[Richard Talks:] Extermination

[Yzjdriel]

Oh, you're here?  Wow.  I, uh, wasn't expecting anyone to actually show up for this.  Cool.

Okay.  What is this I'm doing here?

Well, that's actually pretty simple:  I'm going to talk about things in this lovely game of ours that need a little tweaking.

 

For those of you who don't know me, I'm Zid.  I'm an EV Prime main, and I love this game.

There are a lot of things I like about it, but there are also some things that I don't.  Let's talk about them.

This discussion will benefit mostly from input from veterans, but if any of you newly awoken Tenno have something to share, by all means, join in.

I'm not going to talk about nerfs, powercreep, meta, or anything that ends up being a hot-button issue anywhere in this thread.  I would ask you all to do the same when responding.

Now then.

EXTERMINATE MISSIONS

You love 'em, you hate 'em, you ignore 'em, whatever you think (or don't think) of them, they are a thing that exists.  And like all things in this game, they have their place, and their own issues.

Why don't we start by breaking things down a little?

Simply Put:  Your job in an Exterminate mission is to kill everything that moves and take all their stuff.

Pros:  This is the most basic of missions.  It's the kind of mission you see in every game, and it's the only one you'll see in some games.  It's simplicity makes it easy to speed-run, and it's one of the best places to test a new weapon:  "How long does it take this build to clear [insert node here]?"

Cons:  The simplicity also makes it a little boring, especially if you're not testing anything or trying to stealth your way through.  The lack of variety and the slim chance that anything will happen to shake things up (Stalker/Syndicate Care Packages notwithstanding) makes Exterminate missions pretty vapid most of the time, and not even Hunhow's Puppet provides a challenge to us anymore:  he's merely a minor annoyance in an otherwise straightforward mission.

I've mentioned my concerns about the general state of the game to several people in my Clan and on the Forums, and while most of those people have agreed with me that something's not quite right, no one can seem to figure out what that is or how to fix it.

It would be irresponsible of me to start a thread that outlines problems I've found without proposing any solutions, however.  Therefore:

How to fix it:  The current system of unalerted -> alerted -> alarms on -> eximus spawns -> manic/bursa spawns simply doesn't work and frankly doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  Eximus units should spawn consistently throughout the mission instead of magically appearing on the ship or in the base when the alarms go off.  Aside from being less immersion-breaking to have eximus units naturally spawn, this will make it more sensible to alter the way that other things spawn.

Manics need to spawn in these missions if you leave the alarms on too long.  They were originally intended as an ambush mechanic (remember Blackout?), so having them spawn the same way Bursas do doesn't really make any sense.  However, there is a way to make them spawn that works.  When the alarms have been going for about 45 seconds (the same length of time it takes for the Bursa's spawn chance to be turned on), there will be a chance for the Grineer to lock all the doors in the room, similar to a Lockdown scenario, except the Tenno cannot hack the doors open (the terminal minimap icon could be red to indicate this).  The doors would lock, and then the laughter would echo around the room.

One manic per player per 30 enemy levels.  Once they're dead, the Grineer open the doors again because they have to kill the Tenno at all costs.

Bursas (Riot Moas) should spawn in the same manner:  the Corpus lock the doors and send in the heavy-hitters.

One Bursa per player per 30 enemy levels.  Once they're dead, the Corpus open the doors again because it's either open the door or wait for the Tenno to kick it down.

 

The Infestation has the Juggernaut, and its spawn mechanics are different (and rightfully so).  More importantly, though, its spawn mechanics make sense.  There's no need to change how a Juggernaut shows up.

Bottom Line:  There needs to be a real consequence for leaving the alarms on.  Having the entire mission grind to a halt for a mini-boss fight would fit the bill nicely, and it would also place more of an emphasis on doing the mission properly, rather than letting the alarms blare the whole way through as we run around unchecked.

 

I would appreciate your constructive criticism on this topic.

Have fun and be safe, Tenno.

