Sanctuary Onslaught: Difficulty Changes!

[Bleuarg]

il y a 18 minutes, Hayde615 a dit :

Going to post here, although I posted in the megathread as well:

 

Did your hotfix to elite onslaught "accidently" affect normal onslaught as well? Seriously. I'm seeing reports of this all over Reddit, the forums, and other communities. Something doesn't "feel" right. At wave 4 or 5 (sometimes even 3) my caster frames barely scratch enemies. World on Fire? Resonating Quake? etc. Why are my ults barely denting enemies when they're only level 35 or so? I just tested the exact same build with enemies outside of onslaught and they die fine.

Same here.I was able to solo until 8 with a nukebuild, do my focus, and go back to much funnier way to play. Now I barely stand to 4... And god damn, for once we had an efficient way to farm focus. But no, it seems we have to suffer boreness for it... this gamemode is loosing all his interest... like the game itself.

[Lord-Taco-the-Great]

On 4/25/2018 at 1:10 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

Efficiency Stimuli will no longer appear past Zone 15, and Efficiency drain reaches 10x normal rate by Zone 20, instead of capping at 6x.

Ah, still living in the bubble where they pretend the efficiency pickups matter even a little bit. There's no point caring about those because by the time they matter, they still don't matter.

I pick those obnoxious things up as soon as I find them to make that horrible metal shearing noise go away.

[GOLDNROD]

There shouldn't even be this "efficiency" bs. You want to limit runs increase spawn numbers, rate, enemy armour, and enemy DPS every zone. That way eventually the players will get killed enough to leave.

Regular onslaught needs to be soloable through zone 8.ignoring the solo player is alienating a big chunk of your player base. If there were more spawns it would be but it seems you guys reduced the spawn count rather than increase it. I'm killing as fast as I was before because my gear is good. but when I kill everything in sight, and even with 90 combined enemy radar, I only see a few enemies on the map it's impossible to maintain this stupid efficiency limit. Or in some cases the tile is ridiculous and I see a bunch of enemies on the radar but they're literally a minutes run away because of the obstacle course of winding stairs and ramps and friggin twisty corridors. I lose more efficiency just trying to get to them, murder them instantly and then run another full minute to the next group. 

The prenerf health is perfect for solo players, might think about that.

And if you insist on leaving this ridiculous efficiency system in, at the very least allow it to go over 100% when I have a good run on a tile. Simaris would have done that, he's a statistics guy.

[lennieplop60]

I understand the leveling changes, but the efficiency drain changes are just ridiculous! If we're not "supposed to" reach higher zones, then why add them in the first place? I understand that sanctuary onslaught isn't supposed to be endless, but increasing the drain so significantly after zone eight just defeats the whole purpouse of having zones. I really hope this doesn't stay live.

As for the scaling problem, warframe's entire scaling system is completely broken on its own, so rather than covering it up with odd chsnges like this, the devs' time would better be spent fixing the scaling system as a whole.

[CuteFoxyFox]

@[DE]Rebecca Please just look at top comments here marked with Heart.

Drain of efficincy is the problem, it feels like we lose any feeling of controling the situation, making ppl have more armor which people complain a lot about in Warframe won't help!

Also rewards aren't so much worth it... if you had added rivens! Void traces or even allow grineer manics to drop Ash parts more! Those would encourage people to play the mode!

 

- Why Rivens? 

You gave us a lot of Riven Transmutators which we get tons and tons that we aren't even able to farm rivens fast enough to Transmutate them.

-Why Ash parts from manics?

Depends what you want to achive, Ash farming is hard for now AT LEAST for new players. Addind high chance of parts drops in this mode may attract more new players here.

- Why void traces?

Maybe it is just my opinion but... why are you giving us already Radianted relics that we might not even want? Wouldn't it be better to give us resoruces to radiant what we want? So give us a 80-100? Void traces instead of Relics. There is a limit for those, players cant farm too much for life so what is the issue here?

 

Even High focus reward isn't as good as some veteran players have found elswhere. Just do not think we don't want to play it becouse it is too easy, Enemies are no problem Efficiency is! Spawns are! Rewards are! 

There is no way to encourage me to play it. Becouse if I would like to get radiant relics I would go to Survival fissure which will give me parts, resoruces, EXP, some focus and void traces when The mode can give me Relic with free void traces (if I lucky get one I wanted) and Focus.

Try to think from a players' perspective! You are doing a great job with fixes just allow us to sometimes take the wheel.

