Why Do People Like Defense (The Mission, Not the Rewards)

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

I'm considering writing a feedback thread about reworking defense, because I dislike the mode heavily. But before I do that, I'm wondering if people like  defense and why? Note that I'm not talking about what rewards it gives, but purely the mechanics of the mission.

EDIT: Based on the feedback I'm getting, would survival, without life support, and in a defense map, be an appropriate substitute for defense?

EDIT 2: Many people are saying they enjoy defense to relax. Why do you play Warframe to relax, as opposed to doing other things? And why do you play missions, instead of doing something else? Additionally, why don't you play missions are low enough level you can easily make your way through them anyway? These aren't meant to be attacks, just legitimate questions.

Edited July 7, 2016 by (PS4)WiiConquered

[Jangkrik]

Because you don't have to move a lot?

[Neah]

Its the epitome of "turn off your brain and relax" as a game mode. So I suppose its quite relaxing to play, but for quick rewards, not so much.
You can just sit there, everything comes to you and die, collect rewards, go home happy.

The one Defense mission that I would consider hard and require a more active playstyle would be Moon's Defense tileset. 
That one, is quite literally a slaughter for the enemies as there is a large open ground near the pod, and plenty of cover for the enemies as they wail in on you from all sides, in a full circle, you're inside the 'killbox' and there's no where you can run. They're also Grineer with hitscan weapons, which makes it doubly as annoying to deal with. 

[Trichouette]

6 minutes ago, Jangkrik said:

Because you don't have to move a lot?

This.

Because you can just wait for enemies to come at you and just slaughter them by not doing much.

And because there aren't any "life support".

Mainly, I see more of a "survival mission type" in defense than in survival.

[Jangkrik]

Just now, Trichouette said:

This.

Because you can just wait for enemies to come at you and just slaughter them by not doing much.

And because there aren't any "life support".

Mainly, I see more of a "survival mission type" in defense than in survival.

Yeah. Lots of people (including me) prefer surviving by killing horde of enemies instead of relying on LS.

I personally think getting booted because I failed to pay attention to LS while I can still kill the enemies isn't a good ending for a survival missions.

[FcGod1337]

Because. 1 I can be lazy, shoot synoid simulator everywhere and calm down...

2. Quick rewards

3. I can just look talk with mates or watch streamers

4.Ducats?

5.Relax till you get to the real deal.

[Trichouette]

2 minutes ago, Jangkrik said:

Yeah. Lots of people (including me) prefer surviving by killing horde of enemies instead of relying on LS.

I personally think getting booted because I failed to pay attention to LS while I can still kill the enemies isn't a good ending for a survival missions.

Especially since the whole thing rely on RNG for looting life support modules.

Meanwhile defense just has a cryopod (which doesn't make sense by the way) with a so high HP & shield that you can just slaughter enemies for an hour without caring for life support, simply because "killing everybody" matters unlike in survival.

1 minute ago, FcGod1337 said:

 

4.Ducats?

 

 

Say bye bye to easy ducats with the next update xD

Edited July 7, 2016 by Trichouette

[FcGod1337]

D;

[taiiat]

i'm definitely partially biased because i was very supportive of and involved with the Defense Audit for U17, but....

 

i like Defense mechanically due to generally still being able to apply the Mobility that is the essense of Warframe to the Gamemode, while all Players are always within sight lines of each other, having interesting mixtures of Enemy Specs, with the temptation of Endless Gameplay.

that being said, Health of the Objective in say, Infested Defense, are ridiculous - the thing has so much Health you basically couldn't lose if you tried unless you could skip to like Wave 300 and go AFK.

 

people regard Defense as a 'camp inside the Snowglobe and play a turret simulator' but those Players are simply subjugating themselves to that, the Gamemode does not require it whatsoever.
you can do a lot of things in Defense, it is lenient enough to let you do a lot of silly things while still making you pay attention.

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

15 minutes ago, taiiat said:

i'm definitely partially biased because i was very supportive of and involved with the Defense Audit for U17, but....

