Excavation Feedback Megathread

[ValhaHazred]

Love this new game mode. But a few things to consider:

 

- Enemies attack the excavator... why? They don't want the stuff out of it for themselves? They do! Then why destroy the device? Give it a console they try to get to and capture it to slow you down or turn it off. Or make the players priority targets while near the excavators. Later on the health is too low and no option to repair it. Also there is no logic in enemies shooting at an extractor while their head are getting popped by me standing next to it. Extractors are not a threat.  I  AM  THE  THREAT  !   :)   Priorities, priorities...

 

- When the excavator finishes, the resources magically teleport to my pocket? I would have to pick them up afterwards. Or the enemies could as well. Running away with them (slowly) if nobody picks them up. They want this stuff as well so give them a chance to steal it. Maybe a drone could fly on top of the extractor and start siphoning the stuff out of it.

 

- My guess is the Grineer and Corpus are more than willing to expend their infinitely replaceable and expendable mooks to deny us any sort of advantage at all. Remember, there are 100s of billions of them they can take the losses.

They also have so much infrastructure they probably don't worry about resources on the same scale we do. For them extractors aren't worth recovering.

 

-On the other hand, I really like this idea.

[7grims]

This new mission type does not promote team unity, I think it is good when non-endless missions create diverging waypoints or locations to complete the objective, the squad can finish the linear mission faster, and there arent as many drops or xp to be won in these kind of missions.

 

In excavation mission, a bit like survival, ppl tend to roam around and separate, which makes some players hard to revive when they are very far, and separates players from the xp share range, by either forcing players to go to the scanner, force players to search for power cells, and also by each player choosing to go to opposite directions of excavators waypoints.

 

Maybe only 1 excavator at once fixes the team separation, although I do understand the reason in which it was designed to have several.

 

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Power cells when laying on the floor, they look too much like the indicator for rare mods, a different way of displaying these diferent objects would be much better.

Also, in survival we have a way too see were are the personal support capsules (the small ones), wherever they are in the map, even though we might be very far from these.

Not saying all power cells on the floor should be marked, because these would create a huge visual cluster, as in this game type we not always need to pick them all up, but there should be a way too see the nearest pool of these.

 

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Also about picking up power cells, the range of picking it up should be wider.

Or atleast change the way it force us to align with it, cause we can be right ontop of it, but we cant pick it up if we aren't facing the visual pick up indicator.

 

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Some excavators waypoints are too much near each other.

Several times I have activated a new excavator cause I had enter it's start zone unintentionally.

Same problem happens if you are carrying a power cell for a excavator that needs it, but another one is on your path and immediately consumes it.

Edited August 29, 2014 by 7grims

[Rydiak]

Excavation maps are still FAR too big.  There is no reason for a map to have this much running distance in it.

 

[PeanutMonster]

Just to clarify, Excavation will eventually be replacing On-Planet Survival missions. Meaning, any Survival missions that occur 'outside' will become Excavation, but Survival will remain for those node tilesets that are enclosed(ships). 

 

What about Corpus gas city? It has indoor AND outdoor areas.

[Imaru]

What about Corpus gas city? It has indoor AND outdoor areas.

More importantly, WHERE WOULD YOU MINE THERE???

[Babellon]

Feedback Day 2-

Today I decided to do some test runs, basicly seeing how long it would take me to break the map. When entering the mission, mobs run past me, going somewhere, presumably to the location of the scanner. I can engage them, which is fun, I like the idea that i can farm kills and level weapons on the map comfortably without any restrictions. 

 

Problem- Mobs stop navigating the map, instead spawn in large clusters in a room or area, repeatedly running in circles, or back and forth as if to lure me to a location, but never actually engage, or engage sporadically, while maneuvering around constantly looking for some place to hide.

Mobs consistently run away from me. on sight they will immediately turn and run to any other area of the map away from me and from the objective. I can easily stand at an extractor and never get a single mob attacking, How ever if I run away from the extractor, the mobs will spontaniously spawn in the immediate area around the extractor, until I come, then they all run away again, hide, and avoid me completely. Today on phobos I scored 1200 points, standing at extractors, with no engagement what so ever. Only once I navigated around the map, located the mobs, standing around in a large group in a room across the map from where the objective was did I find something to kill. I carried power cores to the objectives, the mobs did not follow, instead hiding and remaining the the area they originally spawned in. 

