[Sortie]De, If You Want Us To Do Excavation Against Level 80 Enemies...

[Cpl_Facehugger]

...Could you make it so that the extractor health scales up with enemy level? Because 500 shields and 2500 health is basically nothing at that level. Enemies will very happily one or twoshot the extractor. Right now the current unscaling excavation mechanics mean that frost (or massive CC spam) is basically mandatory if you want to actually achieve the mission without spending hours slowly inching your cryo count up by 10s and 20s, and even then it's very easy to lose the extractor if even one charger/lancer/etc sneaks through.

 

Defense and mobile defense missions don't have this problem to nearly the same extent since they do scale, but excavation is the odd man out and it really makes excavation sorties unpleasant. It's challenging enough dealing with the bonus effects like "must bring only bow" or "enemies are immune to elemental damage", we don't need to worry about enemies oneshotting our defense targets.
 

While you're at it, could you make extractors in normal missions scale up the same way? This problem is most glaring in sorties, but those of us who like to stay late in normal extractions encounter it too. 

Edited December 14, 2015 by Cpl_Facehugger

[RafaelFuchs]

CC is king. You don't have to kill something that can't move or shoot (unless you're after a powercell).  I do, however, agree with you that it needs some scaling. I personally think the shields should scale much more than the health. 

[MajesticPinecone]

+1

[MrJxt]

I agree. Also, ancient healer specters give 90% dmg reduction to allies and objectives. New loka players have it easy when it comes to defensive sorties :)

[Evan-0-matic]

Agreed. +1

[(PSN)shmittem]

personally they should be rediculously hard

[Zareek]

I disagree. Excavation is a lot more forgiving, as you keep getting more and more tries. There are MAAANY frames out there that can crowd control or negate damage somehow. Frost is mandatory? How about volt shield? Loki disarm? Vaubans circle of stahp? Rhino Stomp? Ember's fireblast? Nyx's Chaos?

 

There are so many options. Heck what about all the different weapon types as well as cordinating your team? I really dont think its necessary. Sorties are also supposed to be end game.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

personally they should be rediculously hard

 

There's ridiculously hard but fun and ridiculously hard but unfun. I feel that forcing you to take a sniper alone to an infested excavation mission is the former while sniper alone and dealing with the fact that all enemy attacks including the ranged ones from the new power carrier ospreys will take out the extractor within four hits is the latter.

 

I disagree. Excavation is a lot more forgiving, as you keep getting more and more tries. There are MAAANY frames out there that can crowd control or negate damage somehow. Frost is mandatory? How about volt shield? Loki disarm? Vaubans circle of stahp? Rhino Stomp? Ember's fireblast? Nyx's Chaos?

 

There are so many options.

 

Yes, it's possible to cheese virtually every mission with CC. Especially if you're willing to spam large energy restores. I did the first excavation mission (the sniper one) solo with ember by abusing world on fire. However, this doesn't really change my point. It's overly punishing and essentially means one mistake will mean instead of 100 cryo you're getting 20. And even then, ancients will let their minions shrug off most CC, nulls will be terrible when we get a corpus excavation sortie, and grineer... Grineer are probably the only ones who will always be okay, assuming mass CC spam. Provided they don't get nullifier drones from the nightmare raid. Then again, considering that the hack panel mechanics from nightmare raid got imported into sorties, I'm not sure how long until we get null drones too.

 

The much slower cryo payout for even single mistakes is even more of a problem because remember that enemy levels in excavation scales up with time, not with cryo gained or number of successful extractions. If you're forced to slowly grind your way up because enemies destroy your extractors, the enemies themselves are going to be getting even more powerful too.

Sorties are hard enough with stuff like "lol enemies ignore all non-IPS damage" like the last excavation mission, or "lol enemies have 5x their normal armor" or "lol enemies do 100% bonus radiation damage", we shouldn't have to babysit the extractors to the extent where one mistake basically autofails that extractor.

DE's already making us get 1.5k cryo here. That's 15 successful extractions. It's tedious and time consuming and it only gets moreso when you only get a pittance of cryo because someone mistimed their CC to spawns or some charger snuck through.

 

 

 

Heck what about all the different weapon types as well as cordinating your team? I really dont think its necessary. Sorties are also supposed to be end game.

 

What about the different weapon types? First extraction we got was sniper only. We'll certainly get a bow only or melee only extraction at some point. Second extraction was enemies were resistant to all elemental damage, which basically meant you had to bring an IPS weapon that can actually deal with level 80 enemies. And coordinating your team? That might work for clanmates, but pugs? Much dicier proposition. Most people don't have voice chat, and it gets frantic enough trying to protect your ultra-fragile extractor that you can't spend too much time typing.

