Please remove Defense from Archon Hunts or Set it to 5 waves instead of 10

[N7_Dredgen]

This isn't a difficulty complaint or anything... it's just everytime it's Defense its one of the one's with a living target who moves around, and it take approx 20 minutes to do 10 waves no matter how good the squad is.  It's unreasonably slow and boring.  I skip these weeks its so bad.  

[Chewarette]

It can be kept, but Circuit's mechanism should be adapted to Archon Hunt defenses (if not to all of them). So 3-6 waves, with higher intensity and shorter spawns

Edited April 15 by Chewarette
not Duviri, Circuit

[PollexMessier]

Yeah... The extended missions on sortie and archon hunts are pretty rude in general. But defense is just the worst.

I don't think it should be removed, just cus they obviously put in a lot of work for chipper to be the defense objective. But 10 waves is too much.

[Zakkhar]

30 minutes ago, N7_Dredgen said:

it take approx 20 minutes to do 10 waves no matter how good the squad is

That is an average time for defence.

30 minutes ago, N7_Dredgen said:

It's unreasonably slow and boring. 

Bring speednova. It will become fast and extremly hectic. Also if you do it solo, there is less enemies per wave so it goes faster (if you can handle).

Edited April 15 by Zakkhar

[PollexMessier]

Just now, Zakkhar said:

That is an average time for defence.

You understand that's a bad thing right?

1 minute ago, Zakkhar said:

Bring speednova. It will become fast and extremly hectic.

And watch as the impossible to defend moving target is rapidly vaporized, unless you aggressively babysit it with a meta Aoe weapon. Sounds like a blast.

[Zakkhar]

3 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

Circuit's mechanism should be adapted to Archon Hunt defenses (if not to all of them). So 3-6 waves, with higher intensity and shorter spawns

It looks good on paper. But have in mind that mission is done not only by try-hards, but also casuals. In Circuit you get Decrees to balance it out (yet we still have numerous forum threads about waves being too intense, especially for solo player). Plus in Circuit you can die and ressurect. If you die in Archon hunt, you are toast.

[Zakkhar]

25 minutes ago, PollexMessier said:

You understand that's a bad thing right?

Why is it a bad thing? You can manipulate the mission by bringing different frames in oder to customise the speed and excitment for yourself, so that it is not global and whole community doesnt have to endure it. 

25 minutes ago, PollexMessier said:

And watch as the impossible to defend moving target is rapidly vaporized, unless you aggressively babysit it with a meta Aoe weapon. Sounds like a blast.

It is only moving because whoever its following is moving.

You wanted it less boring and faster and when it becomes less boring and faster you complain? I doesnt have to be 10% Speedva, it can be less extreme, hell it be Maim Equinox too (Rage offers similar bonus as Speedva). You just boom booom bang - no need for meta weapon. Or you can bring Gara and constantly nuke whole map. The problem with public squads is people tend to bring cc frames and often cc the enemies in places they cannot be harmed for a long time. Or tuck the defence target in the very corner of the map (instead of center) and wonder why it takes so long for the enemies to travel to them.

Edited April 15 by Zakkhar

[MaxTunnerX]

Defense gamemode in general is lame and boring, regardless of any modifiers. Yes, you can bring mirage or something to make 10 waves in 7 minutes to get it over with quickly, but thats the thing, "get it over with quickly", aka you are bored and/or annoyed this entire time, which is the definition of a failed gamemode. I would definitely vote for removing defense altogether and only bringing it back when its properly reworked.

Edited April 15 by MaxTunnerX

[LittleLeoniePrime]

55 minutes ago, Zakkhar said:

customise the speed

you really can't with some tiles. In a lot of cases it's pathing issues too (especially earth and mars defense tiles) enemies just get stuck and don't even attempt to run at you no matter what you do.

Defense in general is just a bad gamemode. where other missions rotations are usually ballanced around survivals 5 minute per rotation average this one feels more like a 7-10 minute average in a lot of tiles.

