Excavation: No Balance.

[Zorlond]

So, I'm working my way through Neptune, unlocking all of the missions (don't have to, just want to), when I get to an Excavation mission. No big, just get it done and forget it exists, right?

Not happening.

Since this is a standard Excavation, the mission requirement is simple, complete one dig. A single dig to 100% completion. Problem is, the excavator has only a total of 3000 hps (shield+health). This means it blows up after two mobs have shot at it for less than ten seconds. And since energy cells are mandatory to keep the excavator excavating, you can't sit and watch it. You must walk away to get a cell. By the time you walk back (fine, bullet-jump-spaz back), it's already half-health and hasn't even gone 25% through it's dig. Go for a second cell, it's dead. And you can't NOT go for a second cell, you need four at least.

My issue with this is that this mission type has not been balanced. At all. I've checked. I found the weakest, most low-level Excavation mission I could find (Everest, Earth), and the excavators there had the exact same number of hps (3000). The enemies couldn't do jack against it. I literally just stood there watching as they plinked away at it, occasionally grabbing a cell to keep it powered. Sleepwalking victory.

Compare this to the Defense missions, where the defense target very much is scaled properly to the mission's level. The weakest I could find, the defense casket had about 4k hps. Whereas on the much higher levels, it's more like 40k. The time-to-kill for a defense casket is a fairly consistent gradual decline, as enemies get more damaging and harder to kill quickly, requiring the player to remain at least minimally vigilant against enemies (pets can only do so much) regardless of the mission's level. This is in stark contrast to Excavations, where the time-to-kill simply falls off a cliff.

Also of note is that the defense casket is capable of healing itself as long as people stop shooting at it for a few seconds. Excavators don't. They recover shields, but their health is completely static. This is assuming it's still alive, of course.

One might argue that they're completely different missions, but mechanically they're essentially identical except for one point. You have to guard a specific location, that location takes damage if you nod off, and that location can blow up, causing failure. The one difference being that you have to run energy cells in one and not the other. Considering that time away from the location is prime time for mobs to get a few hits in, having this brief step-away be the direct cause of instant failure, particularly since it is inherently mandatory, means that this mission type is inherently unbalanced.

I know a lot of people will come in with builds and frames that can complete this mission (and no doubt a few that will claim that they are 'gods among mortals that have never lost a single mission and how dare I suck so bad as to ever complain', there's always a few idiots like that), but all I need to say is that, yes, there are a few utterly broken frame builds that obliterate all difficulty, everybody knows that. I am not comparing this mission type to frame builds, I am looking at the actual mechanics of the mission before any warframe is involved.

And it is clear that absolutely no balance work has been done on Excavations. You're either sleepwalking through it, or can't complete it. There's no middle ground to be found.

(and since I know some people are going to claim it is, no this isn't a troll post, someone has a complaint about the game you like, deal with it)

[r-kid]

It's not unbalanced, it just prioritises different tactics. For excavation you have to bring a good cc frame if you want to go any distance.


Also, if you progress the story quests a bit further you can get the ability to make them invulnerable and heal them.

[Meewec]

go in with frost, gara, or limbo and you can put a defensive shield around the excavator. specters of some kind can also help and so can queuing up in public, you'll likely end up with at least one person at some point

[NoobFactorPlus]

I don't know if you've done this yet or not (ignore this comment if you have) but if you're going solo, make sure you change that the little globe icon next to your name in the top left, and set to solo. Otherwise the game will throw mobs at you that's worth a whole team.

[Shuri]

Zorlond님이 먼저 게시:

there's always a few idiots like that

hmmm... can't handle excavation solo. i see

and i'm sure it's called difficulty spike or something. Earth and Neptune has different level. with same amount of Excavator HP, the game force you to be even better than your previous self to prepare for the mission. better strategy, better build, better plan, etc.
the game just try to (slowly) prepare you for the higher level mission. if you failed, try again. you can do it. we can do it. we are Space Ninja after all

[Zefar]

This is the one game mode where you need Frost or Limbo. Gaara works okay but her shield can be broken quite easily. Unless you can actively keep every enemy away from it at all times.

