4 player enemy scaling in solo mode please

[Borg1611]

4 minutes ago, -Temp0- said:

Only there's no reasons for increased spawns in defense.

Well, if someone were leveling solo and wanted to do so in small defense map as many people leveling in groups do, they may want to have more spawns in a defense. 

Obviously there are more downsides to solo leveling in a defense since if you were leveling a weapon you'd have to be killing with that weapon, but if it's an AoE weapon you're leveling that may not be a problem. 

edit: also the challenge thing mentioned above! lol

Edited September 24, 2017 by Borg1611

[Troll_Logic]

1 hour ago, -Temp0- said:

If you're able to hold on your own in an endless mission you 'kinda' deserve that affinity

Well, depends.

You saying they kinda deserve that affinity, means they earned it.  But did they?  To me, it boils down to risk & damage.

If the player can run around the map without being at risk, does it really matter how many enemies are out there?  Let's say it's a level 20 or 30 mission.  A player due to his warframe's abilities can run around at absolutely no risk.  He'll earn a certain amount of affinity.  So let's double the enemies.  Does it really double the risk?  Not really.  The player isn't in any more danger.  So does he deserve double the affinity?

Let's look at damage.  Same example.  Someone uses their ability or weapon to kill enemies.  But if the weapon of warframe ability puts out so much damage that even doubling the number of enemies doesn't matter, should that player receive double the affinity?

 

[TheLexiConArtist]

9 minutes ago, Troll_Logic said:

Well, depends.

You saying they kinda deserve that affinity, means they earned it.  But did they?  To me, it boils down to risk & damage.

If the player can run around the map without being at risk, does it really matter how many enemies are out there?  Let's say it's a level 20 or 30 mission.  A player due to his warframe's abilities can run around at absolutely no risk.  He'll earn a certain amount of affinity.  So let's double the enemies.  Does it really double the risk?  Not really.  The player isn't in any more danger.  So does he deserve double the affinity?

Let's look at damage.  Same example.  Someone uses their ability or weapon to kill enemies.  But if the weapon of warframe ability puts out so much damage that even doubling the number of enemies doesn't matter, should that player receive double the affinity?

Flip the equation. Slash the enemy count by a factor of 4. Is the player doing as much? Are the enemies as likely to flank a player with their spawn rate quartered? Does the player need to expend as much of whatever tactical option they use to remove the threat of opposition (e.g. spending energy on a Bastille)? Even if they're in a snowglobe, is the globe taking the same amount of damage?

Say it takes one bullet to kill your enemy. How many bullets do you shoot for four? Up to four bullets, of course. Depending on punchthrough, and AOE weapons...but rarely do these cover the length and breadth of a hallway, even if you've backed yourself into a loot room so as to funnel your opposition a certain way.

Raise the base of that equation. Is it equally likely that you will line (or group) up 4 enemies, or 16? 12, or 48?

 

The actual spawn ratios probably aren't so directly linear, but you can see the point. There will be more threat, even if all threat is 99.9% reduced. There will be more input by the player in covering multiple angles of attack, or even popping bullets down a hallway more frequently. Punch through has a limited value, AOE has a limited radius.

Even if you play the ultimate devil's advocate and cite good old Low Level WoF Ember.. that's three targets per second, which still leaves the fourth through sixteenth a nonzero chance to shoot at you.

[Almagnus1]

2 hours ago, Borg1611 said:

If they implemented my suggestion and let us both turn up spawn rates and enemy levels, perhaps they would then need to cap affinity at a certain level so people didn't do something like get 150 level enemies and then cheese them with sleep + finishers or something for super fast affinity, but outside of that I don't think there would a significant issue in either drops or affinity that you'd have to limit solo players. They could just make it so affinity stops scaling past level 80 or 100 or whatever (around sortie level). I don't really see speed leveling as a big issue in general anyway. MR farming isn't very compelling or interesting content to begin with. Soon we'll want to be wandering around landscapes, not power leveling mastery fodder in the same maps we've been doing forever. The faster you can level a weapon/frame the better IMO. 

So why can't they give the same toggle to ALL group play, and not just SOLO play?

