You shouldn't fail the mule recovery mission if you fail the defence section; It's Bad Design

[boop]

Its a screw you to players and a huge waste of time for no reason. Why cant they send another fuel cell? Why can't it be defended again? There's no reason here at all besides arbitrary BS difficulty.

What if my fuel cells end up in a hole? or on a cliff? I'm ♥♥♥♥♥♥ because I only get one chance. This makes it stupid hard to defend and we should be able to try as much as we like. It's already wasting our time if it resets the defence portion, why waste MORE of it and piss off your players?

Fix this please. It's too luck based and its bad design.

[SCamp]

You have a pickaxe. If you're playing driller or engineer, you have their terrain tools too.

Besides, what's the point of having a mission objective that can't be failed?

[boop]

Originally posted by SCamp:

You have a pickaxe. If you're playing driller or engineer, you have their terrain tools too.

Besides, what's the point of having a mission objective that can't be failed?

I shouldn't have to drill out an arena every time just to play the mission. No other missions behave like this.

Failing Mission = Huge time waste
Failing the defense is already a time waste, why are we getting so punished for objectives in this one specific mission? It would be like having a timer on the Aquarq or Egg mission, and if it runs out you lose. It's cheap and it's bad design.

[Chibbity]

According to the dev's, allowing people to retry it mostly resulted in softlocks; due to lack of Nitra and thus ammunition.

If you fail it the first time, you've prolly used up too much ammo to even have a reasonable shot at second attempt. Just failing is actually easier and more palatable for players than softlocking.

Also, as said above; preparing your area for defense is the core concept of this mode.

[Aimee]

Originally posted by MidBoss:

I shouldn't have to drill out an arena every time just to play the mission. No other missions behave like this.

The amazing thing is, you dont have to.
You can just play a lower difficulty on that mission type, so you can defend the fuel cells or whatever without having to prepare the area.
Its all up to you.

[SCamp]

There is a timer on the Point Extraction mission. The bug waves get larger the longer you stay in the mission.

Consider the following: I played in a mission a couple of days ago with some people where the final set of mini-mule legs were all in a single cave near the ceiling (without easy access) and a BetC was in the same cubby. That was interesting.

Either spend the time to deal with the problem before it becomes a problem (you have terrain deformation tools) or suck it up. Alternatively: if the mission is kill, reroll the mission and hope the new RNG seed favors you.

[Professor Hugedix]

the more someone uses the phrase "bad design" the surer you can be that they have no idea how things should be designed

[Aimee]

Originally posted by Professor Hugedix:

the more someone uses the phrase "bad design" the surer you can be that they have no idea how things should be designed

Considering they only used it twice, i dont think this applies.
I have seen plenty of things in my life that were ''bad designed'', tons of games at that.

The wording for the rest of their ''suggestion'' however is more questionable, and seems rather spitefull to me.

[GIRL]

Originally posted by MidBoss:

I shouldn't have to drill out an arena every time just to play the mission. No other missions behave like this.

God forbid a mission ask you to do something unique and different. That's boring! I hate any mission where I have to do something new and different.

I hate Escort because no other mission makes you gather Oil Shale. I hate Mining Expedition because no other mission makes you mine Morkite. I hate Point Extract because I have to carry stuff.

What a silly reason, lmao.

[gary]

The issue with the mission is the failure state, it conflicts with a core aspect of the game, namely that of movement and particularly the freedom of movement. If you removed the failing of the mission because you are outside of the sphere there would be no real issue.

[SCamp]

Originally posted by gary:

The issue with the mission is the failure state, it conflicts with a core aspect of the game, namely that of movement and particularly the freedom of movement. If you removed the failing of the mission because you are outside of the sphere there would be no real issue.

The core aspect of the game is navigating a cave. Movement is only part of that. Digging and digging accessories are the other part.

[Davrick]

It's been suggested before that moving out of the circle could cause progress to simply halt, as opposed to dropping like it does now. Or have it to continue to drop, but not cause a failure if it gets to zero. I have to admit, I've never really liked the "stand in this spot until you're done or insta-fail" aspect of this particular mission type.

[GIRL]

Originally posted by Davrick:

It's been suggested before that moving out of the circle could cause progress to simply halt, as opposed to dropping like it does now. Or have it to continue to drop, but not cause a failure if it gets to zero. I have to admit, I've never really liked the "stand in this spot until you're done or insta-fail" aspect of this particular mission type.