Also it's the one mission where the objective doesn't get more health.

[Zorlond]

(everyone recommends frames because they failed to actually read the post)

[Meewec]

Zorlond님이 먼저 게시:

(everyone recommends frames because they failed to actually read the post)

or, you know, because different frames excel at different things and make missions easier or harder depending on what you use. you could also forgo a frame that has some form of bubble and go with a nuke frame, if everything dies too fast to hurt the drill it doesn't matter how much health it has.

[Astasia]

Some missions (excavation, interception, hijack, sometimes mobile defense) are clearly designed around coop and are very punishingly difficult or require specific frames to solo. The mode is balanced, it just wasn't balanced around solo play where you have to walk away from it, in coop somebody can always stand there and defend. Luckily the game provides a tool for exactly that kind of situation, specters. Deploy a specter and have them hold position at the objective you want them to defend, this allows you some freedom to move around a bit and do what you need to do. Certain specters make the missions trivially easy much like certain frames, a Mag specter for example spams her shield restore ability every few seconds while also controlling enemies pretty frequently.

[Grey Star, The Rival Defender]

Zorlond님이 먼저 게시:

(everyone recommends frames because they failed to actually read the post)

Because the game mode isn't defense? And actually different? And isn't supposed to be solved the brain dead method of "Set Aimbot Prime aboard Cryopod, bullet jump in a corner for 20 waves, repeat."

Get a defense frame, get a decent build for them, Frost with Stretch and Intensify will do, and you're good to go. For excavation to be unbalanced, it would have to do something with stopping defense frames from working (Nullifer spam, insane damage, etc), rather than "defense objects don't scale with starting level."

Now notably excavators on the Orb Vallis scale with the difficulty level of the bounty. Why? Because bounties aren't something where any individual is always going to bring a defense frame just in case of excavation. They'll bring mobility frames like Volt, killers like Chroma, or healers like Trinity. Frames that could apply to any bounty, with the exception of spy and excavation.

But regular excavation missions are things where you know what the mission is before going in, unlike a bounty. So the expectation there, is of course, to bring a defense frame.

[Peel]

What everyone seems to be missing here, is that it probably should be scaled like everything else. It just feels like an oversight.

I don't think any objective used to be scaled, but then the game was a lot harder.

One redeeming feature of Excavation is that losing an excavator doesn't lose you the mission - you can always try again...

[Kamen Kreuz]

This is a part of the game that I'm not a big fan of. Encouraging players to use different options is great, ideal even, but Excavation makes certain options feel mandatory. I can, and do, run Defense without a wall building frame because you can reasonably kill or CC the enemies enough to keep the target alive. If I do an Excavation, it's Frost or Gara 100%. The maps are too open and the objective requires too much running around to keep the target alive without a solid defensive ability that you can set and forget. Even Infested Excavation is too risky without them, because Infested Power Cell carriers have an absurdly strong projectile attack for some reason.
One thing to note is that Excavation isn't the only mode that suffers from making certain frames feel mandatory, but I don't want to go into specifics and potentially derail the thread.

[GunsForBucks]

Meanwhile people complain the game is too easy.....

If you fail a mission repeatedly then it is a sign you need to rethink your strategy.

Work on your builds based on the job and build some specters. You can deploy multiple specters as long as they are not the same type. Warframe specters can be problematic, it seems the older frames have better AI or something.. so doing a little research into what frame and how to mod it and what weapons it is good with helps a lot. I've got a Loki using the Amprex and he is really good AI wise keeping his distraction clone out all the time and stunning people with the Amprex.

Also frames like Nekros and his shadows... enemies will have target priority to shoot the shadows first and leave the excavator alone.

There are other things you can do but I don't know if you have them unlocked so I don't want to mention spoilers either.

I really love how the game makes you have to rethink things rather than just being able to bull your way through with anything.

[particlewaves]

You can always collect a bunch of power cores and drop them around the excavator before activating it.

[Taddy Mason]

Some missions are meant to be harder than others

[No_Quarter]

Zorlond님이 먼저 게시:

(everyone recommends frames because they failed to actually read the post)

because picking a proper tool for a job is overrated