Survival Balancing

[Raymist]

Why not get rid of life support all together and base the the rewards on kills. Example first reward at 200 kills, next at 500, next at 900, etc...

 

 

[polarity]

If reliance on the big capsules is going to be brought back, I'd like to see the loading screen hint be made mission specific, so every time someone loads into a survival they see "Life support capsules refresh 30% of life support.  Don't activate them until you're below 70%, or you'll be wasting some."

 

Still seeing people who haven't twigged that 'activate when you need it' doesn't mean 'activate when you find it', even as far out as Jupiter.

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

So even harder to solo survivals? Lame

I like the no life support idea... I really hate that aspect of it. Scale enemies harder, but get rid of life support...not everyone wants to play thus game on a team. Or in my case im one 0f the only people in my clan that would prefer to play WF over CoD atm...so why make survivals harder for a loner?

Edited December 1, 2015 by (PS4)big_eviljak

[Shiro_kawase]

As long as we still have Nekros, we will SURVIVE long xD

[Magnar21]

As of late, I think it's a good balance. If I forget about LS, I'll run out. If i pay attention, and keep moving to keep spawns fresh, I'm alright and actually stay positive till 40min or so. Haven't tried farther, since the enemies start oneshotting some of my squishier frames.

 

In groups w/o Nekros, I can't camp completely, as we have to keep running around to grab a LS or two. Still, it seems decently balanced. Would like to see more interesting enemies though.

[Astertom]

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.

This is almost identical to the thoughts I was having. 

[nickelshark]

I would like to see an increase to spawns for solo mode. It's kinda lame that solo can be hard not because of the overwhelming enemies but because they are hardly any to begin with.

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

I would like to see an increase to spawns for solo mode. It's kinda lame that solo can be hard not because of the overwhelming enemies but because they are hardly any to begin with.

Agreed. In fact i think if u solo a tower the life support drops should double or triple in quantity, but ther should be way more enemies and they should be stronger.

Edited December 18, 2015 by (PS4)big_eviljak

[(PSN)Deathscythex01]

 

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.

 

Do you not realize that a lot of players solo everything? (except for raids of course) I like team work as much as the next person but majority of the time I solo simply because I don't want to deal with people that don't know what they're doing. 

 

You want to nerf the drop rate of PLS when the drop rate of PLS without a nekros is god awful. The only time I use nekros for a survival is when a clan mate wants to do tower survivals for prime parts. I use loki prime, rhino prime, or nova prime when I solo tower survivals and when I do solo survivals I end up having to burn through the life support towers because PLS dont drop frequently enough. On 3 different tower survival runs I had to burn through LST because PLS only dropped from enemies every 5-10 minutes and you want to lower their drop rate as well as lower the amount given? Might as well just get rid of survival tile sets then. (first run was with loki, second with rhino, third wukong)

Edited December 18, 2015 by (PS4)Deathscythex01

[(PSN)BlacksmithUSA]

I know I'm definitely late to the party on this thread, but I had a very interesting idea I'd like to throw in here.
 

Suggested changes:

1. Running out of air no longer forces you to extract.

 

2. Life support drops significantly reduced.

 

3. Once on the 5 health minimum, the player will begin to asphyxiate.

 

The more I think about these changes, the more I like them. Think about it, it adds in a great new risk/reward danger to the player, where they will run out of life support, and they have to decide if they think they can run the risk of being vulnerable until they can scavenge some more air. 

 

This would make the atmosphere of survival exponentially more tense. It would raise the skill ceiling significantly, where strategy and resource/risk management has just as much to do with how far you can make it as the level of your gear.

 

As for the last change, this is mainly to prevent players from hiding in a secret room or using quick thinking/iron skin/etc. to stay undead at the 5 health level indefinitely. It also, however, adds in another element of danger, in that running out of air will eventually kill you. I'd imagine that the screen should slowly start to blur and darken, fading away completely after about 30s. If the players asphyxiate, they can not revive and will fail the mission.

 

I'll probably just make a separate thread for this at this point, but I'd definitely still like to hear what you all think...

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

How bout life support is out of the window, considering our TENNO arent actually in the warframes. Ther sittin in the ship, sipping lemonade. No more life support...just higher lvl and more intelligent enemies.

[carnaga]

How bout life support is out of the window, considering our TENNO arent actually in the warframes. Ther sittin in the ship, sipping lemonade. No more life support...just higher lvl and more intelligent enemies.

You believe that life support is just pure air? Of course you do, your a human from planet earth living in 2016. In Warframe the life support system could be anything that supports the life of the Warframes. All we know is that Lotus says "they turned off the critical life support systems" and she never tells what it actually is.

