[PC] Beasts of the Sanctuary: Sanctuary Onslaught Feedback Megathread

[AlanW001]

It was fun but no idea what of what I was doing.

Others were saying that that you had to kill as many as possible without using any gear or energy. That was really weird since all of us have to use energy for our abilities. Thus it was only set up to test our weapons since we could not use our abilities after we exhausted our initial energy. How is that going to show the Cephelon how a warframe works?

I was very disappointed that at the end there was no idea what I got during the mission. I was told that there were guick flashes in the left side of my screen that told me what I had gained. How do you expect us to fight that hard and see momentary flashes of gains when fighting? So basically I have no clue, no mission results and thus no idea if I gained anything after 13 waves. 

As long as there is no mission results I find little reason to go back to this mission. I have no idea what the gain is and what I am doing it right or wrong with mission results. I agree with other poster who have claimed that this is no incentive to do this mission over others, especially since I have no idea I did anything but "dance" for the Cephelon.

[VisionAndVoice]

Make it so that there're always four efficiency boost pick ups on any wave rather than have them eventually diminish to one.

With the current balance, players can easily keep efficiency at 100% on kills alone for the first waves when there are multiple pick ups, making boost pick ups redundant. By the time they become needed, it's on the waves when there is only pick up left. Ultimately this makes the diminishing of the pickups irrelevant - we never use more than one, because at the moment when there's more than one we don't use them because we don't need them. We never meaningfully interact with more than one, there might as well always be just one for the effect they have.

In facts, this makes the pickups themselves irrelevant - when there're many of them we don't need them because we can keep going on kills alone, and only one does not really make a difference, so we still have to go on kills alone.

So please rebalance this, make it so that their number does not diminsh - it will remove some unnecessary complexity and actually make them useful.

Edited April 21, 2018 by VisionAndVoice

[JSwanny]

1 hour ago, Aresis01 said:

Well then, if these host migration issues are going to be frequent enough, you should be able to keep what you earned until then, otherwise there's just no point in taking one's chance with pugs. I'm far from being the only one complaining about this, judging from region chat.

 

Same thing just happened to me and agree that keeping what you earned after a failed host migration should be implemented. Isn't there a system of that nature already in place with void fissure rewards that are returned to you after a failed host migration?

[RaveGreg]

Encountering a glitch when I revive when a portal is open. I will revive in the new area but screen fades to white and the game becomes unplayable.

[LSG501]

3 hours ago, -StickyPants- said:

17 new 'scenes' 0 Khora parts...  The scenes should ONLY EVER drop ONCE per account... There's no reason for them to drop after that... 

Seriously, you can't even sell them... It's like not even getting a reward at all!! Thanks for literal nothing!!

I got three scenes with two being exactly the same scene in one run of onslaught, might have had more if it hadn't crashed.... while I appreciate they can be traded (not sure who'd actually buy them considering their drop rate though) I'd prefer them to drop just once per run.

Edited April 21, 2018 by LSG501

[FaeliecanSagus]

wanted to add an issue i find with the efficiency. with the number of them per level (4, 3, or 2), sometimes we run out of it before we can even reach the 10th wave because there wasn't enough around in the level. leaving it at 4 throughout seems like it would give us better odds of staying in the mission.

[-BM-Mikey]

It decays even when you are waiting for a conduit and spawns stop. I had multiple matches where I wen from 100 to 0 stability while waiting for the conduit to materialize.

The fix is simple enough, make the stability freeze while you are waiting for the conduit to materialize.

[m0b1us1]

15 hours ago, FollowTheFaceless said:

Then NAME your CONSTRUCTIVE "DISCUSSION" correctly - RAID RELATED.

Thanks for letting everyone know that you didn't read the post at all and that I was using raids to make examples of both authentic and artificial difficulty.

Instead of me changing my post to cater to people who can't read an entire argument without focusing on one aspect, I will leave it as is because raids is just a small part of the post and is not the focus what so ever. Note how I do not suggest bringing raids back and instead focus on improving onslaught to be actually difficult.

Need me to hold your hand and guide you through? I will be more than glad to help you understand.

[MirageKnight]

You're also effectively penalized for playing solo. Efficiency decays far less with 4 player squads.

