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

[CandyManCriminal]

58 minutes ago, RistN said:

How is that of any use if game simply freezes or host migration occurs mid game?

Last time game froze I checked system monitor and everything was running smoothly.No high memory usage or anything like that.

This is 100%  bug or something that is coming from mission itself.It is not possible that so many people are reporting same problems that weren't happening before.

thats a bug problem, not an extract problem
bug fixes will come

[TheColMustard]

2 hours ago, xeal209 said:

Of course, neither of those actually have you killing things depending on how it's handled so perhaps buff the focus gain as well? To my understanding this was supposed to be a good focus farm but adaro runs are still more efficient and I haven't noticed actually getting more focus in hard vs normal despite enemies starting at like 3x the level so that was disappointing.

perhaps bring the wrong setup for the mission.  in the TWO or THREE elite runs, I don't care to remember how many failed because of migration/no portals/no spawns, hit daily cap and would have tons more with higher cap.

[jdjtbgs]

During onslaughts, if someone disconnects and rejoins the party, the next portal won't spawn, causing efficiency to keep running out until it fails and the onslaught mission ends. I have confirmed at least 3 times. 

You can see the portal spawn timer is 00:00, but no portal has spawned.

Efficiency has gone down to 4% from 35%, still no portal.

[(PSN)thekarlone]

Again, when the portal opens is like completing Wave 4 of Defense, you still need things to do to complete the round. If DE decides to change it to 'the round ends when the portal spawns', then fine. Right now, the round ends when you cross that portal.

[Cmdr-A]

Did someone in your game leave the game and come back? It seems linked to someone crashing / leaving / quitting / coming back that causes any subsequent portal after that to never spawn. I just crashed in a game and came back into my party with my friends, portal never spawned after that.

[MrJxt]

This just happened to my squad in this zone/map. I've had it happen in the Grineer desert tileset as well. 

 

[GoSonic]

Title. My Harrow should be starting with 180 energy each wave from extra mod capacity, but instead its just a base 50 every wave. I hope this is a bug and not intentional, because that means the Zenurik School is almost mandatory.

 

Edit: It seems to be different on each frame. My volt will always start with 125 no matter what capacity, while my Atlas is the same as Harrow, always starting with 50.

Edited April 22, 2018 by SpecialistOps

[-AoN-CanoLathra-]

Can also confirm, have had this happen twice.

[Max7238]

Constructive and detailed, roger that.
First 3 paragraphs are criticisms, then matched with them below are solutions.

First and foremost, just to get it out of the way:
I maintained two separate threads on these forums over the last four years to suggest a mode very similar to this. "Orokin Citadel" if anyone cares. The threads are archived now, the first because my PC died and the second because its revival gathered no interest from the community.
Which is a GREAT segway, because now we get to talk about why this mode isn't engaging in the least:
"Optimal" play.
Every run of Onslaught I've tried for the last eight hours, on my day off today, has had at least one Banshee Prime in it using her augmented Sound Quake or whatever it is. They can power themselves with Focus and just stand there and mash the ability. Despite any effort I've made to try and make this more engaging for myself, it boils down to standing there doing nothing. With no objectives to complete besides "murder everything on the map ASAP" anyone who isn't an energy battery for a Banshee or, hey, a Banshee, is just standing there pointlessly.

Second, the drops in general.
I understand your decision to keep resources out of this. This is the first time Warframe has had to load completely different tilesets and assets mid-mission (as far as I can remember), for one thing. It would mean that every possible resource type would drop here, and that's clearly broken.
As for the wave drops, as many people, and myself, have pointed out: because of the crashes and the reward structure, it's almost impossible to get a satisfying run, let alone get the drops we want. Drops right now are only rewarded if SOMEONE goes through the portal at the end of a wave. If the public party doesn't communicate, that means someone could end up in Zone 9 alone for no reason.
Further, because of the way the drop chances are set up, you are pulling a slot machine once every 20-25 minutes. And that's leaving out the slot machine you pull every time a wave completes to see if you crash, but that's beside the point.

