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Survival Balancing


[DE]Whirrrrr
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sounds interesting! i like it.

a counter suggestion to that however - still allowing more flexibility, but perhaps you can drain it at will, but it will drain slowly on it's own over time?

this is similar to what you're saying. if you touch it, it will eventually drain out on it's own. this would be a slow trickle, something that would perhaps... partially nullify the drain of Life Support.

if you want to actually increase it, hold Interact on it to speed up the release. kind've like Nitrous i suppose. the car goes at a rate on it's own, injecting your own pressurized oxygen supplement & replacement allows much more power, but only while you keep injecting. once you stop, it returns to it's normal Oxygen based capabilities.

 

No objections here :) I would be happy to get "activate life support with a button press and get the 30% over time while fighting for my skin" any day over needing to be glued to that stupid thing. Either by current game mechanics or by holding the button.

This is why i don't fight around the capsule tanks. I fight AWAY from them, in a position I can easily manage, so when I have to activate the support, I can use the speedy delivery power of TennoTravels to get to the life support and activate it, when no enemy is around. That simply doesn't always work, especially not with Infested who just wipe the floor with you at certain enemy levels if you are forced to stay at the capsule to activate it.

 

But this is just a bandaid fix to the ACTUAL problems.

 

The first problem is the randomness of personal life support drops and the idea of the game mode itself, which can't withstand any scrutiny. The game mode is DESIGNED to rely on those drops. You cannot survive the game if you only activate the capsules Lotus sends you. This is flawed beyond imagination, but is required to not destroy the broken level scaling which endless missions tend to run into. Or is it?

 

How about you get rid of PLS completey? Change Lotus capsules to be a fixed rate to spawn and not diminishing. They would be designed to cover the first 5 minutes with a few percent left, so the only thing the starmap progressing people need to worry about is "can I survive the enemies?" while having sometimes possibly no clue what the rest is about.

 

After that, we get to the point where we need more life support, and this should be gotten through active player participation. Have oxygen tanks "hidden" or let me say "placed" in the level geometry so those need to be sought after and activated in addition to the open drops from Lotus.

Furthermore, all hacking panels become "life support rerouting hacks". Each hack gives you a fixed percentage to the life support. Each hack gets subsequently harder to do, and thus proving the challenge to position yourself far enough away from the enemies to get your hack done, and be fast enough to get it done for that little extra to manage it. That is, ciphers aside. At the start, it takes one hack to add life support. The more hacks are being done, the more are needed to complete a successful life support reroute. Let's say the first three require only one hack each. This number will be listed below the life support line below the minibar. Reroute 4 to 6 requires two subsequent hacks, which can be done on the same console or anywhere, really. 7 to 9 requires three hacks each, and so on. There should not be a cooldown on the hacks, just hack away to your leasure. If you can survive. Which is the fun part of either managing this solo, or actually working as a GROUP to cover the back of the fellow Tenno who is the best at hacking. Totally not going to promote a team-based specialization or am I?

 

 

Second, the validity of the game mode is direly in question. I second what others have said. 0% should only PAUSE the timer and "get on our nerves" ... I mean shields, and life. No arbitrary shield removal any more please. We should get the chance to continue to push this because Lotus continues to throw her capsules and we still can hack stuff and find tanks in rooms. This also doesn't totally promote exploration in survival game modes - oxygen tanks in secret passages :P And each time we go above zero percent, the timer unpauses.

 

 

Third, rewards. ABC rotation instead of AABC would be nice, maybe even ABCD... but honestly, that doesn't change a THING. Why do we want to go past 20 minutes anyway? To squeeze more out of that key? Who cares, if keys can be so easily acquired with syndicates nowadays, even solo? Drop chances don't change, loot doesn't change, enemies just get stronger. That is stupid.

I'm still at a loss how you can still hold on to a random system when you already have a token system in place. Would it be so bad to buy that Prime part I want for 300 Ducats?