Why do you hate groups that much?

[Borg1611]

1 hour ago, Almagnus1 said:

So why can't they give the same toggle to ALL group play, and not just SOLO play?

Why do you hate groups that much?

If you actually read my posts you'd find that I do in fact suggest letting both group and solo players change difficulty settings. I have no idea why you'd think otherwise. I think I was the first person in this thread to bring that up actually. 

[Borg1611]

Sorry for the double post but editing this into my last post seemed odd since it's unrelated...

In my attempt to find a dev stream that discussed difficulty settings I found this:

https://www.warframe.com/news/devstream-43-overview-0

Apparently years ago they briefly tried having a difficulty slider (though it seemed fairly limited and was in a much older version of the game).

They commented that:

Quote

Having the feature return is something we considered before, but one of the complexities associated with letting players adjust difficulty is finding a way to group everyone with disparate settings. The last thing we want is to make finding a group more difficult. That doesn't mean we're simply going to let increased difficulty fall to the wayside.

Finding the correct implementation has been a challenge, but we've been experimenting with what makes a mission 'hard' in our Tactical Alerts.

That's actually earlier why I mention that the difficulty controls should be for private games (both solo and group) and not public games. If their primary concern is matchmaking, just don't include difficulty settings for public games. 

Although, if that really was the primary concern, they could add a game browser that allowed you to more easily find games rather than having to check at each individual node. Obviously if you let public games have difficulty settings with the way we currently find games, it would be extremely obnoxious to go to a node, then keep switching difficulties to see if any games are up. If we just had a game browser that listed all open games from the entire star chart and what difficulty they were set to, people could just check the browser and find games more easily, even if there were difficulty settings in public games. Something like the Overwatch game browser would be a good example. 

They also state:

Quote

This short-lived feature once enabled players to adjust how hard a Mission would be, but was replaced by the multitude of planets, nodes, and game types spread across the Solar System.

I don't think the multitude of nodes is really a great replacement for difficulty settings. The two things complement each other, they're not things that should be exclusive. There aren't that many high level nodes to go to and none of them start at that high of a level compared to what our arsenals are now capable of handling. Difficulty settings in a game with power creep seems like something that naturally goes together.

Even leveling up some newer players may be interested in a different level of challenge or may have a different experience based on what frames or weapons they build first. I've seen people complain things were too easy early on while maybe other players struggle because they either don't know what they're doing yet or haven't built a strong enough arsenal. Difficulty settings just open up a lot of potential in the star chart (and maybe in Landscapes as well, though we don't know exactly how those work yet). 

You'll never make everyone happy with a static fixed set of spawn rates and levels. Giving us difficulty settings at least gives us some control in going after whatever experience it is we're looking for. 

[DatDarkOne]

17 minutes ago, Borg1611 said:

That's actually earlier why I mention that the difficulty controls should be for private games (both solo and group) and not public games. If their primary concern is matchmaking, just don't include difficulty settings for public games. 

Now that would be nice.  I didn't realize that it had once been in the game at one point.  That means it wouldn't be any extra work (new development time) for it to be put back in.  Just limit it to private modes (Invite only and solo) and it's a wrap.  This way it wouldn't interfere with match making at all.  :D

[Almagnus1]

3 hours ago, Borg1611 said:

If you actually read my posts you'd find that I do in fact suggest letting both group and solo players change difficulty settings. I have no idea why you'd think otherwise. I think I was the first person in this thread to bring that up actually. 

And yet, you keep bringing up in the context of SOLO ONLY, instead of just discussing how this feature could be implemented in the game as a whole.

[Borg1611]

1 minute ago, Almagnus1 said:

And yet, you keep bringing up in the context of SOLO ONLY, instead of just discussing how this feature could be implemented in the game as a whole.

Actually, I've repeatedly brought it up in the context of being good for the game as a whole. Starting on page one of this thread. It's not my fault you didn't read what I wrote. 

[Troll_Logic]

5 hours ago, EDYinnit said:

The actual spawn ratios probably aren't so directly linear, but you can see the point. There will be more threat, even if all threat is 99.9% reduced.

