Player Feedback On U18.4 Excavation Changes [Megathread]

[taiiat]

it's a rare bug that happens... in some unknown specific situation.

it wasn't experienced more than once as an edge case before this was pushed to Live.

 

 

suggesting these adjustments, like others in the past, weren't play tested before being pushed to Live is just naive and rude though.

though in the meantime setting their timer to 99 seconds should... fix that. but who knows, as nobody knows why this happens so a fix is difficult to identify, even a quick&dirty one like that.

[--RV--LadySpiderwick]

The nerf to excavators definitely makes them less appealing to me personally. The base health in high up missions makes it hard enough that I need a fully fledged team who'll listen to me when I say "grab a battery and head to the next excavator" and have it protected. I kinda like the fact that they are in different places now however I've noticed delay of them appearing on the map sometimes. I think the health should be adjusted accordingly like the cryopod's are in their respective missions.

[Epsik-kun]

While I'm not that bothered with the rework itself, as it's up to DE how to balance their game, I kinda can't decide whether am I annoyed or amused with the actual changelog entry considering the changes.

 

The thing is, what is stated in the changelog is pretty much the polar opposite of what was implemented into the game for the most parts.

Let's see. Here's the part considering changes:

Excavation Changes / Fixes

 

The following changes have been made to Excavation Missions to help improve fluidity between each excavation:

 

• Dig Site drop points have been optimized to enable players to constantly run into Dig Sites, instead of hunting for a new Site between each completed dig.
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• Areas with multiple Dig Sites will be more difficult to defend, should players decide to activate more than one Site at a time.
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• Dig Sites must be activated in order of being discovered.
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• Dig Sites will no longer immediately reappear in a location that was just recently excavated.
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• Power Cell carrying enemies should be more readily available before the first Dig Site is active.
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• Reduced the power gained from a Power Cell from 50 to 20.
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• Reduced initial power in deployed excavator from 50 to 20
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• Power Cells dropped far away from combat will now despawn, enabling new Power Cells to spawn closer to the player / Excavator.
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• Fixed an error causing power to drain from an Excavator while active.
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And if we break it down:

• Dig Site drop points have been optimized to enable players to constantly run into Dig Sites, instead of hunting for a new Site between each completed dig.
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Prior to change, Dig Site drop points were allocated in strict order starting with spawn point and finishing with Extraction, while repeating the process were you to continue the mission. It's hard to get more optimized than that.

Now Dig Site drop points are scattered across the map, requiring you to backtrack this whole map several times during the same amount of Extractors it would take to get to extraction previously. The change is anything but optimizing.

 

• Areas with multiple Dig Sites will be more difficult to defend, should players decide to activate more than one Site at a time.
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Considering that with new system you'll rarely run even into two Dig Sites in the same area (unless you are progressing extremely slowly with excavations) it isn't true either. Previous to the change you had a constant option of running up to three Excavators simultaneously, if you were to take the risk. Now you rarely have an option to even run two at time. And protecting two Excavators did not felt much different to me.

 

• Power Cell carrying enemies should be more readily available before the first Dig Site is active.
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• Power Cells dropped far away from combat will now despawn, enabling new Power Cells to spawn closer to the player / Excavator.
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This two points imply that there were some problems with getting your Excavators powered up. There were, were you to solo an Excavation. In a full squad case, Power Cells were available all the time. They are not anymore. Due to constant running around across the map and lower initial power amount Excavators have now, you have really high chances of getting your Excavator run out of power, were you to start it only holding one Power Cell. And it also concerns the very first Excavator in the mission, despite changelog specifically stating this was addressed.

And despawn of cells doesn't help either. Because it never noticeable affected Cell Carrier spawn rates, yet helped noticeably were you to prolong the mission

 

• Dig Sites must be activated in order of being discovered.
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I have no idea what does it mean, and how is this considered a "change".

 

Basically, were DE to revert the changes, they can use the same exact changelog once again, only removing these two strings:

• Dig Sites will no longer immediately reappear in a location that was just recently excavated.
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• Reduced initial power in deployed excavator from 50 to 20
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and it will be much closer to the actual situation.

