New Mission Type: Distraction

[CorrTerek]

EDIT: I may have put this in the wrong forum? If so, please move, mods. 

 

One of the things that kind of bugs me about Survival is the logic behind it -- the enemy can cut off the air supply, and one of our main supplies of air is enemy troops, so why do they send enemies to come get us when they could just leave us alone and go deal with the Tenno spy? 

 

Another thing that kind of bugs me is the rather anemic enemy spawn in Survival. Those of you who were around for the Survival event will remember that enemy spawns got to be really impressive , and I personally would love to get back to that for at least one type of mission. 

 

So, with those two things in mind, here's a new mission type I thought up. I'd appreciate any feedback on it. 

 

Mission Type: Distraction

 

The Tenno are providing a distraction for another (unplayable) team that is on a raid/spy/capture/whatever mission. How do they do this? By slaughtering as many enemies as possible. The Tenno keep their eye on a "heat" bar that starts at 50%. Killing enemies makes it go higher, while not killing enemies makes it drop. It hits 0%? Mission failed. 

 

Seems easy, right? Well, here's the thing: enemy spawn rates and enemy level are both tied to the "heat" bar. The higher the %, the more varied amounts of enemies spawn (low heat might have Runners/Leapers, Moas/Ospreys, and Scorpions/Butchers; high heat would have Napalms, Railgun/Fusion Moas, and Ancient Infested galore) and the higher the level they spawn at. So you might start off great, Priming and World on Fire-ing, Crushing, whatever, but eventually those enemies are going to be too tough to kill in large numbers. So you slack off, and the bar starts going down. Enemy spawn rate lowers, and enemy levels drop back to their base values. 

 

Like the current Survival missions, this mission type would be timed. I would think that spawn levels would also be affected by time as well, but I'm not sure if there's a balanced way to do that. Maybe the amount of time raises the base values while "heat" works off whatever the current base value is? Would appreciate feedback. 

 

Also like Survival, there would be mission rewards every five minutes. Extracting would give you all mission rewards earned up to that point. But you'll have to carefully gauge your own capabilities -- unlike Survival, you can't just run for the exit when the going gets too tough, because that bar is still counting down and if it hits 0 before you extract you lose everything. 

 

I feel like this would be a good mission type because it allows the players to judge what they're capable of, and because the usual strategy of bringing in huge guns and murderizing everything wouldn't be quite so effective. It also allows for increased enemy spawns, which are always fun -- especially if you're looking for that one special mod. 

 

So What Happens To Current Survival?

 

Well, there's two possibilities here: 

 

1) There's a really nifty suggestion for Survival missions in the Infinite Ladder Survival thread here in the Maps & Levels Feedback subforum. I feel that it more accurately captures the feeling of "survival" and would be a good replacement. 

 

2) Make "Survival" a Nightmare Mode mutation. It would certainly shake things up if you had, say, Vampiric Survival Exterminate, for instance. More mutations are a good thing. 

 

So! Anyone have any questions, suggestions, or death threats? 

Edited January 18, 2014 by CorrTerek

[Kinperor]

Well I like this if only because it would finally stop the non-sense of cutting the air supply of a whole planet. 

 

It'd be great as well for players who want to really test their limits early, as opposed to waiting a couple of hours to see an actual challenge. 

[phazefox]

cool, it seems like a pretty solid idea, and just for feedbacks sake, there IS a pretty easy way to implement the double scaling (time and heat), you can use multipliers or, if you feel like going linear, adders/counters.

 

it'd be quite easy to make an adder that adds "X", to the base lvls/spawn rates every "Y" time, and this things can be put to trigger every "click", whick should be about every other nanosecond, so it'd be quite gradual, not choppy.

 

using a multiplier for the "heat" would be cool as it could be made so it doesn't just make the lvls/spawn rate higher, but also make time have a greater effect on them; or better yet, make it exponential, so that reaching max heat is NEVER a good thing, no matter how insanelly strong your cell is, but, being exponential, the scaling wouldn't go crazy until it gets to a certain "heat" lvl, at which point they simply start throwing hell at you.

 

properlly balancing both scaling mechanisms would be the hardest part frankly.

Edited January 18, 2014 by phazefox

[-Mandachordian-Tenno-]

Yes

[OmegaShadowcry]

It sounds DELICIOUS, somehow.

 

Nightmare Mode Distraction would definately show you where your gear stands. In the meantime, I'm going to need a bigger frame.