Survival Balancing

[Specific.Zod]

LS drop rate is not really appealing IMO, less LS? kill more, kill faster. new enemy? shoot harder, cut sharper. they should add RANDOM event occured in the mode like:

- each 5,6,7,8,9,10 minutes (one of those) and countine on random time, the team will need to hack a console, grab sth, bring that thing to a specific location to unlock a gate/airlock in order to help Lotus mama delivering life support (i never understand where LS come from, space magic? or why enemies does not try to destroy it (invisible?)), and countinue random like that at random time. it's called survival for a reason, you do anything for your survival. i dont see that in current survial game mode now. Random is how it will work (after 5 min mark) because we will have to be in caution in order to be ALIVE. Lost in killing rage, forget to active/hacking node? die. Afk with WoF? die. Group camp and too far? die. i dont see a real threat lingering on my survival unless those OP eximus (again, shooting do the job), now in the current game.

- each 5,6,7,8,8,10 and countine on random time. boss will apeal and CAN DESTROY LIFE SUP. if you do not stop him fast enough, your life sup will run out -> extraction or die.

I want a real threat to my survival when i playing the mode, i want to be cautious and ready all the time or I WILL DIE. Now in the current survival mode, it's called exp farming mode for a reason.

p/s: i like the idea of random events occur. Just add random events in random time. no more farming mode.

[Powermonger]

On 8/25/2015 at 6:01 PM, Whirrrrr said:

Spawning fixes and tileset tweaks over the past year greatly improved flow by reducing enemy travel time to players, upped the intensity of attackers and grouped enemies together into more tightly packed squads, and increased availability of points during spawn selection. While we're happy with these changes to enemies, one side effect is that survival difficulty drifted over the past few months to where it is now; plentiful large canisters and no reason to use them, even when not trying to stockpile them.

 

 

 

 

We'd like to bring back the original frantic gameplay style of survival, dashing from room to room while facing hordes of enemies against the clock. We've tried this solo, in small teams and in full squads, everything from Apollodorus to T4 Survival, and as far as we can tell the changes feel awesome.

 

 

 

 

 

Upcoming Changes:

 

 

- Each PLS drop is now worth +4 seconds of life support time instead of +6 seconds

 

 

- Small reduction to PLS drop rate (around 90% of what it was)

 

 

 

 

 

We'd love to hear your feedback and will continue to test and tweak if needed.

 

All I know is I am about to stop playing Warframe, I am a new player. I just got out of failing a Rescue mission, I ran around like a fool for the better part of an hour looking for the hostages. The whole time I was attacked and mangled by your Groups of Squads and realized being a Tenno is about as good as being a piece of gun stuck on the bottom of someone's shoe, The Graneeer, the Corvus or whatever they are called, have all the stuff we do and more, Nothing says game is going to kill you constantly like having grenades chasing you around while you are trying to kill the never ending hoards of enemies you guys sent our way, And just when you think you got the area beat and can go and hack the console to bring alarms to reset and get a little rest, you realize that the grenades are stuck to your butt and about to go off, with no way to get them off, you just wait for them to blow up,  Now it may be fun to you guys in development land, and it may even be exciting to you guys with your million health Primes or whatever the top Warframes are in this game, but for a beginning I do not have much fun being tossed into a meat grinder after wave upon wave of Marines and Walkers that have lasers and a Tenno is supposed to be able to block the shots, but I was spinning my blades and watching as my shield was getting hammered down to nothing. So there is no real point in spinning them , now is there? Now this is assuming that the Marines and other enemies got the memo that if the alarms are reset, they are supposed to calm down and get off red alert,  Most times you can't even hide from them, it is like you never reset the alarms at all.

 

 

But you guys are talking about the survival missions, are ya now? Okay, I have lots to say about that meat grinder too. I figured out what to do with the life support and yes, even how to find the ones Lotus Bighead says she is dropping, I was doing great, I was catching them when dropped, activating them when  needed, And I even got some small ones that were dropped by the Marines when I killed them,  I got all the way to when the reinforcements arrived and I could go to Extraction............Then I chose to leave and let the reinforcements take over, what a surpirse it was when I had to jump through hoops just to get to Extraction point , all beat up and ready to leave, I followed the green indicator that is SUPPOSED to be the extraction point and imagine my surprise when I was right on top of it, and it was not there. How about that, ay?

