Endless Missions and the Checkpoint System

[(PSN)Crixus044]

Fair warning, this is rather long,so there will be a TL:DR summary at the end.

With the advent of elite onslaught, higher level enemies are finally coming in. Builds will be improving for the masses and so will playstyles. Onslaught brings in the more powerful enemies for an extreme kill challenge, but what about the original high level missions like survival, defense, and interception? These missions have long been the scrutiny of players who want to fight high level enemies but don't have half a day to sacrifice. With the power us players have at the current, far surpassing our levels back in U18, we're still fighting enemies we've been fighting for years. This has finally broken and with stuff like kuva survivals, fissure endless, and the rise of request for scaling rewards, it seems that players are finally starting to look beyond the normal content of the game.

The issue with all this is the one obstacle of us all, time. We don't have 5 hours to play just to fight high level enemies, but in a duration of 5 days, we may be able to spare 1 hour to put towards a mission. Because of this, most endless runs don't go beyond 2 hours and because rewards usually don't scale, most runs only last 1 rotation, due to lack of incentive to push further. Because of this, scaling rewards has been a big talk in the game, but most have been turned down due to the time required to put into a run and the favoring towards people with time. A checkpoint system fixes every problem with this.

Proposal:

A checkpoint system. Whenever you leave a survival, you are given the option to drop a checkpoint at the time you were at last, so that when you re-enter the mission you can pick up at the time your left off. A 5 hours run can be done in 5 one hour runs.

Benefits:

Scaling Rewards can be introduced to the game, incentivizing harder enemies, while not restricting those without a lot of time to put into the game at one go. Those who have that sort of time still have an advantage of getting these rewards faster, but then again, that happens anyways, but the rewards are available to everyone. We can finally have long term playtimes that help everyone.

1 guy gotta leave early but you don't wanna stop? Take a break, you probably need it anyways. After about an hour of play, those Doritos on your shirt will start to stain, you probably need a shower, your teammate's gotta go eat dinner, the random in your squad wants to bail at 40, your Mountain Dew is warm and you'll need to get a cold one and out the old back in the fridge, and the popcorn's been sitting in the microwave for 3 hours. Drop a checkpoint buddy. Come back in when you're ready, those enemies aren't going anywhere.

The next 2 benefits I'm putting in spoilers because it's very long, math, and history heavy, so if you're interested, read on. It touches on the idea of dps vs effective dps in missions as well as progression vs power creep.

Spoiler

Harder enemies can actually put build to the test. DPS and spread of dps is all out of whack int the current game. With normal content, the average kills per second is close to 3. This stays all the way up to level 100. Because of the modern methods of gameplay, we have these capabilities. The average Hp of 3 enemies at level 100 is 71,658. Therefore, our effective DPS is around 72k, going higher when armor and shields are taken into account. The problem is that our builds are capable of so much more. The average dps of an average weapons when put into battle situations is close to 100k. For melee and sniper  weapons, this goes higher as combos increase, with 4x combo counter being the average limit for melee, sticking to a 250k average dps, going higher for certain weapons and tactics, as well as multiS#&$s. This excludes the use of powers. Right away, the discrepancies can be seen. Our effective dps is far lower than our potential. The reason is due to how our dps is spread. It's spread at a rate of our hits per second, which isn't always optimal. Because of this, we have wasted potential, and tactics that are exceptionally good at spreading dps are considered OP, when they are statistically less powerful than others, just better at spreading it. A higher level enemy would've fixed this.

The best example of this is Trinity with Castanas. In essence, what this tactic does is redirect damage done to all enemies in the area. Many see this tactic asoverpowered, but in reality,  it's only a 3x damage multiplier. 3 links, each dealing the damage done to you, that's 3x damage. A 150% PS mag does better than this. Chroma can do better than this with build modifications, but what makes the killing potential so much better than these 2 frames is how that dps is spread. If you're dealing 80k damage to yourself, that's 240k damage going around. Against 3 enemies that each have over 80k EHp, this tactic works no better than any other 3x damage multiplier, sometimes it would do nothing at all (If enemies are grouped up, why you need trinity to do what the AoE could do by itself?). But, take it against enemies with only 10k EHp, whenever one enemy dies from the damage, link instantly switches the link to another target, finishing off the dps to be done to the next target, so 80k damage done to yourself is redrirected by 3 links to 8 enemies each with 10k EHp, thus 1 detonation kills 24 enemies. This is a perfect representation of effective dps vs dps. If only higher level enemies were around to put this tactic back into the drawer that it came from.

