Outposts Not Getting Raided Unless They're Champion: Guarantee Raids before Deactivation

NotJared
NotJared Member Posts: 311

Generally speaking, my outposts have been struggling to get raids unless they're selected to become a Champion outpost.

I spent six hours building my first Outpost since launch a couple days ago, set it to active, and by the time it had depleted, I had only gotten 2 raids, and one of them didn't even give me any accolades.

I reactivated an outpost I had slapped together in 30 minutes during the open beta that was selected to become a Champion outpost, and by contrast this Champion outpost reached 66 raids and 1,001 kills. Both were rated Brutal.

It's excruciatingly demotivating to continue building outposts, when hours upon hours can be spent making an outpost only for nobody to raid it. It feels like Builders are getting punished for Raiders not clicking on their Outpost at the random level selection menu.

I understand that Synthite can be spent to reactivate the outposts, but it feels super bad to activate an outpost only for it to deplete completely and an amount of players so small play it that it's impossible to even hope to reach a new prestige level in a single activation of the base.

(Also, it's quite frankly annoyingly tedious to have to sit on a minute-long-or-longer loading screen to open every level before I can Activate it or Refill it even if I don't make any changes to it, so I would prefer to minimize the amount of times I have to do this.)

I have a couple of proposed solutions for this, but whether or not these are the implementation I fear Builder players are going to become demotivated very quickly from playing the game unless something is changed to address this:

1) Don't Extract Genmat Until After the First Raid

I think this solution could generally be a safe change, but I think players activating outposts for passive income will generally be upset by a lack of immediate passive income, which is understandable.

2) Scale the cost of Outpost Reactivation Inversely With the Number of Raids it Gets

I'll admit I'm not sure if there's a logic to Outpost Refill pricing right now, but it generally makes sense to me that if an outpost doesn't get raided, the Builder shouldn't have to pay a fee to compensate for Raiders' unwillingness to click on their outpost to begin with. This feels punishing for the Builder who has just lost to RNG. However, if an Outpost is getting raids but not getting kills, this should be an indication to the Builder that they should go back in and change what's not working, and if after getting more raids they don't get enough Prestige points then it would be fair to price reactivation higher. I think this proposal would satisfy immediate passive income concerns, but at the cost of not necessarily guaranteeing raids on an outpost


I'm sure there's a ton of other factors to consider if this aspect of the game is to be rebalanced, but if anything should be taken away from this post, I think something must be changed to guarantee at least 1 raid before an outpost is deactivated or some method that makes Raiders' Decisions on what levels they do (or don't) play feel less punishing against Builders, or else Builders may begin to become demotivated from continuing to build.

Comments

  • NotJared
    NotJared Member Posts: 311
    edited April 2023

    Third proposal:

    Increase the minimum length of time an outpost can be active for. Give it more time to stay active and get raids than 12 hours to a single day, as even a day sometimes isn’t long enough to get enough raids (or even 1) to prestige unless you’re lucky.

    Preferably, I’d like to see this implemented no matter what else changes. The current activation times feel too short, especially for players with active schedules outside of gaming. Spending hours to a whole day crafting a level that’s only active for maybe 12 hours and doesn’t get played more than once feels bad; it would feel more reassuring to be able to not stress about opening the game tomorrow to zero raids and an empty base, or to not have to worry about deactivating my bases at night just to make sure they don’t die overnight when the active player count is the lowest.

    Post edited by NotJared on
  • chezpizza
    chezpizza Member Posts: 120

    Or instead of resetting prestige level (which encourages killbox building), Base goes on into cooldown for 12 hours. You can spend synth to skip the cooldown or reactivate after cooldown to be raided again, prestige also skips cooldown.

    Outpost at p10, have a cooldown of 72 hours and cost lots of resources to reduce timer.

    I hate the fact I have to retire my p10 outposts soon (my beta babies). I mean the game is just started and there is no way folks to discover these outposts in social raids unless I post them on discord.

