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Player Feedback On U18.4 Excavation Changes [Megathread]


Gigaus
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So they go in for testing with an optimal group set up and determines it needs to be nerfed? Why can't they do something better with their time like buffing the other game modes to be total horse S#&$ in terms of rewards or try and breathe some life into the other mechanics that have been left to rot like archwing and channeling.

 

I don't run mobile defense anymore, the spawns were basically slaughtered, especially Kiste on Ceres. I barely run survival anymore because of how unrewarding it is.I don't run exterminate anymore, void or not because of the knee jerk focus nerf and now I probably won't be running excavation anymore. I guess DE just wants everyone to plow through the game playing draco mindlessly for months on end. This really needs to stop, there's so many more things in this game that could use the attention.

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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.

 

​Can't say anything about that, because before yesterday, I hadn't done any Excavations in a while. My post was about what I've gleaned from [DE]Glen's stream.

 

 

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)

 

​Ah nice, glad he posted that on the forums as well. I didn't want to misrepresent what he said during the stream, so I kept my previous post vague. Excerpt from that post:

...

It did feel like there was a bit more difficulty which I think is great -- if you can run two dig sites you've earned a higher rate of reward -- but I still feel that the overall reward rate is much too high. Survival, which is probably the next most-rewarding mission, has exactly the same reward-table and gives you 1 reward every 5 minutes. Our average for Excavation was under a minute and a half per reward.

 
That's nearly 3.5x the rewards for the same amount of time! I'll be trying a few options over the next few days to try to balance this better -- compared to all of the other modes this just isn't fair.
​...
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First tower survs, now excavation, seems like DE pretty clearly says that r5 cores farm and fun together is not allowed. And that dude from DE just clearly say that no other mods gonna be buffer to match up with excavation, instead excavation gonna be nerfed to math them, just to be fair, that
hilarious

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So they took a well-organised, experienced team into excavation, and got appropriately rewarded for it. And somehow this is an issue. Isn't that the whole point of sorties and raids? To give good rewards to those who can manage it? Why does an entire mission type need to be scaled down because an experienced team can do it well?

 

Yet again, it seems that the game is being scaled to match the capabilities of the top 1% of players. As much as I enjoyed the game when I first joined, I get the impression that I would've never stayed had the game been in its current state to begin with. How many new players did we lose because they joined up while exterminate missions were broken? Broken to stop experienced players gaining points too easily for a beta (lol) feature that new players wouldn't even know existed. Good luck to them going through Limbo's excavations with the new (and possibly upcoming) changes.

 

What depressed me the most was the final post in the original thread before being locked. "...and all I got was insults and abuse". No, that is not all you got. Yes, of course there were some angry and insulting posts, this is a public forum after all. But there was lots of well articulated feedback there, and valid points made. Feedback that - much like this thread -  will likely go ignored and overlooked.

 

Such a waste.

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spawn mechanics of enemies in general were nerfed/changed singificantly in 18.4, i noticed this because of the way how i used to farm focus solo with AOE nuker frame, now it takes at least x2, x2.5 more time to achieve same results. (in non endless modes that is, dunno about current state of survivals/excavations)

 

 

For me that would be 4th consecutive nerf for focus farm without any improvements for the system (52 days and counting) leaving only 2 available options - draco style massacres and loki stealth farm (3rd option became S#&$ in terms of time investment). 

 

 

I expect DE to go through with the change or stealthily change things littly by little using "vague definitions", so add one more snooze fest to the list of boring S#&$. 

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What depressed me the most was the final post in the original thread before being locked. "...and all I got was insults and abuse". No, that is not all you got. Yes, of course there were some angry and insulting posts, this is a public forum after all. But there was lots of well articulated feedback there, and valid points made. Feedback that - much like this thread -  will likely go ignored and overlooked.

That's what really bugged me the most. I understand the frustration when you have a huge crowd of people online yelling at you. It sucks, it really does. But there really was a huge amount of valid and constructive criticism in there too. All of it was dismissed with that blanket statement with no indication that any of it was taken into any form of consideration. That to me is extremely frustrating and worrisome.

 

I've heard there has been a lot of talk by DE about "reducing the grind". From what I've seen with the changes and now the ongoing issues with excavations, I have zero faith in the future updates actually bringing anything but the opposite. It just doesn't fit with what has been seen or has been said.

 

I came back to Warframe a few months back after a long break. I've already reached a point where, though I feel like I still want to play the game more, there are so few gamemodes and things left to do that feel fun, rewarding and worthwhile in terms of time spent.

 

I do think excavations being the only worthwhile mission for core and key farm especially needs to change, but DE is going at it backwards. Excavation was the one rewarding and most of all enjoyable gamemode. You are balancing it around gamemodes that largely feel tiresome, slow, unrewarding and quite frankly just not fun to play extensively.

 

That's a damn shame to me.

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This is a huge nerf and it sucks. It now takes 2-3x longer to get to 2k and extract because everything is so spread out its almost impossible to launch 2-3 at a time and protect them all. And to boot, the "power cell fix" is worse then it was before.

