Feedback on the first 8 waves of this week's ESO rotation

[DBrody]

I found the previous week's rotation great (except for wave 4) with regards to entertainment and focus income. This week is the complete opposite in all regards--too many terrible tilesets and, worse, highlights how either some tilesets or factions have absolutely dismal spawn rates. This makes raw focus income terrible and, for this week, makes it painfully less efficient than any other standard alternative. I wanna give quick feedback on what is good/bad about each wave in the first 8 waves most people will be playing.

Wave 1: Small Corpus ship with Kuva Grineer, ~8 spawn points. This is actually a pretty terrible map because the spawn quantity is really bad--enemies spawn exclusively in clumps of only 3 or 4, but about every 30 seconds there's a swarm of 20+ Grineer in the center spawn point. Far, far too much downtime waiting for enemies to respawn, and what little does appear just dies immediately cause there's no quantity.

Wave 2: Large outdoor Earth area with Corrupted, ~11 spawn points. This is, what, four weeks in a row Earth has been the 2nd wave? And it STILL sucks. It has the exact same issue wave 1 has--enemies only spawn in groups of 3 or 4, and there's occasionally a massive spawn in the center room. This is even worse because the map is giant and map nukers can't clear everything, compounded by the fact that the tileset has long "hallways" on the outside which house several spawn points where spawned enemies aren't aggroed. Ultimately either the spawn rate needs to be jacked up, or all Earth tilesets needs to be drastically reduced in size (especially snipping off the pointlessly long hallways).

Wave 3: Small Grineer ship with Corpus, ~12 spawn points. This map is the epitome of how ESO should feel at all times--I'm utterly drowned in spawns constantly. Corpus frequently spawn in droves of 10-20 at almost every spawn point, the map is tiny and easily nuked or cycled around in a loop, and there's no downtime where there aren't some quantity of enemies on the map. Wave 3 is a slaughterhouse and is how ESO should be, and should ALWAYS be. It is also telling when a tiny map has more spawn points than a giant one.

Wave 4: Tiny Infested Corpus ship with Earth Grineer, 4 spawn points. This map has strong similarities to wave 3, except for a drastic reduction in spawn locations. It compensates, to an extent, by making the enemy quantity per spawn even higher (easily 15-25 per spawn), but the map's size and low raw spawn locations means there's a disappointing amount of downtime where you're waiting for something to appear. Ultimately the enemy quantity is acceptable as is, it's a lot better than most of this rotation, but downtime is super boring in ESO. If the map falls below a threshold of living enemies, it should immediately spawn more somewhere.

Wave 5: Medium Void room with Infested, ~10 spawn points. So barring one very specific time two weeks ago, infested are the absolute worst faction in ESO. Their raw spawn quantity is the worst of all four factions (by technicality it's worst out of TEN if you separate all 6 or whatever many unique Grineer factions there are), and they give half as much affinity as other factions. This amazingly means any infested wave in ESO gives 25-35% as much focus as basically any other wave in the rotation, and it shows here HARD. Spawn quantity is absolutely shameful--enemies will never spawn in quantities higher than 4. While waves 1 and 2 had this issue, they had the occasional massive spawn spot, but this tileset lacks that. You just get tiny trickles of infested here and there, and it feels terrible. Infested spawn quantity needs to be quintupled to actually give identical focus compared to other factions. This compensation is mandatory because infested are spawning only half as many raw units as other factions, and again only give half the affinity. Really the "easiest" solution is to double infested spawn quantity and, exclusive to ESO, double their base affinity. As it stands, infested waves in ESO when I'm here for a more enjoyable focus farm makes me hate the game because it's a total waste of my time. I can get more focus on literally any other non-infested planet in the game.

Wave 6: Gigantic Corpus ice room with Infested, ~7 spawn points. So on top of everything in wave 5's complaints applying to wave 6, we also have the tileset that singlehandedly gets my vote for absolute worst in ESO. Map nukers can't even come remotely close to touching the whole map, and that's terrible because over half the infested that spawn do so without being aggroed, and so they just sit idling in their spawn room. There are exactly two spawn points (in the back corner, through several hallways) that actually spawn a large clump of infested, but if you try camping that spot, the spawn point stops spawning anything. So you have to leave and chase the garbage spawns and then come back when the ONLY GOOD spawn point decides to give a somewhat acceptable quantity of enemies. Like all Earth tiles, this room needs to be cut in half. Alternatively, make another 20 spawn points and make each spawn create a minimum of 10 infested. This map is an absolute snoozefest where nothing happens because it spawns the lowest quantity of enemies out of all 8 waves.

