How To Fix Endless Defense: Make It High Risk High Reward.

[xenapan]

1) CONTINUOUS wave spawns for 5 waves at a time. every 90 seconds, the next wave is unleashed. Like mobile defense, it doesn't matter if the previous waves are dead or alive. They just KEEP COMING. (High risk)

1a) after all 5 waves are done sending you have a grace period of 120 seconds to mop up mods, kill the remaining enemies etc. after which you get the exit option.

 

2) Accumulate rewards.

2a) ditch all the crap rewards no one ever wants. health restores, ammo boxes -> GONE.

2b) Each 5 waves you "open" a container for a mod/bp. If you don't like it, you can re-purpose it. "prize". .

2c) So now when wave 5 is "done" your choices are Claim (and leave), LOCK, Repurpose. By repurposing it when the next 5 waves are done, you will get a DIFFERENT mod/bp. (but you cant claim till the next set of waves are done) and you get to do this for EVERY prize.

2d) So if you choose to stay at wave 5, wave 10 will see you 2 prizes if you locked the wave 5 mod, it will be there along with your new wave 10 prize, but if you repurposed your wave 5 prize you will get 2 brand new prizes instead

2e) So this continues for every 5 waves so by wave 20, you will have seen 4 different prizes for the first prize alone. 3 for the second prize, 2 for the third prize, but regardless

2f)This way players get to "See" more prizes without actually getting more prizes. It also helps avoid getting the same prizes over and over again. This way people will have an incentive to STAY because now they are cumulatively "seeing" more prizes for every 5 extra waves they do.

2g) the real kicker to this would be the fact that all repurposed rewards are rolled on the same loot table as the wave you are on. So if you get to wave 30 you get up to 6 prizes rolled off the wave 30 loot table which gives a MUCH bigger incentive to stick around for the later waves.

2h) of course, this is  still high risk. lose anywhere and you lose all your rewards. kept, repurposed etc. and because the waves are all coming out faster, later waves are more about being able to kill FAST enough as they dont stop spawning for 5 waves in a row.

[Yanga]

It'd be unique, that's for sure... but I doubt that people would keep going either way. If they still lose the Locked items for the next 5 waves, they'll just leave with the Prize and restart the mission again. Doesn't matter if it's a risk/reward thing, the second they get a option out, they split with whatever prize they have and just go at it again for more stuff.

Right now, you have the same probability to get rare mods at Wave 5 like you would at Wave 30... DE would most likely fix that later but right now, people are trying to get as much as they can before DE does this.

Also, the constant spawning of enemies isn't going to help them finish the Wave to EVAC faster, it's more of the line going to screw them up before they're ready. They won't be able to collect the Mods that drop because of the fact they despawn 1 min after first pick up and there are people who don't signal where the mods are.

[xenapan]

Yeah... but IMO it would be a really interesting pace. I guess it will work out better when the devs out in higher rarity mods so people have incentive to stick around longer. As it is, I find the current "defense" missions are pretty slow and especially with those stragglers getting stuck, this would really pick up the pace and actually pose more of a challenge for people, force people to work together as a team. Like you said, some people sitl dont mark mods but this kind of pacing would force people to do that because no one can cover the whole map themselves, if one person gets found not marking mods it means 3 people are going to either stop marking mods out of spite and turn into more chaos, or they will work harder towards being a more efficient team because they have to pick up the slack of the 4th. -> higher risk.

[VeNoM0619]

I keep seeing posts about people hating people who leave defenses. After abandoning about 5 times at the first opportunity now personally, I can say my main 2 reasons were:

Someone was being a complete jerk.

LAG

[Thaumatos]

The truth of the matter is that the endless defense missios were structured as a gauntlet and have been broken by their attempt to stop people from exploiting boss runs.

 

In a gauntlet, you don't want people leaving early because they might lose and lose big.  You want players to stick it out until they can't anymore.  That's the whole point of a gauntlet.  Its no fun if you just leave when it gets rough because you'd end up with a bunch of wasted time when you bring it up to the wire.

[matrixEXO]

Would work out nice! I only wish that that wouldn't kill me when I solo it XD