Survival Balancing

[WarHeroman]

2nd Survival T4 13.14 Run out of air,

Been playing since beginning mastery 20 and i can pretty much say you have ruined survival Great Job DE

[(PSN)FriendSharkey]

I can hardly wait for Fallout 4. Not that it's going to deplete Warframe or anything, just that when new games launches a majority of players will flock to it, you tend to see De pull its head out of its behind and get with the picture on player satisfaction over dissatisfaction.

While this Survival tweak hasn't hit consoles yet, I look forward to the results of the PC feed back and the meta data on their servers when players have an option to not stick around for dev experiments and how it effects Warframe. Because usually that translates into a week of splendor on Warframe due to the shower of gifts of "please don't leave us."

[FelisImpurrator]

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.

I've come to realize that the problem in Warframe isn't camping. It's HOW people camp.

 

In other games, those people on the fortresses actually move around inside doing things, changing windows and fixing barriers and all... or if they stay put, it's because they're aiming and killing like an arcade shooter.

 

In Warframe, campers huddle around on a box or a sewer and mash one button until everything else dies or they do, hiding behind an impenetrable shield and launching nuke blasts every second. There are ways to make camping fun, but "macro the 4 key and go make a sandwich" is not one of them.

[(PSN)mc_polo]

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. 

 

Good Morning Ms. or Mrs. Rebecca,

 

I can see where the changes for Personal Life Support (PLS for the newer players) would come into play. I will admit there were times I was in a group of 4 and we never touched a Life Support Module (LSM) until the 30 minute mark. The catch to this scenario however required all 4 players to be within or vacate the same room in which everyone else was in. I do not, repeat I DO NOT, like assuming things but I would rather ask were you and your test partner within the same room?

 

The reason I ask this is because the spawn of the hostiles depends on player(s) location as well as the distance between each player(s). This in turn also have an effect on PLS since lower enemy count means less PLS which means more dependence on the LSMs. This does not seem bad in the scheme of things now but later it would be.

 

This may sound crazy but I would like to see another series of survival test but with 4 players each a good distance away from each other. My hypothesis here is that each player far away drives up the speed at which life support is diminishing but also affecting enemy spawn locations. If you do consider this please give results to where we can see when and where the appropriate changes taking place. I am sorry if I was a rude-sounding TENNO anywhere within this post.

 

Fellow TENNO,

 

mc_polo

 

PS: NYX Prime FTW

[cobra302]

Building on the ideas suggested above. It appears there are two major complaints which players would like addressed. First, the lack of stress and second the splitting up of players when people go off to play solo in the squad mission. I think my suggestion would go far to address both of those concerns.

 

Suggestion: Make the Lotus Life Support Capsules function like the heaters on the ice planet. When you are within a certain radius your oxygen is normal and sustained by the capsule. Beyond that radius your oxygen / health / shields experience a constant drain as they do when the mission is failing. Instead of capsule activation adding duration to the current oxygen over the entire map, which by the way makes no sense, it would instead start a fixed duration of time that standing within its radius provides oxygen. For example, a capsule is activated and lasts for 3 minutes. During those 3 minutes players can stand within its radius and all things are normal. Leave the radius and your oxygen / health / shields are drained. Players can leave the area to kill enemies or pickup drops but they would be in the hazard and have to return to re-up their oxygen / health / shields. After the 3 minutes the capsule disappears and that area becomes a hazard once again just like the rest of the map. The players are forced to go to another capsule and activate it. It could be designed so that only one capsule can be activated at a time or so that several (perhaps with a cap at 4?) can be activated. To be clear, the entire map is a hazard except within the radius of currently activated capsules which makes more sense anyway if the player is to believe life support has been turned off everywhere. After all activating one life support oxygen capsule and having it suddenly make the entire world (all map tiles) replenished with oxygen isn't that logical. Yes, I know not everything is based on logic but if survival is being re-worked then making it a little more logical wouldn't be a bad idea.

 

...

Make us run from one fixed place to another, for our life support, with tension being scarce resources (Shield and Life were an example from someone above, through air being sucked out, and they not regenerating) in between the life supports. Or the life supports could work like air towers on the ice planet, with finite resources. Once its empty, you need to find another one, or you will slowly loose shields and not regenerate them.

...

