Void 2.0: One Major Problem - Enemy Variety

[BlackCoMerc]

Void 2.0 was supposed to fix the sheer repetitiveness of Prime farming. However, the new system has one MAJOR flaw.

Namely...that we fight the same list of enemies over and over again. Every mission.

Turns out...the problem wasnt the maps. It wasnt going to the Void that made it feel so repetitive. Give me the void over Europa any day. Really. I hate those ice caves. They are everything a game about Parkour and movement shouldn't be: confining, narrow, with little to no useful verticality. Basically, the anti void. 

But I digress.

The problem wasnt going to the Void.

The problem was fighting the exact same list of enemies every single mission. That is what made the Void feel so repetitive. That's what induced the fatigue. The boredom. It wasnt seeing the same places over and over (the Void maps are lovely, by the way; sort of miss them now you decided to turn your level designer's best and most appealing works into a complete and utter waste of time...see also, Lua, but I digress again). The problem was a lack of enemy variety. The problem was fighting the exact same list of enemies over and over again.

And guess what: We're still doing it.

Oh look...a Corrupted Bombard. On Neptune. Where? Why...under that Nullifier bubble, beside the heavy gunner and the Ancient. 

Every. Single. Mission.

It does not matter where you move the missions to. It does not matter what the backdrop looks like (unless its Europa; seriously, that place is awful). The problem is what w do on a given mission. What we interact with. Not what we see. 

 

=============

Suggested Fix

=============

Stop spawning unique enemies from Fissures. Only ever Corrupt the enemies already in place on the map. Add more spawns if you think you need to do so. Sure. Sometimes we kill enemies before they become corrupted, missing out on potential Reactant (seriously, why is this bit of utter, troll enabling tedium even still a thing; do you get some sort of fun out of making missions less fun) and this can be a problem. Especially for Exterminates. So add more spawns, if needed.

But please stop placing Bombards and Ancients on Corpus maps. Stop throwing Nullifiers and Ancients into Grineer tiles. Because you are recreating the exact issue you spent months trying to fix by doing so. 

[Autongnosis]

You know, you might really have a point there - tho i'd not solve it by having the Fissure not spawn any enemies. Rather, i'd like the Fissure to be a focus (in a good way, not the bad one of Void 1.5).

Split the Orokin faction into Corrupted enemies (ie the ones in the Void tileset and the ones corrupted by fissures) and actual Orokin enemies. If the fissures where to spawn, every once in a while, one among a couple of different Orokin construct types that act as minibosses, with higher tiers making them more dangerous, that would instantly make me fall in love with Fissure missions.

(incidentally having them into the void tileset itself, or an infested variation in the derelict, or as a safety measure on the Moon withthe added bonus of the possibility of them being hyjacked by the Sentients, would be great)

Edited September 19, 2016 by Autongnosis
typo .-.

[BlackCoMerc]

Just now, Autongnosis said:

You know, you might really have a point there - tho i'd not solve it by having the Fissure not spawn any enemies. Rather, i'd like the Fissure to be a focus (in a good way, not the bad one of Void 1.5).

Split the Orokin faction into Corrupted enemies (ie the ones in the Void tileset and the ones corrupted by fissures) and actual Orokin enemies. If the fissures where to spawn, every once in a while, one among a couple of different Orokin construct types that act as minibosses, with higher tiers making them more dangerous, that would instantly make me fall in love with Fissure missions.

(incidentally having them into the void tileset itself, or a corrupted variation in the derelict, or as a safety measure on the Moon withthe added bonus of the possibility of them being hyjacked by the Sentients, would be great)

Orokin mini bosses would be cool. So long as they dont use that awful damage adaptation mechanic. I mean...adapting to the single damage type from which they take the most damage would be fine. But adapting to four to six types at once...that's not challenging. Its just rendering stuff useless. 

But yeah...Orokin Construct mini bosses would be awesome. Give them lots of EHP. Make them Fissure Guardians or some such. Lets fight them instead of the same hapless mooks we always do. 

One way or another though...Fissure enemy spawn lists need to change. At this point, I miss Void 1.0. At least there, we got to wade through the same old bestiary in interesting tilesets...and with a chance for more than one item per Key.

[TheLoneNinja]

I like void 2.0 much better.  No more spending 20min in a T1 survival for a chance at rotation C prime part.  Now it's just 5min and a prime part of your choice. (to an extent) :D

[BlackCoMerc]

19 minutes ago, TheLoneNinja said:

I like void 2.0 much better.  No more spending 20min in a T1 survival for a chance at rotation C prime part.  Now it's just 5min and a prime part of your choice. (to an extent) :D

That's true. And I also appreciate the new format.

