Teamwork In Relation To Gameplay Incentive: Some Concerns

[Coratha]

First off, I appologize in advance for the wall of text. I'll try to split it up so it's easier on the eyes.

Second, I wanted to say that this is not meant to bash the devs. I'm loving Warframe so far, and I think DE has done a fantastic job with it so far. But after playing the game for some weeks now, and watching the Developer QA Livestream (or the recording, rather), I have some concerns about DE's design direction that I was hoping to get a second opinion (and maybe even a developer response) about.

...

While watching the QA, I took a great interest in the segment about adding ingame incentives for teamwork, as I feel that is something the game could use more of as it grows in development. However, my concern stems from the sort of things the developers were considering adding to this. Several elements were talked about, but two were focused on the most; one already in the game, one that was soon to be: 1) The revival system, whereby teammates can revive a downed ally. 2) A status effect that would later be revealed as the "Electrocution" that has since been added, where a mob tosses a sticky shock grenade of sorts that can latch onto a player, and must be shot or sliced off by an ally to remove the effect early. The devs mentioned how they liked these sort of "gameplay incentives", and would continue to add more, similar features as time went on.

In theory these ideas are sound, and I by no means mean to say they should be removed from the game. They feel right thematically, and have their places in the game. My concern is that in practice they aren't always as effective as "teamwork incentives" as they are griefing tools. I can't count how many times I've been partied up with people who simply leave me to die. I know sometimes you're under too heavy fire to put yourself out of position, that's not what I mean. I don't want anyone dying themselves trying to save me. But some of the supposed "speed runners" (which the devs also said they liked to see in the game), or teammates who flat-out don't care won't give it a single thought. One false move that gets you caught and downed, or stuck with a shock grenade, and they'll be miles ahead before you can even type "Help me, please!". Even something like the double-locked doors that require two people to open can be griefed in the opposite respect if your teammate(s) sit there refusing to open them (doesn't happen nearly as often, but still concerning).

I know that this might be a little bit more of a community issue than a developer issue, but the devs still have a part in it. Even if the tools (ingame incentives, in this case) so to speak are not inherently bad, building more like them to put in the hands of those who would misuse them still has me concerned. When I hear the devs saying that they like the incentives they've added so far, and they intend to add more of a similar vein, I can't help but cringe and think "How many more ways are there going to be for "allies" to screw me over and humiliate me by the time the game goes live?" Once again, please don't think that I hate the game/devs/etc. I'm posting this here because I DO love the game so much so far, I'd just hate to see the game to take a wrong turn down the line.

Can anyone post some insight/advice/assurance/etc to put my mind at ease on the matter? Is this something the devs are at least considering going forward? Has anyone else even run into these situations?

TL;DR: I do think the game needs more incentives to stick together as a team, I'm just not sure the ones currently in the game work so well, and I'm concerned about the devs adding "more like them". Opinions?

Edited March 15, 2013 by Xanesh

[Kadishia]

Yeah right now, there are vastly speed runners and hardly any looters.

They do need to throw more teamwork but there a counter problem as well. More teamwork requires

your teammate to be more helpful or not. You possible might get stuck in a area.

To keep your mind at ease. Find a active ease clan or find some good friends to help you out instead of going into a random

room and forced to be aborted.

[Buddlschlumpf]

I think one part of the problem is that people don't care about their teammates because they don't need them. They are more of a burden as long as you can finish the game all by yourself. There are serveral ways to address this.

One is to add enough features to co-op games until running off on your own means certain death, no matter how high leveled and well equipped you are. As long as you don't need your teammates in coop games, many people won't care about them.

Another one is to scale the difficulty of the game more with an increasing number of players. Right now singleplayer might be challenging until you reach a certain level, two player games are easy, anything above that is rofl-stomping.

Edited March 15, 2013 by Buddlschlumpf

[Brasten]

You missed a rather large dust up on the those very same electroball Neuro Seekers. The long and the short is they are a very controversial subject, where many people (including myself) have expressed dissatisfaction over it. Backlash was rather heated.

