Dark Sector Conflict Feedback

[Balduron04]

There are a plethora of complaints after having tried it a few times. I'm gonna make a short list before I go into details and suggestions.

 

1 - It gets unbalanced

2 - you can't quit

3 - It often starts unbalanced

4 - attackers can't recover from unbalanced starts

5 - if you don't win, you don't get paid

6 - certain powers are unfair

7 - Not all the bugs are dead

8 - even if you're winning, the game doesn't advance

 

1 - It gets unbalanced

 

The team with the stronger specters and the higher amount of players will get more kills, get more experience, be able to kill easier, kill faster, and so on. This is called snowballing by a lot of moba players. I've been in several games where 4 enemy tenno with the help of specters snowball so hard that I'm only alive for 3 seconds at a time (until the invulnerability runs out) and then I get oneshot. Its like a lvl 2 frame fighting a lvl 30 fully modded frame.

 

How to fix - Have a minimum limit on the enemy's power. If team A is at lvl 30, and team B can't get kills, team B should be at least at lvl 15 to be able to have the possibility to fight back. If every attacker's kill gives his team 100% exp and the enemy team 50% exp, then they shouldn't have more than a 15 level gap.

 

Currently, the enemies start at 10 in the first stage, 20 in the second stage, and 30 in the third stage. I can agree with this as to prevent the matches from being too short. I see no problems with this as the attackers can wait to level up before tackling the harder areas.

 

2 - As an attacker in an unfair situation, you have 2 options. Die 20 times to loose, or quit. Except the only quit option you have is alt+f4 if you're on windows. You can't press escape to bring up a menu to invite friends, leave the game, or check who's on the enemy team (this checking should be a feature!)

 

How to Fix: Surrender options are available in most moba games, but they aren't available immediately, and they aren't exploitable. I would suggest both a time limiter so you can't surrender before 10 minutes into the game. After that time limit, if you're at 10 respawns or less, the attackers can surrender. The defenders shouldn't be able to surrender, but if the attackers are just trolling them by killing everything and not advancing...

 

3- It often starts unbalanced

 

Matchmaking is bonkers. One attacker fighting against battlepay will fight 4 defenders. One attacker fighting with battlepay will fight WITH 3 attackers against 2 or fewer defenders. It's only when both sides have battle pay that you have a CHANCE to fight on even grounds. I've been fighting for pay as an attacker and fought against 4 defenders before.

 

Additionally, the clans have the options to deploy specters, which are much stronger than the players at the start. Specters alone can halt an advance, and while there are specters out, there doesn't seem to be ANY non-specter enemies. 8 specters will camp at terminal A, and there will be perhaps 2 corpus guys to kill for exp and you are lucky to solo an enemy specter.

 

How to fix - Limit number of defenders to number of attackers. If there are only 2 attackers, have only 2 defender slots to the game. Keep the attackers from being overwhelmed. Conversely, if there are 4 attackers and 0 or 1 defenders, add specters to the defending side equal to the difference. If these specters level up with the defenders, aid other specters, and can turn off consoles, then the attackers are still getting their challenge while the defender isn't being overwhelmed.

 

4- Players can't recover from grossly unbalanced starts

 

Once the defenders are sufficiently ahead, there's not much the attackers can do against their superior damage and ultimates. This culminates in pushing the attackers back and ultimately, spawn-camping. The attackers get 3 seconds to do damage and gain exp to hopefully kill or push the defenders back, but I have never seen this happen. Most anyone who joins the attacker side leaves immediately. This is 2 issues in one: one team is too far ahead, and spawn-camping. The one team too far ahead was talked about in point 1, but here's my opinion on spawn camping.

 

How to fix- There's a couple of ways I have to solve this problem, but they all involve a protected spawn. The first is to have a designated drop zone for ships. With ships flying over a certain part of the map, any ship-guns would kill enemies that approach too close to the drop-zone. This keeps defenders from spawn camping the attackers, allowing them at least some cover. They will still get sniped and kept from rushing forwards, but at least nobody will be using ultimates next to where I spawn in at.

 

5 - if you don't win, you don't get paid

 

(edit) I've been informed that if you loose the mission, you get half the battle pay. Thanks to my clan, especially silkysilkyfatboy

 

I have never gotten paid for a mission I've lost. Unfortunately by the time I loose a match, there isn't any battle pay left for the missions I started that had battle pay there. Not sure if i'm suffering from pay-bait syndrome, or if you don't get paid for loosing, but the THOUGHT of spending all that time trying to get a promised reward that disappears before you can get there SUCKS. This is the same problem we had before the conflict change where people will jump into a mission without confirming their reward beforehand, and there's no way to do it where it remains fair. Not even sure if this is a problem, but I need help figuring out if this is true.