 

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.

 

The idea of making the capsules and map function more logically in that the life support has a limited range from the capsules has now been suggested a few times. This concept would make the map more interesting, dynamic, and challenging. Hopefully, this functionality along with the other great suggestions that have been made in this thread can be included in an overall solution to rework the survival mode into something better.

Edited August 27, 2015 by cobra302

[Stormblossom]

Regardless of long term solutions, I would really prefer to see a reversion or tweak to help solo play in survival maps, as my squad is only around one day a week and pickups usually hurt more than they help. This has taken my favorite play mode and made it too frustrating to be worth playing.

[CryvernX]

soloing 1h+ runs on t4s was maybe the only thing that kept me playing. you better dont break survival

[low1991]

you better dont break survival

It's already broken. with the reduced PLS recovery rate & drop rates.

It's Nerkos! or DIE!

[Uhkretor]

What is Nerkos?

Also, why do these changes make it a necessity?

EDIT: Because, I don't need that PoS to reach any milestone I want... No offense intended to it.

Edited August 27, 2015 by Uhkretor

[GDSK-NXS]

 

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.

 

 

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.

 

 

I never camp, and I have got up to 75 (near, no extraction) by finishing everythin with excalibur's radial blind augment until I had no energy left. You know what I got? multple forma, plenty rounds of cores, and the rest where parts I always get in the first 10 minutes. Since then I haven't played survival for long since, if we are real, after 40 it is just foolish to continue, you "already got 2 times the """""""""""""best"""""""""""""" rewards" and lasting longer will not give you anything better than that, not even a slight increase in drop chances, it's just forma BP and cores until you die or extract because your hopes were crushed by RNG.

Lately, I only play survivals up to 40, and even then, since my luck is trash (maybe you people go 20 minutes 3 times and get 3 times the best rewards but not me) I would rather buy a primed part than farm it. I don't have ten thousand platinum to spend in cosmetics but farming isn't really worth it since 80% of the time, I get forma, cores, orokin cells, and then DE spits "We take primes to the vault to help the farming". Farming isn't fun, and it's not because of the mission, it's just because of the way rewards are chosen and given in those missions.

And lastly, if I wanted to camp I would play defense, I'm not pushed constantly to get energy, or to get oxygen, and I'm not forced to work as a clock to get things, given the fact that it is not gonna help my trash luck.

[(PSN)SilkyJay86]

Survival might be the most interesting mode to me.  Sounds good. 

[Herr_Metzger]

DE, to make these changes complete, you need to reduce oxygen supplies from 30% to 15%. Or even to 10%.

Edited August 27, 2015 by Mixail357

[KaraBerry]

I've only played two survival missions with the changes in effect. I'm not sure if level matters, but the first was on Apolloduras, and the second was on Jupiter. I forget which node.

My experience both times was this; There were not nearly enough enemies to challenge me. (Note I was using a r10 Ember and my Tonbo.)

Not only were they not enough to challenge me, they weren't even enough to keep me occupied while I waited for the next LSC. The rooms were empty for long minutes before five or six enemies stumbled in. I would kill them, pick up the one PLS they dropped, then wait until the Capsule spawned, would use it, then run around trying to find more enemies. I was playing solo. There should have been no reason for them to have such trouble spawning. When you guys talked about frantic, I was hoping to be swarmed with endless droves of enemies. I had hoped the challenge would be to survive the flood of enemies while still having to pay attention to LS, but what I got was a waiting game where not nearly enough LS could be replenished. Both times I had to leave at just after 10 minutes.

 

I'm going to try a few more missions, in hopes that I just had a really bad couple of experiences there. But so far, I'm a little upset at the changes. Mostly, so far, my suggestion would be to crank enemy spawns. Get them to be a flood, not a trickle. That would probably fix most of the problem.

[thebrainbrain]

You know a mode needs a revamp when players stop caring about nervs ...

[Khunvyel]

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.

 

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.

 

We didn't even start a quote chain to be fair. The way you wrote your previous post was reading as "I know it better than everyone else", hence it rubbed me the wrong way, and I responded to it. Rather civil, I might add. If you look at my posting history, you will see almost exclusively a wall of constructive and well reasoned posts including in-depth bug reports ever since I started to make my voice heard in this forum over a year ago.

