Dev Workshop: Endless Kuva Survival & Kuva Guardian Changes!

[Navarc]

The quantity won't increase the longer we go and it's only 200? Feels pointless to do an endless mission you don't benefit from by going far.

● Scales negatively the negative scaling comes from the fact that life support capsules spawn slower and slower over time
● Has a higher overall difficulty than siphons & floods
● Requires all players to run to the Extractor once it's done to collect the Kuva, as it's a physical drop

[-Seems-]

I think the kuva rewards and the health of the siphon should scale as the survival goes on, otherwise whats the point of doing an endless mission type when the enemies scale as well? 

I'm fine with the 200 base reward IF the amount of kuva you get for each siphon goes up by 100 after a rotation (5 minutes). So first rotation you are getting 200 per siphon, then 300, then 400 etc. before boosters.

The kuva you need to roll a riven once is 3500, this seems like a reasonable rate of kuva farming for those costs and would make people want to stay for longer and actually participate in an endless mission. 

[(PSN)KawaiiOctopi]

Seems the heart is in the right place but 200 kuva and the situation being so busy defend and still try to get air support while having to worry about the surroundings idk it seems like it would feel cramped ? I don't do endurance runs but I guess with the right team this could be a walk in the park. Must be other ways to make the kuva fortress be enjoyable and still get kuva.

[PrincessMittens]

All of these changes sound really solid and fun! However, Kuva gains across the Board are way too small. In order to get a good amount of Kuva, you basically NEED a booster to farm for it and a forma'd Smeeta Kavat on top of that. So while I like the ideas in this workship, I have suggested amounts of Kuva to reward per Siphon/Flood/Harvester:

Siphons: I would increase the amount from Siphons from 600 to 1000. This is enough for players to at least roll their unranked Rivens at least once without multiple trips back. This is 2000 for those with a booster, which for the people who are into the niche market of Riven trades, is a good amount for the time invested. 

Floods: I would increase the number from 1200 to 1800. This is enough Kuva to get a possibly a roll or two from one Flood, which is definitely worth the time. This number becomes 3600 with a booster, making it one roll at max Kuva cost (3500 per roll at roll 9). This is insanely important, as someone who actively finds himself wanting nothing but Floods due to owning mostly Rivens with 9+ rolls on them. This also gives incentives to Veterans into the Riven system as well to farm a lot more, combined with the suggested Siphon number changes, as it allows for a sizable amount of rolls for just 2-3 missions. 

Harvesters: Increase the number from 200 to 600 (old Siphon numbers). This is an acceptable amount of Kuva, and gives more incentive to defending one place for a minute. As Survival levels ramp up, the rewards should too however. So after every C rotation (20 minutes), increase the Kuva gained by 200 (600 to 800 at 20 minutes. 800 to 1000 at 40 minutes, ect.) 

As I said, I'm really excited for these changes, but the numbers gotta be in there too. Overall my suggestions make Kuva feel more rewarding and less like a slog, due to needing fewer missions to get rolls on your Rivens. Overall really looking forward to what you guys have in store. 

(PS: Locking Riven stats when???) 

[AEP8FlyBoy]

If it doesn't scale we'd be better off running floods/siphons mindlessly.

When it can take upwards of 35k Kuva to get relatively 'decent' stats on a Riven (Because the RNG can be horrendous sometimes), 200 Kuva per tower isn't worth waiting for. In 5 minutes we can farm 1000 using this method.

In the same five minutes we can earn 2k+ Kuva from a Flood, and for less effort.
Don't get me wrong, this is a step in the right direction. But 200 Kuva per tower is far too small to offset the fact that'd we'd have to stay in the mission for quite a while to get all the Kuva we want, while enemies scale.

More Risk/Less Reward.
Just saying the reward aspect should scale a bit with the risk.

[(PSN)TheRealKryho]

Les Kuvas deviennent très simples à obtenir, les Kuvas nécessaires pour changer un riven devra être augmenté ou rendre les riven plus rare

[--Q--Animan8000]

200 Kuva only...? Sounds kinda a bit too low for this honestly.

[(PSN)Boomstickman98]

3 minutes ago, AEP8FlyBoy said:

If it doesn't scale we'd be better off running floods/siphons mindlessly.

When it can take upwards of 35k Kuva to get relatively 'decent' stats on a Riven (Because the RNG can be horrendous sometimes), 200 Kuva per tower isn't worth waiting for. In 5 minutes we can farm 1000 using this method.

In the same five minutes we can earn 2k+ Kuva from a Flood, and for less effort.

4 thousand if you include both the smeeta kavat and resource booster.

