Mesa Highlights the Problem of Onslaught Efficiency Drain

[Allekatrase]

So, Onslaught is still getting a lot of tweaks, but the recent ones where they increased efficiency drain show that they're moving in the wrong direction.  Mesa is perfect for demonstrating the problem with increasing efficiency drain.  A well built Mesa can pretty much instantly kill anything she sees in every zone at least into the high teens.  So, the problem for efficiency with Mesa is that the drain is too fast for things to spawn or for her to get into line of sight.  This highlights two problems; drain vs. spawn rate and line of sight on random tiles.

For the line of sight issue you already see metas forming around nuke characters that ignore it.  Mesa makes it into the party to charge up the initial nuke for a pair of equinoxes that trade after that while the mesa becomes dead weight until the next round.  The fact that you have to kill enemies so fast to maintain efficiency that waiting for the enemies to come into line of sight or running around seeking them out is too slow highlights a huge problem and is bad for diversity in the game mode.

The second factor applies to every frame.  Even that pair of equinox frames maim trading and instantly wiping the map repeatedly eventually loses to efficiency because spawns are just too slow for the drain rate.  This is bad design as it's a cap on how far you can go that has nothing to do with player skill.  The mechanics just make it impossible to go any farther no matter what you do.

The fix is simple.  Reduce the maximum drain rate and increase enemy spawn rate and difficulty.  You don't need a high drain rate if the enemies eventually scale high enough that they take a significant amount of time to kill.  End game players want a challenge from difficult enemies, not from a timer that they can't do anything about.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Allekatrase

[Dolomich]

I totally agree, every time I went as far as I could and lost to the timer I was still killing enemies with no problem at all, I just couldn't find them fast enough. Increasing the spawn rate would lead to loosing because you really can't handle the enemies anymore and feel way more fair. This at least how I though this gamemode would work at first.

[Rawbeard]

why would you use Mesa when Equinox exists and doesn't care about line of sight?

[YeAhx_]

5 minutes ago, Rawbeard said:

why would you use Mesa when Equinox exists and doesn't care about line of sight?

Because Mesa is a warframe and not everyone plays with equinox ?

[[DE]Grzegorz]

6 minutes ago, Rawbeard said:

why would you use Mesa when Equinox exists and doesn't care about line of sight?

Gotta charge up Maim first.

[Rawbeard]

10 minutes ago, JuicyButthurt said:

Gotta charge up Maim first.

which is not an issue if you mod right. if that is a real hindrence you need to check how to Equinox for fun and profit

[Rawbeard]

12 minutes ago, YeAhx_ said:

Because Mesa is a warframe and not everyone plays with equinox ?

but Equinox is a warframe and not everyone plays with Mesa

[ZirkonX]

the efficiency drain is way too insane now, they are def going the wrong direction 99% of the community ask for the slow drain of efficiency and they some how took it as to make the drain faster... 

[EquinoxPrime]

31 minutes ago, Rawbeard said:

why would you use Mesa when Equinox exists and doesn't care about line of sight?

psst it's okay everyone can have their favorite Warframe

[Allekatrase]

32 minutes ago, Rawbeard said:

why would you use Mesa when Equinox exists and doesn't care about line of sight?

The point is that the game mode basically requires a frame that doesn't care about line of sight and therefore limits the diversity of frames that are good at the mode.  It's bad design to create a lot of different warframes with different abilities and then design game modes that can only be effectively done by a very small selection of those warframes.  As it stands now maybe there is no reason to bring Mesa, but it was supposed to be an arcadey mode about killing waves and waves of enemies and Mesa is good at that.  The overly restrictive drain mechanic rules her out of a game mode that she would otherwise be very good at.

[ReinAxefury]

23 minutes ago, ZirkonX said:

the efficiency drain is way too insane now, they are def going the wrong direction 99% of the community ask for the slow drain of efficiency and they some how took it as to make the drain faster... 

Because they dont want it to be survival 2.0 aka 10 hour long runs. It's an arcade mode, go fast, kill everything and get out. Still, i do agree that efficiency should be at least on a middle point between how it is now and how it used to be before so using frames like Mesa and others keeps being something viable or at least up to zone 8.

[Allekatrase]

5 minutes ago, ReinAxefury said:

Because they dont want it to be survival 2.0 aka 10 hour long runs. It's an arcade mode, go fast, kill everything and get out. Still, i do agree that efficiency should be at least on a middle point between how it is now and how it used to be before so using frames like Mesa and others keeps being something viable or at least up to zone 8.

Then they should make enemy levels scale up faster instead.  Fast drain ruins the mode.  Increased enemy health which increases time to kill has the same effect as faster drain except it's more interactive because you're fighting against enemies instead of fighting against spawn caps.

The drain definitely has a place, it just needs to be way slower than it is now.  Also, it needs to not drain 15% while waiting for a conduit to spawn.

Edited April 26, 2018 by Allekatrase

[ReinAxefury]

20 minutes ago, Allekatrase said:

Then they should make enemy levels scale up faster instead.  Fast drain ruins the mode.  Increased enemy health which increases time to kill has the same effect as faster drain except it's more interactive because you're fighting against enemies instead of fighting against spawn caps.

The drain definitely has a place, it just needs to be way slower than it is now.  Also, it needs to not drain 15% while waiting for a conduit to spawn.

I agree with that last part, but not entirely sure about making enemies scale faster, consider up to zone 8 should be possible for randoms on a public, at least that's how i see it. Apart from that, i think it would be cool if DE does that.

[Morthal]

My question is, if I could instantly kill all spawns immediately, would the timer still lose time? If so, then the entire Onslaught mission is rigged for failure and as the OP stated, restricts the amount of warframes, that bring any kind of sustain to the onslaught timer. My only testing was of course to use Nukong and clear massive waves of spawns with the glaive...still I can't hit the entire map and the timer decays if trying solo ( speaking about elite here ofc)

[Cibyllae]

It would be cool if the efficiency could go above 100% and the zones would alternate between high spawn rate and low spawn rate. That way a coordinated public group or a pre-made team could strategize against the high drain rate. I don't mind high drain rate, just make sure there are tools for us to combat it. That would allow us to play a numbers game with the high/low spawn rate zones and make preparations for the low spawn rate zones. There is already a sense of that when transitioning from grineer to infested zones. There has been atleast three times now where I've dashed through the portal from a grineer zone into an infested zone with efficiency around 2-4% and meleed my way to make time for my team to get through. And then once all four of us are there we bump the efficiency back upto 100%. Those are really fun moments that I enjoy in onslaught that wouldn't be there if the drain rate was slow. It would be cool if DE could incorporate more of those critical moments of "making it or breaking it" into onslaught that would make going from one zone to the next feel rewarding.