This Is Absurd.

[CelsiusPrime]

yes. I'm mastery rank 13. yes I have tons of maxed gear I could use instead. but I just finished building my neckros and my grinlock marelock and dual cleavers. I don't care if they are "good" for grineer I'm just leveling them. everything (frame primary, secondary, melee) is level 11 or higher. I decide to run a mission on earth that is listed as levels 6-8. I figure with a decent pug I could go a ways in this mission. we start and I get to the objective first and see this:
 

 

 

and I had more behind me. I would just like to point out that the density of enemies in this mission is just too much for players that are even 10 levels higher than the one listed.

 

 

the way the enemies spawn and how they affect progress at a node forces this mission, which is on a "beginner planet" to be played with 1 of 4 frames.

 

A: Rhino cause stomp/IS

B: Frost cause tank/SG 

C: Vauban cause vortex/bastille/tesla/bounce

D: Nova cause EXPLOSIONS!!

 

at it's current state, every mission should be casually pass able if you have a 4 person Pug group with everyone around 3 levels of the listed levels. missions should not require a pre planned team of elites, or flooding recruiting channel with request for rhino or frost. Pug games are the life force and this mission as it stands is completly shutting down any attempts to level here with pug groups.

 

 

DE I WANT TO KNOW WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

[BrotherIcarus]

In the latest live stream DE explained this and confirmed they were going to dial the difficulty down.

[IIJetfireII]

In the latest live stream DE explained this and confirmed they were going to dial the difficulty down.

[CelsiusPrime]

not in the lastest one (#25). that was in the #24 livestream and I there have been a few updates and patches since then. considering this is a progress blocking mistake for all the new players I figured it would be fixed by now

[Neutralred]

Really? Because what I saw was two of the team talking about how they jumped into the map with 'gimped' builds that 'a player who played to earth linearly' would have, and they had 'hardcore fun' and are 'happy new players are getting that experience'.

 

Which tells me that they probably expect Earth players to have:

- Potatoes

- Crafted weapons (clue: you can't craft anything other than Orthos until you hit the planets beyond Earth and you can't buy any primaries other than Braton and Strun)

- Ranked damage mods (another point in the stream was where some daft bugger thinks they're 'doing a god job of moving required mods onto common enemies' - guess they don't think Serration is required then)

- And probably Auras (lol hope you got lucky with an alert on Venus).

 

So yeah, I don't expect this cockup to get sorted until someone notices their conversion values are completely tanked. I want to see this 'gimped build' that was used to check out Interception.

[CelsiusPrime]

agreed I don't potato or forma anything. the only thing with potatoes are the event weapons that come with them. I do this because I don't want to waste a potato on a weapon that I might not like after I finish leveling it.

 

yes I understand it's supposed to be a challenge but as they said in the stream "the early game is too hard and the late game is too easy"

[K_Shiro]

 

In the latest live stream DE explained this and confirmed they were going to dial the difficulty down.

 

 

Why did you quote it fully? If you have nothing to add yourself just give it an upvote man...

 

As for your problem OP, I believe it hails from the fact that the Devs went towards the "easy" way to create challenging fights thus challenge here means that the enemies have higher health/damage/numbers instead of AI, abilities, tactics etc. This usually causes a lot of problem later on because it's getting harder and harder to tune it to fit the players' possibilities and still provide challenge. That along with the fact that the enemies usually just rush at you without any care in the world or for personal safety means they will simply overwhelm you... I have never seen a properly working model for this particular direction, all of them toppled at some point. Yes, this is a working strategy for ants and small animals but a trained soldier doesn't usually rush head on at the enemy hoping someone will manage to bring him down...

 

Back in the days when I've first encountered a shield bearing grineer soldier and seen him stop instead of rushing, sitting down, shield in front and the other soldier stepping intentionally behind him to benefit from his shield, I was like "HELL YEA!". I've hoped that is not the only instance of an ai actually doing something instead of just rushing at you but as you can guess that's not how it went.