Well, it depends.  If the room is full of low level enemies, then that 0.1% chance of threat really isn't.  Think of setting you on a planet full of gerbils with Warframe abilities and weapons.  As long as they stay under a certain level, you're 100% safe.  They can't hurt you.  Unless it get to the point where there is basically an infinite number of gerbils filling the room you're in.  When it takes a player's incompetence for a chance to die, well, that's not really an argument.

I get your point.  As I mentioned earlier, I kinda agree with it.  With certain stipulations.

There has to be a minimum level.  (This stops low level players from doing this and it stops high level players from cheesing everything)

There has to be a significant number of additional enemies.  (This is so it maintains the player's attention)

Those enemies' levels have to be significantly increased.  (This is so the players have to have top level weapons)

The increase in affinity has to be lower that the enemies increase.  (But this is still a large amount of affinity.)

There has to be a penalty for dying.  (So players don't just keep dying and dying and dying because they want to exploit the four lives per missions.)

 

Still, with all of that, it's not much of a challenge.  How many players can cheese through Sortie C survival or exterminate?  Because that's exactly what this would be.

 

 

 

[TheLexiConArtist]

20 minutes ago, Troll_Logic said:

Well, it depends.  If the room is full of low level enemies, then that 0.1% chance of threat really isn't.  Think of setting you on a planet full of gerbils with Warframe abilities and weapons.  As long as they stay under a certain level, you're 100% safe.  They can't hurt you.  Unless it get to the point where there is basically an infinite number of gerbils filling the room you're in.  When it takes a player's incompetence for a chance to die, well, that's not really an argument.

Again, if you flip the equation and look at how a full squad operates versus their given opposition, then view it from the perspective of removing three players - three people contributing any varying amount of damage, utility, control, what-have-you - then you can't really say that giving a single person the ability to turn up the spawns is anything but more demanding of them in comparison to the full squad it's intended for.

I'm sure it's just a personal perspective thing in the end, but if you look at past farming squads, be they for drops or affinity, then a single person would have to invest more effort or resource to get the same result.

Affinity on the old Shipyard Interception - what's the difference between having a leech there and not? Lose a CP aura, maybe, which means armour will be nonzero. Lose the Energy Vampire and now you're dropping Restoration pads to try keeping up the same affinity too, on your solo nukeframe.

Drops of varying kinds - well, it's pretty clear when it comes to bonus loot. You could be the Nekros yourself, of course, but then your gross kill efficiency isn't quite the same alone, meaning you're netting fewer Desecrations over the same period. You can't have extra loot sources either. No Pilfering Hydroid to get a third loot opportunity. Farming Sentients with a single Ivara nets you one bonus loot drop from each of the 4 or 5 'lysts you'd have from the full spawn scale, not 4 bonus and the actual kill.

 

Being solo is its own limiter on output. Excepting perhaps stealth-kill affinity farming, but even that could probably be made unimaginably efficient with an organised 4-player approach.

The only thing I could see argued for removing from solo with spawns overscaled to better befit the conditions experienced by the full squad is removing the ability to fully pause the game by entering the menu.

Edited September 25, 2017 by EDYinnit

[DatDarkOne]

33 minutes ago, EDYinnit said:

removing the ability to fully pause the game by entering the menu.

That one isn't even an option I want on the table.  Real life happens and the need to pause is too important to remove for anything else.  :D  

[TheLexiConArtist]

2 minutes ago, DatDarkOne said:

That one isn't even an option I want on the table.  Real life happens and the need to pause is too important to remove for anything else.  :D  

Just a bit of devil's advocate. It's all that solo-mode actually gives to the player that squad-play doesn't also enjoy, then add upon. Whether it genuinely should be removed in the process (for scaled-up mode only, of course) is up for debate.

[-Temp0-]

10 hours ago, DatDarkOne said:

There are also no reasons for doing Defense missions solo other than challenge. 

Lmao don't be ridiculous. Reason is the same as doing any other missions solo. Not wanting to play with other players.

And if it's not a starchat defense, you need to specifically invite players even which is even more of a headache.

Quote

If the player can run around the map without being at risk, does it really matter how many enemies are out there?

