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Survival Balancing


[DE]Whirrrrr
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If your squad members break off and think "Oh, everythings fine...", they either go *SPLAT* or they are gone for the rest of the game.

(...)

As I said though, something will need to be done to keep everyone closer together.

 

 

Got a suggestion for that too:

 

9. Add affinity share notification eg Teammate names turn orange when out of XP range.

(from https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/426706-uncontroversial-and-important-changes-that-are-simple-to-implement/)

 

Camping needs to be dealt with.

 

Posted this twice already but just in case DE haven't seen it:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/494645-camping-how-to-get-players-to-stop-being-cub-scouts-and-go-be-space-ninjas/

Edited by Fifield
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I don't get the 'it's more frantic.'  How could anyone feel frantic with the nerfed life support drops?

It doesn't make me feel anything other than resignation.  When I'm already at 12% waiting for the next capsule to spawn at 8 minutes into a survival and I've been killing enemies as soon as they appeared, there's nothing 'frantic' there.  I already know that the key was wasted.  If I'm already killing enemies as fast as I can, there's nothing to do.  There's no 'OH NO I BETTER DO THIS' when it's obvious that there's nothing to do.

 

when you're running to a canister, you are most likely not killing enemies.  Unless the RNG is kind and spawns them between you and the next canister.  And since you're not killing those enemies, no more enemies are spawning.  And since you're going quickly to the next canister, you then have to wait for the spawned-in enemies to catch up or leave the canister room (and then get to run back to it later and start the cycle again, hooray?).  During all of this time the life support is just ticking downward and there is nothing that you can do about it.  Futility is not what DE should be going for.  Reducing the air provided will never produce the 'frantic' scenarios that they claim to want.  The entire system needs to be reworked from the ground up instead, potentially the idea mentioned earlier where you have a time limit to activate the next canister before the 'life support expired' state is reached coupled with more and more aggressive enemies.  That would also have the benefit of forcing a decision in team survival; Group Up for safety or Spread Out so that somebody will be able to more quickly reach the next canister.

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being Invisible isn't the only possibility, cycling Invulnerability also is.

Or continuously throwing down Bastilles on low level dudes and never killing them, capping out the enemy population.

 

IMO survival needs its own tile, a single large room with no good camping spot (patch it often if necessary), and no drops whatsoever: just add a few seconds with every enemy killed (I wouldn't presume to know a good number for that).

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Amen.

I stopped playing non-endless missions because they were over too quickly, or took too long for too few rewards.

I stopped playing Excavation because it's only on the Star Chart, not in the void.

I stopped playing Defense missions because the reward tables are absolutely horrible -- nobody wants Orokin cells from T4.

I stopped playing Survival because life support wouldn't spawn from dead enemies or the Lotus in reasonable amounts...

 

The only thing left to do is mess around outside of the Dojo and Relay walls.

Or... pick another game to play.

You obviously have not played Loki, the most gamebreaking character in the game.

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Why don't they just have the large LS drops from Lotus have a time limit then they decay (or fall apart or something, for some reason)?  So you can keep up the 80-90% from the small LS drops from mobs, if the team is constantly killing, but there's some degree of care required because there can only be, at maximum, say 5 big Lotus LS drops at any given time?  The team would also need to move around more as a team, to follow the large LS canister spawns.

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Survival is the only mode I play for actual fun and I'd rather just play it with no LS for no rewards as I've already maxed everything and just want to free roam and kill endlessly without returning to Liset... ever. If I could select that somehow before starting the mission it's all I'd do. If I could free roam on planets I probably wouldn't even run missions, just parkour the enviroment.

 

Survival is the only mode close to just running free and enjoying the characters without being nagged by some pointless annoying task. The life support  is just a tedious annoyance when solo and a non-point when in a group. We run out of air.. we have to restart... big deal lol I wish there was a restart option right at the fail or exit point so we didn't need to return to liset as that is the only thing I fear in this game... Having to recruit and form a new squad lol that's the biggest challenge in this game.  If the 2 choices are leave it alone or entertain a few by adding some annoying mechanism I vote to leave it alone and make a new mission type.

 

If people want to play with different "mission mechanics" DE should just add more variant game modes (or make missions more configurable) and have them alternate in different node locations which would also reduce the existence of draco/viver/egate nodes.

 

I wish a "free mode/ free roam" was added to the matchmaking dropdown so any node clicked could be traveled to without a mission active. Then we could hang out on planets. At which point I could care less about LS, resources, "balance", rewards or even "enemies/clients" who we constantly switch sides between for no apparent reason lol and actually just appreciate what i'm here to appreciate, the artwork and scenery. The narrative is pretty interesting but I can watch 8 seasons of a show in less than a week while programming and give details on each episode so spreading lore over 2+ years slightly lost my interest, I'd have to replay quest or the whole game to respark that.

