Should Survival Get Reworked?

[SgtFlex]

I've been playing this gamemode for a long time now and super often on T4S's. To say the best, it's fun, but what I don't like is the randomness to it.

 

Enemies sometimes spawn in large hordes, and sometimes they won't. I guess it's okay that we should be killing large amounts of enemies to survive, but the whole concept of RNG for part of a mission pains me. Even worse, from a few tests I've had in T4S's, it's almost Mandatory to have a nekros with a desecrate build to get the longest out of the mission possible. T4S's have a small amount of problems, but those problems really bug me, so I have 1 or a few suggestions.

 

RNG OXYGEN

Please, just get rid of this. This is why we practically require a nekros. We have to roll RNG as much as possible to survive. A certain frame shouldn't be required for any mission, it should merely help, like Trinity.

 

So, if RNG Oxygen was removed, what I had in mind instead was oxygen depletion should be based on the amount of enemies presently alive. This makes it so we're no longer relying on RNG for oxygen, but our own ability to kill the enemies as much as possible so oxygen depletes slower.

 

 

Thoughts/ Other suggestions?

I don't really like how T4S's stand right now with nekros pretty much required...

[Archistopheles]

Oxygen rates suck right now. Assuming they keep tweaking it every so often, I hope this is just a bad phase.

[RitaVrataski]

rework or removed.

[OverlordMcGeek]

Since the introduction of those power core guys from excavation that will most likely be implemented in one way or another into survival 1.0 for oxygen.

[7grims]

I think its more of a fix then a rework.

 

So many missions that I was forced to extract or lost, simple by the fact that enemy spawn rate was too low, or cause lotus didn't drop air supply. Making the mission not possible to continue for the lack of oxygen, instead of extracting or loosing cause the enemy beat us down.

[Cannamancer]

Excavation is replacing survival. Problem solved.

[SgtFlex]

Oxygen rates suck right now. Assuming they keep tweaking it every so often, I hope this is just a bad phase.

This is another thing. It's hard to tell if they keep changing rates, or if some people are just really lucky with RNG, or have really bad luck. I can't even tell if they changed them because I don't think they ever report them in the changelogs.

 

 

Since the introduction of those power core guys from excavation that will most likely be implemented in one way or another into survival 1.0 for oxygen.

Wasn't it for planets only? As far as I know, Excavation will only exist on planet surfaces, while on Corpus/Grineer Ships and Orikon Places, Survival will still exist. I mean, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for excavation to exist on ships or Orikon tilesets.

(Quoted wrong person)

 

 

Excavation is replacing survival. Problem solved.

Wasn't it for planets only? As far as I know, Excavation will only exist on planet surfaces, while on Corpus/Grineer Ships and Orikon Places, Survival will still exist. I mean, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for excavation to exist on ships or Orikon tilesets.

Edited September 13, 2014 by SgtFlex

[dashashou]

life support pods have been in drought for awhile now  

[(PSN)Fen_Integrum]

On a similar note, it is a problem how effective Nekros can be. I ran a T3 Exterminate mission with my Nekros God, and only one other player who ran with a Hydroid. We did so well on drops, that we didn't really need to pop any capsules, and eventually Lotus stopped dropping them. Yeah. We went several minutes without receiving a pod, we had so many. We popped our first capsule just to pop it at 19 minutes in, and immediately she said another was on the way.

 

I don't think we should have any one Frame that can just turn off the difficulty of a particular level.

[Metalarcher]

Excavation is replacing survival. Problem solved.

 

While that doesn't solve the problem at hand, as it's a different mode entirely and we're discussing what can be done to improve the current one...I will agree it was quite a bit more fun than any survival I've ever played.

 

I will agree the RNG has to go.  Why make things unpredictable--situations that the player cannot possibly foresee or counteract?  Why put the player in a position where they could be doing everything right and they still perform worse than someone making a ton of mistakes?  It's annoying, to say the least.

