Re-Incentivize Non-Endless Missions

[Kintair]

Congratulations, DE, you've made endless missions worth playing. Now it's time to go back to the non-endless missions and make THEM worth playing again.

Right now, there's only four reasons to play a non-endless mission: One, it's a fissure. Two, it's an alert. Three, you're farming for a part that drops from a certain tileset/mission type (Octavia, Ivara, etc.). Four, you're clearing the starchart or helping someone else do so. Of these four reasons, three go away once you're done with them, and the fourth (fissures) is only incidental anyway.

The biggest thing to change would be to make every relic a possible reward for non-endless missions (Axi relics are currently only available in endless, for example). Another change that would help would be to allow non-endless missions to have more than a single reward. Some already do (spy, sabotage caches), but more could use that boost, and longer mission types (like mobile defense) need to give more rewards than shorter ones (like capture).

[(XBOX)ultimategamerjr]

Honestly, I feel like people have more incentive to play non-endless missions than endless missions. Going 5 minutes then coming back over and over in a survival is more rewarding than going an hour. (To be clear, I don't think 5 minutes in a survival or 5 waves of defense etc. can be considered "endless")

Edited March 27, 2018 by (XB1)ultimategamerjr

[Kintair]

5 hours ago, (XB1)ultimategamerjr said:

Honestly, I feel like people have more incentive to play non-endless missions than endless missions. Going 5 minutes then coming back over and over in a survival is more rewarding than going an hour. (To be clear, I don't think 5 minutes in a survival or 5 waves of defense etc. can be considered "endless")

Only if you're after something in rotation A. If you need something in B or C, you can't just go for one reward and leave.

Also I should clarify that I mean "Non-endless mission TYPES" meaning exterminate, capture, spy, etc. Doing short-runs of endless mission types have their own benefits/drawbacks.

[Ham_Grenabe]

The freakish monotony of endless missions is enough incentive not to do them. 

At least with endful missions they’re over quickly. 

[Kintair]

On 3/27/2018 at 7:37 PM, Ham_Grenabe said:

The freakish monotony of endless missions is enough incentive not to do them. 

At least with endful missions they’re over quickly. 

This is actually kinda my point. I don't WANT to do endless missions all the time. But I am forced to in order to get what I want. In some cases by efficiency (running twenty minutes of exterminate yields less reward than twenty minutes of survival), in others quite literally (Axi relics only drop from endless missions).

It's high time to review rewards for non-endless missions and bring them up to the level of endless ones where they fall short. And nothing should be exclusive to endless missions.

Edited April 2, 2018 by Kintair

[fluffysnowcap]

On 3/27/2018 at 3:12 PM, Kintair said:

Congratulations, DE, you've made endless missions worth playing. Now it's time to go back to the non-endless missions and make THEM worth playing again.

Erm.... How? All they added was kuva survival, that is most efficient to run for 7 minutes then pull. Endless is in drastic need of a second pass, as most the endless missions are virtually unchanged from the initial inclusion in to the game.

On 3/27/2018 at 3:12 PM, Kintair said:

Right now, there's only four reasons to play a non-endless mission: One, it's a fissure. Two, it's an alert. Three, you're farming for a part that drops from a certain tileset/mission type (Octavia, Ivara, etc.). Four, you're clearing the starchart or helping someone else do so. Of these four reasons, three go away once you're done with them, and the fourth (fissures) is only incidental anyway.

That right there is the issue with being a veteran, Being a Have instead of a Have not.

On 3/27/2018 at 3:12 PM, Kintair said:

The biggest thing to change would be to make every relic a possible reward for non-endless missions (Axi relics are currently only available in endless, for example). Another change that would help would be to allow non-endless missions to have more than a single reward. Some already do (spy, sabotage caches), but more could use that boost, and longer mission types (like mobile defense) need to give more rewards than shorter ones (like capture).

Expanding the reward tables with relics and adding caches that contain relics, Is something im in complete agreement of.