By your logic full teams don't deserve affinity at all because then can always revive one another and bring the most powerful and well synergized warframes.

No matter what you use alone, you're never really "safe". And if you're super safe, your damage often sucks a**. Because currently only Wukong can not care about his energy or dying, deals 0 damage with any of his abilities.

The whole *point* of playing WF is playing different frames and frames that suit the misison better. I fckn wish more people actually brought tanky warframes to survivals especially public one and didn't die every other minute in sorties like a lil.... . If you used your brain and brought the right tool it means you at least have a brain and able to foresee possible outcomes including knowing your limits which is better than just briging frost/vauban, trinity, nekros and whatever dps and just sit in one corner spamming. I don't see how those kind of players are "worse" than freeloaders that brought unleveled limbo on Hydron and just leech affinity and occasionally die. You can't be somehow 'punished' because you chose appropriate frame for a mission, doesn't matter if it's something tanky for survival, something invisible for spy or cc for md or interception.

Quote

But if the weapon of warframe ability puts out so much damage that even doubling the number of enemies doesn't matter, should that player receive double the affinity?

Just because there's more of them doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to kill them. 10 enemeis of lv 30 or 40 and you seriously think it's *that* much of a difference? You're aware that in a group usually one-two players have the highest amount of kills and that's exactly why people both play in public and hate strong weapons and warframes? The scaled amount of enemeis is a normal amount, what we get solo is just some leftovers. It's not enough to keep one player busy unless he's a newb that only started playing.

Wanna tell you something else? Not only their number doesn't matter but even their lv. Fighting a lv 1000 is exactly the same as fighting lv 30.

It's the same freaking enemies. They just take longer to kill. In case of increasing their number it will be just more fun because you will always have something to kill on the map and in case of survivals will allow to play variety of warframes not just nekros.

[Kratier]

giving free permanent 4x loot drop 4x exp booster to a niche part of the playerbase is a bad idea, it also would also promote people to not group with other players, which i assume is what the developers do not want to happen

[Voidforged]

Have wanted this for as long as I can remember.

I don't care if affinity and loot gain remain at 1x when we jack the spawn rate to 4x, I'm just so tired of this game having so much potential enjoyment squandered by all of its content being so pathetically easy. 

Personally haven't felt challenged or threatened in years, I do everything with self-set restrictions and sub-optimal gear in the hopes that I might actually struggle, or, heaven forbid, fail a mission.

When was the last time you felt properly immersed in a mission? I was trying to balance on Rell's head whilst casually talking about this exact problem as his 'protector' was screaming at me that there was nothing we could do except run.

When was the last time you failed a mission because of something beyond your control? Because I literally can't recall.

Any kind of difficulty is beyond welcome, though I also think people should be able opt-out if it is too much for them. More options are always a good thing in this game.

[low1991]

2 hours ago, Voidforged said:

When was the last time you failed a mission because of something beyond your control? Because I literally can't recall.

When you only have beginner loadout without any mods, kits, energy supply, pets, etc. Where every single bullet, energy, health are precious. ie, the very start of the game without any assist.

[Voidforged]

13 minutes ago, low1991 said:

When you only have beginner loadout without any mods, kits, energy supply, pets, etc. Where every single bullet, energy, health are precious. ie, the very start of the game without any assist.

Exactly, but no long-term successful game revolves around this part of the player experience. Burnout is inevitable without difficulty. The game we have now is excellent for early and mid game, but we really need to kick off our kiddie shoes at some point and have something to strive against.

I would happily empty my bank account for a quest or objective that is so difficult to accomplish that I literally couldn't complete it alone with my current gear.

 

 

[low1991]

58 minutes ago, Voidforged said:

Exactly, but no long-term successful game revolves around this part of the player experience. Burnout is inevitable without difficulty. The game we have now is excellent for early and mid game, but we really need to kick off our kiddie shoes at some point and have something to strive against.

I would happily empty my bank account for a quest or objective that is so difficult to accomplish that I literally couldn't complete it alone with my current gear.

Just un-equip every single things (mods, pets, kits, etc) and play... No need to re-make account.

