Scaling Endless Rewards

[tarfeef101]

So, I'm sure anyone here who, like me, loves endless survivals, is very frustrated sometimes by the rotational rewards. I personally love playing survival, going for 2 hours or even longer and just chilling out with my friends while we do it.

However, doing so really isn't rewarding anymore. Let's first break down why:

1) For void fissure runs, there ARE endless rewards. The in-mission boosters (and a relic every 5 rotations). These are a nice idea, but are not well chosen in my opinion. If you're going for an hour or longer, you don't need affinity boosters in that mission. Everything you bring will be maxed, and likely your focus cap as well. Most players who bother going that long also don't need the pitiful credits from survivals, or extra resources at all tbh. The relics, however, are great. Perhaps take a look at those boosters instead, and consider more relics, or even boosters that extend out of the mission. But if my changes that will be suggested later are implemented, then I won't really care about this that much.

2) For any survival (or other endless, but survival is my focus for this post. the same ideas can be implemented across the board), the mission scales. The enemies get harder, the time investment is greater, and the challenge gets bigger. However, the rewards don't. There are a few sub-problems here:
 

a) Base level of missions: This affects the reward table the mission draws from. So, if I like the mars tileset, and want to play there for a couple hours, even with level 200 enemies to deal with, I'm getting tiny amount of credits, 50 endo, and lith/meso relics. The relics I actually don't mind staying lith/meso, but those A rotation rewards are terrible.

b) Scaling rewards: Again, even if staying hours into a mission, I'm not being rewarded for my "intensive" gameplay. After 105 minutes on Lua, I can end up getting 2000 credits. In 20 minutes I can get 600K from JV. For anyone who can stay this long into a mission, these tiny amount of credits are laughable. Moreover, mods staying in the rotation rewards past 40 minutes is kinda dumb to me. The noobs who need those are long gone by then. It is simple reward dilution, except on these missions the "better rewards" aren't so good that they need to be diluted.

 

Okay, so enough whining: let's get to how we can fix this:

a) Mod rewards: Past 2 full rotation cycles (40 min, 8 excavators, 40 waves...), I think we can safely remove mods. Enemies will have scaled to the point that anyone still there has 0 use for these. just scrap em.

b) Relic rewards: Everyone needs relics. I love running fissure survivals. I use a ton of relics. Of all types too. So I suggest KEEPING the different base level missions rewarding different era relics on B and C rotations. However, I do suggest increasing the amount or refinement of these relics. If I stay for 100 minutes, I think it's reasonable to expect maybe 2 or 3 relics on that reward, or even a radiant relic instead of just the same one I can get in 2 minutes in a spy mission.

c) Credit rewards: Now this one is a pretty easy fix: scaling rewards. Given how many easy credit farms there are (raids, index for better players, akkad for less intense gameplay), the 2-5K you get in survival is laughable. So scale it up. The longer you go, the "Mission credit reward" you get on every mission for extracting is more meaningless. Plus, nobody who is staying for 2 hours needs 2K credits. We're maxing our primed mods. We need a hell of a lot more. So each rotation cycle, increase the credit rewards by a flat number additively, or scale it percentage wise. The exact numbers can be dealt with by you (DE), but a quick suggestion is just add 5-10K each rotation cycle.

d) Endo rewards: This would work very similarly. As each rotation cycle goes through, up the endo rewarded additively. This makes running that neo fissure on Ani that comes up all the time useful, cause 50 endo is sad for a 90 minute reward. This might require a tiered approach, as the low-base-level missions need this much more than the ones rewarding 400 per rotation, whicv is a lot better. So, another option is to simply scale it with enemy level so that everything equals out.

 

 

This is something I feel very strongly about. However, this is one off the cuff post, and is very much open to criticism, feedback, and ofc ppl loving it is always welcome ;)

[Asdryu]

Yeah... At least this would motivate freaks like you or me to do these even more. The only reason why I would do this is specifically because I feel like I want to, but thinking about the completely meaningless rewards just draws me far away from thinking about doing any endless missions.

Doing an endless mission with a fissure in it, on the other end it's a different story, but still I think that I should be able to hoard more relics from the get go and not from 40 mins away, that's a lot. A lot of stuff can happen in 40+ mins that will force me to leave, thus making my efforts meaningless.

I'd really like anything though to make rewards better. As far as it is now, NOTHING and NO ONE cares about you doing a 2+ hours endless mission, so that just leaves you thinking about rewards at least as in fun and variation are out of the table because if you don't use any meta strategy, you're just straight up gonna explode because of anything, even a melee attack from a lancer.

[Xolgys]

i feel like this is an old topic. its been around since a long time afaik because there is no real reward in endless missions atm. the rewards players get are more or less as u described very low considering the increase in difficulty. basically agree, it needs improvement one way or another so that ppl get more from these missions than just personal joy of running long missions.

greetings

[tarfeef101]

25 minutes ago, Xydeth said:

i feel like this is an old topic. its been around since a long time afaik because there is no real reward in endless missions atm. the rewards players get are more or less as u described very low considering the increase in difficulty. basically agree, it needs improvement one way or another so that ppl get more from these missions than just personal joy of running long missions.

greetings

Yep. You nailed it. This issue has been around forever. Nothing has really been done about it for a long time. Before SOTR void runs could be used an an excuse since every rotation you stay is more "value" out of your key. However, now that excuse is not there.

 

So, I figure putting some concrete issues and solutions in one spot is a good start. 

