Hive Sabotage, Design And Overview

[DE_Adam]

By now many of you have likely taken up arms against the Infested threat in our latest event, Operation: Hive Sabotage, utilizing every power at your disposal to cut back the spread of infestation that has contaminated Corpus vessels.  A unique twist on an existing game type, Hive Sabotage requires players to adapt to a constantly changing set of circumstances triggered by destroyed hive clusters while holding back a constant tide of infested enemies. 

 

 

As the narrative universe expands the development team is constantly looking to introduce new playgrounds--new tile sets for players to discover and explore. Along with the introduction of a new tile set we aim to incorporate new game modes or variations of existing game modes that can feel unique to the art set. With the preview of the Infested tile set we created the “Hive” game mode; with the unique challenge of creating a competitive event that tests not only Tenno teamwork, but should push players to be more aware of both their enemies and the environment in a way they’ve never done before.

 

A great example of some questions we take into consideration when approaching such a unique design are:

 

-How will we calculate points for individual and clan rewards, and what will we give as a reward?

-Will it advance the lore of the game, and how can we use this event to build upon the depth of Warframe’s lore going forward?

-What mechanics can we use to ensure the highest part of the leaderboards requires skill, strategy and teamwork?

-How can we make the event accessible to as many players as possible, while providing a challenge for higher-tier players?

 

Keeping that in mind it appears that with our new Hive mode our design team hit all the right notes, and save for a few bugs, early feedback from players has been very positive.

 

 

Hive Sabotage sets players aboard one of Alad V’s Corpus ships, twisted and corrupted by the Technocyte virus.  Tight corridors broken from the stress of shifting metal, technorganic mutations pulsate throughout the hull, and entire portions of the ship have been breached to the vacuum of space.  Hive Sabotage relies on its claustrophobic atmosphere and level design more than any other game type, and may be the most complex game mode we’ve created to date.

 

 

Earning points in Hive Sabotage is simply done by completing the mission, and how many points you receive will vary depending on a few factors.  How many times you’ve completed the mission successfully and how difficult the overall rating of the mission is will reward players with more points (scaling upwards in difficulty).  The more you play, the harder it gets, and the harder it gets the more points you receive.  Additional players in the group will also increase the difficulty of the mission, giving a boost to points earned as well.

 

 

Going into Hive Sabotage with an organized group will yield the best results of course, but that certainly doesn’t mean that solo players or random groups are at a major disadvantage comparatively.  While many missions in Warframe can be overcome through a combination of speed and brute force, the enemy scaling and endless nature of the Infested horde in such a packed location means you may want to take a different approach.

 

-Move slowly in open areas and explore your surroundings carefully:  Tumors hide in unusual areas and often times a careful inspection will save you time searching while being chased by infested, dodging toxic clouds and leaping over laser beams.

-Use teamwork, stay in pairs:  If you happen to be running a full party and want a little more efficiency in your run, breaking off to handle two hives at a time isn’t a bad idea.  Using a Warframe that has commanding AoE is certainly one way to take care of yourself, but all it takes is a lucky knockdown or Infested ambush to quickly change your fortune.  Stick together, keep your weapon up, and keep moving!

-Can’t see tumors? Try scanning:  A scanner tends to highlight all kinds of useful information, and in the case of Hive Sabotage gives Infested tumors a more easy-to-spot shimmer that can make the hide-and-seek a bit easier.

-Mix up your weapon types: High damage single shot weapons like bows or sniper rifles work wonders against Infested in open areas, but within the twisted halls of the Corpus ship you may have more luck spreading out your damage.  High rates of fire, piercing ammo, and even long-reach melee weapons like whips or polearms should give you the force needed to keep the legions of Infested at bay.

 

 

As for the future of Hive Sabotage?

 

Just like our other time-limited events Hive Sabotage will eventually end, giving us time to collect feedback and improve the game mode for a possible full release with the corresponding full tile set release at a later date. A lot more goes into creating an event than simply making a fun concept to work around, and our design team takes into consideration quite a few elements when building any game mode, let alone approaching the transition of a special event into a more regular game type.

 

We’ll continue to watch as the event continues, so that we can re-release with additional polish and bug fixes in the coming weeks.  Till then, happy hunting Tenno!

 

[Nachino]

Nice, i`m loving the new tilesets too. Great work!

[Letter13]

The new tilesets are fantastic. And having an explanation of how the scoring works definitely helps. Keep up the great work! I'd really like to see hive sabotage become a non-event mission type as well. Maybe even have hive sabotages with more than 3 hives per mission, for even harder difficulty? Nightmare-mode even?

[MotherCorpus]

Some of the lights make me feel like the stalker/other is coming.