 

6 - certain powers are unfair

 

I know some powers are stronger than others at the very beginning. I'm ok, and I have faith that the developers will look at and balance frames from start to end for pvp.... eventually.

 

I know that you gave attackers a 3 second invulnerability at the spawn so they could retaliate for a moment before they die.

 

Frost's Avalanche freezes people in place. They cannot move. It ignores the invulnerability, holds them for the full 3 seconds, and then kills them while they are still unable to move.

 

I seriously hope this is not working as intended. There are probably more that are complained about, but this is the one that's getting around the current anti-griefing measures.

 

How to fix - don't let one team get so far ahead that the other team cannot fight back. Powers are balanced by the ability to retaliate or to avoid the utility effects. If we don't have a way to play against these strong effects, the first team that has them and starts spawn camping will win.

 

7 - Not all the bugs are dead

 

This week, I've died but not died in 3 out of 10 missions. I've been dropped, on the floor, but not bleeding out. I can't shoot, move, or die. Enemy AI ignores me, but I am noticed by players. In 2 missions, my entire squad of attackers are dropped in this manner, leaving us unable to complete the mission in any manner.

 

How to fix -  Let the defenders re-enable objectives behind the current lines of fighting. When an objective (like shield generators) are restored, attackers have to move back and disable them to keep going with their current objective. Its more like a take and hold victory than a fire and forget victory. This lets the line of battle move back and forth across the battlefield. This would also let the defenders push the attackers back and off the rail, meaning defender victory. Giving the defenders an alternate way to win would result in shorter games, where overwhelming defenders don't have to kill a lone attacker 20 times, they can hack the console to stop the incoming ships from dropping more reinforcements.

 

here's an example:

 

A - B - C - D - E

A - Attacker drop zone (Anti-Liset gun controls: Disabled at the outset of the assault. Defense can enable these to claim victory and drop attacker reinforcements to 0)

B - starting attacker barricade (Forcefield Control Ridge: Controls the forcefield that keeps defenders from accessing the Gun controls. The force-field can be on or off.)

C - starting defender barricade and 1st attacker objective (Hangar Entrance - Barricade in front of massive doors that keep tenno fron entering the rail. Doors can be opened and closed by opposing sides)

D - 2nd attacker objective (Turret Control / Shield Generators: Located at the back of the hanger. Their physical destruction disables the turrets or force fields that keep tenno from reaching the power core. If repaired, the turrets re-activate, and the shield on the core goes up )

E - third attacker objective (Local Power Core: Destroy to claim victory for Attacking Side)

 

Attackers spawn at the barricade at A, and have to defend B while trying to take C. Defenders spawn at E, and have to defend C, while trying to take B. Defenders can't access A until B is taken over. Attackers can't access D until C is taken over. If there's 10 npc's for each zone that you control and 10 to assault across the conflict zone, then its the Tenno and Specters that make the difference in advancing. Having waves of 4 specters spawn from each side would give the players something to push forwards with. Claiming an enemy area disables all barriers that prevent you from pushing forwards, and those barriers never come back up. If attackers have reached area D and secured it, defenders could reclaim C by killing all the attacker npc's and repairing the disabled system of C. Reinforcements to D would stop because the npc's have to reclaim C first before moving on, allowing the defenders some time to kill the guys at D and E and push the attackers back.

 

Potential problem - limited tenno reinforcements should be on both sides for this kind of thing, or for neither side. Giving one side the advantage of unlimted respawns allows for things like suicide runs past a barricade to help your side push.

 

8 - even if you're winning, the game doesn't advance

 

Npc's need to be able to revive Tenno and hack consoles. If I've eliminated all enemy reinforcements and enemy tenno around a console, and I have 10 npc's there, but I go down from a bleed proc before I can finish with the console... Nothing happens. All the enemies respawn and re-engage my forces before I can get back there to deal with it. If one of my specters could have hacked that panel or revived me, the objective would have been taken.

 

If I'm the only one in the game, I have to do everything. Until I hit that objective, even if I'm oneshotting all the enemies, they never get harder, and I never get closer to winning. I think it shouldn't be this way, and having Specters able to access nearby objectives would make things more interesting. I THINK I've seen them turn off active panels before, but I can't be sure it wasn't a player.

 

9 - Attackers can't defend, defenders can't Attack.

 

If you're a defending rail, you can't hurt the enemy rail unless you wait for someone to attack your rail and throw 4 people at it. This is WORSE than the previous system.