Spoiler

Warframe has 9999 levels for normal enemies and eximus can reach 10099 levels. We currently only use less than 2% of these levels with elite onslaught going up to under 3% of the levels in warframe. These levels really test the limits of frames, combos, and our combined forces. It's about time we start using them. The word power creep is thrown around by old school player who remember how strong are are now compared to the like of early 2015 builds. What most don't see is the perspective of the new player and progression. I always go by this saying "Power increase with increasing enemies is progression. Power increase against the same enemies is power creep.". New players don't start with 5 forma Galatine Primes with Shadow Debt mods, dual stats, and event mods. They start low, They then move on to builds using regular crit and damage mods with elementals thrown in and a little channeling, much like the builds of ol' 2014-2015, thus the enemies they fight are within those levels we use to fight, which was up to 50. Then they get better gear, formas, and upgrade their r10 mods. They are ready for t3 sorties, trials (When they come back), onslaught, and most higher level missions up to level 100 and 150. As they keep playing, they get better and better mods, new tactics,learn the game and how to build. Status Overload, Shadow Debt, event mods, arena mods, augments, etc. They learn the game to the point that they are 3-4x as powerful as when they started these missions, but after this, there's no where to go. This is where elite onslaught and a checkpoint survival system comes in handy.

We had this same feeling back in 2015, when our gear was getting so strong, it was surpassing the content we were doing, which was level 50. People called warframe no-skill, a Dynasty Warrior clone, no challenge, cheey, etc. People wanted higher levels, and we got them. Recently, those cries started coming back, and as many who know me saw, I said that we are going to get a new boost to levels, and here we are Elite Onslaught. Now to bring that feeling to the main content and those levels to the main world, a checkpoint system in survivals brings that feeling that sorties and trials did for us when they first came out. Anyone who remembers the Phoenix Intercept Escalation mission is especially knowledgeable of this.

So that's my proposal and feedback to missions as a whole.

TL;DR?

Introduce a checkpoint system into survivals to make high level content accessible to everyone.

It opens scaling rewards and will help with balance.

Help's players with low time while not hurting those with time.

Thank you very much for reading.

[Get_Singed]

While I would love scaling rewards simply because I want more Kuva faster, it's very unlikely it will every happen because regardless of how high level enemies get something like Equinox will still be able to clear the entire room with the press of a button because his ult scales with enemy health. Any coordinated team can kill enemies just as quickly after 5 hours as they were able to at the start of the game, so you'd basically be getting more rewards for no more effort.

All that aside, the idea of the checkpoint does not sound like it would work at all either as you would be required to play with the same squad to continue your checkpoint (you wouldn't have some player queue up for the mission only to find out they joined 5 hours into an ongoing run) and if any one of those players doesn't join, they or perhaps all of you lose your rewards. It also just doesn't sound right. You can either do a mission for hours upon hours straight and get whatever comes with that whether it's rewards or just bragging rights, or you can not. There's no reason someone should be allowed to reap the benefits of putting 5-8 straight hours into a mission without actually putting 5-8 straight hours into the mission.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

24 minutes ago, Get_Singed said:

While I would love scaling rewards simply because I want more Kuva faster, it's very unlikely it will every happen because regardless of how high level enemies get something like Equinox will still be able to clear the entire room with the press of a button because his ult scales with enemy health. Any coordinated team can kill enemies just as quickly after 5 hours as they were able to at the start of the game, so you'd basically be getting more rewards for no more effort.

All that aside, the idea of the checkpoint does not sound like it would work at all either as you would be required to play with the same squad to continue your checkpoint (you wouldn't have some player queue up for the mission only to find out they joined 5 hours into an ongoing run) and if any one of those players doesn't join, they or perhaps all of you lose your rewards. It also just doesn't sound right. You can either do a mission for hours upon hours straight and get whatever comes with that whether it's rewards or just bragging rights, or you can not. There's no reason someone should be allowed to reap the benefits of putting 5-8 straight hours into a mission without actually putting 5-8 straight hours into the mission.

Actually, you bring up a point I left out in the OP because it was getting too long and left for the replies to anybody who wanted to know. Random public matches don't use your checkpoint. If you were to join a new group,that wants to use their checkpoints, it picks the average time of the people in the mission, so if you got someone with a 100 minute checkpoint, 1 at 50 and 2 at 25, the average is 50, so that's where you'd start.

Frames like equinox are known for what they do, but as history has shown, unless it can be distinguished as out of place, DE will not change it. Just like we need an incentive to go into higher levels, DE needs an incentive to change something. You've seen time and time again the DE will change things if they think it's out of place, just like Chroma, old Ash, miragulor, and old saryn. By bringing in the higher levels, you give DE the incentive to fix things that have needed fixing, but were put off due to their low importance. Do you really think DE's gonna let something stay at that level if it's too strong? Give us the mission, then fix the problem. This has been the system for years and will continue to work just fine.