 

Now the extractors start with lower energy, the power cells never seems to be there because the mobs move so slow and everything is so spread out. You have to go hunt for power cells even more now toward the start of each excavator, combined with enemies being more agressive....it's just a mess right now.

 

I loved doing these when bored and hate it now. Looks like fomorian alerts are the only good way to farm cores now, which i'm sure they will nerf next.

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These changes are pretty bad. But what's worse is that the person in charge of these changes doesn't even listen to constructive feedback, knee-jerking comments that help as 'insults and abuse'.

I'd like to know why Steve/DE gives so much free reign to a programmer capable of affecting entire game modes nilly-willy.

And if this current course of change and 'not listening, my reasoning is best' then say goodbye to a lot of players.

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I'm not sure where the post ended up, but one player mentioned that Excavation acts a lot like Mobile Defense now, and I agree.  In many cases you have to travel a large distance out to the next objective and than just defend that single point, then repeat.

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These changes are pretty bad. But what's worse is that the person in charge of these changes doesn't even listen to constructive feedback, knee-jerking comments that help as 'insults and abuse'.

I'd like to know why Steve/DE gives so much free reign to a programmer capable of affecting entire game modes nilly-willy.

And if this current course of change and 'not listening, my reasoning is best' then say goodbye to a lot of players.

Agreed. That just speaks of bad working ethics imo.

The update could have been reviewed more insightfully by a dev team.

Or atleast there could be some form of a player counsil from different playertypes/bases who can provide constructive feedback to the devs and help them develop the game (see Eve Online as an example of that or War Thunder (although thier counsil is just more of a decoration now, but still)). 

At the very least to help organized teams farm more (which was provided as the "end result" by DE Glen) they could have just simply increased the extractors limit a bit, so the guys who benifit from that update could have ran all over the map where they wanted and started extractors in different places, while pub players enjoyed the standart mode and didn't get punished for that.

Edited by Victorovich
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https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/516409-the-casual-carousel/page-7

This latest Casual Carousel from page 7 on is a perfect example of why the playerbase's view of DE is dropping so quickly.

Here we have a study being done on the amount of rewards being given for excavation versus other endless mission types. It is concluded that the reward rate is at least three times higher than Surv, Def, and Int. Let's see what happens when someone suggests the other mission types should get their loot drops fixed like the playerbase has been wanting and complaining about for a long, long time...

G6iE8MK.jpg

Consider this customer feedback as I am furious with the responses provided by a DE employee and developer. What players essentially got after posting their very detailed and well thought out (if not scathing) feedback was a gigantic passive-aggressive middle finger and a "You all suck, you just aren't grateful enough." as seen below.

EZrp8jw.jpg

This is not OK. Besides this being a rather childish reply and ending to a mostly good string of responses from players, we are basically being told "no matter what you say, I am going to ignore it." These newest changes are likely to stay, and we can probably expect Excav to take a kick in the nads altogether, dropping the mission type to take on a level of tedious, mind numbing grind like every other endless mode.

I don't care if I receive a moderative action for posting this, I want to express my frustration with seeing this behavior from a member of a company I have held in relatively high esteem. I hope this is not what we as players have to look forward to.

Edited by Xcedis
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Insults and abuse were not all he got but they were all he chose to see. What does that tell you?

 

 

I'm not sure when making the game less fun was considered good game design. Well done again DE.

Edited by TenzUK
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It takes so long to max a single primed mod, heck even a rare 10 mod, even with excavations how they currently are. I can't imagine if they put it to a 5 min like everything else. That'll be pretty bad. Better farm em while they're hot i guess, this isn't going to last.

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My thread/post got deleted instead of merged here, so I will repeat myself but much shorter since I don't feel like typing it all out. The point is this. Excavation rewards should be better/faster than Survival and Defense because there is much much more risk involved in protecting excavators with only 500 shield and 2500 health. They are at a much greater risk of being destroyed and the player getting no reward. Especially when you try to push your limits and run more than one excavator at a time.

 

There is no real risk in survival, all you have to do is kill enemies and pickup life support drops. Its easy and boring. Often you don't even move around much, you just camp in the room that seems to give the best flow of spawns. I find it quite boring.

 

There's a little risk in defense, but you can't compare a cyropod with 65,000+ health to an excavator. It's hands down way more risky and challenging in Excavation. And in defense you just camp one spot.

 

Excavation was the most fun of the 3 modes by far. It becomes very challenging at higher cryotic, and you don't just sit in one spot either. By far my most favorite game mode and have logged hundreds of hours of game time in excavation.

Edited by weezedog
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-snip-

 

The response from that Warframe staff that I would have liked to see is something along the lines of "I sincerely appreciate the tremendous feedback from you wonderful players regarding this excavation change. We will continue to work hard to find a middle of the road solution that addresses both the concerns of the staff and those of the players."

 

What I was disappointed to see was a statement implying that the staff gives no weight to player feedback. Although I appreciate that Glen dedicated his 2 free weekends to the game, I still find his response insufficient. The playerbase is the bloodline of the game, and I wish I saw more respect to that regard.