[m0b1us1]

18 hours ago, davej83 said:

yah.. pls stop cry for raids those was anoying runs always,, and u say elite mode not dificulty?.. yeah till u get stage 15 + efi go down so fast.

Done and easy. Never felt in danger of going down, although my teammates started going down on zone 7 (bad omens indeed). Compared to Mot survival for 2+ hours, the damage is nothing.

[Trichouette]

il y a 26 minutes, MirageKnight a dit :

You're also effectively penalized for playing solo. Efficiency decays far less with 4 player squads.

Really ?

That could explain why my friend and I couldn't go further than wave 12 even though we were killing enemies as fast as they spawned.

What a dumb feature...

[Chipputer]

The fact that you call raids, "real," difficulty is actually hilarious. It was nothing but stat-increased mobs and enemies with extra mechanics thrown in there to force you to take more time and to actually give a purpose to having 8 people-- artificially forcing you to have multiple people open doors just for the sake of, "cooperation."

Not that I'm saying Onslaught is good, "difficulty," either. I still can't figure out why some maps have the efficiency tank despite the party wiping the map constantly nor can I figure out why the spawns don't immediately rush the player and, instead, sit passive with the same rules as everything else, forcing you to use radar mods if you want to keep track of where everything is.

Equating either raids or Onslaught with anything other than artificial difficulty and forced gimmicks is laughable, at best.

[sixmille]

il y a 33 minutes, MirageKnight a dit :

You're also effectively penalized for playing solo. Efficiency decays far less with 4 player squads.

 That's just plain wrong. Decay is the same but you have less spawns.

[Zlickda]

We should get a debuff for weapons or abilities so we can see what not to to to get more efficiency. like main weapon -50% efficiency gain or whatever is affected.

[HolySeraphin]

11 minutes ago, sixmille said:

 That's just plain wrong. Decay is the same but you have less spawns.

And that´s a problem since the decay increases each wave, unlike survival where the decay is the same and we have meaningful life supports,

Edited April 21, 2018 by HolySeraphin

[MirageKnight]

12 minutes ago, sixmille said:

 That's just plain wrong. Decay is the same but you have less spawns.

You missed the point entirely. Yes there are fewer spawns when playing solo...but the efficiency drain isn't adjusted based on the number of players in the squad. A similar issue exists when doing solo Survival runs, but as the player above me pointed out, at least there you have life support towers.

Edited April 21, 2018 by MirageKnight

[Ruadhain]

Thoughts so far: Fun on paper, but seriously needs work to be viable as a standalone game mode.

The two biggest issues are the bad drops and terrible gameplay pattern. Drops first: The fact that enemies don't drop anything means it simply isn't worth our time. That coupled with the incredibly skewed drop tables means the mode simply isn't worth your time if you need resources. The only thing it's good for is farming radiant relics or focus, which can both be farmed via osmosis while farming normal resources anyway.

As far as the drop tables themselves, the drop rates for Khora are garbage, and the fact that two of the parts are rare drops on rotation C (effectively 20 minutes) is just insulting. Players could spend upwards of 6 hours just trying to get a single part, which is just ridiculous.

Two sizes for these: Enemies in onslaught should drop standard resource and loot rewards, but since there is no specific planet, let them drop resources from every planet's loot pool, with equal chances for each rare, common, etc. For the actual rotation rewards, the elite rewards should be at least comparable to sortie rewards, given that the levels are similar. Our time should be respected for going past wave 8; getting a capture scene for fighting level 100 enemies at 30 minutes is, again, insulting. This mode should not be operating on the outdated AABC system given the difficulty. We should have the opportunity for rare items, even if it's a difficult goal to achieve. Past the 20 minute mark there is literally no reason to stay except for measuring contests.

Second issue: Gameplay loop. Put bluntly, it literally isn't fun enough to stand on its own. It is effectively the exact same gameplay as a defense or survival, with efficiency being the only alteration. Enemies run at you, you kill bunch of them, and restore your life support/efficiency. There's the opportunity for some INCREDIBLY cool stuff - we're fighting in a virtual reality arena run by a sadistic AI, and there's nothing unique about that? No new enemies, no new mechanics, nothing. The bar was set low and still missed by a mile.