 

So yes, what you say sounds like a slaughterhouse to me, and my opinion of survival is different. That's okay. I have zero problems with opinions. But I do have issues when someone comes around and blatantly states that "this is not survival" with a broad generalization that it won't even get anywhere after 1000 years of rebalancing. That is not what I believe to be constructive feedback, and that is again my opinion. Hence I reacted. And honestly, I thought that I would get a more mature and civlized response than what you had to offer. Sadly I was wrong.

 

Ultimately, your assumption is wrong that I'm "twisting" the meaning survival. That is just what you think. I'm not twisting it, I simply state my opinion. There is a vast difference between the two. Please re-read what I said and remove the hostility in case you read some out of it. Further assumptions of you about my persona are also incorrect. I haven't made a single assumption about you, if you read what I wrote.

 

And I sure did offer my own feedback, on page 6 and then later on page 9 as an iteration on it.

 

I think that covers everything and now that we cleared that up, I'm sure this works for the better of us both, and will put it into a better light and perspective for the fellow readers :)

[WarHeroman]

T3 Survival 12.29 even with necros this is making me angry waisitng t3 survival keys

Running survival keys all night cant get paste 20 mins without running out of air and stressing the whole time not fun at all

Edited August 27, 2015 by WarHeroman

[low1991]

DE srsly need better test-runners before a actual fix release.

[Fifield]

Anyone tried 4-player camping yet?  I presume it's still feasible.

[WarHeroman]

Why did DE reduce 2 things why not 1 at a time as a test why reduce the drop rate and reduce the time each pickup is worth double trouble cant you just nudge it a little for effect but no you have to push it over the edge u have a great setup the way it was, why why do you fix things that are not broken ?

[Ziegrif]

Yo listen up here's a story

About a pink Nekros that lives in pink space

And all day and all night and everything he sees

Is just pink like him inside and outside

pink his ship with a pink little interior

And a pink Supra

And everything is pink for him and himself

And everybody around

 

'Cause he just did a T3 survival.

 

Builds in spoilers.

Keep in mind I took a Support Nekros build Solo into T3. So I was not ready for this **** and I used 2 resurrects.

 

Nekros

 

Supra

 

Synoid Gammacor

 

Scindo Prime

 

Okay did the survival here's some results.

Times when I had to use a life support pod.

Life Support was never above 50% after the first 5 minutes.

 

10:41

12:47

14:19

18:21

19:46

21:10

23:09

24:23 (at around this point I couldn't kill things anymore due to everything crashing down.)

26:37

27:57

29:10

30:27

32:28

33:14

34:02

 

And this is when LS gave out.

 

 

End result.

 

Edited August 27, 2015 by Ziegrif

[taiiat]

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, more to be found around the map in various ways.

i don't like it any less than the next person, as it sounds interesting - but the problem, is that Players need to be forced to deal with Enemies. if they don't have to Kill Enemies, the more Experienced Players just won't. they'll run around(or just as if not more likely, go AFK in a corner) invulnerable and the only Enemies they'll Kill will be the most impeding ones, like Nullifiers. they won't bother Killing anything else because they don't need to.

it must be mandatory that Players engage the Enemies. PLS isn't exactly a gift from heaven, but it fills those shoes at this point.

if something else (hopefully better) filled those shoes, great. but this is what we have right this moment.

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.

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.

i'm confused. you recognize that Excavation doesn't ever fail you for not doing your Objective (the entire point of the Game Mode), so you effectively can't ever lose, but you want Survival to be that way on purpose?

- - - - -

and seriously Nyx vs. Infested ?

Nyx is a very effective Warframe against Infested. you should read up on what some Abilities do. Edited August 27, 2015 by taiiat

[Kronauer]

- Small reduction to PLS drop rate (around 90% of what it was)

 

You're kidding, right?

As I have experienced, 1-2 personal LS per 10 enemies in the first 5 minutes, after that its way less.

 

Right now, with these changes 40min solo survival seems impossible.

Edited August 27, 2015 by Kronauer

[MomentsOfSpring]

With every update there are less things to do solo. That Law Of Retribution, now survival and more things to come. 

[Guest khk6]

DEs intention with this change was to discourage players from camping.

 

Thing is, theres no reason to move around in survival in the first place. 

