Coordinated Strikes - Multiplayer Soloing

[Colyeses]

I just finished the Gifts of the Lotus while playing as Revenant, and I noticed that he's actually pretty decent to play when you don't have three other people mowing everything down with their weaponry. His abilities can actually put out some decent control and even damage, now that the pillars have been upgraded, but it just doesn't ever come out due to weapons just being that much more powerful. 

Soloing actually allowed me to get far better results out of Revenant, and he was actually pretty fun to play under those circumstances. And now as to how this relates to mission feedback...

We could do with more missions where players split up. For example: The footage that was shown of Railjack really excited me, in particular the tactical station. One player on the enemy ship, and one on the Railjack, leaving the infiltrator technically playing solo, but still getting assistance from tactical control. 

This kind of cooperation and teamplay, with more defined individual roles, would be really awesome if applied in a general mission type. 

For example: New Assassination. The Lotus/Ordis/Tenno network has caught wind of a high profile target being brought out of protective custody to make a transaction. The Tenno have a limited window of opportunity to assassinate the VIP.

The squad is divided into two strike teams. Each duo of players is located in a different section of the ship. The two duos will have to stick together for the first part. One duo heads towards a control room, breaking in and leaving one of the duo's players there to monitor the ship and provide intel and hacking control for the other players. The two players of the other duo will have to split up, each heading for the controls for a shield generator that is supposed to protect the area where the transaction is taking place. The third player has to move into position to be ready to kill the assassination target.

Once all four are in place, the person in the control room has to set up a fake signal to convince enemies that the shield gen is still running. The two at the generator have to disable the shields, and the last person has to move in and kill the target before the fake signal drops.

It's just a suggestion, as the mission can be built up in any way that would have players cooperate while not being in one another's immediate vicinity. 

[Xarteros]

Strike teams: An idea I've wanted ever since we got Survival.

"A lone tenno operative is dancing about getting you loot, distract the enemy lel" ~Lotus

PLAY that lone tenno operative. Make a new mission type that functions like a mini-spy mission or something, where a player has to bypass lots of different defenses, but doesn't have to deal with many enemies. Their success brings better quality rewards to the Survival team. The survival team's efficiency determines how few guards the lone tenno has to deal with.

I completely advocate the idea of linked, separate instances of gameplay. Defending an objective, and it's getting too hairy? "Extraction team is ready". Suddenly, a mini-alert pops up for a group of players to come and extract that cryopod. New mini-mission, where you have to escort the hovering cryopod to an area that you can blast out to space, and fly the cryopod to safety via Archwing, or find some terminal to override and disable the enemy defenses so Lotus/Ordis can beam the cryopod out.

My personal favourite: Beginners. Why does Lotus not send help to these new Tenno who are just awakening? Give it an alternate mission path, or make it turn out the same, but have some awesome teammates to shepherd you through some advanced troops. Safety of the beginner (damage taken by mission end) determines rewards, so players are rewarded for playing defensive, supportive and CC warframes.

These missions would basically be like mini-alerts, but instead of showing up to everyone, you might put yourself on a wait-list/roster to be taken into the nearest mini-mission that pops up. You could have a way to prioritise friends/clan/alliance player alerts, so that you and your team get first dibs should one of their mini-alerts arise.

This sort of system would also open the doors to having craftable Tenno distress beacons that can bring in extra muscle for a short time (maybe even bring back the raid's 8-person team limits for specific alerts/events) for players to use when they're in trouble.

[Teridax68]

I very much like this idea. I think the big picture to Warframe is that, eventually, every part of the game should have consequences upon the in-game world, so that players would be able to coordinate towards a larger goal by accomplishing smaller sub-goals on their own. In the immediate, though, having missions that would encourage players to perform several different objectives at the same time I think could add a lot of excitement to multiplayer, while also prepping players in public matchmaking for potentially more complex, higher-level content (e.g. Trials, or whichever updated replacement comes out). Assault I think has the potential to be changed to accommodate this, and to some extent we have this in slight amounts with Sabotage and Spy, where multiple players each go complete one version of the same type of objective. If Survival were split so that one or two players took the place of the operative, while the rest tried to divert attention via standard Survival gameplay, there could be some interesting opportunities for coordination, particularly if either team could influence and help out the other.