 

i like Defense mechanically due to generally still being able to apply the Mobility that is the essense of Warframe to the Gamemode, while all Players are always within sight lines of each other, having interesting mixtures of Enemy Specs, with the temptation of Endless Gameplay.

that being said, Health of the Objective in say, Infested Defense, are ridiculous - the thing has so much Health you basically couldn't lose if you tried unless you could skip to like Wave 300 and go AFK.

 

people regard Defense as a 'camp inside the Snowglobe and play a turret simulator' but those Players are simply subjugating themselves to that, the Gamemode does not require it whatsoever.
you can do a lot of things in Defense, it is lenient enough to let you do a lot of silly things while still making you pay attention.

What it sounds like to me, then, is that people want something more like the original survival--single room of hordes of enemies pouring out at you. Though with this, they don't want to manage life support. Perhaps a rework of both defense and survival is in order?

[Gamer3548]

38 minutes ago, Jangkrik said:

Because you don't have to move a lot?

I see it as more of the reason why I hate defense.

[1tsyB1tsyN1nj4]

37 minutes ago, Jangkrik said:

Because you don't have to move a lot?

Uranus' defense mission called

[Jangkrik]

6 minutes ago, Gamer3548 said:

I see it as more of the reason why I hate defense.

Bruh. You don't have to move a lot. That means you're not prohibited to move a lot, but you may choose to.

5 minutes ago, 1tsyB1tsyN1nj4 said:

Uranus' defense mission called

That's why I prefer normal defense missions like the ones in Void and Jupiter to Uranus.

Edited July 7, 2016 by Jangkrik

[MuscleVictor]

Personally, I think survival and defense as gamemodes are fine as they are: one encourages a more assault-oriented mindset, while the other enables the possibility of more tactical play on a set map tile.

If I were to make any changes to defense though, it would be using more dynamic conditions for the defense maps themselves. For example, Uranus' defense map has the objective move every wave, the map changes for the first few rotations on the moon map, and corpus archwing defense has two simultaneous objectives to defend. An interesting map would be a large, sprawling map with multiple secondary objectives to defend (destroying them does not fail the mission, but they may provide incentives like in-mission buffs, more end-of-rotation rewards etc.) and one main objective (the cryopod). Tenno in a squad would have to coordinate and strategize on how to go about defending the objectives, promoting the possibility of higher-level tactical gameplay. For solo players, only one of the secondary objectives would be active at a time, if at all.

[armlesspotato]

17 hours ago, Trichouette said:

Say bye bye to easy ducats with the next update xD

;-; dnt even talk about that it hurts me heart.

Back on topic.
With the new banshee augment (Resonating quake) And throw in equinox buff and a rhino buff and a trin and you can pretty much laze around in defense missions. I dont "hate" defense mission per say. I dislike Mobile Defense tho. Its dull and boring and you cant run all three terminals simultaneously. Lotus is slow af.

[taiiat]

8 minutes ago, (PS4)WiiConquered said:

What it sounds like to me, then, is that people want something more like the original survival--single room of hordes of enemies pouring out at you. Though with this, they don't want to manage life support. Perhaps a rework of both defense and survival is in order?

idunno. having only one Tile in Survival got stale, it loses it's welcome when that's all you see. Defense has this problem in some Tilesets, some of the Defense Tiles are.... not particularly interesting to play on due to the shape of them (and subsequently Interception too).

the single Tile Survival was certainly more reliable with Enemy Spawns, but that definitely was basically a turret simulator, not really any reason to move around, just use hardcover to chokepoint Enemies and then basically go AFK. very similar to what Players have been abusing in Survival on many Tilesets for quite some time, ofcourse.

 

Sealab Defense makes Defense more interesting Tile wise, as you do move around somewhat, and the Tile is larger than normal.
which is a step in the right direction. sure, both Gamemodes could theoretically be merged into some sort of dynamic 'everything mode', but that's not likely to happen, no matter how 'perfect' i imagine my longstanding mental image of a Gamemode which presents random Primary Objectives with optional sub Objectives to make the Primary Objective easier, spanning all Tilesets in the game within one Mission  with an ingenious 'Loading Screen', mixing in all Factions with Mission events that change the primary Faction and create 'ambient' fighting like on Mars - giving capability to truly 'play one Mission forever' mechanically.

no matter how great that would be (it's really basically an endless, mobile version of Mass Effect Multiplayer, just with much wider variety in content, and creating it's own 'story' out of the events that occur (which means creating many memorable moments, things to fondly reflect on "when this and that happened and bullets and boom and wow")) - it's just not likely to happen i guess

 

so what's more likely to be something that could happen, is making the Gamemodes (and i guess all in general, Sabotage Caches are an example of a type of this) have more to do, giving optional Objectives and creating more than one road to Rome, Et Cetera.
and perhaps just maybe having procedural events to shake up Missions to make them feel more alive and create those memorable moments.

[chaotea]

I like them because hoard defence is fun.

[NativeKiller]

Wait... people actually like defense missions? O__O

 

...Jokes aside, if some people like defense missions, it's because they can mostly just stand in one place and not have to worry about Life Support, unlike Survivals.

[Drufo]

I actually don't llike it. I think it's the among the most boring mission type. I'd enjoy it more if it was time based and with a very aggressive AI that swarm you, so you'll have to actually kill to protect something and not for progressing in the wave (which in high levels can become really long). Also, I find way more enjoyable defense missions where you have to defend a mobile target, instead of a cryopod, like in Sorties

[Gamer3548]

1 hour ago, Jangkrik said:

Bruh. You don't have to move a lot. That means you're not prohibited to move a lot, but you may choose to.

Considering how I have near the objective or it is likely to be destroyed that kind of makes the "don't have to" into a "You don't have to if you want to lose. That is on solo.

On a squad everyone then rages at you that you left the objective.

So basically the frost bubble is the map for you in Defense

Edited July 7, 2016 by Gamer3548

[Omnimorph]

Because it's relaxing to a degree.

People often play videogames for a challenge, but they also play for relaxation too sometimes, or some mixture, and different things at different times.  You need a good spread of game modes to suit everyone.

[(PSN)Eluminary]

Defense is boring... I think it might be a little bit more exciting if we get a constant stream of enemies coming at you and instead of wave by wave you got rewards every 5 minutes you kept the pod from being destroyed... doing this so you would have to have some way to call for extraction since you wouldn't have the pause every 5 waves.

 

[(PSN)Cephalon_Snow]

42 minutes ago, (PS4)Eluminary said:

Defense is boring... I think it might be a little bit more exciting if we get a constant stream of enemies coming at you and instead of wave by wave you got rewards every 5 minutes you kept the pod from being destroyed... doing this so you would have to have some way to call for extraction since you wouldn't have the pause every 5 waves.

 

I agree , the pauses really do break the flow.  Maybe they should make it..kill X amount of enemies for reward A kills X amount more for reward B ect..ect.

Edited July 7, 2016 by (PS4)I420t

[SpeedOfLightPuncher]

Defense is a chill more. You can actually get some air unlike in survival (life support jokes). And survival should be reworked. It is too stressful where defense needs no rework at all. It is one of the most perfect modes on the game except exterminate.

[RadioLarity]

I don't like endless missions exactly due to the fact of calming down. If I wanted to do exactly that I would just go and read a book. Or take a nap or whatever. But missions like defense still need you to pay attention and keep enemies at bay (especially end game ones) which is boring as all hell. You don't have any goal of some sorts, you're not working to do something just brainlessly kill enemies. Interception is fine.
The thing is that void missions (survival and defense) have all the parts we need. That's why I hate them (and that's why new void system is coming). Doing one boring mission over and over that keeps being the same is just exhausting and I can't wait for void projections and void tears to actually do few cool missions along getting the parts I want.