Survival Balancing

[CrazyCatLad]

Get rid of air support. Have survival waves like defense but each wave is in ONE room. Then you move onto the next.  Every 5th wave a random boss appears with other cannon fodder.  They shouldn't have their 'phases' - just be strong and meaty with high damage.  

[taiiat]

You got spawn screwed by not staying together

Enemies correctly target Players now, being together - while a good idea for safety, Co-Operation, XP and sharing Energy/Ammo drops - is not required anymore.

Add a new difficulty mode, Hard Mode/Mission +30 or whatever seems reasonable, which would basically have the effect of bypassing the first 30 minutes of the normal mission, ie increased damage, increased levels, increased spawn rates etc. Or just give everything +30 levels. Also, better loot to compensate for the effort, even though most players at this level will probably not need it.

this sounds suspiciously similar to playing Nightmare Survival.

[Magnar21]

Things are frantic when enemies are too numerous or deadly to deal with properly. LSC running low just makes players frustrated, and making enemy spawns too low just means that players will stop running Survival without a loot frame. That's not survival.

 

What is survival? Survival is what happens 40 minutes into ODS. Survival is what happens 40+ min into T3S. When the enemy spawns are too numerous to kill quickly (without frames/weapons built for AOE killing), and just one Ancient Healer ruins your day.

 

How do you make players move around, and improve reliability of enemy spawns? Make it so that enemies can teleport. In KF2, this can be immersion breaking (Wait, the game says 1 enemy left, I know I just ran away from the fleshpound, but now he's in front of me?!?). What makes WF unique, is that the survival game mode has endless, scaling enemies. Therefore, having enemies teleport if they get outside a certain radius from the nearest player would be a way to compensate for the finicky AI pathing in WF. Can't tell you how often I find a group of 5+ enemies huddled around a door cause two of them tried to walk through at the same time. Could just apply the "AFK" script to AI, and if an AI is flagged as afk,  you delete it and respawn it near a player.

 

Might need some tweaking, but anything is better than this garbage right now.

[FelisImpurrator]

Enemies correctly target Players now, being together - while a good idea for safety, Co-Operation, XP and sharing Energy/Ammo drops - is not required anymore.

this sounds suspiciously similar to playing Nightmare Survival.

Interesting - I did notice enemy spawns were a lot more consistent in the last team Survival I played, with enemies spawning for players on the other end of the map.

 

As for the nightmare thing - nightmare needs to be less RNG-based (except in alerts, which should have more than No Shield). A toggle menu would be amazing, especially for this idea of having a hard mode with more loot. Individually selectable, stackable debuffs with varying weights to difficulty and thus loot quality, like Transistor and Bastion. Offtopic, but I think that would satisfy the call for higher difficulty.

[taiiat]

Make it so that enemies can teleport. In KF2, this can be immersion breaking (Wait, the game says 1 enemy left, I know I just ran away from the fleshpound, but now he's in front of me?!?).

as long as it's heavily adjusted, as the way Killing Floor 2 does it ,Enemies can respawn only a few meters away from you, or even within Range of a Melee Weapon.

definitely would need to spawn further away from Players than that, in both cases.

choose what modifiers you want to have on for Nightmare

yes, i'd always go for things such as that.

just enforce a minimum of N on, even splitting them into different categories so that you must have one from each Category, Et Cetera.

to keep Players from basically turning everything off.

perhaps with any luck the new Solar Map will contain this. i know that man hours aren't really being poured into existing Mission Nodes as much they would normally be, because in 'sometime soon', it's all being flipped on it's head.

[(PSN)inthephonebox]

I started out typing a rant about mission types, survival most of all, losing its incentive due to over-saturated drop tables, but this really isn't the place, I suppose. 

 

So glossing over the much larger issue, I think the second best thing you could do for survival is provide a reason for players to stick together more. Perhaps make enemy spawns and PLS packs proportional to the amount of players in a give area. Actually cause less LS is everyone spreads out. I think this was the main problem with the pre-LS-buff survival. No one would really work together enough to actually survive; especially on lower level missions. One person wants to look for secret rooms and treasure, another is only concerned with leveling, a third jut wants to hit 5 minutes and bounce, and the forth only wants to try to rack up as much kills and be a showoff for the end-mission screen. No one wants to bother worrying about LS. 