30 minutes ago, MaxTunnerX said:

Defense gamemode in general is lame and boring, regardless of any modifiers. Yes, you can bring mirage or something to make 10 waves in 7 minutes to get it over with quickly, but thats the thing, "get it over with quickly", aka you are bored and/or annoyed this entire time, which is the definition of a failed gamemode. I would definitely vote for removing defense altogether and only bringing it back when its properly reworked.

this omg. couldn't have said it better...

[Zakkhar]

3 minutes ago, LittleLeoniePrime said:

you really can't with some tiles. In a lot of cases it's pathing issues too (especially earth and mars defense tiles) enemies just get stuck and don't even attempt to run at you no matter what you do.

Oh, you can. There are plenty over the wall/level nuking possibilities. Even on the dreaded Corpus Ship. No need for them to get to you, just kill them where they stand. Also, as I already mentioned, if you are solo it goes faster due to lack of the 2 slowing mechanisms pubs do and less enemies per wave.

Edited April 15 by Zakkhar

[Chewarette]

1 hour ago, Zakkhar said:

It looks good on paper. But have in mind that mission is done not only by try-hards, but also casuals. In Circuit you get Decrees to balance it out (yet we still have numerous forum threads about waves being too intense, especially for solo player). Plus in Circuit you can die and ressurect. If you die in Archon hunt, you are toast.

Archon Hunt are supposed to be high-level content. I have no problem with it being difficult and not steamrolled-content

Furthermore, Circuit's decrees balance out the fact you don't chose your loadout + the defense target has instadeath. Archon Hunts let you chose your loadout, and the defense target is rezzable which makes it ez pz

Edited April 15 by Chewarette

[Zakkhar]

1 hour ago, Chewarette said:

high-level content

1 hour ago, Chewarette said:

ez pz

Pick one.

[Chewarette]

15 minutes ago, Zakkhar said:

Pick one.

They're not even contradictory ?

I'm just saying Archon Hunts are supposed to be high-level content. The fact the defense target is rezzable currently makes it easy, despite still being high-level content with constraints (no self revive, gear etc). The fact the defense target is rezzable doesn't make the enemies be level 2 as far as I know ?

If you read my posts, you'll also see I advocate for a more difficult defense mission in Archon Hunts, to offset a bit this easy-peasiness. With a real swarm, it would be a bit more difficult - not terribly, but a bit more

[Zakkhar]

15 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

If you read my posts, you'll also see I advocate for a more difficult defense mission in Archon Hunts, to offset a bit this easy-peasiness. With a real swarm, it would be a bit more difficult - not terribly, but a bit more

I saw it. And I strongly disagree. If you you read mine, you would know.

Edited April 15 by Zakkhar

[SpicyDinosaur]

It's the maps that make me hate defense for Archon Hunts. At least for Jupiter and Earth. The Earth one is probably the map I hate most in the game, excluding the Index map that replaced a really good map for a larger version with garbage pathing.

[SolStreak]

5 hours ago, MaxTunnerX said:

Defense gamemode in general is lame and boring, regardless of any modifiers. Yes, you can bring mirage or something to make 10 waves in 7 minutes to get it over with quickly, but thats the thing, "get it over with quickly", aka you are bored and/or annoyed this entire time, which is the definition of a failed gamemode. I would definitely vote for removing defense altogether and only bringing it back when its properly reworked.

Yeah, they really should bring the 'defense' part in Defense mission, making it timer-based like Mobile Defense - and also how ironic it is that Defense is less 'defense' than Mobile Defense, but it's rather an Exterminate with a strict kill quota.

With some of the enemies just have bad pathfinding, its really agonizing to play.

[MaxTunnerX]

2 hours ago, SolStreak said:

Yeah, they really should bring the 'defense' part in Defense mission, making it timer-based like Mobile Defense - and also how ironic it is that Defense is less 'defense' than Mobile Defense, but it's rather an Exterminate with a strict kill quota.

With some of the enemies just have bad pathfinding, its really agonizing to play.

Hehe yeah, its funny. Ima defend myself by killing everyone in the known universe. Seems like a bad case of pre-emptive strike to me rather than defense. And calling defense "a more painful exterminate" is actually on point. Especially since defensive builds are absolutely garbage in defense compared to offensive builds, because they make you waste even more time. Nukers get the job done much faster and more effectively than tanks and crowd controllers.