Edited January 24, 2016 by Epsik-kun

[p3z1]

So DE made some changes to excavation, but the changes don't feel good IMO, reasons:

 

- Players only have access to one excavator per room. Also only one excavator spawns in one room only. This would be a good change for pubs, but not so much for pre-made teams, who are most likely prepared for such circumstances. Also considering the fact that this change was unnecessary if DE just relocated them yellow circles. For example, in the earth tileset, there's a room with a giant water pit at the center. 2 Excavators circles spawned there. If DE just relocated where the excavators would spawn, it would produce less of a problem.

 

- The changes to power carriers were unfelt in my experience. Power carriers don't spawn unless me or my team decides to deploy an excavator. Also, power cells left behind don't despawn, and unnecessary to change.

 

- You (DE) rescaled enemy spawned but did not scale excavator health. This is probably one of my major grievances to the patch's change. You have enough enemies that can OHKO excavators in a high enough level (Sortie), and still disregard excavator health scaling. This was a major problem in the current sortie (Energy reduction, Earth tileset v Grineer) where bombards can OHKO extractors, add the fact that enemies spawn in troves and only ~5% carry power cells, people are gonna have a bad time.

 

- Changes to starting excavator power should scale depending on number of players present. Soloing is now a big PITA, having 2 players if a problem as well.

 

- Excavators spawns are still broken, sometimes excavators taking a while to "spawn."

 

I'll be honest, the changes, in general, seem to cater to 4 tenno cells, not considering that some players don't have the capacity to be able to have 4 tennos in their game due to bad connection, no friends, etc.

 

Suggestions:

- Revert excavator spawn point mechanics, but relocate some spawn points (preferably a good distance from each spawner)

- Fix excavator spawn mechanics (remove delayed spawning of said excavators)

- Make excavator starting power scale based on player count (20% for 4 players, 40% for 3 players, etc.)

- Scale enemy spawns based on player count (until a certain criteria is met)

- Make power carriers spawn more (but not too much)

[--RV--LadySpiderwick]

I'm going to be as blunt as the edge of my dual ether daggers, I hate what they did to the excavation missions! For real, I've run with my decently strong frames and the enemies knock me down like I'm a incubating kubrow. They're ridiculous now how hard the enemies are now, as well as the health feels lack lusture. Used to enjoy the excavation missions but dislike them with a passion, the only good thing was that they made them in different spots rather than the same.

 

9/10 I don't mind the changes, heck even the need for getting more batteries I'm alright with but the enemies are way too difficult to solo, or even do in a squad. 

[Culaio]

It just feels slower but the added need for a more active gameplay sure is ok.

 

If you mean by active spending more time on boring running back and forth between excavation locations then actually fighting enemies then yeah you are right its more "active"

 

Its a nerf to cheesing, the runs are still about the same speed. Most of the time you have 2 ecavators anyway so you are split in 2 groups, 1 player can easily solo 1 excavator, but now that the game is more focused on mobility than cheese, everyone is triggered.

I love this change.

 

http://imgur.com/a/0hH1x

Thats a 24 minute 1.8k cryo run with randoms, its about the same speed as prepatch, maybe faster with decent players.

 

Any changes that promotes solo play in co-op game is a bad change, especially if that change makes some type of frames completly unusable in this type of mission like for example support frames. trinity become completly useless in this mission since she cant support team with energy if they are all over map and she cant really keep excavator alive if she doesnt bring  certain type of weapon(doesnt have a single power that can help her keep excavator alive), this change simply limited peoples options to what can they bring to this type of mission.

 

 

 

Sortie excavation shown how bad this change is, me and my team ended up in map where excavators shown up only in two titles that were 3 titles apart, so after first excavation we had to go half the map to second and next one was where first one was and fourth one was where second one was and so on(there werent in excatly same location but they were on same title pretty close to each other) so it was going like this A -> B -> A -> B -> A ->......with problem being that they were three titles apart. excavation become running simulator.....

Edited January 24, 2016 by Culaio

[ograzzt]

You know, I could understand if DE would just did excavation missions harder, but they didn't. They just did excavation missions longer and much more boring, especially in solo or with random team. There is also a huge problem with spawn rate of power carriers. And it's not like we get something in exchange for this excavation nerf. That's not how balancing works. 

[Pamela_Voorhees]

I just want to say, thanks for making one of the only rewarding modes a whole lot less fun and rewarding, DE.

[Rydian]

They just did excavation missions longer and much more boring

Yeah I gotta' agree with this.  The change to needing more power cells is understandable, but it's literally only one more cell (50/70/90/100 -> 20/40/60/80/100) and when you're reduced to only needing to feed cells to one at a time (until the next one activates) it actually gives more downtime than before.