 

How to solve the RNG problem?  Perhaps a special unit which teleports in a certain amount of time from the last time one was present and which has a 100% oxygen drop rate.  Perhaps the other enemies could be used as buffs by this hypothetical life-support leader, so if there are many randomly-spawned enemies around him (which would require an AI addition to make enemies prioritize doing so) his health shields and armor would skyrocket to astronomical levels, forcing the player to take out the little guys first.  With that solution, the game is less about "farm everything" and more about "kill all the things as fast as possible" which, to me, seems to be more in the spirit of the game.

 

Plenty of other solutions are probably valid, but I'm just giving my $0.02.

[Rydian]

Excavation is replacing survival. Problem solved.

Excavation is only replacing survival for star chart missions (not Void), and only missions that are outside or have outside portions.  Missions that are entirely on spaceships will still be survival.

 

So yeah survival fixing is still important.

[Celle-Reveris]

Just need oxygen capsules to drop at effectively double the rate so Nekros can get a rework without everyone screaming bloody murder, imo.

[Trichouette]

Excavation is replacing survival. Problem solved.

On outside survival, it will be excavation (like phobos earth and europa), on ship survival, it will stay the same.

i just hope they reduce the rate of decreasing of the life support or just increase the loot chance...but most of all... MAKE MORE ENEMIES SPAWN, especially in the 20 first minutes.

[nickelshark]

The spawn rates are abysmal really. I would rather be overrun by a swamp of grineer then just strait up run out of oxygen. Maybe even remove the oxygen altogether and just crank up the spawns. Idk but the spawns need some miracle grow.

[OverlordMcGeek]

 

 

 

Wasn't it for planets only? As far as I know, Excavation will only exist on planet surfaces, while on Corpus/Grineer Ships and Orikon Places, Survival will still exist. I mean, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for excavation to exist on ships or Orikon tilesets.

Please if you are going to respond to something that I wrote actually go ahead and read it. I did say the power core guys as the ones that carry the special item that needs to pick up and how it would be implemented in one way or another to survival 1.0 not the 2.0 planet excavation survival but instead of power cores OXYGEN.

Edited September 14, 2014 by OverlordMcGeek

[SgtFlex]

Please if you are going to respond to something that I wrote actually go ahead and read it. I did say the power core guys as the ones that carry the special item that needs to pick up and how it would be implemented in one way or another to survival 1.0 not the 2.0 planet excavation survival but instead of power cores OXYGEN.

Yeah I actually quoted the wrong person, meant to quote Aisuru, didn't mean to quote you, my bad.

 

On your post though, that suggestion sounds perfectly fine. There are a ton of ways to go about fixing survival (because I truly think it does need one). Personally, I like the way MetalArcher said, because RNG does need to go, and I think the way they intended to go about Survival was to kill everything as fast as possible, but I think RNG was the worst possible way to execute that idea.

[(XBOX)ShapelessHorr0r]

YES!!!

IMO, Lotus life support should only be a deterrent to camping in an impenetrable pigeon hole, and mob drops are to incentivize the killing of mobs so you don't just run around for 20 minutes.

Life support shouldn't be the main cause of your failure.

Another thread in survivals:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/309644-changing-survival-alerts/

Edited September 14, 2014 by (XB1)ShapelessHorr0r

[Jokubas]

IMO, Lotus life support should only be a deterrent to camping in an impenetrable pigeon hole, and mob drops are to incentivize the killing of mobs so you don't just run around for 20 minutes.

Life support shouldn't be the main cause of your failure.

Seriously. I think the enemies getting harder is supposed to be the main challenge, like Defense. Of course, with min-maxed players and high end content, that might lead to another thing that has to get tweaked, but...

 

I just failed my first attempt at one of the Back to School Survival Alerts, and there was nothing we could do. We hit each capsule the second they appeared (we were never above 70% past the beginning), and there were only a handful of personal life support drops the entire time. There were barely even any enemies. There was nothing we could do about it.

 

I'm honestly not sure what the best solution is. Having the drain change based on the amount of enemies sounds good in theory (encourages you to fight, while not punishing you if the spawn rate dwindles for whatever reason), though it may just end up as another bandage.

Edited September 14, 2014 by Jokubas

[Lancars]

Its sad. you HAVE to have nekros to survive. They fixed it for awhile that lotus wasn't so cheap with the air then they they remade it cheap and rare. You'd think she ould have our best interest in mind but so far every survival alert for this week of alerts we have failed.

