Plague Star critique

[Artekkor]

WARNING: LONG TEXT AHEAD

 

Plague Star is Plains of Edolon's (PoE) exclusive event periodically reintroduced into the game.
During the event the players are tasked with curing the plains from infestation by trying to poison and exterminate the Infested Boil which is the main source of the infestation.
The event is time-limited and is not affected by players' performance during the event.

The event's mission works as a PoE bounty with 4 stages which are always the same:

1. Steal Vay Hek's toxin from a "randomly" picked unique grineer cave system which opens only during event's mission (Sabotage).
2. Bring the toxin to a "randomly" picked mixer and protect it while it does its' job (Mobile Defense).
3. Inject mixed toxin into a "randomly" picked grineer drone which then will move towards the Boil (Escort).
4. Kill the infested surrounding the Boil, with Hemocytes (reskinned Lephantis) emerging from the boil at certain thresholds (based on amount of catalysts) which must be killed to proceed.

 

The 1st stage of the bounty can be dumbed down to "Get to point A".
That's it. The players are not asked to do anything else besides getting to the toxin and picking it up. They don't need to kill enemies, and are not even asked to hack the toxin container or at the very least the door leading to the cave.
The entire 1st stage rewards you with loot from mission's reward table for basically nothing. While its appreciated, i believe there has to be something more to 1st stage besides "get to point A and pick up the thing". Be it a hacking routine or killing nearby commander to steal some kind of key to unlock the toxin container (and not just rip the toxin out without ANY resistance from grineer) - there has to be something more to the 1st stage.

Another thing worth mentioning - the caves where the toxin can be found. I don't know if its just my luck, but it feels like 80% of time its the same 2 caves (one to the left from Cetus gates and the other with entrance looking at the ocean at the far side of the map). if there are others - i honestly can't remember them since they just do not happen often enough.
It feels like there needs to be more variety to where the toxin could be found besides the same 2 caves. At least 4 would be nice.

 

The 2nd stage seems to be suffering from the same issue. The mixer in 80% of occasions is in the same place - the far side shore where grineer are electrocuting sentient's piece. There is at least 1 other mixer spot i vaguely remember, but somehow it has a lower chance to appear, it seems.
More positions for the mixer to be in could also grealy improve the replayability of the event. There are SO many grineer camps all over the plains. yet we keep finding the mixer in same 2 spots (or even just 1?).

Also, on topic of "mixer" - it does not looks like a mixer at all. Its just a console inside one of those mobile containers that grineer have all over the place.
Where is the toxin tube (which is fairly big) even put into?
What could work far better is if the toxin mixer shared the same (but slightly reskinned / recoloured) model as the original toxin container (which can ONLY be seen during the 1st stage of the mission IN THE ENTIRE GAME) and if, just like you see the animation of the warframe taking out the toxin tube in stage 1, it played a short animation of how you put the tube in. This would seem far more realistic.

However, it should be noted, that the console inside the mobile container is partially protected by it, and if we swap that for JUST the toxin mixer - it will be far easier for the grineer to damage it, so buffing the shields / health will be absolutely required.

 

The 3rd stage (find and escort a grineer drone) also suffers from low replayability. Its the same 2-3 spots for the poor thing.
I understand that we can't put the drone anywhere on the plains, since it has to reach the same destionation (the Boil), but surely we can imagine more spots for drone to be in anywhere around the boil, but in acceptable radius? Which is not even thing, since some drone positions are FAR further away than others.

While on topic of reaching the boil - i believe the position of the Boil also could use some more variety. Alright, i understand that it doesn't make sense for the boil to suddenly change its position between the missions - but how about changing the position between events?
So far the event has happened twice, and in both cases the Boil is in the same spot. Why not change the Boil's spot in the next event reoccurance?
How about in the mountains? How about near the ocean - maybe even partially IN the ocean with infested emerging from the water? Or near that one mining grineer outpost?
There are so many interesting spots for boil to be in besides the same open plain in the middle of the map.

Hell, there could be MULTIPLE boils over the plains, with stage 4 boil to get poisoned to be randomly picked during the stage (but the picked boil should be dictated by the location of the drone, so that the players didnt had to escort it through the entire plains).