Edited October 26, 2016 by Yzjdriel

[-Black_Lotus-]

Overall I do like the idea of giving an exterminate mission some more 'meat' so to speak but this seems to be overly punishing towards squishy frames and a non stealth approach.This seems strange considering that an exterminate is proabably the mission which stealth makes the least contextual sense for. I mean its not like Grineer no.257 is going to miss the fact that ~150 of his friends have died and continue to mooch about happily is it? :D

Imagine for instance that you were in a squad with a Volt and a Zephyr maybe and you trigger the Bursa activation. Now you have two frames locked inside what could be quite a small space with two of the more powerful enemy variations to face, especialy, if your if you have limited manouveribility.

21 minutes ago, Yzjdriel said:

One manic per player per tier.  

Also can you clarify what you mean per 'teir' ? I'm going to assume youre talking about how things like Defense and interception are split into tiers but it seems unclear.

On the other hand I'm not sure what Could be done to help this though.

 

[Yzjdriel]

I don't see it so much as being punishing to 'squishy frames' as being punishing to the rusher's attitude of "there are no consequences for letting the alarms go off forever".

Given that it generally takes about 30 seconds to clear a large room, and about 10 seconds to clear a large enough space around you to hack a console, it really shouldn't be too difficult to turn the alarms off.

Let's say you have that Volt and Zephyr team.

Volt can stun one of the bursas, and if you have a Sancti Tigris or some other ridiculously high-damage primary (and the Zephyr will probably have a Tonkor), Bursas really aren't all that hard to kill.  Combine that with the fact that Zephyr has by far the best maneuverability of any Warframe (Fairy Mode doesn't count, because you lose your main weapon loadout to get it) and is a TANK on top of that?  That fight doesn't end well for those bursas.

2 minutes ago, -Black_Lotus- said:

Also, can you clarify what you mean per 'tier' ? I'm going to assume you're talking about how things like Defense and interception are split into tiers but it seems unclear.

Your assumption is correct.  The way I've seen 'tier' used, it's essentially been analogous to "one level 30 'ceiling'", so it's about the same.

[Cyriann]

In fact the principle of this idea seems in fact pretty interesting.  

And I agree, that is not punishing squishy frames, these frames always have way different means of survival than tanking tons of damage at once. 

Though I still don't quite get your "tier" meaning. 

On a personal note I don't really like extermination because of how dull it is compared to a sabotage or spy. In term of things to do. . . Maybe some random happenings, aside from spawning ennemies could be a solution. . . Though I don't really have ideas of what for now. 

[Babellon]

Actually I like that entire statement. I do wish Bursas didn't constantly spawn but I do understand the premise. With that said I have often wondered why we don't see manics popping in on us on grineer missions the same way. I know some people get upset at these units and find any thing which slows down their speed run to be a nuisance but I don't , and in fact feel those mobs should be a part of the 'alert' scenario.

Extermination missions are by far the simplest mission type as you've already said and I wouldn't necessarily want to make them more complicated. How ever some changes to mix things up would not be bad at all. I'm pretty guilty of it myself in the missions I run, I will allow alarms to go off continuously so I can have constant spawns. This of course is why I don't like having heavy mobs constantly popping on me, ala bursa, they get tiresome after a while and to me make it feel like I have to hurry up and finish the mission, or turn off the alarms breaking the spawn cycle. Which for me goes against my playstyle entirely as I do not want to vacate maps as quickly as possible and I'm not simply looking to run to objective and out.

If we're going to have that type of linear play then it needs to rework the rewards system so that we get an ample amount of various items at conclusion. I don't see that in the current form, which is why I don't like corpus runs with bursa spawn. I like to stay for hours on my sabotage, farm my spy missions for all its worth, spend 3 hours in rescue missions...But I do like the idea of adding more flavor, more risk/reward variables to missions.

The fact remains though that if I had to feel like I was required to simply go to objective and out again to do more missions I'd get bored very quickly simply because there isn't enough incentive to keep running that mission repeatedly 5 minutes at a time. which is all everything would turn into if we simply made all missions, whether exterminate or otherwise, always have special units spawning with alarms. Corpus maps are already no fun at anything over lvl 15 because of this. Hurry up and go to mission objective, hurry up and go to extraction...hurry up, that's what I get from that sort of scenario unfortunately and it takes all of the enjoyment out of it for me, I like the grind, my way, 5 minute spurts would not be good.