[LordPreda]

I like the new additions but I have a suggestion: Could the Kuva Harvesting towers get some added visual indicators, maybe a hologram around them, to help identify them to colour-blind players?

[PrincessMittens]

Just now, (PS4)Boomstickman98 said:

smeeta kavat

Now if only Smeeta's proc was reliable for farming 

[16Bitman]

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

Sorry, but I really don't like the idea of making it a physical drop.

The regular siphons don't need any kind of drop you need to pick up to reward you with the kuva and resource boosters and smeeta still applies just fine.

 

This really just ends up punishing players that wish to split up and farm kuva at multiple life support towers at once (if that is possible).

[Einsig_SV]

Increase the Kuva rewarded with time. Please give rewards that scale with difficulty and time investment.

[Fallomarionio]

200 is very low, the 50 each scaling sounds perfect. Otherwise it's just a waste of time-

[Aqua]

make the kuva reward scale pretty please

[LSG501]

2 hours ago, [DE]Sheldon said:

200 Kuva is awarded per Kuva Harvester- this value is still subject to change with continued testing/feedback. 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. Tenno who want a quicker Kuva routine can still play Siphon or Flood missions, but those who want to acquire this Resource via familiar gameplay (with a twist) can jump into an Endless Kuva Survival! 

Could the reward maybe have some sort of scaling so that the longer you stay the more you get per harvester, having a scaling return would encourage players to stay longer in return for better rewards, a bit like how endless relics have a bonus for staying longer. 

2 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! 

 

Doesn't this mean we have to be near the kuva harvester to collect it, which kind of stops us from splitting up.  As others have said I think it would be better to be a group drop, like cryotic which is basically the same principle as the new mission after all and still acts fine with boosters etc. 

Quote

!!NEW!! Kuva Guardian Changes:
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We have amps which can take down the eidolon shields and kill normal enemies fairly easily (up to a point) too.... why can't we just shoot the kuva guardians with the amps, don't they use the same energy as our void blast and dash? 

edit: and just out of curiosity...

Will our kuva be saved ala PoE so that if we get a disconnect or a crash we don't lose all of kuva. 

Will we be able to exit without needing others to leave too.  Seeing as this is basically excavation/survival I'm guessing we'll still have the situation where we can be held hostage by other players that don't want to leave when we want or need to.

 

And after thinking about it a little, I feel 200 is too low a return.

[mrecentric]

Yay now I'll actually be able to obtain kuva!

[Giantconch]

Thanks for posting some info Sheldon, time for some feedback then eh!

200 kuva per tower is paltry and hardly worth the effort. I would assume that the "kuva catalyst" is going to be on some sort of a cool down so you cant do 4-5 per rotation in survival? If so, then perhaps a tweak where the tower grants 200 kuva, with an additional 5 kuva for every 1% of health on the life support tower. This would mean 700 kuva per tower if it is untouched (yes, it could be abused if one of those wiley Frosts is in the group but if the rewards arent going to scale then this needs to be at least as worthwhile as running a regular Kuva siphon)

Alternatively, how about we DO scale up the rewards then? For the first AABC rotation, 200 Kuva (300?) per tower, but the next AABC rotation (20-40 minutes in) it doubles to 400, then next AABC (40-60) increasing again to 600 per tower.

Reason I suggest increasing the drop amount of Kuva, is there is no real reason to run an endless Kuva mission if its far more effective to simply run rinse and repeat regular siphons/floods on the star chart. Theres also little if any reason to stay longer than 5 minutes if the rewards at 1 hour are the same at 5 minutes.

Another potential alternative for increasing the amount of Kuva per tower, is when the tower is "complete" and drops the Kuva, any surviving Kuva Guardians could also drop a 50 Kuva ketchup bottle (or just have the Kuva Guardians drop kuva bottles on death?)

 

Theres a lot of options for improvement/increasing Kuva gain, and I understand the need to balance things out so that normal Kuva missions arent completely abandoned, but if the endless kuva mission is barely worthwhile given scaling enemies then IT will be a lot of good work for nothing.

 

Looking forward to the deployment and adjustments, who knows, maybe 200 is good enough if the squad can get 4 towers in a 5 minute span... providing that you actually even have 4 life support towers available... oh.....

[Zeratul81]

Hi,

 

I think this has probably been said already but the NUMBER 1 thing while adding this to the game for DE should be the balance of Kuva reward per Life Support node.

 

As it was stated the 200 Kuva for a single Life Support node might be too low compared to getting the amount equal to 3 Life Support nodes in a single Kuva Siphon mission which depending on mission type might be really short. If the 200 Kuva gets affected by resource booster and pets then this would be better.