Third, the design theory overall. Last one, so bear with me.
Let me explain my logic first: If I'm using, say, dual katana in Nioh, one would think they were for a ninja playstyle. Someone quick who hits often, right? But if I look at the Mystic arts, they allow me to use less stamina for consecutive hits OR increase my defense for each consecutive hit in a combo up to a cap. Sounds like the developer wants me to stand my ground, actually. And, hey, they also have the best blocking stat in the game! Not to mention all the skills that lock you into an animation and have hyper armor! Oh! I get it! They're for a tank build!
If I apply the same logic to Onslaught in its current state, this is how it goes: I join alone, and I don't get very far with just a Warframe for fun and my preferred weapons. I need to be more "efficient" I guess. I see that kills make me efficient, so I change my loadout. Now i've got my souped up Amprex on an Atlas. If I can't punch it, I shoot it and everything around it. I do better, but there just aren't enough enemies. I know that playing in a squad increases spawn rates. I join public. As with any public mission, I'm now surrounded by Embers, Banshees, Equinoxes, and Mags. My natural response, since they are so common, is to grab my Trinity Prime and feed them energy. I can't get kills, so I bring weapons I need to Forma or level up. Now I see these power-houses are, in fact, their own batteries with Focus. My Vazarin school is useless here, too. I guess I'm intended to stand here and do nothing and wait for the mission to end and see what I get...
How is any of that fun?


To fix engagement:
Introduce objectives. I'd suggest a living defense target, like in some sorties. Perhaps a target that must be synthesized to continue, or for bonus efficiency, to make people slow down with the "optimal" killing. Bosses will only take up time, since a large majority of bosses in Warframe adhere to the "invincibility periods are interesting" philosophy. By adding a moving defense objective, or adding an enemy in each wave that can't be killed, only scanned, will at least give people who aren't spamming abilities something to do.
This is NOT to say to have our host BAN ability use if they're spammed. WithOUT these people killing everything before its in sight, only certain weapons are viable enough to satisfy the objective and make it to the end of Zone 8.

To fix the drops:
This works for any game, and I'm sure you won't do it because it would undermine your perceived ability to make money. Tokens. Redeemable items to allow players to CHOOSE what they get from certain mission types like this one. One token per zone cleared, certain number of tokens will buy a Khora BP from the Sanctuary on a Relay. This will serve as incentive for players to actually try and go BEYOND Zone 8, and mitigate the horrible grind. It will ALSO alleviate the complaints of crashes, since players would be getting tokens for each cleared wave. Even if they crashed, then, they get credit for what they did, in SOME way.
Since you won't do that, because even Destiny 2 did away with that from D1, and that's a $60 base price tag, instead you could at least make Khora's BP available in the market and rebalance the drop chances for her parts. Sadly, I can't give numbers on that, because you guys are the ones with the data to make that happen without breaking it. It IS nice to get so many relics... But not at the cost of what I actually want.

To fix the design overall:
Gonna plug my "Orokin Citadel" once more, and this time with a little detail. My system would "remember" what "floor" or Zone the player had reached. The player could choose to continue from that floor and go further... Unless they fail. If they fail, all progress is lost and they can only start from Zone 1. Again, more incentive to go further.
Second, introducing objectives would encourage other Warframes to be used besides a Trinity battery and then a wide-reaching blender 'frame. Kind of. It still doesn't solve the problem, because, well, nothing can hurt an objective if there's nothing alive to threaten it, right?
Third, you very well COULD restrict abilities. You already tried by resetting energy values in each new Zone and banning gear usage (AND EMOTES, BTW, DAMMIT), but that just isn't enough with the existence of Focus.
Fourth, you could keep spawn rate from scaling down if someone is solo. It would allow people like me to, say, jump in as Atlas and start swinging and still get to Zone 8 alone. Or I could go in as Oberon, use Rage to power myself, use Renewal to heal myself, and jump around and kill enemies. I've beaten Rengoku and Rengoku 2 far more times than a human should be willing to admit, ok? I can handle doing the same thing over and over, as long as I'm given some freedom on how to approach it.
Fifth, and finally, absolutely change the drop structure. When the clock hits 0:00, the wave was a success and players should receive the reward for that Zone, if one exists. This way, no one has to go through the portal to Zone 9 alone for no reason, etc.