We need to come up with ways to add to a missions longevity, that encourage more play time not simply faster run thru, which is I think what would end up occurring much like what we see with corpus now. People already rush, giving them more things to avoid would only make them rush more. I personally want to see longer map runs, not shorter. deeper missions not simply disruptive variables.. more reasons to enjoy and explore the content rather  than avoidance.

Edited October 26, 2016 by Babellon

[Yzjdriel]

43 minutes ago, Cyriann said:

Though I still don't quite get your "tier" meaning. 

It seems like I should clarify that, then.  I'll edit the OP.

Essentially what I mean by that is a 30-level ceiling.

That is, a mission that's level 1-30 is tier 1, 21-60 is tier 2, 61-90 is tier 3, etc.

So a team of 4 in a corpus sortie 3 exterminate that leaves the alarms blaring will run into 16 bursas at once.

[Yzjdriel]

10 minutes ago, Babellon said:

if we simply made all missions, whether exterminate or otherwise, always have special units spawning with alarms.

I meant this change specifically for exterminate missions only, and it would only happen once per mission (you can't expect the Corpus to have 800 bursas on hand on the off chance the tenno show up - remember, we're not a common occurrence to them - but it's a sure bet they have a few).

I'm putting my mind to how to fix up Capture missions next.

[Babellon]

1 minute ago, Yzjdriel said:

snip

sorry, yea I did sort of expand past the actual topic at hand didn't I....in exterminate specifically I do definitely like that idea, alarms go off, we get hit by some special units, ambush style rather than simple hunt for the guy hiding in the corner over there...definitely.

[ArcaneSnowdrop]

8 minutes ago, Yzjdriel said:

It seems like I should clarify that, then.  I'll edit the OP.

Essentially what I mean by that is a 30-level ceiling.

That is, a mission that's level 1-30 is tier 1, 21-60 is tier 2, 61-90 is tier 3, etc.

So a team of 4 in a corpus sortie 3 exterminate that leaves the alarms blaring will run into 16 bursas at once.

...I think, in a Sortie, that might be...overkill at /least/, because you can't use the ciphers, and mistakes are going to get you screwed over. Otherwise, I do like the idea.

[Yzjdriel]

10 minutes ago, Babellon said:

sorry, yea I did sort of expand past the actual topic at hand didn't I....in exterminate specifically I do definitely like that idea, alarms go off, we get hit by some special units, ambush style rather than simple hunt for the guy hiding in the corner over there...definitely.

I don't think you expanded too far past the topic:  it's a valid point to raise that doing this in all missions definitely would not work.

1 minute ago, ArcaneSnowdrop said:

...I think, in a Sortie, that might be...overkill at /least/, because you can't use the ciphers, and mistakes are going to get you screwed over. Otherwise, I do like the idea.

Yeah, that was just extrapolation of the idea.  Applying it in a linear fashion is likely not the best idea, but I'm not as good at balancing ideas as I am at coming up with them.  That's why I play the game, and DE makes the game.

[ArcaneSnowdrop]

6 minutes ago, Yzjdriel said:

I don't think you expanded too far past the topic:  it's a valid point to raise that doing this in all missions definitely would not work.

Yeah, that was just extrapolation of the idea.  Applying it in a linear fashion is likely not the best idea, but I'm not as good at balancing ideas as I am at coming up with them.  That's why I play the game, and DE makes the game.

That is true! Maybe a logarithmic extrapolation of some sort would work?

[Babellon]

As I'm thinking on this in specifics rather than my usual generalized comments- an expansion on exterminations such as making them larger, have more units to kill, I think would play into this and in the case of grineer we need to see more manic activity. What is the point of these specialized mobs if we never encounter them or rarely? Right now the alarms going off doesn't really mean anything in extermination especially in the lower level maps where we have less than 100 targets. I think that too should be looked at, and that at our lowest we shouldn't have less than that 100, in fact that should be the minimum in my opinion. Perhaps give more toward the idea of stealth runs for exterminations since that is where that sort of playstyle really shines to me. I use it quite often to level melee and stealth kill so having a serious consequence to getting detected would lend to the feeling of excitement in missions.

