Interception Missions - Add Emplacements

[DSMK2]

From my experience, it seems like newbies have a hard time with the Earth interception missions, as they can't 'solo' each tower as effectively as a geared out player.

 

There needs to be a clutch.

 

The Grineer turrets hovering around the design council should be put in! As well as other (passive) security measures to reduce the "hold each tower solo" aspect of the game mode.

 

These emplacements should work only for the occupying side; towers need to be captured first for the turrets/security to be used.

 

If the clutches are destroyable, players should have the opportunity to rebuild them. My thought on this: Players will have to collect material dropped from fallen enemies to rebuild turrets/security. That material will scale with the current enemy level, which in turn will scale the emplacements; keeping them useful for the duration of the mission.

 

Later (higher-level) interception missions will have less emplacements to use and deploy.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

[Un1337ninj4]

As a gent who plays Penta Trinity constantly helping out the newbs in this mode. I thank you.

[HansJurgen]

I do not think a new player will figure out how he needs to gather resources and micromanage turrets. He is already battling whatever the game is throwing at him already.

 

The worst part about interception is that the time requirements for capturing a tower are over 10:1 to being captured back by the mobs. The mobs don't even need to stay in the circle to capture it, but rather access a mainframe, typically outside the capture zone, and in any case nowhere near the capture point.

 

A tower that is about to be lost is also very poorly announced. In the heat of the battle this is hard to notice. You are told that you lost it, along the lines of too little too late.

 

The map design is also very poor. The tower themselves have almost no cover, while areas around them consist of good cover.

 

Furthermore, there are a lot of elements like collapsed platforms, or holes or whatever where you can get stuck or a grineer can remain hidden, contesting the capture point. Units also clip through walls and floors a lot, which makes things particularly aggravating when it is a AOE leader with ice, fire or drain.

 

The game mode and mad design simply plays against the strength of the tenno, while giving all the advantages to the cover conditioned AI. You are forced to stand still in the open, fending off against mobs shooting at you from all sides while in good cover.

 

A redesign of the maps and the capture system itself will go a long way to fixing this for newcommers.

 

Reducing the absurd number of leaders and the overall spawn rate for the first 1-2 waves would also come a long way. They can get geometrically tougher afterwards.

 

The difficulty of this game mode scales very poorly with the area it is in, a mid-beginner area. You reach many much easier missions afterwards (including bosses), in higher level systems than this.

 

It is a poorly designed game mode. And adding more stuff to it, instead of going back to the basics and fix what is fundamentally wrong with it, will further confound its glaring defects, ignoring them instead of fixing anything:

 

- difficulty scaling, way too hard considering the next mission nodes

- unfair capture mechanics for the AI, difficult capture mechanics for the player who has to sit exposed and immobile for a long time

- the game mode encourages AOE spamming and camping, basically a farming area for high level players only

- lack of clear alerts on the minimap and hud about the status of the towers

- poor, seemingly rushed map design with the tower capture circle covering very uneven terrain (including heights which cannot be climbed over by any of the beginner frames) or places in which you can get stuck

- plethora of clipping bugs which allow AI to get under the floor, granting them semi invincibility to fire arms

- powerful unit types a new player won't meet again until higher level systems.

- the game mode is placed in the path of advancing through the Earth mission nodes, and not as a side one, forcing new players to get through it.

 

Call it conspiracy theory. Personally, I suspect DE was pressured by high level, borred players to make this change, giving no thought to how this will actually fit within the overall game balance, or whether the game mechanics behind it are sound, and whether they place both the player and the AI on equal footing, or whether the game mod will be universally fun, and not merely appeal to the 1 percenters.