The Recent Survival Changes Have Completely Messed Up Life Support Again.

[Carolly]

Yeah, I'm afraid I haven't been running solo survival since Spy 2.0 either =P

Now I'm just hoping we get a Spy 2.0 Tower - it's pretty much replaced survival for me outside of the Void.  I do enjoy a solo survival run now and then but I think the new Spy is a far superior solo experience, with comparable (if not slightly superior) rewards, even factoring in the bugged credit caches.

Edit: Thank you, thank you, thank you for continuing to listen to community feedback, you have no idea what a big deal it is :)  At some point a package of cookies may arrive at the London office next time I get off my butt and bake, just because.

Edited February 18, 2015 by TheDorque

[Kihana]

I'm not so sure it is right yet.

 

Have been running Cassini (Saturn, O Cells and 5xR5 packs).

It uses the asteroid Tileset, and every time I run it I barely make 15 minutes solo.

 

Some of the tiles in Asteroid don't have many spawn locations and enemy travel time is longer due to long, looping paths in some tiles.

 

I've found the same on Yemaja (same tile set). 20 kills per minute on Selkie vs 13 kills per minute on Yemaja. Enemy level is higher, but that shouldn't matter given the loadout I tested with and the timeframe I used for comparison. I look forward to more tweaks.

[r0ckwolf]

Some of the tiles in Asteroid don't have many spawn locations and enemy travel time is longer due to long, looping paths in some tiles.  I found a couple of elevators with no alternate paths still in there too.  We removed a few problem tiles from Asteroid survival and added more enemy spawn locations (unreleased), please let us know if it doesn't clear up after U16.

i don´t understand why you guys don´t just drastically increase life-support droprates, i can´t count the number of times i´ve seen this suggestion/feedback. Survival is not about surviving at all, it´s about managing that boring meter at the top. It´s kind of an arcade game mode and you should just treat it that way.

I wanna see how long i can actually survive against the toughest guys you can throw at me, instead of always having to extract because of the stupid life support running out.

 

Hope it didn´t sounded too snarky, it´s definetly meant as an serious suggestion!^^

 

greetings 

 

r0ckwolf

[ACorpse]

I had to use Nekros to do a syndicate 10 minute survival. When I tried it with a normal frame there were just not enough enemies and capsules to make it, I ended up falling 50 seconds short.

 

I camped in the exit room on 5 health but apparently the timer stops running once the air runs out (why?) so I had to quit out.

[Fleuretty]

Note that PLS drop rate is slightly lower in fixed-length 10 minute alerts, to make it a little more challenging surviving to 10 minutes (this may skew your tests if you're testing both).  The main life support pillar drop timing still remains unchanged from the early days of survival and the event.

yup, i've noticed since before 15.13 that 10min survival alerts had lesser drop rates, and that's fine because it's a 1-time mission that nobody has to spend more than 10min on anyway, so it's fine to keep that.

 

 

Some of the tiles in Asteroid don't have many spawn locations and enemy travel time is longer due to long, looping paths in some tiles.  I found a couple of elevators with no alternate paths still in there too.  We removed a few problem tiles from Asteroid survival and added more enemy spawn locations (unreleased), please let us know if it doesn't clear up after U16.

oh so that's why Asteroid feels like the hardest survival tileset. I prefer doing Galleon maps myself, since asteroid maps have annoying spawn locations that make it harder than normal even when doing basic camping. Good to know these are getting adjusted. :)

[Husla]

I had to use Nekros to do a syndicate 10 minute survival. When I tried it with a normal frame there were just not enough enemies and capsules to make it, I ended up falling 50 seconds short.

 

I camped in the exit room on 5 health but apparently the timer stops running once the air runs out (why?) so I had to quit out.

I don't understand why you can't extract when your LS goes. Quitting the game after x min/seconds is just a waste. All that wasted for no resources/credits. Such a weird move to make.

[Amazerath]

i don´t understand why you guys don´t just drastically increase life-support droprates, i can´t count the number of times i´ve seen this suggestion/feedback. Survival is not about surviving at all, it´s about managing that boring meter at the top. It´s kind of an arcade game mode and you should just treat it that way.

