Dev Workshop: Endless Kuva Survival & Kuva Guardian Changes!

[SKKiro]

I think DE intention about this is that while you farm relics and what not on kuva fortress survival, you can get some kuva alongside it rather than being a main method of getting kuva. Also 400 endo on rotation a is kinda nice.

[._.-._.]

what has been seen cannot be unseen

 

why not involve clem in kuva survival as well? (well, in this case, just the transmission would be enough for his involvement) 

 

ADDITION: uat's [HC] ? (as seen on second gif)

[Jwanito]

i think the problem is the only reward that scales in this game is affinity, and as a result, focus,

why cant excavations, survivals, and defense have this as well?

it would be very welcome, because endless is the only other place people find very high level content, and a good reward for high level content is needed in warframe

ALSO, if endless is the thing youre focusing rn, could you add a defense-like screen for when people want to leave or stay to other mission types such as survival and excavation?

so that people dont feel pressured when 1 person wants to leave but the other 3 dont (or some scenarios like that)

[(PSN)Boomstickman98]

1 minute ago, YandereWaifu said:

they always have same with smeetas

No, Smeeta actually does double the resource....if it procs the right ability with Charm on.

[SundersTV]

One major issue that is going to arise with this process is the broken spawns in survival. Is [DE] going to address the issues we all know come about while running to different rooms in survival? The choice will no longer be our own once we are hours in and life support suffers because current way spawns work. So until the spawn issue is fixed in the survival mode I do not see this working in for the endless variety. 

It has been and issue even running two rooms away the spawns stop and you lose an easy 30% is not more depending on the tile set before the spawns fix themselves. On top of that spawn rates for the first 10-20 minutes are so slow that honestly how many kuva siphons will you be able to accomplish while still keeping life support up in that time? Currently the way that survival works most people will be looking at a 30 minute run and getting less than what we could easily get in a 5 minute flood. The math just will not add up to be worth it in the current state you are showing this off [DE] Sheldon. 

[(PSN)LEONARD_LEONE]

People in this thread have lots of good ideas on how to make endless good, DE should apply that to all missions in general. #BringBackEndgame

[YandereWaifu]

Just now, Jwanito said:

i think the problem is the only reward that scales in this game is affinity, and as a result, focus,

why cant excavations, survivals, and defense have this as well?

it would be very welcome, because endless is the only other place people find very high level content, and a good reward for high level content is needed in warframe

ALSO, if endless is the thing youre focusing rn, could you add a defense-like screen for when people want to leave or stay to other mission types such as survival and excavation?

so that people dont feel pressured when 1 person wants to leave but the other 3 dont (or some scenarios like that)

easier said than done as that would affect spawn rates and lifesupport drops/ powercells (excavation) as the amount of enemies that spawn are based on player numbers, what they could do that would off set this is allow people to join such missions late in eg join a survival at 40mins or and hour in

[(XBOX)Cryoguard]

I see a lot of people asking for scaling kuva, and I don't disagree to an extent. We have seen that several hour survival runs are not what DE considers "end-game" nor do they necessarily want that to be the meta (thus the removal of void keys). However, I think it would be beneficial to have it scale to a cap. I would very much like to see scaling bonuses similar to those found in endless fissures, where we get bonus rewards for the first 5 rounds to incentive staying. A similar system could be implemented here, with kuva escalating from say 200 to a cap of 400, with random possibilities for the harvesters to drop 30 min resource boosters as an added bonus (not a crazy drop chance, but a reason to make players want to stay). Just my two cents.

[YandereWaifu]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)Boomstickman98 said:

No, Smeeta actually does double the resource....if it procs the right ability with Charm on.

thats what i meant, smeeta kavats charm resource buff always affected kuva and doubled or sometimes even quadroupled the amount of kuva from siphons 

[[DE]Grzegorz]

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! 