 

Ideas for AI tactics:

 

- Infested - Just as now, they are fine being mindless. Wallwalking could be nice but let's dream about that some other time.

- Grineer - Using covers, shielded opponents, maybe heavies as cover, smoke grenades, well positioned squads (like a shooting squad), those hurt retreating IF THEY CAN, not randomly choosing to run into your fire while looking for cover, or running around like a headless chicken when you are shooting. If you are that close that they cannot just step into cover, let them rush at you in melee or whatnot.

- Corpus - Energy shield based defensive drones - they move in front of the soldiers and deploy energy "walls" that only the opposing corpus can shoot through, you must deplete these shields or destroy the drone that deploys it. The current shield drones are great actually but the enemy themselves do not care about them - if they made sure to stay close to one however...

 

As for individual AI the first thing to do is to make sure enemies value their lives enough to not stand in the middle of a corridor shooting - at least kneel down for less contour and better precision if there is no cover around. They don't seem to care much about their allies - neither their wellbeing nor their very presence. They tend to wander around instead of attacking in groups. That's inefficient and feels weird taking into consideration that neither the Grineer nor the Corpus is beginner in fighting.

 

Would be cool if armored opponents would raise their arms to protect their weakspots when under heavy fire without proper means of defense. Just thinking about a melee based heavy with a hammer, holding up his arm to protect himself while he is closing on me fast gives me the creeps :D Grineer soldiers trying to block your melee attacks with their ranged weapon... so many possiblities.

Edited March 24, 2014 by K_Shiro

[Tsoe]

Why did you quote it fully? If you have nothing to add yourself just give it an upvote man...

 

As for your problem OP, I believe it hails from the fact that the Devs went towards the "easy" way to create challenging fights thus challenge here means that the enemies have higher health/damage/numbers instead of AI, abilities, tactics etc. This usually causes a lot of problem later on because it's getting harder and harder to tune it to fit the players' possibilities and still provide challenge. That along with the fact that the enemies usually just rush at you without any care in the world or for personal safety means they will simply overwhelm you... I have never seen a properly working model for this particular direction, all of them toppled at some point. Yes, this is a working strategy for ants and small animals but a trained soldier doesn't usually rush head on at the enemy hoping someone will manage to bring him down...

 

Back in the days when I've first encountered a shield bearing grineer soldier and seen him stop instead of rushing, sitting down, shield in front and the other soldier stepping intentionally behind him to benefit from his shield, I was like "HELL YEA!". I've hoped that is not the only instance of an ai actually doing something instead of just rushing at you but as you can guess that's not how it went.

 

Ideas for AI tactics:

 

- Infested - Just as now, they are fine being mindless. Wallwalking could be nice but let's dream about that some other time.

- Grineer - Using covers, shielded opponents, maybe heavies as cover, smoke grenades, well positioned squads (like a shooting squad), those hurt retreating IF THEY CAN, not randomly choosing to run into your fire while looking for cover, or running around like a headless chicken when you are shooting. If you are that close that they cannot just step into cover, let them rush at you in melee or whatnot.

- Corpus - Energy shield based defensive drones - they move in front of the soldiers and deploy energy "walls" that only the opposing corpus can shoot through, you must deplete these shields or destroy the drone that deploys it. The current shield drones are great actually but the enemy themselves do not care about them - if they made sure to stay close to one however...

 

As for individual AI the first thing to do is to make sure enemies value their lives enough to not stand in the middle of a corridor shooting - at least kneel down for less contour and better precision if there is no cover around. They don't seem to care much about their allies - neither their wellbeing nor their very presence. They tend to wander around instead of attacking in groups. That's inefficient and feels weird taking into consideration that neither the Grineer nor the Corpus is beginner in fighting.

