Mission Timer

[fungus]

Before I say anything, yeah I know why it exists, yeah I know it makes sense in setting since the Destroyer can't stay in the same position in low orbit forever, all that jazz. But from a purely gameplay perspective, ever since pre release footage showed it, I have not been a fan of the timer.

I understand the devs probably want something to discourage players from staying in a mission for like 2 hours farming or whatever, but I don't like having a hard cap on how long I can stay in a mission for, nor do I like outright disabling stratagems. Sometimes me and my buddies playing get caught up in a firefight or something and end up battling it out because while it does have flaws, the game's combat is still extremely fun. But, because we like to enjoy the combat a bit, we end up sometimes not being able to do everything on the map, which kinda leaves me a bit sour. It feels like the game is sometimes just saying "okay, enough fun for now, go leave and start a new mission" instead of letting us play the way we enjoy, which is a bit slower and more attrition focused, like how my squad used to play in the first game.

This isn't really a question of difficulty or anything like that either, I'm not saying the game is too hard, this is a question of playstyle. It just feels like taking engagements and actually fighting the enemy in higher difficulties isn't really something you should do a lot, and that sucks, because some of my fondest memories of the first game was spending 15 minutes fighting relentlessly over lost equipment.

As I said before, I understand the devs probably want to discourage players from staying in mission too long, and honestly, I'd be fine with just that - a discouragement instead of a hard limit. Hell I'm insane enough to honestly be okay with say, doubling the call-in and cooldown time of stratagems, including resupplies and stuff after timer ends; just don't force me to leave. It genuinely irritates me enough that sometimes I just don't end up playing the game because well, why bother when I can't really play it the way I wanted, and the way I could play the first game.

Does anyone else feel similarly about the timer?

[Amaranth]

The timer is necessary. If I join a game with others, I don't want the host to waste two hours of my time in a two hour session. The timer gives me an estimate of how long the mission will be.

[fungus]

Originally posted by Amaranth:

The timer is necessary. If I join a game with others, I don't want the host to waste two hours of my time in a two hour session. The timer gives me an estimate of how long the mission will be.

I'm aware that people don't want 2 hour long missions. What I'm suggesting is moreso a rework to the timer to give incentive people to not stay in a mission forever, but allow people like myself and my group of friends a bit more wiggle room to take longer engagements and retreat/stealth less. Besides, I feel reinforce budget/tokens already do a good job of making staying in a mission for long not the best idea, a hard limit on top of that feels like too much imo.

[Hand's Hermit Permit]

In just about every game with a timer, there's always a contingent of players that hate the timer.

But you gotta know.

The timer is for your own good. Pacing in a game is important. You're incentivized for speeding missions up, since time left is one of the factors that gets you paid more, and you're also incentivized to take the whole 40 minutes and fight every nest and objective. We can choose which to do, or get stuck in the firefight for 40 minutes.

I don't know what you're like, maybe you really would do more than 1 or 2 missions where you're just stuck in a firefight for 4 hours, but you'd be in a small, small minority there. I'm willing to bet that most people that say they don't want a timer would get bored of the game anyway and stop playing the game saying it's all samey, so literally the timer is to our benefit.

Eradicate/defense missions have you doing nothing but fighting bugs. I recommend just spamming those if you just want to fight things all day and not stealth.

[Enkidu]

I don't see them changing the "vanilla" experience but perhaps they could allow a host to modify certain parameters. Maybe not possible given that the host is just a HOST, not a server, and considering how much it would alter the value of obtainables like samples, medals, SC, etc it would probably have to be "unranked" in nature. Part of the value/rarity of POI pickups IS the limited time since you likely can't get them all during any given mission.

But introducing "unranked" games would have a whole other undesirable affect on the metagame/Galactic War as a whole. "Everyone" would be playing in modified servers and not contributing to the war effort at all, so this is likely something that will never happen.

But perhaps an "endless" game mode would work. Something like an Eradication mission but instead of having a set number of enemies to kill before the game is over they just keep coming until you either all die or escape on a pelican.