Obviously I'm fairly dissapointed in the new mode. It shouldn't have been released in the current state, but hopefully another update can make it more compelling. As soon as I have khora and the legacy weapons I'm done with it.

EDIT: Forgot to mention that the timer needs to be shortened as well, or the zone completion to be altered to be based on kills. 2.5 minutes is much too long, and I frequently find myself getting bored for about the last minute of any given zone. Timers should be shorted to 1.5 minutes per zone, or changed to be based on kills. Efficiency makes more sense as a mechanic if you focus it on how quickly you can kill a set number of enemies, instead of the current system. The Efficiency pickups should also be changed so that instead of adding 10% (wasting the gain if you're above 90%), it temporarily pauses efficiency decay OR temporarily boosts efficiency gained from killing enemies.

Additionally, more on potential new mechanics: This is a VR chamber controlled by an AI. It should be changing constantly, rearranging, and it should look way, way cooler. We should have gotten a custom tileset designed specifically for this gamemode, or used the simulacrum/mastery test tilesets. Using existing tiles runs into too many issues. Simaris should be changing the environment around us ("Let's see how you perform now!"), altering the terrain or even changing the enemies and their properties. At a bare minimum, it would be cool to have random sortie modifiers for 30-60 seconds, but there's so much more that could be done. We should also have custom bosses that appear - not existing ones, but fresh ones that appear every so often (8 waves?) custom to Onslaught. Literally anything that isn't just a rehash of existing content, please.

Edited April 21, 2018 by Ruadhain
Additional Information

[RunningMirror]

There is Glitch, when crashed and re join.

 

on zone 8 portal won't be open.

 

[Duality52]

After a day of Solo Onslaught, some thoughts:

• Large tilesets, ranging from open space (Corpus Ice Planet, the elevator from the Kuva Fortress, Mars) and separate corridors and different elevations(Sealabs, Derelict, Infested Ship) can effectively drop most of your efficiency in the later rounds plus add on to how painful it is to find any efficiency stimulus.
• The Efficiency Gain/Lose Ratio is too punishing after around Round 6. Let heavier enemies (Heavy Gunners, Techs) give out more efficiency just like Affinity.
• Enemy flow feels inconsistent where enemies tend to not move torwards you upon spawning far away.
• Eximus especially Grineer, & Nullifiers tend to never move upon spawning, while also attracting other nearby allies. This badly disrupts the flow of enemies as well.
• The amount of Efficiency Stimulus pickup should never diminish later on as the enemies get more difficult to kill (Grineer).
• This gamemode makes you energy-starved. Why should your energy get resetted upon entering the Conduit? Have to rely heavily on Energizing Dash (no I don't have Arcane Energize).

Outside of that, some ideas to help make Onslaught more Solo friendly:

• Enemies should spawn closer to the player rather than somewhere farther away from them.
• Increase the amount of Efficiency restored from killing enemies and the pickups.
• Reduce the likelihood of getting large tilesets, while favoring small/medium sized tilesets.
• Enemy should be just as aggressive as in Survival; enemies will rush to your location even the Eximus.

Rewards:

• Too many Relics; pull out at least two Relics to prevent more dilution to the drop table. Add some Meso to Rotation A, Neo to Rotation B, and Axi Relics to Rotation C replacing half of the original relics. 
• Khora Parts, especially the Systems and her Blueprint. are worse than even Octavia's Neuroptics and a Flawless Relic (6% for a Rare). Increase the chances.
• Replicate Captura scenes don't really give you anything aside from trading.
• Braton Vandal & Lato Vandal: Currently, I'm not that well-equipped enough to get past Round 6, but their drop chance can have a slight increase around a 4% to 6% chance of dropping.

Enjoying it still, but wish this mode is more Solo friendly.

Edited April 23, 2018 by Duality52
Braton & Lato Vandal

[TyrianMollusk]

Finally found out where that horrible metal-shredding-metal noise comes from: the efficiency orbs.  Why would you make something we are supposed to leave until we need it make such an awful, constant, ear-bleedy noise?  It's terrible.  We pick those up as soon as we see them now, just to end the pain.  Bad system, anyway, since you start with extras when you don't need them, then once they might matter, you only have one, which isn't enough to make any real difference anyway.  Just obnoxious party favors we have to tag.