Might as well go so far and make a new token and call it "Orokin Relic". You get 1 relic for each 5 minutes into the game. That would be 4 relics for 20 minutes. 20 minutes is also usually the time when the spawn levels start to go higher, so at that point we give out multiples. Now we're at 2 relics per 5 minutes. After another 20 minutes, we're at either 3 or 4 relics per 5 minutes.

So let's make that , I don't know, 20 or 25 relics per part? Numbers pending and honestly don't matter. The idea is there, and has been for a long time. I've never seen DE give a reason why they want to keep the RNG. I can think of; randomness provides player trading and not making the content dry out so easily. I understand the first, but the second is... well. If you bring content that is enjoyable, people will play it regardless.

I know you have plans to spread out the Prime parts over the starmap. This promotes even more the idea of the "Orokin Relic" token because you're going into the great blue yonder and find Orokin stuff. Horray! Now let's get it to mommy Lotus and ask if we can get something to trade for it.

 

 

I withhold my comments on Excavation. Initially, I really loved the game mode and still do. The only sad thing is, the mission can NEVER fail unless you DIE, and you still get cryotic through destroyed excavators. It's basically an "all you can kill buffet" with no risk other than to your life, and no task to actually be worth pursuing.

 

 

Warframe is awesome, after two years it still is. I still manage to get new people on board, and the most recent addition to it is super thrilled and promptly threw 90 bucks at the game. You've done an amazing job with the initial release of the new parkour system, and it's super friendly and easy to use. I can't wait for new gauntlet challenges and obstacle courses that REQUIRE precision and speed of this movement. But there is still not enough polish that was promised, and the game is still wracked by early design choices which are shackling the progress of it.

 

If you want a compelling game system, there needs to be more than a few mission types which just scale with levels. Maybe it is time to think about iterating extra challenges on these basic mission types the higher we get, on starmap and Tower levels. Endless missions will always be an issue with the level scaling. So simply don't put all the challenge on the enemy levels but instead move more on to mechanic challenges. That does NOT mean more RNG. It means challenge player skill that isn't tied to shooting people in the face. I'd much rather see rewards based on harder tasks with a fixed outcome in gratification than mediocre to braindead things that are only tied to randomness.

But since there will always be those two camps... how about to cater to BOTH of them by letting them decide prior to the mission what they want to go for? That would be fun for a change. We have binary pre-mission selections and inside them as well. It can't be that hard.

Edited by Khunvyel
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Why can't we get polls or game plays of updates that change the game drastically?

 

What happened to to communicating with players? Was it more necessary to have a community poll, just to change void keys from syndicates. Was that more important than changing the function of a game mode?

 

 

Why am I asking so many questions? Because, I personally feel like you are ignoring us. Yes, we want the game to change for the better but we should always have a say before it gets implemented.

 

What I want to see, update logs. This is not for fixes but for changes in game play.

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With this new survival rebalance you are fighting timer and not enemy. Tried doing Apollodorus, best i could manage was 26 minutes. My kill count was 616. Mooks barely spawning and barely droping LS.

 

I guess this rebalance was aimed at coop T4 void, but it ruined low level solo survival missions instead.

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I'm really loving the idea of removing the PLS capsules entirely. Ever since it's conception, the integral flaw of Survival has been how reliant on RNG and enemy pathing it is. You can be going through entire armies at a time but still only receive one or two capsules, and while I hate to call you guys out on it the enemy pathing in Survival has always been very hit or miss, so Survival feels less like your surviving against the actual enemy and more against the clock and RNG.

 

 

EDIT: And I'm sure others have already mentioned this, but the reason that it was so easy to stack PLS was primarily because Nekros and Hydroid could generate additional capsules (that or you were just really lucky, which again is an RNG issue). All this change does is further enforce the need for these frames without actually fixing the O2 surplus when you do have them on your team; meanwhile solo players or teams without a Nekros/Hydroid have it harder than ever.

