Adding more variety to Defense

[DaeCatt]

I've been playing a lot of Defense lately and I've caught myself feeling like it's an incredibly repetitive mission that I only really play because it can provide so much affinity. Even after trying to rotate in other missions I just don't find defense that interesting in comparison to other missions, so I took a minute to think about what could be changed.

When I first started doing defense missions I was actually surprised that there was nothing special about the wave leading up to your chance to leave. Thematically it would make sense that the enemy had rallied a stronger force against you just ahead of giving you a break. My first thought was to just make every fifth wave harder, just as how the waves normally scale, but I think I came up with something better. After fighting The Executioners on Sedna and The Brokers from The Index I thought it would be more interesting to have a mini-boss appear alongside the normal enemies during these waves. Of course that would mean designing maybe three mini-bosses for each of the four factions but I wouldn't mind seeing enemies like the executioners re-used for this purpose.

An alternative way to make Defense less repetitive would be to introduce random single-wave enemy modifiers. Sort of like the Arena modifiers or the Nightmare mission modifiers these would be "keywords" that change some properties of the spawned enemies. These would apply to random waves and could increase in frequency as you kept on fighting. A couple potential modifiers could be:

• Spawning all enemies from the same location in rapid succession, causing a burst of enemies to appear and attack the point.
• Slightly lower the levels of the enemies but increase the amount that spawn, causing a swarm of enemies.
• Lower the amount of enemies but spawn but make all of them Eximus units.

With just these three I can already imagine some especially interesting rounds, especially when combined with each other or applied to a round that also has a mini-boss unit.

Ultimately I am a rather new player and don't know what DE might already have planned for the existing mission types, nor how much work it would take to implement these changes and balance them, but I thought it would be interesting to hear what other players think about defense and my suggestions.

[(PSN)ghinellil]

Defence is the most boring thing to do in this game. In sorties the operator wander around, but 10 waves still too much.

I prefer 5 waves, with different mechanism. Maybe only one kind of (weak) enemy in horde for the first wave, then stronger enemies in less number, for finish with only 3 enemies level 60/80 for the last wave.

[Naftal]

Spawning enemies in one big burst would be stupid as long as we have abilities and other things that hit unlimited amount of enemies.

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

Field Bosses (Bursas, Prosecutors, Sentients) are spawned in every 5th wave in some defense missions. I would like to see that expanded to include most defense missions. Obviously, you don't want manics or something similar pwning n00bs on Mercury, but having the Juggernaut spawn every 5 waves in an particular Infested Defense on Eris might alleviate some of DE's frustration with the node.