Now to get that far was not with out it's cost. I spent all but a few 1,000 of my affinity reviving so I could keep going because I had gotten some pretty good mods and did not want to lose them. And I lost them anyway, WEEEEEE and woopty Doo.  Hey, I still had some affinity left, You guys should make the Survival even harder so you can completely drain players out of their affinity. Really, that is what I look for in a game, one that pounds me into the dust, Can't abort without losing all the rewards that I got during the beating, and takes every ounce of energy just to do one quest and even though I am a beginner, it pretends I am the best player in the universe and can handle 50 Marines with sticky grenades, walkers with the power to stomp a foot and set me on fire, OH, and speaking of fire, love your Marines with the flame throwers, guys. Deadly, very deadly, so between the fire stomping walkers, the flame thrower guys and the sticky grenades. I am lucky I have not thrown in the towel already. But I give games the benefit of a doubt, and think maybe I still need to practice,  But day after day after day I get killed by overwhelming forces and wonder how people play this.  The game says it is free and I am told everything is gettable for free by playing. Well, you probably can get it if you do not mind getting slapped around 1,000 each per mission.

 

Yes, if you look at my Tenno, I am level 17, Still an Excalibur,  I have mods but still have the beginning rifle, the same beginning pistol, I did manage to make a set of duel fire swords, I needed them for the Infected mission I did, but, other than that, i am no further ahead than when I started.  Somethings are senseless, others are just ridiculous. Getting mobbed in every single mission available is not my idea of entertainment. Not by a long shot.

 

 

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

Yes, usin affinity to revive is stupid. Survival that needs life support is equally stupid.

[--Q--uaint]

15 hours ago, Powermonger said:

 

I'd be willing to help a new player out some time. When I'm next on, I think I'll friend you and see if I can help you out.

[--RV--LadySpiderwick]

In regards to the current workings of the capsules and modules that drop from enemies an established strategy means that you'll never run out of them. I always pop one at 70% or lower and it's kept me going for a good while in survivals. However the enemy scaling is the problem that I have. I don't have all the fancy mods like Heavy Caliber and 2+ forma-d weapons to go in and kill like I'm an overpowered valkyr. I think that the enemy scaling could be worked to be better, as I've seen mentioned by FaitKO and her friends- introducing sortie like conditions, also the problem with the random drop chances for each 5min/10min, 15min and 20min etc can honestly be pretty crap. I love getting forma blueprints but sometimes it's just plain un-fun to just get fusion cores at rotations 1 and 2 in the first twenty minutes. 

 

[Noabettiet]

Of all the things that should be changed i don't think this is the one.

There is barely any reason to carry on going past the 20m mark, because of the ridiculous spike of difficulty / rewards for the effort radio.

[Foefaller]

3 hours ago, Noabettiet said:

Of all the things that should be changed i don't think this is the one.

There is barely any reason to carry on going past the 20m mark, because of the ridiculous spike of difficulty / rewards for the effort radio.

Well, there is for void missions. Tower keys, especially T3/T4, do not drop often enough that you can always go 20 and out for hours on end. (people with massive stockpiles of T4 endless mission keys from Draco notwithstanding)

That being said, I've always wondered if all the endless missions (including defense, interception and excavation) should change the Reward scheme from AABC for the first four rewards to simply ABC afterwards. Even if it just means getting the second B or C reward five minutes/waves earlier and still having to bail before earning another, that's still time saved from grinding for whatever reward brought you to that mission in the first place.

[Noabettiet]

Just now, Foefaller said:

Well, there is for void missions. Tower keys, especially T3/T4, do not drop often enough that you can always go 20 and out for hours on end. (people with massive stockpiles of T4 endless mission keys from Draco notwithstanding)

That being said, I've always wondered if all the endless missions (including defense, interception and excavation) should change the Reward scheme from AABC for the first four rewards to simply ABC afterwards. Even if it just means getting the second B or C reward five minutes/waves earlier and still having to bail before earning another, that's still time saved from grinding for whatever reward brought you to that mission in the first place.

there was this awesome thread in which someone suggested the rewards going as:

ABCA -> ABCB -> ABCC -> ABCA(again)

However weather that would work out or not, i have no idea. Personally to tired to think out a solution or think deeply to this.