Now that mainly a problem with the players, but giving these brats some reason to pay attention couldn't hurt. Therefore, I would suggest a sort of survival 3.0. Have certain areas lock down and unlock as time goes by. Keep the map pretty small until the five minute mark, then open up some rooms and the extraction area. Then at the ten minute mark, have the enemy decompress the first area and unlock more rooms. This would force players to move together more and make the mission feel a bit more dynamic. Players would also have to hoard LS capsules more strategically, if in 8 more minutes two or more of them are going to be opened to space. 

 

But I must say again, while something like this would make the gameplay more enjoyable, I still wouldn't see much of a reason to pick this mission type over a less time consuming mission. And this comes back to the over-arching problem with the continual oversaturation of enemy and mission reward drop tables. As a founder, and a long time believer in this game, I feel terribly finishing up a 30 minute survival missions, and thinking  'What was the point of that?' I'll be honest, more often than not, at that point I just turn the game off and do something else. 

[FelisImpurrator]

yes, i'd always go for things such as that.

just enforce a minimum of N on, even splitting them into different categories so that you must have one from each Category, Et Cetera.

to keep Players from basically turning everything off.

Oh no, not minimum. Not a fan of that. No, I say it should scale the rewards appropriately. Want to play with the easiest modifier? Fine. Get minimum drop buffs and low chance of the good NM mods. Want to play with as many as you can conceivably stack (assuming modifiers are rebalanced so they can all be on at once and provide a doable experience)? You will go through hell, but drown in treasure for it. This is the exact system those two games use and it works beautifully. None, one, five, ten, all of them are valid combinations and all of them scale rewards accordingly, with some modifiers giving more rewards than others.

[taiiat]

Oh no, not minimum. Not a fan of that. No, I say it should scale the rewards appropriately. Want to play with the easiest modifier? Fine. Get minimum drop buffs and low chance of the good NM mods. Want to play with as many as you can conceivably stack (assuming modifiers are rebalanced so they can all be on at once and provide a doable experience)? You will go through hell, but drown in treasure for it. This is the exact system those two games use and it works beautifully. None, one, five, ten, all of them are valid combinations and all of them scale rewards accordingly, with some modifiers giving more rewards than others.

the problem with that for Warframe, is that the path of least resistance is what Players will do. if they can turn it all off but still get Rewards eventually, they will.

or if there's ones they can opt in to that are 100% inconsequential for them, they'll do that.

for better or for worse, 'big' games like this need to be built with path of least resistance in mind.

*shrugs*

[FelisImpurrator]

the problem with that for Warframe, is that the path of least resistance is what Players will do. if they can turn it all off but still get Rewards eventually, they will.

or if there's ones they can opt in to that are 100% inconsequential for them, they'll do that.

for better or for worse, 'big' games like this need to be built with path of least resistance in mind.

True, and I've argued this for things like affinity and resource gain (i.e., the "Draco issue"), but the thing about nightmare is still that it should probably be an optional challenge for players who intentionally want to push themselves, for the most part. If people want to play with an easy modifier and have <1% chance of getting good Nightmare mods, fine by me, that's how they want to play and they'll make up in sacrificed time what they save on difficulty. If they want to struggle through a run to the extreme but come out with a king's ransom in a fraction of the time, fine. If, like me, they want to go the moderate way for a balance of difficulty<>time investment<>reward, why not?

Keep in mind that a system like this would make the easiest path the longest, unlike the problem we have now where the easiest path is also the shortest and thus there's little incentive to do anything else.

 

But this probably deserves the thread I was going to make it before anything else.

[taiiat]

Keep in mind that a system like this would make the easiest path the longest, unlike the problem we have now where the easiest path is also the shortest and thus there's little incentive to do anything else.

true, i suppose.

[--MZez--]

Best way for solo players

[Natsusane]

I just want a tower style survival/exterminate mission where you have to clear a floor in order to proceed to next one. It would be endless mission with no side objectives (or maybe some optional ones for fun), nothing to defend and nothing to collect just mass slaughter.

 

Current survival missions are okay I guess up to 40min max then it gets boring. These changes won't make 'em any more interesting.

I want this mass slaughter in my life right now! Also give me an option to start with lvl 100 mobs so i dont have to wait a friggint hour to get there <.< or make it so that each wave spawns higher lvls so you can actually enjoy highlvl before you fall asleep.