Given that the capsules are supposed to spawn every 150 seconds and slow down over time we'd be looking at average of 40 kuva per minute, compared to average 600 from siphon mission each mission would take 15 minutes on average which might be the case for newcomers to the game, even Survival and Mobile Defence usually finish before 10 minute mark and these are the slowest missions available.

The question is, what's the purpose of endless Kuva? Is it supposed to be an alternative to Kuva Siphon missions (where the reward would have to be increased to account for average completion time across variety of missions, like captures, exterminates or survivals), a mere timesink with some bonus whenever the player is done with all the Kuva missions on other planets or a source of the resource that could possibly place itself between Kuva Siphon and Kuva Flood, then it would not only need to have increased base reward but also increase the gains over time to account for the mission getting harder.

200 is a bit low, really low if it doesn't scale with mission progress.

[(PSN)Boomstickman98]

Just now, YandereWaifu said:

thats what i meant, smeeta kavats charm resource buff always affected kuva and doubled or sometimes even quadroupled the amount of kuva from siphons 

Oh. the way you worded it was very confusing.

[Maercurial]

Please make the amount of Kuva scale, doesn't need to be a lot, but a slight increase over time to make it worthwile to stick around. You have to sacrifice Life Support so you likey won't turn every Health Pod into Kuva, meaning that this is extremely inefficient compared to regular Kuva missions as of Time/Reward. As the time spent in Survival increases, so should the Reward per time spent, and that is only achievable with scaling Kuva reward.

Maybe something like 100 Base, and then +50 for each Kuva Tower defended, so first one: 100, second one: 150, third one: 200 and so on. Maybe even less than that if you think it ramps up too quickly, but there should be something here. This is your chance to add some sort of actual endgame, don't waste it like that.

And please change Survival in general to allow players to OPT OUT just like Defense, that way those that want to continue can do so, and those that do not are free to leave. Removes a lot of toxicity from Survival Missions, so I don't see a reason against that change.

[LeonTGamer]

Maybe just add like idk from 250 - 1000 kuva to the reward pool for every 5 min ?

[Prof.549]

200 Kuva/tower is a joke.

300-350(or even higher) would fit much better and cover time/effort spent, cuz enemies got tougher and reward would be still low. Which(low reward) would lead to "10-15min-drop-repeat" rather than to 1-2 hrs runs.

[Birdframe_Prime]

2 hours ago, Blade_Wolf_16 said:

200 Kuva for protecting something as weak as an Extractor while losing Life Support doesn't seem that rewarding. If it takes 3 Life Support to get as much as a simple Siphon, I can tell that nobody will be doing long runs of this.

You've hit on something I was calculating for a bit. The thing is that, (bearing in mind that the thing does say 'boosters apply to the pickups) you're having to balance the time investment to enemy difficulty against this reward.

In regular Kuva missions, you can get an average of 500-600 Kuva per run, and they're about five to six minutes depending on your mission type, at around level 30-40 enemies. Kuva Flood drops in level 80 and doubles your return up to around 1100-1200. Each of these modes is affected by Resource Boosters, enabling people to go to a Flood and get 2500 Kuva for five to six minutes work, if they have a Booster, or 1250 for the same if they don't, at a fairly decent level of difficulty for most players.

Life support in the Survival missions drops initially every 2 minutes 30 seconds (they get further apart as you go on), and the Kuva Harvest takes 1 minute. This means you can get the initial pod from the start of the mission, the second and third pods and have them completed in a six minute cycle for... guess what? 600 Kuva. With a booster that's 1200. At the same level of enemy difficulty as a Kuva Siphon mission, too. Funny how the maths works out.

The difference is that you can then carry on to the 20 minute mark, have at least 6 or 7 Life Support pods spawned and harvested for Kuva, and the same effort as a Rotation C Survival there, for around 1200-1400 Kuva, or double that with a Booster, and you've got as much as a Kuva Flood without the enemies scaling to that level.