 

On 3/28/2018 at 12:37 AM, Ham_Grenabe said:

The freakish monotony of endless missions is enough incentive not to do them. 

At least with endful missions they’re over quickly. 

 

9 hours ago, Kintair said:

This is actually kinda my point. I don't WANT to do endless missions all the time. But I am forced to in order to get what I want. In some cases by efficiency (running twenty minutes of exterminate yields less reward than twenty minutes of survival), in others quite literally (Axi relics only drop from endless missions).

It's high time to review rewards for non-endless missions and bring them up to the level of endless ones where they fall short. And nothing should be exclusive to endless missions.

Yup i agree here, and this is coming from some one that loves doing long missions, so a relatively simple solution would be to add scaling for the suvival and defence player; however for the players that like shorter mission types adding relics to the missions rewards along with spy like catches, will help with the general lackluster sense of reward the game suffers a little from.

[spirit_of_76]

there is always a reason to run spy mission as it has some of the best rewards (the heat and cold status elemental mods drop there) endless is way more efficient than most other missions as far as time getting stuff and always will be.  having an over a minute of load screens for a 5-minute mission kills the efficiency. the sabotage resource caches are like what you are suggesting and they could have better rewards than they do.  If any mission type needs an incentive it is hijack. that mission, in particular, is difficult and canonically could reward better stuff on the corpus versions with payment for completion of the Grineer version (I dought that the Corpus want more Fomorians).  That and have you looked at the t3 rewards for the endless missions, they are trash.  T3 interception is the exception and the only populated interception mission is on Eris.  most of the content is not that rewarding for even newer players.  However, I would prefer to do 40 min survival if there was a point to do so.  the thing is there is no reason to go beyond 20 min, 20 waves, 16 extracters, and 4 interceptions unless you are doing an endless fissure mission as only there do the rewards scale.  capture is to easy to put anything valuable in same goes with exterminations. now mobile defense, sabotage, and hijack should have some reward as they are longer and "harder" missions but axi relics should be worked for.  now it an axi relic was the reward for a perfect spy mission or from a hijack then sure but not form some of the easy missions that are used as places to get some resources real quick.  

[Ham_Grenabe]

You know, I wouldn't mind missions that were endless if they weren't so relentlessly Same Same. Defend this single location until the the end of time. Kill these guys and activate life pods until the heat death of the universe. Etc.

I'd love an endless mission that just piles on all the objectives of all the missions we have into one hilarious, never-ending mashup. Start with survival. Then lotus is yelling into your ear, "The operative was captured. We need to know where they are." Suddenly you have to hack spy vaults (while still doing the Survival thing). DON'T trip the alarms, or Bad Things will happen. Great, hacked the vaults, still have enough air, now you have to go to the prison complex. Looks like the operative has been moved, but there are two squads of Kavor jailed there. So escort them to an airlock.

Make sure you check your life support level.

Get to the airlock. Run an interception-like thing to hack the hangar point defenses. Defend the hangar until an evac ship can arrive. Now kill everyone who saw that happen. 

Don't forget your life support.

Eventually you'll have like a survival, 2 interceptions, a spy mission, a capture AND a sabotage all on your plate at the same time, assuming the lotus doesn't send you one some cache hunt or need you to excavate something. And just never allow it to let up. 

That's my idea of an endless mission. It's like a war in a tiny bottle. 

Edited April 4, 2018 by Ham_Grenabe

[spirit_of_76]

too much to keep track of in pubs, it would be good in a premade squad.  spy missions in pubs are a pain and if you have an uncooperative/wasteful squad in survival it can be hard to make it past 10 min.  not saying it is a bad premise but not feasible for the current state of the game.  now a changing objective in an endless mission would be good starting with a defense/interception moving to hijack then doing a spy/sabotage and ending with a survival.  the problem with multi-objective missions how to make them endless without still being repetitive.  the fun of an endless mission testing you gear against harder and harder hoards but there is no reward for doing it.  overall many mission could use some updating/reward/map improvements

[BlackCoMerc]

On 3/27/2018 at 7:37 PM, Ham_Grenabe said:

The freakish monotony of endless missions is enough incentive not to do them. 