 

If I want to support the rail that is occupying and destroy the rail that is intruding, shouldn't I be able to attack the Intruding rail when there are no people wanting to attack the rail I am on?

 

Please add the option to assault both rails AND the option to defend both rails. Battle pay for defending and attacking could be separated, or the match-making could see that 500 people want to support the intruders and 1000 people want to support the original occupants and send 500 "defenders" to assault the enemy solar rail to reduce the enemy rail's HP, or reduce the siege time the enemy rail has. This makes more sense, lets us support the guys who have the battle pay, and helps with the issue of "cannot make session" that we currently have. Letting both sides sabotage and defend both rails makes more sense to me. If attackers only attack when there's no defenders online, the attackers will win without a contest, and the defenders, even if they have double the numbers of the attackers, can't do anything to retaliate. This is not what the conflicts in their current incarnation are about, and if I could attack the invaders, I wouldn't have any complaint about the unfairness of the current situation.

 

It took me about 3 arns to finish this post complete with suggestions. I had a 1 hour break in the middle to watch Farscape. If you need further elucidation about the contents herein, a PM or post is appreciated.

 

Disclaimer: As always, these are my opinions, views, and suggestions. If they are the copy of someone else, Please support the both of us. If you have constructive feedback, feel free to post it in the thread. If you like all of the ideas in a post, please upvote the post they are in. If you like part of the ideas, comment with a post about which ones you appreciate.

Edited July 27, 2014 by Balduron04

[PeanutMonster]

9. it's much more boring than the previous conflicts

[Whytee]

1 - It gets unbalanced

 

The team with the stronger specters and the higher amount of players will get more kills, get more experience, be able to kill easier, kill faster, and so on. This is called snowballing by a lot of moba players.

 

The 'snowball' effect really is quite ridiculous, especially for defenders snowballing incredibly quickly incredibly easily. Not trying to Hijack the thread, but I made a suggestion here to use EXP over time, instead of EXP from kills, so that both teams progress at an equal and 'fair' rate.

 

 

2 - As an attacker in an unfair situation, you have 2 options. Die 20 times to loose, or quit. Except the only quit option you have is alt+f4 if you're on windows. You can't press escape to bring up a menu to invite friends, leave the game, or check who's on the enemy team (this checking should be a feature!)

 

How to Fix: Surrender options are available in most moba games, but they aren't available immediately, and they aren't exploitable. I would suggest both a time limiter so you can't surrender before 10 minutes into the game. After that time limit, if you're at 10 respawns or less, the attackers can surrender. The defenders shouldn't be able to surrender, but if the attackers are just trolling them by killing everything and not advancing...

 

I think the mission itself should be timed. The '20 lives' count is ridiculous, new players who don't stand a chance just get killed over and over, meaning you have to abandon taking objectives to babysit them, or lose because one player on your team died 20 times. It's a lose-lose situation.

 

I think the mission itself should be a 'timed' type mission, not an 'exterminate' type mission, much like the nightmare mode 'timed' missions, which grant you additional time per kill. this could work both ways, attackers gain time for kills, or lose time for deaths. Or, it could simply be a static timer (say 20 minutes) that when it expires, the mission is over.

 

I feel this would be MUCH more appropriate instead of this '20 lives limit' currently in place.

 

3- It often starts unbalanced

 

Matchmaking is bonkers. One attacker fighting against battlepay will fight 4 defenders. One attacker fighting with battlepay will fight WITH 3 attackers against 2 or fewer defenders. It's only when both sides have battle pay that you have a CHANCE to fight on even grounds. I've been fighting for pay as an attacker and fought against 4 defenders before.

 

Additionally, the clans have the options to deploy specters, which are much stronger than the players at the start. Specters alone can halt an advance, and while there are specters out, there doesn't seem to be ANY non-specter enemies. 8 specters will camp at terminal A, and there will be perhaps 2 corpus guys to kill for exp and you are lucky to solo an enemy specter.

 

How to fix - Limit number of defenders to number of attackers. If there are only 2 attackers, have only 2 defender slots to the game. Keep the attackers from being overwhelmed. Conversely, if there are 4 attackers and 0 or 1 defenders, add specters to the defending side equal to the difference. If these specters level up with the defenders, aid other specters, and can turn off consoles, then the attackers are still getting their challenge while the defender isn't being overwhelmed.

 

I think Specters are added by the Defending / Attacking clan themselves, no? I don't know for sure, but I seem to encounter much much tougher specters on occasion, which obliterate my team's specters (granting the opposing team tons of EXP).

 

I agree about limiting the amount of players equal on both teams, though. The 4vs1's are pretty dumb.