 

Now, for me, sure this is workable, I can run around the map, killing to my hearts content when I find the groups hanging around where ever they spawn at. How ever, from a game mode achievement perspective, this completely breaks the process of activating and protecting extractors, further the scanner, will have massive numbers of mobs around it, but once i kill them, no more mobs appear, until I completely leave the area where the scanner is located, then they reappear. 

 

On the one hand, its ok, I can kill mobs endlessly, on the other hand, it makes the map feel very empty and uncontested for large areas, and slows down the pace of the mode all together. I leveled the new latron wraith from 0-20 on one map, it took about an hour, most of the time was spent wandering through the map, looking for mobs to shoot at, and finding the clusters huddled in locations randomly and far flung from the actual mission objectives.

 

Yesterday when I first did the mission, it was very fast, very engaging, had a lot of spawns, continuously, today, it seemed like I spent more time looking for mobs than I did engaging them. Not sure what happened, but today was definitely not like yesterday at all.

Edited August 29, 2014 by -Malachi-

[Vargras]

Dose that include the Gas City tileset? Its Sort of outdoors.

 

What about Corpus gas city? It has indoor AND outdoor areas.

It's kinda hard to mine a gas planet (unless you're gathering the gases themselves), so:

 

More importantly, WHERE WOULD YOU MINE THERE???

[PeanutMonster]

It's kinda hard to mine a gas planet (unless you're gathering the gases themselves), so:

 

But how do you remove all the Oxygen from the outdoor areas? It's the same problem as on-planet survivals IMO.

Edited August 29, 2014 by PeanutMonster

[Vargras]

But how do you remove all the Oxygen from the outdoor areas?

You don't.

 

But adding Excavation to a gas giant planet makes zero sense.

[Erelas]

Love this new Survival mode DE, and the new tileset is gorgeous, kudos and well done to the team! 

*high fives all around*

[Kthal]

The maps now have approximately the right tile count, but Europa's Iceset (I haven't played the others since map shrinkage) consists of long corridors, meaning that the amount of running needed is still too high.

 

Also, Europa's lifts, one guaranteed near the Scanner, and those diagonal ones need to go, especially in this gametype.

Any infinite mission with lots of running back and forth cannot have those kind of choke points, especially with idiot teams.

 

The diagonal lifts also suffer from players riding up, then jumping down. The slope can be run up, meaning they are just blocking the map without any reason.

[Llyssa]

Big note: Either warmers or excavators need a different icon/model.

 

I've spent a little too much time delivering energy cores to warmers because they look pretty much the same, particularly when they're together in an area.They're both dark little X-shaped towers with a weird pole in the middle. Add some rings or glowing bits or just change the shape of one of them entirely.

 

There *is* a visual difference, but it's not enough to notice when you've got 30 guys firing 80 plasma bolts at you every second.

[stubon]

i dont know... why i have 3000+ cryotic but can't reward event. (P/S: megan i love you )

[Verryn]

Excavation or survival for survival on Jupiter, gas city? Both seem unreasonable given, excavation is impossible because there is no natural terrain and survival doesn't make much sense because it was always an open space.

[VKhaun]

Just wanted to put a post up and say that I dig the new mode.

 

I love that the excavators are essentially optional. Once you have extraction open it can just be a care-free XP farm with lots of guys. Please don't ever change that. If I need to do extractors to get rewards or whatever else, that's fine, but I love that I can just play my way in a nice open outdoor map until I'm killed or run off.

 

I see potential for PuG conflicts in people 'not helping' with extractors, but unless there are special excavation-only rewards that you need a ton of that's really a non-issue. If you only need a reward once (mod / frame part / etc.) you can make a dedicated group. If there aren't exclusive mods then you can go to survival where people MUST help or suffocate.

[letir]

Excavation or survival for survival on Jupiter, gas city? Both seem unreasonable given, excavation is impossible because there is no natural terrain and survival doesn't make much sense because it was always an open space.

Jupiter don't have normal atmosphere.

[GhostSwordsman]

The only feedback I have at the moment for the new game-type is to find somewhere else for the lotus to talk to us. (will upload screenshot or link to screenshot later) It becomes very difficult to monitor the excavators mid to late game, as the lotus keeps butting in and talking to us, and her transmission screen sits right on top of where the extractor info is given. The length of some of her transmissions have cost me and my fellow Tenno few excavators. Not to mention that she just HAS to tell us that an excavator has lost power, EVERY SINGLE TIME IT HAPPENS, making it even more impossible to keep track of the status of our excavators. (perhaps for this mission type, it is best the lotus goes on the right side of the screen rather than the left side as per usual)

 

Edit: Here is a pic of what I'm talking about when lotus is praddling on about there being no power...