At least with endful missions they’re over quickly. 

Amen.

More Missions like Assault would help.

More secondary objectives, more variation in the order they appear...but base non-endless stuff off the structure of Assault. That's a great mission.

Maybe consider some secondary objectives that just focus on infiltration as opposed to combat.

Just... please...no more standing still, defending stationary stuff. That's beyond tired and.over used in.this game. so

[BlackCoMerc]

On 4/2/2018 at 11:45 AM, Kintair said:

This is actually kinda my point. I don't WANT to do endless missions all the time. But I am forced to in order to get what I want. In some cases by efficiency (running twenty minutes of exterminate yields less reward than twenty minutes of survival), in others quite literally (Axi relics only drop from endless missions).

It's high time to review rewards for non-endless missions and bring them up to the level of endless ones where they fall short. And nothing should be exclusive to endless missions.

Agreed.

So, so sick of Survival and the stupid, nonsensical O2 towers and drops. It's so tired and outdated.

And Defense? Nope, I won't even DO those anymore. Just boring.

[Ham_Grenabe]

1 hour ago, spirit_of_76 said:

too much to keep track of in pubs, it would be good in a premade squad.  spy missions in pubs are a pain and if you have an uncooperative/wasteful squad in survival it can be hard to make it past 10 min.  not saying it is a bad premise but not feasible for the current state of the game.  now a changing objective in an endless mission would be good starting with a defense/interception moving to hijack then doing a spy/sabotage and ending with a survival.  the problem with multi-objective missions how to make them endless without still being repetitive.  the fun of an endless mission testing you gear against harder and harder hoards but there is no reward for doing it.  overall many mission could use some updating/reward/map improvements

Well, I guess I could settle for the main objective changing up periodically. I guess. :D

[spirit_of_76]

the biggest problem how do you make the rewards appropriate to the effort.  the endless missions have bad loot pools or are too much of a pain (interception).  I don't do non-endless missions because I would rather sit in a defense for an hour than reque for squads after a 5 min mission.  It also makes for better focus/affinity farm when not running a stealth kit.  but yeah some non-endless mission need a loot pool most missions need a loot pool improvement (vitality should not be an end of mission reward anywhere but earth).  other missions need an overhaul.  the recent changes to excavation missions help a lot.  Improvement to enemy pathing and objective placement and overall map design could make all of the missions better especially the enemy pathing and AI.  alarms in a spy mission should do something.  I could say trigger an alarm in a room then leave and because the alarm is in another room there are fewer mobs in other parts of the map but they are now more alert everywhere.  this change would help spy (more mechanics to play with) extermination, (faster completion/you have to kill stronger units) and survival (more enemies/stronger enemies)

Edited April 4, 2018 by spirit_of_76
fix spelling

[low1991]

Make endless mission with primary objective of survival? (Survival of defence pod/ players/ NPC/ etc), with Secondary objective that can be forgone without any penalty, but doing them will give players additional benefit of rewards (like, doing Secondary objective A = give loot from table A) on top of the primary objective reward. 

Non-endless, implement more features in non-endless maps. Make each non-endless node difference from another. (ie, Earth non-endless node A is difference from Earth non-endless node B), this differences is be different in enemy size, strength, assault pattern, types, variation of a specific enemy type, a spawn/zerg of a specific or a majority of a specific enemy unit, etc.

[Hypernaut1]

i think endless should at LEAST have a mini-boss every 20 waves. This mini-boss should drop something valuable. 

[spirit_of_76]

good Idea make the reward from the mini-boss scale with difficulty and really be worth it or people will just extract at wave 15 and this should not be a thing in excavation missions.   

