Event spawn patterns are broken

[zircuits]

Issue Type (Required):

Enemy Mechanics

Issue Description (Required):

Event spawns bounce between sporadic bumbles of poxwalkers and tiny groups of elites. They are also sometimes really slow to get spawns out, or have really awkward pathing/long walkways to get to anywhere threatening. Combine this with drop downs and climb ups in some of these places and it makes it extremely easy to camp out groups of enemies from continuous spawn points and completely stop spawns in other places. This heavily trivializes events and makes a lot of them the dullest part of the experience.

The Pox Maelstroms are a major offender of this, as they rarely spawn enough enemies in the first place, but the low spawn rate combined with the innately low event spawns makes the whole pox gas traversal a joke, especially when there is a health stim every room. It also makes rushing objectives during events very easy.

Slow spawns have especially been a problem for Magistrati, where the boss can be consistently killed before the first elite wave even spawns, and creates an awkward long pause between the captain’s death and then the elite wave spawn, run towards the drop down, drop, recover, then finally do something.

There’s also special occasions like Comms Plex mid event, where if you get a wave of gunners, you can stall them by constantly poking your head out into the entry room to trigger their firing animation. Scab Gunners especially lock into place. This prevents any shooters spawning in the main room as well, since their spawn trigger is tied to the gunner/shotgunner spawn, which only triggers after the previous elite wave was cleared.

These clips highlight the worse of these problems on Auric Damnation. Some events will have no elites beyond a single trigger near the end. Others will have little to no horde. Some will be only horde, and then, as it goes to the next stage, switch completely to elites. There are also several moments where there is a huge lull period where there is nothing but stragglers or small groups of enemies slowly crossing the map, with maybe a few specials coming in. In the case of Archivum Sycorax, There are so few spawns in such few places consistently that it’s very easy to just outpace them as the huge areas you have to run through to complete the objectives are completely empty of enemies.

I may possibly add more clips later on in the future covering either more events or more of the same events but broken in more ways.

Steps to Reproduce (Required):

1. Play any mission
2. get to an event
3. witness the spawns
4. Cry

[PC] Do You Use Mods? (Optional):

Yes, but I haven’t tried disabling them

Reproduction Rate (Required):

Often (<75%)

Platform (Required):

PC - Steam

Upload Supporting Evidence (Optional):

[Kambrin]

Not that I disagree but this is unlikely to get changed. Only so many enemies xbox can handle

[zircuits]

Hordes outside of events can spawn well over 100 entities including elites. In a lot of these clips there are barely over 10 on screen at any given moment. There’s also several moments in which nothing is on screen. This isn’t about how many enemies the xbox console can handle before giving up, this is about how these events are randomly empty.

Smelter Complex’s final event, for example, has preset waves of over a hundred groaners with a mix of small rager waves coming from several directions. Meanwhile a lot of these clips, where you can see how many I kill in quick succession, there are barely anymore than 15 near one another.In the clip of Comms Plex’s final event there is barely more than 6 enemies on screen at a given time. Some of these clips also feature times where there are plentiful hordes, but no elites whatsoever, or barely any horde, but a group of elites spawn, or worse, neither are happening, and instead you get a trickle of loose enemies. I don’t think this is xbox’s fault. This is either a huge flaw with the spawning system, or a poor balance decision.

Some map events are consistently okay for their elite spawns (comms plex mid event does work consistently, it can just be cheesed to prevent further spawning due to their poor spawn location) while others consistently fail (excise vault mid event and archivum syckorax events will often times fail to spawn anything at all, or trickle small groups in between doors that are very far away from the objectives).

[zircuits]

To make my point further, that the spawns are not related to console limitations, here is the final event of Mercantile. (minor epilepsy warning, big flashing number that takes up top of screen)

This event is sorta functional, I noticed there were fewer specials than in other events when they had little spawns, but I have no certainty that the two are connected or if one effects the other. Instead I want to focus on the fact that I am able to kill, in quick succession, over 200 enemies. In every other clip I have submitted, I do not believe I ever reach 20 kills in quick succession more than maybe once. At the very least, this should be the standard of most events (even though there is a serious lack of elites for the whole combo duration).

[zircuits]

To show that these events are just inconsistent, here are 2 functional events, where there is horde and elite spawns occurring.

This Comms Plex Event has elite spawns as well as hordes appearing.

This Silo Cluster, compared to the last clip I featured, has a ranged elite wave spawned at the end of the bridge, then a large melee horde with mixed ragers. It’s plentiful.

These are the two that I found to appear functional. The rest of these clips I have noted what I feel is missing from them.

Plentiful Elite (Rager) Waves, but no horde presence.

You can count on one hand the amount of elites that appear.

Same as last, barely any elites whatsoever, no elite waves at all during event.

This is a case in which it starts out looking like a functional event, but devolves into trickle hordes and elite waves.

Series of large hordes but with no elite presence, then trickle hordes and elite waves, then, as the event comes to an end, there is a combination elite and horde wave finally.

There are trickle waves with a few elites and small hordes but besides specials nothing is happening.