Your time investment and enemy level is the same amount, if you have the ability to run for 20 minutes in a survival with only partial boosts from these Harvesters to your life support... which some people don't have, although a decent team of 4 players will find completely possible.

tl;dr?

For comparison to a Kuva Siphon style of mission, this is exactly the same amount of Kuva for the difficulty level and time investment.

For comparison to a Kuva Flood, it's balancing the lower enemy difficulty by extending the time investment further.

The most efficient way to farm Kuva is still Kuva Floods with a Booster on, because it's less time investment for the most reward, usually, however this Kuva Survival node will always be available, while Kuva Floods bounce around and change mission type on you, and aren't always there.

It's a nice balance of choice for a player to look at.

[NEUDRIVER101]

I'd like to vote for the 250-300 Kuva per tower.
That should be a fair amount to make it time well spent vs just doing a regular Kuva mission and please keep in mind that we'd have to balance this with keeping life support going. Not everybody is going to want to have or use a Nekros or Hydroid on there team. For me survival mission are all about kicking back and enjoying some time with whatever warframe and weapons I want to us in the moment without having to think too much. That means not being able to use every tower as a Kuva tower. At the very least i'd like to make even on a Kuva survival mission vs a regular kuva mission.

[Doc-Orange]

Please scale the amount of Kuva with mission time. We need a challenge for veterans. The actual way is not rewarding 

[Maercurial]

vor 1 Minute schrieb Prof.549:

200 Kuva/tower is a joke.

It would be okay if it'd actually scale up over time, then the more time you spend, the more efficient you get.

The game is wayyy too focused on just rushing through content as fast as possible already, give us some rewards for the time investment in a mission as well. Rewards shouldn't just scale by how many consecutive missions you can spam one after another. Add some change of pace here and make it scalable with time.

[(PSN)XeoSerferus]

cool

[TucsonKaHN]

2 hours ago, CelestialStorm said:

 

How would the kuva reward scaling get in the way of mimicing the mechanics of "Excavation / Defense with the intensity of Survival?"

I think lowering the base kuva value and making it so it scales off of how many you do incentivizes players to stay there longer instead of restarting every 10 minutes. I feel like long, challenging endless missions is a great thing about Warframe and it should be rewarding to do.

It appears @[DE]Sheldon and the other Devs are equating Kuva gained per Harvester to the amount of Cryotic gained per Excavator in an Excavation mission. The issue(s) I am seeing with this mindset is that, like Excavator health, we have no guarantee that Kuva Harvester health will scale with enemy level/mission duration. Additionally, due to the way Survival missions work versus Excavation, there are no additional rewards associated with defending a Harvester for a full harvest duration; the Harvester returns to an inert Life Support Tower and awards a small amount of available Life Support. Losing an Excavator also has no risks associated with it in the same way as losing a Life Support Tower; Excavation has no failure conditions in the same way Survival mission do. After all, while both missions don't fail until you run out of revives, Survival punishes you for failing to meet an objective (maintaining life support levels); Excavation doesn't really care, and will allow you to spawn Excavators at leisure. We also do not know if the harvest process then disables the tower from being activated normally, in the event that we need more Life Support during the mission. Lastly, using the Towers to harvest Kuva also opens them up to being destroyed. The idea of running this as an Endless means of harvesting Kuva has far too many risks associated, and seemingly not enough of a reward. Until we know more about how the Life Support Towers are affected during and after the Harvest process, we can't really judge whether 200 Kuva is enough for each minute we successfully defend a Harvesting tower. What we can say is that (on paper) the risks are not valid commensurate to the rewards. 

[Anchenar]

Awesome! Thank you for that DE! But:

Scaling the Rewards would be more rewarding, since right now, with just 200 Kuva, its more efficent to run Siphons and Floods instead of staying 1h in a Survival.