 

It could be nanomachines or essence which are harmless for normal biological beings that also keeps warframes running and operational. Or it could be something we cannot even imagine. We don't even know do they have biological parts in them -- it could be pure air that Warframe biological parts need. All we see is a white fog coming out from life support modules and it could contain anything. It's like bringing a guy from 10 000 B.C. and show him a car and he tries to figure out whats it made of.

 

Anyways, to the topic: I find survival missions fun and epic.

Edited January 11, 2016 by carnaga

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

You believe that life support is just pure air? Of course you do, your a human from planet earth living in 2016. In Warframe the life support system could be anything that supports the life of the Warframes. All we know is that Lotus says "they turned off the critical life support systems" and she never tells what it actually is.

It could be nanomachines or essence which are harmless for normal biological beings that also keeps warframes running and operational. Or it could be something we cannot even imagine. We don't even know do they have biological parts in them -- it could be pure air that Warframe biological parts need. All we see is a white fog coming out from life support modules and it could contain anything. It's like bringing a guy from 10 000 B.C. and show him a car and he tries to figure out whats it made of.

Anyways, to the topic: I find survival missions fun and epic.

Anyone ever wonder why the enemies never suffocate and die? The enemies never react whatsoever to watever it is...its stupid.

[carnaga]

Anyone ever wonder why the enemies never suffocate and die? The enemies never react whatsoever to watever it is...its stupid.

So who drops the life support capsules again?

 

Edit: I get your point. But I like to think that enemies we are fighting against have life support system equipped that lasts for hours and when we shoot and kill them, the LS they are having gets destroyed. And if we are lucky enough, we get a small fraction of their life support as a capsule drop. As they cut-off the life support - they have some backup plan to keep themselves alive once life support hits zero.

 

So yes, I want to see at least some times when Corpus trooper is re-filling his life support if we don't kill him and just observe x amount of time while trinity is spamming the blessing =^.^= 

 

On the other hand if you pick the life support capsule, it affects all players. It's like magic or it is directly released to the atmosphere. We are also releasing the stuff from the life support modules and as it affects us, it affect our enemies? And if we die for the lack of LS, we are not there seeing how the enemy refills their LS. And if they can cut-off the life support they can put it on once we are gone.

 

Maybe John Prodman is shouting in their intercom: "Hang on guys! We put the life support back on after they are gone!"

Edited January 11, 2016 by carnaga

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

So who drops the life support capsules again?

Edit: I get your point. But I like to think that enemies we are fighting against have life support system equipped that lasts for hours and when we shoot and kill them, the LS they are having gets destroyed. And if we are lucky enough, we get a small fraction of their life support as a capsule drop. As they cut-off the life support - they have some backup plan to keep themselves alive once life support hits zero.

So yes, I want to see at least some times when Corpus trooper is re-filling his life support if we don't kill him and just observe x amount of time while trinity is spamming the blessing =^.^=

On the other hand if you pick the life support capsule, it affects all players. It's like magic or it is directly released to the atmosphere. We are also releasing the stuff from the life support modules and as it affects us, it affect our enemies? And if we die for the lack of LS, we are not there seeing how the enemy refills their LS. And if they can cut-off the life support they can put it on once we are gone.

Maybe John Prodman is shouting in their intercom: "Hang on guys! We put the life support back on after they are gone!"

Which brings us to the question at hand...why pray tell do our enemies(grineer, infested, corpus, corrupted) have superior technology over us tenno? How is it they can survive with zero LS? How do they have superior tech over us, when we are supposed to be the most advanced space ninjas in the universe....? Kinda stupid

[Kalvorax]

what i STILL find stupid is the LS mechanic at all.....just change it to revive based *OH WAIT, WE ALREADY HAVE THAT /sarcasm* and a no fail mechanic (ie, you run out of revives the mission is a success and is over). THAT is what a survival is, how long we can last against endless oncoming enemies........not how long can we make life support last based on rng.

 

apart from the infested (Saturating the area with toxic spores...basically like ash during a fire) the greineer, corpus and orokin ones just dont make sense what so ever.

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

The enemies should be able to steal or deactivate the large life support capsules, showing a warning on the map, and the capsule icon flashing as it is being taken or destroyed by the enemy,and getting life support from enemies should be a harder process, some in game mechanic, such as every enemies carrying life support, but if you are using a weapon or ability that completely destroys them, the life support is destroyed, or if an enemy unit sees you coming or suspects it is going to die, it will destroy its own life support stash. In this way, robotic enemies would not drop life support either

[xXDeadsinxX]

Well I'd really like this because, survival is supposed to be hard so I would enjoy this.

