Survival Balancing

[CanadianWolverine]

Meanwhile, somewhere at the back of the room, a lonely voice pipes up...

 

Just tried to do a Syndicate Survival mission, which I pretty much have to do alone or the other impatient Public players don't let me have the time I need to hunt down the medallions.

 

Now, this is my first Survival mission since the change, I was used to running a Solo Survival for up to around 30 minutes with my Rank 30 *^ Loki Prime and Rank 30 **** Hikou Prime and I do mean running, those pods that Lotus sends got used, with me usually waiting intensely for her to teleport in the next one..

 

So when I just did this Syndicate Survival, this is roughly what my face looked like with just 5 minutes left to go still, just absolutely pulling my hair out with the Life Support hovering between 10% and 40% until I finally just couldn't find any more ridiculously rare drops of Life Support (2%?!?) and there were no pods from Lotus to activate and the Life Support ran out with just 41 seconds left to survive till Lotus would give me an extract...

 

 

WTF

 

I am not a happy player of space ninja's right now, Survival went from one of my favourite missions to the absolute wurst if this experience is anything to go by.

 

If you think having a Pilfering Hydroid or Nekros was a requirement before, just wait to see how hostile this makes squad leaders trying to run these mission types now if they don't have the "perfect" squad mates with the "right" rank 30 frames with max ranked mods. Just what the heck was DE thinking.

[AMDMAD]

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

 

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). 2 Person T3 Void Survival did not leave us starving for O2 in the slightest. Our lack of Corrosive Projections and 'end game loadouts' on my end was our real weakspot and reason for departure.

.

ODS Solo on the other hand is a different story - thirsty Nyx Prime was thirsty. 

 

Lastly, this isn't the end of these changes. Please observe directly in the OP that 'We'd love to hear your feedback and will continue to test and tweak if needed.' Rest assured Survival is a passionate topic inside and outside DE walls. 

You just have to keep ruinning everything dont u? Oh i forgot it is beta how silly of me.

The harsh reality is you trying to nerf everything in order not to reach high missions

because u know the armor etc is broken and u dont want us there,This is obvious with

recent changes and healers buff , That is why u use cp to be able to do something

and not enemies be sponges and that is why u dont want us to go over 60 min.

So instead nerfing everything to hide the unbalance my idea is balance them.

Best solution is give enemies a max level they can reach and blance towards it

Edited August 27, 2015 by AMDMAD

[MaxiTB]

The only way to fix the camping meta in survival right now:

 

* Increase drop rate of prime parts by 100% or increase somehow the drop-rate of keys (or let us transmute them).

* Reduce the global drain rate of LS by 50%.

* Reduce PLS value to +1.

* Increase stationary LS to +100.

 

The main issue is simply the effectiveness of camping with Nek/Hyd. Only a major nerf to PLS will change that.

BUT this also means less drain is required or you will run out fast. This change would at least force players to move. As a compensation for increasing difficulty way better drop rates are required. The main reason why people camp the first place are the awful drop rates of parts and the shortage of keys in general.

[Fifield]

The only way to fix the camping meta in survival right now:

 

* Increase drop rate of prime parts by 100% or increase somehow the drop-rate of keys (or let us transmute them).

* Reduce the global drain rate of LS by 50%.

* Reduce PLS value to +1.

* Increase stationary LS to +100.

 

That's basically the first suggestion here:

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

The second suggestion also works and was more popular.

 

The way reward system is wrong in 2 ways, here they are (along with some -fixes- thought by me):

1) AABCAABCAABCAABC: Really? getting rotation A rewards at 65-70 minutes is okey?

 

Yes, since you only got there by camping (assuming you're talking about T4).  If you put in better rewards after 20 mins, you massively encourage camping.

[AzureTerra]

So one of the better missions gets a swift kick in the nuts but Farmville Draco still rolls on happily

[Ziegrif]

I'll test solo on T2 tonight. Then form my opinion.

I was doing T3s for Ash prime parts but now I'm a bit afraid to do it solo.

Gotta drag my Bromance to T3.

Edited August 27, 2015 by Ziegrif

[RiverRatJr]

so as a player that spends a lot of time soloing missions, here was my T4S solo run that i JUST finished. 

i stayed until i absolutely ran out of LS, that means picking up every PLS, and activating every pod at 10-15% as well as killing every enemy that i saw to maximize drop chances.  i only lasted 10:45.

For a T4S i normally can run for about 50mins on average when soloing, was very suprised to see how much this changed affected it.

 

my personal thought on this is to increase the number of enemies or dmg that they do. survivals atm feel like ghost towns until about 15 mins in. and survivals are not exiting due to the fact that there is no threat until you get about 20-30 mins in, when there are a lot of enemies spawning. the answer is not to decrease the number of LS drops.

 

[imgur](http://i.imgur.com/zPH9yTZ.jpg)

Edited August 27, 2015 by AOD_RiverRatJr

[arsyadpower]

thx, you guyz make camping a lot easier now :)

[Renkai141]

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/462115-what-if-we-improved-old-modes/#entry5144025

 

My two cents, involves lots of reading.

