Excavation Feedback Megathread

[Lancars]

Go to Phobos or Europa. 

Still they stretch people to the limits on these. Or people don't know what it means to be a group.

[Hueminator]

I agree that earth tile set a bit hard to climb and brutal for slow warframes (although Frost is good for these mission)

Edited August 29, 2014 by Hueminator

[xXNASHXx14]

I love everything about this gamemode except one thing. When you pick up the power cores, it should go on your back rather than in your hand. Sort of like the power core-wielding enemies. Like this, you should be able to hold your primary, also, it'll look better. I hate it how the power core glitches through your hand. 

[UNIT1KCV]

Maps its kinda to big ... getting lost alot

Ya it's huge

[CY13ERPUNK]

basically +1 DE

 

another great blanket improvement to the game

 

I really liked the Breeding Grounds event, and the Excavation missions are also a great success IMHO

 

personally I would have designed other interactive level objects and had the players running around grabbing the power cells and bringing them back to the excavators vs having the enemies carry them around (again no one seems to think about this stuff, why are the enemies carrying energy cores for our excavators?), maybe even the tenno have to somehow siphon/hijack power from the broken ship's reactors or something, but whatevs

 

certainly i would have done it slightly differently, but regardless Excavation is a vast improvement over the standard survival mission design, person i would like to see survival as a mission go away, im sure the ships-in-space version of the mission could be overhauled and redesigned as well

 

and as long as this is the trend : breeding grounds, excavation, etc we're on a good path i think

 

of course the level design guys never cease to amaze me, i am constantly impressed with the expansive rooms/tiles =]

[quietcanary]

If the rewards at the end of a excavation are not ______ (that word that means Compounding but more appropriate to this context) then I feel like it was probably just a accident on de's part and will be fixed soon. if not then why offer so many moderate prizes?

 

I haven't actually gone back to check whether this is a thing since im logging off for the night

[Somedude1000]

AT the moment the sheer spawnrate causing all the lag is preventing me from being able to properly gauging this new feature :/

[KittyDarkling]

    So at this point I've completed the event twice, First on solo, second in a full group. My first run was also prior to the two hotfixes. I want to get his out of the way because I'm sure most will agree that this mission type is extremely fun, and it has a very real possibility of becoming my new favorite mission type. I'm really very very happy with the way mission are being revamped and made. That being said, I noted a few things about the missions:

 

 - As others have said, I'm not to sure about the lore friendliness of enemies just so happen to be running around with cores on their backs. why are they there? why are there so many of them? and why don't they notice we're harvesting their power cores and stop carrying them?

    This feature works gameplay wise so long as spawns keep up, but they sometimes don't.

 

 - This might seam like an odd complaint bu the time required to pick up the cores is very long. It would be great if by holding down E (or whatever the default activate button is) You could automatically pick up the core without needing to stop or play an animation. Warframe is a very fast pace game, and that small amount of time spent standing still can and will get people killed.

 

 - Again as others have mentioned, for a solo player the sheer distance between points can be very daunting, and for a full team, it seams to kinda break spawns. If the spawns could remain stable, then I would love for the map size to remain the same for teams. However if there's a way for the game to detect starting team size/ online options, It would be great if the map size could cater in kind.

 

 - The change to the ability to pick up multiple cores at once is interesting. It kinda emphasizes the distance things are apart, which would be fixed if the spawns were more functional for spread out teams. and I can imagine it makes things pretty hard for a solo player, When I did my solo runs I did it before the patch, so I can imagine looking back that  power core management will be a great deal more tedious now.

 

 

    I'd like to reiterate how much I enjoy and appreciate this new mission type. It'd be nice if the above changes could in some way shape or form find their way into the game, or be tweaked in some way. But I'm extremely happy with this update in general! Please keep doing what you're doing DE, because it's something beautiful!

[Micke799]

Great update, I am enjoying it alot so far.

 

Minor bug report: I cannot start any Void mission if I am in Solo mode. Can get around this by setting it to invite only when I want to go slaughter on my own but then I cant pause.

Just wanted to bring that to your attention.

 

EDIT: For a second the Solo void missions was working again. But I managed to re-create it, after I switched warframe I was again unable to start a Void mission with matchmaking setting Solo.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Micke799

[Not1Loss]

Don't know if any 1 have same problem but it makes me angry . I start the event play all the way to the end , end then were should be a mission report with all of the rewards i get a transparent blue screen and my WF going back at his ship and i don't get nothing, NO EXP, NO MODS , NO event points , nothing , i play 30-40 min for nothing and it happens for third time . The only thing i can do is Alt.+ F4

[K2LOO]

When i pick up a cell sometimes I'm unable do drop it/use it for a few minutes at a time even when the extractor clearly needs the power. This occurred on both Earth and Europa, with Mag and Rhino. Quite problematic being limited to sidearm/melee for extended periods...

[Omnimorph]

Yeah, I agree with the comment about it being a bit too fiddly to pick up the cores. 