[Brahmastra]

2spooky

[-Krux-]

cool

[Hybridon]

Id like to see it overrun Infested Mobile Defense, it carrys kind of the same logic, with exception that taking down tumors and your own mentality of going quick or slow makes it like carrying a datamass and putting it in a terminal, having varied times to defend during that terminal.

 

I really enjoyed how it gets deadlier, and that infested keep swarming you over and over, something we've missed on Infested survivals, we want to be swarmed so that the threat becomes real.

[CaveCricket48]

This is probably my favourite events so far.

 

The atmosphere of the new tile set, the challenge but support for solo play as well (solo'd for the majority of my event play time), the swarms of infested keep things intense, and the addition of poison enemies that makes healers more important or requires careful attention to the rusher, who can still go fast but needs to keep a sharp eye.

[Shin]

I only have one thing to complain about this new tile set while im loving it. 

 

Way points are derped. There are times where i simply cant find the exit. I dont know if the maps i've played were bugged but if it wasnt bugged or anything, when i follow the exit waypoint it takes me to a dead end. Back then when U7 came, we were getting stuck on missions with red doors blocking our way. I hope its not the same case .

[DiddlyMcGee]

possibly make it so that G3-Golem is talking to you while you destroying the tumors and hives similar to in halo 3 when encountering the flood

 

http://youtu.be/S43L0djtk0s?t=2m40s

 

(couldnt find any videos with only grave mind quotes)

 

timestamps

2:40- 3:08

 

6:55-7:10

 

7:35-8:30

[MeduSalem]

To be honest I would like it if the "Stench"-system would stay even after the Event across ALL infested related missions... Something like a temporary reputation system that builds up the more Infested you kill and decays slowly over time. The more "Stench" you have the more aggressive the Infested are during your next mission.

 

Probably with a well balanced maximum cap so it doesn't become impossible to beat them because of increasing difficulty.

[AnonCat]

THANK YOU! =3 It's good to see a more detailed explanation.

[Judge_Hellboy]

Some tiles take some figuring out. One took me a moment to realize that i needed to go over to a railing and jump down to go under where i was. XD

[Archwizard]

On the one hand, I love the new tileset. I can't say I dislike the traps that destroying each hive presented, either; they were annoying and invasive, but they also forced you to be more cautious moving around the map and compelled people to stay together (the best strategy I found for fast missions in groups was to move in pairs, in case one person died to a gas cloud and needed a revive), which is something I can't really say was even pulled off by all of those door traps on Corpus and Grineer ships (especially since those can be unavoidable if the camera is on the other side of the door).

 

However, I hated the scoring, since you'd lose points if you didn't keep one consistent group for a extensive chain of runs. Most of these events, my major issue has been that victory comes through extreme grinding; the mission becomes monotonous by the twentieth time for an impending reward. I've always felt the best events were the ones that rewarded skill at least as much as grinding - the kind where a good strategy and a strong, reliable team would be the most efficient way to complete the event in only a smaller handful of runs, rather than just putting you through dozens of dizzying speedruns to inflate the time spent in the mission.

Edited June 20, 2014 by Archwizard

[taiiat]

the Event, and the Tiles, and Gamemode - are all great work.

 

the Tiles and Enemies create a truly Infested atmosphere, the Infested are even lingering around in corners and bunched up in places, which is exactly what i expect from the Infested, perfect. far more interesting than the standard 'congo line running towards you' type of Enemies.

 

the Music, and sounds from the Infested themselves, all mix together to create an atmosphere that... well, the rest of the game seems bland now :D

 

 

the Gamemode is truly unique at this point, while having easy to digest objectives. 

 

 

the tiles are out of this world (hue?). there's tons of little details. and that Extraction tile that ends in a 'slide' shaped area - that backdrop is superb. gives some actual idea of the scale of things. 

 

 

 

only two complaints.

 

- sometimes, the Framerate has a significant drop, for unknown reasons.

- a lot of the time... i end up going through the entire missions without Atmosphere. just constantly draining me throughout the Mission, never stops. i hear Atmosphere draining sounds when i leave areas with Atmosphere... but it doesn't 'turn off' sometimes. so i praise my Sentinel because it'll replenish my Shields whenever the game drains them down :/

 

 

but those are small complaints compared to how great this is, and i can deal with those until they're fixed, they aren't gamebreaking for me, just annoying. (though constant drain could kill less experienced players, especially ones which don't have a Sentinel).

 

 

Edit:

oh, almost forgot. this is why i still play Warframe, there's issues here and there(some pretty significant), but Digital Extremes does a great job of setting the bar for themselves higher and higher and producing content that continues to impress.