That's everything I can think of that really needs to be said. You guys know the crashes are a problem, so I tried to leave them out as much as possible, but everything else here is as constructive as I can be in terms of game design. I want to direct a game myself one day, and seeing this kind of mode (setting aside the worrisome direction Warframe's design direction has gone over the last year) is concerning at best.

Good luck working on this one, guys. Thanks for all the hard work.

[fluffysnowcap]

Lost one on wave 21 elite due to this -_;

[TheColMustard]

I put this as a reply in another thread late last night so I'll copy it here and fix it a bit:

For the most part: It's a joke and not much of a challenge at all, especially when you get 2 or 3 people together that know what the hell they're doing.  The hardest part of this whole thing as it is, is praying to RNGesus that you get squad mates that aren't playing on toasters, have a decent connection and something worth your time actually drops AND that someones game doesn't crap out because then you lose EVERYTHING.  I finished maybe 3 runs.  I haven't gotten anything since, from yesterday evening to this afternoon due to people crashing and failing the whole mission.

I'm MR23 and I've only got a dozen or so weapons left to make to rank.  Don't give a crap about scenes, put them in with Sim's standing purchases list, don't give much of a crap for relics, they're rewarded already in everything else we do, if you want to leave radiants fine but we don't need yet another way to get intact relics.  Requiring people to play a game for the only place to get parts for the new warframe, that you knew was going to be buggy as hell and not everyone is going to like...wth.  Was really looking forward to another quest, especially after Harrow. [DE]sapointed.

I do have an idea too for making it actually more challenging and rewards lost on migration fixed.  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 (mini/boss fights only) that grants/suspends efficiency temporarily with a cool down (suspension ends when destroyed, etc.), then continue to zone 9 with increasing difficulty each zone and an actual boss fight at 10 with larger enemy waves or progressively increasing number of enemies  and repeat/continue.

[Vomitous]

'Again', more like you have to complete Wave 6 of defense after getting your loot at Wave 5 before you can extract. And again I can't believe that someone is making the argument that, after receiving your loot roll, standing in a corner avoiding enemies for 2 full minutes while your efficiency bleeds out is desirable gameplay.

In the meantime, I've started being careful about how much efficiency I have left during Zone 8 so I don't have to wait long, but you can't really do that in publics.

[Ascarith]

2 hours ago, (PS4)thekarlone said:

No, the portal IS the checkpoint. You are not forced to go to the portal after completing a round to start a new round, but the round is only completed when passing through the portal.

Maybe some you misunderstood the game mode, because you think that you have completed the round when the timer reaches zero and the portal opens, but this is wrong. The round is completed when you cross that portal, it's a two-phase mode. 

- Zone (round) starts
1. Mantain the efficiency by killing enemies for 2.5 minutes.
2. Reach the conduit before it closes.
- Zone (round) ends

What @kyori is asking is a way to extract between Step 1 and Step 2, which seems unreasonable to me. However, this structure is subject to change. 

This goes back to the discussion about Onslaught being counter-intuitive based off the way the rest of the game works. No other game mode "ends" by forcing you into the next iteration (which you must then endure for more than a trivial amount of time). Note that the game refreshes your Stimuli counter when a portal opens, not when you walk through it (at least, this was a bug that I and some others reported - might be fixed but I didn't see anything in the notes yet). This suggests to me at least one person at DE intuitively assumed that "portal opened" = "round ended." 

