An idea that can breathe new life to old missions

[Hallelion]

"Old dog, new tricks"

Hi, I dunno if this is the right section, if you think this is not where this should be, please feel free to move it accordingly. 

I sincerely believe that there's benefit in new content, but there's just a large effort needed for "completely new" content, like Landscapes and other big projects. The time needed to build, test, and ship something that big is also costly. I'm not against such ambition, but content can also be made with a smaller scale and cost without reducing the impact and effect it could introduce.

Amongst all the content drought before Fortuna, here are some ideas I have formed that I think could alleviate the in-betweens of major content updates:

 

A. Revisit the Syndicates

1. Introduce Syndicate interactions in old, non-endless missions. Have a small chance where an operative from a syndicate pop into a mission, asks for help and you do (meaning you perform a side-mission for them), and reward you with positive, conflict-free reputation that is reasonably big to encourage people to do it again if the chance arrives.

2. Introduce Syndicate Invasions, wherein Syndicates fight for domination of each planet, we Tenno help either side, and the winner will grant additional rep gains separate from the regulated rep earnings when you play missions on that planet for a some time.

3. Play with the Syndicate alignments, say, have semi-regular events where the Syndicate alliances can be changed by our efforts. Say, have Perrin and Hexis team up, and the success of that mission will grant a period where earning rep for either will not result in negative rep for the other.

4. Introduce new weapon augments, syndicate weapons, and syandana. It's been years since the weapons were introduced. Maybe it's time for a new set? Say, Telos Tenora, Sancti Scoliac, Secura Lenz, Rakta Spira, Vaykor Tonkor, Synoid Staticor, etc. 

5. Introduce Syndicate Air support augments in the form of equipping landing craft skins, but this needs two more landing crafts. 

 

B. Revisit the game modes

1. Alongside making the enemies scale with level, probably scale the mission difficulty as well. Say, have the capture target have an entourage of higher-level enemies that could stall the capture process, or have more sensors planted in the spy vaults. Have another hostage to rescue, or two defense objectives. Anything that could introduce variety in the current, non-bounty mission cycle, would make things interesting.

2. Open an opportunity to chain non-endless missions with better rewards (and a choice to not participate). 

3. Introduce a mission failsafe to some missions, where if the current mission is failed, an alternative mission is generated on the spot that only rewards you keeping the loot and XP. Say, failing a capture mission will lead to a one-tower interception to sabotage the escape or death of the target. This could be a fallback to missions failing due to disconnections and such... 

 

Thoughts? 

[Teridax68]

I like many of the suggestions in the OP. Thoughts on the above points:

2 hours ago, hallelion said:

1. Introduce Syndicate interactions in old, non-endless missions. Have a small chance where an operative from a syndicate pop into a mission, asks for help and you do (meaning you perform a side-mission for them), and reward you with positive, conflict-free reputation that is reasonably big to encourage people to do it again if the chance arrives.

I fully agree to tying syndicates to side missions, and in general I think missions in Warframe need bonus objectives, rather than entirely separate missions for alerts and whatnot. I think even with the idea of syndicates being in conflict with each other, it could be interesting for syndicate side-missions to have two different syndicates propose conflicting objectives: one syndicate could have you rescue a target, for example, but another could ask you to assassinate said target through whichever means. Two different syndicates could ask you to hack into a spy vault, and you'd have to choose who to give the data to. 

2 hours ago, hallelion said:

2. Introduce Syndicate Invasions, wherein Syndicates fight for domination of each planet, we Tenno help either side, and the winner will grant additional rep gains separate from the regulated rep earnings when you play missions on that planet for a some time.

I like this, and in general I think the world of Warframe needs to be developed further so that each faction is a true entity of its own with its own agenda, M.O., and place in the universe, where completing missions would have an impact on the balance of all of these different, frequently opposing forces. Completing an objective for a syndicate shouldn't simply give a reward, but should have a legitimate impact on that syndicate's power and position in the world, with appropriate consequences in the form of additional objectives and missions from all sources.

2 hours ago, hallelion said:

3. Play with the Syndicate alignments, say, have semi-regular events where the Syndicate alliances can be changed by our efforts. Say, have Perrin and Hexis team up, and the success of that mission will grant a period where earning rep for either will not result in negative rep for the other.