Also, why are there Oxium Ospreys?  Those stupid gimmick resource nodes and their insane suicide protocol have no place in this, even more than the rest of the game.

[FollowTheFaceless]

10 minutes ago, Duality52 said:

Enemies should spawn closer to the player rather than somewhere farther away from them.

THIS. It's a SIMULATION OF MASSACRE! NOT SIMULATION OF "THEY CAME FROM OVER THERE, WOW, IT LOOKS BELIEVABLE AND SO REALISTIC!"

[TheColMustard]

19 hours ago, m0b1us1 said:

Let me start out by saying that I did not try casual onslaught, I went straight to elite. I have to say that overall, I am extremely disappointed. I went in with my typical set up (Inaros, vectis prime, akstilleto prime, a plague zaw), nothing special, and got to round 6 or 7, just over 246k points completely solo, and didn't even need to use my abilities for the most part. Towards the end I started trying to spam them just to see what would happen and how much I needed to use an ability for me to get a penalty, but I only needed to use my 1 ability once so I had enough time to charge my 4.

 

The problem with "Difficulty"

Let's not beat around the bush here. DE released this mode as a way to try to appeal to the raid community. Eidolons are nothing but a gear check and bored a lot of players and had terrible rewards until they made them into a focus farm and put arcanes on the drop tables. However, as a supposed replacement of raids, DE clearly does not fully understand why people played raids. DE must understand that the best thing about raids was that they had AUTHENTIC difficulty. I still think it's hilarious that DE used the play rate of a mission type that was gated by a key that took 6 hours to build, no public queue system, and only gave rewards once a day to justify removing raids. Then they lazily "thanked" us by giving everyone a flashy version of the normal LoR emblem. Didn't even put forth the effort to make something new, or anything to differentiate those who had played them a ton vs someone who just played once and only for the emblem. Anyway, let me continue to the meat of my opinion.

What is authentic difficulty? Well that is the idea that the difficulty is increased to require more skill. Example, Super Smash Brothers Melee or Chess. If you set the AI to the lowest level, it gives you ample opportunities to win and does not punish your mistakes. When you start increasing the difficulty, the AI makes faster decisions, gives you less time to react, punishes your mistakes, but the overall game does not change the advantages.

Artificial difficulty is the opposite. The difficulty is increased such that your skill does not require change. Take SSBM for the same example and increase it's handicap to max and yours to lowest, but keep it's difficulty at minimum. You will find that the lowest difficulty is insanely hard to KO, yet does not require any change up in skill if you are good at the game already. What the handicap does is make the AI (or player controlling that character) experience less knock back while giving more. So you go from being able to stomp this easy AI, to having to beat on him like a sandbag for a while before knocking him off or using a cheese strategy. Imagine if a chess AI was instead starting to replace pawns with queens. Or if pokemon got tougher by just giving increased stats (even beyond what is "possible") instead of just improving the AI to make better decisions. So no dragonite spamming agility against a venomoth because the attack type is super effective against venomoth.

"But what does that have to do with raids and onslaught?"

Excellent question! Raids, as buggy as they were, were difficult because it required more than just a gear check. To complete any raid, team work wasn't an option, it was a prerequisite. Standing on the buttons in LoR was boring sure, but your team HAD to cooperate so then another player could escort the core down the line or open doors for you to access where you needed to drop batteries. In JV, you had to shoot buttons to drop a force field or to open the head on the golem so then someone else could push a spore to where it needed to go. This required actual team work as one person could not do it alone. The artificial difficult of raids can't be ignored either. In NMLoR, standing on pads would drain your energy. Did this make the raid more challenging? Of course not. All it did was require you to rely on an EV trin more or if you were speed running it then just use more energy pizzas. The electrified rail would basically one shot the core, did that make the raid more challenging? Nope. All it did was make that section unforgiving. If you ran everything smoothly, with a team that knew what they were doing, then one wouldn't really be able to tell the difference between NM and normal LoR at all.