[Rakosta_Kai]

Maybe this is just me...

 

I see changes like this as being a need for difficulty modes being added and the risk -reward ratio being addressed along with it.

 

making tweaks to a mode to make it feel more challenging to people who have played the mode for years is off-putting to casual players and those who have just recently come to the game.

 

There's a reason it was set to this level of difficulty... It's the lowest common denominator.

 

If you want to make a tougher mode then it would be nice if it were an optional difficulty mode.

It would also be nice if it had better loot and rotation rewards consistent with that increased difficulty.

[Kalvorax]

My crew went from activating maybe 4 in a 40m period to needed 8 in a 20 minute period. The start of survival is now the hardest part. Trying to make it to 5m without going through 3 life support with the crappy starting spawns. What you could of done was removed the life support drops from enemies and made the ticks per second slower or you could remove LS period since it never made since.

 

bouncing off what you said at the end.

 

The way i see a survival could be each player has, say, 4 bleed outs. At the end of each bleed out, they are respawn as if they had used a revive (but didn't, revives are not allowed in survival *hypothetical change*) and on the final one (so they technically have 5 bleed outs) the die and but respawn as a "ghost" in the sense that they can still move around (so as not to trigger the stupid afk timer) but can't do anything else.

 

Once all 4 members are down the mission ends with a success (so no fail, just like excavation).

 

THAT is how I see survival....not this need to always be picking up life support (THE ONLY FACTION THAT MAKES SENSE FOR THIS IS INFESTED, DUE TO THEIR SPORES).

Edited August 27, 2015 by xcynderx

[MJ12]

I'm not sure why this whole life support thing is relevant or interesting. Okay, the idea seems to be that you want people to move rather than stay in one room and camp-but here's the reason we're doing what we do in Survival-we're supposed to be distracting the enemies from Tenno agents who are pilfering stuff while we're killing all the guards and generally making a nuisance of ourselves.

 

So the failure mode shouldn't be "we run out of life support and must extract," it should be "the enemy is not distracted and they stab the guy looting the lockers in the face repeatedly with bullets." At a minimum it should require you to reach objective rooms and clear them to keep the enemy's attention. You could add more interesting objectives to them-killing minibosses, for example.

 

It even makes more sense than "these sealed armor suits don't come with their own life support."

[smithf]

I'm not sure why this whole life support thing is relevant or interesting. Okay, the idea seems to be that you want people to move rather than stay in one room and camp-but here's the reason we're doing what we do in Survival-we're supposed to be distracting the enemies from Tenno agents who are pilfering stuff while we're killing all the guards and generally making a nuisance of ourselves.

 

So the failure mode shouldn't be "we run out of life support and must extract," it should be "the enemy is not distracted and they stab the guy looting the lockers in the face repeatedly with bullets." At a minimum it should require you to reach objective rooms and clear them to keep the enemy's attention. You could add more interesting objectives to them-killing minibosses, for example.

 

It even makes more sense than "these sealed armor suits don't come with their own life support."

I actually agree, if it is just the distraction part: life support is not necessary.

 

But on the other hand, there needs to be some attentuation factor that will prevent people from going on forever. This is why the current LS system is in. But if there is another way to achieve the same ends, doing away with it makes more sense. Like you mentioned: "these sealed armor suits don't come with their own life support." is ridiculously funny.

[Sunder]

I'm not sure why this whole life support thing is relevant or interesting. Okay, the idea seems to be that you want people to move rather than stay in one room and camp-but here's the reason we're doing what we do in Survival-we're supposed to be distracting the enemies from Tenno agents who are pilfering stuff while we're killing all the guards and generally making a nuisance of ourselves.

 

So the failure mode shouldn't be "we run out of life support and must extract," it should be "the enemy is not distracted and they stab the guy looting the lockers in the face repeatedly with bullets." At a minimum it should require you to reach objective rooms and clear them to keep the enemy's attention. You could add more interesting objectives to them-killing minibosses, for example.

 

It even makes more sense than "these sealed armor suits don't come with their own life support."

Not to mention ya know....Archwing.

When we have that equipped we can literally be out in space for as long as we want.

Why not just bring it with us to Survival missions?

 

That  being said, Survival really needs an overhaul.

[kajiss1]

Well i did a T4 surv with valkir, hek, hiku p, and scindop. in a solo run, i try my best but the life support was going down to fast. in the end i got 26 min and run out of it.

 

A little more Ls will be nice to keep going 

thanks for all.

[nickelshark]

Not to mention ya know....Archwing.

When we have that equipped we can literally be out in space for as long as we want.

Why not just bring it with us to Survival missions?

 

That  being said, Survival really needs an overhaul.

Not to mention that apparently the Grineer, Corpus and Infested all seem to have built in LS but we Tenno don't.

[Sphirical]

In my honest opinion, the Survival mode was perfect. The difficulty, the ease when you have a proper team, the experience required to keep going for a long time. Everything worked.

Until they started changing the spawn mechanics and now even the drop rate of PLS.

And when I say perfect I mean that so far Survival has the most replayability without it getting boring, unlike other modes. It was balanced and worked the way it did.