This sounds good, though I feel the more general issue is simply that the current arrangement of Syndicates in opposition to each other is flat and conducive to tedium, rather than interesting choices, narrative or gameplay. Syndicate conflicts I think should be shown, not told, by mutually exclusive objectives given to the player, and otherwise, if there is no conflict presented to the player, that conflict should not exist when trying to gain standing with any one syndicate.

2 hours ago, hallelion said:

4. Introduce new weapon augments, syndicate weapons, and syandana. It's been years since the weapons were introduced. Maybe it's time for a new set? Say, Telos Tenora, Sancti Scoliac, Secura Lenz, Rakta Spira, Vaykor Tonkor, Synoid Staticor, etc. 

This I think is a good idea, there's plenty of opportunities to develop the identity of each faction through more weapons. With that said, I also take issue with Syndicate weapons, and just variations of the same weapon, in how their increase in stats and beneficial effects tend to make the original weapon stand out as mastery fodder by comparison. I absolutely love my Vaykor Marelok, and to this day it's my most used sidearm, but I wish it were more a case of adding a cool skin and some unique mods to the Marelok, with some stat buffs if the weapon's underperforming, rather than just obtaining a better version of the same weapon. As such, I feel the process of creating Syndicate weapons should be more about releasing skins and augment-style mods, with buffs across the board to underperforming weapons, rather than the same weapon, but better.

2 hours ago, hallelion said:

5. Introduce Syndicate Air support augments in the form of equipping landing craft skins, but this needs two more landing crafts. 

I'm not personally a fan of tying gameplay to cosmetics, and I believe landing crafts are essentially just cosmetic, though it'd be interesting to see if more could be done with the idea of air support charges, which are currently mostly just one more throwaway mechanic within the game.

2 hours ago, hallelion said:

1. Alongside making the enemies scale with level, probably scale the mission difficulty as well. Say, have the capture target have an entourage of higher-level enemies that could stall the capture process, or have more sensors planted in the spy vaults. Have another hostage to rescue, or two defense objectives. Anything that could introduce variety in the current, non-bounty mission cycle, would make things interesting.

I very much like this. Personally, I strongly believe that mission difficulty should stem from the challenges presented by the objective itself, rather than the enemy's stats, and so baking a difficulty curve directly into these objectives I think would help create a much better sense of challenge, rather than one of pure stat-based difficulty. Additionally, I think there are a lot of current mission type that could use some more pizzazz, with Capture especially being a potentially really cool target hunt, that unfortunately often boils down to the player locating the target, one-shotting them, pressing a button, then bullet-jumping all the way to the end of the mission.

2 hours ago, hallelion said:

2. Open an opportunity to chain non-endless missions with better rewards (and a choice to not participate).

This is an interesting idea. Sorties kind of offer a taste of a narrative through interconnected missions, but ultimately offer no real story, connection or unique adventure, just three random high-level missions strung together. If there were the possibility of genuinely having more narratives in the game, by having missions lead into others via some procedural narrative or gameplay thread, it could create a much better sense of immersion, and if done right could also provide an ever-increasing challenge for players to try to surmount.

2 hours ago, hallelion said:

3. Introduce a mission failsafe to some missions, where if the current mission is failed, an alternative mission is generated on the spot that only rewards you keeping the loot and XP. Say, failing a capture mission will lead to a one-tower interception to sabotage the escape or death of the target. This could be a fallback to missions failing due to disconnections and such... 

This seems like an interesting idea as well. If nothing else, having a mission auto-fail and immediately extract the player I think is something that could change: if the player has failed a mission, even if there's nothing they can do to amend that, they should still be able to go all the way to extraction, and carry back whichever loot they found. If they don't want to go that far, aborting the mission already does what the current auto-extract on fail achieves. Even in the face of failure, it should be up to the player to decide whether they want to leave the mission or not: this has already been implemented in PoE, where failing a bounty or incursion doesn't auto-kick the player from the Plains, so I see no reason why that development can't be applied to normal missions.

[Hallelion]

Hi, thank you for the comments!