[dmirtygorachyov]

AN ASSAULT ON CHEESE, MAN THE EV, WHERE IS OUR MAX RANGE DURATION VAUBAN? SOMEONE GET FROST HERE.

Edited January 24, 2016 by dmirtygorachyov

[SaNE_]

Can this please be the last straw for a test build/QA team that actually plays the game? You've got more than enough people who would be willing to do it for you.

 

The change on paper looked fine but in game it makes a massive difference (just like exterminate, which is still broken) and one that I can't see a good reason to have changed. If you want to nerf core farming, do it but revert the changes you made to the mode because you just made it worse (apart from the new spawns, adding new spawns was great so it felt different; not the new system where you need a horse so that it doesn't take literally minutes to travel the map).

Edited January 24, 2016 by SaNE_

[Cerenax]

Excavation missions where fine before, but now they are super boring and it takes much longer for you to finish the drills. Please, revert all the changes.

[motorfirebox]

The only one that really irks me is forcing the excavators to spawn in different locations. I know it was probably giving away too many rewards too quickly, but I actually enjoyed the hectic pace of defending 3-4 excavators at once.

[Konga]

Agreed, its what made excavation missions fun and not just another boring wait. Rather, the change shouldve been.. Increase the enemy spawn rate with each active excavator. 3 excavators out= 3x the enemy spawn rate imo

[iFlipWiGs]

I dont understand why they would do this. It was so much fun to play tritton now its super boring. Please change it back.

Edited January 24, 2016 by Test_the_God

[motorfirebox]

Yeah, I can totally understand if DE wants to slow down the flow of rewards from excav missions. But in doing that, they've made actually playing the excav missions less fun.

[LoneDirewolf]

Seems DE really has started to take a stance against fun and effective farming at the same time, we saw it with extermination and now excavation, meanwhile, the 1 place DE has stated they would like to get rid of, Draco, is going full speed.

Edited January 24, 2016 by LoneDirewolf

[TauMaxim]

I really enjoyed excavation, but now. The grind just got too much for me. I'm a strange kind of person, and warframe has a special spot with me. Hitting my head against a wall over and over again, and then have something to show for it really made this game from me. The game is farm and nothing but farm. If you take farming out of the equation, you have literally nothing left. Now, now I lost all will to play the game. You can't level rank 10 mods anymore. It's just too painful. I would understand this "buff" a lot more, if they added to the shop a pack of 10 r5 cores for 10 plat. Then I'd get it. But this... I'm sorry, but seems like I'm going to be putting warframe down for a while now. It's just not worth it anymore.

 

 

Hieracon was actually fun. It was a fun mission. Especially above 2k cryotic when you had 3 excavators active. It had challenge, it required a decent about of skill - when playing vauban or another CC frame of course. I used to be able to reach 3k without losing an excavator with randoms. Which 99% of the time meant there was no trinity for power. We had to rely on energy drops, and don't get me started when the energy leech enemies started being common. Now, I don't even dare to think of doing 3k excavation. Even the standard 2 excavators then extract strategy is too boring and drawn out to play.

 

A friend of mine just started playing. And heneeds r5 cores. And I just can't be bothered to help him with it, which is sad. Revert the changes, make excavation fun again. DE just lost 2 players, because the only reason my friend started playing, was that we could play and have some fun TOGETHER. Now, there's no fun in it anymore. Sorties are... crap to put it lightly. LoR is now as simple as Earth missions for me, Nightmare LoR I have not completed yet because people don't realize that the electricity is instafail in that mode. There is no endgame for me personally anymore

[Zed993]

My thoughts: Excavation is awful, slow, and painful now, change it back please.

[xection9]

I really want to see DE admit the fact they nerfed r5 yield in excav mission and put it the patch note.

[Caelward]

It used to be a wonderful mess of a battle, keeping up 2 or perhaps 3 excavators at once.

 

I have to agree with Epsik about the effects of the patch being opposite to the stated patch notes.

[Kontrollo]

There are probably more changes coming and I'm pretty sure people won't like them. Excavations are too rewarding right now.