Wave 7: Small Grineer sealab with Mars Grineer, ~10 spawn points. The best wave this rotation, wave 7 swarms you with spawns and a tiny enclosed space to nuke them over and over again. I don't have a single complaint about this, it's basically wave 3 but with the bigger focus gain. This wave is, again, how every single ESO wave should be. It's fun, it's a massacre, it's exciting, there's enemies everywhere, it's perfection.

Wave 8: Large Kuva Fortress with Infested, ~6 spawn points. The first rotation ends on a total disaster of a wave. Every Kuva Fortress wave in previous weeks has been garbage, and this tile is no exception, compounded by the halved spawn rates that infested have compared to other factions, and you have a miserable waste of time. Like every large tile, this KF tile has long hallways on its outer edge where spawn points do not spawn in aggroed enemies. What little are aggroed have to make a long walk to actually be visible by players. It is really bizarre how large tilesets tend to have fewer spawn locations than tiny maps, by the way. That doesn't help the situation whatsoever. Also the AI in KF tiles have dreadful navigation and gets stuck in the lower levels of the main base constantly.

Overall summary:

- 3/8 waves are actually good this week. The rest are abysmal and will result in borderline no focus gain and no enjoyment due to a constant lack of anything to kill.

- Large tilesets need to either be trimmed or deleted entirely. Not a soul in this playerbase has, or will ever go, "Wow it's the massive ice tile that doesn't spawn any enemies, my favorite!"

- Infested need a 100-200% increase in spawn quantity and for their affinity to be made identical to other factions, exclusive to ESO. Every infested wave will always suck for focus gain if this doesn't happen.

- Enemies need to spawn in faster, in general. Still too much potential for idling around waiting for something to kill, even when not playing with meta frames.

- Enemies NEED to be aggroed upon spawn. For maps where this isn't happening, if this is an unfixable bug, the map just straight up needs to be deleted from appearing in ESO. Being bored out of my mind isn't fun.

Edited May 8, 2018 by DBrody

[Morthal]

All current tilesets need to be removed. Best option ( not opinion ) is to make Onslaught, a virtual based tile, just like in the MR tests and Simaris tutorial. This way, each zone can be dynamic and will likely have better performance for all platforms. The layouts can still be as stupidly designed as they are now but I for one, wouldn't mind some sensible creativity!

[TastyTaro]

22 минуты назад, DBrody сказал:

Large tilesets need to either be trimmed or deleted entirely.

you know... if to be smart about it, this mode requires its own tileset. As a matter of fact, we already have a tileset ready in the game the one that is used for mastery tests.

Edited May 9, 2018 by Kel_Silonius

[Paradoxbomb]

Strange, I find this week's zones to be a lot better than last week's (Zone 7 was a run killer half the time). That said, the Infested in particular seem to take their sweet time on those larger tiles, which really hinders your ability to kill them efficiently.

 

5 minutes ago, Morthal said:

All current tilesets need to be removed. Best option ( not opinion ) is to make Onslaught, a virtual based tile, just like in the MR tests and Simaris tutorial. This way, each zone can be dynamic and will likely have better performance for all platforms. The layouts can still be as stupidly designed as they are now but I for one, wouldn't mind some sensible creativity!

This is actually a nice idea. I always kinda liked those simulation/MR test levels (basic as they are) and wouldn't mind seeing the same aesthetic used for Onslaught.

 

Edited May 9, 2018 by Paradoxbomb

[Urlan]

41 minutes ago, Kel_Silonius said:

you know... if to be smart about it, this mode requires its own tileset. As a matter of fact, we already have a tileset ready in the game the one that is used for mastery tests.

Makes sense.

[peterc3]

2 hours ago, Morthal said:

All current tilesets need to be removed. Best option ( not opinion ) is to make Onslaught, a virtual based tile, just like in the MR tests and Simaris tutorial. This way, each zone can be dynamic and will likely have better performance for all platforms. The layouts can still be as stupidly designed as they are now but I for one, wouldn't mind some sensible creativity!

This is entirely opinion, a bad one at that. MR test maps aren't dynamic, they're laid out by the devs. They're simplistic (not a plus). What is "sensible creativity"?

[Morthal]

4 hours ago, peterc3 said:

This is entirely opinion, a bad one at that. MR test maps aren't dynamic, they're laid out by the devs. They're simplistic (not a plus). What is "sensible creativity"?

I'm not sure you're understanding what dynamic + sensible creativity is. Basically, imagine a virtual space where you can add blocks to create walls, floors, stairs, ramps, platforms that float and rotate around the virtual space. Many possibilities but sensible ones, that don't leave the AI standing in a corner, 200m away and definitely no maze like closet spaces for enemies to get lost or trapped in. 

The current tilesets are lazy, predictable and full of unfixed bugs/clipping issues. I could also argue that MR designed tilesets would also be lazy but at least they'd be more fitting and offer far more diversity in layouts. A missed opportunity.