And coordination itself is not effort? Have your ever actually been in a coordinated team at an endurance run? It's not as easy as it looks on streams on on YT clips. First is the coordination of planning. The amount of knowledge and tactical skill put into a coordinated team alone deserves the rewards, but to then actually execute that team to make 5 hour enemies look like sorties, that's a whole other skill. I suggest you ask a well known endurance runner to plan something with you, like a 3-4 hour survival, just to start you off, so that you start the learn the basics of what I mean. You can really learn a lot from these guys. For example, send me any one of your builds and I'll help you improve its performance any way I can and give you tips on how to truely maximize your strength.

There's plenty of us players out here that enjoy the thrill of a long endurance run, but we have jobs, responsibilities. We have the skill and the knowledge, but the one thing that cannot be fixed in game is time. There's no reason why checkpoint system hurts any of this. Those that have the time to go 5-6 hours, will still get it faster than me because they don't have to take breaks, thus they get their reward for their time, but the kind of enemies we fight at those levels should be accessible to all, not just those with time. People should be able to reap the rewards of surviving high level enemies if any do come, (which there aren't much now), because how long you're able to play shouldn't be toted as a skill or something that you can hang over someone else's head. It should help you, but not to get something someone else can't. Skill should be the only barrier to higher levels, not time.

Edited April 29, 2018 by (PS4)Crixus044

[--END--Rikutatis]

I would love to be able to fight high level enemies without having to spend 2h+ nonstop in a mission, that'd be great. A checkpoint system like this would be pretty cool.

Also I agree the higher level enemies would put a lot of builds and loadouts into better perspective. Stuff that is considered overpowered just because it can clear rooms of trash mobs but wouldn't even make a dent a few hours in without a proper comp vs frames that have been considered "trash" in the past, but that can actually push really far into high level enemies. 

[Get_Singed]

10 hours ago, (PS4)Crixus044 said:

snip

I kind of hate to say this but giving up on having a life tends to be the tradeoff a person makes if they choose to go on 5+ hour straight gaming sprees to play one thing in any game for 5 hours. That's just how it is. You can't have public matches ever allow someone to use a checkpoint because what happens if someone with an 8 hour checkpoint joins a public match where everyone else's last checkpoint was at 20 minutes? His 8 hours will be reduced to 2 and a quarter hours while their 20 minutes will be massively jacked up to 2 and a quarter hours to average them out. The only way that idea could possibly work is if you were forced to use the same team to continue a checkpoint, and THAT would only work if you had created a coordinated team, otherwise good luck getting all those randoms to agree to another hour+ play session. This is something games don't do because it simply doesn't work, and there's no need for it.

And no matter how you try to nerf frames like Equinox, people will still find another way to make 8 hour enemies just as easy as 5 minute enemies. That's the reason they haven't implemented scaling rewards so far, it's far too easy to go for hours in one mission if you just bring the right frames. I have done it, and it took virtually no planning at all aside from "lf x frame".

[(PSN)Crixus044]

11 hours ago, Get_Singed said:

I kind of hate to say this but giving up on having a life tends to be the tradeoff a person makes if they choose to go on 5+ hour straight gaming sprees to play one thing in any game for 5 hours. That's just how it is. You can't have public matches ever allow someone to use a checkpoint because what happens if someone with an 8 hour checkpoint joins a public match where everyone else's last checkpoint was at 20 minutes? His 8 hours will be reduced to 2 and a quarter hours while their 20 minutes will be massively jacked up to 2 and a quarter hours to average them out. The only way that idea could possibly work is if you were forced to use the same team to continue a checkpoint, and THAT would only work if you had created a coordinated team, otherwise good luck getting all those randoms to agree to another hour+ play session. This is something games don't do because it simply doesn't work, and there's no need for it.

And no matter how you try to nerf frames like Equinox, people will still find another way to make 8 hour enemies just as easy as 5 minute enemies. That's the reason they haven't implemented scaling rewards so far, it's far too easy to go for hours in one mission if you just bring the right frames. I have done it, and it took virtually no planning at all aside from "lf x frame".

I know about the nerfing, it's called the wack-a-mole effect, at least that's what I've coined it to be. You nerf one thing, another will take its place and may even be better. That's how we've gotten to this point in the first place.

I don't want public missions to allow checkpoints. Checkpoints are something you can use at your discretion with the team who wants to use it, and even then, it'll only take the average checkpoint of everyone who uses it. I'll drop a better explanation in the OP for ya. Checkpoint system is used in many games actually with great success. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon has a very strong save progress system for Co-op Multiplayer, Destiny has a checkpoint system for Raids that is been heralded as one of the few things they did right. GTA Online has a checkpoint system for heists that is well liked by the community. Same can apply in WF of course with modifications to fit our game. Like I said, Pubs are off limits to the checkpoint system. The checkpoint system is something you can only use with recruited folks and only at the group consent. You don't need the same team for anything else except picking you back up at your specific time.

Edited April 30, 2018 by (PS4)Crixus044

[twitchingDoe]

I like the idea that at the end of every rotation players vote to remove an item off the rewards table.