[Repligon]

Survival needs a complete rework, not a nerf. It is so illogical it makes my head hurt.

Why enemies always turn off life support on a ship that carries important stuff? Why do they sabotage themselves? If it is not a problem, why they never do this on regular missions? Why can't we hack some console and reenable life support? How operative works without air? Why PLS lasts forever for enemies but only X seconds for us? Why space mom can teleport capsules but can't teleport air? How we breath all the air on a huge ship so fast? Infested carry PLSses? What is life support on a planet? Why enemies come to give us their PLSses instead of leaving us alone suffocating? This list can go forever.

I understand that air thing is needed to prevent us from hiding and waiting, but we can achieve this in much more logical way.

Change "air" gauge to "threat" gauge. Tenno's task is to be as annoying as possible. The higher threat level the faster operative works. Threat level decreases with time and once it hits zero -> mission ends. Killing enemies increases threat level but can't push it to max, only to ~50%. From time to time sub missions that can push threat level further are announced:

• Sabotage life support (lol)
• Sabotage reactor (causes envirnomental hazard)
• Kill VIP (some boss–like enemy)
• Hack console to call Twin Queens (or whoever else) and say dirty things.
• Destroy cargo
• Destroy weapon prototypes
• Break windows
• Steal money from highly sequred storage room (for corpus missions)
• Kill VIP's favorite pet
• Break cloning equipement (on uranus)
• Destroy tumors (on infestation missions)
• Wreck factory facility
• Take a round from that huge gun on grineer galeon, bring it to another room and make a huge hole in a hull.
• Hack ship administrator's computer, then bring data to another console and announce his browser history.
• Stop enemy engineers from fixing machinery you sabotaged.
• etc.

This will make survival more engaging, make it less reliant on RNG and will also dicourage camping.

Edited March 23, 2016 by Repligon

[Satinpuppies]

9 minutes ago, Repligon said:

Survival needs a complete rework, not a nerf. It is so illogical it makes my head hurt.

Why enemies always turn off life support on a ship that carries important stuff? Why do they sabotage themselves? If it is not a problem, why they never do this on regular missions? Why can't we hack some console and reenable life support? How operative works without air? Why PLS lasts forever for enemies but only X seconds for us? Why space mom can teleport capsules but can't teleport air? How we breath all the air on a huge ship so fast? Infested carry PLSses? What is life support on a planet? Why enemies come to give us their PLSses instead of leaving us alone suffocating? This list can go forever.

I understand that air thing is needed to prevent us from hiding and waiting, but we can achieve this in much more logical way.

Change "air" gauge to "threat" gauge. Tenno's task is to be as annoying as possible. The higher threat level the faster operative works. Threat level decreases with time and once it hits zero -> mission ends. Killing enemies increases threat level but can't push it to max, only to ~50%. From time to time sub missions that can push threat level further are announced:

• Sabotage life support (lol)
• Sabotage reactor (causes envirnomental hazard)
• Kill VIP (some boss–like enemy)
• Hack console to call Twin Queens (or whoever else) and say dirty things.
• Destroy cargo
• Destroy weapon prototypes
• Break windows
• Steal money from highly sequred storage room (for corpus missions)
• Kill VIP's favorite pet
• Break cloning equipement (on uranus)
• Destroy tumors (on infestation missions)
• Wreck factory facility
• Take a round from that huge gun on grineer galeon, bring it to another room and make a huge hole in a hull.
• Hack ship administrator's computer, then bring data to another console and announce his browser history.
• Stop enemy engineers from fixing machinery you sabotaged.
• etc.

This will make survival more engaging, make it less reliant on RNG and will also dicourage camping.

I absolutely love this idea. PLS DE.

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

55 minutes ago, Satinpuppies said:

I absolutely love this idea. PLS DE.

Actually threat lvl is great, except wen max threat lvl is reached, instead of mission ending....a self destruct sequence is activated giving operatives x amount of seconds to extract or the whole place is destroyed. 