[GuiltBlade]

Aaaand now I'm out. I can't even be bothered to get Khora any more. I'll stick to farming relics from missions that reliably drop them along with other materials and wait a month or 2 for her inevitably superior replacement.

I actually thought the squishier enemies were a deliberate decision for the game mode to make it seem more arcadish and fast paced, like a quick power trip with score attack. Now as a solo player it's just another, less enjoyable, less intelligent, survival.

In short, I think this patch was a big step back, but that's in part because I thought this mode was not meant to be more of the same. Feeling a bit burned out on this addition to Warframe, hope the next one is better.

[RealPandemonium]

On 4/25/2018 at 1:10 PM, [DE]Rebecca said:

Enemy scaling is broken.

Enemy scaling has been broken game-wide for years.  Damage 2.0 had already shown its age in 2015, and it's 2018 now.  Revisions have been needed for a long time; Warframe makes less and less sense as this goes on.  Feels like a house of cards at this point.

[ChronoJXF]

I would suggest keeping the progression items on the spot so as to prevent it from vanishing after host migration, or add a similar thing from void fissure runs where we get inbox from Ordis recovering such reward/s after a lost connection to the host or a failed host migration.And I would also suggest if a squad is able to get to zone 10 - 16 at least the squad don't get the same award/s in zone 2 - 8, or add more chances on the items we didn't get on the lower zones.
P.S. Recently there was a zone where only Grineer Drudge Brazers and Foremen is showing up with very minimal spawns, was that intentional?

[theLeal]

Can something please be done about the host just abandoning the sanctuary?? So far, everytime the host decides to leave, all of the affinity and zone rewards that had been earned are lost because the host could not be bothered to stay for that extra minute.

[Redspace0095]

Thoughts concerning rewards. Would it be possible to treat the waves in a similar way to stages on Bounties? 

* Rewards AABC with C on wave 8. 

* Wave 9-16 the rotation repeats but the common rewards are omitted from the list.

* Synthetic Eidilon crystals need rethinking as 5K Focus reward for 2 waves work on Elite is very underwhelming. Perhaps remove them from the table and have them as a mission reward for every wave completed. Time wise you'll get the same focus reward from them as you would hunting a single teralyst.

* When the regular theme rotation happens, perhaps swap out the weapon blueprints with others from the Invasion and Baro sets to keep the reward table from getting stale?

 

[m0b1us1]

21 hours ago, MinkoElkra said:

I skimmed earlier, reading entire thread right now (though from most recent post to oldest, rather than front to back). Finding something like this makes me want to smash my head into my desk.

 

For anyone scrolling through that thinks like this, please stop. Warframe's mechanics make "challenging gameplay" effectively impossible. DE would have to rebuild from the ground up to achieve something like this. The best they can do with the game in it's current state is artificial challenge (i.e. increasing the lvls of enemies, nerfing players with special conditions, giving units invulnerability frames, etc. -though that last one is mostly bosses). If you want actual challenge, as much as everyone involved doesn't want to hear it, you need to play something else.

Really? Do you honestly think it is impossible to make a challenging game mode? Really? It's not impossible in the slightest stretch of the imagination if you put a bit more thought into it. I have had PLENTY of actual challenges in this game, this is just not one of them.

One of the old mastery rank tests was a "point capture" mission. Sounds easy enough right? Well now make those points move and add in enemies. That would be far more challenging than a timed, high level exterminate. Need a harder difficulty? Have enemies be able to capture them (much like in normal interception). Still a lot more you can build on this.

Here is yet another idea. Why not a mode that rewards high mobility? Again, looking at mastery rank challenges, there are a few where the platforms will disappear after a set period of time. You can make a map where parts of the map fall so it forces you to use your mobility. Too simple and easy? I agree! Why not have a zone that appears on the ground that you can follow for increased affinity, damage, and damage resistance? Sure, you could go outside of the zone, but the enemies would be scaled to such a level where that could quickly result in your death. The zone gradually speeds up and you are tasked with getting as many kills as possible until you are downed. You can have additional zones that pop up and when you for example wall cling and get a massive bonus while shooting while clinging or a buff while shooting and aim gliding?

Oh here is another concept. Why not a game mode where enemies go through phases where they are highly resistant to one thing, but suffer in another? So you are spin-to-winning and then the enemy becomes immune to melee damage, but will explode and deal AoE damage to others on head shots? Or the enemies become immune to CC, but take extra damage from abilities? Or a massive surge of void energy (let's assume we are going against the corrupted) washes over the map and enemies can a massive damage boost and become invulnerable to damage, but CC last twice as long and has twice the range? Basically a changing mode where ANY frame can shine and not certain frames.