[fungus]

Originally posted by Hand's Hermit Permit:

In just about every game with a timer, there's always a contingent of players that hate the timer.

But you gotta know.

The timer is for your own good. Pacing in a game is important. You're incentivized for speeding missions up, since time left is one of the factors that gets you paid more, and you're also incentivized to take the whole 40 minutes and fight every nest and objective. We can choose which to do, or get stuck in the firefight for 40 minutes.

I don't know what you're like, maybe you really would do more than 1 or 2 missions where you're just stuck in a firefight for 4 hours, but you'd be in a small, small minority there. I'm willing to bet that most people that say they don't want a timer would get bored of the game anyway and stop playing the game saying it's all samey, so literally the timer is to our benefit.

Eradicate/defense missions have you doing nothing but fighting bugs. I recommend just spamming those if you just want to fight things all day and not stealth.

Maybe. I see where you're coming from, but politely disagree.

The first game had no such timer, but I never felt the need to stay in a mission for longer after picking up a few samples and completing objectives, because spawns would continually ramp up the longer you stayed. It was difficult and steered you in a certain direction, but didn't outright force you to near exclusively play hit & run like helldivers 2 does. In fact, to me, the game starts feeling a little stale because of the timer, not the other way around, because you can either stealth or play hit and run, but not really go fully loud unless you split up as a team and try to have one group take all the aggro.

You said pacing is important and I agree, but I feel it goes in the opposite direction. On difficulty 7-9, it feels like staying in one fight for longer than 5-ish minutes will result in you either having to rush towards the end of the mission to clean up the map, or skip some objectives, and I really don't like that. I think it'd be more engaging if the team had to make a decision - leave now with the main objective done, or risk not extracting but take in more rewards and fun by clearing out a few remaining outposts.

Again, to emphasise, I know why it exists, and I don't want the timer entirely gone, but rather reworked, just so that way the game allows for a selection of wider strategies to be employed, such as a frontal assault approach that I'm more favourable towards. I don't mind it if the game wants to restrict or make certain things more difficult, even exceedingly so if you decide to stay longer than 40 minutes, I just want the ability to do so.

[Æɴɪsᴏ]

I think the timer is fine.

[Hand's Hermit Permit]

Originally posted by fungus:

Originally posted by Hand's Hermit Permit:

In just about every game with a timer, there's always a contingent of players that hate the timer.

But you gotta know.

The timer is for your own good. Pacing in a game is important. You're incentivized for speeding missions up, since time left is one of the factors that gets you paid more, and you're also incentivized to take the whole 40 minutes and fight every nest and objective. We can choose which to do, or get stuck in the firefight for 40 minutes.

I don't know what you're like, maybe you really would do more than 1 or 2 missions where you're just stuck in a firefight for 4 hours, but you'd be in a small, small minority there. I'm willing to bet that most people that say they don't want a timer would get bored of the game anyway and stop playing the game saying it's all samey, so literally the timer is to our benefit.

Eradicate/defense missions have you doing nothing but fighting bugs. I recommend just spamming those if you just want to fight things all day and not stealth.

Maybe. I see where you're coming from, but politely disagree.

The first game had no such timer, but I never felt the need to stay in a mission for longer after picking up a few samples and completing objectives, because spawns would continually ramp up the longer you stayed. It was difficult and steered you in a certain direction, but didn't outright force you to near exclusively play hit & run like helldivers 2 does. In fact, to me, the game starts feeling a little stale because of the timer, not the other way around, because you can either stealth or play hit and run, but not really go fully loud unless you split up as a team and try to have one group take all the aggro.

You said pacing is important and I agree, but I feel it goes in the opposite direction. On difficulty 7-9, it feels like staying in one fight for longer than 5-ish minutes will result in you either having to rush towards the end of the mission to clean up the map, or skip some objectives, and I really don't like that. I think it'd be more engaging if the team had to make a decision - leave now with the main objective done, or risk not extracting but take in more rewards and fun by clearing out a few remaining outposts.