Now, onslaught... it's purely artificial difficulty and its terribly boring as a result. DE is essentially giving the mobs a handicap boost and calling that "elite". Does the requirements to beat the enemy change? Nope. Does the game require you to adapt and improve? Nope. It's the exact same thing as beating up the easiest CPU is SSBM, but them having a huge handicap. It's just yet another gear check. The only challenge I had was navigating some weird tile sets so I could kill enemies quickly and didn't have to waste time running around to find the 2 focus things.

It seems like DE doesn't fully understand just how powerful you can get in this game. If you watch their streams, it looks like they use partially modded equipment. What might be "challenging or elite" for DE is more than likely a cake walk for an older player. This doesn't apply to just DE however, this is a problem that every developer faces. What one thinks of as "challenging" might be easy for someone else. There is a game that talks about this very idea perfectly. In the game, "Getting Over It", the creator tells us a bit about how he developed the game as we are playing it. He talks about how he made the game in parts, he would make once section, try for hours to get past it, and once he got past it, develop the next without having to repeat the prior parts. He continues by saying that what might have taken him hours, someone else will be able to beat that particular section in mere minutes within an hour of releasing the game. He understood the fact that what the developer thinks is hard might not be hard at all to other people. So he didn't make any changes even if it took him hours and hours to get past a section. DE must learn to accept this fact, what they think is challenging or hard can and will be considered easy by some players. So when designing the concept behind "elite" onslaught, they should have kept that in mind.

So what does all this mean? "Elite" onslaught is not elite at all. It is purely an timed exterminate mission with purely artificial difficulty. There is nothing about it that will put your skills to the test. Unlike in raids where at least you had to have team work.

 

What is the point of doing anything difficult?

Now, one must answer the question of WHY would one do high difficulty stuff at all? Of course one easy answer is for rewards, another is for prestige, and the last is because they want a challenge. The rewards of raids were arcanes. In a large number of ways, having 2 sets of arcane grace or a set of energize showed prestige (or a nice wallet) since you can only gain arcanes from raids once a day. Having a large number of arcanes showed that you had beaten the best the game had to offer and gave you rewards for it. 

What does onslaught have to offer for rewards in terms of prestige? Nothing. Peculiar mods are fun sure, but overall are worse than worthless. They take up a mod slot which stops that slot from being used for something that will help your performance. So the only value peculiar mods have is to WORSEN your performance. If you have max focus, then you don't benefit from the focus farm. Raids gave you not only a cosmetic that would show off what you did (that wouldn't harm your game play), but also reward you with arcanes that could be used to push you to the next level. So realistically, the only reason to do "elite" onslaught is for the radiant relics.

 

Ideas and concepts that direct how things should be changed

Those are the problems with onslaught and DE's recent decisions. Now what can be done to fix those problems? I think it can be boiled down into 2 major solutions.

1. Make "elite" onslaught worth it's name. Collecting 2 objects and killing a bunch of stuff isn't hard at all. Even putting restrictions on abilities doesn't make it hard unless you are using an ability reliant frame like Mag or Nova. Don't focus on artificial difficulty, put time and effort to make it actually difficult. If playing solo, have optional areas that slowly shrink while you are standing in, that give you extra efficiency, focus, w/e, but as it shrinks your movement is limited. This would make it require you to adapt your play style. Or make it so that you gain extra focus when getting kills with either only your primary, secondary, or melee. You can even get more creative and have zones that grant more efficiency based on how much damage you can tank/mitigate, how many enemies you can CC, how many enemies you can kill with abilities only, you get the idea. When playing with a team, make zones pop up that require you to split up or group. If you split up then different zones can have different changes, or if grouped up will modify the enemies that spawn to have more AoE coverage. You can even go into the silly route by having zones that invert controls! There are so many possibilities to make the game authentically difficult that it makes me sad to see DE take such a lazy design route.

