Changing The Survival Mission Rules?

[Tar_Spit_Fire]

How about changing survival rules to: 

1) Remove all the life support system requirement and enemy level increasing*of course the enemy starting level will be damn high for example: T4 survival enemy starting level is level 50*
2) Survive 20 minute and the reward system stays the same.. *that means there will be a guaranteed prime parts or forma on 20 min end
3) After surviving 20min players gets to choose to extract with all the rewards that they get in that 20 minute or stay and re-roll all the rewards they gotten for another 25 minute*5 minute increases per stay* until they got the reward they are satisfied

okay guys i bet i will get a lot of flames for this but the reason im suggesting these is because the current survival rules is somewhat inconsistent... the life support capsules sometimes spawns too slow for you to survive further and the enemy level increasing as time passes is making the high level mission like T4 survival almost impossible to continue further than 50 minutes*unless you have a very skilled and op team* and the reward system sometimes will make you feel like all your time and effort spent for surviving this long gone to waste.. 

So guys what do you all think about this?*please be gentle..*

Edited June 25, 2014 by Tar_Spit_Fire

[chaotea]

How about changing survival rules to: 

1) Remove all the life support system requirement and enemy level increasing

2) Survive 20 minute and the reward system stays the same.. *that means there will be a guaranteed prime parts or forma on 20 min end

3) After surviving 20min players gets to choose to extract with all the rewards that they get in that 20 minute or stay and re-roll all the rewards they gotten for another 25 minute*5 minute increases per stay* until they got the reward they are satisfied

okay guys i bet i will get a lot of flames for this but the reason im suggesting these is because the current survival rules is somewhat inconsistent... the life support capsules sometimes spawns too slow for you to survive further and the enemy level increasing as time passes is making the high level mission like T4 survival almost impossible to continue further than 50 minutes*unless you have a very skilled and op team* and the reward system sometimes will make you feel like all your time and effort spent for surviving this long gone to waste.. 

So guys what do you all think about this?*please be gentle..*

 

1) Removing the LS capsules would be bad, if only because they stop people getting into areas where they cant be touched and afk'ing for 20 min. Making it more reliable when LS would drop might be better.

 

2) The loss of RNG isnt a good idea. Plus, 20 min is to soon, as most survivals only get hard at 25, and some of the most fun is found at holding out at 30+. (credit cashes are fairly pointless though, so maybe removal of this or increased reward would be better, but DA is constantly experimenting with this.)

 

3) I think just staying for more reward is better. What i'd like to see is after the 5min timer, you dont have to extract to win, only for extraction reward (xp and mission credits). Also, change that when a player goes to the extraction, they get a 10 sec timer and then complete the mission and are disconnected for themselves only (remaining grouped with anyone in the extraction at the time). This way those doing a 5min credit run wont pull those going for a 20+.

[ZeGreymane]

 the life support capsules sometimes spawns too slow for you to survive further and

 

the enemy level increasing as time passes is making the high level mission like T4 survival almost impossible to continue further than 50 minutes*unless you have a very skilled and op team*

 

and the reward system sometimes will make you feel like all your time and effort spent for surviving this long gone to waste.. 

 

 

The life support capsule spawn time is fixed, the lake of oxygen come from a lake of oxygen loot.

This is for me the only thing who got to be review in survival mod (imho).

 

The second sentence of my quote disturbe me, a lot of players want and ask for end game mission...

T4 survival start to be really interesting, the fact that the mission become "impossible" after 50 min seems to be an good thing for the game (don't need all mission on easy mod during 5h...)

 

When I read  "impossible to continue  [...] unless you have a op very skilled and op team*"

I just rofl thinkink of all topic calling for a nerf of a weapon/warframe cause this is OP nerf it!!!

And now, we call for a mission difficulty nerf???

 

plz.... Stop nerf my warframe to the ground...

 

 

Afterwards, rewards.... RNG is evil... Life isn't fair that all!

For me an hard to acquire reward is just more rewarding when you finally get it (still imho).

 

So, difficulty after 50 min isn't a problem for me, it's something how start to be nice for the futur of this game.

But the lake of oxygen cause ennemeis start to be hard to kill or don't drop a lot of oxygen pack shouldn't be a part of this difficulty.

 

Perhaps add a mecanism how spawn more resupply after 30-45 min, depending of the average oxygen stock.

This could put another (more accessible) way to try to survive, try to open resupply without dying.

 

Another way could be to increase the amouth of oxygen we got on ressuply/loot when the time of survival increase.

