Defense Experiments

[Hybridon 5,144]

Also in for U17 is tuned wave-lengths! Rather than early waves being super short and late waves being super long it's dialed back a bit: earlier waves are a little bit longer and later waves are shorter so that on average 20 waves requires about 25% less enemies to get through.

 

I just did three different 20-wave runs with a buddy:

 

Jupiter, IO: 23 minutes

Ceres, Casta: 32 minutes

Pluto, Outer Terminus: 28 minutes

 

I'm going to see about tuning the Corpus schedule up a bit -- Outer Terminus was easier than it should have been.

 

No offense, but 20 waves should take the same time as a 20 minute survival... we already have a worse drop table on most defenses with the same tier as survivals, you have an extra factor that is enemy scaling makes it easier for them to put down the cryopod and fail the mission, you have to wait 5 waves to be able to extract, while survival after 5 mins you are good to go when it gets too hectic...

 

I think defenses are in a desperate need of fine tuning in aspects of risk-reward, theres mostly much more risk in a defense for far worse rewards, especially considering how if you dont get what you want on rotation C, expect to spend another 30 minutes trying to get to that rotation C again... maybe.

[DJNeonNight 2,208]

 

 

 

The first iteration of this is ready to go in Update 17. I'll need to play more over to polish it further but so far it has the DERebecca seal of approval: "I'd definitely put this gas in my car."

 

Rainbow dash makes the news even better :3

 

Bad English, yeah, I know 

[ColtTownn 32]

No offense, but 20 waves should take the same time as a 20 minute survival... we already have a worse drop table on most defenses with the same tier as survivals, you have an extra factor that is enemy scaling makes it easier for them to put down the cryopod and fail the mission, you have to wait 5 waves to be able to extract, while survival after 5 mins you are good to go when it gets too hectic...

 

I think defenses are in a desperate need of fine tuning in aspects of risk-reward, theres mostly much more risk in a defense for far worse rewards, especially considering how if you dont get what you want on rotation C, expect to spend another 30 minutes trying to get to that rotation C again... mayb

Agreed!!! There isnt anything more frustrating then when you are doing a T4 D and end up failing the mission one to two rounds away from extract...

[MarioVX 52]

Many thanks, Glen! It's great to have some transparency on the more technical aspects of the game mechanics to understand what's going on. We players often feel a bit left in the dark about these things by you guys, and this is a great counter-example. Much appreciated!

[UltimateSpinDash 2,115]

Many thanks, Glen! It's great to have some transparency on the more technical aspects of the game mechanics to understand what's going on. We players often feel a bit left in the dark about these things by you guys, and this is a great counter-example. Much appreciated!

Yeah, but Glen does this quite often. I wish the other Devs would do the same.

Keep it up, Glen!

[(PS4)chewbaccachris 168]

Rainbow dash makes the news even better :3

 

You are as sad as me lol

[Rotorom 8]

Hmm, very interesting. Spicing up defense and survival missions is a plus. Can't wait to see what you have in store next Glen!

[(PS4)vollkerball 13]

A great and simple idea, with real results and that increases the dificulty im a progressive way!!!
very nice Drew

Edited August 3, 2015 by (PS4)vollkerball

[RafaelFuchs 806]

So, T1D with 2 people (rank 30 frost and rank 18 excalibur) who are fairly well of in the game, we got to 40 before it was getting dodgy. It wasn't because they were overwhelming us though. They started to chew through to globe fairly quick (my friend didn't know about the frost rework so his build had a fair amount of duration) and the heavies were starting to turn into bullet sponges for our not so serious weapons (grakatas for days). I personally like the changes so far, but a very slight change to how many heavy units spawn would be perfect in my opinion. 2-6 more per wave would do it. 

[Burnthesteak87 1,575]

The change is noticeable.

Anyway, without losing respect for all this Work (which I wouldn't even be able to deal with), imho the problem with Defenses isn't just the number of enemies spawned.

The only mechanic increasing pressure for a player is enemy's ability of soaking damage. (Since Snow Globe or heavy Crowd-Controls deal with the enemy damage, and Energy Consumables and generators deal with energy lack and sustain CC spam).
Examples are the level increase in enemies (armor and health pool) and some other mechanics like Infested/Ancient Healers' Aura and Nullifier's Globes.

There is no skill involved in this, just learning a rotation, a safe place to stay on and repeating, repeating, repeating.

Imho should be introducted more strategy and positioning in the system.