No, I don't agree that forced team play work in theory. It has never worked in any Co-Op game. Either people want to work together or they won't. If you force it you just end up with unhappy people. I come from a rather heavy Pen and Paper RPG background and one of the biggest unspoken rules is as a organizer (Game Master) you cannot force players to cooperate. It never works and just makes people mad.

The very idea of forcing cooperation through mechanics like stunlock are exactly the kind of thing GM in the P&P RPG scene know better then to do. The more sucessful ways are to incitivise teamwork.

Since the main target is to curtail speed running, teamwork should offer more reward then speed running. This means needing to do additional backened maths that give more XP, loot drops, etc for players being near each other. If 3 out of 4 people are not speed running, those 3 people should get more reward out of play then the speed runner. The system doesn't work that way currently.

Most suggestions I see are about punishment, punish the non-teamplayers! Slow them! Burn them! Make them regret running head! And on and on. Punishments don't work, they just make people mad. Give people a reward or bonus for playing a certain way that is more 'profitable' then another and they'll move to the style of play where they get the most bang for their time.

The other point is to make that reward known to new players. Don't hide it away.

[Coratha]

@M4sterofp4in

I know, and I figured this would come up at least once. Premade groups are always a plus, but my issues are that A) I literally only have one friend who plays Warframe (the downside of closed beta :( ). B) Game-joining is still a tas buggy at the moment. My friend and I have mostly been playing solo or in PUGs lately because the game has a coronary every time we try to connect to each other.

Clans might be an interesting option though, I didn;t know that had become a big thing in the game yet. I'll have to look around, thanks for that advice!

@Buddlshlumpf & Brasten

I think these two post more or less hit the nail on the head. Budd's post in particular reminds me of things from Guild Wars 2. Warframe might not do with scaling player level down to match content, but other things like scaling UP the difficulty of missions to match party size/combined level is something that the game could definitely do with. I actually thought that was in already the game, just not enough so. It's surprising to hear they haven;t added it at all yet. But with the addition of scaled difficulty, it would also be good to have scaled-up rewards (exp, money, and drops).

Brasten also touched on a good point in particular: the way the game is currently set up, it seems more quantity over quality as far as running missions goes. It seems more worth it to speed through a mission, complete the objective, get the end rewards, then rinse and repeat a million times than it is to clear a mission entirely. The drops and exp you get IN the mission from the mobs and containers isn't enough to justify to most people spending the time clearing them all, when they could spend the same amount of time running the whole mission over a second time. That's partly what encourages the speed running.

What encourages speed running at the cost of leaving teammates behind is, again like Budd said, they don't feel needed. Why would speed runners spend time reviving an ally who, in their minds, is just going to die on them again when they could be getting closer to the goal? I actually don't get why people queue up for Online mode when they're strong enough to solo the mission that easily, unless they wanted the team experience. Do they just enjoy the feeling of leaving the "noobs" behind, of getting a ridiculous Damage Dealt percentage while 2-3 other people get the single-digits? It's weird...

That's also one last issue I'd like to tie in to the previous points brought up: it would be cool to see either some incentive to queue with and help out lower-leveled players, or a way to match up only with people around your level, or both. It always felt awkward to me that s game like Warframe doesn't have a traditional room-based lobby system. What if you want to do a mission as a team, but you want to start it from the beginning? What if you need to do a difficult mission and don't want people dropping in with alternate frames fresh out of the foundy? what if you ARE one of those players who wants to train a frame, and needs some higher-level allies who understand that they;re an experienced player on a lowbie frame? All the game does right now is put you into a queue that drops you in with whoever else is next up. I know the playerbase is still on the low side due to closed beta, but it would be nice to see DE experiment with these sorts of things for later.

Thoughts and opinions?

[Sibylle]

I agree to the point that you should get bonus affinity when close to your teammates, good point Brasten, it should work through reward, not punishment.