And even then, there's still people who can't play with others because of a slow connection. Raids and derelict vaults already punish these guys, they don't need to be kicked when they're down by making sorties massively harder for them.

Edited December 14, 2015 by Cpl_Facehugger

[RafaelFuchs]

-snip-

A new guy will be punished for having a bad connection, but veteran players aren't really challenged by the sortie missions. A guy with a bad connection can probably find someone, eventually. Is that an excuse to write off bad connections though? I don't think so, but you can only do so much as developer to aid in their struggle. In the end, these missions are meant to be hard and rewarding, if you complete them. They are not required for you to do, but pay nicely if you do. 

Since you brought up raids, I'll use that for a quick example of what I mean. I, personally, hate the raids due to the fact of needing so many people. I just don't do them. Should I be compensated for not doing them? No. It's 100% in reason to not give me rewards from the raids because I can't do them within my limitations. 

 

In my personal experiences, I find these things easy. Sure, they're boring and slow, but you can easily solo them... I've done each sortie rotation solo so far and don't plan to change that. 

[Cpl_Facehugger]

A new guy will be punished for having a bad connection, but veteran players aren't really challenged by the sortie missions. A guy with a bad connection can probably find someone, eventually. Is that an excuse to write off bad connections though? I don't think so, but you can only do so much as developer to aid in their struggle. In the end, these missions are meant to be hard and rewarding, if you complete them. They are not required for you to do, but pay nicely if you do. 

Since you brought up raids, I'll use that for a quick example of what I mean. I, personally, hate the raids due to the fact of needing so many people. I just don't do them. Should I be compensated for not doing them? No. It's 100% in reason to not give me rewards from the raids because I can't do them within my limitations.

Except the 4/5ths of the focus system is locked behind sorties unless you're shelling out plats for greater lenses or buying lenses off trade chat. And my point is that DE is already giving solo players the D with the mechanics they have now, making things a little less frustrating wouldn't be a bad thing.

 

 

 

In my personal experiences, I find these things easy. Sure, they're boring and slow, but you can easily solo them... I've done each sortie rotation solo so far and don't plan to change that.

 

That's good and all, but a lot of people don't. I actually do (solo'd all of them at least once as a matter of pride), but I'm still cognizant of the fact that other players, even other players with the same gear I have, don't have it so easy. And even then, mindlessly spamming [chaos/blind/disarm/etc] isn't much better than mindlessly spamming [snowglobe], with my underlying point being that because the extractors don't scale, that's basically what you have to do and that's not very fun.

 

TBH I think all you guys who are saying "sorties are meant to be hard!" are missing the point. Sorties are supposed to be fun for endgame players. Can you guys honestly tell me that losing extractors to one hit and thus making an already long mission take even longer is fun?

 

It's like, I'm not having trouble with sorties. I'm able to complete them all, whether solo or in teams. My problem is that while in general they're fun, excavations aren't because unlike MD and defense, the extractors don't scale, which means at sortie levels the extractors get oneshot, basically doing little but frustrate and draw out the duration of an already long mission.

Edited December 14, 2015 by Cpl_Facehugger

[RafaelFuchs]

 

Don't misjudge what I said. I clearly agreed that there needed to be scaling. 

[(PSN)DanteVincent]

I'm loving these sorties, it's showing all the flaws of the meta, and boy, are there many.

 

Tenno have even less health and shields. CCing and shooting bullet sponges to death that one hit kill you, yum!

 

Seriously, that's what separates warframe from reaching the next level.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

Well, the thing with tenno is that we might be fragile but we can move around like cocaine-infused hamsters. Extractors have no such benefit.

 

I mean yeah the meta should and will be changing when the great weapon scaling change comes through in 18.5 or 19, but in the meantime I'd love to see extractors scale up so excavation missions get less tedious.

[SpicyDinosaur]

Since when is using the right tool for the job and playing efficiently cheesing?

[Naqel]

I mean yeah the meta should and will be changing when the great weapon scaling change comes through in 18.5 or 19, but in the meantime I'd love to see extractors scale up so excavation missions get less tedious.

 

You hope for too much. Not to mention that unless the way mods are balanced changes, the only problem it'll solve is people's favorite weapons being useless, and not the scaling being horrible overall.

[FrostySpikes]

Yeah thats kinda stupid, but frost is usually mandatory for the community for anything that has the word ''protect'' on the objective, its true that there are maaany options but the community just points frost to do the job.

 

I agree with the scaling, good idea