Survival Balancing

[low1991]

This, This, So much This. Either that or make a set enemy type drop LS, like in Excavation.

Wouldn't this invoke Excel #4 Spammer hiding behind some door?

 

1 thing for sure, nerf oxygen % or drop rate? hell no.

[FelisImpurrator]

along with this, it may be good to... either increase the Chance earlier, or increase Enemy Density faster.

as when the PLS rate isn't terribly high, getting started on a Survival can be finicky. i.e. if Enemies one time Spawn a bit less than average you could find yourself leaving very early.

once it's established, then absolutely, Life Support has been very easy.

so as long as we compensate a bit for the start of Survival so that the lower Enemy Density doesn't become a problem, it should be alright.

Here's a bit of a crazy idea.

 

So during Ash Prime's drop week, I was running some T3S for the Systems, and I noticed something I haven't been able to reproduce since. Sometimes, I would join a Survival run, and for some reason spawns would be very slow at the start - maybe first 10-15 minutes - BUT PLS capsules all restored 20%. By about 20 minutes, it would normalize spawns and the super capsules would disappear completely, going back to 6%.

 

What if PLS for the first ten minutes actually did this intentionally, but over time, slowly start giving less and less down to a minimum of 3% - bottoming out at the point where enemy spawns reach their peak flow rate? The fewer enemies there are, the more air there is in each drop. Would solve the start problem, and possibly address the issue in solo.

 

Also, conversely - what if the drop chance on PLS increased the lower your air count went? And I mean - extremely high, maybe above 50%, if you're in the single digits. That way, RNG would be less prone to utterly sinking an entire run in a matter of seconds as twenty enemies die without a single drop on your last half-minute of air.

 

-

 

There are also two things I'd like to see changed about hitting 0% air.

 

One - can we get a grace period, specifically for situations where the air hits 0% partway through activating a capsule? At least a check that ensures LS will hold at 0% until the animation is complete, and refill as normal. Last-ditch recoveries shouldn't be nearly impossible.

 

Two - in solo, being out of air doesn't trigger "run to the exit". It's an instant failure condition. What's the point of this? Can't we just have the same chance to run to the end before we die? Paired with the lack of a 0% buffer and the tendency for solo spawns to be far too low to start with, this is not a fun situation.

Edited August 26, 2015 by FelisImpurrator

[Ziegrif]

Against it.

If you want to add frantic into survival add more enemies.

LS is pointless busywork designed to get you out of cover which it doesn't even do now nor will it do if it's nerfed. Because Nekros is a thing.

If you want to push the player overwhelm them.

Running out of LS just feels like BS.

Also solo needs more enemies. First 10 minutes are just boring. Need to actually wait in a room for the troops to arrive.

 

Last time I had fun in a survival was in a Nightmare survival where when I opened the first door 20 grineer started shooting at me.

That was nice.

Edited August 26, 2015 by Ziegrif

[Snowmotion]

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.

 

"Dashing from room to room" still often leaves me twiddling my thumbs for twenty seconds while I wait for the enemies to figure out where they're next going to approach from or catch up because they decided to spawn behind me.

I can't wait to suffocate while I die of boredom!

 

This sounds like a bandaid for a perceived issue where you should be looking at a deeper running fix to accomplish what you're aiming for - or potentially an overhaul to permit you to make that 'pressure' you talk of a core part of the game mode, not just an offputting afterthought.

 

While I speak for myself here - If you're going ahead with this though, I truly do hope that you plan to make enemy spawns more aggressive in their placement or permit us to take optional challenges such as having the spawns work as if we had a full team, as I currently find the existing endless game mods to be more necessary evil to partake in. When they're ultimately reduced to the thing some of us do to level a weapon or frame for having fun with, changes like this won't add excitement.

 

They'll make it more of a chore.

[ThunderZsolt]

Not sure about reducing the drop rate, theres already too much of a perception that Nekros is is a must-have for survivals...

 

Infact, had an idea;

 

Remove PLS entirely.

 

Instead of restoring a set amount of remaining time, using the LS capsule will simply prevent the mission from failing until the next one arrives.

 

When the next one arrives, players have a certain amount of time to activate it before mission failed.