[Nokturnal]

Thoughts and opinions?

I personally can't stand when the game tries to force you to use teamwork.Ex: Double Doors, Electricution, Elevators in general (cause if you don't wait your an a-hole but if your wait you get bored, lose-lose situation) Basically the game is telling you "Stop what you're doing and wait for/help your teammate or you're an ahole!" Basically it's a guilt trip.

Teamwork should be rewarded not forced down our throats. By combining abilities for extra effects and making using teamwork have more rewards, they'll be more incentive to do it.

Also the whole lack of teamwork aspect is mainly due to the way lobbies in this game are created, you should be able to advertise what you plan to do on a mission you're hosting (or whether you want to host or not)

For example: What if there was a system, once you pick a mission you could pick from different categories so people know what you're planning to do?

-XP run

-Speed run

-Resource Gathering

-Boss only (aborting after boss)

-Stealth Run (once better stealth mechanics are added)

(You could even pick multiple categories if ya wanted. For example: Stealth Run/Resource Gathering or something)

The system would have to be changed so that just cause there's an open session doesn't mean you want to join it. (Like that should be implemented ASAP) but this would allow players to know ahead of time what the host is planning to do on the mission. So people with different playstyles aren't grouped together and then complain when someone does something they don't like.

And yea, all frames should probably run the exact same speed without mods. I'm thinking about as fast as Ash's base speed for every frame. Don't want people leaving their teammates in the dust? Don't make speed differences so extreme.

---

Edited March 15, 2013 by Nokturnal

[Coratha]

@Nokturnal

A very nice elaboration of my last paragraph: that's basically the long version of what I was trying to say, thank you. :)

Also, on a humorous but still relevant note...

... By combining abilities for extra effects and making using teamwork have more rewards, they'll be more incentive to do it....

How awesome would it be to have Frost, Ember, and Volt combine for one giant Elemental Death Blast?!? *_*

On a more serious note: Yes! As cheezy as some people find it, I think it would be awesome to have combination abilities (even if it was only for specific warframes/abilities), as long as the combinations made sense, and felt meaningful.

Example1: Ember drops a fire field, then Excalibur dashes through it, spreading the flames in the area he travels through.

Example2: Volt zaps an enemy marked with Mag's Bullet Attractor, causing an electromagnetic effect that pulls nearby enemies to the target and sticks them together for a few seconds (less like a stun, more like a REALLY short tether), making them easier to AoE.

You have me curious now to see if anyone else has some cool combo ideas. :D

[SlyBoots]

No, I don't agree that forced team play work in theory. It has never worked in any Co-Op game.

what about the left 4 dead series? as far as i'm aware most of the special infected are there to enforce teamplay.

I agree to the point that you should get bonus affinity when close to your teammates, good point Brasten, it should work through reward, not punishment.

that's already in, you don't get affinity at all from kills of your teamamtes unless you are near. goes to show how much (some) people even just so much as try to play together because: "hey why should i if i can solo rambo through?" yeah, indeed, why should you? play solo matches. just a suggestion. (that was not directed at you, soulassassin, or anybody else in this thread for that matter.)

there's a lot of truth to what buddlschlumpf said and that should probably be addressed but besides more and harder enemies (statistical difficulty increase) these special mechanics make proper teamplay satisfying. so in conclusion i'm for this stuff (in coop) and would like to see what else digital extremes come up with.

Edited March 15, 2013 by SlyBoots

[Brasten]

what about the left 4 dead series? as far as i'm aware all the special infected are there to enforce teamplay.

that's already in, you don't get affinity at all from kills of your teamamtes unless you are near. goes to show how much people even try to play together because: "hey why should i if i can solo rambo through?" yeah, indeed, why should you? play solo matches. just a suggestion. (that was not directed at you soulassassin.)