2. Give "elite" onslaught rewards that are worthwhile. Peculiar mods are terrible, let's not sugar coat it. Raids could give you lots of credits (500k if you found a credit booster), all sorts of boosters, COMPLETE detonite injectors, arcanes, emblems, and a unique experience that required team work that isn't found anywhere else without relying on artificial difficulty. Improve drop tables as we get further. Like Kuva survival, if we can make it 2 hours in, 300 endo (200 kuva) reward is simply a slap in the face. Eidolons took arcanes because without them, the only reason you have to kill eidolons is to get amps, which are only used to kill more eidolons, and focus farming. Give the veterans something that is worth going to this mode. Give us a drop that let's us IMPROVE our game play. NOTE: THE FOLLOWING SUGGESTIONS ARE BASED ON A FAR MORE DIFFICULT AND CHALLENGING MODE AND ARE JUST USED FOR EXAMPLES. Like a reward for breaking some set score that let's us add arcanes back to cosmetics (under the condition that no more than 2 sets can be used on one frame). Give us SOMETHING that makes us feel like our dedication was rewarded. Peculiar mods make it seem like all our work is being made fun of. Here is one idea, give us some currency from this mode "onslaught points" that can be used to buy stuff like focus, endo, credits for relatively low amounts of points. Stuff like relics, mods, rare resources (injectors, mutagen mass, etc) for a "medium" amount of points. Finally some major stuff like cosmetics, boosters, items that lock in stats for rivens, and the ability to use arcanes on a cosmetic.

 

At long last, a conclusion

Overall, there is only 1 lesson to learn here. DE, you must realize that what you think is hard is not hard at all to many players. I remember when you claimed beating eidolons would be like beating raids. Nothing further could be from the truth as we have people solo'ing the tridolons TWICE in a single night, teams beating them four times in one night. The hardest thing about eidolons is not getting one shot by harry's instant magnetic pulses if you don't have a trin on your team (not the ones from taking out a limb). I, like so many veterans, want a challenge. Giving us yet another gear check is not a challenge. DE, throw your worst at us. If you think it's hard, ramp it up two fold at least. "Elite" onslaught at the moment does not give us a challenge. Already the record is 3 million points and its not even been out for more than a few hours. Give us something that will truly put us to the test, not just what gear we have, but our experiences and skills as a whole, and reward us based on that.

When you do that, then we will at long last have a true end game.

Agreed.  It's a joke.  Hardest part of the whole thing is praying to RNGesus that you get squad mates that aren't playing on toasters, have a decent connection and something worth your time drops AND that someones game doesn't crap out because then you lose EVERYTHING.  I haven't gotten anything since yesterday evening (including this afternoon) due to people crashing and failing the whole mission.

I have an idea too.  For the most part, like first 1-4 zones can leave AI as is, maybe a little tougher, start off a bit casual, get the more non-hardcore players into it, find their groove or whatever.  Then at zone 5 have smaller small waves but with a "mini boss" with a bit more difficulty than the zerg and maybe a defensible object that grants/suspends efficiency temporarily with a cool down, then continue to zone 9 with increasing difficulty each zone and an actual boss fight at the end.

[TyrianMollusk]

1 hour ago, AlanW001 said:

As long as there is no mission results I find little reason to go back to this mission.

The mission ends on the standing screen.  You can switch back to the mission results screen and see what dropped along the way.

[LSG501]

Just had the best 'annoyance' yet..

Go into public group (yeah yeah I know) get an mr6 as host (not sure they're even ready for this sort of mission if I'm being honest), they start getting killed around wave 4, round 5 they rage quit after going down AGAIN (not even waiting to be revived) and those of us left get completely screwed over due to the host migration. 

The countdown timer continues without anyone actually being able to play the game as we're stuck in the host migration ship scene and we lose everything everything we'd got.  Luckily it was just relics but considering how rare getting khora parts are if this happens after getting one of them I'm sure most of us are going to be p'd off. 

Edited April 21, 2018 by LSG501
typo

[Duality52]

10 minutes ago, FollowTheFaceless said:

THIS. It's a SIMULATION OF MASSACRE! NOT SIMULATION OF "THEY CAME FROM OVER THERE, WOW, IT LOOKS BELIEVABLE AND SO REALISTIC!"

It would help if enemies on the other side of a tileset wouldn't just stand there and let you come to them.

Solo play is frustrating due to this, and chances are you'll be spending more time wandering across a large tileset to find enemies camping. Not much of a massacre, more of an annoying chore that punishes you badly.