Survival Balancing

[KnaveOfSwords]

On 3/22/2016 at 4:49 PM, 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.

This sounds like an awesome idea for a game mode.  I'd probably see about having the difficulty scale with threat level.  Driving up the threat level lets the lone operative work faster at the cost of drawing more enemies to try to kill you.  Take a measured approach to keep the threat level low, and you'll likely have a safer time of it, but the operative is going to work a lot slower as they have to avoid all the security that isn't being diverted to deal with you.

On 3/28/2016 at 10:37 AM, 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).

I like this idea as well.  I'd go with adjacent rooms getting life support for part of the duration.  If the room the life support capsule is in gets 3 minutes, the surrounding rooms get 2.  If you want something a bit like the current PLS, have kills give the player(s) a few seconds of getting to ignore the effects of not having life support.

 

If you're wanting to stay closer to the current survival, I'd go with switching PLS over to being an effect of kills rather than drops, or remove it entirely.  Put in a cap on how many of life support capsules can be on the map at once (I'd go with 1-3), and how close together they can be (having 3 spots in one room where life support canisters can be is good.  Having life support canisters in all of them is not.), remove the current "once life support is gone, it's gone for good" limit, and cut down the rate at which life support canisters are brought in.  I wouldn't necessarily say that it should be impossible to keep life support up, but the typical experience should include periods where life support runs out before the players can get the next canister.

[taiiat]

22 minutes ago, DreadWarlock said:

The real problem with this game is that the enemies have become so difficult that forced players to become ridiculouly OP with their min/maxed builds for lvl 500 enemies. Now people start their account thinking on making those OP builds, they buy plat, gather the necessary mods, and so the game becomes easy, and threads like this show up.

nono - other way round. Players are constantly given never ending powercreep, and the game compensates over time by taking it away with Enemies.

[DreadWarlock]

2 hours ago, taiiat said:

nono - other way round. Players are constantly given never ending powercreep, and the game compensates over time by taking it away with Enemies.

I don't get how this powercreep is a problem, most powercreep are boring to play. I gladly traded a Tonkor for a harder to use Secura Penta, Got rid of my Broken War as soon as i got my War Blueprint, and i hardly use my War, Sancti Tigris is actually quite balanced, even with it's one-shots, due to constant reloading. Really now, i find no enjoyment in using some of the Top weapons, Braton Prime, Burston Prime, Akvasto, Sybaris, Bows, Dual Kama Primes, are so much more fun to play, i have a hard time understanding why do people still cater to the most powerful weapons, when many others do their job effectively, while being fun instead of overpowered 

Edited April 28, 2016 by DreadWarlock

[RedFoxVT]

How about make it so life supports are separate for each Warframe (Even though we now know that Warframe's have no one inside them and thusly don't need life support, hey, I calls it how I sees it, no hate). If each player has separate LS and maybe one player runs down to 0, other players can have an option to give them half their LS when they run up to them. I think that'd be an interesting mechanic.

[xbone]

this would make mostly stealth survivals even more difficult.when running loki or ivara sool.its very rare to get more then 15 enemies in one spawn.

[(XBOX)Harper Lord]

Just going to add my two cents as well, don't think this is a good idea, what your proposing to change DE, a lot of people have really good suggestions here, what harm can trying out a few of the communities suggestions cause? (Plus you get bonus points for showing you are listening to us.)

[TheJagji]

Survival needs to have a more objective based set-up, rather than just being a Defense with no time limit.

The first thing is to kill the air thing. I like the idea of a timer on them, but it being tied to you losing health is not something I like. With the hint of what is to come, with the new environmental stuff we got a sneak peek of in Dev Steam 73, I would love to see survival tied to that somehow. Not sure how, but I can definitely see its penitential in making it more interesting.

On 4/30/2016 at 2:37 PM, Yuri_Treychenko said:

(Even though we now know that Warframe's have no one inside them and thusly don't need life support, hey, I calls it how I sees it, no hate).

They still might actully... I mean, given that Dark Sector is being used as a jumping of point, I can easily see how the Warframes are made, and, to that end, how dark and insidious they really are...