Edited by Paradoxbomb
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IMO this game is getting sick, everythings are hard, grind reinforced and fanboys are blind enough to see the problem. In fact i don't care if moderator lock this thread or not, DE refused to communicate and this forum utterly useless now. Finally i realized what defines an "update" when DE has no new content. Hype thread? More like NERF thread.

>DE makes a thread just to communicate

>"DE refused to communicate"

K. Makes sense. Keep up the lovely positive attitude!

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Who asked for this "change"?

Because "reduce the grind"?

and "less RNG"?

Changes are necessary. Survival needs a revamp and that's that.

 

 

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 would fix almost every problem survival currently has. I hope to Cthulhu DE notice this.

Edited by Gale47
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WHY? Survival was the most fun mode before this nerf?  I haven't tried it post nerf, but why are you making this more about micromanaging LS and dealing with RNG than, you know, actually surviving and having fun shooting dudes?

 

WHY NOT JUST HAVE EVERY ENEMY KILLED GIVE YOU BACK A SET PERCENTAGE OF AIR INSTEAD OF HAVING AIR REGULATED BY RNG BS?!

 

^Because everything on warframe is RNG^ if they did something different that would be inventive, don't be silly.

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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.

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So before i could get to 40 mins ODS with Excal solo only with ls drops, now i failed at 16 mins with drops and the ls Lotus sends, GJ DE in breaking that game mode. "Is  survival too easy, let`s mess it up and raise the grindwall/player`s frustration" ....honestly "if it`s not broken, don`t fix it". Overhauling survival is probably necessary but please don`t use half-baked approaches to it - they only drop your credibility and angers the playerbase.

 

-My 16 min fail boiled down to " kill 20 mobs, no ls drops->S#&$, kill more mobs-ls at 30-> use ls pod, couple of secs later ls down at 20-> run to the next room, rinse repeat until fail.

-You FAIL to understand that the players always adapt and your "balancing" or whatever you want to call it is pointless, what are you going to do next ? - Remove Necros ?!?  

Edited by Shinoma
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With this new survival rebalance you are fighting timer and not enemy. Tried doing Apollodorus, best i could manage was 26 minutes. My kill count was 616. Mooks barely spawning and barely droping LS.

 

I guess this rebalance was aimed at coop T4 void, but it ruined low level solo survival missions instead.

 

Yep I have had a very bad time on T2. 

 

I'm really loving the idea of removing the PLS capsules entirely. Ever since it's conception, the integral flaw of Survival has been how reliant on RNG and enemy pathing it is. You can be going through entire armies at a time but still only receive one or two capsules, and while I hate to call you guys out on it the enemy pathing in Survival has always been very hit or miss, so Survival feels less like your surviving against the actual enemy and more against the clock and RNG.

 

That would be the greatest change and the best sollution to make survival how DE wants. 

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

 

as for me i did some T2 survivals yesterday in a group of 4 and I don’t like the changes one bit.

 

PLS seems to very rarely drop. I was running with my tonkor and clearing very large groups of enemy’s with ease and we was not getting enough life support to keep going. We ended up all split up just running between LS trying to get enough LS. In the end we ended the mission due to the lack of LS. Didn’t matter how many we killed, we just couldn’t get enough LS.

 

All missions ended at the 40 min mark because there was a large lack of PLS and the LS amount nerf and not because we were failing to kill them.

 

So Please DE can you change the PLS back. 

 

Otherwise is a must to have a Nekros just to try and get enough PLS to go further.

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before: you left because enemies were too strong, after ~45-60 min

now: you leave because you run out of oxigen, due to running from one life support capsule to another ~30-40 min (or nekros)

 

i want to run around/camp and kill things. i dont even understand why camping is a "no-no" in survival missions. Look at ANY pre-war/Post-apocalypse (zombie) survival game. There are 2 kinds of players. Wanderers who run around to survive and players who organize themselves to build fortresses(camping) in order to survive.

