Onslaught Change/Tweak Requests

[clueless]

Let me preface this by saying I have extensively played each map of Onslaught in a desperate hunt of Intel, so I have a decent amount of experience with the mode. Aside from 1-year exclusivity which is not negotiable, I think it's safe to say while the soul of Onslaught is there the gameplay could use some tweaking. For those that don't have it (read: probably everyone else), the way Onslaught works is you are on a MP map and part of it is a "safe zone" with a Dark Aether Anomaly at the center, and you fight a wave (or "Surge" as it is called) of enemies. After the Surge is complete, the Dark Aether Anomaly and the correlating safe zone move to another part of the map before beginning the next wave. Elites will spawn in every 3 Surges as a Boss Surge as opposed to spawning amidst a horde of zombies, so you will see them fairly often. Enemies drop loot, Elites drop loot and weapons, and you go until you die. So essentially, it's Warzone/BR but built for Zombies players.

 

The gameplay is simple since you are in the relatively small confines of MP maps. The map sizes don't allow room for Perk Machines or anything of the sort; you don't get points or salvage since all obtainable items come from drops including the weapons. It is quite literally shoot until you die. The map sizes also limits lobbies to a total of 2 players instead of the average 4. 

 

Main Enemies (Zombies & Plaguehounds) can drop ammo, grenades, armor and armor plates.

 

Elites (currently) will drop: A Max Ammo when splitting the Megaton into two, a Random Drop and at least 1 Weapon of varying rarity among random obtainable items including Support items on your first Megaton Split kill, and a Random Perk Drop and at least 1 Weapon of varying rarity among random obtainable items including Support items on the other Megaton Split.

 

Sounds good, right? Simple enough, as it should be. And it is truly fun! It's difficult, and I want it to stay difficult, but it definitely needs some adjustments.

 

1. Armor plates drop too frequently, when they can't be applied to base health. In most games I've played I've been bare naked in terms of health because you have a 1/6 chance of getting Juggernog as your first perk, and Base Armor does not drop often until higher rounds. I like that Armor is a rare item to obtain, but don't spawn Armor Plates in this mode if nobody has Armor when other items that have any kind of use in early rounds could be dropping instead. In Die Maschine this is not the case, as you can buy Armor using salvage instead of waiting for it to drop.

 

2. Weapon rarities are a BIT too random in this mode. I had killed 8 Elites in a few of my games and have still only gotten one weapon of the highest tier - and it was an unpacked RPG. Rarity of loot increases with Elites killed, but usually doesn't feel like the case as most of the time I've seen blue weapons and purple pistols with occasional desirable weapons such as LMGs or shotguns on later drops where you need to be dealing massive damage. Which leads into my third point:

 

3. As far as I've seen, there is no way to obtain Packed Weapons in Onslaught (although my highest Surge is 27, they may spawn later but I have no way of knowing). You will die painfully in high Surges or survive even more painfully. By Surge 24 I was unable to do damage to Elites with a purple LMG and orange RPG. 8 Elite kills in one game is the highest recorded milestone before surviving until dying, so high/max rarity weapons should be able to do enough damage to survive this Surge even if it takes a BIT of time, but not an excessive amount of time. Hopefully this can be changed by either adding a way to obtain Packed Weapons or adjusting enemy health/damage scaling to the point that Surge 24 becomes reasonable. Surges after can still get crazy after that last milestone, but at least make Surge 24 more attainable.

 

4. This is an issue overall but especially shines in Onslaught. Plaguehounds are WAY too OP. Between having a base attack that slows the target, the IX Tiger lunge, and heavily erratic attacks with little to no warnings, a bare naked health player will not be able to keep up with them on. (Plaguehounds begin spawning around Surge 7-9.)

 

5. Lastly, let us earn Aetherium Crystals by playing the mode. We are surviving hordes of undead just like in Die Maschine, maybe even more intensely with the possibility of not getting Juggernog or Armor until much later in the game when rare items start dropping more frequently, and should be getting even just 1 Crystal for every Elite Surge completed. 

[Intelligence Quotient]

Completely agree about these features and noticed similar things, a few I wanted tweaking were:

 

Let us keep earning Perks. Random Perks stop working after the 6th Elite Surge, even if you don't have 6 Perks due to downing.

 

Very occasionally, the Megatons don't even drop weapons, which is baffling to me, they should guarantee drop a random weapon of random rarity that perhaps scales.

 

Exfil. I wanna stop at some point without dying. Maybe every Elite Round the Exfil window opens and beating the Elite Round lets you leave.

 

And lastly, just make these Survival maps too. I wanna just play Zombies on Miami, just throw in a Mystery Box, Wunderfizz, PaP, Arsenal, Exfil, Crafting Table and it'd be perfect.

[clueless]

Well, here we are months later and they've actually fixed most of these issues in the most recent update! 

 

Chalices are physical items that can drop from Elites, and Pack your weapon based on what Chalice it is (Bronze = Pack I, Silver = Pack II, Gold = Pack III).

 

Aether Tool (basically the Dark Aether Wrench model) can also drop from Elites, and upgrade your weapon Rarity!

 

A while back they addressed the armor plate issue overall so that's also cleared.

 

Onslaught feels more like "classic" survival now, and even moreso for Onslaught Containment which I hope becomes a permanent addition. 

 

If I were to say anything now, the Elite waves need to be tweaked to be more abundant/harder in higher waves, because once you're able to deal with your 10th Elite Wave, you can deal with an infinite amount of them until you give up and choose to die. Even if it's as simple as adding more Elites to each wave, gradually making the amount of Elites spawn ridiculous (which we already know is possible due to Outbreak) would allow a sense of danger to remain. If not, no big deal, it's still MUCH more fun now with the recent changes and I feel I'll be playing it a lot more now.