Edited May 2, 2016 by TheJagji

[Morndawn]

Could you please just leave the basic survival mission as it is and create new missions with new ideas, or altered for some reason in sorties etc? It was funny for me just to fight a lot of enemies and also to lose health in the end if I will not have enough of life supports. Thank you.

Edited May 8, 2016 by Morndawn

[Azrael]

I don't understand why the rewards have to be tied to the time elapsed. The whole point of LS is to make you move around and kill things. Why not just make the rewards tied to how many enemies you've killed? We could have rewards every 100 enemies, or something similar. Then drop the LS component all together. That way we don't run into long sections where RNJesus turns his back on us and we get no PLS drops, and instead focus on the reason we go to survival missions: slaughtering thousands of enemies.

But no matter what wee do, we really should provide a way to skip through the first 30 minutes or so. I do long survivals so I can fight high level enemies, it'd be nice if I could do that without spending 2 hours.

[Technologic141]

On 22. 3. 2016 at 4:49 PM, 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.

Combine this with 8 players and archwing . 4 players in, 3 out and one will be "alone operative" who must hack/destroy/steal in cover (his progress based on threat)  and we have new RAID where whole team must participate.

[ThereShallBeWings]

Survival is currently my favorite and I greatly enjoy it, but as long as I have energy I can keep going for ever, which the eximus' normally stop me at around 35 minutes, or the sudden, and complete loss of all energy that sometimes happens, 140 energy is lost instantly on occasions, and this helps against stacking Valkyr, Limbo, and Atlas' tectonics / rumblers. Which would literally carry me all the way to 20 mins without me having to raise a hand.

But in all honesty, I like the way they are, getting to 40 minutes is difficult, very much so depending on the mission.

Edited May 10, 2016 by Cynical_Scrub

[taiiat]

On 5/8/2016 at 2:45 PM, Lord_Azrael said:

I don't understand why the rewards have to be tied to the time elapsed. Why not just make the rewards tied to how many enemies you've killed?

it should be clearly obvious how abusable that is.
and that there's no longer any requirement for Players to move around. even as it is, Players can manage to not need to move around, and you're removing factors that facilitate moving around even further.

[Azrael]

52 minutes ago, taiiat said:

there's no longer any requirement for Players to move around. even as it is, Players can manage to not need to move around, and you're removing factors that facilitate moving around even further.

This is partly my point. We can hardly call something abusable if abusing it means doing the same thing everyone is doing anyway. Why is occasionally changing locations on the map the gold standard of survival missions? The point of survival is to *survive*, and to kill as many enemies as possible. The mission shouldn't focus entirely around keeping an arbitrary number high. The current system is much more abusable, since it allows players to potentially go a long time by killing far fewer enemies than they are expected to if they can just manage the LS properly (for example, by bringing multiple ivaras and looting everyone). What I want when I play survival is to kill hordes of increasingly high-level enemies while desperately trying not to get killed. I don't play survival to go on a treasure hunt for LS modules. The PLS is just a mechanic to force us to kill lots of enemies, why not be explicit and make that the goal?

[taiiat]

15 minutes ago, Lord_Azrael said:

why not be explicit and make that the goal?

because of exactly what i already said - it's more abusable than what we have currently.
complete regressions in Gameplay are generally not advisable in Video Games.

[--Q--uaint]

20 minutes ago, taiiat said:

it’s more abusable than what we have currently.

I would argue that’s not really the case. The LS system lets you use RNG-boosting powers to go much longer than you could normally, and Ivara in particular is an extremely good example of this: Someone solo'd a 5 hour run, simply by abusing Sleep Arrows/Covert Lethality and Prowl.

While there exist methods of murdering lots of enemies very quickly, those methods don’t work very well with Nullifiers around or high level Grineer in general.

I suppose it depends what you mean by “abusable.” If you mean acquiring loot more quickly, sure it’s “abusable.” That’s a good thing IMO, since it brings it more in line with Excavation.

If you mean that it would allow you to get more loot than you otherwise would, I think it’s fine since Survival should be based on your ability to continue fighting and killing, not on how fast you can murder.
To that end, a LS-like mechanic would work, but RNG is not the correct way to implement it.

