Survival - Upgrade (Remove Life Support)

[Innocent_Flower]

I want this so much, so very much.

 

Maybe I could get some prime parts without having to stay 40 minutes at a time. 

 

 

Edit: on looking at this further, I'd be extremely happy to have survival use a kill metre rather than a time one, but i am unsure if that warrants taking out life support. 

Edited December 26, 2014 by Innocent_Flower

[Infinite_TE]

Or you need to keep the kill meter high or you lose? and every 5 minutes you gain a reward like it is right now? otherwise it basically is defense

 

that just the same as the original survival concept.

 

-Infinite_TE 

[Phatose]

Interesting idea, but certainly not a survival rework.  At best it's corner camping endless exterminate easy mode.

 

Desperately needs a fail condition that isn't "You all died", else it becomes nothing more then "Camp forever, lol".  Start mode, find corner or perch, camp there forever.

 

Add in a second timed kill bar - and any time your kills is lower then that bar, you cannot revive and you steadily lose health, it starts to become something that might qualify as a game mode.

[Jax_Cavalera]

Would it be more fun if Caches appeared each time your Kill Meter filled up and you have a limited time to get to them before they self destruct.

They could function as either :

1. All rewards are delivered this way so if you want to get them you need to be mobile which would reduce the camping approach from a full time tactic.

2. Prime Parts/R5 Core Packs arrive in the temp. Caches and other rewards are auto-delivered to you on claim such as credits and resource rewards like Orokin Cells etc.

In the 2nd option players would always get some reward for filling their Kill Meter but the good stuff would only be obtained by reaching the temp cache in time.

Would this make it better..more challenging or just annoying?

Edited December 22, 2014 by Jax_Cavalera

[Makya]

Why not just add more focus onto excavations which are lifesupportless survivals with better spawn numbers?

[Jax_Cavalera]

I guess the main reason is that Survival missions are meant to have a focus on fighting enemies and shouldn't be a task driven gamemode. Excavations are a task driven gamemode where you have to gather enemy drops and reach objectives.

The current similarities between Excavations and Survival that you draw are further evidence as to just how out of place the Life Support is in such a gamemode. It is clearly distracting attention from where players were anticipating the focus of that gamemode would be when it was first announced.

[RafaelFuchs]

An hour without a nekros? vid or did not happen.

 

EDIT: now that i think about it, it should be possible but not solo.

T1S, Loki (disarm), quanta, marlack, Bo

 

solo ran 1h 2m and some seconds. it's totally doable. you need to know where to stand to make best use of how enemy spawning works and just cut them down as soon as you see them to get more to spawn. use to be able to 2-man about an hour without nekros on T4S too if you did something similar, but we waited for vor to show up before we started the mission though cause shield drones refreshing he shields always was a real pain in the rear...the new bombards and nullifiers add some serious chance to it though because if they happen to walk into the room with a full squad in the bubble you could easily get wiped by it.

[xkillo32]

Survival is about how long you can survive, not how long you can keep killing things. It also isn't ALWAYS necessary to bring a Necros, it's perfectly possible to do without one. If anything, to prevent the preference of bringing a Necros frame, do away with life support drops and supply more life support pods.

 

It's not a defense, it's not about clearing out their ship or even necessarily killing anything at all. It's about making a distraction while the lone tenno operative raids the ship. 

 

Your idea sounds like a fun gamemode though, definitely. But I wouldn't want the current survival replaced with it, god forbid you actually have to do something to keep the timer going.

exactly

how long you can survive

not how lucky you are with life support

[Loswaith]

Some major issues with this mode though:

1. It will simply be a camp mode.  Players will find a room with good spawn rate and never leave untll they have to, or even sit near extraction ("homers drinking bird" will be the best way to play it).  Survial forces you to move about at least some.

2. Why would tenno even bother doing this kind of thing?  Given the purpose is to just last as long as you can, being able to extract kills the survival notion of lasting untill you drop. Making it more a horde mode and not anymore survival than what we curently have.

3. Enemies arent designed to go above a certain level and when they do it forces people to use specific frames/weapons and the like.

4. This is to defence what raid was to capture, essentially the same mission with marginally different conditions (atleast raids made some thematic sence).

5. Typical Survival style play means the fail and end conditions are the same.  Your death.

Edited December 23, 2014 by Loswaith

[xkillo32]

Some major issues with this mode though:

1. It will simply be a camp mode.  Players will find a room with good spawn rate and never leave untll they have to, or even sit near extraction ("homers drinking bird" will be the best way to play it).  Survial forces you to move about at least some.