Need another? I would be glad to provide! Target priority is something that only happens at extreme high levels or when dealing with nullifier bubbles. So why not a mode where certain enemies are given some kind of indication on them. Like imagine a green number or letter appears over their head. Killing the enemies in order provides a large boost to affinity and restores HP or something along those lines. Now you have a mode where instead of just "who can clear the room the fastest", you have a mode that rewards precision, aim, and focus more. Of course you can choose to just use saryn or nuke trin and will still be rewarded, but not nearly as much as if you selected your targets and took them down. Wouldn't that be far more difficult than just clearing a tile set over and over?

Look, I could go on and on and on with new ideas that would give players an actual challenge. This was maybe 5 minutes of actually thinking about it, hence why the ideas aren't flushed out. Here is my point, you are looking at the game from a terribly restrictive view. "Oh this is just a horde game and it can't be anything else". This game CAN give us a challenge, if you look at all the other aspects of it. Look at LoR and JV. Yeah, having some people stand on buttons isn't "difficult" and having energy drain doesn't make it any more difficult because energy pizzas, but it required team work to get the team where they needed to go. Shooting a button wasn't hard, but keeping the conditions right for your other teammates was the challenge. Carrying a battery and using energy pizzas or relying on an EV trin teammate isn't hard, but observing your surroundings and keeping out of harms way can be. At the end of the day, no matter what frame you brought, you could finish the mission and get the same rewards as the rest of your team. Onslaught simply rewards the frames that can keep up the highest KPS (kills per second) and nothing more. So if you are a Zephyr, Frost, Nyx, or any other frame that is strong in other ways, you will NEVER be able to out perform (and thus rewarded as much as) a saryn, nuke trin, maim equinox, or spin-to-win tank.

If you think outside the box, beyond what you consider as the "norm", I guarantee you that this game can have a mode that gives EVERYONE a challenge.

[Gandergear]

Can you guys please just listen and remove efficiency? If you really want give us 2:30 to kill 300 enemies that all spawn in by 1:30.

Efficiency is true anti fun fuel, powers the meta, and makes everything thats not capable of nuking the map hot garbage.

And then you make that issue EVEN worse.

I just want the game to be fun again, get me off mr bones wild ride.

[Tau.]

Even with the previous rate of efficiency, it was mechanically impossible to keep it up with normal gunplay. Do note that Rebecca literally had to use the Maimerax to even stay in the game. The rate of wholesale slaughter mandatory lies only within the reach of wide-range melee (you know exactly what I mean, don't deny it), augmented with map-covering aoe ability spam. To even stay afloat, we're forced to spawncamp the entire map en-masse. 

 

This isn't survival where enemies trickle and pour in from the entrances of the tile - enemies just spawn in right in front of you, next to you, behind you, conveniently spaced apart, and needing to be dead no later than the very moment they appear or you're running a deficit on efficiency. But you don't have time to shoot at each one, even one-shotting one after another is still too slow. 

 

This is in no way devbashing - I'm not trying to insult you guys or put you down in any way (as Reb's post in locking the latest hotfix thread expressed a weariness of). Just laying out the facts of the matter. This is, plain and simple, not the 'bite-sized Warframe experience' Scott expressed the intent for.

 

I say this devoid of emotion, interest, investment, or salt: It's a meat grinder. 

[(XBOX)TazBoy2K]

On 4/25/2018 at 1:50 PM, MunsuLight said:

I'm happy that the ESO is gonna be more  challenging but there is something that you shouldn't do

"Efficiency Stimuli will no longer appear past Zone 15, and Efficiency drain reaches 10x normal rate by Zone 20, instead of capping at 6x."

For the love of god, don't do that.. Why can't the dev team accept that people want this mode to be an endless mode .. There is nothing wrong with that..  IF they want to fight against real level 160+ Enemies so be it ..  If they want to challenge themselves be it .. 

Please accept that some people want "challenging" content.. There is no point in making the Efficiency drop faster .. except that you dont want people gaining so many rewards.. and to say the truth, most of these rewards arent even that good

Edit : And people saying that there is gonna be a challenge against high level grineer.. Just bring CP for the love of god .. High level Armored Grineers without armor are weaker than Corpus Tech of the Same Level to be heard

 

CP is great don't get me wrong but I shouldn't HAVE to use it every single time to go far against anything with armor.

[(XBOX)TazBoy2K]

17 hours ago, Darkvramp said:

WELLL NO S#&$ SHERLOCK!

