Survival Change - It's Raining Life Support

[ReiganCross]

That WOULD help with the problem in some of the maps where the oversized map doesn't give you enough spawns (usually at the 10-15 minute mark) to actually drop cans, where it's less "I can't handle this" and more "I'm surviving and killing fast enough,  but you're not giving me what I need". That does get really boring and frustrating.

 

A possible reason DE might not want to do this? That'd also make it a bit easier for us to get Survival related drops, and futs with whatever "hey we have an economy we're trying to build here" digits. But I'm not sure how strong of a counterpoint that is for them. Trying to run a business while keeping a game fun is something to consider...but a lot of the drops from Survival are non-market items, so. Hmm. Plat equivalence maybe?

 

Ok, i'll get this out of the way now. If you're using the excuse of "I have to make money" in order to make a game less engaging and more frustrating, you're failing gaming entertainment! I constantly see people use this line of reasoning to justify certain actions a game developer makes, like "hey, i don't like it, but the developer needs to make money".

 

Yes, devs needs to eat, but they should be paying the food with money they get from crafting a great lasting game, not just a shallow profitable one. This way, devs will be able to generate food now and years from now while doing the same great work, instead of exploiting the good will of the people while it last and move on from the next shallow work. And no, i'm not accusing Warframe of being a shallow piece of profitable work, Warframe is actually pretty fair in it's business model and i couldn't ask for a better deal out of DE, seriously, my initial deal of 100 bucks is STILL lasting me. What i'm saying is that profit should never move game design, it is game design that should bring profit. I will pay for a good game (as i did), i will not pay only because you want me to.

[Guest Shibboleet]

The whole idea with oxygen and life support is bloody stupid.

It should be just waves + waves+ waves of enemies, litteraly tons of enemies against you and no stupid life support.

It's set up this way so you can't hide in a corner and receive infinite rewards for afking. If you want wave after wave where you need to kill them to recieve a reward, there is always defense.

[Zkorp]

I agree it would be interresting to try it this way. +1

[Starender]

Just do away with O2 and increase the enemy spawns so it'll be proper survival instead of "find air canisters minigame".

this.

[battlebrothertherix]

It's not the O2 survival I find ridiculous, what I find ridiculous is that the Grineer and Corpus can literally survive on ignorance. I've been survival running with my Rhino recently and on a good day I can get to half an hour solo. But then I get the day when the Grineer take a deep breath and hold it until I kill them. No life support, and I have to leave around the five minute mark.

 

And of course just to hammer the nail into the coffin, I tried a Corpus run recently. Not a single life support pod dropped from any of the soldiers. Didn't matter who they were, I got nothing from them at all, ever. I was frantically jumping through every single pod Lotus gave me and by the time I hit the five minute mark I had to book it to extraction because otherwise I would have been choking on the ignorance of my enemies.

 

 

When survival does this it's a total joke, because it means there's not even the faint possibility of me getting anything decent, so how about this:

Definite scripted drops. We've already got the Lotus drops, but how about there also being an automatic secondary support say from every five enemies? In a group of ten, two would definitely drop life support, while the other eight would have a percentage chance. That drop rate wouldn't have to change with higher levels because we'd be dealing with bigger and badder opponents, so the time and ammunition expended to kill them would balance that out nicely.

[azmyth1]

I'd actually suggest the opposite: only having the lotus drops.  This would mean you don't need a Nekros and it would force people to move from room to room to get the life support rather than just camping a single room, which can get boring.

[Mokkania]

Ok, i'll get this out of the way now. If you're using the excuse of "I have to make money" in order to make a game less engaging and more frustrating, you're failing gaming entertainment! I constantly see people use this line of reasoning to justify certain actions a game developer makes, like "hey, i don't like it, but the developer needs to make money".

You took it a bit too far for what he said but to sum it up as long as it works everything goes, after that people (the devs and the players) have to deal with it.

 

Yes, devs needs to eat, but they should be paying the food with money they get from crafting a great lasting game, not just a shallow profitable one.

For a real game I'd say yes but for F2P online games the situation is a bit different

 

What i'm saying is that profit should never move game design, it is game design that should bring profit. I will pay for a good game (as i did), i will not pay only because you want me to.

It's more or less an extension of the existential question that more than half or maybe the whole of the "creative business" (don't have the right words in my mind right now) have to question themselves about.

[ReiganCross]

I think everyone here agrees on one thing... SURVIVAL NEEDS CHANGING!... I'm going to get hired at DE before i fix Survival for them, especially when i don't even know if they'll glance the post. But we all agree, Survival right now is highly frustrating. As in, that's not the actual Survival mode we want.