 

Just reverse the change or rework survival over all.

get rid of lifesupport capsules, increase the oxigen drop and remove RNG from the oxigen drop. And let soloplayers decide how much enemies should spawn. as solo player against the spawn of a full team? why not? what s the problem?

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DE, may I make a suggestion that I'm pretty sure its going to fit perfectly with the "Survival" intention?

 

... Ever heard of Phobia II...? Apply that and multiply for 9999. Its meant for us to survive, right? Then make us survive that way.

 

Life Support is fun, but it gets old. And it gets easy. I applaud the attempts that you guys are having at balancing the Survival gamemode, but it's like the Energizer bunny...

 

... You balance, and rebalance, and rebalance, and rebalance, and rebalance... (1000 years later) and rebalance, and rebalance, and rebalance, and rebalance... (earth ends up exploding) and rebalance, and rebalance, and rebalance... See where this is going?

 

If the purpose is to survive, which is why its called "Survival" in the first place, why not throwing entire legions at us with constant, low timeframe, respawn? Seriously, get Phobia II and play it like you really mean it, and you'll understand what I'm trying to say here. Or even better, there's a game that falls directly on the same system as Phobia II. Its called "Crimsonland", distributed by Reflexive Arcade... If fits perfectly with the Survival thing, no need to have Life Support. All we need is to survive, and it'll be all up to each player to be able to survive.

 

See, before increasing the Life Support capsule drop rate and PLS drop rate, I was already doing 30 minutes without problem. After increasing it, I was reaching the 90-minute mark without problem... Now, I'm reaching around the 70-minute mark without problem as well. The Life Support system gets old, and gets easy. Especially after learning how to manage air supply properly. I'm pretty sure that everyone else feels the same thing.

 

---------------------------- x ----------------------------

 

... DERebbecca, this one is directed at you. What I just said isn't just a feedback to the current changes. It can also be used as a baseline for a complete rework of the Survival system because that's exactly where this gamemode is going to end up being in, sooner or later. Its probably best for us, as players, and both you and your co-workers, both as a team and company, to stop tweaking a system that we already know its so outdated to the point where any kind of tweak ends up being useless right before its released to us, the community. I don't know if the current Survival is "Survival 2.0", but I would get started on that 2.0 if it isn't already. No one does Survivals unless its a Survival on the Void, ok? Kill the current Survival and bury it for good, or go for Survival 2.0 and win.

 

---------------------------- x ----------------------------

 

... My bluntness sucks !, I know... I may seem to be a bit aggressive and harsh with my bluntness, misleading people into thinking I'm bashing and/or insulting outright, even if it isn't on purpose. But pretty much everyone is reaching the consensus that enough is enough. Enough with the tweaks, no one's even there for them, and bring out Survival x.0 where x > 1.

 

 

 

EDIT: There is no need to revert the changes, in my opinion, but you seriously need to start working on a complete rework of the Survival System.

Edited by Uhkretor
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My stupid suggestion on how to change survival and limit camping:

In survival, your shields are drained just like after breaking a window in a corpus ship. To aid you, Lotus drops her LS-capsules. When activated, those capsules add LS to the tile they're in and everything works normally for a set amount of time within that one tile.

If you go without LS for a longer time the drain increases exponentially, doubling for every minute you go without LS. The timer resets once you enter an area with active LS.

Let's say it starts at a drain of 10/s:

After 1 minute it would be 20/s

After 2 minutes it would be 40/s

After 3 minutes it would be 80/s

After 4 minutes it would be 160/s

After 5 minutes it would be 320/s

.

.

.

This would allow the player to go for quick strolls outside of LS, but greatly punish those who stay outside for a long time since even spamming Blessing constantly won't be enough to counter the continuous damage at one point.

Bonus for nightmare: Instead of resetting completely, the timer for "time without LS" merely runs backwards, so you have to spend more time within LS than outside of it if you don't want the timer to build up.

