[Richard Talks:] Recovery

[Yzjdriel]

Oh, hello.  You've made it.  Excellent.

It's been a while since I did the last one of these, so I'll once again go over what it is i'm doing here.

There are some things in this game that are perfect, there are a lot of things that are fine the way they are, and some things that just need to change.  So let's talk about those things that need some tweaking.

This discussion will benefit mostly from people who've actually played the Recovery mission, but if you haven't and still want to leave a comment, feel free!

I won't be talking about nerfs, powercreep, meta, or anything else that invariably ends up being a hot-button issue anywhere in this thread.  I would ask you all to do the same when responding.

Now then.

THE RECOVERY MISSION

You think it was fun, you think it was boring, you've never actually been killed by the Zanuka Hunter, whatever your opinion (or lack thereof) of it is (or isn't), it is a thing that exists.  And like all things in this game, it has its own place and its own issues.

As usual, I'll begin by breaking things down.

Simply Put:  Your objective in the Recovery Mission is to locate and retrieve your weapons and abilities and get the hell out.

Pros:  This mission offers a vastly different style of play from other missions in that you are severely under-powered at the beginning compared to the levels you are used to.  This places an emphasis on stealth, which is something the majority of current content severely lacks.

Cons:  Once you find one of your weapons, the rest of the mission is trivial.  Enemies can be easily slain with the most basic of equipment at the level they spawn at in the Recovery mission, and they do not spawn at all as frequently as you would reasonably expect from Alad V's Zanuka facility.  This completely destroys any sense of urgency you may have felt when you began the mission utterly powerless and reduced to extremely low-damage fisticuffs.

So what should be done about it?  Let's address each problem separately.

How to fix it:  The spawn rate of enemies should slowly ramp up the longer you take, contributing to a real sense of urgency.  The Lotus could even mention this in a VO (something along the lines of "Hurry, Tenno.  Reinforcements are arriving.").  The longer you take to reacquire your weapons and abilities, the less chance you have of success.  In addition, since this is Alad V's Zanuka creation facility, wouldn't it be interesting for a Zanuka to spawn the instant you open the door (at the other end of the map) and begin hunting you down?  That's a definite way to add a sense of urgency, and the consequence for failure wouldn't be all that great:  it would just restart the mission, loading screen and all.  This would shift the focus of the mission into moving quickly without arousing suspicion - essentially speed+stealth=win.

There should also be a decent number of Eximus units on the map (refer to my thoughts on Exterminate missions for my take on Eximus spawn mechanics) to reflect that this area is more highly secured than some random Corpus installation.  Given that this is Alad V's personal area, and he used to hold a seat on the Corpus Board of Directors, he should have a staggering amount of resources at his disposal.  It therefore stands to reason that there should be a lot of enemies in the area, not the five or six I ran into on average before reaching my Sancti Tigris (at which point the mission became a joke).

Bottom Line:  There isn't enough challenge in this extremely well-designed mission to make it anything more than a gimmick.  Increasing the spawn rate, adding more Eximus units, and possibly adding the Zanuka itself to track you would greatly increase the sense of urgency and add a real consequence for jerking around instead of focusing on the task at hand.

 

I would appreciate your constructive criticism on this topic.

Have fun and be safe, Tenno.

Edited December 8, 2016 by Yzjdriel
fixed some punctuation for added clarity

[Skaleek]

I'd like to be able to play this mission more often. Perhaps as a twist in a sortie mission? Or maybe when you die to bosses or fail a mission it has a chance to activate this one? As it stands right now i actually cant die to Zanuka most of the time. if i have a pet or sentinel they kill Zanuka with a sneeze.

[Yzjdriel]

3 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

I'd like to be able to play this mission more often. Perhaps as a twist in a sortie mission? Or maybe when you die to bosses or fail a mission it has a chance to activate this one? As it stands right now i actually cant die to Zanuka most of the time. if i have a pet or sentinel they kill Zanuka with a sneeze.

And that's ANOTHER thing.    But as this is primarily a look at the mission itself, I chose not to focus on how you actually get to the mission.

[Arkvold]

The problem here is that there's no way to escape this mission if you, say, try out invasions early and arouse Zanuka Hunter's ire.  This mission has to be completeable by someone that is physically incapable of killing Zanuka Hunter.

Not everyone who deals with this mission is as armed to the teeth as you are, or I am.  There are people who are just taking their first tender steps into invasions and would find the likes of Zanuka or G3 a legit challenge.  Or maybe they got carried through some invasions by a friend to get a vandal/wraith weapon part, and they're in no way prepared for these bosses.

The Recovery mission's gotta be doable by these people too, which is the primary reason why it's so designed to be easy - and if you are weak enough to die to Zanuka Hunter, it would be pretty unfair to have to fight Zanuka again in order to escape wouldn't it?  He's just going to kill you again.

So if you want to present the mission as a legit challenge for veteran players, you need to consider that veteran players are the least likely to be playing this mission, and include solutions for less-equipped and skilled players to get through it.

Otherwise, you're going to have people who really are trapped in the Zanuka facility, and they're going to be abandoning the game because of it.

[Yzjdriel]

20 hours ago, Arkvold said:

The problem here is that there's no way to escape this mission if you, say, try out invasions early and arouse Zanuka Hunter's ire.  This mission has to be doable by someone that is physically incapable of killing Zanuka Hunter.

Not everyone who deals with this mission is as armed to the teeth as you are, or I am.  There are people who are just taking their first tender steps into invasions and would find the likes of Zanuka or G3 a legit challenge.  Or maybe they got carried through some invasions by a friend to get a vandal/wraith weapon part, and they're in no way prepared for these bosses.

The Recovery mission's gotta be doable by these people too, which is the primary reason why it's so designed to be easy - and if you are weak enough to die to Zanuka Hunter, it would be pretty unfair to have to fight Zanuka again in order to escape wouldn't it?  He's just going to kill you again.

So if you want to present the mission as a legit challenge for veteran players, you need to consider that veteran players are the least likely to be playing this mission, and include solutions for less-equipped and skilled players to get through it.

Otherwise, you're going to have people who really are trapped in the Zanuka facility, and they're going to be abandoning the game because of it.

You're coming out with a very strong attack about something that I explicitly state to be a possibility of an added challenge:  would you mind toning it down a little?

 

I've tested this mission several times by purchasing some beacons from Baro.  Once with my default loadout (just so I could play the mission to see what it was); once with a Level 18 Excalibur, a Glaxion, Hikou, and the Obex; and once with unranked Valkyr Prime, Cernos Prime, Akjagara, and Venka Prime.  While I noticed an obvious change in my capabilities when I didn't have a Trinity Prime or Sancti Tigris, I still did not find anything significantly challenging about a mission with a grand total of seven enemies between me and my first weapon, and a total of 37 dead enemies by the end.

 

So if I want to present the mission as a legitimate challenge for ANYONE, I have to point out that the low spawn rate means that no matter the player's power level, the mission isn't really that difficult (and that may be the intention), and should be tweaked ever-so-slightly to provide a greater sense of urgency to the player, since you're escaping from the lab of a man who has tortured and experimented on Tenno and their Warframes:  it shouldn't be a walk through a deserted facility.  It should be an actual fight to get out.  You could even experiment with adding enemies or enemy levels based on the Conclave rating of the player's equipment when captured as a balancing factor.