 

This will require players to move at some point, will end those boring tunnel camps everyone only ever seems to do, and it removes the dependance on loot drops for the mission to continue, and it kills the noob trap of players just using the capsules as soon as they arrive without realising what it actually does.

 

+1 to this. Really, this wold make the teams move out of the tunnels they are camping, not reducing the rate - camping teams already have a nekros to keep them supplied

[cobra302]

What I miss about survival? Thrill.

 

Why do I get more thrill out of a breaking window in a corpus ship than from a whole session of survival?

Simple. The environment doesn't feel threatening. If every player does their job right, I, as a player, never make the experience of getting choked out of a room. Just kill enough enemies and pop enough capsules and everything is just fine.

 

Why do I only get thrilled when the mission has already failed to the point where I have to evacuate? That is simply wrong.

Compare this to hive missions. Combat in the broken segments of the ship, where the atmosphere is being sucked out, is super thrilling.

Im under the constant pressure of my shields being drained and I have visual and audio clues what's going on.

It's atmospheric and I don't get this from survival.

 

Don't get me wrong. Survival does a lot of things right:

I can roam around freely. The enemy is coming at me from all sides. I have to consider something besides fighting.

 

Still, freedom of movement is not purposeful in survival. You can camp or you can stray away or split up from the group.

The only purposeful movement in the mode is to go to a place with good spawns to milk the enemies for their LS.

Meanwhile Lotus is flooding the place with capsules of her own. It's almost comical.

Guess what? Lotus deliverd us 20 capsules but we only used three and then dumped the rest when we left because we could pilfer all we needed from our enemies.

 

The nerf is good and well but it isn't enough.

 

My proposed changes:

1)The whole level is constantly being drained (like in hive missions).

2)Enemies don't drop life support at all.

3)There is only one Lotus capsule active at any given point in time.

4)Every capsule provides 30 seconds of the tile it's in not being drained.

5)Once it is used up Lotus will beam another capsule into the level and the team has to make its way there.

6)The AI will frequently try to lock the team in and block doors in the teams path.

 

This should:

1)Make the teams movement as a unit more purposeful and mission-oriented.

2)Make teams less dependent on Oxyfarm-frames.

3)Create more tension and atmosphere.

 

Building on the ideas suggested above. It appears there are two major complaints which players would like addressed. First, the lack of stress and second the splitting up of players when people go off to play solo in the squad mission. I think my suggestion would go far to address both of those concerns.

 

Suggestion: Make the Lotus Life Support Capsules function like the heaters on the ice planet. When you are within a certain radius your oxygen is normal and sustained by the capsule. Beyond that radius your oxygen / health / shields experience a constant drain as they do when the mission is failing. Instead of capsule activation adding duration to the current oxygen over the entire map, which by the way makes no sense, it would instead start a fixed duration of time that standing within its radius provides oxygen. For example, a capsule is activated and lasts for 3 minutes. During those 3 minutes players can stand within its radius and all things are normal. Leave the radius and your oxygen / health / shields are drained. Players can leave the area to kill enemies or pickup drops but they would be in the hazard and have to return to re-up their oxygen / health / shields. After the 3 minutes the capsule disappears and that area becomes a hazard once again just like the rest of the map. The players are forced to go to another capsule and activate it. It could be designed so that only one capsule can be activated at a time or so that several (perhaps with a cap at 4?) can be activated. To be clear, the entire map is a hazard except within the radius of currently activated capsules which makes more sense anyway if the player is to believe life support has been turned off everywhere. After all activating one life support oxygen capsule and having it suddenly make the entire world (all map tiles) replenished with oxygen isn't that logical. Yes, I know not everything is based on logic but if survival is being re-worked then making it a little more logical wouldn't be a bad idea.

Edited August 26, 2015 by cobra302

[Egg_Chen]

Edit: Completely removed my post, after running a Tower Survival discovered how bad the gamemode has been neutered.