[--Q--uaint]

5 hours ago, Repligon said:

Change “air” gauge to “threat” gauge. Tenno’s task is to be as annoying as possible. The higher threat level the faster operative works. Threat level decreases with time and once it hits zero -> mission ends. Killing enemies increases threat level but can’t push it to max, only to ~50%. From time to time sub missions that can push threat level further are announced:

This will make survival more engaging, make it less reliant on RNG and will also dicourage camping.

I like this idea, but could you elaborate on making the operative work faster?

[EnderDDT]

So what exactly is the goal of these changes?  Let me see if I have this understood correctly.

"one side effect is that survival difficulty drifted over the past few months to where it is now; plentiful large canisters and no reason to use them, even when not trying to stockpile them.  We'd like to bring back the original frantic gameplay style of survival, dashing from room to room while facing hordes of enemies against the clock."

 

So the solution that is proposed is to reduce the efficiency of PLS drops without any increase in the canisters?  This would fix the "plentiful large canisters and no reason to use them" issue, when it happens. That said, this is a "negative motivation", ie: your goal is to get away from something but not necessarily to push the game in a better direction instead. If the "positive motivation" (where you want the game to go) is truly "to bring back the original frantic gameplay" than this isn't likely to achieve it. Let me explain why.

 

Most of the time, in my experience, you are forced to leave when the RNG depletes you of all your canisters or when weaker players simply cannot hold their own against the enemies. The second scenario is somewhat frantic and fun (but less of an issue with a good group), but the first just feels like getting screwed over by arbitrary mechanics. If players know from experience that, even if they go searching out each of the canisters as a group, that the game will still end when the RNG turns against them (not counting Necros and such) then the mission becomes about luck rather than skill. I've never been in a match where getting to the goal was the problem,

 

I agree with others, just remove the PLS completely, but make sure that the canisters are powerful enough to do the job by themselves (with some leway for human error). First see how well this does the job then we can see about other options (such as adding "subbosses" or "lockdowns" or things more creative) once we have a baseline that isn't RNG/Necros/Hydroid dependent.

 

[--RV--LadySpiderwick]

13 hours ago, Repligon said:

Survival needs a complete rework, not a nerf. It is so illogical it makes my head hurt.

Why enemies always turn off life support on a ship that carries important stuff? Why do they sabotage themselves? If it is not a problem, why they never do this on regular missions? Why can't we hack some console and reenable life support? How operative works without air? Why PLS lasts forever for enemies but only X seconds for us? Why space mom can teleport capsules but can't teleport air? How we breath all the air on a huge ship so fast? Infested carry PLSses? What is life support on a planet? Why enemies come to give us their PLSses instead of leaving us alone suffocating? This list can go forever.

I understand that air thing is needed to prevent us from hiding and waiting, but we can achieve this in much more logical way.

Change "air" gauge to "threat" gauge. Tenno's task is to be as annoying as possible. The higher threat level the faster operative works. Threat level decreases with time and once it hits zero -> mission ends. Killing enemies increases threat level but can't push it to max, only to ~50%. From time to time sub missions that can push threat level further are announced:

• Sabotage life support (lol)
• Sabotage reactor (causes envirnomental hazard)
• Kill VIP (some boss–like enemy)
• Hack console to call Twin Queens (or whoever else) and say dirty things.
• Destroy cargo
• Destroy weapon prototypes
• Break windows
• Steal money from highly sequred storage room (for corpus missions)
• Kill VIP's favorite pet
• Break cloning equipement (on uranus)
• Destroy tumors (on infestation missions)
• Wreck factory facility
• Take a round from that huge gun on grineer galeon, bring it to another room and make a huge hole in a hull.
• Hack ship administrator's computer, then bring data to another console and announce his browser history.
• Stop enemy engineers from fixing machinery you sabotaged.
• etc.

This will make survival more engaging, make it less reliant on RNG and will also dicourage camping.

Honestly this could actually be a viable new gamemode if it weren't suggested as a change to survival

[(PSN)Gaelic-_-Flame]

I realize this is quite an old topic, but I still feel the need to share my thougths.