 

4- Players can't recover from grossly unbalanced starts

 

Once the defenders are sufficiently ahead, there's not much the attackers can do against their superior damage and ultimates. This culminates in pushing the attackers back and ultimately, spawn-camping. The attackers get 3 seconds to do damage and gain exp to hopefully kill or push the defenders back, but I have never seen this happen. Most anyone who joins the attacker side leaves immediately. This is 2 issues in one: one team is too far ahead, and spawn-camping. The one team too far ahead was talked about in point 1, but here's my opinion on spawn camping.

 

How to fix- There's a couple of ways I have to solve this problem, but they all involve a protected spawn. The first is to have a designated drop zone for ships. With ships flying over a certain part of the map, any ship-guns would kill enemies that approach too close to the drop-zone. This keeps defenders from spawn camping the attackers, allowing them at least some cover. They will still get sniped and kept from rushing forwards, but at least nobody will be using ultimates next to where I spawn in at.

 

 

This would be addressed if both teams progressed in EXP at an equal rate (see reply #1). If both teams have equal mod capacity, there is no reason that the 'spawn camped' team cannot fight back, since both should be at an equal footing.

 

I totally agree on protected spawns for both teams. Defenders get protected spawns - why don't attackers?

 

I also think the shields should have a one way fire system - allowing the newly spawned players to shoot out from their spawn point, while enemy players cannot shoot inside, allowing players inside the spawn to clear away 'camping' enemies before having to exit - meaning the best tactic for Defenders would be to actually DEFEND the objectives, rather than simply spawn camping until they win.

 

Of course this would mean that no objectives should be in sight of a shield (which would allow players to safely sit behind the shield attacking enemies trying to attack/defend an objective).

 

8 - even if you're winning, the game doesn't advance

 

Npc's need to be able to revive Tenno and hack consoles. 

 

Yes!

 

Totally agree. The amount of times I see my specters hanging around, just stood there looking at the beeping console which is about to lose them the game, is just silly.

 

9 - Attackers can't defend, defenders can't Attack.

 

If you're a defending rail, you can't hurt the enemy rail unless you wait for someone to attack your rail and throw 4 people at it. This is WORSE than the previous system.

 

If I want to support the rail that is occupying and destroy the rail that is intruding, shouldn't I be able to attack the Intruding rail when there are no people wanting to attack the rail I am on?

 

Please add the option to assault both rails AND the option to defend both rails. 

 

Agree.

Edited July 27, 2014 by Whytee

[Balduron04]

Thanks for the post!

 

I have some new thoughts after this feedback:

 

Unbalance is sometimes fun:

If both teams are on equal footing the entire time and there's nothing they can do, that's a hard game to win for either side. I'd prefer an experience system that works on both time AND kills. The players who are more skilled can earn an edge they can use to close out a game. I think this should be possible, I just don't think the definition of "edge" should be more than 2 or 3 levels. Eventually, they'd hit the max level and its all skill vs skill, just like it is in the beginning, and people will have different max-power levels as well. Balancing with all these factors is really hard, especially since a lot of the stuff you have to get as a rare-drop from pve.

 

Power Gaps from a 1 level difference can be huge:

One level can be the difference between a mod being online or offline. For mods like Hornet Strike and Barrel Diffusion, the amount of damage they can increase the gun is ginormous. Each mod that comes online at the early game roughly doubles the gun's previous damage, so being one mod ahead of the enemy means that you have double their damage for a while.

 

Math:

100 damage +90%(first mod) = 190 + 150%(second mod) = 475 *+90%(third mod) = 900

 

It only takes 3 mods to go from base damage of 100 to a whopping 900 damage, and about 50% of that can ignore shields, meaning your bullets are doing 450 health damage per hit after only 4 mods. Every frame without Vitality or Vigor after the 2nd mod is gonna die in one hit, and more is just overkill.

 

There are guns with more than 100 base damage in the game, even with the tenno vs tenno damage reductions.

 

Final note:

The one way fire screens have merit! Definite encouragement to not go too far and focus on the objectives in front of you! They would go a long way towards changing spawn-killing into camping if both sides had them, meaning we can still play our game and not feel so entirely overwhelmed that we can't do anything. We'd have to change it so defenders have a non-kill way to win, but I'm already in favor of that :D

[Whytee]

If both teams are on equal footing the entire time and there's nothing they can do, that's a hard game to win for either side.

 

I take the opposite view here. I feel if both teams have an equal footing on the game, then the only thing stopping them from winning is 'which team is higher skilled?'. 

 

Basically if everyone is on a level playing field it all boils down to skill, which is what players really want. Being snowballed against, even if only slightly, feels demoralizing and unfair.