Edited August 27, 2015 by Egg_Chen

[Pandoran_Stallion]

I'd prefer removal of pods (or 1 pod per 5 minutes) and favor of PLS-only. I think that player skill when it comes to killing enemies does matter, and skillful players will be able to keep the kill count up so they can rely on LS pods as enemies become more difficult to kill. That would also promote teamwork within squads to reach maximum killing efficiency and relies more on skill and seeking enemies out than camping.

I also miss the old Defense maps being used for Survival. Although I see potential for abuse, I liked having players in relatively close proximity. It forces teamwork and simplifies spawns. Perhaps enemies could have little to no LS drop rate when in spawn rooms to prevent abuse. I understand it would undermine a lot of the hard work the team has out in, though, so as long as this current form is improved I'm all for keeping it.

[Deus_X_Machina]

Everything that promotes the use of specific Frames for the use of the team - Nekros for example, and were powers of other frames work against the team (Slow Nova for example, because sometimes it can hinder the spawn approaching) is bad design in Survival.

 

Stop the Personal Life Support modules altogether.

A lot of ideas are tossed around for that.

 

Make us run from one fixed place to another, for our life support, with tension being scarce resources (Shield and Life were an example from someone above, through air being sucked out, and they not regenerating) in between the life supports. Or the life supports could work like air towers on the ice planet, with finite resources. Once its empty, you need to find another one, or you will slowly loose shields and not regenerate them.

 

You want to keep us moving? Then do not let the life support walk to us to be slaughtered. It doesn't make sense anyway. If they stopped coming, we'd be out of air very fast. Bad defense strategy.

 

Instead they could try to attack the life support. Best not have it with shooting it, because that would bring another Defense / Excavation situation, were you want someone to make a defensive shield around it (Frost for example), but more a direct sabotage, were they try to interact with the capsule (like in Interception), and when they succeed the capsule stops working, either for a while, or until we activate it again (which could take a bit, a minigame for example).

 

There might also be special units, like in excavation, that can sabotage the capsules in a way, that cannot be easily rtepaired - e.g. blow them up.

 

So many posibilities, but tweaking the existing situation will not reach your target.

[BrazilianJoe]

No more PLS. Once a Life Support capsule drops, players have 1-2 minutes to activate it. 

Failing results in "mission failure". ONLY THE LAST REWARD IS LOST.

 

THis ends the LS availability difference from 1/2/3/4 player team, forces players to move around the level. 

[cobra302]

... Make the Lotus Life Support Capsules function like the heaters on the ice planet. When you are within a certain radius your oxygen is normal and sustained by the capsule. Beyond that radius your oxygen / health / shields experience a constant drain as they do when the mission is failing. Instead of capsule activation adding duration to the current oxygen over the entire map, which by the way makes no sense, it would instead start a fixed duration of time that standing within its radius provides oxygen...

 

 

...Or the life supports could work like air towers on the ice planet, with finite resources. Once its empty, you need to find another one, or you will slowly loose shields and not regenerate them...

 

Well its nice to see that at least one other person seems to think my idea of having the life support capsules function similar to the ice planet heaters is a good idea.

[Instinction]

Survival is not a fun mode. The air mechanic is not a fun mechanic. Do I have any ideas to improve upon the current mode? No. In my opinion, it needs not a rework, but a complete overhaul.

The mode for what it is right now is not fun due to the core mechanic, and no amount of alteration or slight tweaking will change that.

Until the current core mechanic is completely and totally changed into something entirely different, my clan mates and I will continue to say, "Ew." in chat anytime we have to do a survival mission (which is only by complete necessity or due to a reward, as otherwise we avoid the mission type at all costs).

[Telogor]

Am I the only one who thinks these changes are terrible?  Already, a solo player has to scamble all over the place for the LS, and it's not fun at all.  When I take nearly-maxed gear into an Apollodorus run to finish off the last few levels, it's way too easy to run out of LS.  Running all over the place for the big capsules is NOT fun, and is not good gameplay.  It separates the team, decreases the enemy spawn rate, and makes it so that people need to take a Desecrate/Despoil Nekros if they want to have a good run.

[taiiat]

What if PLS for the first ten minutes actually did this intentionally, but over time, slowly start giving less and less down to a minimum of 3%.