Enemy spawn becomes slower, and loots will scatter all over the place.

So its really natural that players resort to camping tactics. That way all the enemy will gather in one place with stable respawns. 

 

Lowering personal LS in this state would encourage camping even further. If DE wants to fix that then there should be more reason to make players move around.

 

One of the easiest way to do that is to increase the air from LS capsules. Make them replenish around 50-60% air.

 

Edit: some facts

+6 seconds down to +4 means 66% replenish amount, and drop rate 100% down to 90%, would result in:

 

0.66 * 0.9 =  0.594

 

So personal LS is now only ~60% effective compared to before.

 

I think the reduction is a bit too much if you ask me.

Edited August 27, 2015 by khk6

[Uhkretor]

We didn't even start a quote chain to be fair. The way you wrote your previous post was reading as "I know it better than everyone else", hence it rubbed me the wrong way, and I responded to it. Rather civil, I might add. If you look at my posting history, you will see almost exclusively a wall of constructive and well reasoned posts including in-depth bug reports ever since I started to make my voice heard in this forum over a year ago.

 

So yes, what you say sounds like a slaughterhouse to me, and my opinion of survival is different. That's okay. I have zero problems with opinions. But I do have issues when someone comes around and blatantly states that "this is not survival" with a broad generalization that it won't even get anywhere after 1000 years of rebalancing. That is not what I believe to be constructive feedback, and that is again my opinion. Hence I reacted. And honestly, I thought that I would get a more mature and civlized response than what you had to offer. Sadly I was wrong.

 

Ultimately, your assumption is wrong that I'm "twisting" the meaning survival. That is just what you think. I'm not twisting it, I simply state my opinion. There is a vast difference between the two. Please re-read what I said and remove the hostility in case you read some out of it. Further assumptions of you about my persona are also incorrect. I haven't made a single assumption about you, if you read what I wrote.

 

And I sure did offer my own feedback, on page 6 and then later on page 9 as an iteration on it.

 

I think that covers everything and now that we cleared that up, I'm sure this works for the better of us both, and will put it into a better light and perspective for the fellow readers :)

 

... And there we go again, my bluntness sucking big time...

 

... There is no hostility, ever, on my posts or your posts, unless you personally think there is any... You stating your opinion should be expected, as much as me stating my opinion. Of course, its only natural to think that people twist stuff right off the bat, for whatever the reason you can think of, especially on a gamemode as~... unique... as this one (What, unique? pfft zomfgwtfwutlolz hahaha zomfgwtfnublolz...). but then again, it might be my bluntness sucking big time, and it usually rubs some people the wrong way... I should really care about that, but was never even there for it and I'm not seeing it happen in the near future... or the far future... Anyway, I don't think I made assumptions about you either, unless you read something between the lines that absolutely wasn't, isn't and never will be, there in the first place. Just to be absolutely sure there isn't, I re-read my post, that you politely quoted, 30 times to make sure there isn't anything there... And there's isn't.

 

Also, I didn't say that this isn't "survival". It IS Survival, but not fit to my prefferences. Lephantis only spawns on a huge square room by the hundreds is more of my thing, to be honest, but its like I said before... I always try to think about others and moderate my suggestions. Again, my bluntness sucking big time 195% of the times usually rubs some people the wrong way... But its ok, I'm already used to it already. Oh wait, other people isn't... Anyway, I believe I was really moderate on my suggestion.

 

... Oh yeah, I have to keep a memo somewhere stating "do not think about others, for they will not think about you", somewhere on my field of view, because it seems that trying to be considerate towards others instigates having my bluntness sucking big time and usually rubbing people the wrong way...

 

But I wonder... when that usually happens, isn't it because the other party reads stuff between the lines that wasn't, isn't and never will be there, in the first place?

 

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

 

To sum it up... After I've reworked my bluntness into "Bluntness 2.0", I might feel inclined to actively suggest something without someone else getting rubbed the wrong way. Don't want people getting turned on in the process...

 

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

 

Side-note, completely off-topic: I have considered to actually be part of the "Guide of the Lotus" thing (I believe that its how its called) since I like to be helpful... most of the times... but everytime I say something constructive on the forum, I get bashed like there's no tomorrow... I'm pretty sure you can imagine how eager it makes me to actually follow it through...