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Excavation Feedback Megathread

[DE]Megan

By [DE]Megan,
in Missions & Levels

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Babellon

Babellon

Posted
Posted

What if you decided to stop feeding the scanner? Do enemies keep increasing their level or do they become good fodder for leveling weapons?

 

Are we gonna see dark sector excavations?

Yes, you can ignore the scanner, kill mobs to level weapons, and then reactivate scanner to get a drill to make the mobs increase level as you go. Its actually quite nice and effective for leveling all weapons.

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Sanctious

Sanctious

Posted
Posted

A little more clarity on the mini-map in general for this game mode would be great (or all game modes for that matter), it's easy to get lost.
I would say the map should shrink about a 5th, ended up running through the same procedurally generated "cross-corridors" in Europa about 3x before finally getting to a different tile and then another marathon to run before the excavator.

Aside from that, appreciate all the hard work DE!

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Blazer-X

Blazer-X

Posted
Posted

Good: Its basically an endless mobile defense with a whole "minigame" of bringing in power cells that forces players to stay close to their objectives (as opposed to fighting 3 rooms away at the door). There's absolutely nothing that can be argued against the concept. It's literally bringing one of the most fun gametypes, making it endless, adding incentives for players to play as a team, and adding incentives to last longer (rewards per successful excavation). This is by far the greatest thing I think DE has done yet.

 

Bad: Map size. Marathon-frame much? 

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DeadVoid118

DeadVoid118

Posted
Posted

Excavation Feedback Megathread 

 

The brand new Excavation gameplay mode has arrived with Update 14.5! Please post your relevant feedback in this thread so we can better make changes to improve this new gamemode! As with most new additions, we’re eager to hear your feedback and make changes where necessary.

 

Related threads will be merged into this megathread so all feedback is kept organized.

 

Thanks for your help, Tenno!

Two Problems:

 

Map Size and Spawn Rates

Sometimes, spawn rates spawn so many enemies spawn it's ridiculous. Other times, so few enemies spawn that we think the game is glitched! The map size is so big, it's hard to run from one excavation site to another as it literally took me 3 minutes, which is enough time for my allies to screw up the drill before I get there.

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DeadVoid118

DeadVoid118

Posted
Posted

 

First batch of feedback after two missions;

 

A) BUGS

 

  • If you just stand at the start of the mission doing nothing, enemies spawn constantly, running somewhere. The same happens when you just run around when no artifact is being excavated. They continue to spawn and run around, even if you don't kill anyone.

     

  • The icon of the scanner is so big that it partly clips with the tiny white arrow that indicates "up" or "down."

     

  • Performance is terrible, similar to Cicero Crisis when you inserted the antitoxin and suddenly everything went down. The weird thing is, performance is bad even though there are no enemies on your tile or the adjacent one, so I guess it is too much spawning and running around of NPCs that makes this happen. No Survival node or invasion I ever encountered had such bad performance. Not even the regular Earth survivals.

 

B) FEEDBACK

  • First and most important, I had plenty of fun with this game mode. I didn't feel as pressured as in survival where I get punished by RNG sometimes. That said, the good kind of pressure, the challenge, is still up. I can much better decide when to go and how far I want to go. This is wonderful. Great Job :) However, I don't know if this should be replacing survival. It sounds more like an actual mobile defense, just like Hijack sounds like a better mobile Defense.

     

  • The Health bar interface on the right feels too huge and convoluted (due to spacing) to make out which beacon is which and where you actually have to go to defend when multiples are up.

     

  • Enemies spawning at the start of the mission run SOMEWHERE, apparently to the scanner. I went through 4 tiles before finding the first enemy running to the 5th tile which was where the scanner has been located. That doesn't quite make any sense. How would they know where the scanner gets down if even I don't know it?

     

  • Let enemies spawn only when the scanner has been activated, and not earlier. This keeps it a bit with consistency of the other Survival missions (hack to activate) and you stabilize performance a little.

     

  • Maps feel too large. After insertion, I shouldn't run through 4 or 5 LARGE tiles on average just to get to the scanner. Give us the scanner sooner, like the second large tile which has plenty of entrances, or on the third tile and giving the second plenty of branching ways. This would reduce endless long run times on the start

     

  • I like the difficulty curve. It feels a bit softer than regular survival, which is good because there is a lot more running involved in here to get from one point to the other, thus not punishing as much with additional spawns. However, I would welcome it if the enemy spawns would diminish a little when there is no active dig site.

     

  • Thank you a lot for planting this event on Earth, so that every player, even the newest one, can access it and have a reasonable chance with the enemies to at least get a badge :)

 

 

C) SUGGESTIONS

  • If you have picked up an energy bundle, you shouldn't automatically add this power to something you manage to run by. Either make it an interaction like "power this unit" with your "use" button, or make the ring of interaction smaller, like touch range. It is seriously annoying if you try to run by the scanner, which is positioned in a narrow passage, and constantly power the scanner by accident because I cannot nudge past the activation radius.

     

  • I'm not sure how I should feel about the Scanner being indestructible. I think it should be able to receive damage in the powered state, and if power drops to zero, it should launch into safety again. This would add a bit of spice to the mission. And yes, I suggest this as a solo player. It adds tactical element to give the Scanner just enough energy to complete a scan before launching into safety again, or play the risky business and defend the scanner through a couple of scans before letting it launch away, and then continuing to said dig sites. If the Scanner then gets destroyed, There are two options:

          EITHER the mission is not a failure, but you are basically forced to extraction after all remaining artifacts are recovered because there is nothing else you can do.