Here are my responses:

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I fully agree to tying syndicates to side missions, and in general I think missions in Warframe need bonus objectives, rather than entirely separate missions for alerts and whatnot. I think even with the idea of syndicates being in conflict with each other, it could be interesting for syndicate side-missions to have two different syndicates propose conflicting objectives: one syndicate could have you rescue a target, for example, but another could ask you to assassinate said target through whichever means. Two different syndicates could ask you to hack into a spy vault, and you'd have to choose who to give the data to.

Yup, though, as noted from my post on the reddit, the risk of potentially placing Tenno against each other directly (or at least force the squad to follow only one course of action) would be both an interesting and a terrifying situation. I agree, though, that side-missions would be a great addition to the current flow of the gameplay.

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I like this, and in general I think the world of Warframe needs to be developed further so that each faction is a true entity of its own with its own agenda, M.O., and place in the universe, where completing missions would have an impact on the balance of all of these different, frequently opposing forces. Completing an objective for a syndicate shouldn't simply give a reward, but should have a legitimate impact on that syndicate's power and position in the world, with appropriate consequences in the form of additional objectives and missions from all sources.

Yup! It would also give us something to tinker as a community while the devs are busy with the bigger projects. Having syndicates respond to "hard times" from the other syndicates would be a good case in expanding the story, albeit minimal.

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This sounds good, though I feel the more general issue is simply that the current arrangement of Syndicates in opposition to each other is flat and conducive to tedium, rather than interesting choices, narrative or gameplay. Syndicate conflicts I think should be shown, not told, by mutually exclusive objectives given to the player, and otherwise, if there is no conflict presented to the player, that conflict should not exist when trying to gain standing with any one syndicate.

Agreed as well with how the syndicates are currently poised. They all have the perfect allies and enemies already, which is harder to retcon in the story without people reacting in wild ways. With regards to "Syndicate conflicts should be shown by mutually exclusive objectives", would that be similar to what you have said above regarding point A1? I think my reading is getting flaky with how tired I am right now, please bear with me.

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This I think is a good idea, there's plenty of opportunities to develop the identity of each faction through more weapons. With that said, I also take issue with Syndicate weapons, and just variations of the same weapon, in how their increase in stats and beneficial effects tend to make the original weapon stand out as mastery fodder by comparison. I absolutely love my Vaykor Marelok, and to this day it's my most used sidearm, but I wish it were more a case of adding a cool skin and some unique mods to the Marelok, with some stat buffs if the weapon's underperforming, rather than just obtaining a better version of the same weapon. As such, I feel the process of creating Syndicate weapons should be more about releasing skins and augment-style mods, with buffs across the board to underperforming weapons, rather than the same weapon, but better.

The problem with just "release a skin and augment-style mods that buff the existing weapons instead of introducing an identical one" is that they would still need to find a way to progress the MR bar for everyone. A good compromise would be that Syndicates offer weapons unique to them and to them only.

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I'm not personally a fan of tying gameplay to cosmetics, and I believe landing crafts are essentially just cosmetic, though it'd be interesting to see if more could be done with the idea of air support charges, which are currently mostly just one more throwaway mechanic within the game.

Me too, but if something like this could be implemented easily and with less cost, the first logical thing would be to move all landing craft parts to syndicates, introduce more rarer rewards to rare containers (probably a random, very rare, mod), and then decouple air support charges on the terms of usage, similar to how crafted sentinels have their weapons acquired, and could be equipped (mostly) on other sentinels. Agreed that the air support charges are a bit gimmicky right now, though.

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I very much like this. Personally, I strongly believe that mission difficulty should stem from the challenges presented by the objective itself, rather than the enemy's stats, and so baking a difficulty curve directly into these objectives I think would help create a much better sense of challenge, rather than one of pure stat-based difficulty. Additionally, I think there are a lot of current mission type that could use some more pizzazz, with Capture especially being a potentially really cool target hunt, that unfortunately often boils down to the player locating the target, one-shotting them, pressing a button, then bullet-jumping all the way to the end of the mission.

From some of the reddit comments, they have some of the idea already in the game, but limited in some terms. Arc traps are usually at higher levels, as well as the difficulty of vaults. But yeah. it's not prevalent on the other missions.