 

Edit2:

oh, and there's those Infested Ospreys that get stuck literally everywhere :/

Edited June 20, 2014 by taiiat

[Althix]

i must say i like this new tileset and event in general, despite the fact that i have to restart the game after each run, because of the crashes.

 

Had some very good time when 2/3 of the ship had no oxygen at all, so i was forced to use shield restore. tough run that was.

energy draining mists are cool, i very like them, makes you watch where to step.

amount of mobs on the map is huge, but i like it, i was swinging my Skana Prime left and right in Jolly Massacre.

 

so in general if your idea was to create really hazardous environment for WF, i must say you did it and you did it well.

[CerebrateJoe]

I'm completely in love with hive sabotage.  Couldn't be happier.  If you insisted I was critical, though, I suppose I'd point to the length and the running.  I spend more time, I think, running from one hive to another than I actually do at the hive.  I'd like a reason to stay a little more stationary and have to deal with the infested.  Its too easy to ignore the horde and stay on the move.  I saw a comment about replacing mobile defense with this.  I don't like that, but I do like the idea of adding a mobile defense style countdown to the shield on the hive.  It would get really intense if I had to keep the infested away from the hive while it bleeds-out or some such.  Kinda a reverse-mobile defense that way.  The infested fight to heal the hive and drive you off.

[BenzinNinJa]

Over all I really like this event.

my only problem is that Salad V sounds like a Scooby Doo villain.

[Cold_Arrow]

Great job again at also creating secret room(s), the one(s) i found took me quite a while to figure out.

 

about the gameplay itself:

I do feel like the hives are a bit small and squishy. 

they could use some size and sturdiness (maybe even some defences of its own to improve difficulty

and to make it a more interesting experience)

Edited June 20, 2014 by Cold_Arrow

[TheEidolon]

While I love most of this event, the scoring is very...unpredictable.

 

 

  The more you play, the harder it gets, and the harder it gets the more points you receive. 

 

 

If his is true, then how can I run with a specific group of people, and get a certain score, then run the same mission again, with the exact same people, and get a lower score? Does the difficulty fluctuate?

 

[holdenagincourt]

I really love this map and the event (and the new cosmetics)! There are a couple places where you can fall down and get stuck in the level geometry, which usually results in death because the Infested attack you while you're trying to jump out. But these sorts of bugs are normal early on and the overarching concept and execution are good. Little details like the music when outside (why does it fade away when you go inside?) and the askew camera angles really make the experience.

[ShadowHawk614]

Let me start by saying, I am the sort of person who likes to solo and look around the new environments I am presented with. The very first time I saw this tile set, I loved it, and took my time exploring it. That is until I can to the first hive and tried looking for the nodes. As soon as you enter the room, you start getting swarmed by the infested. And once you finish in that room, you need to quickly move to the next room, while being chased by the swarm of infested which following you from the room you just left. The end result is you end up sprinting through, and around, the level just to survive. You do not get to really enjoy the level design to much, because you are too busy trying to stay alive. It would have been nice to have been able to scout out the level with no threat at all, just so you could learn and enjoy it.

 

A top of that, even though I soloed this entire event, the scoring was weird. Sometimes it would increase by one point, other times it would go up by two, and every so often it would go down by one or stay the same. This made getting those rewards really frustrating, and time consuming. I know that you want to give the good rewards to the players that really go the distance, but perhaps next time you could reduce to amount of times you must play the level to something below forty. :)

 

Other than those two issues, I really enjoyed the whole event.

[S.T.M.P.D]

Fun fact: I was playing one of the hive missions when I got stalker'd.

 

The two scariest things in Warframe in one area? My poor Nova's frame needs cleaning now.

[Slurmageddon]

So far this has been one of my favorite lore events in terms of releasing a new tileset. The place looks creepy and twisted and awesome, the music that came with it is intense, and the new infested "voices" bring back some harrowing "Last of Us" memories!

Fighting through the hordes of infested hammers home their lore, when youre in there you really get the sense that this is something that could wipe out entire worlds if it were released.

 

And the point structure actually seems to have found a way to at least start breaking up the monotony of doing a large amount of consecutive runs.

[AmethystWyrm]

First and foremost, I love the new tileset, perfect mix of corpus sci-fi with infested horror! I adore the mission itself and it's implemented excellently. Unlike most others I actually like the scoring system (thanks to the explanation) and wouldn't mind seeing it pop up again. The only thing I don't like is the Prova Vandal, I understand the need for a corpus themed reward weapon of course, but I would have preferred seeing something like a Supra Vandal or a Lecta Vandal. Other than that though, great event, great tileset, overall it's just epic.