Again, to emphasise, I know why it exists, and I don't want the timer entirely gone, but rather reworked, just so that way the game allows for a selection of wider strategies to be employed, such as a frontal assault approach that I'm more favourable towards. I don't mind it if the game wants to restrict or make certain things more difficult, even exceedingly so if you decide to stay longer than 40 minutes, I just want the ability to do so.

You're describing the soft and hard timers. This game does have a soft timer, because the patrols do get worse the longer you wait, it's just not very pronounced. Where it gets really difficult is once the main objective is complete to give your evac a bigger sense of urgency.

Spelunky operates with only a soft timer, and it operates in 2 phases. First a ghost comes at you slowly if you wait too long and if you touch it it instantly kills you. It's very doable to avoid however since it's slow. In Spelunky 2 they supercharged it. After a while of evading the ghost, it goes into phase 2 where it splits into two smaller ghosts that are faster and move at different speeds so evading it becomes much harder.

The forums for these games is just people endlessly ♥♥♥♥♥ ing about the ghost. They hate it. However, the playstyle enabled by not having it is guaranteed to cause people to get bored with the game. The game has treasure and you can spend hours mining all the coins and gold on a map, and the ghost is there to get you to hurry the hell up and keep the game on a more interesting pace.

So a very hated soft timer is there, but it's really to the game's benefit since it disables playstyles that will inherently be more grindy and nonsensical.

Now this game has a hard and soft timer, and I say that's to its benefit since there's no confusion on how long someone is able to take. If there were only the soft timer that gets impossible at 1+ hour through the mission, people would have having invested so long into a mission just to die when they might not have even clearly understood that spawns get worse and they should have just hurried up. It doesn't really matter if you state that in a tip or the tutorial, if people don't see a timer they'll assume playing hours in a single mission is entirely valid and just be frustrated when it doesn't work for them. The timer completely removes the guesswork and makes sense. So I don't think it needs a change.

[fungus]

Originally posted by Hand's Hermit Permit:

Originally posted by fungus:

Maybe. I see where you're coming from, but politely disagree.

The first game had no such timer, but I never felt the need to stay in a mission for longer after picking up a few samples and completing objectives, because spawns would continually ramp up the longer you stayed. It was difficult and steered you in a certain direction, but didn't outright force you to near exclusively play hit & run like helldivers 2 does. In fact, to me, the game starts feeling a little stale because of the timer, not the other way around, because you can either stealth or play hit and run, but not really go fully loud unless you split up as a team and try to have one group take all the aggro.

You said pacing is important and I agree, but I feel it goes in the opposite direction. On difficulty 7-9, it feels like staying in one fight for longer than 5-ish minutes will result in you either having to rush towards the end of the mission to clean up the map, or skip some objectives, and I really don't like that. I think it'd be more engaging if the team had to make a decision - leave now with the main objective done, or risk not extracting but take in more rewards and fun by clearing out a few remaining outposts.

Again, to emphasise, I know why it exists, and I don't want the timer entirely gone, but rather reworked, just so that way the game allows for a selection of wider strategies to be employed, such as a frontal assault approach that I'm more favourable towards. I don't mind it if the game wants to restrict or make certain things more difficult, even exceedingly so if you decide to stay longer than 40 minutes, I just want the ability to do so.

You're describing the soft and hard timers. This game does have a soft timer, because the patrols do get worse the longer you wait, it's just not very pronounced. Where it gets really difficult is once the main objective is complete to give your evac a bigger sense of urgency.

Spelunky operates with only a soft timer, and it operates in 2 phases. First a ghost comes at you slowly if you wait too long and if you touch it it instantly kills you. It's very doable to avoid however since it's slow. In Spelunky 2 they supercharged it. After a while of evading the ghost, it goes into phase 2 where it splits into two smaller ghosts that are faster and move at different speeds so evading it becomes much harder.