Edited April 5, 2018 by spirit_of_76

[Kintair]

On 4/2/2018 at 9:02 PM, fluffysnowcap said:

Erm.... How? All they added was kuva survival, that is most efficient to run for 7 minutes then pull. Endless is in drastic need of a second pass, as most the endless missions are virtually unchanged from the initial inclusion in to the game.

I've been here a fairly long time. I remember when endless missions struggled to be relevant. Then the cumulative reward change happened, and things rapidly tipped into the endless mission's favor. I was fine with it at the time because I was almost as tired of non-endless missions then as I am of endless missions now.

 

On 4/4/2018 at 11:39 AM, Ham_Grenabe said:

You know, I wouldn't mind missions that were endless if they weren't so relentlessly Same Same. Defend this single location until the the end of time. Kill these guys and activate life pods until the heat death of the universe. Etc.

I'd love an endless mission that just piles on all the objectives of all the missions we have into one hilarious, never-ending mashup. Start with survival. Then lotus is yelling into your ear, "The operative was captured. We need to know where they are." Suddenly you have to hack spy vaults (while still doing the Survival thing). DON'T trip the alarms, or Bad Things will happen. Great, hacked the vaults, still have enough air, now you have to go to the prison complex. Looks like the operative has been moved, but there are two squads of Kavor jailed there. So escort them to an airlock.

Make sure you check your life support level.

Get to the airlock. Run an interception-like thing to hack the hangar point defenses. Defend the hangar until an evac ship can arrive. Now kill everyone who saw that happen. 

Don't forget your life support.

Eventually you'll have like a survival, 2 interceptions, a spy mission, a capture AND a sabotage all on your plate at the same time, assuming the lotus doesn't send you one some cache hunt or need you to excavate something. And just never allow it to let up. 

That's my idea of an endless mission. It's like a war in a tiny bottle. 

13 hours ago, Hypernaut1 said:

i think endless should at LEAST have a mini-boss every 20 waves. This mini-boss should drop something valuable. 

 

11 hours ago, spirit_of_76 said:

good Idea make the reward from the mini-boss scale with difficulty and really be worth it or people will just extract at wave 15 and this should not be a thing in excavation missions.   

Guys, a little off-topic here. Good ideas for making endless more interesting, yes, I agree, but that's not the point here. The point is that endless missions are already dominating, and non-endless missions need some help.

 

On 4/3/2018 at 5:47 PM, spirit_of_76 said:

capture is to easy to put anything valuable in same goes with exterminations. now mobile defense, sabotage, and hijack should have some reward as they are longer and "harder" missions but axi relics should be worked for.  now it an axi relic was the reward for a perfect spy mission or from a hijack then sure but not form some of the easy missions that are used as places to get some resources real quick.  

I broadly agree, but there are other ways to make such simple missions worth running, particularly at higher levels. Perhaps a high-tier capture could reward a small assortment of lith relics, each with a small chance of being a Meso instead, something like that. As for Axi, why not have Sabotage-style caches in more mission types, with a chance to reward relics of an appropriate tier if you find all three? Guaranteed Axis for hijacks, perfect spys, or assaults would also be welcome, these longer mission types long enough to warrant the guaranteed relic on top of whatever other rewards would be appropriate (Larger lump affinity for objective/mission completion, pile of endo, etc.)

[spirit_of_76]

keep tier right but one guaranteed axi won't make a hijack worth it.  you would need a cash of maybe 4-6 items the amount/value change depending on speed and damage taken.  Overall the loot tables need cleaning in the higher tires.  the best example is sabotage.  have you seen the loot table, there is a reason no one does that mission very often the reason endless is better right now is that it has a more reliable reward set than all other missions.  look a xini it is probably the only populated interception node the reason is that it is one of the best relic farms.  same with narssia pluto it is one of the best spots to farm ambulas.  as a whole, the loot and difficulty needs some work.  

 

Edited April 6, 2018 by spirit_of_76