Edited by Tyrian3k
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I highly doubt anything of this will be considered. Lately the community is just getting ignored despite HEAVY restistances to certain topics which get implemented either way. First i was all for it but then: No - revert this immediatly or rework this again , you got plenty of suggestions. Please read all of this and dont just decide something COMPLETELY different. 

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Lets face it, 90% of those so called "heavy resistances" you're reffering to were and/or are actually of self-interest nature to the individual in question. There isn't a single shred of "suggestions" or "feedback" on them whatsoever. This topic, in particular, seems to be focused in considering feedback, hence why DERebbecca actually stepped and left a post in this topic. But, instead of seeing lots of constructive suggestions, I'm seeing a lot of suggestions focused on each own self-interest.

 

Don't take me wrong, they're all good ideas. But the feedback DE is looking for isn't in either of the posts of each of us. In fact, I seriously doubt my own post is even going to be considered, but at least I can say that I tried. The same for everyone else. However, I'm perfectly sure my suggestion was made with everyone else in mind, and not just me alone. Life Support out of the equation, just staying alive for as long as it takes against legions and legions of AI units. Its the perfect meaning of "Survival", and it definitely requires less tweaking than with life support as it was already proven since~... they first tweaked the Life Support system.

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Well after some survival runs (T3S) i can safely say i was forced into extracting at 31 min, when i normally could go for 40+ alone. Now 30 min is a long road. I end up spending 40% of the time moving between LS areas, meaning there are hardly any enemies on my path, not to mention the rate they drop pods now are just bonkers. I've always enjoyed Survival, mainly because it does become very chaotic at higher levels, and will let you face the enemy till you can't do damage at all. Biggest downside of the mode is the already horrible RNG that did not reward people that went for 1h or more. Now that 1h mark is just a myth unless you have a whole team that is experienced, and we all know that is a rare scenario.

 

As a MR20 that has always enjoyed Survival mode be it for farming keys or just doing long void runs these changes, and upcoming ones do not make the mode sound ''awesome'' as you devs said. Take a note on what the real problem is, which is how RNG is completely unrewarding for people that went 1h+. Rather then making reaching that mark a task in its own, after trying survivals now i can safely say it is a mode i've started to dislike, which is sad considering i played it non stop back in the days.

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Can we just revert this change? Is DE even listening? They have a massive habit at making changes, and never listening to the community about anything. It's like they just say, "Nah screw you, we'll change what we want to change." And yeah it's their game, but that's not how you run a healthy community.

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DE, may I make a suggestion that I'm pretty sure its going to fit perfectly with the "Survival" intention?

 

If the purpose is to survive, which is why its called "Survival" in the first place, why not throwing entire legions at us with constant, low timeframe, respawn?

 

My bluntness sucks !, I know...

 

I didn't think you were blunt, but I personally think that you went a bit over your head in telling everyone they don't "get it" and then bring your own opinion of "survival" as override. Which is... nothing but a slaughterhause. If you want endless waves with no failure condition but your death? For now, Excavation is your pick.

 

I'm also a bit at a loss how you can say "survival" and thinking hordes of enemies coming your ways. When I think about survival, it has a lot more to do than sustaining yourself in a hostile environment. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to fight constantly. Quite the opposite actually.

 

Honestly, if people really want swaths of hostiles coming their way and they want to hold out as long as they can... what is so wrong with mobile defense? Oh they want endless mobile defense? Isn't that called Defense? Oh you want no breathers? Then how about a new game mode called... "King of the hill"? Or even better, "Entrenchment" ?

I wouldn't mind if the idea from someone else earlier in this topic who said that rooms are going to be locked out after a specific time would apply to this "Entrenchment" thing. You'll get pushed back by time-locks and the rooms shut down one after the other and everyone who gets stuck into the room dies and respawns at the team mate, instead of forceful extraction. Because that is no fun. At first the rooms are tiles which are fairly easy to defend, then we're getting more open and less defendable rooms to boot.