 

(Don't get me wrong, it is fun in it's own way, but what we wanted for Survival was mainly defense without a damn Defense Target to actually defend. They had to put a way to get us moving, but this thing is getting in the way of me killing an infinite amounts of dudes!)

Edited May 10, 2014 by ReiganCross

[Guest Shibboleet]

I think everyone here agrees on one thing... SURVIVAL NEEDS CHANGING!... I'm going to get hired at DE before i fix Survival for them, especially when i don't even know if they'll glance the post. But we all agree, Survival right now is highly frustrating. As in, that's not the actual Survival mode we want.

 

(Don't get me wrong, it is fun in it's own way, but what we wanted for Survival was mainly defense without a damn Defense Target to actually defend. They had to put a way to get us moving, but this thing is getting in the way of me killing an infinite amounts of dudes!)

I posted here and only proposed a minor change...not what you're proposing that we all wanted.

Edited May 10, 2014 by Shibboleet

[Raiithe]

Agreed, most of the time , the only reason i have to leave a survival is because i ran out of O2.

 

Being dependant upon the large O2 nodes is a pain, especially when the tiles are dodgy and the spawns are worse. For example Venus (maybe mars either way on planet), I often end up having little choice but to finish just after the 10minute mark, this is due to a massive map requiring long travel time and spawns where enemies will be totally absent for anything from a 'wave to wave' to 40seconds.

 

With the Dark sector survivals this can be even worse, as many sections (seen this in earth especially, one tile has a low walkway and the ancients can't seem to figure out a way around) are difficult for ancients in particular to navigate due to being to tall. Derelicts often have traffic jams as well.

 

O2 drops should be made more common and spawns and pathing addressed.

[dandin3]

agree!!!!!!

i love do solo surv. and exp t3 surv. i always lost cuz the LS .. sometimes i can still can kill enemy in one shot...

 

 survive 2.0 my dream *.*

[sry my english]

[fatpig84]

Or just use the old survival maps.

They are defense maps. The LS aren't far away and enemy spawn in HUGE waves.

 

The best survival is always the Corpus in door defense like Xini and the like.

[Balduron04]

100% chance of a 1% life support capsule from every enemy. This will fix a lot of problems with life support not dropping enough and remove survival missions from nekros or bust lists. When the enemies scale up enough to be hard to kill, that's when you know you gotta get out of town. Players can get however far they like!

 

I also like the Lotus only drops, but she needs to drop enough that you can actually survive on just her gifts. This is an excellent idea for when Trinity can no longer perma-invulnerability the entire squad.

 

I just think it needs to change, especially ODS. They never drop anything.

[-XeqtR]

If you take out the difficulty of the O2 it just becomes a defense without a cryopod. It promotes people to spam abilities to win, possibly to the point of exploiting certain mechanics in the game. If survival didn't rely on tracking down O2 and defense didn't have a cryopod, it would just be a mindless killing game that takes no other skill consideration. Those other objectives need to be in so a group can't just find a way to hide and aoe to victory forever. As survival is now, you can already survive forever against the enemies (if you're good enough), the only reason you lose is because of the Oxygen or Crypod. It needs to be difficult; otherwise the lack of challenge would lead to a flood of people winning purely by who can stay in the mission the longest and have no sense of accomplishment (also sounds pretty boring).

[ReiganCross]

If you take out the difficulty of the O2 it just becomes a defense without a cryopod. It promotes people to spam abilities to win, possibly to the point of exploiting certain mechanics in the game. If survival didn't rely on tracking down O2 and defense didn't have a cryopod, it would just be a mindless killing game that takes no other skill consideration. Those other objectives need to be in so a group can't just find a way to hide and aoe to victory forever. As survival is now, you can already survive forever against the enemies (if you're good enough), the only reason you lose is because of the Oxygen or Crypod. It needs to be difficult; otherwise the lack of challenge would lead to a flood of people winning purely by who can stay in the mission the longest and have no sense of accomplishment (also sounds pretty boring).

 

That is EXACTLY what we were asking for! When Survival came around we were just wishing that we didn't had to defend that goddamn Cryopod lazy bastard! It was a time where Defense was the best mission to farm but the Cryopod just made everything much, much more unnecessarily frustrating, and when we asked for Survival we just wanted Defense WITHOUT this blight that is the Cryopod. And now you're here telling me it's a BAD thing to want to have loads of fun while not being held back by some goddamn Cryo? Yeah, no, i just want a mission where i kill as much stuff as i can before they have such a thick skin that not even internet trolls could get trough it, possibly as every enemy corpse piles up in a big pile of dead baddies while i'm shooting really big guns down like that old Duke Nukem 3D cover!