Side-note... Perhaps it's time for DE to introduce an event where no mods, pets, kits, etc are allowed... Like the Halloween event but more hardcore.

[Voidforged]

15 minutes ago, low1991 said:

Just un-equip every single things (mods, pets, kits, etc) and play... No need to re-make account.

Side-note... Perhaps it's time for DE to introduce an event where no mods, pets, kits, etc are allowed... Like the Halloween event but more hardcore.

I do that all the time, but it would be nice to be able to play the game with all of the things we spent the last four years farming in a place worthy of them.

More events like that with weird strategies and out-of-the-box thinking required would be awesome too.

Edited September 25, 2017 by Voidforged
Typo

[DatDarkOne]

8 hours ago, -Temp0- said:

Lmao don't be ridiculous. Reason is the same as doing any other missions solo. Not wanting to play with other players.

And if it's not a starchat defense, you need to specifically invite players even which is even more of a headache.

By your logic full teams don't deserve affinity at all because then can always revive one another and bring the most powerful and well synergized warframes.

No matter what you use alone, you're never really "safe". And if you're super safe, your damage often sucks a**. Because currently only Wukong can not care about his energy or dying, deals 0 damage with any of his abilities.

The whole *point* of playing WF is playing different frames and frames that suit the misison better. I fckn wish more people actually brought tanky warframes to survivals especially public one and didn't die every other minute in sorties like a lil.... . If you used your brain and brought the right tool it means you at least have a brain and able to foresee possible outcomes including knowing your limits which is better than just briging frost/vauban, trinity, nekros and whatever dps and just sit in one corner spamming. I don't see how those kind of players are "worse" than freeloaders that brought unleveled limbo on Hydron and just leech affinity and occasionally die. You can't be somehow 'punished' because you chose appropriate frame for a mission, doesn't matter if it's something tanky for survival, something invisible for spy or cc for md or interception.

Just because there's more of them doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to kill them. 10 enemeis of lv 30 or 40 and you seriously think it's *that* much of a difference? You're aware that in a group usually one-two players have the highest amount of kills and that's exactly why people both play in public and hate strong weapons and warframes? The scaled amount of enemeis is a normal amount, what we get solo is just some leftovers. It's not enough to keep one player busy unless he's a newb that only started playing.

Wanna tell you something else? Not only their number doesn't matter but even their lv. Fighting a lv 1000 is exactly the same as fighting lv 30.

It's the same freaking enemies. They just take longer to kill. In case of increasing their number it will be just more fun because you will always have something to kill on the map and in case of survivals will allow to play variety of warframes not just nekros.

I think fellow tenno that you got me confused with someone else.  I'm only asking for increased enemies in solo mode.  Not because of extra drops/xp, but because it looked cool and interesting when Reb did it in the devstream.  That looked like a lot of fun with all the extra enemies.

Edited September 25, 2017 by DatDarkOne

[Troll_Logic]

10 hours ago, EDYinnit said:

then you can't really say that giving a single person the ability to turn up the spawns is anything but more demanding of them in comparison to the full squad it's intended for.

Well, yes and no.  Does it require more attention?  Depends on many things.  Warframe isn't like Serious Sam where the player is out in the open and has to fight in all directions.  I still find groups of level 20+ players who turtle at the end of a tunnel.  So in that scenario, and you know every player is going to do that, it's not more demanding.  As long as the enemies are low enough to be easily killed by either weapons or warframe abilities, nope, not more demanding yet.

Dude, I get your point.  Yes, theoretically it would be a tougher game.  I'm just saying that it won't be like that, in the beginnings of a mission, and for a while after that.  And when it became really tougher, players would just leave then and they just happened to collect a multitude of affinity easily up to that point.  So the solution could be to start that mission at that much tougher point.

Someone else brought up the "super loot" scenario.  That has to be considered.  I know you mentioned that certain mods can't be used, but is that really feasible?  Someone starts a game a message pops up "Sorry, you can't equip such and such on this mission."  I don't think that would fly.

As for the pause, that has to stay in there.  RL happens.  Players have to step away from the game for PPP breaks and such.