 

But while all this sounds nice and funny, there is no REASON for it. It would simply make no sense at all. I'm already bothered how we can kill 1000 enemies in a single mission. Let's face it, Corpus and Grineer must be really borderline stupid to think they can overwhelm the Tenno at SOME point when continuing to throw enemies at them. Neither is this plausible nor economical. The only reason I see this as a game mode is like a Tenno trial with holographic enemies as training type. But not in the "existing" world.

 

So please, if we think about improving the game, we should also think about the validity of things. Everyone can call the "it's just a game" card on me as often as they like, but believe it or not... the more plausible and sensible something in a game is, the less one is annoyed by it. Acceptance becomes easier, immersion rises, and with that you're much more enticed with the game.

 

edit: typo + clarification.

Edited by Khunvyel
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I didn't think you were blunt, but I personally think that you went a bit over your head in telling everyone they don't "get it" and then bring your own opinion of "survival" which is... nothing but a slaughterhause. If you want endless waves with no failure condition but your death? For now, Excavation is your pick.

 

I'm also a bit at a loss how you can say "survival" and thinking hordes of enemies coming your ways. When I think about survival, it has a lot more to do than sustaining yourself in a hostile environment. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to fight constantly. Quite the opposite actually.

 

Honestly, if people really want swaths of hostiles coming their way and they want to hold out as long as they can... what is so wrong with mobile defense? Oh you want endless mobile defense? Isn't that called Defense? Oh you want no breathers? Then how about a new game mode called... "King of the hill"? Or even better, "Entrechnment" ?

I wouldn't mind if the idea from someone else earlier in this topic who said that rooms are going to be locked out after a specific time would apply to this "Entrenchment" thing. You'll get pushed back by time-locks and the rooms shut down one after the other and everyone who gets stuck into the room dies and respawns at the team mate, instead of forceful extraction. Because that is no fun. At first the rooms are tiles which are fairly easy to defend, then we're getting more open and less defendable rooms to boot.

 

But while all this sounds nice and funny, there is no REASON for it. It would simply make no sense at all. I'm already bothered how we can kill 1000 enemies in a single mission. Let's face it, Corpus and Grineer must be really borderline stupid to think they can overwhelm the Tenno at SOME point when continuing to throw enemies at them. Neither is this plausible nor economical.

 

So please, if we think about improving the game, we should also think about the validity of things. Everyone can call the "it's just a game" card on me as often as they like, but believe it or not... the more plausible and sensible something in a game is, the less one is annoyed by it. Acceptance becomes easier, immersion rises, and with that you're much more enticed with the game.

 

Just like you stated that what I said was my own personal view of it, from what I understood of that entire testament, I also assume that you decided to use my post to use your own twisted view of what "Survival" is.

 

I already know where the incoming train of replies and quotes are going to end up in, so let me make this short.

 

... I did not include everyone, except at the part where "consensus that enough is enough" comes into play. Everyone is tired of the tweaks they're doing, period.

 

You see a "Slaughterhouse", I see Survival. Want to know what a Slaughterhouse in this game really is? Lephantis only as a spawn on a HUGE square, spawning hundreds and hundreds of Lephantis at the same time, prefferably on top of your sorry a - - head. That's what a Slaughterhouse is. I would be fine with it, but I like to think out-of-the-box and on a broader range other than my self-interest on the gamemode. Which is why my suggestion was quite moderate. If you think that my suggestion is too much for you, maybe you should step up to the plate and offer your suggestion like a grownup instead of bickering on my own suggestion. As far as I know, I have not bickered about any other fellow player's suggestion about the matter.

 

Lets stop the quote chain right here, if you wouldn't mind. I have shared my view on the subject and I would preffer to maintain myself on a 'constructive' feedback setting, which may be one of the very feedback types that DE will end up taking in higher consideration in the long run... if you wouldn't mind.

Edited by Uhkretor
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