling up gear there.  And an edit to add:  I don't notice much of a difference in clear time, either, unless I have an entire team of AFK players.

Edited March 25 by MrDugan

[Tiltskillet]

50 minutes ago, MrDugan said:

Anecdotal evidence (but a lot of it.) would suggest that they're the same.  XP on Hydron is fairly static, regardless of host, which suggests static spawn rates.  The only time that XP increased was the change to Eximus units.  If there is a difference, it's not enough to change average XP gains across countless defense missions that I've ran leveling up gear there.  And an edit to add:  I don't notice much of a difference in clear time, either, unless I have an entire team of AFK players.

Good stuff. 👍

[VibingCat]

9 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Just gonna weigh in here quickly. There was a thread a good while back, sometime after crossplay was added where KPM was discussed. And the KPM between a PC and a next gen console on the same solo SP survival tile were nearly identical with the same frame. Where the slight shift in numbers could be written off to be caused by KB+M vs Controller, since it was that close. And iirc the slight difference also came down to the console player heading towards EZ prematurely while killing on the way, and the PC player stayed in place until the rotation was over, and then headed to EZ without killing.

But yeah, you arent alone in ending up with equal counts.

In my experience, when one day a console player hosted a Cascade game, spawns were at least four times lower. There would be many scenarios where not a single grineer would spawn in a large room, only thraxes showed up, and I definitely couldn't get energy, ammo and Primary Dexterity stacks.

[SneakyErvin]

14 hours ago, VibingCat said:

In my experience, when one day a console player hosted a Cascade game, spawns were at least four times lower. There would be many scenarios where not a single grineer would spawn in a large room, only thraxes showed up, and I definitely couldn't get energy, ammo and Primary Dexterity stacks.

Yeah but are you positive it was a next gen console? All consoles have the swirly thingy icon, so hard to tell what type of generation or console overall it is. The old ones and switch aswell as now iPhones have lower spawn rates and density, that is known and has always been a thing. Now it can obviously be a thing for next gen aswell if they are the host, since the test that was done was based on solo runs, so there might be something in the matchmaker that doesnt differentiate console generations.

The tests that were done in survival between a next gen console and PC had a kill difference of around 100-150, with a total kill count of around 2500 after 20 minutes, or 120-125 KPM or roughly 2 KPS. If there was a massive reduction in spawn rates for the next gen console they would never come close to that and the difference would be far greater than 100-150.

16 hours ago, MrDugan said:

For the Switch, and mobile, maybe.  I still had my Xbox One, not my Series X when SP hit, and even solo, the spawn rate in SP mobile defense was a sea of red triangles.  Which then noticeably was absent when I was in an SP survival.  The proper amount of spawn was already in the game for last gen consoles, and my console ran that fine, solo or not.  The problem is they won't put that same spawn rate into the missions that need it.

I think it has to do with how the spawn locations are handled between the modes. A sea of red in mobdef could be because the spawns have fixed locations and flow, while in survival the locations might be far more chaotic. Likely because in defense and mobdef the spawns are based on the location of the objective, in survival and other objectiveless missions it is based on player location(s).

I wonder how it works in excav which is a mix of both objective locations for the A.I to attack and players. And ESO, which is objectiveless but with fixed locations on limited sized maps.

[VibingCat]

9 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

If there was a massive reduction in spawn rates for the next gen console they would never come close to that and the difference would be far greater than 100-150.

Imagine how cool it would be if a dev read this conversation and told us how their code works.

Edited March 25 by VibingCat

[Arbitrary]

3 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

The tests that were done in survival between a next gen console and PC had a kill difference of around 100-150, with a total kill count of around 2500 after 20 minutes, or 120-125 KPM or roughly 2 KPS. If there was a massive reduction in spawn rates for the next gen console they would never come close to that and the difference would be far greater than 100-150.

I certainly hope you're not referencing this thread. Cause if so, you're misrepresenting the conclusions from it.

The result of tests from that thread for reference.

[SneakyErvin]

52 minutes ago, Arbitrary said:

I certainly hope you're not referencing this thread. Cause if so, you're misrepresenting the conclusions from it.

The result of tests from that thread for reference.

No, that was a thread about something completely different. Think that was something about Nourish vs Roar on Saryn or something. I cant recall if the KPM comparison was on the WF forums or Reddit even since I also glanced over it, I wasnt engaged in it at all. The thread you mention here is all over the places since it uses different mod setups, weapons and abilities. It has one thing common iirc and that is using Saryn lol.

58 minutes ago, VibingCat said:

Imagine how cool it would be if a dev read this conversation and told us how their code works.

Yup, would love that. The only slight info we have from DE is what they revealed with the matchmaker post when mobile went live, where it talks about host priority a bit.

Edited March 25 by SneakyErvin

[Arniox]

On 2024-03-23 at 10:51 AM, Jarriaga said:

They can't do anything about it. Hardware limitations are hardward limitations.

They can if they made dedicated servers... 

On 2024-03-23 at 12:47 PM, UnstarPrime said:

Question: does this issue exist when a PC player on a potato hosts a PC player on a super-rig?

Yes, but not as badly as a ps4 hosting a PC player. 

[lSaminatorl]

On 2024-03-22 at 10:29 PM, JimothyStevens said:

I agree but I think that normalizing reactant spawn across mission types as a response to this question is an excellent idea. Not sure what they could do with regards to the spawn rate on lower end hardware. It's kinda a rabbit out of the hat moment. Only way to prevent it would be to not release on low spec stuff.

I do hope this is the case so it's more in line with extermimates reactant drop rate. Certain mission types like disruption have an abysmal resftant drop rate, where rounds often take twice as long to complete compared to a non-fissure version of the mission due to needing 10 reactants, and having to hold back so much. 

[MrDugan]

On 2024-03-25 at 12:10 PM, SneakyErvin said:

Yeah but are you positive it was a next gen console? All consoles have the swirly thingy icon, so hard to tell what type of generation or console overall it is. The old ones and switch aswell as now iPhones have lower spawn rates and density, that is known and has always been a thing. Now it can obviously be a thing for next gen aswell if they are the host, since the test that was done was based on solo runs, so there might be something in the matchmaker that doesnt differentiate console generations.

The tests that were done in survival between a next gen console and PC had a kill difference of around 100-150, with a total kill count of around 2500 after 20 minutes, or 120-125 KPM or roughly 2 KPS. If there was a massive reduction in spawn rates for the next gen console they would never come close to that and the difference would be far greater than 100-150.

I think it has to do with how the spawn locations are handled between the modes. A sea of red in mobdef could be because the spawns have fixed locations and flow, while in survival the locations might be far more chaotic. Likely because in defense and mobdef the spawns are based on the location of the objective, in survival and other objectiveless missions it is based on player location(s).

I wonder how it works in excav which is a mix of both objective locations for the A.I to attack and players. And ESO, which is objectiveless but with fixed locations on limited sized maps.

As far as I'm aware, spawn works the same way in these missions, with it being based on room adjacency to the player.  It's only fixed in things like defense maps, and that's because those maps are procedurally generated.