[(XBOX)ShapelessHorr0r]

Its sad. you HAVE to have nekros to survive. They fixed it for awhile that lotus wasn't so cheap with the air then they they remade it cheap and rare. You'd think she ould have our best interest in mind but so far every survival alert for this week of alerts we have failed.

Seriously. I think the enemies getting harder is supposed to be the main challenge, like Defense. Of course, with min-maxed players and high end content, that might lead to another thing that has to get tweaked, but...

 

I just failed my first attempt at one of the Back to School Survival Alerts, and there was nothing we could do. We hit each capsule the second they appeared (we were never above 70% past the beginning), and there were only a handful of personal life support drops the entire time. There were barely even any enemies. There was nothing we could do about it.

 

I'm honestly not sure what the best solution is. Having the drain change based on the amount of enemies sounds good in theory (encourages you to fight, while not punishing you if the spawn rate dwindles for whatever reason), though it may just end up as another bandage.

Yep

[Macdermott]

While that doesn't solve the problem at hand, as it's a different mode entirely and we're discussing what can be done to improve the current one...I will agree it was quite a bit more fun than any survival I've ever played.

 

I will agree the RNG has to go.  Why make things unpredictable--situations that the player cannot possibly foresee or counteract?  Why put the player in a position where they could be doing everything right and they still perform worse than someone making a ton of mistakes?  It's annoying, to say the least.

 

How to solve the RNG problem?  Perhaps a special unit which teleports in a certain amount of time from the last time one was present and which has a 100% oxygen drop rate.  Perhaps the other enemies could be used as buffs by this hypothetical life-support leader, so if there are many randomly-spawned enemies around him (which would require an AI addition to make enemies prioritize doing so) his health shields and armor would skyrocket to astronomical levels, forcing the player to take out the little guys first.  With that solution, the game is less about "farm everything" and more about "kill all the things as fast as possible" which, to me, seems to be more in the spirit of the game.

 

Plenty of other solutions are probably valid, but I'm just giving my $0.02.

I like this idea.

 

It'll remove the "where's the life support gonna drop from" mentality but also make it more difficult to acquire said life support.  Perhaps it should then restore a larger amount too, like 10%, to make up for taking so long to kill him.

[(PSN)Fen_Integrum]

I've noticed that the drops are a lot better, the fewer the people you have, which screws you over on team DPS. I ran last night with my Trinity, and a Random on Mimas that ran with a Rhino Prime. It was fairly Epic. We had absolutely no need for life support at all, and backpacks dropped at every fifth kill, I swear to dog.

 

Unfortunately, the enemies grew too strong for just two of us, and we had to bail.

 

EDIT: I almost exclusively run with three others, but that run, an older run with Nekros and Hydroid, and one Survival I soloed with Volt, each produced enough Life support to run nonstop, if not for the serious lack of the DPS a team could produce.

Edited September 15, 2014 by (PS4)Fenrushak

[Metalarcher]

I like this idea.

 

It'll remove the "where's the life support gonna drop from" mentality but also make it more difficult to acquire said life support.  Perhaps it should then restore a larger amount too, like 10%, to make up for taking so long to kill him.

 

Yeah, and that percentage can be easily changed to whatever number works best, based on testing.

[Deus_X_Machina]

Definitly a rework is asked for, the last few times my teams always ran out of oxygen because of a lack of enemies (no idea where they spawned, was in the Void). I hate it when Survival turns into desperatly searching for enemies.

 

Outside the void at least the enemies seem to spawn, most of the times, but about those enough has been written (concerning drop rates).

 

Why all this is frustrating, is because not your ability is failing the mission / aborting it early, but just fate.

Nothing you can do about it.

 

Instead there could be hard protected enemies that drop life support - the faster you get through them, the better your rate, that you can influence.

Or hard to reach capsules, the better you are at the parcour part of the game, the faster you get them.

Or you have to reach each life support within 30 seconds (arbitrary number), everything you take above that goes from your Buffer time (e.g. 3 minutes), so you eventually reach a point where you cannot stay.

 

Whatever can be influenced by players makes a good mechanic.