 

Grineers are less than ants (dont insult ants)

 

but yeah lack of AI , you descibe perfectly how the game work actually

Edited March 24, 2014 by Tsoe

[IIJetfireII]

Why did you quote it fully? If you have nothing to add yourself just give it an upvote man...

Why so serious -_-' ?

 

Already gave an upvote obviously or else why would i quote the whole thing. I wish they could allow us to see the list of who's upvoting...sigh..

Edited March 24, 2014 by IIRodimusprimeII

[K_Shiro]

Why so serious -_-' ?

 

Already gave an upvote obviously or else why would i quote the whole thing. I wish they could allow us to see the list of who's upvoting...sigh..

 

Sry, guess only I hate spamming.

[Neutralred]

As for individual AI the first thing to do is to make sure enemies value their lives enough to not stand in the middle of a corridor shooting - at least kneel down for less contour and better precision if there is no cover around. They don't seem to care much about their allies - neither their wellbeing nor their very presence. They tend to wander around instead of attacking in groups. That's inefficient and feels weird taking into consideration that neither the Grineer nor the Corpus is beginner in fighting.

Actually, the Grineer are vat-grown and their primary tactic is stated to be "overcome by sheer weight of numbers", not superior tactics - making the overtuned Invasion maps probably the truest Grineer tactical exhibition, sadly.

 

Corpus are meant to be merchants, technicians and workers, not primarily warriors. Hence they kinda are meant to be newbs as far as fighting is concerned. Think of 300, where Leonidas asks the Arcadians what their professions are and they answer "potter, builder" etc. - where the Spartans are warriors through and through.

 

The single biggest improvement to AI would be the ability to keep track of more than one opponent. At the moment units tend to fixate, and that leads to odd behaviours like kneeling for cover against one Tenno while exposing their backs to the other three party members. This makes no sense. At the very least they should try suppressive fire to keep anyone who can see them's heads down.

[Monolake]

Yes it IS absurd. Just carried two guys who asked for help in chat, they been stuck on Eurasia for days

Yet DE still thinks its fine ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edited March 24, 2014 by Monolake

[CelsiusPrime]

UPDATE:

did some "gimping" of myself just to see how hard it really is.

 

This photo is just to show you the team I was playing with. it was a fresh Loki, fresh Excalibur, a volt and me. (an excal prime) this is a pretty good show as to what a new player would experience as a team when they are playing this level at mastery rank 0-2. please ignore the names as this isn't about them, just their equipment.

 

 

 

 

for this shot I want to draw the attention to the number of people who are still up and who are dead, or bleeding out. right now he has no chance to help raise his friend simply because he can't get there when he's getting overrun himself.  this was maybe around a 7 min match and the grineer have 50% more than us already.

 

 

 

now this is the important part. here are the mods I was using on my "gimped" frame. some of these mods are impossible to have as a new player who just reached earth. I didn't want to gimp myself too much so i decided to play as a really "lucky" new player who managed to get a excal prime  or who potatoed his frame. I wanted as much damage as possible so I added a rifle amp ( which would be extremely difficult for a new player to get), maxed abilities (for the most powerful attacks and cc), flow (so I could spam all day long) intensity (to kill things in one hit) and stretch (to make the most of slash dash and javelin). there is no way a new player is going to have a maxed flow mod but I used it anyway just to give myself another bonus.

 

 

 

 

this was the rifle I was using and getting extra damage from the rifle amp of mine. these mods are unrealistic for a new player but I added them anyway because I need to show you all that even if they have a serration that doesn't mean that this mission is going to get any easier.

 

 

 

 

 

another beginner weapon. I think it's safe to assume that new players would have been able to get newer better weapons by the time they get to earth. and still these mods weren't enough.

 

 

 

I used the prime over the original because I wanted to pretend that maybe they were able to forma the weapon so now it has that extra polarity slot. still not enough.

 

 

[ZaraaK]

I had no luck under any circumstances (solo/best frame/weapons) soloing the mission.

