Dev Workshop: Endless Kuva Survival & Kuva Guardian Changes!

[Blue_Robot]

8 minutes ago, AuroraSonicBoom said:

This has less to do with not allowing solo or non-cheese players to gain unfair rewards and everything to do with not repeating the same mistake of the old Void key system, where it burning yourself out on the same type of mission and tileset ended up being the cause of a lot of player frustration. Screw "veterans" or rewarding skill, 2 hour survivals don't require either. All you need is the right kind of cheese.
DE should release it as it is, watch the player numbers, and then adjust the static reward depending on whether enough people play or not.

Like I said, specific set ups will break it, and pretty much the game mode will probably be a "Who can Stay Awake the Longest Mode".

I agree. DE Should release it in its current form and see how it goes from there.

[Anthraxicus]

4 minutes ago, Green_Alien said:

Yes, I already took the excavation/defense part into consideration when I wrote that. So it still stands, even with just two people (hell, we don't even use life support posts to get that far, and now that you will be forced get a bit of life support per kuva instance extracted?.). Imagine running with a 4-man squad with coordination.

Thing is, the purpose of the new source of kuva is not to replace the old kuva siphon/flood missions. So basically it should not be faster. If the amount of kuva scaled the longer you stay, I guarantee you that it will eventually surpass the rate you gain kuva from the mentioned siphon/flood missions if you stay longer a set amount of time.

You don't use life supports but you will have to do it now. You will need to drop your advantageou position to activate the life support, which may very well spawn on weird rooms, defend it, use your operator to disarm Kuva Guardians, and having to deal with the exponentially longer period between life support towers. 

It is higher risk and longer duration for lower rewards. That is the worst combination possible.

[Sorenxoras]

I'm liking this so far. people might complain that you get more kuva faster from kuva siphon missions, but in my mind the point of those missions is that it's a fast, but specific, way to get kuva. with the survival mission granting kuva you're not going to have the same challenge so it makes sense that the kuva gain is slower. and being as it's converting one tool into another, it makes sense that it won't be as efficient at it as the machine specifically built for it. some amount of scaling would be nice, but i'm gonna play the missions first before i say what works and what seems too tedious.

[Prof_Blocks_007]

Kuva

200 per tower is a good starting point. Some quick math shows that if there is a harvester active 50% of the time, the mission will net 6000 Kuva/hour, which is more than the 4200 ((600 x 5) + 1200) from all 5 Siphons + 1 Flood of a given hour. There's more to it than that though.

The Siphons/Flood can be cleared in less than an hour (exact time varies, depending on the missions/planets), and this can be done leading up to the hourly reset (e.g. 30 mins before, then 30 mins after), completing 10 Siphons and 2 Floods for a base value of 8200 Kuva. (Siphons can also be repeated if selected by another player that hasn't yet done the given Siphon, though I'm not sure if this is intended.)

For the Kuva Fortress Survival, the maximum Kuva rate will heavily depend on the spawn rate of the Life Support towers, and the spawn rate of the Catalyst carriers.

Either way, the endless Kuva option will have the advantage of not having to load in and out of missions repeatedly, and will not require searching for the Siphon (which is particularly problematic on Ceres).

Gonna need to test it in-game to properly judge it.

I'll be looking forward to trying it out!

 

Some concerns:

• Will the spawn rate of Life Support Towers still slow down as the mission progresses? (Getting less and less Kuva Harvesters as the run progresses would go against the endless objective)
• Will life support capsule drops be increased for Solo runs? (Currently, spawn rates are low for Solo players, often requiring the use of Life Support Towers to compensate for the lower mini-capsule drop rate)
• Will the Kuva drop be a marked item, like the Animo Nav Beacons? (So that the drop can't be easily missed, especially if the squad splits up to defend multiple towers (if multiple towers can be converted at the same time))

 

Kuva Guardians

1 hour ago, [DE]Sheldon said:

 !!NEW!! Kuva Guardian Changes:
In light of all these changes surrounding Kuva, we felt it necessary to make improvement tweaks to the Kuva Guardians (or onion babies as Megan likes to call them). When faced outside of The War Within quest, their mechanic required to turn them vulnerable has been met with some confusion.

As an overall change, Kuva Guardians are now easier to turn vulnerable, but will become tougher to kill once they are. 

Previously vulnerability flow was: 

• Operator Void Blast to stun, then Void Dash when stunned to disarm their Kesheg and turn vulnerable.

NEW vulnerability flow:

• No stun state required. Operator Void Blast OR Void Dash to disarm their Kesheg and turn vulnerable.

General Kuva Guardian Changes:

• Increased base Health from 300 to 400.
• Slightly increased the Fire Rate of their Twin Rogga .
• Guardian Health type is now in line with the rest of Grineer.
  • Weaker against Heat and Viral but more resistant to Gas.
• Added a red glow around the Kuva Guardian to depict when it is invulnerable.

The simpler and quicker disarm is a welcome change. This will be especially useful against the groups that spawn in Siphons when in a squad.

Their dash attack could do with a slightly longer telegraph, and shorter range. For the leap attack, the telegraphing and recovery time (pulling their spear out of the ground) is already perfect.