The forums for these games is just people endlessly ♥♥♥♥♥ ing about the ghost. They hate it. However, the playstyle enabled by not having it is guaranteed to cause people to get bored with the game. The game has treasure and you can spend hours mining all the coins and gold on a map, and the ghost is there to get you to hurry the hell up and keep the game on a more interesting pace.

So a very hated soft timer is there, but it's really to the game's benefit since it disables playstyles that will inherently be more grindy and nonsensical.

Now this game has a hard and soft timer, and I say that's to its benefit since there's no confusion on how long someone is able to take. If there were only the soft timer that gets impossible at 1+ hour through the mission, people would have having invested so long into a mission just to die when they might not have even clearly understood that spawns get worse and they should have just hurried up. It doesn't really matter if you state that in a tip or the tutorial, if people don't see a timer they'll assume playing hours in a single mission is entirely valid and just be frustrated when it doesn't work for them. The timer completely removes the guesswork and makes sense. So I don't think it needs a change.

I thought the patrols only increased after certain things are fulfilled, and the amount of time spent in mission didn't actually affect anything.

Anyways, I don't quite think you get what I'm saying. the timer is fine, my problem is it's effects, not the timer itself

As for avoiding confusion, that's easy; I am not suggesting the removal of the timer, just making it so that it doesn't kick you out of the mission. They can keep the hud element, the voicelines, pretty much everything, and just make it not instantly call extraction and completely disable all stratagems, and have extract auto leave after 20 seconds of landing.

You talked about spelunky's soft timer, and how that goes to it's benefit, and that's pretty much what I'm asking for. They can make the game really hard after that 40 minute timer at the top right says 0, call like 5 dropships on you every 2 minutes, increase cooldowns, whatever, ♥♥♥♥ my ♥♥♥♥ up. I just want the chance to finish up the rest of my objectives before I leave, so I can fully enjoy the game at my own pace instead of having to avoid the best part of the game, the combat.

One more time to make sure we understand now, the timer is not the issue, they can keep the timer, I never said remove the timer, keep the funny number at the top right, just make it not end the mission immediately. That's all I want.

[darkblade]

If you need 40min to do your mission, then you are too slow.

You dont need to collect everything, i think 70-80% is good enough, and talk with the other who does what, a good way to do this is to split up in 2 teams, 1 team does the main objectiv, the other does side stuff

And in blitz missions you only should focus on the main objectiv and get out asap

[fungus]

Originally posted by darkblade:

If you need 40min to do your mission, then you are too slow.

You dont need to collect everything, i think 70-80% is good enough, and talk with the other who does what, a good way to do this is to split up in 2 teams, 1 team does the main objectiv, the other does side stuff

And in blitz missions you only should focus on the main objectiv and get out asap

it's not a question of difficulty, it's a question of playstyle. Me and my squad(s) can clear 8-9 perfectly fine, it's just that well, we prefer to play a bit slower and enjoy the game's combat a bit more. I don't see the problem with giving a little more wiggle room to people that want to enjoy the combat, especially if the best strategy remains to be hit and run, it just opens up a few more options for playstyles. The issue is that we feel punished for playing the game in a way we enjoy, not so much the fact that it's too hard or we can't clear main objective. What I suggest is a change to make it possible to play the game in a way that me and my friends enjoy, without making it the only or most optimal way, just something you can choose to do instead of lowkey being forced to only hit & run.

Blitz mission funnily enough I'm perfectly okay with, because the entire point of those missions is to play hard and fast, beat em quick, they're designed from the ground up to be that way, and it's a nice break from regular missions. If I don't want to play that way, I don't boot up an op with a blitz mission, simple as. Not so simple with normal missions, as I feel there's a lot of incentive to not rush with a map that's filled to the brim with side objectives and enemy bases to clear that are imo, the most fun part of the game, not to mention PoI's with collectables and supplies, but a hard restriction on how long you're allowed to stay in mission.

As I've said plenty before in this thread, I actually still want the timer to exist and make the game considerably more difficult after it reaches 0, I don't want my way of playing to become the most optimal because I know a lot of people prefer to play hard and fast, all I am asking for is the option to enjoy the game in a way that almost can.