 

PS: Sorry for my poor english skill and if a ton could look aggressive, I'm definitievly not aggressive in all I said.

[Marthrym]

I never really understood the survival in Warframe. Super space ninjas with uber advanced biosuits. That don't produce or recycle their own oxygen. Considering we already have that IRL, how can they not?^^'

Do they even need oxygen? Especially when you see enemies walk around without anything to allow them to breathe when oxygen runs out... Are they all suicidal? I mean yeah I know they kinda are since they go up against Tenno but still...

Oh and why on Earth would we need life support... on EARTH? The vegetation itself is proof enough that we don't need life support down there.^^'

DE should find something other than "life support". Anything would make more sense I think.^^

[ZeGreymane]

Yep a bit strange but oxygen is just a mecanism to avoid survival to be just an infinite turtle def at exit, waiting invisible that the clock turn.

 

But when we reach a decent time in t4 survival, the difficulty due to ennemeis level start to be interesting.

Oxygen still got to be needed to avoid an invisible waiting and put some objectives to reach.

 

But I think that at low level, oxygen could be an big part of the difficulty, in t4 survival, this objectives should fade to let the fight be the main purpose of the difficulty.

[Tsukinoki]

@OP
They *cant* remove the oxygen.
It's what prevents people from finding a hidden area where enemies cant spawn and AFKing in there for 1 to 4 hours and getting all of the rewards for doing nothing other than sitting there and then running to extraction while invisible/invincible and not having killed a single enemy in the game.
That would make survival a very pointless game mode to have and it would be an AFKers dream come true.

@Marthrym
For the planets there is an easy solution for why we need life support:
If you've noticed all of the planet based missions take place in depressions and hollows, all low ground.  There are plenty of unbreathable gasses that are much heavier than air.  They are probably flooding the area with those gasses in order to choke us out and kill us due to lack of oxygen.
So it does make sense why we would need to pick up life support capsules and things on the planets.

Edited June 25, 2014 by Tsukinoki

[Viverim]

.

@Marthrym

For the planets there is an easy solution for why we need life support:

If you've noticed all of the planet based missions take place in depressions and hollows, all low ground.  There are plenty of unbreathable gasses that are much heavier than air.  They are probably flooding the area with those gasses in order to choke us out and kill us due to lack of oxygen.

So it does make sense why we would need to pick up life support capsules and things on the planets.

I'm sorry, what?  Unbreathable gases on Earth???  Where do you live that you have valleys full of gasses that are lethal?

Sorry, but that makes no logical sense at all.

 

and if the gasses are lethal, why do the Greneer not get affected by it as well?  I mean, several of them don't have helmets, so they are obviously not wearing environment gear.  At least Corpus have helmets on... until you shoot them off.

 

I agree that the oxygen mechanic makes the player move rather than forting up and AFKing, but your explanation makes little sense.

 

 

My own thought would be simply that each 5 minute mark requires you to hit one of the in-game consoles and do a hack to unlock the reward.  At 5 minutes, the first console becomes active.  At 10, the second.  The timer only starts, however, after the previous console has been hacked.  This forces people to move around, and if you went AFK, you still only get 5 minutes worth of reward no matter how long you have been in the game.  As consoles are everywhere, they could code the console activation to be a certain number of tilesets away, thus forcing you to move around quite a bit during the game.  In game explanation is that the other tenno operative (remember, you're supposed to be helping another tenno) is setting up resources to be extracted, and by activating the various consoles you are helping to disable security systems that allow them to continue while drawing the enemy away.

 

And no, I don't expect this to be implemented.  It would require too much of a rework to do (although I imagine some code could be used from the Spy mission types, I doubt it would be a quick or easy thing to accomplish)

[Tsukinoki]

@Viverim
IF you had actually *read* what I posted I said that the Grineer/Corpus were *flooding* the low areas that the missions take place in with unbreathable gasses, as in pumping the unbreathable heavier than air gasses into the valleys in order to displace the oxygen so we cant breath.

And there are inert gasses that aren't harmful by themselves, only harmful in that they displace oxygen so you cant breath.  But the gasses themselves do little damage until you'r out of oxygen and suffocate.  So it does not have to be poisonous at all.  Such as try breathing in 100% argon.  It'll displace the air as its 38% denser.  Its completely non-toxic.  But if the air around you was replaced you would suffocate.