Okay I'll give you Left 4 Dead and Portal 2 Coop. However both of those games are designed in a way makes working as team the best answer. In Warframe the best answer currently is Speed Run. Until that changes, anything DE does to force teamwork will be an annoying failure. Look at Left 4 Dead, the Survivors all move at the same speed. A single Survivor cannot win a whole level single handed against even just normal infected. Things that don't apply in Warframe. Also are we talking PvP or VS AI with L4D? Also I'll point out that unless you and everyone else in the game go into L4D commited to Coop play, you're going to be made angry by the enforcement mechancis, which happens in online play. There is a term for it, "rage quit".

So yes, the theory of enforced teamplay does not work. It can and does make people very mad the second teamplay breaks down. The fact that some games like L4D can actually get away with it says more about people being willing to work together if the GOAL is what they wall want. That goal in L4D is completing the match. In Warframe... what is the goal? Well I guess it's resource and XP farming for late game play once your trying to build an level new Warframes... which means that not eveyone is going to seek that goal the same way... hence why we have Speed Runs that make DE think they need to "enforce teamplay" with goofy mechanics like double doors and stunballs.

There is the Affinity bonus, but it isn't exactly large and only helps mitigate complaints of Kill Stealing. What I'm talking about is a real serious bonus. Something that challenges the efficiency currently found in speed runs. Until DE address the goal and makes that achievable most effenicently by teamplay, teamplay will continue to be ignored in fravor of other methods.

As I said, in the P&P scene you run across this all the time. If the people playing aren't interested in going after the same goal or disagree on the way to go about the goal the game will end before it really starts. You cannot force them. If you try they will quit and find something else to play. See Railroading, which is what DE started doing with double doors and stunballs (more stunballs then doors). In P&P play the correct answer is to make sure all players are intersted in "your" story and to incentivise (not punish) following it.

Edited March 15, 2013 by Brasten

[DSMK2]

Players running ahead (and killing everything) drive others to run after them, it gets annoying. Especially when they trigger out of sight security cameras on the Corpus levels, activating laser gates. I'm semi relieved when they hit locked doors, because that means me and others can catch up; but after that, the cycle repeats. They're not stopping to loot anything or kill everything for XP. It’s made even worse when they don’t even say a thing.

It’s infuriating when one starts the extraction timer themselves. I honestly think it shouldn’t start until about a half of the total players reach it.

I honestly still think the electric stun balls should have the option to slowly and painfully remove them by tapping a key really fast; the team ‘help’ requirement is really forced.

I would love to see more incentives:

• Being close to each other gives a shield recharge bonus
  
• Killing enemies with others nearby gives an noticeable amount of extra XP
  
• Looting while near each other increases drop rate and material quantity
  
• Ammo sharing?
  

Though once open beta starts, I’m curious how the general playing style will change.

@Xanesh I like the idea of combining powers!

This thread has a nice idea that could count as a kind of fun when you play in a team:

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/15254-man-down-revival/

[Coratha]

@DSMK2: I'm liking some of those ideas.

I definitely agree that the team affinity boost could use a tweak, but it feels like there needs to be more than that. What about someone who's out material farming because all their stuff is capped and they want to try a new frame? EXP is literally useless to them. There's definitely some merit in a team money/material drop boost as well.

The shield recharge one might be nice, but honestly it would be hard to notice the difference without it being overpowered, and thematically it doesn't really make sense. Then again I suppose you could argue that a drop boost isnt very "thematic" either, but it's up to interperetation. It's interesting, but if it was a choice between this and the drop booster I'd pick the latter, you know?

Ammo sharing seemed a little wonky to me at first, but the more I thought about it the more I realized what you were thinking there. It might be kind of cool to be back to back with your buddy in a firefight, one of you runs out of ammo so the other tosses you a clip or two to last you the fight. Maybe they could even implement a radial callout menu ala DotA/League of Legends with one of the options being "Need Ammo!" and if you pick that callout, it reads what gun you have out at the time, and flags your character for interaction; an ally can walk up to you and press X to give you one clip's (your clip size) worth of ammo. Could possibly work?