But the fact its the same enemies every single mission...already feeling the fatigue. Its gotten old. Preserve the uniqueness of factions. Stop tossing them together in a big mixer every Fissure mission. I know this probably sounded unique and cool. But do it 50 or so times, and...its just as repetitive as the old Void system.

[TheLoneNinja]

1 minute ago, BlackCoMerc said:

That's true. And I also appreciate the new format.

But the fact its the same enemies every single mission...already feeling the fatigue. Its gotten old. Preserve the uniqueness of factions. Stop tossing them together in a big mixer every Fissure mission. I know this probably sounded unique and cool. But do it 50 or so times, and...its just as repetitive as the old Void system.

What do you expect? Non-void enemies in fissures/void/orokin places?  It's already a mix of orokin and the current occupants (infested, grineer, corpus)

[BlackCoMerc]

Just now, TheLoneNinja said:

What do you expect? Non-void enemies in fissures/void/orokin places?  It's already a mix of orokin and the current occupants (infested, grineer, corpus)

As I said in the OP...I expect them to corrupt the enemies already on the map. Those that belong there. Not add their own list of enemies to the mission. 

By doing this, you preserve the uniqueness of each faction. You vary the experience of each Fissure run. If its a Grineer fissure, I get Grineer enemies, but Corrupted. If its Infested, then I get Infested enemies, but corrupted. Each experience is different.

Right now, its Bombard, Nullifier and Ancient...every single mission. It took the former Void more than a year to begin feeling repetitive. And this wasnt due to a problem with the Void itself. It was due to DE insisting that everything worth having, belonged on the C rotation of T3 Survival. 

So DE set out to make a major update, to fix a problem they created themselves. And instead of simple and elegant, we got...this. Its messy. Convoluted. And easily as repetitive as the old Void due to the Fissures spawning the exact same list of enemies every single mission. 

They didnt fix anything. They just moved the same old problem, to new locations.

[TheLoneNinja]

1 minute ago, BlackCoMerc said:

As I said in the OP...I expect them to corrupt the enemies already on the map. Those that belong there. Not add their own list of enemies to the mission. 

By doing this, you preserve the uniqueness of each faction. You vary the experience of each Fissure run. If its a Grineer fissure, I get Grineer enemies, but Corrupted. If its Infested, then I get Infested enemies, but corrupted. Each experience is different.

Right now, its Bombard, Nullifier and Ancient...every single mission. It took the former Void more than a year to begin feeling repetitive. And this wasnt due to a problem with the Void itself. It was due to DE insisting that everything worth having, belonged on the C rotation of T3 Survival. 

So DE set out to make a major update, to fix a problem they created themselves. And instead of simple and elegant, we got...this. Its messy. Convoluted. And easily as repetitive as the old Void due to the Fissures spawning the exact same list of enemies every single mission. 

They didnt fix anything. They just moved the same old problem, to new locations.

Well the whole reason the orokin guys are there is... they are coming through the fissures.  Mixed with corrupted occupants already there.

[BlackCoMerc]

3 hours ago, TheLoneNinja said:

Well the whole reason the orokin guys are there is... they are coming through the fissures.  Mixed with corrupted occupants already there.

Yes. I know that.

I also know this is bad. It makes every mission incredibly similar to every other one. It gets repetitive quickly. It makes me wonder why we ever left the Void, if the only thing these do, is bring the same list of enemies and tactics to new maps. 

Nothing has changed. They spent months on SOTR, and literally nothing has changed. 

Still fighting all the same enemies: Check

Still a grind wall behind a grind wall: Check

Still using nothing but straight power creep that will eventually render a ton of stuff absolutely useless in order to try and sell PA: Check.

Literally the only change they accomplished - after months of development time - was to move the grind repetition that instills burnout in people, to another location. That's literally the only thing, game play wise, SOTR actually accomplished. 

When Steve first brought it up, it seemed cool. And the ability to obtain stuff more quickly is cool. I like that part. But its already gotten old. For several reasons:

Reactant: aka, how to deliberately enable trolling, while making your game more tedious and less fun. Reactant adds nothing to game play. Its annoying. Its tedious. On Lith Exterminate missions, it often does not even work. Kind of like its own map markers that way.

Enemy Spawns: They are exactly the same every mission. You know, just like they were in the old void. The one that got old. And caused Burnout. Sort of like the new one has already done in a lot of people. Because we keep fighting the exact same bestiary of enemies over and over again. Imagine Witcher 3, where every Witcher Contract was a Griffin and a Wraith, standing side by side. How many of those would you actually enjoy? 

Well guess what: That's Warframe, in a nutshell. And it needs to change.