 

I wouldn't want the cores to be standard pickups you automatically hoover up as soon as you go near them, I would want there to be some abstraction of the act of picking up the core. 

 

But at the moment it's tuned so that there's such a narrow range where you're "in position" to do the pickup (like with storage closets), it would be better to have a more generous area where you can be near the core and hit F to pick it up, or the "cone" or whatever it is, could be widened.

[Llyssa]

It makes no sense that at the moment, you cannot deliver cores to the scanner when it has stopped scanning.

 

Things should be able to get power cores until they have 100% energy. I don't actually want to run back to the scanner after every single artifact excavated. That's not that much fun. It *also* makes it pointless having someone on scanner duty, as they can do absolutely nothing but stand there until it starts scanning again. Worse, because of the size of the map, they can't even try to reach the dig sites, as the scanner will need them again before they can get anywhere.

 

It's far too awkward this way.

[Zarlockk]

Game mod is a lot of fun and enemies scale pretty fast. Team work is very useful to get higher results. A bit difficult on Earth due to terrain but on Phobos and Europa it is great. Only thing is rewards are extremely low. Like on Europa i got to 3800 and best thing i got was U5 core. 

[Quizel]

I give this mission type the thumbs up but of course could use some tweaking (granted as in event we can only guess how things will be spawning once it is over).

 

Here is a few suggestions that could be quick changes:

 

When looking at an extractor, have it named "B" somewhere on the health bar just like on the mini map.

Reason:I see that A and C have power but B does not. I grab a cell and it takes me a moment to verify which pod to bring it to w/o wasting it. Granted, in time I may learn to memorize the lay out and which extractor pod is which as they appear >.>.

edit: or better yet even show the % of power on the name or some indicator on the name/health bar that it is out of power.

 

Display power in seconds left instead of %. I don't like doing math on the fly if it isn't 1% per 1sec. And if it is, I don't see why it's a % anyway >.>. If %power/sec drain is known and %power is known, little math -> (%power) / (%power/sec)  = # of sec left that power can be supplied.

 

Earth with the Regulators and Bombards/napalms is sooo deadly. Why does earth only grant 100pts/extrator while Europas grant 300pts? Should be flip flopped if you ask me lol.

 

Smaller things:

when finished excavating, launches off into space. Seeing it blow up almost seems like we failed >.>

 

Allow cryo extractor to be filled to 100% when max # of extractors are located - quality of life really. If that's suppose to be part of the challenge it's fine. But running back a long distance as Frost or Oberon is painful.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Quizel

[(PSN)VeTeRaNz_ExPeRt]

I need the DEVS help I out 200p on warframe . DEVS please contact me on me on psn I'll also be trying to get in touch through twitch and Facebook . I put so much time and money in this game .

[adarazrad]

There is a spot on europa with no spawns, i waited there minutes for battary, also, once when i was there, suddenly bunch of enemies spawned right on my face ( well 2 meters in front of me ) .

 

this spot :http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=307291897

 

and also, i fell into the river once in europa tileset as well, and i kept spawning right under it with no way out.

 

also sometimes point have same name ( i had 2 drills and both called A ).

 

also, id love the option to press X to put the core inside a drill/scanner, because sometime it automaticly put it in there when i dont want.

Edited August 29, 2014 by adarazrad

[adarazrad]

 

I give this mission type the thumbs up but of course could use some tweaking (granted as in event we can only guess how things will be spawning once it is over)

Earth with the Regulators and Bombards/napalms is sooo deadly. Why does earth only grant 100pts/extrator while Europas grant 300pts? Should be flip flopped if you ask me lol.

 

 

i think europa gives more points because you looking for the ice material, and obviously, europa gives more ice then earth

[DrNoesis]

Much prefer it to the old survival mode, and once you get your head around not over-filling the extractors with power cores (what can i say, overly keen newb who really wanted to try a latron) it's actually a nice fun and more involved mission.

Will agree with other posters though, the maps are very big and it can be easy to get lost just trying to track down the next extractor.

I've also experienced probs with picking up cores.... they're unavailable to pick up until they stop moving, and in some places it's taken up to a minute for them to slowly roll to a stop, which can be a bit awkward..

 

[LiiiooX]

with valkyr's hysteria earth becomes completely dark, unable to see anything.

[Void_Soldier]

So far I've only played the new mode solo (post-patches), and only on Earth and Europa, which makes it slightly hectic at parts, but lots of fun getting the relevant 3k points.

 

Like the variety of excavator spawn locations, some are nice and defendable, others are open and fantastic if you were, say, trying to attack them :) This makes the fact that you get any points earned thus far if the excavator is destroyed an absolute must. Without this this mode would be very frustrating indeed.

 

Spawn rate variability can be an issue, especially for the power carriers. Noticed this more on the new tileset, perhaps due to the scale of the maps and the sheer number of MOAs that turn up as the difficulty cranks up but had slight issues with this as well on Earth, where I had to defend the excavator from everything for longer as it spent time unpowered. Playing with a team I guess would make this easier as you could defend and go look for power cores at the same time.