Also, I read the thread you linked and I'm loving that idea too. So many times it's difficult or impossible to revive a downed ally, because the reason they died is they got caught in an unfortunate position. I agree that it shouldn't eat up the time limit, as that would encourage griefing. But I slightly disagree with the guy who suggested carrying an ally counting as a revive. Maybe if it just froze the downed timer until you can put them down in a safe spot?

[SlyBoots]

then i give you the doors & the difference in speed, brasten. ;) speed though is traded for survivability so let's keep that in mind at least.

but other than that you're describing a problem in people, the players - no game can fix that. incentives are just maculation, one's no team player as a result. and the real team players have no problems with these mechanics because they're not punished. maybe digital extremes should separate a teamplay mode with all that stuff in from a contest mode without it.

Edited March 15, 2013 by SlyBoots

[Buddlschlumpf]

I agree with the point, that teamwork does not need to be enforced. I did not mean that so one-sided. In the game, you should feel like you actually need your team.

In the end this means that DE has to implement some drastic differences between solo and coop play. Because in solo you are supposed to run through on your own succesfully. You fail, if you lack the skill and/or the level. In a coop match, it's quite the opposite. Success has to come with teamplay and cooperation. Failure hast not to come by lack of skill and/or level alone, but also by a lack of teamplay and cooperation.

I would like to have a mixture of incentives as well as punishment.

Punishments for running of alone:

- The most obvious ones are disables of all kinds, stunlocks etc.

- Another way might be increased spawns of high difficulty mobs. This would at least require a better difficulty scaling with team size as well as Mobs based on the soloplayers level (they must be strong enough to force him back). But it's a nice element for story telling - the enemy actually focuses on the isolated player.

Incentives for staying together:

- More XP, loot etc. (mentioned in other posts)

- Auras with limited range (e.g. player enabled buffs that benefit everyone in the team who is close enough to receive them).

@all people stating "the players the problem": No, they are not. Players are like they are. It's neither their fault nor their well doing if the game works as it is intended. The way players behave is a fact given to a game designer. He has to deal with it.

Teamplay does not come by itself. Players play as a team if it's better than playing on their own. Because if playing in a team or not doesn't make any difference why would you bother? That's a mistake A LOT of coop games do and one that would cripple warframe as well: Coop is not just some people running together a mission you could do solo as well. Coop is about additonal game features that require cooperation by either punishment for not cooperating or rewards for successfully playing as a team.

Besides: The 2-player-doors are an example for the fact that somethings wrong right now. In a game that features cooperation those doors wouldn't be necessary because the game by itself would encourage the players to stick together. The fact that you need doors to prevent players from running ahead points to a lack of coop features.

Edited March 15, 2013 by Buddlschlumpf

[SlyBoots]

@all people stating "the players the problem":

that would be me and we're the only people in this thread that agree on that punishing mechanics are doing their job so we're kinda saying the same thing. but yes, if these are used as - as xanesh puts it - "griefing tools" it's somewhat questionable to tell the game designer "to deal with it".

Edited March 15, 2013 by SlyBoots

[Buddlschlumpf]

I did not specifically address you as this same argument has been brought up in other threads in this forum as well as in other games ;). You can never blame the players.

[Critter]

I play this game with my girlfriend and my best friend and the 3 of us tend to stick together as much as possible. We'll often not kill anything til each of us have our map challenge completed and then go about killing everything. I think one of the main advantages we have is that we use Ventrilo whilst playing, allowing us to call out when we're in trouble. For example my best friend has immense trouble with the cameras in Corpus areas so I tend to take those out. I've found that, more often than not, running off ahead tends to get me swarmed by enemies and subsrquently murdered. I'm not exactly a low level, my Excalibur is rank 27, so level really hasn't all that much to do with it. I do think that if you're going to play online rather than solo you're going to have to expect to work together towards certain ends. Although running with strangers, as I have a few times in the past, more often than not they run off and don't care that i'm there. The moral of this story being, play with friends rather than strangers. At least if friends $&*^ you over you can laugh about it. ;)

[SlyBoots]

You can never blame the players.

butbutbut i just did that. watch me do it again: it's all the players' fault. climate change, forest fires, bieber, everything. XD to be frank i haven't run into what i would call "griefer" at all so there.

