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Survival Spawning

[DE]Glen

By [DE]Glen,
in Developer Workshops

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[DE]Glen

[DE]Glen

Posted
Posted

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I love playing Survival; it is definitely my favourite game-type because it is dynamic, active, and challenging. Like most veteran players I have run countless Orokin Tower Survival missions have seen it get steadily more polished as various tweaks and fixes were made.

 

Several months ago my attention turned to Survival in other areas of the game after hearing reports of problems with the spawns. With the help of volunteers we uncovered a number of little issues that were fixed in Update 15. Over the last month we ran more tests and although things were noticeably better something was still a bit off -- on low-level missions we often ran out of life support before we hit the 20 minute mark!

 

Last weekend some volunteers helped us isolate another trouble spot: we reduce the enemy count when you have less teammates and we compensate by increasing the rate at which these enemies drop personal life support -- the missing link was that we also reduce the enemy count for easier missions but this reduction was not being factored in!

 

We also found that in the easiest missions there were not quite enough enemies to keep a full squad busy -- the missions seemed a bit too quiet especially compared with our fond memories of T4S! Although there were concerns about novice Tenno having difficulty it was decided that we would increase the spawn-limits slightly for lower-difficulty missions.

 

Some attention was also given to the higher-difficulties as well. Historically we compensated for various pathing and spawning problems by increasing the enemy counts but this is not healthy for performance on low-end machines. Since there have been quite a few small tweaks and improvements to how spawns flow towards players the more extreme counts should not longer be necessary and were reduced slightly (factoring this into the life-support drop rate, of course).

 

It is worth mentioning that fixing the personal life-support drop-rate and tweaking the spawn counts are only the most obvious changes being made; under the hood are a bunch of more subtle improvements to how enemies hunt down players. For example: historically many enemy types would only jog from where they were spawned (jogging allows shooting, sprinting is faster); one thing we found was that Infested enemies were still jogging even though they weren’t carrying a weapon!

 

One last thing: this obsession with Survival may seem extreme however the great thing is that almost all of the low-level AI changes will actually improve other game-types too (Excavation, Defense, Mobile-Defense, and Interception).

 

We tested these changes internally and even though the adjustments were small the impact was quite noticeable -- we ended up playing all afternoon it was so much fun! These changes should go live on PC in today’s hotfix and we are really excited to hear about your impressions -- we still have areas to polish but this should be a big step forward for a lot of missions!

 

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Somedude1000

Somedude1000

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Posted (edited)

Awesome!

 

[size=5]EDITED![/size]

 

Well I'll stick to one important thing, and that is, how will the tweaks to survival missions spawning coincide with the recently introduced improved enemy accuracy? It's often a pain to play against enemies as is on solo survival, especially now hat they have (100 %?)  accuracy

 

Enemies are now able to target you from sizable distances and fire at you with near perfect accuracy unless you are using a mobile frame, and the biggest issue here is simply that Tenno Survivability is absolute rubbish in its current form, to a certain stage you can rely on vitality + redirection, then later Rage and Quick thinking.

 

 

However, after a certain point when the accuracy simply becomes unbearable, more of the game ends up being, "kill the enemy before they even see you" as even a single enemy has the capability to potentially drain your health / shields to 0 with their newfound accuracy rather quickly. This makes players have the tendency to run along with frames / weapons and builds packing massive DPS so that they can;

 

1. Initiate ability, stun / daze / stop everyone in the room

2. Fire While enemies cannot react

3. Repeat

 

While these increases may be minute, the aforementioned problem is that there is no engagement with the enemy that allows you to "tank" and take their shots, and I am afraid that this will only get worse with larger volumes of enemies spawning. Am I overthinking this?

 

Or is there something in the pipelines right now to allow us to actually take a single bullet without going down?

Edited by Somedude1000
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Jamescell

Jamescell

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Survival gameplay is generally more exciting than certain other gamemodes, but I think the majority of players run it for the rewards. Survival is one of the most lucrative mission types to run and personally, I find issue with such an imbalance in mission reward potential. A little more interesting? Sure, but the concept itself is a little ridiculous; Tenno space-gods having to run around collecting oxygen off of dead bodies... in an unrealistic scenario where enemies drop life support selectively despite all enemies needing personal suppies. Also, enemy factions shouldn't be so dumb that they send in troops to help Tenno survive. If oxygen was shut off and the area was quarantined we would be goners in a few minutes.

Edited by Jamescell
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Egg_Chen

Egg_Chen

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Posted (edited)

Thank you for the hard work Glen.

 

Survival is my favourite gamemode, despite how bad the spawns could be.

Keep up the good work, I have noticed recent improvements, looking forward to more tweaks.

 

Edit: The one that springs to mind was a recent fix, making Corpus drop as many LS as Grineer.

Elara went from playable in Solo only as Nekros to fully playable :)

 

PS. I'd love a multiplier for player numbers, so I could play Solo with the enemy count for 4 players ;)

Edited by Egg_Chen
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Grimm

Grimm

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These changes should go live on PC in today’s hotfix

 

15.3.0 soon tm. Glen can we expect it to lunch after maintenance on the site or will it be later or before?

 

i hope they make DE exclusive helmets would be epic to see glen running a mission with a horse head 

Edited by Grim-CM-
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Egg_Chen

Egg_Chen

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Don't downplay your role Glen, identifying and pushing for the changes is as important as the dudes making the change!

... but I'll definitely say a big thank you to the rest of the team, do appreciate this under the hood stuff, it is noticed :)

 

Edit: That means the testers and volunteers as well, thank you for improving my favourite gamemode.

 

Edit2: Damn I want the Aura from that screenshot, would be very interesting to see spawns map wide, understand it better, then kill them all faster :)

Edited by Egg_Chen
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VKhaun

VKhaun

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When doing all this, what are the thoughts towards affinity, enemy level and the timing on spawning different enemy types? MD, Excavation and especially Survival are very good early game leveling areas for recently forma'd weapons. It could have a large impact on the way people play if the XP changes significantly in either direction.

Edited by VKhaun
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Zareek

Zareek

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Posted

It should be said that it's not me that made the changes -- I'm just the passionate advocate for the game-type -- the real work was and is being done by a much broader team!

Could it be a solution to make other ways to obtain life support as well? Like hacking certain areas for a life support boost or slow the life support drain, or allow kubrows to find additional life support on fallen enemies?

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