[(XBOX)Tucker D Dawg]

As someone who prefers endless survival over all others followed by  endless defense I too find the reward mechanic to be laughably bad in endless missions.  Almost any other mission type is better for credits, endo, XP, etc.  The reward system as it stands actually encourages people to leave early - somewhat counter-intuitive for an "endless" mission don't you think?

That and having lotus pop in all the time and say "the longer you stay the more you will be rewarded" is just a slap in the face.  Sure 101 is more than 100, but what she doesn't say is "the longer you stay, the less you will be rewarded for your effort put forth" which would be more accurate.

I have no idea on what the right fix would be but things I've thought about in no particular order:

• Fissure missions - the longer you stay, the more the probability shifts to rare items in radiant (only) relics
• Scaling XP - or at least Focus points
• Scaling credits - no more mission credits just for starting it, just gradually increase the credits awarded on a per wave basis
• Scaling endo/credit rewards - rather than 50 endo endlessly - 50,100,150, etc or whatever as a reward
• gradually increasing rarity of mods dropped
• Fissure missions - larger trace rewards for staying (although admittedly this is somewhat useless with the current cap on stored traces as I routinely get 2000+ traces per run but can only keep 1250  - so that might need to be looked at as well)
• More "modified" relic rewards instead of boosters

 

[tarfeef101]

26 minutes ago, (Xbox One)Tucker D Dawg said:

As someone who prefers endless survival over all others followed by  endless defense I too find the reward mechanic to be laughably bad in endless missions.  Almost any other mission type is better for credits, endo, XP, etc.  The reward system as it stands actually encourages people to leave early - somewhat counter-intuitive for an "endless" mission don't you think?

That and having lotus pop in all the time and say "the longer you stay the more you will be rewarded" is just a slap in the face.  Sure 101 is more than 100, but what she doesn't say is "the longer you stay, the less you will be rewarded for your effort put forth" which would be more accurate.

I have no idea on what the right fix would be but things I've thought about in no particular order:

• Fissure missions - the longer you stay, the more the probability shifts to rare items in radiant (only) relics
• Scaling XP - or at least Focus points
• Scaling credits - no more mission credits just for starting it, just gradually increase the credits awarded on a per wave basis
• Scaling endo/credit rewards - rather than 50 endo endlessly - 50,100,150, etc or whatever as a reward
• gradually increasing rarity of mods dropped
• Fissure missions - larger trace rewards for staying (although admittedly this is somewhat useless with the current cap on stored traces as I routinely get 2000+ traces per run but can only keep 1250  - so that might need to be looked at as well)
• More "modified" relic rewards instead of boosters

 

Just responding to your points:

• Interesting, and something that with balancing is totally feasible.
• XP scales with enemy level, so this already happens. I play 1 survival and can max out focus.
• Not sure if this AND better rotational credit rewards is too much, but 1 or the other for sure would help
• Absolutely
• Interesting, although I'm not sure this is a priority to me at least, since most mods are not that hard to get or buy if your luck sucks for it, and there are other issues I'd rather see addressed first
• Yeah, the cap could be bigger but I won't complain, 12 radiant relics is enough for 1 mission. I can survive with that. As for scaling traces, the resource boosters you get every 5 waves kinda does that for you.
• totally agreed.

[DSpite]

On 29/05/2017 at 7:37 AM, tarfeef101 said:

So, I'm sure anyone here who, like me, loves endless survivals, is very frustrated sometimes by the rotational rewards. I personally love playing survival, going for 2 hours or even longer and just chilling out with my friends while we do it.

 

The simple fact it can be "played for 2 hours and even more" so easily by bringing the correct "no one shall pass here" Frames combinations, is exactly why you will not get scaling rewards.

The whole point of "rewards" is something that is given out for doing something out of the ordinary, and since it can be done almost at will with a farming setup, you will not get "better rewards" until DE makes more enemies, changes the AI, and adds in more dynamic things happening in high level waves.

Enemies at Level 0 act exactly the same as Level 1000 enemies. They just have more hit points/armour to chew through and more damage, which we trivialize with Corrosive Projection/taking away all their guns/CC'ing everything out to 60 meters/etc etc.

[Elvangreen]

6 minutes ago, DSpite said:

The simple fact it can be "played for 2 hours and even more" so easily by bringing the correct "no one shall pass here" Frames combinations, is exactly why you will not get scaling rewards.

The whole point of "rewards" is something that is given out for doing something out of the ordinary, and since it can be done almost at will with a farming setup, you will not get "better rewards" until DE makes more enemies, changes the AI, and adds in more dynamic things happening in high level waves.

Enemies at Level 0 act exactly the same as Level 1000 enemies. They just have more hit points/armour to chew through and more damage, which we trivialize with Corrosive Projection/taking away all their guns/CC'ing everything out to 60 meters/etc etc.

^ This.

While the ideas above are needed and useful, while we have the capability to cheese through endless missions to the point where IRL time limits is the limiting factor, we simply will not get scaling rewards.

[tarfeef101]

To the last 2 people:

 

What you said raises a point to me that results in 2 outcomes

1) DE agrees with you, in which case they really need to be working on a way to better scale enemies, which has been thought of as a good idea plenty, but we have not heard "we have a strategy and are working on implementing it now". So that needs to happen if that is the case.

2) DE thinks that using the cheesy strategies you alluded to counts as challenging enough and skillful enough, in which case they should still be fixing rewards because they perceive what we're doing as a challenge.

 

So either way, something has to be done.

Edited May 30, 2017 by tarfeef101