 

I was able to do duo it with a friend but both of us were running high level gear and mods.

 

I wouldn't be opposed to the difficulty on a much later map, but Eurasia is as people have said above me, anything but a late game map. This map is going to cause new players to rage quit. If I ran into this when I started playing, it would have been a roadblock and it might have been enough for me to turn to another game permanently.

 

With that in mind, I am not trying to be self entitled when I say I think DE need to fix this asap as it has real potential to drive away new players in frustration. 

Edited March 25, 2014 by ZaraaK

[CelsiusPrime]

it has real potential to drive away new players in frustration. 

 

totally agree on this

[Wolfstorm18]

Did one right now, with a level 17 Loki. Super mega easy, boring, too much boring... so boring, so easy, that I cant just believe someone is complaining about the 'difficulty'. Did only the first run since its the most boring game mode, if it was in the grineer galleon I was going to puke on boredom.

 

DE still didnt fixed it: the base should be captured by hacking consoles not just standing there waiting for super mega slow timer to run out (whereas the enemy just hit console button and capture without waiting, and even sneak behind you instead of shooting at you first). I prefer one thousand times mobile defense, and is really sad that DE did this horrible 'interception mode' instead of a MD with the nice Earth tileset. The only good thing about those maps is the sniper points, but this would be used in a defense map pretty easy. Give me a mobile defense on Earth with hundreds of grinner troopers jumping from armored transports, and interceptions with grinner air strikes, then we talk about 'difficulty'. 

[K_Shiro]

Actually, the Grineer are vat-grown and their primary tactic is stated to be "overcome by sheer weight of numbers", not superior tactics - making the overtuned Invasion maps probably the truest Grineer tactical exhibition, sadly.

 

Corpus are meant to be merchants, technicians and workers, not primarily warriors. Hence they kinda are meant to be newbs as far as fighting is concerned. Think of 300, where Leonidas asks the Arcadians what their professions are and they answer "potter, builder" etc. - where the Spartans are warriors through and through.

 

The single biggest improvement to AI would be the ability to keep track of more than one opponent. At the moment units tend to fixate, and that leads to odd behaviours like kneeling for cover against one Tenno while exposing their backs to the other three party members. This makes no sense. At the very least they should try suppressive fire to keep anyone who can see them's heads down.

 

"Overwhelming by sheer weight of numbers" doesn't mean rushing headlong into fire. Russia in 2nd WW was just like that, hell, Normandy was exactly like that. They were literally trying to get through by "simply" pushing forward and many died. Even they didn't stop to start shooting in the middle of the beach while being shot at...

Edited March 25, 2014 by K_Shiro

[GeoffFromAccounting]

Did one right now, with a level 17 Loki. Super mega easy, boring, too much boring... so boring, so easy, that I cant just believe someone is complaining about the 'difficulty'. Did only the first run since its the most boring game mode, if it was in the grineer galleon I was going to puke on boredom.

 

DE still didnt fixed it: the base should be captured by hacking consoles not just standing there waiting for super mega slow timer to run out (whereas the enemy just hit console button and capture without waiting, and even sneak behind you instead of shooting at you first). I prefer one thousand times mobile defense, and is really sad that DE did this horrible 'interception mode' instead of a MD with the nice Earth tileset. The only good thing about those maps is the sniper points, but this would be used in a defense map pretty easy. Give me a mobile defense on Earth with hundreds of grinner troopers jumping from armored transports, and interceptions with grinner air strikes, then we talk about 'difficulty'. 

 

show me your build, if you're using mods that ARE NOT Flow, Streamline, Stretch or Corrupted Mods, then holy hell, if you are then you just lost all credibility

 

I use a Max Rank potato'd Zephyr with near max Redirection for survivability (which gives me around 930 shields) and max Continuity for my abilites, a Vectis that does over 4000 damage on paper (not counting resistances), a Marelok that does around 2400 damage on paper (again, not counting resistances) and a Glaive that does around 1500 damage on each Charge attack and I STILL have trouble dealing with hordes without using OP weapons/frames like Soma or Nova respectively

Edited March 25, 2014 by Ninjaboy00

[11.11.11]

Personally. I find it silly, and mildly ironic - that one can find waves of Level 25 enemies on a level 1-5 map. 