You are correct that I have essentially ignored your phase 2 in my discussions. My reading of the original request operated on the assumption that reaching the portal was never an issue. (The fact that portals can take forever to spawn probably also contributes to this - you feel like you "won" but really Simaris is just laughing at you because something something his rules). @kyori never explicitly says this, though, so your reading is equally valid.

The most logical solution I can think of is to have hitting the portal grant the reward AND a stay/go option, but that messes with flow of the mode. 

[LightningsVengance]

36 minutes ago, jdjtbgs said:

During onslaughts, if someone disconnects and rejoins the party, the next portal won't spawn, causing efficiency to keep running out until it fails and the onslaught mission ends. I have confirmed at least 3 times. 

You can see the portal spawn timer is 00:00, but no portal has spawned.

Efficiency has gone down to 4% from 35%, still no portal.

When yo go through the portal with Nidus do his stacks reset? (i'm sorry for how off topic this is i just need to know)

[Duduminador]

Congratz DE, you do not disappoint in creating new content that never fails to get washed out by old meta, whether it's an ulti mesa or the next random frame on eternal Atterax spintowin. It's actualy amazing that with so many updates and hotfixes, that you refuse to deal with this stuff. Digital Extremes certainly shells out more updates than any other game out there. But the other developers actually bother to address exploit mechanics.

[Grifs]

No idea if it does for all I know, but I remember having a shortage of mobs without radar.

Atm it's always zone 12 where I can't progress, with zone 10-11 usually cutting down efficiency by half when a whole lot of energy-draining eximus mobs spawn in on a wide map. Rather hard to spot an eximus in the middle of a dozen mobs, especially if they're coming from all sides.

Might have to start trying out ranged zaws since my guns can't keep up consistently.

Edited April 22, 2018 by Grifs

[Dracorya]

Just going to drop the two main issues I had with this new mode (I do find it fun but...yeah))

1) That drain after wave 10 gets ridiculous. Even though we easily slaughter enemies, it seems to not be enough to keep the efficiency up. Also the fact that it continues to drain when you have to wait for the conduit to the next zone opens is lame. We lost out on one before it wasted efficiency as we were forced to wait for the conduit to open.

2) The drop table really is too overbloated with relics. I feel reducing the number or dropping their drop chance would be a better plan..Also we should not be getting dupes of captura scenes :/.

[Brawneteer]

Right, so about the rewards. I know Endo is almost always something you can never have enough of, but I think I'm not the only one who would've liked to have seen Kuva as a reward as well. Riven mods are a thing that a lot of people care about and put time and effort into, and while the Kuva Survival gave us a different way of gathering Kuva, I'd like to see Kuva integrated into more of these new modes like Sanctuary Onslaught. Doesn't have to be a large amount, can be at the most 500 or around there so it's worth our time.

[C486]

So far, an interesting horde mode. 

Aside from the crashes in aforementioned posts, or the low drop chances for the ideal pieces of loot, or relics that could be used for quick plat.

One issue I have is with not being able to leave when you're done with the mode, the olny way is to let the timer run out, what?

I'll say this mode is average, essentially a Nidus parts farm except with a few more issues. 

In short, the mode had promise but with the aforementioned issues I would say I'll pass on this mode for the time being.

Now, one improvement I would suggest is have a reward after each round, sure that would kill this mode but it's just a suggestion.

What with how "modern gaming" is and all.

C486.

[Konachibi]

My biggest issue with Onslaught has to do with a problem the game has been suffering from for years, has been acknowledged many many maaaaaany times, and nothing has ever been done to fix it.

Enemy armour scaling.

The most noticable thing in Onslaught is how different types of Grineer can take different amounts of punishment.  A standard Grineer trooper from somewhere like Mercury can be downed at level 30 without any issue, but an Arid Grineer Trooper from Phobos takes 4 or 5 times more damage to die, at the same level, and dishes out more damage.  A level 30 Grineer using a Hind should not magically do more damage than another level 30 Grineer using a Hind but with a different lick of paint.

