What is wrong with onslaught and how to fix it.

[lukinu_u]

First, I want to say I really like the idea of onslaught (and I'm happy to see the Lato Vandal come back), but in my opinion, there are some issues in the design that could be easily solved to make it much more enjoyable.

Before finding solutions, what are the problems ?

• The efficiency decaying too fast at a certain point where you cannot continue because the enemies spawn rate don't allow it. This give the feeling you can't continue, not because you aren't good enough but because the spawn rate isn't high enough.
• How said earlier, the spawn rate that isn't high/constant enough, meaning you will often have period of "no enemies" during the fight.
• The need to kill a bunch of enemies as fast as possible, rewarding long range melee or AoE build more than precise single target projectiles that is generally, more skilled to play.
   

So first, we can solve both spawn and efficency problem by making spawn depend on kills. Let's imagine the mission start with a set amount of enemies, each kill will spawn 2 more enemies, so the more you kill, the more enemies spawn. This means players that kill faster will have more enemies spawn and indirectly slower efficency decay if he can kill hold the the bigger enemies waves.
To avoid too big enemies overflow (because it may be a pain for old computer) this value can be ajusted to a lower ratio like 1 kill = 1.2 spawn, but this require further testing to see if it work well. This would also make a difficulty scaling on player killing capability and not just time.

For the problem, what should be done isn't nerfing AoE build in onslaught, but more add something to incite precise gameplay. What I have in mind a onslaught score / efficiency multiplier for each successive headshot, a bit like the stealth affinity multplier, but that scale higher (maybe up to x10).
This would give player the choice between spamming AoE weapons/power and having a slower and more precise, but more skilled gameplay by doing headshot series, especially if the enemies number on the map increase foreach kill.

[Rawbeard]

I wish there was something happening, right now it's solo tile survival. having an incentive to actually fight and not simply clear the map and wait for respawn would be nice, too.

[DiosGX]

39 minutes ago, Rawbeard said:

I wish there was something happening, right now it's solo tile survival. having an incentive to actually fight and not simply clear the map and wait for respawn would be nice, too.

I was just thinking about something along these lines.

Perhaps every 3rd or 4th wave could have a mini-death squad spawn in during the final 30 seconds of the zone. Defeating them would earn you +100% extra bonus Focus Gain upon next zone start, and lock Efficiency in place for 10 seconds as it begins as well.

[(XBOX)BigLithuanian]

First off Hi Lukinu!! This would be a great start to Onslaught improvements, I haven't played it of course but I've read and seen many of the complaints players have made and I believe it is heading in a better direction but if these changes were done Onslaught could reach its true potential. I am so thankful for PC players who test and get stuff changed before it comes to console.

I can't wait to test it out myself on May 4th if everything works out. 

[twitchingDoe]

hate to make a simple suggestion but cant you put the efficiency up every 1x spawn equally down every 1x kill? 

[NeithanDiniem]

4 hours ago, lukinu_u said:

• The efficiency decaying too fast at a certain point where you cannot continue because the enemies spawn rate don't allow it. This give the feeling you can't continue, not because you aren't good enough but because the spawn rate isn't high enough.

This is intended. This game mode is not supposed to be infinite. Specifically it was designed for an arcade-like feel.

4 hours ago, lukinu_u said:

• How said earlier, the spawn rate that isn't high/constant enough, meaning you will often have period of "no enemies" during the fight.

This is a problem with the tiles, which they are working on fixing. They either remove some tiles from the lineup or fix spawn locations so more enemies can spawn more consistently.

4 hours ago, lukinu_u said:

• The need to kill a bunch of enemies as fast as possible, rewarding long range melee or AoE build more than precise single target projectiles that is generally, more skilled to play.

Impossible to deal with outside of DE making headshots have a bonus. They cant make AoE weapons less useful in this game mode just so that single target guns are more effective to force a specific gameplay style, at the cost of all others. If you want to do single target, do it, there are weapons that are perfectly fine in this for heavy targets, while AoE can handle trash groups.

[NeithanDiniem]

6 minutes ago, _Doe_ said:

hate to make a simple suggestion but cant you put the efficiency up every 1x spawn equally down every 1x kill? 

That just means that you can never get ahead, ever, and any second not spent killing an enemy means you are one % closer to automatic failure. That creates more of a problem.

[twitchingDoe]

3 hours ago, NeithanDiniem said:

That just means that you can never get ahead, ever, and any second not spent killing an enemy means you are one % closer to automatic failure. That creates more of a problem.

the mission is timed and it progressively gets harder and harder eventually you will fail..

my up and down is the wrong way round in the last post :)

[NeithanDiniem]

19 minutes ago, _Doe_ said:

the mission is timed and it progressively gets harder and harder eventually you will fail..

my up and down is the wrong way round in the last post :)

I figured it was, but you still have a flat system. There is never any way to get ahead, even with the timer ticking away. Currently as the timer ticks away you can counteract it by killing enemies, but your way makes it so that every enemy spawned drops your score along with the timer, so the only way to even break even before the timer is to nuke everything on the map before the portal opens. Its impossible to kill enough enemies to counter the timer, at which point you may as well as get rid of efficiency alltogether and just make it be a survival timer that has no way of increasing its life support.