Edited March 15, 2013 by SlyBoots

[FierceRadiance]

Generally, I believe you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar. So I prefer positive incentives to coop over punishments for soloing in a group. And I disagree with ramping up the difficulty based on player level, as that has the potential to A) ruin gameplay for a lower player that gets matched into a much more experienced group, facing enemies that will flatten him or her, and B) allow players to 'salt' their group with one high-level player so the rest can gain XP faster (depending on how drastic the delta on the ramp-up is).

That said, what about a game mechanic that greatly ups the odds of running into a seeker if there are no other players nearby? Or even a new annoyance (as most of these new mechanics have turned out to be IMHO) that ONLY shows up if you run off from your group? Of course, I'm always the one who leaves the linear path to explore other parts of the ship/asteroid for more loot, and such a mechanic would work against me, so...

[Buddlschlumpf]

@PanUmbrian: At least I'm not talking about ranking up difficutly based on player level, but with the number of players in a team. Right now, the scaling up is way to low.

[Coratha]

@Buddschlumpf: An addendum to what you said, that I think will help clarify it for people: there need to be mechanics in the game that punish the player who tries to speed through and lone-wolf it, not make a victim out of the one left behind. With things like the so-called "stunballs", the one who gets tagged becomes helplessly dependant on their partner(s) to save them, while the latter can simply trololo away and leave them to die. Whereas with a difficulty increase, if one guy goes in Leroy Jenkins style, they're the ones who end up getting mugged. Also, "punishing mechanics" may have been a bit harsh of a term to use, it seems to be putting people off about the topic.

@PanUmbrian: I understand where you;re coming from with that, but I honestly I think that's more of an issue with the matching system than anything. See some of the above posts for details, but in summary the idea is that they should have a more traditional room-based lobby system. I will however agree that the seeker idea is interesting, and would fit the theme especially well in Infested missions. It would be nice to have such a mechanic, as I stated previously, to have a mechanic that discourages and "punishes" - so to speak - people splitting from the group, without making the group they split from feel punished as well. There's gotta be a happy medium somewhere.

Also, as an additonal idea for incentive: similar to the "seeker" idea but different, what if there was a chance for a miniboss to spawn in a mission when the party is together? It would spawn in a regular room rather than an arena to catch player's off-guard, would be stronger than normal mobs (even stronger than "heavies" like grineer commanders and ancients, but not nearly as strong as a real boss), but would give a special bonus of exp and rare drops if defeated. It would be a semi-random treat to pop up for groups that stick together, and would add an element of unpredictability and surprise to liven up normal mission segments. How cool would it be to be winding your way through Fossa with your allies, looking for the Jackal, when all of a sudden you round the corner and are face-to-face with a group of 3-4 Mini-Jackal Prototype bots (just for example)? :D

[Buddlschlumpf]

@Buddschlumpf: An addendum to what you said, that I think will help clarify it for people: there need to be mechanics in the game that punish the player who tries to speed through and lone-wolf it, not make a victim out of the one left behind. With things like the so-called "stunballs", the one who gets tagged becomes helplessly dependant on their partner(s) to save them, while the latter can simply trololo away and leave them to die. Whereas with a difficulty increase, if one guy goes in Leroy Jenkins style, they're the ones who end up getting mugged.

true and important point you make there.

[Zinn]

If you want to end 99,9% of speedrunning, simply change the loot tables: People do not speedrun out of malice, they do it out of efficiency and because barely any useful materials in WF drop in adequate rates.