 

The only bugbear with this mode is the auto-feeding of power cores. I know some dislike that we have to stop and press a button to pick them up, much like in a mobile defense or deception, but several times the nearest power core was in a narrow area the other side of my locator beacon, meaning that unless it's power was full I couldn't get the core to the excavator. I won't repeat the language I used, but it wasn't good.  Pressing X to deliver a power core (preferably with no specific move-breaking animation) would help this mode, especially as out of several attempts all but one have had the beacon just by the narrow entrance of a tunnel on both Earth and Europa.

 

Now that I have the event rewards, I'll have to try this mode being able to leave when I wish to, as trying to rack up the points made it feel like a very long mission that I'd only want to do when I knew I was going to be playing for several hours at least. That's not a complaint btw, with rewards of this calibre I don't think they should be handed out for little or no effort, I'm just intrigued as to how different it will feel without the event points threshold looming over my shoulder :)

 

Excellent addition to the game, some very minor tweaks (and the inevitable tileset fixes as holes/traps are discovered by players moving in way the devs couldn't have predicted with a crystal ball dash-mounted in their time machine) and it'll be even better, not that it's broken, just needs polishing.

[Wyndeigo]

UI crashes everytime when exiting any of the new missions. I have to alt f4 to quit the game and log back in and that is the only option. 

[TisEric]

Ok now that i have finished all the goals some feedback:

 

1) Best game mode in the game currently , makes you move , constantly spawns enemies which is nice , you are always doing something , get small rewards for your effort , even the most simple of team work gets results I.E. i joined a pub group they for some reason refused to use chat on me.... but i tried to coordinate never the less , i put myself on scanner duty as the ice level on Europa is ridiculously large and you cant afford to run back and forth to power it. Every now and again i gave the team "orders" like to stop feeding power to excavators or defending a specific one and leaving the others. It was fun and we finished at 3.4k points because well..... rewards :p, We could have easily gone much higher.

 

2) Points / Maps / enemies, I feel this is one of the most bothersome issues. Earth is by far the hardest location for this mission.

Bombards , scorpions , jet pack guys are a plenty and the non stop knockdowns get you killed too often.. it only gets you 100 points per excavation which sucks. Couldn't get past 1200 points with pugs. Phobos i haven't tried. Europa on the other hand is exactly how its supposed to be

Enemies are deadly but are not over kills, you have time to evade shots and get out of the way of knockdowns , the 300 points per excavation tho makes the event super easy to complete.

 

Maps - Earths map sucks plain and simple , i always hated the forest map because its just badly designed for survival style modes.

Enemies literally spawn everywhere in a 360 degree area around you at any given moment , lots of elevated steps or platforms  sometimes up to 4 different high levels give them all the cover the need to shoot ridiculous homing rockets of never ending physics bending prowess to hit you.

Map usually drops excavators on different high levels as well so you need to constantly go up and down the same swampy circle area with the cliff where they have an amazing vantage point to kill you in seconds.

 

haven't tried phobos.

 

Europa , great map design but its WAY too big like monstrously way to big. You cant get to your scanner before it runs out of juice 99% of the time so a scanner duty position has to be filled, Other than that the map has too many points where you either get stuck while crouching , fall through the world or get stuck on invisible bits but its new so ill let it slide (harr harr ).

 

 

Enemies - Grineer are terrible for this game mode.

Their whole premise is to knock you down or other wise incapacitate your ability to shoot or move. It adds nothing but frustration to the mode.

Curpus - Bit too easy to be honest until they start getting Eximus they are a walking 1 shot obstacle Of curse i was using a booben + Akvastos with blast damage at the time so it might be just my setup plus all it takes to effectively beat them is to constantly move .

 

 

3)Spawns , both cells and enemies have an erratic spawn programming... one of 3 things happens randomly,

1 - everything works fine enemies have good steady spawn and cells spawn in a timely fashion.

2 - no enemies spawn at all.

3 - enemies spawn a plenty but no cells .

 

that needs to be fixed up.

 

 

4) difficulty.

 

easy - Europa - way too much points for little time invested , Curpus makes for easy to avoid enemies.  

moderate - phobos - decent points , grineer i assume? i hate them but i hear its an open map so should be less of an issue.

hard - earth - little points , grinner enemies in a very close quarters kinda map in most cases and the high levels of the map make for impossible to defend locations.

 

 

 

Overall i like this mode (i hate survival..) its good stuff.

Little bit of fixes up and it will be the premium mode of pve warframe.

[Utarious]

I think it would be nice if you made it so you had to press Q at a extractor or a scanner to put a power cell in.

 

One time on Earth we had numerous cores but we couldn't get them pass the scanner because it insta ate them when we tried to get by because the scanner was in a narrow hall-ish type place.

[Vicious_Raptor]

 

I had to run all the way up and around to get over this one bridge with a gap in it only to miss 2 times because my frames legs seems to stop working 2 feet from the edge

So I'm not the only one