[twitchingDoe]

making it 1 for 1 is easy just for this post is due to all sorts of cool stuff. :)

the timer is 2:30 minutes intill next zone regardless of how fast you kill or they spawn. and efficiency maxes out at 100

if efficiency reaches zero you fail, and even if an enemy spawns every second.. you would have had to only kill 51+ in the time provided in able to progress to the next zone.

the system also reviews "the precision" kill talked about earlier in this post as later down the run players would have to work together to kill one enemy as your not going to be able nuke the entire area as enemy levels would get silly :)

[NeithanDiniem]

45 minutes ago, _Doe_ said:

making it 1 for 1 is easy just for this post is due to all sorts of cool stuff. :)

the timer is 2:30 minutes intill next zone regardless of how fast you kill or they spawn. and efficiency maxes out at 100

if efficiency reaches zero you fail, and even if an enemy spawns every second.. you would have had to only kill 51+ in the time provided in able to progress to the next zone.

the system also reviews "the precision" kill talked about earlier in this post as later down the run players would have to work together to kill one enemy as your not going to be able nuke the entire area as enemy levels would get silly :)

The problem is you spawn more enemies than you kill, so you'll inevitably get a net loss each wave. You cant guarantee every single spawn is dead before the portal opens, and if a group spawns last minute you are out 10+ % that is irretrievable. One the portal opens the efficiency is locked, unchangable, so you'll lose out very quickly unless you are nuking the entire map, which creates a required gameplay style.

[twitchingDoe]

12 hours ago, NeithanDiniem said:

The problem is you spawn more enemies than you kill, so you'll inevitably get a net loss each wave. You cant guarantee every single spawn is dead before the portal opens, and if a group spawns last minute you are out 10+ % that is irretrievable. One the portal opens the efficiency is locked, unchangable, so you'll lose out very quickly unless you are nuking the entire map, which creates a required gameplay style.

then kill faster... 

balance, tweaks and debugging will always be difficult to speculate if not tested!

there are plenty of ways to link and give a kill to spawn ratio.. 

The original point of this post was that there was not enough spawns to keep the efficiency running in an efficient way <<lol 

off the top of my head the simplest way to combat the group spawn rate would be to count down every second to the amount of the original amount spawned in that group.. this stop a massive "jump or flux" in numbers

add a "soft" or visual cap only, on the efficiency max!.. (you can kill more than 100 and it will tally, but you will still only see it as 100)

it was a simple "Base" suggestion.. untweaked!, unbalanced! and certainly not debugged!.. something to work off or from, however interpreted ?

[NeithanDiniem]

1 hour ago, _Doe_ said:

then kill faster... 

balance, tweaks and debugging will always be difficult to speculate if not tested!

there are plenty of ways to link and give a kill to spawn ratio.. 

The original point of this post was that there was not enough spawns to keep the efficiency running in an efficient way <<lol 

off the top of my head the simplest way to combat the group spawn rate would be to count down every second to the amount of the original amount spawned in that group.. this stop a massive "jump or flux" in numbers

add a "soft" or visual cap only, on the efficiency max!.. (you can kill more than 100 and it will tally, but you will still only see it as 100)

it was a simple "Base" suggestion.. untweaked!, unbalanced! and certainly not debugged!.. something to work off or from, however interpreted ?

but you keep forgetting that with your idea for every spawn you lose efficiency, no matter how many you kill... You can kill 100 sure but that only works if you have only spawned 100 and you killed them instantaneously, otherwise you have permanently lost efficency. No matter how you try to explain it your idea in intrinsically, fatally flawed. It is impossible with your idea to ever, EVER get ahead. it is a flat system. You could kill ten quadrillion enemies each petasecond but you would net gain nothing, because the spawns would be equal or greater than your kills. This is basic math here that doesn't need to be tested in a game, you can just look at the numbers alone and show that it will fail. And it isn't a soft cap, its a hard cap. Its a hard cap because it is impossible to pass the cap, ever. soft caps can be passed.

[twitchingDoe]

I blame Simaris...

don't forget your starting number buddy!

Sorry, couldn't help myself 

Edited April 29, 2018 by _Doe_

[-Equinox-Prime]

i think the problem starts and ends with efficiency decaying to fast, they are basically making you to bring AOE weapons AOE warframes and AOE melee, otherwise you wont last more than 6 rounds, this immediately rules out 90% of the weapons and warframes which is an absolute shame.

also they can make enemies to scale faster, ill understand that i loose if the problem is my lack of KPS but lets keep this kps factor on real numbers so we dont have to AOE it all because we are basically back to where WARFRAME was 2 years ago, full of OP aoe weapons and abilities so players just had to spam and thats it, we are oficially back to that era.

[VioletGoblin]

I am sick of using the Atterax, but it is the only thing that can kill the enemies fast enough, I have had some success with the Sarpa as Octavia, but only if the rest of the team is pulling their weight.

I don't know why but I have been seeing a lot of leaching Trinitys in my games, dragging me down, keeping Khora systems away from me 

 

I'm going to stop playing until the next hotfix.