And for the helmet-less Grineer its the same reason we dont instantly suffocate and die.  There is still oxygen to breath until the meter hits 0 and there's no more oxygen left.  At that point we lose health but the grineer/corpus dont because of game mechancis.
Logic cant be completely applied to games, but the idea of flooding the vallies/low areas where the planet missions take part in makes a lot of sense if you actually think about it.

Oh and as for your suggestion:
It wouldn't work.
The reason is that there is a maximum spawn limit on enemies.
So say under your system I do a corpus survival mission.
I *only* kill non shield osprey enemies.
Eventually the spawn cap would be reached by pure shield ospreys.
Then I could run around and activate the terminals without having anything that could possibly hurt me.

In an infested mission I could do that with crawlers to much the same effect.

Grineer are the only faction you couldn't cheese the spawns that way, unless you are on Earth or Phobos with the regulators.

Edited June 25, 2014 by Tsukinoki

[Viverim]

Oh and as for your suggestion:

It wouldn't work.

The reason is that there is a maximum spawn limit on enemies.

So say under your system I do a corpus survival mission.

I *only* kill non shield osprey enemies.

Eventually the spawn cap would be reached by pure shield ospreys.

Then I could run around and activate the terminals without having anything that could possibly hurt me.

In an infested mission I could do that with crawlers to much the same effect.

Grineer are the only faction you couldn't cheese the spawns that way, unless you are on Earth or Phobos with the regulators.

I have not observed a maximum spawn limit.  After all, I personally have had spy missions with 1200+ kills, and others have posted numbers even higher.  Further, as you would be changing the mechanic anyway, if such a mechanism were in place, you could always have the counter reset to 0 after each time you activate the console.  Wouldn't be that hard.  IF such limits do exist, your argument could be used for the current system as well.

[Tsukinoki]

@Viverim
I meant spawn limit as in the maximum number of living enemies that can be on the map at the same time.
As in the game engine can only support so many enemies before it just crashes and dumps you back to desktop.  This was *very* clearly observed when you used to be able to glitch the hacking on the moa pods and produce an infinite number of shockwave moas.

At a certain point the game would start spawning only 5 or 6 enemies in the defense mission at a time.
If you spawned enough moas the game wouldn't be able to spawn anything and you would sit there waiting forever for enemies to show up that never would.
If you spawned much more than that the game would just crash.

Normally this isn't seen as you generally are killing the enemies, but you can observe this if you do an interception mission and watch the enemy spawns.  If you dont kill the enemies eventually the spawns slow down and stop until you start killing the enemies, at which point more start spawning again.

So under your system I would just have to wait for the game to hit the maximum spawn cap at once with just harmless enemies and I wouldn't have a challenge in the mission.

Sure it would take a while to set up, but then again time in that mission wouldn't mean anything at all.

Edited June 25, 2014 by Tsukinoki

[Tulzscha]

Moved to the proper section.

[notionphil]

My own thought would be simply that each 5 minute mark requires you to hit one of the in-game consoles and do a hack to unlock the reward.  At 5 minutes, the first console becomes active.  At 10, the second.  The timer only starts, however, after the previous console has been hacked.  This forces people to move around, and if you went AFK, you still only get 5 minutes worth of reward no matter how long you have been in the game.  As consoles are everywhere, they could code the console activation to be a certain number of tilesets away, thus forcing you to move around quite a bit during the game.  In game explanation is that the other tenno operative (remember, you're supposed to be helping another tenno) is setting up resources to be extracted, and by activating the various consoles you are helping to disable security systems that allow them to continue while drawing the enemy away.

 

This is a clever re-imagining of the mode, but it misses two key elements;

 

1) In current survival, killing enemies quickly is an essential part of surviving, as that's what drops the needed O2. Your suggestion would equally reward hiding or infinite absorbing.

 

2) Also, players have to balance seperation from their team, who may be in a good spawn room, to go activate a far off canister, or pick up drops left on the ground.

 

The pressures and group dynamics of current survival aren't perfect, but they are more complex than they appear at casual glance. The reason why DE doesn't have an endless mode that consists solely of killing enemies is bc they know our powers are far too exploitable, and we can kill enemies forever. Thats why there is always an external objective like an o2 tank or a cryopod.

[Viverim]

This is a clever re-imagining of the mode, but it misses two key elements;

 

1) In current survival, killing enemies quickly is an essential part of surviving, as that's what drops the needed O2. Your suggestion would equally reward hiding or infinite absorbing.

 

2) Also, players have to balance seperation from their team, who may be in a good spawn room, to go activate a far off canister, or pick up drops left on the ground.