[--Q--uaint]

<snip>

 

Why is it that the best mission rework ideas are all buried in giant threads?

[Chaosdreamer]

I don't really enjoy survival with the name this mode have and I don't think I have enjoyed survival exept for the first time released during event in a closed map which was awsome .

 

I had rather get a real survival where ennemy come and ambush your team being crazy level (to avoid one hit ko)

[Arix_Mote]

Survival is my favorite mode. All your min-maxing of stats and rewards isn't what's important. Survival is more fun now. I don't care how much I get from it, what's important is I'm having a great time while it's going and it almost always ends in chaos. This game is a grind and if the grind isn't fun, the game isn't fun.

 

The new changes are welcome and a blast. People die in Survival now, it's awesome.

[MumblesMcphatty]

Enemies correctly target Players now, being together - while a good idea for safety, Co-Operation, XP and sharing Energy/Ammo drops - is not required anymore.

 

Really? I've noticed improvements in solo play but all I'm noticing in full squad runs is increasingly horrendous lag the more spread out everyone becomes. 

[Keerith]

In all honesty, I never enjoyed Survival missions because they don't promote teamwork. Setting out a camp strategy works for the most part, but it gets dull quite fast, and most players would rather just run about. Every player then spreads into different far-away rooms, never to be seen again.

 

On the one hand, I do like having to fight off waves of enemies while -not- hugging a cryo pod. On the other, Survival's concept seems kind of... jarring. If the grineer can just switch off life support on us and be fine, why don't they do it in every mission? Why is 0% life support a game over, but my Mag can stand in a room exposed to hard vacuum for half an hour and still have shields left, not to even mention Archwing - if we can get our Archwings teleported to us out of nowhere for the Submersible missions, why can't we get our archwings to pop in for Survival? :D

[(PSN)inthephonebox]

On the one hand, I do like having to fight off waves of enemies while -not- hugging a cryo pod. On the other, Survival's concept seems kind of... jarring. If the grineer can just switch off life support on us and be fine, why don't they do it in every mission? Why is 0% life support a game over, but my Mag can stand in a room exposed to hard vacuum for half an hour and still have shields left, not to even mention Archwing - if we can get our Archwings teleported to us out of nowhere for the Submersible missions, why can't we get our archwings to pop in for Survival? :D

 

This is my biggest problem with survival, its immersion breaking. And while I'll admit, Warframe really can't be a truly immersive game, I still never enjoy illogical continuity gaps. Survival really needs a complete overhaul. I know its one of DE's babies and they're going to be very resistant to a huge change, but its just downright broken, in theory and execution, as it is right now. The life support concept needs to be done away with entirely. I still think my suggestion of compartmentalizing the ship into areas locked and unlocked at certain times could continue the timed aspect of survival while focusing more of just "surviving."

[Jinryusai]

This is my biggest problem with survival, its immersion breaking. And while I'll admit, Warframe really can't be a truly immersive game, I still never enjoy illogical continuity gaps. Survival really needs a complete overhaul. I know its one of DE's babies and they're going to be very resistant to a huge change, but its just downright broken, in theory and execution, as it is right now. The life support concept needs to be done away with entirely. I still think my suggestion of compartmentalizing the ship into areas locked and unlocked at certain times could continue the timed aspect of survival while focusing more of just "surviving."

And replaced with something that makes rewards come faster a long with harder enemies as a price. Except, the harder enemies that come faster are harder than usual for attempting to rush things so that 20min-120min Forma comes faster(not that forma is the goal here, but finding out you wasted your time/energy sooner rather than later is the goal).

 

It can be BORING in endless missions and pointlessly time consuming to wait for that final rotation while sleep shooting enemies.

[(PSN)AngelShur]

It's a great change! Looking forward for this....

A lil bit more challenge is always good! This means the rewards (VOID) will go up in platinums, so in that sense it's GREAT!!

AngelShur

[TheBrsrkr]

Hmmm.....

My idea for survival would be to make it pretty much like an infinite mobile defense, but protecting your lives instead of the cache. Give it a 60m range of influence, and anyone outside it's range gets a timer for their personal LS unit that refills slowly when in range. Then when the air runs out you move on to the next cache. The amount of air in the cache decreases by 30 seconds each time (capped at 2minutes) and starts at 5 minutes 15seconds.