It wouldn't be a good idea, for the same reasons Chibbity mentioned. It would end up causing stalemates. If you could leave the zone for as long as you wanted, teammates would just run out and look for Nitra whenever they ran out of ammo, which honestly would ironically result in more team wipes than if they had just stayed inside.

It would also promote bad habits like ditching your team and being lackadaisical about the objective. Not to mention it would throw strategy out the window. Fighting in a tight space is what makes the event challenging.

Originally posted by gary:

The issue with the mission is the failure state, it conflicts with a core aspect of the game, namely that of movement and particularly the freedom of movement.

This is just my personal experience, but usually whenever I'm in a swarm, I find holding your ground is much better than running around like a crazy person (with the exception of Scout). I don't mean staying completely still, you should obviously still dodge projectiles, etc. But rarely do I have to move from the general area I'm fighting in. Even more so when I'm with a team to better help defend the area.

I think the "stay in one spot and fight of endless enemies" part is pretty much the same as any normal swarm. I guess it's a bit different on wide-open maps like Point Extract maps and On-Site Refinery, but again I only really ever move far when I need to. It's still definitely possible to sit in relatively the same spot and fight off enemies.

Besides, you can still move freely around, as long as at least 1 person stays in the radius. Honestly, if we could just freely move around all the time, it would be way more boring. It would just feel like another generic swarm fight.

[JeanneOskoure]

Originally posted by MidBoss:

I shouldn't have to drill out an arena every time just to play the mission. No other missions behave like this.

Escort final section gets much easier if you drill the little crystals and engie places bug repellent platforms.
On-Site Refining gets much easier if you drill through the walls to set up clean pipelines.
Likewise, Salvage gets much easier if a driller and an engie prepare the terrain together.

Drilling is self explanatory, you need to remove the walls in order to have the biggest zone to defend possible if it is blocked.
As an engie, if there is a wall near, I recommend placing 3 platforms right in the center above the thing to defend, then have a little space and put another 3 platforms.
On each side, place 2 platforms (3 if there is no wall) on the ground right at the max range of the zone to defend and if you have Gemini systems, place a turret on each side, furthest from the drop pod to have a better angle (facing inwards if you have Defender system). Dig out the platforms a bit if there isn't enough space for bugs to crawl near the drop pod or they'll ignore bug repellent.

And here you go, it took 30s and you prepped the arena. Way faster than drilling on OSR or placing platforms on Escort Ommoran fight.

[R.-]

Originally posted by JeanneOskoure:

Escort final section gets much easier if you drill the little crystals and engie places bug repellent platforms.
On-Site Refining gets much easier if you drill through the walls to set up clean pipelines.
Likewise, Salvage gets much easier if a driller and an engie prepare the terrain together.

Don't forget Elimination missions. Bad terrain surely makes dreadnought fights tough like hell!


>90% of the time when a player blame RNG, it's because he's not good enough to tell what went wrong, nor can he think of improvement / alternative solutions. When life doesn't give you lemon, don't choke and say it's lemon.

[Aimee]

Originally posted by gary:

The issue with the mission is the failure state, it conflicts with a core aspect of the game, namely that of movement and particularly the freedom of movement. If you removed the failing of the mission because you are outside of the sphere there would be no real issue.

I understand your point in this, and I can get atleast partialy behind this.

Yesterday i lost this mission becouse one player decided to start it solo, while me and another player were mining and stuff.
They either did this on purpose or figured out it did not work so well afterwards, becouse it took them 10 second before they ran out of the circle and died short after.

We could not get to the area fast enough before the bar run out since it hardly started at all, and we lost without having stepped a foot in the circle in the first place.
This has happend to me on more than 1 occacion, and you dont always want to babysit the mule before calling it back, just becouse there is a chance of someone starting it once the mules are called back.

I understand that this can sometimes be an issue, and i think the developers could easly fix this.
By changing the following;
If someone starts the defence and atleast half the team have not been in the circle yet, that when it fails you can start over if it fails within a certain amount of time.
60 seconds would probably suffice, for players to get to the area and start defending.

It would be a simple implementation without too many drawbacks that i can think off.


As for the ''freedom'' of movement part, i dont think this is unique to this gamemode, since you also have the drilldozer mission, and low O2 mutators.
As well as most maps creating corridors, and few places to stand on that limit your movement. Especialy during a big wave.