Finding Friends and Middle Ground – Gripes with Nightwave

It’s only been a week since Nightwave was released and already there are patterns being made. And with any new thing, there are always gripes and problems and complaints. Nightwave certainly has a few of them and it’s mostly to do with the challenges.

The first week’s set of challenges were all pretty easy. Sure, about half my clan didn’t have any filled Ayatan Sculptures so they needed to run around and find some more to fill (that’s where the Ayatan sortie luck comes in handy) but all the challenges were doable for an end-game player. For a lower level player who has done all the main story quests, the challenges were all doable aside from the Capture or Kill a Hydralyst, because that’s a damn hard fight if you don’t have the equipment for it. But even then, you can easily be carried through most of the first week’s missions.

Week 2 flipped that on its head.

Before I continue, I should point out that I’ve done every challenge so far. I had a little help with the Hydralyst one (because I can’t solo that yet and it gives me a headache) but the others were all doable for me. I say “for me” because I’m pretty much an end-game player who has pretty much everything. But most people aren’t end-game players and have limited Warframe and weapon pools.

Anyway, back to week 2. Week 2’s tasks were all a lot longer than the week 1 tasks. For example, one of the tasks was “Do 10 Syndicate missions.” Most normal players only have 3 Syndicates that they are friends with, which means they can only do 9 missions a day. I’m friendly with 4 Syndicates so I managed to knock this one out in about an hour. Another challenge was “Make 10 Perfect Conservation Captures” out on the Orb Vallis, which is piss easy if you have someone like Ivara or Loki but can be genuinely quite tricky if you don’t know where the animals can spawn or how wind affects being detected.

But then there’s the elite missions. Week 1’s elite missions included doing a sortie with a friend, killing 100 Eximus units and capturing the aforementioned Hydralyst. This week’s elite missions are: do 3 waves of Elite Sanctuary Onslaught, Do 60 minutes of Kuva Survival without using a Life Support Capsule and Survive 60 Minutes in a Survivial Mission with a friend.

I should point out, those 60 minutes, that’s in one sitting. Sure, you can halve the time by doing the Kuva Survival task and the Survival with friend task at the same time, but that’s still a whole hour dedicated to a single mission. I mean, I could totally do a 60 minute survival. I’ve done it before and I’ve easily done 40 minutes on my own, but that’s a big ask for a lot of players. It’s a challenge but it’s also a long, boring one that, if you fuck it up, you have to start it again from scratch.

You see, doing a sortie with a friend can be done in about 20-30 minutes with ease. Capturing a Hydralyst takes 45 minutes at most (after which the Hydralyst will run away when the sun rises). But 60 minutes doing the same thing over and over is pretty damn boring after a while. Sure, you get Kuva (I got 8200 Kuva, meaning my Smeeta ACTUALLY GAVE ME THE BUFF) but it’s still boring and slow and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to speed things up. Which sucks in a game that is mostly about speed and efficiency.

What makes things worse is that there’s room for unplanned failure. If you lag out during a Hydralyst capture, that sucks but the average squad only takes about 20 minutes and you still keep any rewards you picked up. If you lose connection half way through a 60 minute survival, you lose everything. Through no fault of your own.

There’s also been a lot of complaints about having to do tasks with friends. While it does suck for completely solo players, the problem could be alleviated really easily by allowing people in an Alliance to count towards these missions. That means groups of solo clans can work together while still being technically solo. But the thing is, you don’t even need a friend to do the task, you just add someone as a friend at the start of the mission then remove them as a friend when you’re done.

That being said, the idea to let Clem Specters count as friends is amusing, but considering how indestructible Clem is, I’m wondering if that’s too much. Maybe Clem should only count if your Clem Clone makes it to the end of the mission in one piece or something.

I get that these missions are supposed to be challenges, but they need to be fun challenges. Getting 20 kills while sliding? Pretty fun. Killing 100 enemies with fire damage? Makes you swap things up. Three waves of Sanctuary Onslaught? Sure, haven’t done that in a while. 9 Invasions? Well, I guess we could always use more Fieldrons and Detonite Injectors. Doing a sortie with a friend isn’t really a challenge but it’s fun having someone to play with for a change. But things like 60 minute survivals are really, really slow and tedious and I expect that we’ll see similar changes like that in the future.

“But you can just skip the ones you don’t like! You don’t need 100% completion for the rewards!”

Yeah, but it sucks giving up on a whole level’s worth of standing simply because you can’t play for an hour. Giving up on tasks, especially weekly elite ones, is a huge setback to actually leveling up.

Here’s hoping week 3’s missions aren’t as boring…