Edited September 13, 2015 by TheBrsrkr

[(PSN)AngelShur]

Sounds good but then you have the problem that people will be forced on one spot and or they choose to cap their own cache! :-/ not to sure. The Survival is being worked on atm...? After the last update I bet they will make it more challenging.

AngelShur

[(PSN)inthephonebox]

And replaced with something that makes rewards come faster a long with harder enemies as a price. Except, the harder enemies that come faster are harder than usual for attempting to rush things so that 20min-120min Forma comes faster(not that forma is the goal here, but finding out you wasted your time/energy sooner rather than later is the goal).

 

It can be BORING in endless missions and pointlessly time consuming to wait for that final rotation while sleep shooting enemies.

 

This all keeps coming back to the problem of oversaturated reward tables. Survival suffers the most, making it the mission type that is most tedious and ultimately enticing one to run, but other void mission types are fast approaching. The problem is systemic, and therefore, I say again, we need a whole void/reward overhaul. Originally, I remember from the earlier devstreams, before Baro was what he was, he was pitched as a way for players to turn unwanted void rewards, possibly even forma, into the rewards they wanted. There is no reason why ducats shouldn't be a currency for void rewards we actually want. Its a win/win. The devs still maintain a reason to play the game over and over and over and over.......and once we do that enough, to no absolutely no avail, we can decide whether we want that elusive frame piece or weapon barrel or what have you, and risk missing out on baro's primed items. This still leaves RNG as the most effective way of obtaining a rare void item, and if the price in ducats is high enough, it shouldn't drive down the trading chat plat prices too much. 

 

This is all aside the point, but directly related, and therefore does need to be said until someone picks up on it. Simply taking items out of the void is not a viable strategy for combating reward table saturation. 

 

More to the point, running 120 minutes (2 hours!) of survival should not be the way to get the void items players want. That's easily more time than normal, working people have to sit and play the game non-stop. And for the people that do, that easily tires players out. I've played this game hours on end plenty of times, I've also run super long survival and defense missions. And when I finish an hour+ missions, I usually stop. I'm worn out. Whereas if I play more shorter missions, I can play, and enjoy playing much longer. If its about keeping players playing and coming back for more, DE needs to realize that stagnant gameplay, usually unrewarding stagnant gameplay, draws players away. 

 

Changing up mission types is a start, but if they dont address the fulfilling nature of this game, players, like myself, will be torn away.  

[Jinryusai]

More to the point, running 120 minutes (2 hours!) of survival should not be the way to get the void items players want. That's easily more time than normal, working people have to sit and play the game non-stop. And for the people that do, that easily tires players out. I've played this game hours on end plenty of times, I've also run super long survival and defense missions. And when I finish an hour+ missions, I usually stop. I'm worn out. Whereas if I play more shorter missions, I can play, and enjoy playing much longer. If its about keeping players playing and coming back for more, DE needs to realize that stagnant gameplay, usually unrewarding stagnant gameplay, draws players away. 

 

Changing up mission types is a start, but if they dont address the fulfilling nature of this game, players, like myself, will be torn away.  

It's the fast paced void missions that are more rewarding. The idea of waiting 20min or until round/wave 20 to get an insignificant item ids why players may dread the idea of doing endless missions, even if they are fun, at some point you'll burn out and feels like a waste getting nothing. If you do manage to get a void item and not the item you seek, good luck selling it.

 

So this is why I gave up farming...No rewarding gameplay, no rewards. Just sleep killing.

[Xarteros]

I think survival needs more than just a tweak of numbers regarding drop rate or amount of air restored.

Survival needs a 2.0 rework to incorporate changes to its base structure.

Above all, survival needs to be removed from the realm of RNG forever and made completely about skill. No more random drops in spawn rates or PLS drop rates, no more Lotus giving up on supplying life support beacons. Survival needs to be until you die and don't respawn, or until you feel you have to extract.

Survival and defense both also need a boost to rewards. As you go up in time, you should be receiving more and more rewards at each stage. There's currently no real reason to stay longer than the first C rotation unless you're dealing with limited void keys. Staying for a second rotation should yield a second reward for each stage of the reward cycle, so if you stay for 40 mins you should get 2 random rewards for the C rotation. Difficulty should be reflective of that, but every player should want to work together to actually survive for as long as possible, to maximise rewards.

Only then will we really feel the pressure to survive