 

The 4th stage seems to suffer from one issue alone - The Hemocyte.
Or, rather, from the mechanic that Hemocyte inherited from Lephantis.
I'm talking about a damage-gating mechanic. The Hemocyte (just like Lephantis) has the ability to not allow the players to damage it in a single shot beyond a certain threshold.

Now, i had my issues with certain enemies only being weak to certain weapon types before. The main example being how shotguns are somewhat useless against Eidolons (which is mostly dictated by how big the eidolons are, making shotguns' damage fall-off to always be present, unless you are ready to make a bullet jump to get close enough every time you take the shot).

But we are talking something else here. We are talking about an enemy who is RESISTANT to a specific category of weapons.
The said category being: weapons that shoot slow, but hit hard.
Opticor, Ogris, Tonkor, Spearguns all of the Bows and some of the sniper rifles ultimately are not as efficient against Hemocyte as weapons that hit not as hard, but faster.
The weapons that i found to be efficient are: Buzzlok, Grakata, Ignis Wraith, Prisma Gorgon, Soma Prime and the likes.
It should also be noted that all of these share the same trait: they are all crit-heavy weapons.

From my experimenting (which is very blured by incosistancy of my squad mates: how many Corrosive Projections there are, are there Novas, etc):
highly modded Opticor, Ferrox and Euphona Prime struggled to deal more than 1000 damage per hit (ignoring multishot, i only mean the numbers that i see to pop-up).
Opticor would deal 500 damage with not-crit shot (from about 20.000 it shows me in the moding screen) and 1000-1500 with a crit (with 50% chance to do so).
Ferrox also has the same issue with dealing about 1100 damage with a crit. Euphona dealt even less - 800, but ultimately could shoot faster than Ferrox so i ended up using her until the missions was over and i changed my weapons to something better.

Meanwhile, the likes of Buzzlok (with no riven) can deal about 400 (and on certain occasions - 600 and even more) damage per critical shot, but Buzzlok could shoot MUCH faster.
In fact i ended up putting either Speed Trigger or Vile Acceleration on it just so i could put more bullets into Hemocyte's mouth.
Same ended up happening for the majority of guns i used against Hemocyte.

Basically if you want to deal a lot of damage to hemocyte, you must use a gun that:

1. Can fire fairly fast (is a full-auto and has fire rate of at least 6.00 and higher)
2. Has a high critical chance and high critical damage (crit-focused or at least crit-viable)

Which reduces the choice variety of guns that you can use efficiently by a fair lot.

I know that some people will argue that their sniper rifles do fine too, but this one seems to be related to snipers' combo-related bonus damage (which bypasses the damage-gate?).
But you get the point.

So yeah. That one could be adressed. As far as i'm concerned - the Hemocyte (and by extension - Lephantis) is the only enemy in the entire game that does that (why?).

 

That sums up my analyse of Plague Star event (which i grinded soulesly for last week or so) and the ways that it could be slightly (and pleasantly) improved.

 

TL:DR

1. Stage 1 (get the toxin) is too simplistic to be a "stage".
2. The event suffers from lack of variety for placement of: toxin, mixer, drone, and ultimately boil itself.
3. The toxin mixer could use a different model and not just be a generic-looking console inside a mobile container unit.
4. Hemocyte's weird damage-gating mechanic has no reasons to exist and is the only known (to me) case to directly affect what kind of weapon works best against it.

[---RV---Maniac]

The disapointment for me was the fact that the major changes from last plague star, was to make it less cheesable and make the boss as much as a bullet sponge as possible.
People complained about it being boring last time and now it's even worse,
The only thing about it is the rewards mostly due to the items which that are locked on this operation and the poe resources/forma that you can buy plenty of. Mostly due to the fact that poe mining is cancer, specially for sentirum and nynth which they clearly know thus adding them as rewards for this event.

[FreeWilliam]

I think the bigger problem was that the event was clearly for everyone but there were ways that new players could be made largely helpless (by adding the consumables) and turned the last fight into a grind. 

I saw WAY too many cases of my party shrinking from four to 3, 2, or even 1 as the Hemocytes get harder and harder. 

Perhaps what's really missing is some MINIMUM damage for lower leveled or lightly geared players?