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The survival concept itself seems flawed.  What we are told is that we are supposed to be distracting the enemy while another tenno is raiding the place.  How exactly does no air work with that?  Why would they turn off life support in this situation, but not any others?

 

So why not make the game mode around actually doing what you are supposed to be doing - distracting the enemy.  Instead of an O2 meter, you can have a "distraction" meter.  If it hits 0, the enemy realize the ruse, and the jig is up.  So what qualifies as a distraction?  Well, killing enemies probably.  You can also have specific targets that Lotus points out that will really get the enemy's attention (the equivalent of the big pods currently).  You could really go pretty creative with this mode and factor in lots of stuff from other modes.  You could have stuff like reactors to sabotage, spy rooms to distract the enemy, viruses to upload, etc.  Or you could have something like infested to release to create more chaos.  Lots of different options.  You could also include something like a "suspicion meter" if you wanted...  Where if all you've done is kill the enemy and haven't targeted any of the bigger stuff, they could start to figure that you're just a decoy.

 

Anyway, lots of ways this could work, but it seems like it fits the description of how this mode is supposed to work a lot better than the current model.

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because without being forced to Kill Enemies, Survival has no opposition. no challenge.

if there's no point in actually Killing anything, the path of least resistance is to not. and then get Rewards without putting in any Effort to speak of.

being Invisible isn't the only possibility, cycling Invulnerability also is.

Well, often the path of least resistance IS to kill the enemy because it is faster to put a bullet in the head of a Grineer than circle-stealthing around them without getting alerted :D So there goes the comparison to "no effort". And yes you are right, Invulnerability phases are just as "bad", I just picked the Loki Team because it was putting the one-sided combat into the forefront.

 

But all this talk about Survival, and the suggestions and other discussions in here brought me to an interesting conclusion, especially what you and I talked about, Taiiat, so thanks for that spark of inspiration.

 

Why does Survival needs to be DEFENSIVE?

 

Think about it. It is usually better to stick together and defend chokepoints to get more kills with less risk while you're having life support close by to activate. So why do we have to be reliant on whatever random positions Lotus chose to magically let oxygen tanks appear? I mean, space magic is a thing, but I still find this a wee bit too arbitrary that Lotus "spawns" these things. I also find it a bit weird, and always have, how only some enemies drop their life support when others don't. I mean, some of them are outright obliterated, even disintegrated, and they still drop their life support. Others die from a single bullet to the foot, and don't drop their canister. So much for that. Let's not even talk about compatible systems.

I also don't want to talk about how the enemy has seemingly unlimited Life support but WE TENNO don't. As I said before, the oxygen mechanism has grave continuity issues. But I digress.

For the sake of the game mechanic, let us keep the suspension of disbelief.

 

Here is an idea paired with a combination of already suggested things in this topic on how to bring Survival more into the acting offense instead of the reacting defense:

 

  1. No personal life support capsules, and the oxygen tanks are not spawned time based any more.
  2. Lotus points us to one oxygen console / station at a time that has an auxiliary, emergency Oxygen supply that we Tenno can replenish from. Those are not located right in the middle of the room, but at walls. Because console.
  3. The idea is to get there and activate it. Once the activation is done, life support gets back to 100% and Lotus pinpoints the next location which is usually more than one tile away. That means only one active Oxygen marker exists at any given time.
  4. How to activate is up to debate. A simple button switch might be too easy. A "hold for X time total" thing would maybe work better, since you can always decide when to stop to turn around and defend yourself.
  5. So technically, the Tenno have to go into the offense and fight THROUGH enemies and keep moving to get to the life support.
  6. I know people can say now that conflict is again not required, and you could outmaneuver them and stealth your way through. So what? Do so. Since enemies won't die and any NPC left standing will start moving to the next objective to be in your damn way, you'll be ending in a situation where one single mistake will have dozens of enemies take aim and fire at you. Again, invisibility and invulnerability mechanics should not be the reason why an idea for a game mode gets destroyed. I'd rather fix those Warframe mechanics.
  7. Extraction might be tricky to do, but I think about a little order in the chaos of the random tile generator. You start out in the "middle" and the extraction is close to the middle too, but the Team is more or less moving around on a circle of tiles that is put around them.
  8. Fail state would be the same as current. If your life support gets to zero, it gets iffy. But I would still say that zero life support only cancels the timer, and continues when life support is back up.
  9. While I would like to put the reward based on how many successful activations have been done, this is too close to Excavation and to easy to exploit. We are here to gather TIME for our fellow Tenno that raids the ship. Although maybe adjustments could be made. I wouldn't mind a drop to 4 minutes versus 5 minutes per reward stack.