Some questions:

• Twin Rogga have 2 rounds per reload, yet the Kuva Guardians (currently) fire continuously without reloading. Is this intended?
• Is their (almost) complete immunity to status intended? (Currently they only take one or two procs of each type, before and after disarm. This delay seems to refresh, but I'm not entirely sure).

And as an extra note, the damage output and VFX of the Kuva Hyekka Master's Ignis could do with a tone down. The nerf that Scorch got a while ago would do it.

 

The RNG-heavy Grind

Finally, the current Kuva grind is incredibly slow, given the cycle cost of 3500 (on roll 10 onwards, which will happen for the vast majority of Rivens), and the sheer amount of RNG involved in getting a good enough stat set to 'fix' a given weapon. (For weapons that have a reasonable disposition for that weapon's power level).

Increased Kuva rates/stat locking will no doubt remain a desire of the community, and a needed change for the Riven system to properly serve as a "lower-power weapon booster", and have an actual progression, instead of being purely based on luck.

[Jwanito]

It doesnt need to scale all that much, i think kuva scaling from 200 to 400 over 10-20 min is gonna be enough

 

[Atreides.]

200? for the first 5 minutes right? in a survival the longer you go the higher the enemies meaning higher risk...and with higher risk should come higher reward. IMO

[Blue_Robot]

1 minute ago, Anthraxicus said:

You don't use life supports but you will have to do it now. You will need to drop your advantageou position to activate the life support, which may very well spawn on weird rooms, defend it, use your operator to disarm Kuva Guardians, and having to deal with the exponentially longer period between life support towers. 

It is higher risk and longer duration for lower rewards. That is the worst combination possible.

Okay, so I haven't considered the kuva guardians yet. And I am not aware of the exponentially longer period between life support towers you mentioned (since we don;t use them in fissure or regular survival missions.) So I guess it will be a bit more challenging with just two people.

But still, 3 or 4 people will still easily break the game mode if scaling is introduced.

It shouldn't be a faster way to obtain kuva compared to siphons/floods. It should only be an alternative. Or it could just be a simple endless mission with a bit of currency reward to those who are not fans of waiting for survival fissure missions to pop up or regular endless missions.

[AFluffySpaceShark]

 

3 hours ago, qxDUCKxp said:

Question: Does a resource booster double the amount of kuva dropped?

 

3 hours ago, [DE]Sheldon said:

*Developer note: Deciding to make the Kuva be a physical Koolaid bottle-looking drop allows for Resource Boosters and Smeeta Kavats Charm to apply! 

 

[--END--Rikutatis]

16 minutes ago, AuroraSonicBoom said:

This has less to do with not allowing solo or non-cheese players to gain unfair rewards and everything to do with not repeating the same mistake of the old Void key system, where it burning yourself out on the same type of mission and tileset ended up being the cause of a lot of player frustration. Screw "veterans" or rewarding skill, 2 hour survivals don't require either. All you need is the right kind of cheese.
DE should release it as it is, watch the player numbers, and then adjust the static reward depending on whether enough people play or not.

These are bad arguments. Almost everything you see on a daily basis in Warframe is cheese, that's just the nature of the power fantasy game. From Limbo in those mobile defense sorties, to a near invincible Mesa in Cetus bounty 5 pressing one button to obliterate the entire camp. Sure, there's cheese in long survivals, but cheese is everywhere else as well. People have done multiple hour survivals with less cheesy builds, it's possible. As for burning out and player frustration, come on. There will still be kuva in siphons and floods, people can make their own decisions on where to farm it. It's not like void keys where there was nowehere else to get those primes. We just want DE to throw us a bone here, we have builds that melt groups of lvl 150 bombards in seconds in the Simulacrum and absolutely nowhere to use those builds. Endless kuva could at least scale up to a certain cap, just to give players who want a challenge some sort of meaningful in game rewards for doing these runs. 

[FollowTheFaceless]

3 hours ago, Blade_Wolf_16 said:

The reward has to be worth the risks

Say that to cryotic high level missions.

[Fulgie]

pick one 
> it doesnt scale with timer 
> endless

[Lyravain]

200 Kuva seems to be a bit on the low side. About 300-400 though should be a great amount to get people into running Kuva Fortress.

[Key]

Rip rivens, oh yeah baby

[Ghostin21]

First and foremost - thank you so much for all the efforts to make this a success.  From the careful thought put into the tile changes and map layouts to the art and code work required to create another game 'system' - thank you. You've earned every prime pack and accessories purchase and I still want more! =)

I've appreciated the fact the Kuva Fortress is designed to be unfriendly to Tenno, and its twists, turns, alarms, etc... are there specifically to mitigate the insane movement of warframes and give the fortress a little bit of a chance.  It's the Lower Guk (early EQ1 reference) of the game, where in EQ many fond hours of farming were had - and it was never easy - but the loot was worth it and so we came.   