[B0N3M4N]

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.

^This DE

 

We need to feel thrills, we need to feel alive, to feel like we need to fight for our life, not just sitting in a room bunkering with Nekros and Trinity, because we know that this is the most used method to keep up with survivals for litterally HOURS. Just think about making a fast-peaced mode for a fast-peaced game.

 

Also some other modes are needing to be looked at too, like how Defense is the same thing as survival with the only fact that you stay on a smaller place and you risk your failure more and more the times goes on(also Frost is mandatory with Defense, which is bad), or other game modes like Exterminate, Capture, Deception and so on, which aren't giving to you any real reward to end them and it all ends to be a speedrun slaughterhouse.

 

Just try to make something that makes us "feel" the mission, that's it.

Edited January 29, 2016 by Redskull94

[(PSN)big_eviljak]

Endless hoardes of baddies, increasing in difficulty is a challenge. Instead of life support and being able to leave in 5 mins.....

How bout making it so that one round is 10 mins and wen the round is up, u have 20 secs to activate a extraction node and leave the map or stay for the next round. After the first round enemies lvl up at a rate of every 2 mins, so by the time the next round is up their considerably more difficult. At third round they lvl up every minute...round four...every 30 secs....round 5 every 15 secs.....and so on

Then its truley a survival and staying for the next round is much harder and requires more thought, and at later rounds...a team effort is a must, and no more does a mission end because u run out of time or air or watever....its based on ur actual ability to SURVIVE.

Edited January 31, 2016 by (PS4)big_eviljak

[KeGaRe]

I have an idea of making it like we have a goal on the mission. Say we need to get from point A to point B fast because the ship is decompressing or something.. and enemies will spawn faster each time we get near to the extraction point so we don't feel sleepy when we do survival mission (which I personally do) cause we are literally just camp or running around randomly and picking up LS, for hours and endless hours of real world time..

 

it is one of the mission that I can literally set WoF and left the game to sleep, lol. But yeah for the time being maybe the most possible change is to raise difficulty of the LS drop, make LS drop from certain specific enemies? (like power carrier from excav, but stronger and bigger). Make it faster also an option maybe 1 second of real time to 2 or 3 seconds of mission time? 

 

overall I respect the changes that you guys bring it's a change towards a better but my suggestion might be able to be implemented as well as other brilliant ideas that people have stated here too. Good luck DE!

[(PSN)xKAIOWAx]

Why we need life support in survival if we can fly in deep space or underwater with archwings? 

[(PSN)Azuuldon]

Alright, I read the first two pages of this thread and I agree with a lot of the ideas. I believe the atmosphere is incorrect for a survival mission. I enjoy the panic and the fright of that moment when you have to rush to extraction because you no longer have life support. I love it, and I always try my best to stay as long as possible in that moment right? because it's exciting and fresh and it gets your heart pumping because you could die at any minute. No shields, basically no health, and a horde of enemies who are relentless. 

 

When WuKong came out, my squad found survivals to be the greatest game mode ever. Survive the first 5 minutes and then let the oxygen empty out. Then use your third ability and last as long as you can. Those 40 minutes that I survived without any oxygen and the constant threat of death was the best time I have ever had in a survival mission. However, you don't get to any rewards for this kind of game play. And if you are feeling adventurous, bring other kinds of frames and see how long you can last.

 

Try it. Just once, and on the mercy survival, until you get your barrings on how it works. It's a fresh and exciting way to play.

 

Now that I have said that, I would like survival to change drastically.

 

I agree that the environment needs to change. It needs to be more dramatic and tense and darker. 

Enemy spawn rates need to be increased. By a lot. you should feel overwhelmed not like you're being hunted.

Life support should be removed altogether and it should be about surviving.

Mini Bosses need to spawn like the on the moon tile sets with the sentients.

 

 

EDIT: It would also be a cool idea if every 5 minutes or so a new enemy was introduced? Like start with the easiest grineer like butchers and continuously move up to bombards and napalms. and then start adding in corpus as well? and then infested? like survival is a major crossfire between three factions and no one drops LS and you just have to survive with no oxygen.

Edited February 8, 2016 by (PS4)Simmermon008

[(PSN)xKAIOWAx]

Im like the idea about mini boss or any kind a special enemies per rotation 

[-VS-Zany]

Why we need life support in survival if we can fly in deep space or underwater with archwings? 

Archwings creats a bubble around us. --> Mag prime codex