Fissure Excavations and How to Reduce Frustration

[Lt._Luc]

So, today I joined a public Excavation Fissure mission and happened to pop in just a short time before the second drill was going to complete after having already been topped up with cells. I scrambled for Reactant, but unfortunately there was no way to get enough before it finished. This would only be a minor annoyance under normal circumstances, except a vaulted rare Mag prime blueprint dropped from it. Naturally, I was disappointed that I missed out on it, and annoyed that there was literally no way I could have gotten it either. The session otherwise went well and the rest of the players made sure everyone had their reactant before filling the drills (it was actually the longest excavation session I've ever done, which was quite an experience, but I digress), so it wasn't an issue of players not communicating.

 

Now, under other circumstances with less-knowledgeable or considerate teammates, everyone knows the pain of dealing with players who insist on filling up the drill before everyone is ready. There's nothing you can do to stop someone from doing it on purpose, but there might be a way to help stop the frustration at least; an on-off switch. All this space age technology and no one put a "Suspend Drilling" button on these things! Clearly, Space Mom needs a better supplier than her crummy Corpus contacts.

 

The implementation is simple: Two players (to prevent trolling) must interact with the drill like they would any panel. Upon doing so, a mark would appear beside that drill's progress counter (perhaps with a tone or message) showing that the drill is either paused or, preferably, will pause upon reaching the last 10 seconds of its drill time. Once everyone is ready, two players simply interact with the drill again to remove the pause and it finishes the drilling procedure. This would help remove the annoying micro-management of keeping a drill from being started when not desired, while still allowing cells to be attached to restore shields in a pinch.

 

Also, having a (single) player stand at a drill location and hold Interact to start the drill in the first place would help avoid accidental drill imitation as well when you're traveling across the map.

 

I'm sure there's something I'm missing that would improve this idea or be a crippling oversight, so feel free to give your feedback!

Edited April 30, 2018 by Lt._Luc

[(PSN)OriginalEquinox]

It's definitely annoying getting paired with people who think they are in a race against time when it comes to filling the cryotic bar even though they can clearly see that some teammates are yet to gather enough reactant and this is a problem I've had with other modes as well specially when getting into a ongoing match where everyone else have finished their tasks and are spamming markers on the extraction point even after you tell them you're still finding reactant but usually end up running out of time and having your own time wasted in the end. So I don't think that adding a pause button on the extractors will change much because there will always be dumb people determined to get in and out ASAP even if they themselves miss a reward.

[Prof.549]

Unlucky.

[kgabor]

That can be a problem if teammates are nup and farm reactants on the other side of the map expecting everyone to do the same but if it's just something like you don't get the first reward after joining a mission it's like, whatever that's normal, i don't expect teammates to wait for me to get 10 reactants from 0 when there is only 10-20 seconds from the last extractor in the fissure rotation, the fact that you missed on a vaulted part is...yeah, unlucky but it happens.

I missed out on a Mag P bp just yesterday just because a teammate didn't pick a relic after the first rotation of Survival, then assuming he/she was wasting my time i didn't pick one in the next one either and another teammate got it as a reward while formerly mentioned picked a relic in the last second and another didn't pick one at all.

After that it dropped, of course i blocked the fk out of that person lol.

[Callback]

4 hours ago, (PS4)Equinox21697 said:

It's definitely annoying getting paired with people who think they are in a race against time when it comes to filling the cryotic bar even though they can clearly see that some teammates are yet to gather enough reactant and this is a problem I've had with other modes as well specially when getting into a ongoing match where everyone else have finished their tasks and are spamming markers on the extraction point even after you tell them you're still finding reactant but usually end up running out of time and having your own time wasted in the end. So I don't think that adding a pause button on the extractors will change much because there will always be dumb people determined to get in and out ASAP even if they themselves miss a reward.

They're spamming marks at extraction because a million corrupted spawned near there and the ground is littered with reactant.  Never back track unless you have already reached the end of the map.  Most fissures open in front of the group.