Like you - I want this to be a success; kuva from the fortress in an endless mission has been something I've been looking forward to since the first time I went on the 'kuva siphon/flood' merry-go-round. However, to be very, very clear - the opportunity to run an endless mission is not, by itself, the thing that interested me, nor is the opportunity to run an endless mission on the fortress.  We can already do that, and because it is harder to play/fight there, for no additional reward, it's not worth the time and effort.  You've built a wonderful system that requires considerable effort and teamwork in a harder-than-normal environment, and unless I (and many others) have misjudged, the rewards are significantly less than I can get elsewhere with significantly less time and effort, and importantly, less warframe/mod/weapon investment.  

Lower Guk was special because you had to earn it - and the rewards were worth it.  It's okay to have hard content - to give new players and veterans something to aspire to - but bragging rights aren't worth it alone.  I'm sure you have the numbers for what a talented group or individual can do by farming siphons and floods for an extended period with and without boosters/Smeeta.  The fortress should be close to that.  If I can't walk out of a 3-hour survival with at least the same drops and kuva amount I could get by doing siphons/floods for that same period (with short breaks no less!) then it's not going to be worth doing.  It'll be something to do once in a while until the fortress moves far enough I can go run siphons/floods again, but without the reward matching the effort, I'll likely do something else instead.  I'd like to mix and match the two with an expectation of gaining slightly more by doing the survival mission because it is harder and takes much more effort.

 

 

[Kimimoto]

1 hour ago, (XB1)Cryoguard said:

with kuva escalating from say 200 to a cap of 400,

Any form of scaling, even with a cap like this would keep me in playing rather than leaving +1

[StoraSkogen]

Tbh you could have just added kuva to the reward table. A lower amount for rotation a, slightly more for b and the most for c. This would've given some incentive to continue playing. The fault with this system is that the hp of the extractor doesn't scale, but also the fact that the rate which survival towers spawn take longer and longer to spawn. It just wont be effective. Im not telling you to trash the system, but you seriously just could've added the rewards to the drop table. It would be easier and it would work waaay better than the system you're trying with right now. Cy@

[mr.Tequilas]

plz make it scale, dont overkill it but we need at least a bit scaling in the rewards and its perfect, we need the endless, plz plz plz make it a thing again :,( 

[Skaleek]

Pretty terrible kuva rate. Try multiplying that by 2 or 3.

[Guest]

I wonder if DE will lock this thread like they did with the Damage 2.5 thread.

[Kimimoto]

32 minutes ago, Green_Alien said:

But still, 3 or 4 people will still easily break the game mode if scaling is introduced.

You could literally say that for anything ever, even everything in the future. That's not a valid reason.

Lets just have one nice thing please.

[-Darman-]

We need tons of kuva. So 200 per each sounds like real crap.

Do 600 or more, or else this will be pointless and i'll take the planetary kuva farming ride and do what i always do - exterminations, mob-defence, captures, assassinations etc.

As been said by many others before me, there is no point to run Endless Kuva Surv, until reward costs in much more time spend. Also, i would like to see someday smeetha kavat revisit with instant-reloads, and first attact reflects removal, making other rest it's buff in separated special behavor mods to allow the user decide what does he want from his pet on the mission. This also should make kavats equal with kubrows that's realy underpowered now.

[JeyciKon]

4 hours ago, [DE]Sheldon said:

Kuva awarded per successful Kuva Harvester does not increase as the Endless Survival mission progresses.

[Fire2box]

200 kuva, that means 17.5 (18) kuva catalysts are needed for a single roll at 3,500 kuva. half at 8.75 (9) if resource booster works. Smeeta charm buffs likely wont make a difference if each take around 2 mins the buff would be gone before you get 3. So at least 20 mins per roll if you don't have an resource booster? seems a bit slow. 

Of course like excavations it might go faster with an party. But with excavations in public groups, people bail around level 65-70 enemies sometimes sooner. and if level scaling ever got added to this then pre-made parties going for hour or hour's at a time will be at an huge advantage. 

[NoLife]

No scaling... so no reason to persist past one.... and anyone actively looking for Kuva has no reason to consider this method.... okay. Content I won't be touching, okay.

[Chroia]

4 hours ago, [DE]Sheldon said:

Considering the Endless Survival aspect, this number will allow Kuva Survival to sit in the middle between Kuva Siphon and Kuva Flood in regards to the amount of Kuva rewarded.

Could you cover your math here?

I know you get 3 Life Support towers in the first 5 minutes, which puts you at break-even with a theoretical normal Kuva siphon mission.
And break-even is not between siphons and Floods.

However, after those first 5 min, life support towers spawn slower and slower, afaik, which effectively gives you negative scaling, and that's in an ideal situation, i.e. assuming that you have enough air to convert all the towers you get.

So, unless I'm missing something:
Sure, the mission-type's endless, but you're actively disincentivied from actually playing it past Rotation A, let alone as a 40+ minute run.

The only advantage I see here is that you're not throttled by the siphon/flood mission spawns - so blitz the flood and siphons, then do 5-10 minutes in the surv and repeat while you wait for a repop. :|

 

Also, I honestly don't see the need for the Kuva Guardian change.
It's neither hard to do, nor difficult to grasp once it's explained to you.
And it does need to be explained, or you'll never know to use Op-mode. (Good thing TWW forces you to learn that before you can get to Kuva missions.)