[-Aza-Gorod-]

why cant we just fight endless enemies till we simply die? or some how make it to the exit before dieing? sounds better to me and it is accualy real survival instead of logic breaking stuff like how the infested can breath in space or stuff like that. i mean come on D:

[smithf]

Not to mention that apparently the Grineer, Corpus and Infested all seem to have built in LS but we Tenno don't.

 

we probably don't breath the same air and things like that... lol.

[kubbi]

As a long time player who has been pretty burned out by endless game modes, I believe the increase in difficulty ought to be met with an restructuring of rewards. Namely, rather than the AABCAABC rotation cycle we've had for so long, perhaps we could switch to a more intuitive ABCABC rotation cycle.

Completely supporting this. Playing for 20 minutes hoping for a certain drop (and be dissapointed with forma) is too long. It should've been ABC from the start.

But then again warframe and grind just happens to have to be a thing.

[Homer87]

I've played survival since this change, and I'm honestly not a fan of it - I'm gritting my teeth waiting on Lotus to send life support capsules, while the enemy is being stingy with their air. It was nice to have a lot of drops so I mainly had to worry about the enemies in front of me instead of whether or not I was going to make it to five minutes on the life support system itself, let alone the enemies. I understand that this is a tweak, and more tweaks to come, but as it stands now, survival is more stressful than fun. It's a shame because it is by far my favorite mission type.

[HollowExistence]

This change is as bad as paris prime looks like

[Silverton]

Yeah after some more playing around with it trying to stay pass 10m without Nekros is pretty hard. With Nekros I can keep life support in the 80s, but without him I have to activate at least one support every minute 30. So what went from being lets take what ever frame we have fun with has became someone has to bring Nekros to make it anywhere.

 

My suggestion is get rid of LS period and make it play as long as you want. It makes little since that we have to activate LS when the rest of the enemies on the field are unaffected. The only place it makes since is infested and that is because of the spores in the air, but in all other scenarios it doesn't. Heck even the corrupted have a way to fight it and they are mindless drones...well so are the grineer. If we are people in conduits to control our void energies than certainly we should have a way to make LS.

 

I like to idea of just free roam until we want to leave, which is how I have been doing survival for the last year. Stay for 10m on Cassini for r5 cores or stay in void missions for 20m for a c rotation part. Reducing how LS has been for the last year to make things harder isn't helping anything and it just pisses off your players base.

[msterforks]

Players have to actually try if they want to achieve 20 minutes on a low level survival. Teams need a Nekros to make it to 40 minutes on most survivals. 60 minutes is near impossible without a coordinated and experienced 4 man team.

 

These changes bring about two problems. The first is that many low level survivals were a relaxing level where players can level up weak weapons and try new things out. With the added stress to kill as efficiently as possible, this is no longer a thing.

 

The other problem is much, much more drastic. The drop tables.

Players were already struggling to receive drops in void survivals. Popular items such as the Ash Prime systems drop from a scarce T3 survival key. With already diluted drop tables, few keys and now fewer rotation C chances, these players are discouraged from ever building these prime items.

 

Terrible, terrible update. Revert ASAP, and work on a different solution please.

[Tesseract7777]

I think the spirit of these changes are good, but you guys may have dropped the LS drop rates a bit much. The problem I was running into in a T3 Survival for only 20 minutes solo, was struggling the whole time to find enough LS. And I mean really struggling. 

 

I was killing stuff with my Seven forma'd amprex no trouble at all, but LS was appearing as rarely as water in the desert. 

 

And I reached the point where I barely made 20 minutes because I was having to rely more on actually activating the LS support Capsules, which is good(The relying on LS Capsules, not the barely being able to go 20 minutes part) ! Except... it's just not enough. 

 

Especially for a solo player, Lotus just doesn't spawn the Life Support Capsules fast enough to keep up. With the lowered amount of LS Modules dropping from enemies, and them counting for less, even if you kill really fast and run around and use the LS Capsules strategically, it was barely enough to go 20 minutes. And I was killing stuff very quickly, killing multiple mobs at once with my Amprex. 

 

It's clear the spirit of this change is to make survival more run and gun so we have to rely more on the Capsules and not just camp and own mobs. Like I said I think the intention behind the changes is a good idea, but it's become a bit too difficult to keep up, especially for solo players. 

 

Having a system where doing survival, especially void survival solo is almost impossible because of LS Capsules not appearing fast enough and LS not dropping fast enough was an old problem that was fixed a while back. The problem has returned and it seems to be more pronounced now. 

 

I don't suggest increasing the amount of LS drops from mobs, nor do I suggest increasing their value. 

 

Instead, in the spirit of these changes, I suggest that the speed at which Lotus spawns Life Support Capsules increases, and the amount that they restore your LS is buffed from 30% to around 40%. I think those changes alone would enforce the running and gunning playstyle you guys want, while making it less frustrating and more possible for solo players to play and enjoy survival missions. 

 

If anyone from DE reads this thanks for reading and considering the feedback! 

Edited August 27, 2015 by Tesseract7777