[Balduron04]

I take the opposite view here. I feel if both teams have an equal footing on the game, then the only thing stopping them from winning is 'which team is higher skilled?'. 

 

Basically if everyone is on a level playing field it all boils down to skill, which is what players really want. Being snowballed against, even if only slightly, feels demoralizing and unfair.

 

I think there's 3 ways of looking at a game:

 

Completely fair fight - both teams are equal in all respects

Mostly fair fight - one team has an advantage, or an edge over the other

Slightly unfair fight - both teams have advantages and disadvantages, but one team gets more benefit

Unfair fight - one team is weaker.

Completely unfair fight - lvl 1 cloud vs lvl 99 sephiroth

 

All of these could be the result of the different game modes.

 

I am advocating for Mostly Fair Fights. Here is my reasoning.

If the game consists of making 100 decisions, and I make the first 50 correctly, at some point I should know that I'm making the right decisions. I should be rewarded by the game for making those correct choices. If my opponent does not make all 50 decisions correctly, then I should have an advantage, and be able to use it to make the rest of my decisions easier. I have earned an advantage from repeatedly being more skilled than my opponent. My opponent's skill should also give him rewards. But if we are close in skill, we should never be in a situation where even if I make multiple mistakes and he makes a correct decisions, I still win. I don't want to be in any fight that's Unfair or worse.

[Whytee]

I think there's 3 ways of looking at a game:

 

Completely fair fight - both teams are equal in all respects

Mostly fair fight - one team has an advantage, or an edge over the other

Slightly unfair fight - both teams have advantages and disadvantages, but one team gets more benefit

Unfair fight - one team is weaker.

Completely unfair fight - lvl 1 cloud vs lvl 99 sephiroth

 

All of these could be the result of the different game modes.

 

I am advocating for Mostly Fair Fights. Here is my reasoning.

If the game consists of making 100 decisions, and I make the first 50 correctly, at some point I should know that I'm making the right decisions. I should be rewarded by the game for making those correct choices. If my opponent does not make all 50 decisions correctly, then I should have an advantage, and be able to use it to make the rest of my decisions easier. I have earned an advantage from repeatedly being more skilled than my opponent. My opponent's skill should also give him rewards. But if we are close in skill, we should never be in a situation where even if I make multiple mistakes and he makes a correct decisions, I still win. I don't want to be in any fight that's Unfair or worse.

 

Well, in the case of Dark sector conflicts 'correct decisions' could be counted as taking/defending objectives. 'incorrect decisions' could be counted as going afk, fighting in the wrong area, running into a bunch of enemies with no energy/ammo, etc.

 

If both teams have an equal advantage, the team making the correct decisions will still win. There is no need to reward a player for making the correct decision, as making the correct decision in the first place is enough of an advantage in of itself.

[Mythblaze]

Here is what should be done in PvP.  If these issues can be addressed by DE and implemented I feel that the PvP will be much better.

 

Valkyr ultimate should not provide immunity in PvP. Imagine if Iron Skin was full immunity.

 

Latency for a match should be forced to not allow any connection over 75 ms. This will keep region specific players having an optimal experience. 

 

Certain abilities need to be on a cool down. In general the first ability and some second abilities need to have a cool down to prevent spamming. 

 

Limiting the amount Tesla and other such abilities is needed. Ex: Allow only three Tesla to be thrown and be active at any given time. 

 

Provide optional spawn locations.

 

Fix not being able to finish a downed player with a killing shot. 

 

Fix the spawn camping immunity that is not working. 

 

Fix the issue/bug of players having complete immunity. Damage shows as zero damage. 

 

Fix the issue of players leaving the game when they are losing. Suggested fix: provide an instant win to the team that did not quit. Precautions to prevent abuse of this by locking out a player from dark sector if they quit more than three times in a day for 24 hours. 

[Balduron04]

Those are some very valid points. Some of which I've talked about, but thank you for reiterating. They are problems that NEED to be fixed.

 

I've seen people get the Undying mod first, rush a console with a strong secondary weapon, arm it, and then sit there dead to kill anyone who tries to disarm it. I've died and lost consoles to this, and man do I wish that I could kill them like I could kill down'd specters in previous game modes.

 

That being said, they need more than two weeks to come out with a better map and fixes for the problems we've highlighted. I'd say a month based on past experience to get anything worth while...

 

And with the recent problems with the bugs, going down and not dying or being able to respawn or quit, getting dropped from missions during the mission result screens that happened today and not getting rewards, and the recent connection issues, I might want to wait till update 15 to play again. :( it was such a good game :(