Survival Mode too short and difficult to be fun

[briantherunner]

I have beat the campaign on normal and hard (2 playthroughs) and really enjoyed it. I thought I would play around with the survival mode and haven't been able to win any of the preset difficulties (easy, normal, or hard - didn't try brutal).

First of all, I cannot notice any significant differences between the difficulty settings since the waves all seem to spawn around 6-7 minutes apart and the over time is 1:30 overall. The problem is that the enemy waves scale up very quickly to the equivalent of endgame campaign levels which by then I have all research unlocked and all resources maxed so it is not difficult to build amazing defenses, the problem with survival is I don't have the equipment or towers to provide enough dps to kill the enemy waves quick enough without them destroying a major portion of my walls/mining areas. By the time I rebuild I get attacked again. Additionally, the nest/large monster events spawn in between those constant waves, which is unattended will cause serious damage over time. The final wave spawns what seems to be worse than the campaign end, which takes place after 20 hours of gameplay rather than 1.5 hours.

The campaign is a well balanced and fun mode where you explore the various biomes and have time to build up resources to combat increasing threats. Survival simply is not balanced in any way and seems only there to punish the player. You really don't have time to build up a proper functioning base due to the constant threats and always being behind the difficulty curve. If you insist on keeping it as short as it is, then you cannot scale the enemies up as quickly or have waves as large as exist. It also seems other enemies can randomly respawn inside my base, which I never found happened in the campaign. The difficulties should be more spread out such that easy should be easy and not the equivalent of hard/brutal in the campaign. I watched the developer stream, and even the devs cannot beat survival mode. I just don't understand the point of a mode that doesn't really let you play the game effectively as it was designed as being fun. When I look at the custom difficulty options or sandbox I see there was a lot of variance in settings available, yet the preset difficulties seem to put them all too difficult. I wish there was more replayability to this game, but it seems the campaign is the only real way to play the game.

[voidreaver]

Hey! We're releasing a huge update today that contains a major Survival Mode overhaul. It addresses most of the issues you mentioned in your post. While it won't be Zen walk in the park, you will have the firepower necessary to beat it for sure. Give it a try after 7PM CEST.

[nYu]

thank you devs ! take my money please !! i cannot wait any longer

[Necanthrope]

Survival takes about an hour and a half and is non-stop action. You have to be increasingly more efficient in how you play as you raise the difficulty. It's all about time management, smart / efficient build orders, smart / efficient research orders and good tactical play during combat.

All your really saying at this point is your not doing the above. Instead your comparing the campaign with its near limitless time to a mode with finite time. You do not need to research the entire tech tree to win in fact its not even possible. You just have to play at a higher level than the campaign demands.

A friend of mine streams the survival mode. He never even completed the campaign as it was too easy (this may have changed as it was back at release). He only plays max difficulty survival with chat voting enabled. We sabotage him with the worst events we can the entire way. Despite this he typically at least reaches the final wave. He's had a decent amount of wins as well.

So at least imo your entirely wrong about the mode. It's the most challenging way to play the game. It also requires far more skill than the campaign. Finally it provides a shorter burst of intense gameplay. This make the win when it happens much more satisfying.

If anything I joked with my friends that it needs a new higher difficulty. Mainly because my streaming friend was achieving a few too many wins lol.

[Necanthrope]

@voidreaver

What issues specifically are being addressed? The mode is already beatable on its highest difficulty with decent regularity assuming voting doesn't make all the events very negative.

I'm a bit concerned the mode is being nerfed. A recent patch definitely messed with the random events. The more hard hitting negative events like stronger attack, boss attack, new objective tend to appear as options 0-1 times in a whole run. It got to a point where my friend turned off positive events and the voting options where a constantly recycling of the same weak events with no uptick for the stronger ones.

He actually stopped streaming the game for the last week waiting on the dlc release and hopefully a fix. Simply put the mode wasn't much fun with the strongly negative options removed from the pool.

[Omanaman]

The company is too easy even at the maximum level of difficulty. The main thing is to make the first trip to the swamp area, and there you can rebuild the base and wait for the study of many important things that make the passage of the company as easy as possible, since at this stage of the game and in the first area there are absolutely no attacks on the base. That allows you to build up all the plantations without worrying about the defense. Then you can visit other areas without returning to the main base. As a result, we get a lot of new technologies and resources without the risk of losing the main base.

[briantherunner]

Originally posted by voidreaver:

Hey! We're releasing a huge update today that contains a major Survival Mode overhaul. It addresses most of the issues you mentioned in your post. While it won't be Zen walk in the park, you will have the firepower necessary to beat it for sure. Give it a try after 7PM CEST.

Tried it again post dlc launch and I do feel it is a big improvement since you cut out a lot of the campaign research that has no place in survival, gave better starting equipment and with the mass repair and upgrade buttons it is quicker to do batch tasks. I appreciate that you did address a lot of the feedback. I am still finding it difficult to get all of the resources since I think the game intended for you to gather the crafting only resources across the various biomes in the campaign and it seems unless you get lucky with the geoscanner you don't really get the 4 crystal type resources you need for tier 3 & tier 4 crafting (i.e. hazemite).

I agree that the campaign difficulty was also too easy so glad that has been addressed as well. With infinite time and multiple outposts it becomes very easy to snowball with resources to the point you always have max resources in the campaign.

[briantherunner]

Originally posted by Necanthrope:

Survival takes about an hour and a half and is non-stop action. You have to be increasingly more efficient in how you play as you raise the difficulty. It's all about time management, smart / efficient build orders, smart / efficient research orders and good tactical play during combat.

All your really saying at this point is your not doing the above. Instead your comparing the campaign with its near limitless time to a mode with finite time. You do not need to research the entire tech tree to win in fact its not even possible. You just have to play at a higher level than the campaign demands.

A friend of mine streams the survival mode. He never even completed the campaign as it was too easy (this may have changed as it was back at release). He only plays max difficulty survival with chat voting enabled. We sabotage him with the worst events we can the entire way. Despite this he typically at least reaches the final wave. He's had a decent amount of wins as well.

So at least imo your entirely wrong about the mode. It's the most challenging way to play the game. It also requires far more skill than the campaign. Finally it provides a shorter burst of intense gameplay. This make the win when it happens much more satisfying.

If anything I joked with my friends that it needs a new higher difficulty. Mainly because my streaming friend was achieving a few too many wins lol.

I agree it is non-stop action, but I feel like survival requires a very strict strategy that ignores the majority of the weapons and buildings to the point where it ends up becoming the same research path and build order to maximize defenses and dps. Therefore I don't find it as interesting as the campaign since you really are only playing a small portion of the game that is very repetitive. Glad you streaming friend is enjoying it and doing well, but it doesn't mean it actually is a fun or worthwhile mode for the majority of the playerbase just because one person has it figured out. The AI in this game is quite predictable, so I am sure I could figure out the best strategy, but I don't find it a fun or worthwhile challenge.