So I've been playing a lot of 2-man survivals with a friend, and we've been playing like this ever since we've started playing Warframe (almost two years ago now). I remember long time ago survivals were actually quite challenging to keep your Life Support up, you had to run around the map turning on the LS capsules, while killing enemies and trying to survive. I understand that part of that "harder" feeling was because our weapons, mods, frames weren't as powerful back then, but still it felt quite different than the current Survival.

In current Survival we can sometimes do 20-30 minutes without activating LS capsule even once. And that's without Nekros/Hydroid or any other loot frame. Of course it's RNG based, and sometimes we have to activate them more often, but most of the times we don't even have to move on to another room at all (or just change it once) during the entire Survival, and we've been doing a lot of 60 minute ones lately.

Personally I would significantly decrease the amount of LS drops from enemies, or maybe rework them entirely to act different compared to Capsules. For example instead of adding more time (LS percentage) they would rather slow down the timer for a short period of time, so you couldn't survive just by picking up LS drops alone. You still get advantages from killing enemies, but have to run around the map activating LS Capsules to extend your time. Of course the spawn time for Capsules might need to be adjusted a bit to be more often. Probably LS Capsules need to get more spawning places as well. Not just three rooms filled with Capsules, but rather spread them across the map more evenly to ensure fighting in all the different rooms/corridors on the tileset. There might be some other options, but I feel like we need to be forced to move more often during Survivals, rather than be casually sitting in the same room for extended periods of time.

I really want the frantic Survival to be back.

[viperveteran]

My main concern with these changes is the impact that it would have on solo survival runs.

If this was to be implemented I would hope that it would scale in accordance to the number of players in a squad. So in a full squad the proposed changes were in full effect, half a squad capsules would be worth 5 secs and drop rate would be 95% of what it is now and for the solo it would be 6 secs and 100%.

[SrSmocking]

On 25/8/2015 at 8:34 PM, MumblesMcphatty said:

And for the love of Lotus - if you're going to insist on making it more difficult - there must be reminders about sticking together!!

 

Multiples of them - excessive redundancy - Lotus audio - Ordis warnings - BIG NEON signs ... there should be no reason for anyone getting into arguments with randoms because they're completely convinced being 5 tiles apart doesn't affect the spawns. 

An option to force the team to stay together is just to make LS drain faster if the team is split up.

A possible fix to make Survivals more fun is to make the map smaller, and every time a Life support capsule appears it opens a section of the map, so the mission force you to stay around the Life support capsule until the next one appears.

[Irorone]

Survival by itself is goofy in its current iteration.  Let's turn off life support and then send in dudes with life support.  It's like saying you're gonna siege a castle by cutting off its supply line and then sending in soldiers with a nice lunch box.  I'm practically certain that the operative is Maroo and the only reason we get something every 5 mins is because she keeps the rest.  Finally these ships must be absolutely massive because just the military crews in them number in the thousands.

I'll be blunt I miss survival beta where you just had to keep killing till you were eventually overwhelmed (I realize that certain tweaks would have to be made though since there are frames that would cc/ aggro manipulate the mobs into infinity, though that already happens with the really high end players).

Edited March 27, 2016 by Irorone
grammar

[(XBOX)Snicket002]

On 3/21/2016 at 9:14 AM, (PS4)big_eviljak said:

Yes, usin affinity to revive is stupid. Survival that needs life support is equally stupid.

I see the reasoning for them making it cost affinity, especially when you only had 1 warframe, I mean if you used all your revives you couldn't even play anymore until the reset or if you spent platinum.

[(XBOX)Snicket002]

The thing I hate most about survival is instant failure if life support hits 0%, there's no last chance to get to extraction anymore, I know this was done to possibly avert an exploit using iron skin with rhino (since the health drain would not effect him, but it is really stupid.

[venon23]

On 23/03/2016 at 0:37 AM, EnderDDT said:

So what exactly is the goal of these changes?  Let me see if I have this understood correctly.

"one side effect is that survival difficulty drifted over the past few months to where it is now; plentiful large canisters and no reason to use them, even when not trying to stockpile them.  We'd like to bring back the original frantic gameplay style of survival, dashing from room to room while facing hordes of enemies against the clock."