Yep, it's only acknowledged as BROKEN when they are "Too easy" to kill not when you got a Bombard with almost 90% worth of armor shoving rockets in my face........ or hmmmm how about a corpus tech 2 shotting me just because he grazed my hit box, or the best one yet I think is a toxic ancient sneezing in my direction instakilling me and anyone in a five Mile radius past level 80 (maybe 100).

[Auris40]

As I already noted on the megathread: What about the rewards, in particular for the "normal" Onslaught?
At the moment we are just punished for playing standard grinding for Khora (sidnote: still havent got the neuroptics after the 60th+ B rotation)
What we dont get in comparison to normal mission grinds for ´frames:
-Credits
-Resources
-Mod Drops
-Codex Scans

What we get in comparision to normal missions to grind for ´frames:
-Captura Scenes (that are useless beyond the first one, cant even sell them)

Its just not worth it, compared to other grinds the reward is practically non-existant.

[Gismowarlord]

When the hoste leave, everything goes wrong Fix plz.

[TioTrix]

Am 26.4.2018 um 01:26 schrieb (PS4)willsp282012:

why exactly are you hating it now? im positive this is unintended, de is a excellent community who wants us to enjoy every part of warframe, so let your voice be heard, say why the changes are no good, as im  sure there no where near being done modifying it

playing the mode over and over again with the same frame and weapons its just boring for me..

befor the patch you can play with the most frames and weapon.. no only with a few

thats why i hate it..

[BrazilianJoe]

I am deply saddened that trolls forced the other thread (22.18.7 update) to be locked. NOT COOL.

 

Still, I would like to reinforce the feedback that the Onslaught has severe host migration issues which cause frustrating loss of progress. 

It should be possible for a player to just leave without issues. 

I propose to change the portal mechanics: 

There would be two portals: One with a Simaris avatar and map icon, one with an Ordis avatar and map icon. 

The Ordis portal is to leave. Simaris portal is to stay. This streamlines the player choice of staying or leaving.

Choosing no portal still leaves anyway. 

Abandoning the mission should not break stuff for everyone else.

Host migration shouldn't ever fail. Can you propagate the "endgame state" between all players once the portal countdown to open begins, so that anyone can take over without fail?

[Checht]

Hi DE, the recent difficulty change for Elite Sanctuary Onslaught had my hopes up for something that resembles challenging endgame mode in Warframe. Please just reduce Efficiency decay rate or increase Efficiency gain per kill. Give us zero revives in team play in ESO and the enemies can be buffed up some more. These changes would increase the need to survive, rather than just killing fast. The balance between the needs to survive and to kill fast would balance the meta, players would have reasons to choose something other than the meta nuke frames.

Please, please, do not lower the difficulty for ESO. It is supposed to be the hardcore mode, let it be hardcore. If you want to please those complaining about the slower grind, lower the difficulty for Regular Onslaught, increase the resource gain or loot for the regular mode or whatever. Grinders can grind the heck out of the regular mode for all I care. Please let us have this hardcore mode be hardcore. Thanks.

[Tzolkat]

I ran normal mode Sanctuary Onslaught exactly once. I don't remember what wave I got to, but there came a point where I could not make the efficiency go up even though enemies were still dying in large numbers. And you know what? Losing because of that wasn't okay. I felt cheated, and I've felt no compulsion to do it again.

I had been considering trying the elite mode with some friends, because they told me it wasn't so horribly tough and was a good way to farm focus and radiant keys, two things I have a lot of difficulty getting otherwise. But pending these new changes and especially with reports of elite mode changes breaking normal mode, I'm having second thoughts.

---

My suggestions...

1) Rework how efficiency functions. One way I could see this working that doesn't feel so cheap is to tie efficiency drain to enemy spawns, rather than just scaling the drain based on some number. Later stages have higher spawn rates, which drains efficiency faster. When you kill those enemies, you get the efficiency back. As enemy level scales, they become harder to kill until you reach a point where you either can't survive or just can't kill fast enough, and are literally overwhelmed by the enemy, ending the game. Obviously, enemy pathing would need to be fixed for this to work properly, as enemy spawns are no good if they're stuck somewhere or not seeking Tenno to fight for whatever reason.

2) If you're set on 'fixing' enemy scaling such that it matches what exists in the simulacrum, buff the focus bonus we get upon entering the next stage. Either make it last longer or scale up the bonus amount.

[toomanydice]

I don't mind the increase in enemy difficulty, I find the mode refreshing and I feel the mode is a more entertaining version of exterminate.  However, I feel like it still has major issues on multiple levels.

Enemy difficulty: not bad, but it becomes an issue later.