[Morndawn]

On 26. 3. 2016 at 1:36 AM, (XB1)Snicket002 said:

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.

 

On 26. 3. 2016 at 3:35 PM, viperveteran said:

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%.

It happened to me - I was doing a syndicate survival solo, because none else was online and I didn't take the best weapon, so I was thinking I will play it the way it was always fun for me - to hide and run around rather than kill everything and feel bored (as some players here), but I run out of life support - not enough of capsules and the last one 20 secs before the end of the mission was placed on the other side of the mission, so I had no time to reach it. and with the new instant failure with 0 of life support I failed that. 

I really wish they would change it back and do not care about abuses - what if that is fun for someone? 

And for those, who want to have all the missions hard - why you don't discuss the most boring mission in this game - extermination, where is 0 of challenge? 

And why getting a prime warframe should be unreachable by some players? Why it is such problem? you have to be there 20 mins anyway.

Survival is fun for some players and  if I will not play with Rhino or Trinity, I wouldn't be able to abuse that, so why force me to play the game some way, when that should be in nightmare /sorties/raids mainly? If Trinity heal wouldn't be so OP, they wouldn't have to destroy the fun for others...

 

[Morndawn]

How it could work for me with still the same survival type of mission, would be to make the mobs more hard, chasing you really, but leaving empty rooms behind, so you would be forced to move around, but not really to fight with them, with less drops and more of those firm support capsules, I wouldn't feel forced to kill every mob in the mission to get the drops, (so it wouldn't became another extermination like mission) but the challenge would be to get to the capsule first in some empty room left behind and release it. With more aggressive mobs, chasing players around, there would be no room for AFK players and still it could be possible to do it for the new players, who don't have good enough weapons/mods. If they would keep moving and arrive to the capsule first, they would be able to finish the mission. 

I like all the other ideas too, but it would be great, if they would be in a different mission, the same way as it is now with sabotages - the old and the new versions are present and it will add more of diversity. 

And I think if the 4th trinity skill would be armor only, it would be better for the challenging group play.

On wiki it says, that survival will not let trinity to replenish health so fast, so I don't know, why they removed the health bleed after you run out of oxygen :( I really liked that feature of survival :(

[taiiat]

On 5/12/2016 at 0:01 PM, Morndawn said:

playing Survival without Killing

uhh - this is a game where the Gameplay pretty well centralizes around stylistically Killing lots of Enemies.
if you don't want to Kill Enemies, you... might be in the wrong game.

Survival purposely makes Killing important in order for Players to not only have something to do but also to inevitably force them to leave the Mission once they cannot keep the Killing Rate high enough.

20 hours ago, Morndawn said:

I don't know, why they removed the health bleed after you run out of oxygen :( I really liked that feature of survival :(

it hasn't gone anywhere. special Missions (ala Alerts) require completing a certain Time Window. failing to do that is a Mission Fail.
this is the case for all Gamemodes - failing to complete the Alerts' Task is an instant Mission Fail.

Playing a normal Survival Mission does not do this, you will drain Health as expected.

[xxswatelitexx]

PLS nerf would hurt new players who have a harder time racking up kills compared to more experienced ones. This would basically make it less favorable for new players to squad up together. 

[(XBOX)Snicket002]

Survival should be just like other games where the goal is to hold out on as long as possible and not be based on how long some arbitrary timer system (life support) lasts.

[Morndawn]

On 13. 5. 2016 at 7:54 PM, taiiat said:

uhh - this is a game where the Gameplay pretty well centralizes around stylistically Killing lots of Enemies.
if you don't want to Kill Enemies, you... might be in the wrong game.

Survival purposely makes Killing important in order for Players to not only have something to do but also to inevitably force them to leave the Mission once they cannot keep the Killing Rate high enough.

it hasn't gone anywhere. special Missions (ala Alerts) require completing a certain Time Window. failing to do that is a Mission Fail.
this is the case for all Gamemodes - failing to complete the Alerts' Task is an instant Mission Fail.

Playing a normal Survival Mission does not do this, you will drain Health as expected.

 

Thanks for clarifying. I did yesterday a syndicate mission again and I was losing health in the end of mission, so that would be great.