 

The pressures and group dynamics of current survival aren't perfect, but they are more complex than they appear at casual glance. The reason why DE doesn't have an endless mode that consists solely of killing enemies is bc they know our powers are far too exploitable, and we can kill enemies forever. Thats why there is always an external objective like an o2 tank or a cryopod.

1) except that, in my own personal experience, they don't drop O2 canisters with any regularity.  I would play survival more if they did.  From my perspective, survival isn't about surviving, it's about getting random loot drops needed to increase the timer.  Infinite Absorbing, I assume with someone like Nyx, already has a limit, as you will burn through her energy at some point, still leaving you with the requirement of activating the next console and dealing with the enemies along the way.  Hiding... well, you still need to go to the next console.  If you make the console far enough away (which was my point), then it takes time to reach it, meaning no matter how long you hide, you aren't accomplishing anything once the current timer hits the 5 minute mark.  "I'm going to hide out for the next 5 minutes!"  Okay... but.. it will take you at least three minutes to run to the next console, and the timer won't continue until you do, sooooo... why are you hiding?

 

Edit: a possible tweak is to let the player know which console will be the next one that will be active, so that they keep moving towards the next one, similar to how the current system lets you know in advance where the next environmental device will drop.  That is one flaw in my above system I did not address properly, and I apologize for the oversight.

 

2) admittedly I am weak in the area of group responses, as I perform 90% of my play in a solo mode.  I'm not a fan of PuGs, specifically due to the rampant "Run-n-Gun, Spam #4" most people seem enamored of. Correct me if I am wrong, however, but isn't the point of being with a team, um, teamwork?  If you are off doing your own thing, you aren't actually performing teamwork, and while integrated tactics can be used for guild mission runs or operating with friends, I don't think it happens much in PuG situations (though I may be wrong). 

 

Anyway, I expected that my concept wouldn't be very popular, given the attitude/playstyle a majority of players seem to show, and it wasn't intended to be a "DE must replace Survival with THIS!" response.  I was simply giving an alternative to the current mission style that I would find more enjoyable.  Of course, for me I think "am I having fun/enjoying this mission" rather than "Oooo!  What Loot Am I Getting!!" when I play.  In it's current form, more than half of the mission modes I find difficult to actually enjoy.

Edited June 25, 2014 by Viverim

[Viverim]

@Viverim

I meant spawn limit as in the maximum number of living enemies that can be on the map at the same time.

As in the game engine can only support so many enemies before it just crashes and dumps you back to desktop.  This was *very* clearly observed when you used to be able to glitch the hacking on the moa pods and produce an infinite number of shockwave moas.

At a certain point the game would start spawning only 5 or 6 enemies in the defense mission at a time.

If you spawned enough moas the game wouldn't be able to spawn anything and you would sit there waiting forever for enemies to show up that never would.

If you spawned much more than that the game would just crash.

Normally this isn't seen as you generally are killing the enemies, but you can observe this if you do an interception mission and watch the enemy spawns.  If you dont kill the enemies eventually the spawns slow down and stop until you start killing the enemies, at which point more start spawning again.

So under your system I would just have to wait for the game to hit the maximum spawn cap at once with just harmless enemies and I wouldn't have a challenge in the mission.

Sure it would take a while to set up, but then again time in that mission wouldn't mean anything at all.

#1 - if an enemy is harmless, it has no place in the game.

#2 - if the game is able to spawn only support enemies and has not filter to determine population, then it was not properly thought out.

#3 - By having enemies too far distant from the player/players de-spawn, the population cap would not be a problem.

#4 - actually, time does mean something.  Console A activates at the 5 minute mark.  The timer freezes until you hack the console.  At that point, the timer continues.  At the 10 minute mark, Console B activates.  The timer again freezes until you hack the console.  Time is a factor.  If you want your rewards in a timely fashion then you need to keep moving.  Now, the problem I foresee is that rewards don't just keep rolling in.  You have to actively work for them by hacking consoles.  It wouldn't be "20 minutes = 4 rewards", because it would take time to reach the next console, and time to hack the next console.  I expect people would complain that they are no longer getting their mega-loot.

 

If you don't kill enemies in an interception mission, then unless you are running with a 4 man group, you lose.  If you are playing with a 4 man group, all areas are under contest, and you have a stalemate until you start killing (and I assume the enemies will continue to try and kill you).  Why would anyone do this?  It's pretty silly.

[Tsukinoki]

#1 - if an enemy is harmless, it has no place in the game.

#2 - if the game is able to spawn only support enemies and has not filter to determine population, then it was not properly thought out.