Lackluster drop tables: It gets really annoying when you get multiple copies of a captura scene with alarming consistency.  It is a reward that has no value past a single copy and clogs up the table.  Endo is probably the second most useless reward, there are better ways to collect it and I have never seen anyone happy to see it as a reward.

Efficiency and Cheesing:  I remember DE stating they have tried to make changes so that playing the game isn't just sitting there, spamming your 4 until everything dies.  Unfortunately this is what I see every game and it is because the mode is designed to encourage it.  Unless your squad has one or two "spam 4" or "activate and forget" I'll bet you  will struggle to finish stage 8, let alone 10 or fifteen.  I liked this mode more when I felt it was giving me a chance to experiment and still earn something from it.

Hazards outside of Elite: personal feelings here, but I hate the bubbles of magnetic procs.  They slow down everything because enemies start to cluster there and you can't damage them while they're inside the black hole of annoyance.  The bubbles come and go without warning and I can't count how many times one has been dropped on my head because I stopped moving for a few seconds. hazards that deal stat procs are not the problem, I don't mind them when they pop up in hive missions or sabotage missions.  Those are noticeable and avoidable.  These bubbles are hard to avoid, slow everything down, and make the mission a lot less fun, at least IMO.

I really want to like this game mode.  However, I don't want to have to cheese my way to farming focus.  It's turning from a short and fun romp into a grueling chore that becomes less satisfying by the day.

[(PSN)xxav1xl6ivax]

On April 25, 2018 at 10:16 AM, Cradicias said:

Yeah, this gameplay mode feels like a waste of time... Focus is nice and all, but once you hit the cap, what's the point of doing this? It's mindless and not very engaging. It's not entertaining, there needs to be special mechanics and enemies we haven't seen before that require more thought than just SMASH CLICK. Thought this was gonna be more strategic =(

Once again, that previously all-important critical developer self-question I remember having read in the notes about a 'latest update' not so long ago, recalls itself to mind, the memory of that  critical question which arose to decide the fate, to keep or cut a long-standing game mode, resurfaces again, like a lingering reverberation of a decaying echo of a dying old developer's chorus refrain, "IS THIS FUN?"

[MinkoElkra]

On 4/27/2018 at 1:48 AM, m0b1us1 said:

Really? Do you honestly think it is impossible to make a challenging game mode? Really? It's not impossible in the slightest stretch of the imagination if you put a bit more thought into it. I have had PLENTY of actual challenges in this game, this is just not one of them.

Not sure if intended, but this seems to be a rather aggressive start....

The closest thing to a "challenge" I've ever had in this game is deciding which warframe and weapon combination trivializes the artificial challenges they try to put in. This is something that can be done for each of your suggestions as well. In order off the top of my head: point capture -> Loki -> utility and mobility, changing tileset -> Titania -> razorwing, enemy phases -> Ivara -> wide range of ability effects, ordered kills -> Loki again -> same reason as before.....obviously other frames could do good, but these frames trivialize those gamemode ideas; not that any of them are bad however, I'd like to see one or more of them fleshed out.

That, the ability to trivialize, is why I say they would need to rework things from the ground up. I say that it is effectively impossible because I am looking at everything this game has to offer, and what I see is a plethora of mechanics that make creating an effective challenge for everyone virtually impossible without nerfing these mechanics. We have a perfect example with this update where the elite version penalizes over usage of some of them (btw I'm not just talking about power based mechanics here; those are just the most obvious and plentiful).

Could a truly challenging gamemode exist taking the entire game into account? It's possible, but that would take a rather arduous amount of work and would likely end up similar to conclave, archwing, and to a lesser extent the plains of eidolon where it is essentially a completely separate game inside of the primary game that is Warframe rather than a piece of the primary game like the "standard" gamemodes.

 

Besides all that, my primiary issue isn't that people can't find challenge in this game; that's doable if you want it enough, though it usually includes personal nerfs such as no power usage. The issue I have is the "hardcore" players that are desperately looking for challenge in a game that trivializes its own challenges and keep complaining when something inevitably ends up not being challenging enough because of that. I'd much rather the development team work on actually fixing (not making band-aids for) what they already have out rather than try to create a gamemode that would be entirely counter to the rest of the game.

P.S. Seriously though, flesh out some of those idea and create a thread (or more); maybe one will get enough traction that DE will take notice.

[renogaza]

The only thing.. The only thing! Good that came out from the Beasts of the Sanctuary update! The once glorious sanctuary onslaught! Is now complete garbage thanks to you DE! You brought my hopes up for nothing!