I wanna see how long i can actually survive against the toughest guys you can throw at me, instead of always having to extract because of the stupid life support running out.

 

I think I can explain that. If you are allowed to hunker down on a survival mission, then survival essentially becomes a defense mission with no defense objective. The idea behind survival (currently) is to force players to move from one point to another in order to keep life support from reaching 0%. If players are allowed to do that without being forced to move, then the mission loses it's dynamic and becomes tedious.

 

That does not mean, however, that the mission should force players to only run and activate life support units. It works best when it mixes short periods of holding a position with short periods of running towards the next life support unit. The variable that controls how long you can hunker down and how long you need to run is the personal life support drop rate. It should never be too low or too high because either of those situations will break the flow of the mission. But adjusting it is very difficult due to a number of other variables that influence drop rate, such as enemy spawns, enemy behavior, player weapons, player warframe powers, and others.

[ACorpse]

Failing *despite* activating all capsules *and* killing every enemy you encounter *and * collecting every single dropped pack is extremely frustrating though.

[Stormandreas]

Your kidding right? I'm soloing Survival missions no problem at all, with rank 0 warframes at that! (polarised :P) I can easily get to 20 without a nekros, and have never needed one for 10 minutes.

[SonicSonedit]

i don´t understand why you guys don´t just drastically increase life-support droprates, i can´t count the number of times i´ve seen this suggestion/feedback. Survival is not about surviving at all, it´s about managing that boring meter at the top. It´s kind of an arcade game mode and you should just treat it that way.

I wanna see how long i can actually survive against the toughest guys you can throw at me, instead of always having to extract because of the stupid life support running out.

 

Hope it didn´t sounded too snarky, it´s definetly meant as an serious suggestion!^^

 

greetings 

 

r0ckwolf

Yeah, that how original Survival Event was and that's why this event is known as one the few good events among the community. It's a shame that Survival turned into boring "keep the meter up" minigame instead of fun skirmish it was. 

Here is a memento from when survival was fun:

Right now survival is completely outclassed by Excavation - they are basically same modes (go to checkpoint and stay there killing enemies) but excavation, unlike survival, is fun - you have to protect an objective, there are more enemies (and more enemies = more fun, always) and rewards are based on your performance, not tied to time. If you are good you will get more rewards, if you fail to procect extractors, you will get less.

 

 

I think I can explain that. If you are allowed to hunker down on a survival mission, then survival essentially becomes a defense mission with no defense objective. The idea behind survival (currently) is to force players to move from one point to another in order to keep life support from reaching 0%. If players are allowed to do that without being forced to move, then the mission loses it's dynamic and becomes tedious.

It's quite the opposite, in fact. Survival is tedious now - because you stay semi-afk on life support capsule, lazily killing these few enemies which appear. Right now survival is extremely boring.

At the event you could care less about the capsules, but you had to show your best to survive, you had to show your best just to stay alive, and god that was amazingly fun - you wouldn't even notice the time fly by because of the non-stop action. And now? Now you just stay on capsule and watch the timer constanly because you are bored.

Yes, survival event was a defense mission without objective. And it was freaking awesome.

Edited February 19, 2015 by SonicSonedit

[taiiat]

-snip-

the Survival Event ultimately boiled down to being Defense. it was just Defense. the only difference being nonstop Enemies and your Objective had a lot less Health than otherwise because it had legs and held Weapons.

if all you want to do is stand there in a Monster Closet behind your protective Invulnerability, and glue your trigger down until it says game over, yes, Excavation will do a better job for you.

Survival forces Players to keep moving, while also having stents of the original Survival Event while you're fighting the Enemies at each group of Life Support Pods. (hopefully, as hopefully Enemies will Spawn well and start to pummel Players a bit compared to when moving between groups of Life Support Pods).

besides, we all know what the most memorable part of the Survival Event was.

:)

http://imgur.com/a/lyTWT

[Carolly]

Realistically, my move would be to remove LS drops from the Desecrate table and rebalance Survival.  The difference between having a Nekros and not having a Nekros is laughably huge; I ran a solo T1 on my Nekros earlier to 40 and I never needed to trigger a capsule.