 

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/43103517966156841/485009784EDB75B1E49E9F6301116E2F39DB7E1B/

 

You're telling me there's no power, but I can't see it for myself!

Edited August 29, 2014 by GhostSwordsman

[Taralasian]

It's a great gamemode, but Feral Kubrow are an absolute nightmare when an Excavator spawns near some of their dens.

 

The issue I have right now is that Void and Derelict missions are refusing to load...

[Varzy]

Love this new game mode. But a few things to consider:

 

- Enemies attack the excavator... why? They don't want the stuff out of it for themselves? They do! Then why destroy the device? Give it a console they try to get to and capture it to slow you down or turn it off. Or make the players priority targets while near the excavators. Later on the health is too low and no option to repair it. Also there is no logic in enemies shooting at an extractor while their head are getting popped by me standing next to it. Extractors are not a threat.  I  AM  THE  THREAT  !   :)   Priorities, priorities...

 

- We already have a defense and mobile defense mode. This is supposed to be a survival-ish mode. Then why do we need to defend the extractors from destruction? It should be more like: "Cryotic discovered here and here, grineer/corpus units coming to mine it, go get that for yourself." The enemy will try to kill us to get the stuff for themselves. So we need to "survive" while getting power cells, putting them where they belong, protecting the extractors from hacking attempts / theft / drawing much more attention to ourselves by camping near those extractors.

 

- Power cells. They have metal in it, right? Tenno weapon holsters are magnetically holding stuff, right? See where I am going with this? Leave the primary weapon at home and have one more power cell on you! Having only a pistol and melee weapon in a survival-ish mission is a challenge in itself. Seems fair enough.

 

- Power cells could be marked on the minimap and the map with a very small icon. Really small icon. But only the map and minimap. No need for a full waypoint like in a survival mission.

 All of these. Personally I think it'd be more interesting to prevent the extractors from being hacked than to protect them like a defense objective, but if they must be defended, make players the priority targets, so enemies only attack extractors when you aren't around to guard them.

 

But really, the Interception-style 'enemy hacking' would make this mission a lot more distinctive from  Mobile Defense.

[xmegarockx]

sprinting and more sprinting and u can only hold one cell its very tired to play

[mrecentric]

* The maps are huge, I spend half the time running around.

* Its too hard to solo.

* The drill points are difficult to defend, especially since they're always on low-ground and wide out in the open. Meanwhile the enemies occupy high-ground and shoot from a distance.

* The drill points spawn way too close to eachother sometimes. I can't drop off energy to one drill until all of the other 3 are done so I can run past them without energy getting sucked up. They're frequently maybe 20 feet apart in a cluster of four.

Edited August 29, 2014 by mrecentric

[Llyssa]

One other thing: It's possible to get burned on wreckage on the ice map.

 

I find it odd that the burning wreckage is hot enough to harm us, but *not* hot enough to reverse the effects of freezing temperatures, *particularly* when the warmers *are* warm enough to protect us from freezing temps, but are *not* hot enough to harm us.

[Kalenath]

But how do you remove all the Oxygen from the outdoor areas? It's the same problem as on-planet survivals IMO.

 

Um... just a thought...

 

Who don't the Tenno suffocate when they are running around the gas city normally? Maybe something is holding the atmosphere in? Force fields or something?

 

It would make some sense for a city like that to be an enclosed environment even if we cannot see what is enclosing it.

 

Enclosed environment=easy to cut life support.

[Brynslustafir]

So I'm still suffering from marathon fatigue. 

But apart from that I'm enjoying it. 

[Lypiphera]

Interesting new game mode, liked that it replaces the confusing survival on planets (didn't make sense). It has great potential but the map is way too large and there seems to be mostly running around. A bad example was after returning with power to the scanner I was unable to locate an enemy or a previously dropped power core before it ran out again. Running to opposite ends of the map to defend separate extractors does not help either. Also, they can be really difficult to care for solo if you have to run around trying to gather 1-2 more cores as it runs out and nothing seems to be coming. Re-introducing carrying multiple power cores would help solve this, assuming it would be smart about it (not going above 100%). Again, great potential, but too much running around especially if compared to survival.

Edited August 29, 2014 by Lypiphera