 

The scaling is out of hand plain and simple. Level 1 to 5, should mean you will only ever see level 5 enemies at the most. Otherwise what is the point of having that categorization. 

 

Even if the ridiculous spawn rates remained, it would be far less of an issue if you weren't running into ripper marines that don't die after a whole magazine of head-shots. 

[CelsiusPrime]

Did one right now, with a level 17 Loki.

 

question time:

1: what weapons were you using?

2: what was your loki build?

3: what level were you weapons?

4: did you look at the end screen? were you carried by 3 other Rhino Prime Stompers?

[Wolfstorm18]

show me your build, if you're using mods that ARE NOT Flow, Streamline, Stretch or Corrupted Mods, then holy hell, if you are then you just lost all credibility

 

I use a Max Rank potato'd Zephyr with near max Redirection for survivability (which gives me around 930 shields) and max Continuity for my abilites, a Vectis that does over 4000 damage on paper (not counting resistances), a Marelok that does around 2400 damage on paper (again, not counting resistances) and a Glaive that does around 1500 damage on each Charge attack and I STILL have trouble dealing with hordes without using OP weapons/frames like Soma or Nova respectively

 

 

I dont need "credibility" to say its easy and boring game mode. It just is. But anyway, I was using Vitality, Redirection, Continuity, Stretch, Decoy, Invisibility and Radial Disarm. I was ranking the frame after a forma, and didnt use any power, only the primary weapon (Gorgon Wraith). The first wave was done in some five minutes. I was alone but a random player with a Excalibur joined me near the end of the wave. When I read this thread I thought I was to see some packed-up mobs to clean up with my Gorgon but appeared just some scattered troopers. Survival is much better to play. 

[CelsiusPrime]

I dont need "credibility" to say its easy and boring game mode. It just is. But anyway, I was using Vitality, Redirection, Continuity, Stretch, Decoy, Invisibility and Radial Disarm. I was ranking the frame after a forma, and didnt use any power, only the primary weapon (Gorgon Wraith). The first wave was done in some five minutes. I was alone but a random player with a Excalibur joined me near the end of the wave. When I read this thread I thought I was to see some packed-up mobs to clean up with my Gorgon but appeared just some scattered troopers. Survival is much better to play. 

 

you say you didn't use any power, like at all? and the Gorgon Wraith is a much more powerful weapon than any that are available to new players. remember this thread is about how can the new players handle it, not the forma'd mid-late game players.

[GeoffFromAccounting]

I don't need "credibility" to say its easy and boring game mode. It just is. But anyway, I was using Vitality, Redirection, Continuity, Stretch, Decoy, Invisibility and Radial Disarm. I was ranking the frame after a forma, and didn't use any power, only the primary weapon (Gorgon Wraith). The first wave was done in some five minutes. I was alone but a random player with a Excalibur joined me near the end of the wave. When I read this thread I thought I was to see some packed-up mobs to clean up with my Gorgon but appeared just some scattered troopers. Survival is much better to play. 

 

of course it's going to be easy and boring if you're using high powered weapons, now try doing it without max rank mods, Continuity or Stretch and using a Braton, Lato/AkLato and Skana/Cronus, THEN see if it's easy and boring

[Neutralred]

Spawn scaling is screwed. It's actually much easier to solo Intercepts. If you're alone there are hardly any spawns.

 

Try a 4-man cell.

[Seanjuju]

In the latest live stream DE explained this and confirmed they were going to dial the difficulty down.

*newbie difficulty

 

Vets still need their fix.