Also, conversely - what if the drop chance on PLS increased the lower your air count went? And I mean - extremely high

One - can we get a grace period, specifically for situations where the air hits 0% partway through activating a capsule? At least a check that ensures LS will hold at 0% until the animation is complete, and refill as normal. Last-ditch recoveries shouldn't be nearly impossible.

Two - in solo, being out of air doesn't trigger "run to the exit". It's an instant failure condition. What's the point of this? Can't we just have the same chance to run to the end before we die?

perhaps. would probably work, alleviating issues with getting started being the most difficult part of the Game Mode potentially ;)

well, it doesn't increase extremely high, but the more 'in dire need' of Life Support you are, the higher the Chance is for them to drop.

idunno if making it more extreme is necessarily a good thing. some Players already take advantage of the increased Chance at lower Life Support levels and get really butthurt if someone raises Life Support higher.

ideally, i'd rather any level of Life Support that isn't 'you ran out' to be equal so that Players don't feel like they need to be at a certain level.

it does that already. it's not very reliable in Multiplayer though, due to Latency(Clients don't exactly have an accurate representation of the current Life Support situation, it'll always be ~1/8-1/6 of a second behind. more if the Match is incredibly laggy). but if you're activating a Life Support Pod, it will hold at 1% until that finishes.

Survival instant fails if you run out of Life Support within the first 5 Minutes(presumably 10 for Alerts but i can't exactly test it any time i want, don't run out!). after that it shouldn't (and doesn't, in my.... much too extensive testing history) cause an instant fail.

-snip-

unfortunately, this makes Greedy Pull a new path of least resistance. never have to leave the safe zones.

and aside from that, in order for such a thing to work, the safe zones need to be quite sizable, like, 100 Meter Radius.

if Players are specifically forced to not be able to move, that forces everyone to play Survival like a Facebook game. we don't want to do that.

I'd prefer removal of pods (or 1 pod per 5 minutes) and favor of PLS-only. I think that player skill when it comes to killing enemies does matter, and skillful players will be able to keep the kill count up so they can rely on LS pods as enemies become more difficult to kill. That would also promote teamwork within squads to reach maximum killing efficiency and relies more on skill and seeking enemies out than camping.

Life Support Pods are most useful for the Players that aren't abusing AFKFarming methods, though.

those that do look to abuse this Game Mode wouldn't notice any difference, as the ground is already completely covered with Life Support for them(completely) - while Players playing normally may need them from time to time.

Edited August 26, 2015 by taiiat

[FelisImpurrator]

well, it doesn't increase extremely high, but the more 'in dire need' of Life Support you are, the higher the Chance is for them to drop.

idunno if making it more extreme is necessarily a good thing. some Players already take advantage of the increased Chance at lower Life Support levels and get really butthurt if someone raises Life Support higher.

ideally, i'd rather any level of Life Support that isn't 'you ran out' to be equal so that Players don't feel like they need to be at a certain level.

it does that already. it's not very reliable in Multiplayer though, due to Latency(Clients don't exactly have an accurate representation of the current Life Support situation, it'll always be ~1/8-1/6 of a second behind. more if the Match is incredibly laggy). but if you're activating a Life Support Pod, it will hold at 1% until that finishes.

Survival instant fails if you run out of Life Support within the first 5 Minutes(presumably 10 for Alerts but i can't exactly test it any time i want, don't run out!). after that it shouldn't (and doesn't, in my.... much too extensive testing history) cause an instant fail.

The problem is, if it's equal chance at all levels, RNG can screw you over at the last few % even harder.

 

Also, I've never had it stay at 1... in solo. I haven't tested this in multiplayer because I'm still a mostly solo player, and the only time it would ever go that low is a solo run anyway. Last few times I attempted, it went below 1% and cut off the air. Or maybe it was because the LS was triggered at 0%, which bypasses the safe zone - in that case, make the safe buffer something that outright reverses the decompression if it kicks in before the capsule's animation finishes, no matter what.

 

As for the instant-fail... damn, I didn't know that. Makes sense though, because the first five minutes IS the hardest.