 

Oxygen and Cryopod does not add difficulty, it just frustrates the hell out of people and is honestly not fun at all to run. If only the Defense Target could be fun to defend, like possibly have us slowly reinforce the defense target with placed defenses between waves (like defensive walls and automatic turets) so we end up with a really badass fortress of awesome! Or Oxygen being the only defense against some kind of deadly neurotoxin that could create some ever diminishing safe zones that you have to desperately increasing as we toss our enemies into the deadly areas! Right now the Oxygen is a damn obnoxious bar that we have to babysit while the defense target is an ever so vulnerable and extremely exposed bullseye...

[Marshall]

Nowadays, if I fail survival missions, it's because I ran out of oxygen, not because the enemy was overwhelming me

 

Oh jez, story of my life xD Well, seriously - drop rates for oxygen tanks are just too low!

[Zkorp]

It seem to be worst since last patches... We ran some survival : no mobs spawn (one by one or very little packs) = no oxy, we wait 'till 12/18 %, no new LS we had to get out... This with (or without) a Nekro. No mobs no loots... There's one like this where we had to get out after 7 minutes. We used to stay at least 25 minutes in every survival.

does someone had seen the same problem recently ? (or are we really f'up with RNG spawns ?)

[-XeqtR]

That is EXACTLY what we were asking for! When Survival came around we were just wishing that we didn't had to defend that goddamn Cryopod lazy bastard! It was a time where Defense was the best mission to farm but the Cryopod just made everything much, much more unnecessarily frustrating, and when we asked for Survival we just wanted Defense WITHOUT this blight that is the Cryopod. And now you're here telling me it's a BAD thing to want to have loads of fun while not being held back by some goddamn Cryo? Yeah, no, i just want a mission where i kill as much stuff as i can before they have such a thick skin that not even internet trolls could get trough it, possibly as every enemy corpse piles up in a big pile of dead baddies while i'm shooting really big guns down like that old Duke Nukem 3D cover!

 

Oxygen and Cryopod does not add difficulty, it just frustrates the hell out of people and is honestly not fun at all to run. If only the Defense Target could be fun to defend, like possibly have us slowly reinforce the defense target with placed defenses between waves (like defensive walls and automatic turets) so we end up with a really badass fortress of awesome! Or Oxygen being the only defense against some kind of deadly neurotoxin that could create some ever diminishing safe zones that you have to desperately increasing as we toss our enemies into the deadly areas! Right now the Oxygen is a damn obnoxious bar that we have to babysit while the defense target is an ever so vulnerable and extremely exposed bullseye...

That would be all fine and dandy if it was implemented in a different game. As warframe is now, you don't run into "too thick of skin". You can either control the enemies forever or live forever. Even if somehow they took out all scaling abilities and made enemies hard to kill, all you need is time to kill them (meaning shooting more bullets = more time). How can you find fun in something not challenging? Losing a game makes you want to push harder to not lose. The system you suggest is unable to be lost in for smart/good players.

I'm also confused about everyone's problems with life support. I have yet to see this oxygen issue and I have been doing casual survival games a lot recently. I'll agree without a nekros it might be a bit difficult and that's definitely something that needs looked at.. but if you have a nekros you should be able to go forever. If you can't, it's because you're not killing fast enough.

[Liminal]

I'm also confused about everyone's problems with life support. I have yet to see this oxygen issue and I have been doing casual survival games a lot recently. I'll agree without a nekros it might be a bit difficult and that's definitely something that needs looked at.. but if you have a nekros you should be able to go forever. If you can't, it's because you're not killing fast enough.

The fact that you are not running into that problem doesn't mean the rest of us aren't. I've gone from 85% air to 44% yesterday without a single drop (no more than 4 or 5 enemies in a whole minute). And it's not a rare ocurrence.

 

EDIT: corrected. Enemies did spawn.

Edited May 12, 2014 by The_Doc

[Seanjuju]

Just throwing this out there. How about enemy units...attack?

 

DE?

[ReiganCross]

That would be all fine and dandy if it was implemented in a different game. As warframe is now, you don't run into "too thick of skin". You can either control the enemies forever or live forever. Even if somehow they took out all scaling abilities and made enemies hard to kill, all you need is time to kill them (meaning shooting more bullets = more time). How can you find fun in something not challenging? Losing a game makes you want to push harder to not lose. The system you suggest is unable to be lost in for smart/good players.

I'm also confused about everyone's problems with life support. I have yet to see this oxygen issue and I have been doing casual survival games a lot recently. I'll agree without a nekros it might be a bit difficult and that's definitely something that needs looked at.. but if you have a nekros you should be able to go forever. If you can't, it's because you're not killing fast enough.