 

So the solution that is proposed is to reduce the efficiency of PLS drops without any increase in the canisters?  This would fix the "plentiful large canisters and no reason to use them" issue, when it happens. That said, this is a "negative motivation", ie: your goal is to get away from something but not necessarily to push the game in a better direction instead. If the "positive motivation" (where you want the game to go) is truly "to bring back the original frantic gameplay" than this isn't likely to achieve it. Let me explain why.

 

Most of the time, in my experience, you are forced to leave when the RNG depletes you of all your canisters or when weaker players simply cannot hold their own against the enemies. The second scenario is somewhat frantic and fun (but less of an issue with a good group), but the first just feels like getting screwed over by arbitrary mechanics. If players know from experience that, even if they go searching out each of the canisters as a group, that the game will still end when the RNG turns against them (not counting Necros and such) then the mission becomes about luck rather than skill. I've never been in a match where getting to the goal was the problem,

 

I agree with others, just remove the PLS completely, but make sure that the canisters are powerful enough to do the job by themselves (with some leway for human error). First see how well this does the job then we can see about other options (such as adding "subbosses" or "lockdowns" or things more creative) once we have a baseline that isn't RNG/Necros/Hydroid dependent.

 

0t0  some one o says something intressting
yea remove the canisters and only lotus LS 
that way we need too move from room too room too activate them we dont need too camp
and we dont need nekros pressing 3 all the time
ls should work like  excavators but for time in mission 
imagine each LS takes 2:30 mins too end so u need 2 LS too make it too 5 mins  something like that will be cool

[--Q--uaint]

14 hours ago, Irorone said:

I'll be blunt I miss survival beta where you just had to keep killing till you were eventually overwhelmed (I realize that certain tweaks would have to be made though since there are frames that would cc/ aggro manipulate the mobs into infinity, though that already happens with the really high end players).

So much this.

 

My idea:

Survival no longer has PLS. Once the alarms are activated, you have 2 minutes until the life support has drained from the full map - and the first Lotus capsule is generated instantly like now.
Life support capsules drop every 2 minutes 30 seconds, and supply the room they're in (and maybe adjacent ones?) with LS for 3 min. This gives you at least 30 seconds of leeway in your current room to prepare before you run for the next capsule.
After the first 2 minutes, the current "out of oxygen" effect is applied to any player who's outside of the currently-supplied room(s).

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

6 hours ago, ChronoEclipse said:

So much this.

 

My idea:

Survival no longer has PLS. Once the alarms are activated, you have 2 minutes until the life support has drained from the full map - and the first Lotus capsule is generated instantly like now.
Life support capsules drop every 2 minutes 30 seconds, and supply the room they're in (and maybe adjacent ones?) with LS for 3 min. This gives you at least 30 seconds of leeway in your current room to prepare before you run for the next capsule.
After the first 2 minutes, the current "out of oxygen" effect is applied to any player who's outside of the currently-supplied room(s).

This would allow u to solo survivals too...so im down.

[(XBOX)Snicket002]

On 3/22/2016 at 4:25 PM, Noabettiet said:

there was this awesome thread in which someone suggested the rewards going as:

ABCA -> ABCB -> ABCC -> ABCA(again)

However weather that would work out or not, i have no idea. Personally to tired to think out a solution or think deeply to this.

DE would never give us that many C rotations so close together

[Wandrecanada]

Seems like the Air mechanic itself and the enemy scaling is the issue that causes camping in the first place.

My solution would be to add secondary fail mechanics into the game that forced movement and the sense of frantic wars against time.

Perhaps add some kind of bomb that would depressurize the whole ship causing a set loss of air so that you have to choose between losing seconds or staying safe?

Solo to group scaling could even include increasing instances of bombs or having multiples appear.

 

Lastly reduce infinite scaling and cap time allowed by stopping spawns at a certain time limit (so it follows the listed enemy ranks).  This also makes things like keys more normalized so you can craft a key drop rate and know what kind of reward is possible. It should be better for you to normalize challenge and allow you tailor the experience.

Edited March 29, 2016 by Wandrecanada
Clarity