2. Why would tenno even bother doing this kind of thing?  Given the purpose is to just last as long as you can, being able to extract kills the survival notion of lasting untill you drop. Making it more a horde mode and not anymore survival than what we curently have.

3. Enemies arent designed to go above a certain level and when they do it forces people to use specific frames/weapons and the like.

4. This is to defence what raid was to capture, essentially the same mission with marginally different conditions (atleast raids made some thematic sence).

5. Typical Survival style play means the fail and end conditions are the same.

1. no it doesn't

in survival you camp in a room with a good spawn because nekros will take care of the life support

2. this is to replace survival

3. survival already forces people to use atleast a nekros

4. never played raid

5.?

[(PSN)PoeticProdigal]

So, a defense mission without a pod ?

Ditto.

[Phatose]

1. no it doesn't

in survival you camp in a room with a good spawn because nekros will take care of the life support

2. this is to replace survival

3. survival already forces people to use atleast a nekros

4. never played raid

5.?

 

The reality is you can't just camp in survival.  You'll still have to go out and pick up those life support pods.  That's important because it means you cannot just sit at one end of a hallway and just shoot, pretending you're a sentry gun from Aliens.  You do have to go out and expose yourself to enemy fire - else you don't get life support, and you lose.

 

The ideal tactic in a mode like this would be to find a one sided corridor and just stay there.  It's not coincidence that every mode in the game either forces us to keep moving - or to take a designer defined position which allows multiple modes of attack on us.  It's to prevent cul-de-sac camping.

[Rakshal]

The reality is you can't just camp in survival.

Actually, in void survival, if you get a certain room and you have a Loki, Nekros, Vauban, and Trinity you can spam Radial Disarm, Vauban's ult (don't remember the name of it), Desecrate, and Energy Vampire and you will have unlimited amount of life support with little to no threat to you.

[Jax_Cavalera]

Yep as many have stated the current survival is EXACTLY this.. you go into 1 room camp with dedicated Nekros Vaub combo and 2 others and farm till u get bored.

In the suggested concept I even brought up the idea of temporary caches where your team would need to retrieve them to get the reward for maxing out the Kill Meter.

This would encourage players to be more mobile as they progress. Life support with nekros and vaub actually makes you LESS mobile than the temp caches and the funny thing is life support brings NOTHING to the table for the bugs, issues and extra hassle involved.

T1S is probably fine to do with any frame you want for 1 hour .. the same can't be said for T4S. I've seen T3S done before nullifiers were introduced with someone using a mag and shade combo but with nullifiers in the mix.. that may no longer be a viable option.

I'm not sure I'm quite getting the quoted "Defense mission without a pod" implication there but at a guess I would respond with yep.. pretty much.. throw in the temp caches to evoke some mobility in the group and that's what you have yeah.

When Survival as first announced we all thought we were getting Defense without a pod so to see it released the way it was .. that was a pretty big let down.

Edited December 23, 2014 by Jax_Cavalera

[Krak_Nihilus]

2.  By removing the "Timer" out of the game-mode you will not be able to exploit how many enemies you may kill at a lower difficulty level just by spawn-camping them.

 

*a kill = a kill simple, you only get X number of kills per difficulty level before things become harder again making this less vulnerable to exploitation*

 

 

3.  If you have a strong team / solo frame, you can go through those early waves faster than those who have a weaker team/solo frame.  This would reward Veteran players with quicker turn-around and also give newer players something to aim for.. being able to fill their Kill Meter quicker.

 

Things to be considerate of:

 

1. Speed Farmers - There will likely be a trend to fill the first 4 Kill Meters as fast as possible and then claim out - REPEAT.

 

To help with this, some of the following actions could be taken :

 

   -  More rare rewards have a higher chance to drop as rotations repeat so if you were to do Rotation C for the 3rd time in One game, you would have 3x the chance of getting the more rare drop as the Kill Meter reward.

 

keen to hear other peoples thoughts on this and ways to ensure the speed farm plague wouldn't set in without crippling the fun of the surviving hordes of enemies.

 

About 2, why does everyone here seems to talk about some exploits that they forget to specify? Do you consider fast leveling of gear an exploit or what? Killing more low level enemies to get more affinity is not an exploit imo.

 

About 3, I don't consider my nuking Excalibur to be stronger than my utility Loki. From my experience so far veterans* tend to go for utility and new players tend to go for nuking evrything around them. Your game mode idea does not reward veterans, it rewards nuking and press 4 to win, which I'm sure you'll call an exploit the second this thing is implemented.