[BhruicDearg]

it does that already. it's not very reliable in Multiplayer though, due to Latency(Clients don't exactly have an accurate representation of the current Life Support situation, it'll always be ~1/8-1/6 of a second behind. more if the Match is incredibly laggy). but if you're activating a Life Support Pod, it will hold at 1% until that finishes.

 

No, that's not how it works.  If you start activating a pod and it hits 0% once that happens, it will go back up to 2% and continue to count down - since activation takes 2 seconds, that's enough time to finish the activation.  If you try and activate one when it's at 0%, but before they've disappeared, it definitely can disappear before you finish "starting" the activation.

[BlackCoMerc]

Barely survived 5 minutes solo. Had to use two supply drops for O2. And this was Saryn, mind you, blowing up whole crowds at once. 

 

So here is yet another mission I will no longer play. Let's see, so far, that's:

 

-Exterminate

-Sabotage

-Deception

-Rescue (because no one - and I mean no one - actually LIKES escort missions; they are so bad this has been a Trope/Meme for ten years)

-And now, Sabotage

 

So tell, DE, what's left? For me to go play another game? Good...because that's where I am going, and I plan to take my money with me.

[Sibernetika]

I hate it when I'm right.. I knew solo would be screwed over again like every damn time you guys go and fiddle with the drop rate you have to tinker with solo as well, only to readjust it back to what it practically was.. cant u guys for once just leave solo alone?

 

T4S run 10:08 minutes with tigris blowing stuff to smithereens for more drops and that was about as far as I got

Edited August 26, 2015 by Sibernetika

[Darkmoone1]

I feel that Survival was largely already well made. If there was any change that had to happen in Survival, it happened in the wrong direction.

 

Nekros will now become more needed than ever before now. Was it possible to keep the air at 100% in Survival at some points? Yes, but this was because of multiple reasons. First off, high level or veteran players would play in levels with equipment way too powerful for the mission they participated in. This allowed them to easily leap from room to room, destroying every single enemy they came across bringing a large chance to stash PLS. They had no struggle until they hit the wall of enemies over time. You also had those that would spread out accordingly(Very slightly, about 2-3 rooms apart) and hunt the enemies down, a strategy that often rewarded with a good amount of PLS. As it was, there wasn't any sort of need to bring necessary equipment or warframes.

 

Lowering the amount of PLS gained without balancing enemy levels with Tenno gear brings a wrong style of survival. Instead of actually fighting and worrying about surviving the ongoing onslought of enemies in the mode(By which players were rewarded PLS as a result), people will now bring Nekros in close to every survival game in an attempt to bend and fight the RNG rules you've placed instead.

 

Not sure if this will completely destroy how Survival worked before, but I'm positive this will encourage the use of Nekros immensely which is something you do not want to do DE. 

 

My recommendation for now: Revert the changes(If you have to rework the LS system as it is becoming less and less enjoyable, focus on bringing ideas to your RNG system), and rework Nekros the same way you changed Excalibur(Remove his Desecrate, it has no use in a scenario where Warframe will be a finished game....if it ever comes to this).

Edited August 26, 2015 by Darkmoone1

[nickelshark]

T1 survival has gotten really hard now. Solo at least. Ran with a Mesa and just got by the 25 min mark. I have a feeling that lower level survivals will now become more difficult than higher level survivals due to the difference in spawn rate.

[BlackCoMerc]

I have said it in these forums time and again: no one - literally, NOT ONE PLAYER - actually LIKES or ENJOYS the life support mechanic. At best its tolerated, amidst constant grumbles about how we just want to run missions without babysitting numbers or coffins or extractors. Just once. 

 

And now not only has DE decided to keep it, they have doubled down on making it more rare and scarce. 

 

So much for fun.

[Sibernetika]

so with these changes I see the Draco squad working in survival now with Mesa, Frost, Nekros, and Gmag to pull all those love life supports drops

[Guest khk6]

If PLS were nerfed for the sake of more movement, then there should be a buff for the LSC. 

 

I have a feeling these changes were made without solo players in mind.

[-Jiwa-]

Just revert these changes...

[FoxyKabam]

If PLS were nerfed for the sake of more movement, then there should be a buff for the LSC. 

 

I have a feeling these changes were made without solo players in mind.

DE - solo players? what are those?