          OR a new location for the scanner to get down is selected, and you need to set up a beacon to make it land. This beacon needs to be defended like Interception and powered with energy bundles to establish connection. This allows continuing the mission if so desired, and adds a flavour of consequential continuity to it.

 

Please no, I really do hate your suggestions :3

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tehgreg

tehgreg

Posted
Posted

I have only played it 3 times on 14.5.0.3 build and this is what I think of it:

 

1. The maps are HUGE - even with coptering it takes too long to go back and forth carrying 1 power cell at a time.

 

2. Sometimes the extractors will get the same letters on the minimap - e.g there can be two A's and one C

 

3. With 3 extractors active at once there is simply too much information on the screen and it is impossible to quickly glance at the info and know which extractor requires protection or which one should be powered up. My sugggestion - replace the numbers with health bars and add a health bar to current % of power.

 

4. Add map markers for dropped power cells, just like life support in survival.

 

5. I'm fine with automatically adding power cells - makes the gameplay fast and fluid.

 

Overall, this gamemode seems to be fun but the maps are just too big. I have yet to see if it is worth doing these missions XP wise with a score of 3000+ because I did all my runs with level 30 gear.

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Babellon

Babellon

Posted
Posted (edited)

Feedback day 3-

Running Europa, Drills spawn, but appear under the ice, unable to power up, unresponsive, cannot be used in any way. Forced to repower scanner, find new drill, Unsure if this will effect outcome once extraction reached. Currently in mission. Has happened 2 times once last night, once this morning. Thus far seems to have no effect on mission, can still power scanner, locate new drills, How ever it is annoying, as you now have an icon for a drill you cannot locate, or access.

 

Edit: after completing new drill, the drill that ws in the ice, was active and destroyed by mobs before could reach it, while that did eliminate it from the map, drills need to not get stuck in ice.

 

Edit 2: able to complete mission, drill in ice ultimately had no lasting effect on outcome, as stated above was eventually destroyed by mobs while handling other drill locations. Not sure if it was relocated after leaving area, but did apparently become operative at some point, delayed, as the mobs were able to destroy it before i could reach it.

Edited by -Malachi-
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Sorain.

Sorain.

Posted
Posted

I have played this mission several times now, and I really love it. however, I don't like that you can only dig for cryotic, which is used for only 3 weapons so far. maybe in the future, after the planetary survivals are replaced, there could be an option to chose the resource you are digging for? obvioulsy the more rare resources (plastids, rubedio, alloy plate, etc) would come in smaler amounts then say, ferite, and the ultra rare resources (gallium, neurodes, etc) would not be an option.

 

if nothing else, it would be extremely good way for new players to expand their arsenal early, something that is currently very, very difficult, and this drives away many new players.

 

just a suggestion that I think would be cool.

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Zeitzbach

Zeitzbach

Posted
Posted

One of the worst modes I have played on so far.

 

-Earth is one of the worst map in this game because of all the fences and trees and stuffs there. How to make it worst? Imagine playing in that map but is 10x bigger.

 

-Power cells are NOT marked on the map. It's playing a game of hide-and-seek with the powercell especially if you AoE'd them early and with all the stair and low point high point here and there, you have to deal with the bad parkour just to find a single power cell.

 

- Spawn rate is sometime very bad based on location. I had 3 excavators out and there was nothing for me to kill for almost 3-4 minutes. All 3 ran out of power and I was playing AFKing game. I think I read a couple of thread here before I could hear some gunfire. Oh, and the enemies continue to scale while this happens.

 

- This mode basically forces you to team-up. It's nice that there's a team mode now but the team part had nothing to do with the difficulty. Instead, it's just "hey, work separately so we can rack up as much points as possible early", easily noticed by the excavators being 3 exterminate maps apart from each other.

 

I understand it's new but this map has the worst Quality of Life issue so far out of all other modes. I'm going to be honest. The more I play this mode, it feels like I'm just testing how bad I can deal with all the frustration.

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Aburith

Aburith

Posted
Posted

The new mission addition is great and all, but my only problem is that whenever you do something Lotus covers up excavator info on the left side and keeps popping up to tell you that more forces are inbound. I would appreciate it if this were toned down a little XD. Some people like to see the progress of the digs.

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Kemanorel

Kemanorel

Posted
Posted

Have my best run at 10200, but ran another time with some different folks and after we had gotten to 7500 (both on Europa) the scanner would no longer scan but we had zero active excavator sites. This had happened before and I chalked it up to having had too many get destroyed, but this time we didn't lose any. Are there some spawning off the map or something?

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GhostSwordsman

GhostSwordsman

Posted
Posted

Have my best run at 10200, but ran another time with some different folks and after we had gotten to 7500 (both on Europa) the scanner would no longer scan but we had zero active excavator sites. This had happened before and I chalked it up to having had too many get destroyed, but this time we didn't lose any. Are there some spawning off the map or something?

When I did my 10000 point run, there was a point where we were sitting at about 9000 i think, and it took about a min or two for the location to pop up on the map and for the excavator to drop in. We thought it might be bugged, but after waiting a short time, lotus popped in and said the extractor is ready to go and the mission proceeded as normal. (we only lost one extractor btw, so I don't know how much farther we could have gone)

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