My Idea:
Start with 100 Kuva and scale it up to a bit more than a Flood would give you and CAP it.
Why Cap? Because balance. Having Kuva endlessly scaling to end up getting 3k per Life Support is crazy and it WONT make it to a Game. We need to be a bit more realistic here.

Here my Idea of a Drop Table: PLEASE READ

Spoiler

Levels and Rewards:

25-35 > 200 Kuva

35-50 > 250 Kuva

50-60 > 350 Kuva

60-70 > 400 Kuva

80-100 > 500 ~ 600 Kuva 

All rewards are per Harvester respectivly.

I think its totally fine if you cap the Kuva reward at 600/Harvester and not go beyond that. Yes it gets more challenging but I think higher numbers COULD ruin the "economy" for Rivens.

Before you think the numbers are low, please consider its per Kuva Harvester.
It might take time to get the Kuva Catalysts but remember, it also takes time to find these dumb Siphons / Floods in Exterminate Missions on MARS AND CERES.

[Thundervision]

And so the worst expectations came true. Sigh

Not trying to be a smart-ass, rude or something, but it may be a bit harsh.

1 hour ago, [DE]Sheldon said:

Kuva awarded per successful Kuva Harvester does not increase as the Endless Survival mission progresses. Our intent is for Kuva Survival to mimic the mechanic of Excavation/Defense with the intensity of Survival.

Counter-point a) And the only good things about Survival is said intensity, but only regarding the enemy spawn. The «time vs. reward» ratio goes this way: Excavation > Interception > Defense > Survival. You can deploy up to 3 Excavators, you can somewhat speed up the progress in Interception and speed it up for sure in Defense and Salvage, but not Survival. You're locked in 5min rotations with non-scaling rewards.Totally «rewarding» and «encouraging» to stay as long as you can.

Counter-point b) I don't understand... Guys, you did a fantastic job at making Endless Mission being really endless, rewarding and encouraging players to stay longer -- the Endless Fissure Missions. Why stick with the old and heavily criticized concept of non-scaling rewards? How is this rewarding if I decide to stay for an hour or two to fight Lv.100+ enemies, that hit like a Fomorian-powered train, to get a Stabilizer mod and the same amount of stuff I was getting within the first minutes? The only definition of «Endless» here is people's sanity and patience -- and these aren't endless.

So, I guess, I called it:

On 16.03.2018 at 10:37 PM, Thundervision said:

if Kuva reward won't be increasing over time (like 400 within the first 15 min, then 600 within the next 15min, then 900 Kuva within the next 15min etc.), it will be the old Triton all over again: people won't even bother to stay, they will do the first rotations (capsules in our case) while the enemies are 'meh' and then just extract to start it again.

 

Now, to amount of Kuva:

Quote

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! 

 

Sounds like you're taking average players/veterans in account regarding the mission conditions while offering a low-tier reward.

The regular Kuva Siphon missions take roughly 5-7min when it comes to Capture, Sabotage or Rescue and about 10min, when it comes to Exterminate, Mobile Defense -- you get around ~480-700 Kuva. And it's without speedrunning, boosters or anything. There's no any kind of difficulty in Siphon missions, you can just spend all the time in operator mode, dashing left and right as well as using AMPs. Heck, your Sentinels or Pets can handle the enemies on their own as well.

For comparison sake:

Regular Kuva Siphon:

• capped Lv.25 enemies
• predictable spawn of Kuva Grineer:
  • camping around the Siphon and annihilating spawning enemies before they can even react sounds challenging.
• not the main objective of the mission:
  • which means someone can complete the objective while the others deal with the Siphon.
• average time of 5 min to get ~480-600 Kuva

Kuva Fortress and Endless Kuva require you to:

• survive
• maintain the O2 level
• kill stuff around you
• sacrifice Life Support capsules in order to get Kuva
• protect the Life Support station:
  • Lv.50+ Scorch, Hyekka Master and her kavats, Drakgoon Gunner, Kuva Guardian and Kohm Trooper say 'hi'
  • I wonder if the Life Support's health scales with the enemy level, otherwise: hello Excavation's ugly brother.
• dealing with Kuva Guards and other enemies which will scale over time
  • the weapons Kuva Grineer use: Tonkor, Ignis (+fire bombs), Miter, Hek, Kraken, Kohm, Drakgoons, Mareloks etc.
• potential «mandatory» frames like Nekros, Ivara and Hydroid to keep the level of O2

Quote

The design intent and goal for Kuva Survival is for players, both Public and Solo, to balance risk and reward as they sacrifice their Life Support Towers for precious Kuva. Carefully managing available Life Support Towers and Life Support dropped by enemies becomes increasingly important in order to obtain as much desired Kuva possible. 

To balance risk of losing 200 Kuva at 80min to Lv.100+ Grineer that will probably destroy the Station in a blink of an eye, and borked O2 capsules drop no matter how fast you kill enemies? And receiving anger as a bonus reward? Sorry, but it's just not worth it. I'd like to hear why would I bother with this one if I can use a park walk with fluffy Lv.25 Hyekkas hopping around the green trees catching little maggots while I'm chilling in kiddo mode without any fear to lose 480-700 Kuva?

Kuva Siphon is a quick and safe option compared to Endless Kuva, yet Endless Kuva has almost three times less reward with three times more requirements than the Siphon? This is something where I can't find any logic behind this.

 

 

 

Main points:

• Please, reconsider Kuva scaling with time/enemy level. If it's not going to happen, people won't even bother with playing «Endless» mission -- at this point, why not just put Kuva in Hijack, or Archwing Pursuit or any other non-endless missions? Because it will be another case of efficiency vs. not-rewarding-rewards, why stay for an hour, sweating and losing your nerves when you can just do a 5-10min runs, rinse and repeat. As if previous Vivergates, M-Primes etc. situations didn't each anything.

If no scaling Kuva:

• Increase the Kuva to 300 units.
• Implement a success streak, like a side objective: «Complete 3 Kuva Harvesters in a row» to receive bonus Kuva, or bonus Kuva for every 5 successful Harvesters.

 

P.s. while we're at this:

Quote

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

Can we also increase Sortie Kuva to 7000 units (6000 feels like a troll move considering a capped re-roll costs 3500 units)?

And for the love of God can we please make Resource Booster affecting the Mission Resource Rewards as well mirroring the situation with Mission Credits Rewards and Credit Booster?

[JohnnyMeta]

It does not convince me, I usually does Kuva missions for a long time in an afternoon but 200 for 1 minute.
In an hour it could be obtained on average, from 9000> x <12000 Taking into account the travel time it would take between going to the towers, the possible setback, the level of the enemies, and what is a survival and if or if Life support is needed.
In a kuva flood one with a booster can get 2400 or a little less, with Smeeta, it could get out of 4000-5000, and it would only take less than 5 minutes.
It would not make sense to invest 1 hour to farm so little kuva, when by the usual method to get much more kuva.

Maybe it could be better. That every time a tower is harvested. the reward of kuva increases by 25 or 50 per tower. D:

[--END--Rikutatis]

Come on Devs, huge missed opportunity here. Veterans have been asking for a challenging end game for so long, you finally have the chance to make challenging endurance runs a worthy endgame activity with scaling kuva rewards, and you make the reward a flat 200 kuva regardless of time spent in the mission? Pls make the kuva rewards scale with the enemy level or time spent in the mission, even if you need to put a cap in there somewhere (1h to 2h or whatever). People who don't want to spend 1h+ in a survival can still get kuva through siphons and floods. 

[FacelessEnt]

Ok, I believe that the Kuva reward from the towers should be increased.

I think increasing the kuva gain from 200-325 would be enough. After 2 towers you would be able to get nearly the same amount from 1 kuva mission.

Other than that I think this update is perfect.