 

I still find it silly that Tenno can't bring their own life support, if the Archwing can field it unlimited, and that Tenno even have to breathe... but that's another story for another day.

 

Again, the objective of Survival as it currently is means not to survive on your own, but to get as much TIME possible for that lone Tenno operative. This is not about you, this is about the other one. It is about stalling and distracting the enemy from said operative.

 

If no suggestion of any of us hit the nail on the head yet, then please DE, at least decide what you want for Survival to be.

If it remains the "Lone tenno operative" thing, then the name of the game is stalling / delaying / distracting the enemy from getting to that Tenno. Right now I don't see Survival really doing this but that might just be me. I always think that the oxygen we replenish also helps our fellow Tenno raiding things because s/he doesn't run out of air to do things. If that was your goal, then okay. I would still hope we could get a bit more immersion for the stalling / delaying / distracting part.

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I know people can say now that conflict is again not required, and you could outmaneuver them and stealth your way through. So what? Do so. Since enemies won't die and any NPC left standing will start moving to the next objective to be in your damn way, you'll be ending in a situation where one single mistake will have dozens of enemies take aim and fire at you. Again, invisibility and invulnerability mechanics should not be the reason why an idea for a game mode gets destroyed. I'd rather fix those Warframe mechanics.

You'll end up with several hour long runs that keep lv5 enemies alive. Killing has to be part of it. 

Even if invisibility is outright removed you can bastille enemies without killing them, go through the rift, link, blind, use hysteria ... you'd have to tweak way too many abilities for one single mode.

 

This is how we exploited the Phoenix Intercept escalation: the game has an enemy cap for obvious reasons -> disable them all instead of killing them and move around with impunity.

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Here is an idea paired with a combination of already suggested things in this topic

which is great and all, but it's all for naught without Enemies being mandatory to Kill, and without an actual Fail State.

the latter is a bit more personal, but look. it's this simple. Players Kill Enemies in Survival. this is mandatory. Survival will always be this way. it's not moving away from that.

allowing Players to be passive just creates too many problems. if allowing Players to be passive worked, it would already be that way.

do i like that summary of points? yes. will it work? no.

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Survival rework or different game mode: 

 

No personal life support, only large capsules. 

 

Capsules spawn when there is 30 seconds left, then 29.8, then 29.6, then 29.4 ... you get the idea. 

 

Enemies drop life support coordinates to make capsules drop sooner +0.1 seconds. (They help Lotus pinpoint the teleportation location).

 

People would run around all the time, activate every capsule, and be at high stress levels all the time. Hopefully having more fun.

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/519383-on-survival-reworks-or-perhaps-a-different-game-mode/

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I think the devs are tackling survival the wrong way. They're trying to edit an entire game mode at once, which doesn't make sense at all. In no way will DE say "let's turn all the exterminates into level 40+ enemies, including Mercury". So why is DE trying to increase the difficulty of survival regardless of level? Wouldn't it make more sense for Apollo to be super easy to get to 60 minutes without any large capsules, while on Pluto one would struggle to hit the next 5 minute mark?

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I see so many truths in these posts and with every post I hope to see a Dev's response to the actual arguments.  

 

As for survival, why not instead of capsules, make checkpoints you need to reach (as a team) within the tileset after certain amounts of time? 

This way survival will be about actually surviving the vicious attacks of the enemies rather than NEEDING to kill to get some air.

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I see so many truths in these posts and with every post I hope to see a Dev's response to the actual arguments.  

 

As for survival, why not instead of capsules, make checkpoints you need to reach (as a team) within the tileset after certain amounts of time? 

This way survival will be about actually surviving the vicious attacks of the enemies rather than NEEDING to kill to get some air.

Personally I like this idea due to it being similar to Left4Dead. You could also simply say a section of the tileset is going to purge, so you have so many minutes to get out of it until its done and reopens, then rotate the purge so players are forced to move out of a zone or get fried to crispy toast.

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More tweaking.
 

Hotfix 17.2.6

 

Continued Survival Changes & Fixes:

 

  • Tweaked the code so that it is more aggressive at spawning enemies near the players.
  • Continued to tune personal life support drop rates.
  • Tweaked enemy-specifications for Tower Survival missions.
  • Please note that before this round of spawning changes 20 minutes of T3 Survival averaged 54 kills/minute. After this round of spawning changes 20 minutes of T3 Survival averaged 68 kills/minute.
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 Warning:

This post might contain sarcasm

This post might contain mildly strong language

This post will, above all contain honesty

Brutal honesty.