 

Oh, eventually the numbers in armor and health will be so astronomically high that you'll run out of Energy and Bullets and expendable gear to bring down a single enemy down. And which point it would, in fact, become all so boring as every enemy can be lifted and none of the 1hit kills could feasibly happen to you, especially with such an easy revive system. BUT i'll argue that i'm still going to have loads and loads of fun while i'm mowing down stuff, and it would be incredibly liberating not to be held down by an obnoxious oxygen bar or an attention-seeking bullseye!

 

As for the survival thing, it's just a matter of feelings. I don't feel like i'm surviving, i feel like i'm on a seek and destroy mission to desperately look for oxygen, which has a completely different feeling to being completely surrounded by death and destruction and surviving it. I will admit though, it is not a bad game mode, i still play it a lot and find it awesome when you go in alone with any frame and can get kills by just throwing a stone in any direction, but that is not the "Survival" i'm looking for. Come to think of it, a single defense point is also not the "Defense" i'm looking for either... Maybe we should also think about some sort of Defense 2.0, after all when they put the "2.0" effort on Rescue, it became kind of good if you ask me. (Also, i'm trying to not say "2.0" all that much because lately it's becoming this term that wants to be on anything. Like "Infested noises 2.0" or "Music 2.0". C'mon, think of something else. Like saying "Around the Corner" instead of saying "Soon".)

[-XeqtR]

The fact that you are not running into that problem doesn't mean the rest of us aren't. I've gone from 85% air to 44% yesterday without a single drop (no more than 4 or 5 enemies in a whole minute). And it's not a rare ocurrence.

 

EDIT: corrected. Enemies did spawn.

I'm not claiming that everyone who says it is lying. I'm making the point that if you're running into o2 problems, you're playing incorrectly. The odds that I have never had a problem with it when so many do is very small. So what that means is that the way I'm playing it is making it different.

[Liminal]

I'm not claiming that everyone who says it is lying. I'm making the point that if you're running into o2 problems, you're playing incorrectly. The odds that I have never had a problem with it when so many do is very small. So what that means is that the way I'm playing it is making it different.

Considering I used to get to 50' in Ceres by myself a few patches back means something was changed in the game. It's on their end, not on ours.

If I had to guess I'd say you are just being lucky.

[-XeqtR]

Oh, eventually the numbers in armor and health will be so astronomically high that you'll run out of Energy and Bullets and expendable gear to bring down a single enemy down. And which point it would, in fact, become all so boring as every enemy can be lifted and none of the 1hit kills could feasibly happen to you, especially with such an easy revive system. BUT i'll argue that i'm still going to have loads and loads of fun while i'm mowing down stuff, and it would be incredibly liberating not to be held down by an obnoxious oxygen bar or an attention-seeking bullseye!

Like I said, this would need to be in a different game than Warframe or there would need to be lots of changes to scaling abilities. For example, this idea on corpus would be as simple as spamming shield polarize on mag. If you don't know, with how the game is currently made up of shields higher than hp, shield polarize is a percent damage, therefore scales with enemies shields getting higher. It doesn't stop killing ever, because of the very fact of enemies getting harder to kill (more shields). Armor is easily removed by stacking corrosive projection mods so then you have just hp scaling which with a number of things can be taken out regardless of how high.

Killing in this game is the easiest part. There needs to be other objectives, otherwise its just a generic hack and slash with no point. I'm open to something other than oxygen or a cryo, but not neither one and nothing else. I don't want to go in reverse.

If you have a hard time killing and picking up oxygen off the guys you kill (or looking on your map for blues), I would say that's a challenge by definition. Complaining about something being hard is the reason people enjoy it, it's challenging. Two things at once, keep oxygen up and kill to survive. If anything I wish they would add a third thing to that. Survive, oxygen, and defend a cryo. All endless missions in one. That sounds intense and fun.

[-XeqtR]

Considering I used to get to 50' in Ceres by myself a few patches back means something was changed in the game. It's on their end, not on ours.

If I had to guess I'd say you are just being lucky.

All that means is that they made the mission harder so you can't play like you do. Like I said, incorrectly. It's actually the opposite. Either you're somehow unlucky, or you don't know how to play survival to get the maximum oxygen. I'm not trying to insult you, just merely trying to explain to you the problem. There are many that have the same issue.

Also, how is solo a scale for anything in a team game? If anything, solo makes oxygen easier (if you understand how spawning works in the game). The only problem is actually surviving long in solo (which is why a team is better - for living at least).