Edited April 15 by MaxTunnerX

[N7_Dredgen]

10 hours ago, Zakkhar said:

That is an average time for defence.

Bring speednova. It will become fast and extremly hectic. Also if you do it solo, there is less enemies per wave so it goes faster (if you can handle).

Definitely not.  If you aren't smashing out regular defense waves in about 1 min something is wrong.

These Archon Hunts though take place one the worst maps, and again the moving target.  This causes all kinds of janky spawn issues.  Having triple levelled maps for these modes also doesn't help.  Overall the mission is severely longed out compared to normal defense imo. 

I can do 10 waves of Hydron reliably in about 10 min, even on SP... so not sure why Archon hunts have to be almost double the time.

Edited April 15 by N7_Dredgen

[Zakkhar]

4 hours ago, N7_Dredgen said:

Definitely not.  If you aren't smashing out regular defense waves in about 1 min something is wrong.

So you are comparing average times for all defence missions to top times on best possible map. Interesting. Show us yourself smashing defence waves in about 1 minute not on Hydron.

Hydron is Hydron for a reason.

[N7_Dredgen]

17 minutes ago, Zakkhar said:

So you are comparing average times for all defence missions to top times on best possible map. Interesting. Show us yourself smashing defence waves in about 1 minute not on Hydron.

Hydron is Hydron for a reason.

You can literally do this on any defense that has a pod man.  The only exception maybe being the Corpus ship tile with the 26 hour long elevator.  This is true on Earth, Mars, Sedna, Pluto, Void, Eris, Neptune... even Ceres with the moving pod the waves are 1 min approx etc. the list goes on.  I think you might just not realize what you're saying here.  Most defenses in this game are super easy and don't have this timing problem because the enemies all run to a singular point and have significantly less places to spread and get stuck.  I'm pretty sure I could just list 95% of the nodes in the game and be correct here.  

The only defenses that take this long are the one I just mentioned, and the ones with living targets.   It seems to be largely 2 problematic maps... Jupiter Corpus Defense, and Corpus Ship Defense - but defense objective does play a role, because if you're ever done a living target defense on the hydron map, you will know it takes twice as long.  Virtually everywhere else in the game defense is significantly faster even on SP high levels.  It's being longed out because the target is moving all over the place in maps where pathfinding is already bad... and those maps are always the maps used in Archon Hunts to add insult to injury.  

 

Edited April 15 by N7_Dredgen

[Zakkhar]

1 hour ago, N7_Dredgen said:

because if you're ever done a living target defense on the hydron map, you will know it takes twice as long. 

It only takes twice as long if you do it in squad of random pubs. If you do it solo, you control the action, you control the defence target movement. And if you stick to the center, so does he. It is not the missions fault. It is players' fault. Moving target has pros and cons. Pros are that you can rez him and give him a weapon (unlike the coffin), cons are the his movement is tied to one squadmember (it can change each round) and if they run like an idiot over whole  map, so does he.

And it is not like Operator defense is a new format for Archon hunts, it was like that for ages with sorties and alerts (also 10 waves). Hell, we even got 15 waves for Grendel.

Edited April 15 by Zakkhar

[Schwitzer]

I have literally dozed off while playing the Archon Defense mission. This has happened multiple times. It is so unbelievably boring that it actually puts me to sleep. 

[Emwue]

On 2024-04-15 at 11:55 AM, Chewarette said:

I'm just saying Archon Hunts are supposed to be high-level content.

Just for context, in the current progression of the game you unlock Archon Hunts before Arbitration, so at the point DE thinks you should be doing those, you do not yet get access to even Galvanized mods, for example.

That being said, the idea of copying the Undercroft defence solution is not a bad idea, as long as it wouldn't have additional parameters associated with Undercroft defence like increased Eximus spawns in wave 3, so it has my vote for sure. :)

[Grave.Knight]

Defense needs the number of waves per rotation reduced from 5 to 3 with more enemies to compensate.