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This is an interesting idea. Sorties kind of offer a taste of a narrative through interconnected missions, but ultimately offer no real story, connection or unique adventure, just three random high-level missions strung together. If there were the possibility of genuinely having more narratives in the game, by having missions lead into others via some procedural narrative or gameplay thread, it could create a much better sense of immersion, and if done right could also provide an ever-increasing challenge for players to try to surmount.

Thank you for agreeing with me! Some of the reddit posts noted that it could be first implemented to endless missions to reduce the risks of host migration on long runs. Do you think such would work for endless missions, as well?

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This seems like an interesting idea as well. If nothing else, having a mission auto-fail and immediately extract the player I think is something that could change: if the player has failed a mission, even if there's nothing they can do to amend that, they should still be able to go all the way to extraction, and carry back whichever loot they found. If they don't want to go that far, aborting the mission already does what the current auto-extract on fail achieves. Even in the face of failure, it should be up to the player to decide whether they want to leave the mission or not: this has already been implemented in PoE, where failing a bounty or incursion doesn't auto-kick the player from the Plains, so I see no reason why that development can't be applied to normal missions.

Yup, I hope the Gas City Remaster (alongside the lore) bring an opportunity for such.

[Teridax68]

7 minutes ago, hallelion said:

Yup, though, as noted from my post on the reddit, the risk of potentially placing Tenno against each other directly (or at least force the squad to follow only one course of action) would be both an interesting and a terrifying situation. I agree, though, that side-missions would be a great addition to the current flow of the gameplay.

Having Tenno oppose each other is definitely a minefield, which could be amazing if done right, but horrible if done wrong, and so far it's largely been done very wrong. Because of this, it might be better if these conflicting objectives were personal, rather than assigned to the whole squad, in the case of bonus objectives in a mission.

7 minutes ago, hallelion said:

Agreed as well with how the syndicates are currently poised. They all have the perfect allies and enemies already, which is harder to retcon in the story without people reacting in wild ways. With regards to "Syndicate conflicts should be shown by mutually exclusive objectives", would that be similar to what you have said above regarding point A1? I think my reading is getting flaky with how tired I am right now, please bear with me.

Yup, it's the same idea. We should be able to see Syndicate conflicts via actual conflicts, rather than arbitrary standing conversions on otherwise interchangeable progress bars, and conflicting objectives, both on a per-mission level and on a larger scale (e.g. two syndicates vying for control of a node) could be the perfect way to showcase this.

7 minutes ago, hallelion said:

The problem with just "release a skin and augment-style mods that buff the existing weapons instead of introducing an identical one" is that they would still need to find a way to progress the MR bar for everyone. A good compromise would be that Syndicates offer weapons unique to them and to them only.

I don't think the MR bar needs to be made to progress each time, and in general I don't think one should have to create duplicates of the same item just for the sake of MR, particularly since that only perpetuates MR fodder as this line of otherwise useless and undesirable weapons. If the intent is to create entirely new weapons, let's do that, instead of taking an existing weapon and creating a better version of it.

7 minutes ago, hallelion said:

Me too, but if something like this could be implemented easily and with less cost, the first logical thing would be to move all landing craft parts to syndicates, introduce more rarer rewards to rare containers (probably a random, very rare, mod), and then decouple air support charges on the terms of usage, similar to how crafted sentinels have their weapons acquired, and could be equipped (mostly) on other sentinels. Agreed that the air support charges are a bit gimmicky right now, though.

This is true, the simplest possible implementation could be for any landing craft to be able to deploy any air support charge, which would decouple the cosmetic element of landing crafts from the gameplay implications of air support charges. It would also allow these new charges to be added to each syndicate without having to create two new landing crafts: in fact, one might even only need to create two new air support charge types, and give the ones we have now to certain syndicates. All of this is assuming one wants to develop on the system, though, and personally I think air support charges are a largely redundant line of content that could be safely removed.

7 minutes ago, hallelion said:

Thank you for agreeing with me! Some of the reddit posts noted that it could be first implemented to endless missions to reduce the risks of host migration on long runs. Do you think such would work for endless missions, as well?