[Yzjdriel]

3 minutes ago, ArcaneSnowdrop said:

That is true! Maybe a logarithmic extrapolation of some sort would work?

Perhaps.  Though the asymptotal nature of logarithms would be something I'd like to avoid.  Perhaps something like y = x² + 8logx ?  Still mostly linear, but shallower than a straight 1:1 ratio.

5 minutes ago, Babellon said:

As I'm thinking on this in specifics rather than my usual generalized comments- an expansion on exterminations such as making them larger, have more units to kill, I think would play into this and in the case of grineer we need to see more manic activity. What is the point of these specialized mobs if we never encounter them or rarely? Right now the alarms going off doesn't really mean anything in extermination especially in the lower level maps where we have less than 100 targets. I think that too should be looked at, and that at our lowest we shouldn't have less than that 100, in fact that should be the minimum in my opinion. Perhaps give more toward the idea of stealth runs for exterminations since that is where that sort of playstyle really shines to me. I use it quite often to level melee and stealth kill so having a serious consequence to getting detected would lend to the feeling of excitement in missions.

The number of enemies you see is based off the mission level and the MR of the host.  Increasing this number based on the size of the squad and the level of the mission would be an interesting thing to try.

For example, adding another 50% to the total for each additional squad member (2 members is 150%, 3 members is 225%, and 4 members is 337.5%) would be a nice way to make them seem more meaningful with a team (and it would also make rushers consider playing solo more often), and it would also increase the relevance of the alarms the earlier on they get triggered.

Or perhaps have the number of enemies be calculated thusly:  MR of host * the mission level * some balancing constant + 100 ?

[ArcaneSnowdrop]

Just now, Yzjdriel said:

Perhaps.  Though the asymptotal nature of logarithms would be something I'd like to avoid.  Perhaps something like y = x² + 8logx ?  Still mostly linear, but shallower than a straight 1:1 ratio

Perhaps. I'd have to find my graphing calculator to decide on a good slope.

[Yzjdriel]

@ArcaneSnowdrop

Tungsten Carbon

"y = [insert function]"

it's not perfect, but it's good for quick-whipping up some graphs

Edited October 27, 2016 by Yzjdriel

[Babellon]

@Yzjdriel Certainly, and that goes into an idea I was throwing around not to long ago, about MR directly effecting mobs, levels, and population.

I'd like to see maps level to the range/rank of the player. As a soloist I often browse around the solar map generally running amok and would definitely feel more engaged if when I went to say mercury or earth that those mobs scaled up to my range giving me more intensity on the missions. MR would have more relevance and feeling of importance with that set up and would give some of the challenge back to missions. If we then took that and averaged it to the number of mobs, and levels, as in total mr of all players divided by that number of players, and let that be the number and level of mobs,,,I am terrible at writing math lol, but you get my meaning.

At the same time there has to be a minimum cap, so that Sedna for example didn't scale down. That would only apply in one direction in terms of level ranges.

Edited October 26, 2016 by Babellon

[Yzjdriel]

19 hours ago, Babellon said:

@Yzjdriel Certainly, and that goes into an idea I was throwing around not to long ago, about MR directly effecting mobs, levels, and population.

I'd like to see maps level to the range/rank of the player. As a soloist I often browse around the solar map generally running amok and would definitely feel more engaged if when I went to say mercury or earth that those mobs scaled up to my range giving me more intensity on the missions. MR would have more relevance and feeling of importance with that set up and would give some of the challenge back to missions. If we then took that and averaged it to the number of mobs, and levels, as in total mr of all players divided by that number of players, and let that be the number and level of mobs,,,I am terrible at writing math lol, but you get my meaning.

At the same time there has to be a minimum cap, so that Sedna for example didn't scale down. That would only apply in one direction in terms of level ranges.

Quite.  I for one would certainly like to see more of an emphasis put on stealth gameplay than just giving an affinity bonus that can be overcome by brute-forcing it in places like the old nodes Draco, Kappa, or Kiste.

[Yzjdriel]

My thoughts on Crossfire Exterminates: