Excavation A Total Change

[DeaneTheMachine]

When Update 18 came out, excavation itself receive the massive Nerf in terms of efficiency and playability. Namely we lost fusion cores and it generally became harder to keep an excavator alive without defending efficiently. Now considering we just had the spectres of the rail update which in my mind is completely awesome and quite frankly really good job on DE's part relics are now harder to farm because every time you want to farm a prime part you must use a relic which means that after a while it can get very tiresome and for people especially like me who work seven days a week have a smaller amount of time to play with other people and farm prime parts. I therefore propose a complete change in excavation mechanics, locations and enemies to make it fun for everybody and have it as a really good mission for farming relics.

DO NOTE THAT SOME OF THESE IDEAS ARE MY OWN, SOME I CLAIM TO HAVE BEEN MINE BUT MAY BE PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED IN POSTS OR FORUMS CAN'T FIND AND SOME I WILL TAKE FROM OTHER FORUMS AS I DO BELIEVE THAT THEY ARE A GOOD IDEA.

1. Extractor health scaling

• To the first thing excavators really need like other defence targets (Mobile defence, defence etc.) Is the ability to scale into the higher game. Therefore at a base level of one and excavation have 500 shields and 3000 health. The scaling ratio (how much it would scale by) would be exactly the same as any Mobile defence target or sortie operative target.

 

2. New Extractor Power Mechanic

This idea was taken from this post https://redd.it/4vmv12.

Excavators would now be powered by the Warframe shields similar to a hijacked mission. I will expand a little on that idea by saying that we will still have power carriers that now no longer add power to an extractor but instead add a certain amount of health when one is given to an extractor. Whether it is a flat amount or can be scaled up in the late game is entirely up to DE's prerogative

 

3. Extractor Spawns and Map Design 

A personal problem I have with excavation is the gigantic maps that are involved and it severely thins out the action and makes it harder to move as a team because the map is so large therefore I propose a new size to excavation.

• Firstly the maps have got be a lot smaller. There should really be only be four tiles on the map on average: The entrance tile where we first jumped down through the roof, a tile where the excavators spawn, another tile for excavators to spawn which directly connects the previous tile and the extraction tile where we finish the mission.
• Secondly if the maps got smaller than the excavators will also have to spawn more quickly because we could get there quickly so I propose an excavator location spawns every 30 seconds. Excavators would also spawn in a simple repeating and mirroring pattern so you're not traversing from one end of the map to the next (e.g. A-B-C-D-E-F-E-D-C-B-A) This also encourages good team set up because if teams can coordinate well they can farm faster.
• Thirdly I propose a reward multiplier. Going longer in any defence mission is somewhat counter-productive as the rewards do not get any better nor do you have any chance of getting any higher tier awards at all. Therefore a reward multiplier is better option. The first four rotations of a AABC would remain exactly the same. When you start the second rotation and the third rotation you will get a two times and three times reward multiplier respectively. (E.g. a relic earned on the first rotation would net you one of that relic, a relic and on the second rotation would net you two of that relic, a relic and on the third rotation would give you three of that relic and so on) this once again encourages teamwork and players to go longer than just a minimum of one and extract. Note that cryotic will not be affected by the reward multiplier.

 

 

Comment down below. I want to hear all criticisms and praises.

 

Edited August 9, 2016 by NovusNova
Removed "Megathread" tag

[motorfirebox]

Excavators definitely need scaling health. Powering them off Warframe shields... I'm not opposed to it, I just don't see what it would add/improve? I'm not sure I agree about making the map tile smaller. At least on Heiracon, the action very rarely feels thinned out at all. Reward increases of some sort for longer runs are definitely good.

The thing that concerns me about excavation is that it could really stand to make more sense and also be more dynamic. Like, you've got these power core carriers running around... but why? What are they doing there?

It seems to me like excavation should be less about individual excavators and more about the area being excavated, and what's buried there. You and the enemy should both be trying to dig up whatever's hidden there, both trying to destroy each other's excavators and protect your own.

Here's my back-of-the-napkin model: somewhere on the map, there's an artifact buried. Both you and the enemy are trying to locate it, and you both start out with the same large search area (there would be some kind of visual indicator of your search area). Planting an excavator and letting it run to completion will narrow down the search area for you; likewise, if the enemy manages to run an excavator to completion, their search area is shrunk. In order to call down an excavator, you just steal a power core and blow it up (shoot it, melee slam it, whatever) inside the search area. The Lotus can track the explosion and send an excavator to those coordinates, but only every 120 seconds or so.

So the mission would be, plant your own excavators inside the search area, and make sure to find and blow up the enemy's.

[cittran]

37 minutes ago, motorfirebox said:

Excavators definitely need scaling health. Powering them off Warframe shields... I'm not opposed to it, I just don't see what it would add/improve? I'm not sure I agree about making the map tile smaller. At least on Heiracon, the action very rarely feels thinned out at all. Reward increases of some sort for longer runs are definitely good.

The thing that concerns me about excavation is that it could really stand to make more sense and also be more dynamic. Like, you've got these power core carriers running around... but why? What are they doing there?

It seems to me like excavation should be less about individual excavators and more about the area being excavated, and what's buried there. You and the enemy should both be trying to dig up whatever's hidden there, both trying to destroy each other's excavators and protect your own.

Here's my back-of-the-napkin model: somewhere on the map, there's an artifact buried. Both you and the enemy are trying to locate it, and you both start out with the same large search area (there would be some kind of visual indicator of your search area). Planting an excavator and letting it run to completion will narrow down the search area for you; likewise, if the enemy manages to run an excavator to completion, their search area is shrunk. In order to call down an excavator, you just steal a power core and blow it up (shoot it, melee slam it, whatever) inside the search area. The Lotus can track the explosion and send an excavator to those coordinates, but only every 120 seconds or so.

So the mission would be, plant your own excavators inside the search area, and make sure to find and blow up the enemy's.

Well. This is certainly something I'd find interesting, but there would need to be different interaction mechanics -- read: 'ways of weakening enemy excavators' -- to ensure that health scaling for BOTH sides still makes sense.

Either that, or having us Hack enemy excavators to make them self-destruct, or something.

[taiiat]

there's no reason why Excavation should be a Gamemode that gives you everything every other Gamemode does, but more of it and faster.
Excavation is still a massively higher reward Gamemode than any other in the game, despite having been slowed down.

 

they don't scale currently because that makes it a lot easier to create some semblance of challenge rather than Enemies just firing so many bullets that they hit it by accident.
i wouldn't be against them Scaling Shields only as you progress however.

 

the Power Cells being obtained from Enemies is cruicial for this Gamemode to work without everyone being AFK.
like Reactant, simply not needing to play an Animation to bring it to the Objective would help an incredible amount.

you could probably get away with the Power Cells giving 10% of total Health or something. since the Shields would be scaling, the Power Cell would not fully refill Shields anymore, but a Percentage of them. such as 20%.

 

Excavation has relevant size to prevent Players from spending most of their time AFK while getting Rewards.
Excavators purposely don't spawn in the same places over and over to make Gameplay more interesting than 'walk to A, spam Abilities, walk to B spam Abilities, walk to.....'.

Players are already given the option to 'farm faster' if they can handle it by splitting up and running multiple Excavators at once. if Squads don't feel confident enough they can opt to not do so.

 

Rewards giving some nod towards Players opting to play for extended periods would be nice. such as slightly increased rates for the things Players want lots of.

52 minutes ago, motorfirebox said:

Here's my back-of-the-napkin model:

that could be another Gamemode inofitself.

Edited August 9, 2016 by taiiat

[DSpite]

When I see topics like these, I tend to read "I want more power-farming options", because frankly what I see here does add anything to "challenge", if that word even applies to this game, because really, it has as much challenge as Borderlands.

You might as well just have a 4 team of Frosts to power-farm it. None of the OP ideas make it more fun, they now really really make it worthwhile actually having 4 Frosts, because no one will want to risk losses from "multipliers" at higher AABC rotations.

You just basically asked for a custom Loot Cave, and will just end up with people creating a custom, low-effort team Meta just to farm it for hours.

The only thing it needs is to have mechanics that make it less boring. I could not care less about the rewards.

If you work 7 days a week and have no time to play a game that is based on resources, you can't blame the game for not giving you resources "fast enough". It's like blaming EVE Online for making you need 8 hours a week to farm enough ISK to buy a Plex for the month, and then say that you can only play 2 hours a week, because the only reply in Forums you would get is "then EVE is not the game for you" or "just buy the Plex", which also apply here.

Edited August 9, 2016 by DSpite

[NovusNova]

Removed "Megathread" tag.

[(PSN)Darth-Escar]

I'm pretty opposed to this because I really, really like that excavation is a mix between survival and defense. The only thing turning me away from it at times is me being a showoff. Cryotic doesn't effectively show how many digs you've actually completed, so showing how how many keys you got is the only good way of showing that. Also, I wish there was excavation on the moon.