 

*disclaimer: I am not a veteran and am not to be considered one, but I have seen quite a lot of them ingame and they rarely used nuke frames, so please no 'stfu your not veteran you has no excal prime' stuff and the like, ok? Thank you.

 

What's wrong with speed farmers? If you don't want people leaving after first 5 minuts because cred tax on dark sector is low than don't go with randoms, I have already learned that and so should you and every 'veteran' player. If you already don't play with randoms in not endless missions (ext/spy and such) but the idea that someone can do 3 t3 capture in ~6 minuts annoys you, maybe you should calm down a little and stop telling people how they should play?

 

 

Interesting idea, but certainly not a survival rework.  At best it's corner camping endless exterminate easy mode.

 

Desperately needs a fail condition that isn't "You all died", else it becomes nothing more then "Camp forever, lol".  Start mode, find corner or perch, camp there forever.

 

Add in a second timed kill bar - and any time your kills is lower then that bar, you cannot revive and you steadily lose health, it starts to become something that might qualify as a game mode.

 

That is basicly survival but instead of gathering life support you gather kills. Still if you don't have enough of it you die, with only difference being that you can't revive when kills are too low but you can get them back up again (unlike life support, which currently if you lost you lost it forever and you need to run for your life).

 

Edit: Added a disclaimer.

Edited December 23, 2014 by Krak_Nihilus

[Krak_Nihilus]

Adding to my previous comment, I forgot to mention that I do like the idea of it. As a seperate gamemode but not a survival replacer.

[DBugII]

I strongly agree with this idea.

[FattyKracken]

 A suggestion to your idea, have it be KPM (kills per minute), after time goes on, it requires slightly less KPM per five mins as enemies start to increase in difficulty.  that way its less like defense, and more teamwork is needed, as if everyone is only semi spread out, spawns get Deluded and thus requires people stay a little bit closer together.  the ammount of kills that exceed KPM has a slightly higher chance for better loot, but also increase spawn rate and level of enemy's in return.  thus if your pushing really hard, you have a better chance at getting better loot, but also the increased chance at not reaching this goal.  that way frames that are all about killing, has to watch it slight to make sure they dont have emey's to difficult for the rest of their team to handle.

[fatpig84]

This would only be applicable if there is another fail condition.

Right now most missions have 2 fail conditions like Capture (target escape or you died), MD (terminal blown up or you die). interception (less points or you die) etc

 

So this will fit with the current scheme of things.

 

 

You have to kill X amount of enemies within a designated time frame, like 100 enemies within 10 minutes. If you fail to do so you automatically fail. Period.

 

If you finish 100 enemies in 10 minutes, you are given a short grace period to rest like 10 secs to rest and loot (and rewards are rewarded during that time) before an even harder wave appears.

 

This does 2 things.

 

1) Prevent it from turning into a turret warframe where everyone just stands there and shoot stuff.

They don't even have to move except pick up drops.

 

2) Encourage ability spam !

Yes we should have more games that force us to use our abilities.

 

3) Increase the value of mobility skills and frames.

Of course you can't go slow, you gotta go fast in this mode.

 

 

 

P.S. It should not be a survival replacement, but a new game mode.

Moar game modes = less cluttered RnG tables dawg !

Edited December 23, 2014 by fatpig84

[Allucross]

Can be called mass murdering

We kill them

We get rewards

[Jax_Cavalera]

Hey there Krak, thanks for the feedback. Let's take a quick look over the issues you highlight with the gamemode and see if there are some tweaks to resolve them..if they require resolution.

With your Question about 2. (what's wrong with speed farming) I am going to say the problem is the very reason we have Nullifiers on Cereberus and why we got a callus Nerfing on 4 frames due to Viver.

As a player I have no issue with obtaining Rep and XP quickly, however DE have labeled this behavior as exploiting game mechanics and continue to find ways of discouraging it.


Not being a veteran player means we are getting a unique perspective on the game from you, which is really cool. If you did have the opportunity to do a lot of runs with other Veteran players it would become clear that Excalibur is a deadly frame beyond your wildest imaginations.

Being privileged to converse with the rest of the Design Council in game we often discuss new potent frame combinations among a lot of things talked about. Excalibur .. like loki are not much use on their own but when you mix utility with damage frames.. this is when the real magic happens.

It may take time to learn which frame combinations can make for the best results and that is really why it may appear Veterans run Utility over Damage..which I can confirm to ease your curiosity is not true. We use all different frames at different times to achieve specific results.


I don't remember telling anyone how they should play, I'm not certain how that conclusion was reached. We are here all discussing the concept of the proposed gamemode change/introduction to determine what tweaks need to be put in place. There is no need to feel like anyone here is telling you what to do as that would be misunderstanding the evident purpose of this topic.