#3 - By having enemies too far distant from the player/players de-spawn, the population cap would not be a problem.

#4 - actually, time does mean something.  Console A activates at the 5 minute mark.  The timer freezes until you hack the console.  At that point, the timer continues.  At the 10 minute mark, Console B activates.  The timer again freezes until you hack the console.  Time is a factor.  If you want your rewards in a timely fashion then you need to keep moving.  Now, the problem I foresee is that rewards don't just keep rolling in.  You have to actively work for them by hacking consoles.  It wouldn't be "20 minutes = 4 rewards", because it would take time to reach the next console, and time to hack the next console.  I expect people would complain that they are no longer getting their mega-loot.

 

If you don't kill enemies in an interception mission, then unless you are running with a 4 man group, you lose.  If you are playing with a 4 man group, all areas are under contest, and you have a stalemate until you start killing (and I assume the enemies will continue to try and kill you).  Why would anyone do this?  It's pretty silly.

To answer your points:

1) Shield ospreys and most crawlers.  Especially the current incarnations of the toxic crawlers as they dont leave a cloud on death anymore.  There are also the Grineer Regulators that are harmless on their own and buff other grineer.

If you can manipulate the spawns by selectively killing long enough they become harmless, if annoying, that just sit there like balloons.

2) In most cases you dont have the time to manipulate the enemy population to that extent, and you are generally killing things so that there is almost always tons of open slots for enemies to spawn.  So consideration on populations percentages have never been needed or considered.

3) It is easy to keep the enemies spawned by kitiing them after you whever you happen to need them, or in the case of Ospreys, a radial disarm will make them hug your legs until you destroy them.  So again, nothing should get far enough away to despawn.  And in order to get the spawns back on track it would require massive amounts of enemies to despawn.

4) What I meant by "Time doesn't mean anything" is that I can take as long as I need to in order to manipulate the enemies that have spawned, and then worry about getting my rewards in a relaxing and stress-free environment as I run from console to console without having to worry about any enemies.

And finally:

There was a short bit that enemies who had been affected by Loki's RD werent able to hack the terminals in interception and were therefore unable to capture any points.  So it was possible to watch the spawning behavior and see when the game would simply stop spawning enemies until you killed a few.

And it is silly to do it in interception nodes and such in normal gameplay.  But when you are examining a system to see how it works, what the rough spawn percentages are on a node and so forth it can be useful.

[Viverim]

*shrug*

 

We could continue to argue, but that doesn't actually go along with the thread's theme.

How about this: you like the current system, I don't.

 

Fair enough?

[zoboso]

I'm sorry, what?  Unbreathable gases on Earth???  Where do you live that you have valleys full of gasses that are lethal?

Sorry, but that makes no logical sense at all.

 

and if the gasses are lethal, why do the Greneer not get affected by it as well?  I mean, several of them don't have helmets, so they are obviously not wearing environment gear.  At least Corpus have helmets on... until you shoot them off.

 

I agree that the oxygen mechanic makes the player move rather than forting up and AFKing, but your explanation makes little sense.

 

 

My own thought would be simply that each 5 minute mark requires you to hit one of the in-game consoles and do a hack to unlock the reward.  At 5 minutes, the first console becomes active.  At 10, the second.  The timer only starts, however, after the previous console has been hacked.  This forces people to move around, and if you went AFK, you still only get 5 minutes worth of reward no matter how long you have been in the game.  As consoles are everywhere, they could code the console activation to be a certain number of tilesets away, thus forcing you to move around quite a bit during the game.  In game explanation is that the other tenno operative (remember, you're supposed to be helping another tenno) is setting up resources to be extracted, and by activating the various consoles you are helping to disable security systems that allow them to continue while drawing the enemy away.

 

And no, I don't expect this to be implemented.  It would require too much of a rework to do (although I imagine some code could be used from the Spy mission types, I doubt it would be a quick or easy thing to accomplish)

I think you idea would be better as a endless spy mission where life support is not the objective getting to the access panels are (like spy). 5 panels for minimum, additional five panels for additional rewards. Each time you are detected or lock-down occurs, the enemy spawn level should permanently increase one unit and twice that if the enemy spawns while the alarms are on. furthermore enemies will continue increasing the alarm level until it reaches "endgame" levels of enemy difficulty.

[OrphanMaker]

I think if go +60 mins you get a blue . I think that would be a worthy reward. Or maybe something more extreme like 1 hour 30 mins you get gold potato.