  • NotJared
    NotJared Member Posts: 311

    Update with the new formula changes:

    The new update that improves visibility of bases without raids has improved the raid-rate of my lower-prestige bases.

    I'm now struggling to get past Prestige 4. Especially so if the raiders decide my hard work designing the level doesn't deserve any accolades.

    I will get one raid when my base first goes online, and then not usually any others beyond that. Which brings back the same issue as before.

    32 kills on 1 raid at P4 garners me 100 Prestige points, which is spectacularly well-performing. But no matter what I do, I can't reach prestige 5 at this rather dismally slow rate. At the end of the day, I'm still getting punished for reasons beyond my control.

    I find myself wishing that bases would stay online indefinitely and only deplete resources whenever someone raids the base, that way I'm directly rewarded at a 1:1 ratio with how well my base is performing, and not being punished for raiders' unwillingness to even click my base's thumbnail on the random selection of 15 to 18 bases per raid - if they even see it.

    Either that, or a way to Refill my GenMat and activate my base from the Sanctuary to make the process of reviving the bases easier and less tedious, making this much less of an inconvenience.


  • PinkiePie
    PinkiePie Member Posts: 14

    Brutal outposts are no fun to play. He generally uses all mechanisms that are considered to be unfair : Killboxe, Seconde wave cube, Kill the collector for make one HUG labyrinthe.

    Out of 10 brutals, if 1 is really funny it's a miracle. If with the boost, I see that your 2 most used traps are: corrosive cube, plasma tower/ flame launcher never I will never click on your outpost. Same waye if i see huge distance

  • Seraphor
    Seraphor Member Posts: 8,706

    Yep, in addition to low raid numbers, Brutal bases get raided far less than Normal or Dangerous ones (though keep in mind Normals are full of speedrunners trying to rank up).

    Looks like you have a tendency for massive Brutal outposts. You're better off building smaller outposts and keeping them in the Dangerous category.

    That's not a guarantee though, you'll probably still only see about 5 raids per cycle, which still isn't enough if you happen to wipe out at a high prestige.

  • NotJared
    NotJared Member Posts: 311

    Brutals being no fun is a matter of opinion. There's plenty of fun stuff that's not a killbox!

    They're difficult at first, but Nine times out of Ten a killbox is negated completely useless by just grappling through the whole room and throwing down a Barrier+Pheonix Pod at the GenMat, then doing the same thing on your way out. Combined with a fully upgraded Ironside suit and Boltshot + Plasma Bow or Arc Barrier, you're nearly unstoppable.

    Tailor your loadout to what's in the base, and you'll be able to learn how to overcome anything!

    The solution to Brutals not earning enough prestige points to be upgraded should not be "make easier bases", I should be able to have a chance to prestige my base over one cycle.

  • Seraphor
    Seraphor Member Posts: 8,706

    It's not that Brutals don't earn as much prestige, they earn just as much prestige as the other difficulties.

    Brutals don't get raided. It's a playerbase issue. People don't like raiding Brutal outposts.

  • PinkiePie
    PinkiePie Member Posts: 14

    I respect your point of view but clearly this is not the case for the majority of players. If players don't click on brutal it's for a reason. Seeing a piston army and sentries shooting everywhere when I only have 3 ammo doesn't make me want to play this kind of base.

  • MadMoeZel
    MadMoeZel Member Posts: 685

    you're right. it shouldn't be. but it IS. now, what are you going to do about it? adapt? or cry?

  • MadMoeZel
    MadMoeZel Member Posts: 685

    they're only considered unfair by those without the skill to beat them.

  • PinkiePie
    PinkiePie Member Posts: 14

    People don't always play video games for skill but for fun. It's a community game, she chooses what she wants to play or not. Then, if your pleasure is the brutal base, there are discords dedicated to that to have social raids. You can't force the community to play bases they don't want to play