So to recap on the points you make :

- Veterans do run Excali AoE damage frames.. it is why Viver caused so many issues.

- The proposed gamemode upgrade actually lets players handle the enemies however they want whilst avoiding the pitfalls that caused Viver to be an issue. If you consider caches for rewards over just giving them to the players.

- I can understand the feeling of being a newer player and having veterans 'Lording' their seniority over me so I do get why that would be frustrating.

The Disclaimer does unfortunately attempt to avoid the fact that the veteran players have a lot more experience which is why they are able to produce such unique and powerful combo-squads and typically get high tier rewards before newer players.

The issue you highlight with Phatose' post was addressed in an earlier post that lists the proposed introduction of Temp Caches.

Edited December 24, 2014 by Jax_Cavalera

[Jax_Cavalera]

A suggestion to your idea, have it be KPM (kills per minute), after time goes

I think I understand the gist of what you are saying but parts are a little unclear. Are you able to breakdown your idea into dot points that cover each Mechanic and how it affects the gameplay experience/purpose of having it in there please.  I would like to better look over the ideas in a more clear format if you wouldn't mind that'd be awesome.

Fatpig84 :

This issue with adding a timer to get kills is that it would continue to keep the existing problem we have with current survival.  Unreliable spawn rates cost games at no fault of the players.

I do think a secondary goal would be nice provided it didn't re-introduce the same problems that we are trying to remove from the game in a different form.

What is your opinion on temp Caches for rewards as explained in an earlier post of mine?

Edited December 24, 2014 by Jax_Cavalera

[Loswaith]

Actually, in void survival, if you get a certain room and you have a Loki, Nekros, Vauban, and Trinity you can spam Radial Disarm, Vauban's ult (don't remember the name of it), Desecrate, and Energy Vampire and you will have unlimited amount of life support with little to no threat to you.

In all fairness this is a very specific squad makeup to achieve the no movement.  The recent Viver has shown that even interception (arguably a mission that you need to move around for) can be won without moving around aswell with a specific squad build (as can many other interceptions too).  These are far from the norm for squads though and for the most part a just kill everything would mean any group is best as static position.

 

 

As to the temp caches, this is what the life support capsules already achieve (actually they seem more like the extractors in excavation without needing to defend them).  For many players the rewards arent the point its the affinity gain (thats why sechura is popluar dispite extreemly high taxes).  Caches can still be ignored by the players where as the life support really cannot be ignored without a very specific group build.

 

All in all I cant say I am againt having these horde style missions as well.  I'm personally all for more mission types even if they are essentially just a different dressing on a mission style (RIP raid missions).  Though im more for missions that make sence that Tenno in the kind of world setting would do.

Edited December 24, 2014 by Loswaith

[Otis.Driftwood]

Survivals are fine as they are if you:

stay in a room with a few good entrances

don't run room to room

KEEP THE TEAM TOGETHER <---  most important.

The moment the team splits up the following happens.:

enemy spawns split between the 2 locations and will not spawn while people are moving through the areas.

your nekros can not desecrate outside of 50 meters.

Every time you or one of your team mates go into another room you remove an enemy spawn point and the game has to create another.

Found this on the wiki and is the best advice ive ever gotten

[Vyrn]

There are two major problems I have with this, but they might have been brought up by others already.

 

One: I kinda like current Survival. There's a little emphasis on team composition and strategy, and there is usually lots of stuff going on. Also, the "need" for Nekros is often a bit exaggerated. When I run solo, I generally don't have any problem hitting 40 minutes, and 60+ is really more about staying alive than LS drops. To be fair, though, more LS does drop in solo, but I still think it's not as bad as people say. If in a team, just stay together in one room. Holding from a single position (I tend to just hide behind Electric Shields as Volt) keeps all enemy spawns close, especially in large rooms. That makes spawns consistent, maintaining high enemy flow.

 

Two: If Survivals were changed to this, the game type would suffer from the same problem that plagues Interception--Loki, Ash, Limbo, and Valkyr could make it a walk in the park. Loki and Ash can just turn invisible to kill without getting hit, Limbo can kill from the Rift (takes longer, but it works), and Valkyr can just kill in Hysteria. Assuming players are careful, they can go on virtually forever with little to no difficulty.

 

One final thing, actually. The name of the game is "Survival," not "Exterminate." Your goal is to survive while distracting the enemy, not decimate legions of troops. Granted, that's basically what Survival is at the present, but it's still explained differently.

 

At best, I'd like for something similar to this to be presented as a new gamemode, but I feel it should not replace Survival.