 

Anyways, I still fully support reverting back to the excavation system before this most recent update. This game needs to remain fast-paced. A squad of 4 defending an excavator at a time is indeed equivalent to mobile defense.

Edited by WolfTitan
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Well part of the problem is that people generally come to forums to complain or because they want something changed. Very little praise is given on forums. If you are happy you generally don't take the time to write something on a forum. That's just the nature of how feedback works, most people don't take time to leave positive feedback. And I'm sure as a dev, reading negative feedback day in and day out must really get to you, but I think that the criticism is not a reflection of the totality of how people feel about the game overall. People wouldn't still be playing if they only felt negativity towards it, you just don't see people's positive feelings on message boards because that's not where people tend to express those feelings. 

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I did some looking into the locked thread and Glen mate, I don't see much of the hate or abusive comments you claim were directed at you.

I mean sure, some did have some spice. One dude said you deserved backlash, for example. But I didn't see anything that was actually attacking yah. Infact, you're lucky that the comments you got were pretty cool and collected... For the most part.

If you announced that controversial post in Region, you'd be flooded with people saying they want to skin your cat, murder your mother, and steal your cheerios. That sorta stuff is uncalled for.

But all I saw was criticism mate. And you're a professional programmer! You went to college and earned yourself the spot you're at in life right now. I'm sure you can handle some spicy criticism without throwing it all out the window and dismissing it as a bunch of hate. Yer better than that.

And y'know, the folk in that thread were right. Your testing pool was too shallow and too precise. The more random variables in a testing grounds, the more tests you have to run. And WF is full of those random factors.

Additionally, you should't be nerfing Excavation. All it'll result in is more talk of nerf down the line, because people always gravitate to the most effecient path. Nerfing the mode won't do anything to change that.

Instead of nerfing the mode, how about make drops more mission-type reliant? Have some things only ever drop from Survival. Some things only ever drop from Exterminate. Some things only ever drop from Rescue, Hive, ect.

People play Excavation because the drop tables between it and other missions are exactly the same. Excavation just gives those tables out in the most effecient manner.

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I did some looking into the locked thread and Glen mate, I don't see much of the hate or abusive comments you claim were directed at you.

I mean sure, some did have some spice. One dude said you deserved backlash, for example. But I didn't see anything that was actually attacking yah. Infact, you're lucky that the comments you got were pretty cool and collected... For the most part.

If you announced that controversial post in Region, you'd be flooded with people saying they want to skin your cat, murder your mother, and steal your cheerios. That sorta stuff is uncalled for.

But all I saw was criticism mate. And you're a professional programmer! You went to college and earned yourself the spot you're at in life right now. I'm sure you can handle some spicy criticism without throwing it all out the window and dismissing it as a bunch of hate. Yer better than that.

And y'know, the folk in that thread were right. Your testing pool was too shallow and too precise. The more random variables in a testing grounds, the more tests you have to run. And WF is full of those random factors.

Additionally, you should't be nerfing Excavation. All it'll result in is more talk of nerf down the line, because people always gravitate to the most effecient path. Nerfing the mode won't do anything to change that.

Instead of nerfing the mode, how about make drops more mission-type reliant? Have some things only ever drop from Survival. Some things only ever drop from Exterminate. Some things only ever drop from Rescue, Hive, ect.

People play Excavation because the drop tables between it and other missions are exactly the same. Excavation just gives those tables out in the most effecient manner.

 

Disagree entirely in the different loot tables through different game modes.

 

You would be removing freedom of play style from players, not everyone plays and likes Excavation.

 

I personally hate and rarely play Excavation myself, and being forced to play Excavation to get an item I need, is just making the experience even more frustrating than already is (considering the RNG).

 

Plus Grineer are still OP and bugged in Excavation missions, they do more damage than Void T4 and destroy Excavators in seconds, ridiculous. https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/573151-grineer-excavation-missions-lv-2030-damage-values/

Edited by JoseSnake
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Disagree entirely in the different loot tables through different game modes.

 

You would be removing freedom of play style from players, not everyone plays and likes Excavation.

 

I personally hate and rarely play Excavation myself, and being forced to play Excavation to get an item I need, is just making the experience even more frustrating than already is (considering the RNG).

Just because you're like that doesn't mean the rest of the player base should be limited too.  Look at Sorties for good examples, Sorties help segregate players who are willing to branch out and learn (have multiple types of equipment and can do all the mission types) from people who don't (players who run around with the same weapons forever and use ciphers all the time).

 

If things are divided into further reward tables (like based on mission type and difficulty such as they already did with spy giving dual-stat heat and ice mods), RNG would be less prevalent because (assuming equal chances), the smaller the pool the greater chance of any one specific item and the less time wasted running missions that cannot drop the item in question at all.

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Overlord

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Posted Today, 07:08 PM

Just so people can have a little insight to what reactions this has caused, there has now been healthy debate occurring at DE for hours (still continuing into this evening) about bigger picture issues with time, rewards, and missions. Glen and I are now both on a path to collect even more data. As the data and debate starts to yield plans of interest, we'll make a Dev Workshop to continue the discussion together. 

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