 

As for the killing- you can play this game with trinity or to do spy missions, so it is not only about killing, and it would be boring if it would, but what I was saying is,that to try to survive without the possibility to kill enemies (like it is in some horror games) can still be fun for some players. and I like when you need tactics.

But I noticed,that the problem with a horde was,that if the team splitted,the mobs were splitted too, so they were in every room anyway,but still it was possible to run to a LS module and release it.

With 2 players it was the best variation, with more of players, you can ignore LS module completely,and still have enough of drops, which can be a bit boring. Also it worked well with infested,because they don't have ranged weapons,but stronger grineer would just shot you down.

But the more I think about it the more I like the idea of 0 drops and a lot of LS modules.

Maybe if there could be a challenging syndicate missions, when you are a top rank with them, where you could have such missions?

Because I don't do sorties, because you need to finish 3 of them, and I'm not sure if I could get a group of good players for the hardest mission and nightmares are without shields mainly,but if I would like to have just 1 feature of the mission to be removed and made harder, (because of syndicate weapons I will be able to finish that) maybe some challenging syndicate missions could do that?

 

Edited May 15, 2016 by Morndawn

[Morndawn]

It could actually be connected to a solution for the players who wanted syndicate missions to be more different from the ordinary: 

Those missions, that don't have any feature, that could be removed, could be made harder by implementing of syndicate fights - like a group of syndicate,that hates you, would arrive and work agains you and make the mission harder - or even sabotage the LS modules,as some players suggested here.

Edited May 15, 2016 by Morndawn

[taiiat]

32 minutes ago, Morndawn said:

But the more I think about it the more I like the idea of 0 drops and a lot of LS modules.

the problem, as ever, is that then there's no necessity to Kill Enemies. which has to be the case, in order for Players to have more to do than 'just walk to here' and repeat. and to keep Players from turtling in locations indefinitely due to not needing to Kill Enemies.

and then because of that, Players would just Kill the Enemies that pose high threats, and not Kill the rest of them. eventually the game will be at the maximum concurrent Spawns of just the lowest threat units, and no more Enemies will Spawn for the rest of the game.

 

[jinxeverything]

How about this, we have 5 tiers of mission and this mission timer does not go from 0 to infinite but is on countdown! 

1. Tier 1 = mission from level 1-10 (can go to level 20-30 when we decide to stay for another round).
2. Tier 2 = mission from level 10-20 (can go to level 30-40 when we decide to stay for another round).
3. Tier 3 = mission from level 20-30 (can go to level 40-50 when we decide to stay for another round).
4. Tier 4 = mission from level 30-40 (can go to level 50-60 when we decide to stay for another round).
5. Tier 5 is T4 exclusive as this mission need to start from level 70 since this is the highest mission in the game, it need to start high, not scale from 20 to 70 in 20 minutes (can go to  level 140-160 when we decide to stay for another round).

Time limitation :

1. Tier 1 mission will last 10 minutes with the option to get another 5 minutes, most of new players will struggle the moment heavy unties will roll in, so that's a good limit. 
2. Tier 2 mission will last 20 minutes with the option to get another 15 minutes.
3. Tier 3 mission will last 30 minutes with the option to get another 25 minutes.
4. Tier 4 mission will only last 40 minutes with the option to get another 35 minutes.
5. Tier 5 mission minutes will be between 60-120 minutes and here you also get 2 rewards starting 65 minutes and onward with the option to get another 45 minutes.

You get a chance to extract whenever you want after 5 minutes mark.

We don't have Air to pressure us in here but time, time goes down very quickly and the only way to slow it down is to kill enemies, head shots furthers the slow down of the time by 1.5X.

Your job here is to slow down the time as much as you can until you reach the milestone A.K.A 5 minutes mark for next reward.

So kill enemies to last longer by slowing down the time through death :)

No need to bash my idea, if its bad then its bad, at least i tried something.

 

[Satchii]

why make survivals harder theyr only there for filling out the drop slots on 5-10 min 15 min 20 min markers anyway lowering droprate and restore amout will only make it a hazzle to do, change the survival mode all together