Once you hit 30 on your fave stuff and have to farm for frames etc., you need to think about efficiency because you will repeat certain missions a lot in the current system: If you want to farm Rubedo, you are contained to two missions or so on Earth and Outer Terminus if you have a Loki that can open doors. If you want to farm Alloys, you are basically running Vedic and nothing else (possibly Exta if someone needs Frost BPs and you want to help). Here's the kicker about farming the rare mats: They only drop realibly from containers or bosses. On top of that, they drop in piles of 10-25 or so and that means you have to collect lots of piles to reach 800 rubes for a new frame or 500 alloy for a new weapon.

Now imagine you're in a place like I am, having played the game for a long time and already own all of the stuff I want from the current content: I have to farm 1600 rubes (two frames), plus maybe 500-1000 more in case of weapon or bonus helmet crafts, 1000+ alloy (300 for new frames) so I can at least craft some of the new weapons there are bound to be in 7.0, several control modules, neural sensors and other rare stuff you want a stockpile of to prepare for crafting lots of stuff. Think about how many times I have to run these missions to obtain that amount of material and keep in mind that it takes about 10 mins for each of the longer runs, maybe more.

If I'm not speedrunning, I would never get done with this. Fortunately, I am in a huge clan with lots of people, so finding someone to farm with isn't difficult and I don't bother regular people. On the contrary, they often end up bothering me because when farming containers, you want to avoid reaching the objective while moving as quickly as possible from room to room. Most speedrunning could be ended by simply making rubedo/alloy/sensors drop from regular enemies but it's important to realise that you'll create a similar issue as well: Now no one wants to finish a mission because they can farm endless spawns instead.

Personally, I prefer speedrunning because it makes things go faster and fits the ninja theme better than standing in a big open room, awaiting the next wave of enemies. I believe DE does intend to do something about the current farm mechanics in 7.0, though, both in terms of mods and materials.

Edited March 16, 2013 by Zinn

[neKroMancer]

The best negative effect to disincentivise speedrunning and lone-wolfing is death.

Like others, I see the same problems.

1. The current enemy spawn doesn't scale related to player number.

2. Enemies are not designed to take advantage of teamplay.

3. Frames' powers have no synergy between one another.

4. 4th powers

One example is ME3MP which is similar in concept to Warframe. In ME3MP, there're powers which are well categorized into tech and biotic. Some powers are best used against shield, some are better against armor. Combining powers mean you got a power combo like tech/biotic explosion.

Enemies in ME3 also partially require some teamwork to take down. They can be taken down solo but it's faster with teammates helping you. Damage they can dish out is phenomenal. Stand in the open for 3 second under heavy fire literally means death sentence. Have a teammate by your side means better chance to win an engagement than fall flat on the floor.

One aspect of speedrun is related to the current form of 4th powers which deals enough damage to clear a room with proper modding. These powers allow an extremely mindless gameplay; Gather 100 (or less) energy and proceed into the room, press 4, gather more energy, go into the next room, press 4. They cheapen the game as a whole. DE Steve mentioned that DE want to balance gun/sword/powerplay and these 4th should be strategic powers...obviously, some adjustments are in order.

[DSMK2]

@Zinn: Where’s the fun in that D:

---

I think outside of incentives and punishments; there should be more level features and scenarios for playing with others that wouldn't crop up if a player played solo.

@Xanesh: Good idea with mini-bosses.

Multiplayer combat scenarios:

• Blockade: Enemy units in anticipation of Tenno movements have set up a room filled with stationary turret emplacements and defensive structures to ensure survivability for themselves and their ship, but not for the Tenno.
  
• Elite troops: “We’ll handle the Tenno scum! HOLD THEM OFF HERE”. Group enters a temporally one way entry into a locked room filled with elite units of various abilities and roles.
  
• Mini boss: Dangerous but semi easy to dispatch. Akin to Heavy Grineer marines, mini-Jackals, and ancients. Room situation nearly the same as above.
  
• Infested blocked doors: Doors covered with an infested creature type, they let infested in, but not Tenno out. They have high HP weak points that open periodically, they will defend themselves via tentacle attacks.
  

Though what happens if the player finds himself ending up solo?