We've all heard you multiple times in devstreams mention that you know that we hate how badly armour scaling works... well... you haven't released any significant updates for Warframe since before Christmas, and THIS was meant to be a significant update, and yet you introduce a 'survival 2.0 but with a loud shouting annoying cephalon telling you you're always doing something wrong' mode that's horribly unbalanced for longevity and only serves to accentuate how terrible armour scaling is, a warframe that's actively trying to kill Kubrows because of a bug created by an ancient loyalty system that only Kubrows use because of how dumb it is that you mentioned in the devstream before launch and yet completely overlooked when testing the build, a machine pistol with a magazine capacity so low that it makes water pistols look deadly in comparison, and more crashes than a car safety testing facility!  What have you been doing in the last 6 months to cause an update THIS BAD to be released to the general public?  Why did you decide not to give Khora an Exalted Whip when that would have been freaking awesome?  Why have you still not fixed Titania's Razorwing form being 1-shotted on the plains by anti-archwing missiles?  Why did you release an update the day before the weekend after countless experiences in the past with your updates and new game modes being very very buggy?

You're better than this DE, we know it, you know, now start showing it.

Edited April 22, 2018 by Konachibi

[CalhounMooney]

Played 5 times regular mode, was not able to finish 3 times. First failure - 4th wave, happened while transitioning areas - white screen, the use of No.5 did not help as suggested by teammates. Had to abort mission. Second time - wave 6, game just completely froze, had to close it with task manager. Third time - wave 12,  while host transitioning stuck in an endless loading screen. After a while mission end screen appears (I presume efficiency dropped fully), without any rewards of course, and UI became completely unresponsive and any movement and action inside the Orbiter was impossible. Had to close the game again with task manager. Just about as you set foot in Onslaught, anything can trigger game breaking event, by you or by your teammates. I have to point out that in my previous 800+ hours did not have much trouble anywhere in the game, just occasional blank screen on return to Cetus doors and usual stuff, no trouble that would cause crash or irreparable freeze whatsoever, so this makes it so much harder to cope with. Hoping for many fixes to come as soon as possible. Otherwise, your hard work is certainly appreciated and admired.

[Ozais]

hmm seem the mission is bugged atm lost to many items from random crashes and Host migration only can go like zone 9 any thing beyond that well there is a high chance of item loss. well even there is a chance of item loss during the 9 zones

Edited April 22, 2018 by Ozais

[RattyCatty819]

While Overall I like the idea of the new mode I have my issues with it.

 

1: Armor scaling is still way out of control and the elite mode just highlights that issue

2: Drop rates of relics seem to overshadow 90% of the loot unique to the mode, and while I know this is kinda the point it gets frustrating when out of about 10 runs, each making it on average to stage 8, that I walk away with my only really notable loot being a Braton vandal barrel and the Khora neuropicts

3: The stage 7 portal on elite mode, the Grineer ship stage with the kuva grineer, has never appeared in about half my games, forcing a early and unfair end to the match.

4: In about 10% of my games the game itself froze and crashed to desktop, and doing some more testing around this is the only mode this happens in as far as I know

5: And finally in one of my games we'd made it to stage 14 on elite mode just to have a host migration occur and boot us to orbit without our loot.  Felt like a kick in the nuts tbh

[Flood_Storm]

My main issue with this new game mode is players that somehow end up host and intentionally leave after 8 zones, causing host migration that never reconnects and ends up screwing the other 3 out of any focus/drop rewards. I'd enjoy it very much if an alternate version of onslaught was made that only ran for 8 zones so those who want to farm can, without ruining it for those of us who want to keep going

[Gilanu]

Not sure if intentional but every single time I've had host migration happen at 8 waves and then I lose everything. This is getting seriously old. If it's bad coding, I'm ashamed. If it's player intentionally screwing over the other 3 then I'm really sick of those people, either way it's really aggravating.