[TheLexiConArtist]

2 hours ago, Troll_Logic said:

Well, yes and no.  Does it require more attention?  Depends on many things.  Warframe isn't like Serious Sam where the player is out in the open and has to fight in all directions.  I still find groups of level 20+ players who turtle at the end of a tunnel.  So in that scenario, and you know every player is going to do that, it's not more demanding.  As long as the enemies are low enough to be easily killed by either weapons or warframe abilities, nope, not more demanding yet.

Dude, I get your point.  Yes, theoretically it would be a tougher game.  I'm just saying that it won't be like that, in the beginnings of a mission, and for a while after that.  And when it became really tougher, players would just leave then and they just happened to collect a multitude of affinity easily up to that point.  So the solution could be to start that mission at that much tougher point.

Someone else brought up the "super loot" scenario.  That has to be considered.  I know you mentioned that certain mods can't be used, but is that really feasible?  Someone starts a game a message pops up "Sorry, you can't equip such and such on this mission."  I don't think that would fly.

As for the pause, that has to stay in there.  RL happens.  Players have to step away from the game for PPP breaks and such.

It's clear we should just agree to disagree by virtue of personal opinion on whether the difficulty alters. An hey, even I'll concede there's no actual difficulty in some situations, say Shadow Step-Maiming Strike-Atterax abuse. You'll take a tiny amount longer to kill the same number of mobs because some are a distance in front and some a distance behind, whatever.

 

I just don't see how one person in a squad of four people supplying a theoretical 100%-25% (or even leechers doing 1%) of the overall workload is any healthier than a person alone doing an invariable 100% of the work. However little effort it takes to do that work, whether enemies start at level 10 or level 30+, one player's solo input >= one player's squad input. Maybe, too, if that one person IS capable of cutting out 95% of the enemy-fighting pie and leaving 5% between the other three people, those three actually benefit if that person no longer has a vested interest in being in a public squad for the sheer sake of enemy count. They get more game to distribute between them, the one player puts the same effort in or more by themselves and gets the same result out of a given mission.

 

You seem to have misunderstood something (or I'm misreading in turn), for I never said that certain mods would be unusable in this theoretical system. Just that you cannot have your cake and eat it too as a solo player. If you're solo as Nekros, you can't have access to Pilfering Swarm because you implicitly have no Hydroid buddy. In this way, unlike affinity, for loot purposes the simple fact that you have one Warframe and one loadout of abilities already reduces the net effectiveness compared to a purpose-built squad, even assuming an identical spawn rate.

 

(Also, I wouldn't actually want pausing out either, for the record, I simply see it as the only arguable advantage.)

[DatDarkOne]

9 minutes ago, EDYinnit said:

I just don't see how one person in a squad of four people supplying a theoretical 100%-25% (or even leechers doing 1%) of the overall workload is any healthier than a person alone doing an invariable 100% of the work. However little effort it takes to do that work, whether enemies start at level 10 or level 30+, one player's solo input >= one player's squad input. Maybe, too, if that one person IS capable of cutting out 95% of the enemy-fighting pie and leaving 5% between the other three people, those three actually benefit if that person no longer has a vested interest in being in a public squad for the sheer sake of enemy count. They get more game to distribute between them, the one player puts the same effort in or more by themselves and gets the same result out of a given mission.

I like this post as it expands on some of the reasons a player might go solo instead of being in a group.  While the part below explains why group play will always be attractive.

12 minutes ago, EDYinnit said:

Just that you cannot have your cake and eat it too as a solo player. If you're solo as Nekros, you can't have access to Pilfering Swarm because you implicitly have no Hydroid buddy. In this way, unlike affinity, for loot purposes the simple fact that you have one Warframe and one loadout of abilities already reduces the net effectiveness compared to a purpose-built squad, even assuming an identical spawn rate.

 

[Troll_Logic]

4 hours ago, EDYinnit said:

It's clear we should just agree to disagree by virtue of personal opinion on whether the difficulty alters.

Funny that I'm going to disagree with you on that :), but why should we?  We are both being polite and listening to each other.  Maybe we could come to an agreement or maybe not.  But more talking has never hurt anything. :)