Or hey, how about this; remove LS drops entirely, increase capsules by a factor of about three.  Boom, movement is necessary to handle Survival, Nekros is not.

Edited February 19, 2015 by TheDorque

[Amazerath]

It's quite the opposite, in fact. Survival is tedious now - because you stay semi-afk on life support capsule, lazily killing these few enemies which appear. Right now survival is extremely boring.

At the event you could care less about the capsules, but you had to show your best to survive, you had to show your best just to stay alive, and god that was amazingly fun - you wouldn't even notice the time fly by because of the non-stop action. And now? Now you just stay on capsule and watch the timer constanly because you are bored.

Yes, survival event was a defense mission without objective. And it was freaking awesome.

 

I'm not discussing whether or not current survival is fun or boring. That's not the point of this thread. I was offering an explanation about why excessive life support drops would not work well with the current survival logic.

 

If you want to discuss the fun/boring aspects of survival, either send me a PM (I'll gladly reply) or simply start a new feedback thread with your ideas about what is wrong, why, and how it can be made better. Talking about it here will just derail the thread and cause it to get locked.

[SonicSonedit]

Survival forces Players to keep moving

Standing half-afk on capsule is not exactly a definition of "keep moving".

[taiiat]

Realistically, my move would be to remove LS drops from the Desecrate table and rebalance Survival.  The difference between having a Nekros and not having a Nekros is laughably huge; I ran a solo T1 on my Nekros earlier to 40 and I never needed to trigger a capsule.

Or hey, how about this; remove LS drops entirely, increase capsules by a factor of about three.

Boom, movement is necessary to handle Survival, Nekros is not.

i am very fond of Desecrate no longer affecting Mods, Resources, or Life Support. instead being an actual Support Ability. Supporting Players with Health, Energy, Ammunition, healing Shadows, and should affect the Enemies in some manner - lots of choices here, perhaps debuffing them in lieu of fear of the corpse manglement.

however removing Life Support Drops means that Players can hide in a corner and never need to Kill any Enemies.

the Life Support Drops require you to Kill Enemies rather than AFK, and Life Support Pods require you to move rather than hide in a Monster Closet.

Life Support is to matter, but not be a limiting factor until you cannot Kill Enemies fast enough.

this is what Survival is, the more we can work towards this, the better.

[Carolly]

i am very fond of Desecrate no longer affecting Mods, Resources, or Life Support. instead being an actual Support Ability. Supporting Players with Health, Energy, Ammunition, healing Shadows, and should affect the Enemies in some manner - lots of choices here, perhaps debuffing them in lieu of fear of the corpse manglement.

however removing Life Support Drops means that Players can hide in a corner and never need to Kill any Enemies.

the Life Support Drops require you to Kill Enemies rather than AFK, and Life Support Pods require you to move rather than hide in a Monster Closet.

Life Support is to matter, but not be a limiting factor until you cannot Kill Enemies fast enough.

this is what Survival is, the more we can work towards this, the better.

You'd want to adjust spawns to compensate, of course.... but two points:

First, make sure only.... oh, 10-15% more LS drops than is needed so if you're not constantly moving, you're going to lose.

Second, make sure there are plenty of enemies between the players and the capsules.

[CaptainShortbus]

Seems to me they nerfed the capsules themselves, now they each restore 3% LS.

[(PSN)shadowraith_666]

I just finished an infested survival alert on venus and each time i ran the mission not only did LS stop spawning after 5mins the infested also stopped spawning as well, each time i could only do the mission for 10 mins then evacuate.

[Amazerath]

I just finished an infested survival alert on venus and each time i ran the mission not only did LS stop spawning after 5mins the infested also stopped spawning as well, each time i could only do the mission for 10 mins then evacuate.

 

If there's stuff not spawning then it's not a balance issue, it's a bug that needs to be fixed. But don't post it here on the feedback section. Each platform (PC/PS4/XBOX) has it's own dedicated bug report subforum. You'll need to use one of those otherwise it's unlikely that your report will be read by a dev.