Do you mean having players shift from one endless mission type to the next, or creating an extended narrative over the course of a single endless mission?

[Invictus13307]

8 hours ago, hallelion said:

2. Introduce Syndicate Invasions, wherein Syndicates fight for domination of each planet, we Tenno help either side, and the winner will grant additional rep gains separate from the regulated rep earnings when you play missions on that planet for a some time. 

I like this.  It makes the inter-syndicate rivalry something in-game instead of just background lore, and it also means we have new ways for syndicates to step on each other's toes.  I can see allied/neutral syndicates "invading" each other, for example, because their mission objectives interfere with one another. 

You could tie a lot of different effects into it, too.  Maybe players that helped the losing side are more likely to get attacked when running missions on that planet.  Maybe players that helped the winning side get some support units at mission start.  Maybe certain drops or resources are available depending on who owns the planet. 

[Hallelion]

8 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Having Tenno oppose each other is definitely a minefield, which could be amazing if done right, but horrible if done wrong, and so far it's largely been done very wrong. Because of this, it might be better if these conflicting objectives were personal, rather than assigned to the whole squad, in the case of bonus objectives in a mission.

Yup, a possible way would be like, two objectives that are placed far apart, so that affinity radius can take care of rewarding those who chose only one side. Say, Hexis wants a data vault, and in another place in the map, a Perrin wants to deliver a payload.

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Yup, it's the same idea. We should be able to see Syndicate conflicts via actual conflicts, rather than arbitrary standing conversions on otherwise interchangeable progress bars, and conflicting objectives, both on a per-mission level and on a larger scale (e.g. two syndicates vying for control of a node) could be the perfect way to showcase this.

Yup. which is why I am a bit perplexed that the syndicates placed side-by-side each other in the relays, as if their back-end pursuits do not clash with each other in any way.

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I don't think the MR bar needs to be made to progress each time, and in general I don't think one should have to create duplicates of the same item just for the sake of MR, particularly since that only perpetuates MR fodder as this line of otherwise useless and undesirable weapons. If the intent is to create entirely new weapons, let's do that, instead of taking an existing weapon and creating a better version of it.

Yup. new weapons exclusive to them (similar to Simulor for Simaris)

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This is true, the simplest possible implementation could be for any landing craft to be able to deploy any air support charge, which would decouple the cosmetic element of landing crafts from the gameplay implications of air support charges. It would also allow these new charges to be added to each syndicate without having to create two new landing crafts: in fact, one might even only need to create two new air support charge types, and give the ones we have now to certain syndicates. All of this is assuming one wants to develop on the system, though, and personally I think air support charges are a largely redundant line of content that could be safely removed.

The override charge is useful for ungrouped rescue/spy sorties, though... 😛

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Do you mean having players shift from one endless mission type to the next, or creating an extended narrative over the course of a single endless mission?

I think they meant the first one, but only one single mission type, just so that rewards can be saved in-between. But I'd rather have an extended story over multiple missions. 🙂

 

8 hours ago, Invictus13307 said:

I like this.  It makes the inter-syndicate rivalry something in-game instead of just background lore, and it also means we have new ways for syndicates to step on each other's toes.  I can see allied/neutral syndicates "invading" each other, for example, because their mission objectives interfere with one another. 

You could tie a lot of different effects into it, too.  Maybe players that helped the losing side are more likely to get attacked when running missions on that planet.  Maybe players that helped the winning side get some support units at mission start.  Maybe certain drops or resources are available depending on who owns the planet. 

Yup, interesting stories could be told with it!

[Teridax68]

7 hours ago, hallelion said:

The override charge is useful for ungrouped rescue/spy sorties, though... 😛

This is fair, but it's just about the only air support charge that is useful, it's only very situationally useful to boot, and its usage can also be replicated via other, existing items, I feel. Jamming a vault's alarm by expending a cipher at any of the consoles within I think could be perfectly adequate, for example, and doing so outside of a vault would already hack map-wide alarms.