 

Naturally one option would also be to add small Kuva drops (like any other resource) to the enemies so that in addition to the Life Support nodes used you would get Kuva from the enemies. (Perhaps the drop amount should be somewhere around the same as with Oxium) Or just make sure that its worth for the player to do the survival versus Kuva Flood/Kuva Siphon. If it does not provide a better/equal return of Kuva you (DE) might just end up wasting your time implementing as anyone trying to be efficient will not be doing the missions.

 

I really do hope this turns out well. Would be nice to do these missions instead of the Kuva Flood/Siphon all the time.

[TeneKay]

Scaling up the Kuva reward with enemy level would be the best way to go in my opinion. At level 100 enemies, 200 Kuva per tower would be simply not worth it with how difficult it'll be to keep the tower alive.

[(PSN)Seratronix]

I really appreciate you doing this DE, but this is the same thing as all the other siphon missions. In and out then restart mission every 10 minutes. The risk to reward is balanced though... Little risk for little reward. Until you attempt to focus on the endless part of it... Then it drifts to high risk lower reward. Scaling is important here, we need incentives or this will never be "endless."

I like how the fissures work, maybe every so many minutes the fissure screen pops up asking to leave and stay with a 25% resource boost increase displayed on the bottom? Just an idea, probably a bad one. Lol 

[DiabolusUrsus]

Thanks for the workshop.

Even so, I am not satisifed with a lot of the reasoning for it.

Endless Kuva should alleviate mission fatigue. That is, the tiring aspect of needing to constantly start missions and rush them to completion to maximize throughput.

I implore you to consider a LOWER starting Kuva reward and scale the reward up noticeably with each tower to reward players more for sticking around.

Edit:

The more I think about this, the more upsetting it is.

I agree that the rewards should not push multi-hour endurance runs too hard, so Kuva should scale to a cap. However, the proposed rate is just plain abysmal.

I'm not even a meta-farmer and I'm expecting this to be a waste of effort after the novelty wears off in a few runs. Is it that problematic to implement player-friendly Kuva rewards when you are already choking plat sales out of multi-layered Riven RNG?

[Vali]

There are three things to be considered here: 

1) WIll the Kuva Filter's HP scale with enemy HP? This has always been a problem with regular Excavation missions, except those are usually in wider tilesets. Protecting these filters in close quarters with low base HP in high levels is gonna be bad.

2) Since it's still WIP, my opinion would be that 300 Kuva per filter should be fair, given the current spawn rate of life support drops. Though this is only a rough estimate compared to internal testing.

3) I hope there is some reconsideration with not allowing Kuva values to scale, as there would really be no reason to stick around for more than 5 minutes. Perhaps let it double/triple over time, but cap it at a certain point? There does exist a certain portion of players like myself who'd like to go 20-40 minute runs but lack the incentive to, and not exactly run those insane 2 hour+ survivals. Plus, with the nature of Life Support which spawns less and less frequently throughout a run, it should scale somewhat with that slowdown.

[Gr1mjaw]

a life support capsule is dropped off at the beginning of the mission, and the delay between capsules starts at 2min 30 seconds, with the delay gradually getting longer

at like 20 min, you'd have maybe 6-7?-ish capsules if you didn't use any

so 1200-1400 base kuva before boosters in like a 20 min mission

 

endless survival kuva with those rewards just seem worse on an efficiency per time level

because even a long mission like an MD is still like 8 min at max

the only real benefit is that it's "different" so to speak, it's a change of pace

and 2 siphons equals a 20 min kuva survival.

 

honestly, for endless survival to be between regular and flood levels of kuva,
it would theroetically have to reward between 2000 and 4000 base kuva per 20 minutes, assuming it takes 6 min to do a siphon mission, which is a fairly average time to do one

It should be 400 kuva at base to be even relevant. 

[ZanderArch]

1 hour ago, [DE]Sheldon said:

Once the Kuva Harvester is complete, you can grab your successfully earned 200 Kuva from the completed Kuva Harvester. Completed Kuva Harvesters also give a small percentage of Life Support to aid in your literal Survival. 

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

Any particular reason for this change? The current 'mission rewarded' Kuva from Siphons and Floods are already effected by these resource boosting effects.

And will the physical Kuva pickup be back-ported to Siphon and Flood missions?

[Neightrix]

1. Since kuva fortress is the hardest tileset, would it be possible to change the drop table on Taveuni specifically to match equal level interception? In other words, change the relic drop table from having an axi relic only possible on rotation C to rotations B and C. This would make the farm worthwhile without needing to increase the kuva amount.
2. Since kuva is being addressed, would it also be possible to address the purely random nature of riven cycling? I believe many players would prefer a progression in cycling, even if it's a very long progression, over raw dice rolls.