If that might offend you, please stop reading here.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Sorry, a recent post made me think that disclaimer could be necessary.

 

So:

 

[...]

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

Really?

In all honesty, I do not think so! I doubt, that you tested this changes in Solo play. If it wasn't your vision, that soloplay can not even last to 20 minutes, than you did not test this change. The comments following the implemented change show what you should have noticed if you had really tested it, as it should have been done.

 

I also, long ago, began to doubt that you love our feedback. Why do i doubt that? Because there are so few reactions to it. Examples:

-) Forewarnings of situations that will occur, brought out by many, underlined with arguments, usually hang around worthless, changes get implemented anyway, and are at best hotifexed a day after.

-) Feedback about Nekros connected to the Survival situation? Came up ages ago, is ignored till today, I might have overseen comments by you about that, but since the other players would be helpful enough to bring them up, if there were one, whenever the topic touched that, and they don't, i do not think we no anything about your stance about it. You just ignore it.

-) Feedback about different weapons usually takes at least half a year to reach your ears. another one that there maybe is a change. Who knows if it is our feedback thats causing the change anyway, you could just do what you want anyway and sometimes it is a thing that has been touched by feedback in the past.

 

Thats just a glimpse. i can tell you from my point of view, that it seems more like all the players are talking to a wall.

 

Firstly, sarcastic bashing among each other and DE is out of place. It is harmful to all levels of discussion that I can see.

[...]

I read the posts before yours, and couldn't find many really sarcastic posts - were they deleted?

 

I also have to add: Sarcasm is not a natural state for many. It is provoked, when all else seems to fail on a regular basis. Like giving feedback, even when its asked. If that doesn't have an influence, you will get sarcasm over time, because its frustrating in large amounts, and some frustration can be vented in sarcasm. Venting frustration is a major thing with humans.

It might not be nice, but it is a warning sign. Usually it pays to try to find out WHY people are sarcastic.

 

Warning, very brutal honesty paired with strong language:

If you want people to reduce being sarcastic, stand up (physically), go to the people at Digital Extremes that forward a half-assed, minimal tested, change (without listening to feedback) into a real update, and tell them to stop it.

Start thinking about feedback before implementing a change. If you ignore it, communicate this for the largest (most brought up) issues.

 

 

[...] Secondly, I went Solo vs 2 Person testing relatively casually (T3 Void + ODS), and there is certainly credence in the 'Solo being way harder' claims (at least in my limited experience this evening). [...]

 That right here shows, that you could see the problem in a limited testing session. It was "visible" for many people before the change was implemented. It was visible to a lot of people after it was implemented.

Now how shall I believe, that it was really tested?

 

Is the testing environment somehow faulty, so that major issues never crop up?

Are testing conditions bugged?

 

We, as a playerbase, have no idea, but to me it seems ridiculous, that such issues fall through. Issues that depend on rare condition, of course. Major things like the life support rate in solo play? I never believe thats possible. I have tested LOTS of issues in games. I never could report glaring big issues. Why? Because they always were already reported by everyone else.

 

 

A great stsrting point would be to expand the part of sharing your vision. It probably involves more than a starting post though. From the starting post, we can infer, that you want frantic gameplay, moving from room to room, and many enemies. Good, thats a vision. Wonderful.

But we need vision about the details too. Is it in the vision, that Nekros can change this gameplay? If yes, good tell us and we know. It would have quite an impact on your vision, but we would know. If no - why is it still possible?

is it in your vision that the team moves together, or each independantly, wherever they want? What behaviour do you want to see more?

There are many ideas in this thread, that propose a change to survival, to better fit, what we GUESS might be your vision. Because many think tweaking will never work out right. Its always tweaked wrong for some combinations.

If you share your vision, we can narrow down our suggestions to better advance that vision. We might not like some parts of the vision, but if we are speaking from the same knowledge, at least we can really communicate.

 

And communication is a two way street. While we can certainly communicate well withing the playerbase, I am not sure we communicate to you. From a fixed starting point, like the starting post, we move out with pour feedback, suggestions, etc. and spread fast into different directions. If there is no further response, it spreads out a bit further and dies down. If you narrow down the path after a wave of feedback, the results will be better.

If you say, for example: "We do not want to change the style of survival in the next months at all. We just need help tweaking the current situation." that helps. It might be frustrating for some of the players, but at least we would know better, how to be useful to you.

 

For now, we just have wild guesses, and everyone hopes you listen to him.

We do not know, if you even read what we write.

Not to speak if the directions we propose even have a snowballs chance in hell to survive the first glance.

 

Communication - its key!

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