[Culaio]

 

I really enjoyed excavation, but now. The grind just got too much for me. I'm a strange kind of person, and warframe has a special spot with me. Hitting my head against a wall over and over again, and then have something to show for it really made this game from me. The game is farm and nothing but farm. If you take farming out of the equation, you have literally nothing left. Now, now I lost all will to play the game. You can't level rank 10 mods anymore. It's just too painful. I would understand this "buff" a lot more, if they added to the shop a pack of 10 r5 cores for 10 plat. Then I'd get it. But this... I'm sorry, but seems like I'm going to be putting warframe down for a while now. It's just not worth it anymore.

 

 

Hieracon was actually fun. It was a fun mission. Especially above 2k cryotic when you had 3 excavators active. It had challenge, it required a decent about of skill - when playing vauban or another CC frame of course. I used to be able to reach 3k without losing an excavator with randoms. Which 99% of the time meant there was no trinity for power. We had to rely on energy drops, and don't get me started when the energy leech enemies started being common. Now, I don't even dare to think of doing 3k excavation. Even the standard 2 excavators then extract strategy is too boring and drawn out to play.

 

A friend of mine just started playing. And heneeds r5 cores. And I just can't be bothered to help him with it, which is sad. Revert the changes, make excavation fun again. DE just lost 2 players, because the only reason my friend started playing, was that we could play and have some fun TOGETHER. Now, there's no fun in it anymore. Sorties are... crap to put it lightly. LoR is now as simple as Earth missions for me, Nightmare LoR I have not completed yet because people don't realize that the electricity is instafail in that mode. There is no endgame for me personally anymore

 

 

I think that they did this (bad) change because lately r5 cores got really devalued, recently I tried to sell maxed primed  continuity at 550 and people still didnt want to but it even though its like selling 1 r5 core for 1 plat + primed continuity mod for which you had to farm for ducats + effort and time you spend to farm for the r5 cores, and not that long ago maxed primed continuity was worth  800+ plat. 

And I believe that reason why maxed primed mods and R5 cores got so devalued is because DE put legendary core as reward in sorites, now people probably think they will get it sooner or later and will be able to max their primed mods. So I belive that this problem is DE fault and now they are probably trying to give back value to R5 cores and maxed primed mods by doing this bad change to excavation.

 

I really want to see DE admit the fact they nerfed r5 yield in excav mission and put it the patch note.

 

 

There are probably more changes coming and I'm pretty sure people won't like them. Excavations are too rewarding right now.

 

Problem is that only  they nerfed R5 cores that was probably their goal but also nerfed amount of keys we are getting which is a huge problem, since the keys we are geting is already RNG based, and this made it worse.

Edited January 25, 2016 by Culaio

[Wyrmsilver]

had posted my results earlier, mainly complaining about long running times between extractors. it looks like my post got rolled up into this one, so I'll post my newer results here. I have tested a lot more maps, and it turns out the enforced ordering really only has a noticeable negative impact on maps that have giant nodes, specifically the earth dark sector where I was doing my initial tests. so the enforced order could possibly be tolerable, if they add checks for max distance, as well as min.

 

that said, it looks like DE Glen is dedicated to making further changes, which will actually kill off this game mode, and indeed is his stated goal: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/516409-the-casual-carousel/page-7

(his post is at the bottom of the page, with his decidedly negative response to suggestions to buff other game types instead in the middle of page 8)

[Culaio]

had posted my results earlier, mainly complaining about long running times between extractors. it looks like my post got rolled up into this one, so I'll post my newer results here. I have tested a lot more maps, and it turns out the enforced ordering really only has a noticeable negative impact on maps that have giant nodes, specifically the earth dark sector where I was doing my initial tests. so the enforced order could possibly be tolerable, if they add checks for max distance, as well as min.

 

that said, it looks like DE Glen is dedicated to making further changes, which will actually kill off this game mode, and indeed is his stated goal: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/516409-the-casual-carousel/page-7

(his post is at the bottom of the page, with his decidedly negative response to suggestions to buff other game types instead in the middle of page 8)

 

 

I am completly lossing faith in DE, their "research" completly ignores so many things, like the fact that its done in "perfect" conditions: like having strong team that can solo every excavator, it ignores the fact that sometimes you may end up in team that doesnt have any good defensive or CC frame. Another problem is the fact that support frames completly lost their place in excavation missions which means that people will be forced to uses energy/health restores which means more farming. And of course how random titles are drop locations of excavators are means that you may end up going half the map over and over and over again, which happen to me in a sortie,  excavator were droping in only two locations that were half map apart so after every excavator we had to go half the map.....