Quote

I think they meant the first one, but only one single mission type, just so that rewards can be saved in-between. But I'd rather have an extended story over multiple missions. 🙂

I'd completely agree to having unlocked rewards be retained upon mission failure in pretty much any case. Warframe has changed a lot over the years, and at this point I question why there is a risk of losing one's rewards to begin with, particularly since the game overall is meant to be rather forgiving in terms of mission completion, but also still has quite a few bugs that can break or fail a mission. Plains of Eidolon does this already by letting players keep rewards even after failing an objective, and I think that could be applied to everything else. Some people are bound to argue that this would push Warframe into even more casual territory, whatever that means, but I think in practice, coupled with some adjustments to scaling rewards, this could be the first step towards encouraging players to push their limits in endless rewards, and stay past the initial AABC cycle.

Edited October 3, 2018 by Teridax68

[Invictus13307]

On 2018-10-03 at 7:40 AM, Teridax68 said:

Jamming a vault's alarm by expending a cipher at any of the consoles within I think could be perfectly adequate, for example, and doing so outside of a vault would already hack map-wide alarms.

Maybe hacking any console outside of a vault should jam all active vault alarms?  It'd let the fourth player in a squad contribute without forcing them to babysit a specific vault.

The issue I see with limiting it to consoles inside the vault is that time spent ciphering consoles is time that could have been spent getting to the vault objective. 

[Teridax68]

8 minutes ago, Invictus13307 said:

Maybe hacking any console outside of a vault should jam all active vault alarms?  It'd let the fourth player in a squad contribute without forcing them to babysit a specific vault.

This could work as well. Personally, I'd also like alarms to be a more general, permanent thing, so if an alarm gets triggered in a vault, it should trigger the alarm across the map, and vice-versa the moment the vault is opened. In this respect, using a cipher could jam the alarm for a period of time, regardless of location.

8 minutes ago, Invictus13307 said:

The issue I see with limiting it to consoles inside the vault is that time spent ciphering consoles is time that could have been spent getting to the vault objective. 

This is true, though that I think is also a valid tradeoff. Having the choice between rushing to the vault, and risking failure, and taking a diversion to jam the alarms, which could buy you time but also close off routes, I think could make for much more compelling gameplay than a system in which you could instantly jam the alarms on-demand the moment they got triggered, without having to interrupt your movement towards the vault.

[Hallelion]

4 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This could work as well. Personally, I'd also like alarms to be a more general, permanent thing, so if an alarm gets triggered in a vault, it should trigger the alarm across the map, and vice-versa the moment the vault is opened. In this respect, using a cipher could jam the alarm for a period of time, regardless of location.

I think it should be one-way: raising alarms from the vault would trigger alarms to the map except the other vaults, but not the other way around. It would be a bit unfair to players who rush and focus on a vault only for another outside the vault to trip some alarm and accidentally "throw a wrench". We could easily say "change the pace, quickly get it then", but it's still annoying.

5 hours ago, Invictus13307 said:

Maybe hacking any console outside of a vault should jam all active vault alarms?  It'd let the fourth player in a squad contribute without forcing them to babysit a specific vault.

The issue I see with limiting it to consoles inside the vault is that time spent ciphering consoles is time that could have been spent getting to the vault objective.

Let's add a challenge to it: have the Lotus tell people outside the vaults that "this vault has a remote vulnerability, this is the console to hack to delay the lockdown process", tag a console in a place far enough to not be "a walk in the park", and have that console have a 90/10 chance for the following:

A. 90% reversing all lockdowns, and jamming the timer for some time.

B. 10% of breaking the timer, and stopping further lockdowns.

[Teridax68]

31 minutes ago, hallelion said:

I think it should be one-way: raising alarms from the vault would trigger alarms to the map except the other vaults, but not the other way around. It would be a bit unfair to players who rush and focus on a vault only for another outside the vault to trip some alarm and accidentally "throw a wrench". We could easily say "change the pace, quickly get it then", but it's still annoying.

This is fair, though it's already possible for players to screw each other over in Spy missions by tripping the alarms and/or failing a vault, regardless of external alarms. If nothing else, the alarms being the same across a whole level could be an opportunity for players on the outside to hack a console, or use a cipher, and give players inside vaults a grace period. In both cases, there are tradeoffs, though, so my proposal may still not be the best.