Fixing the boredom, defense and interception edition

[Fallen_Echo]

Hello there Tenno!

 

It came to my attention that content drought topics are rising (thought i personally think theres no more drought than what we had constantly in the last 2 year) so i decided to revive one of my old suggestions on making the two most boring game modes a bit more intense.

The problems are pretty simple, the mobs are slow, the breaks between round as time passes start to feel longer and longer and in many places the mobs simply get stuck or hide in somekind of same spot what only makes the whole match even slower.

Im not sure what anybody else thinks but after wave 15 if the enemy hasnt started to overrun the pod yet the whole mission gets soo boring that i my operator needs to periodically shoot my frame in the leg with my tigris prime to stay wake it up. Its goddamm boring and by the time you reach the point it actually becomes intense and engaging you already lost half of your brain cells from the staleness of the run.

 

I thought up some changes what could make these gamemodes much faster and entertaining.

 

Defense

A general update is that the enemies are now get a speed bonus to reach the objective faster, instead of spawning in safezones they are spawning in random areas around the map generally closer to the objective than currently, the corpus and the grineer both have teleporters for this and the infested can literally grow out of the walls. Details below in the faction related changes.

The break is reduced to 2 second, to compensate each break grants players a small surge of energy and health while partially heals and reshields the pod. To reduce the chance of losing loot due to having much smaller breaks now each wave ends with an implosion wave what draws every drop closer to the objective.

Change the defendable objective regularly and set up a variable on it so on each map it can spawn atleast in 2 zones. Even the smallest maps can have "active consoles" where important data is stored what the Lotus needs, we dont need to always defend frozen people. A console, some important cargo, a hacked corpus/grineer robot, anything can go. (not as in the infamous node on Uranus but as each mission has a differently placed and different looking defense object)

 

For faction related mode changes:

Grineer:

1.) The grineer are deployed with Vay Hek's distruption drone and a propaganda drone in their spawn areas with teleporters, they are programmed to move slowly (almost literally at crawling speed) to the defense area. Their health and level is capped at the starting amount and stays that way, no drone can spawn if the previous ones are still alive. Max 8 drones can be active at any time. Both drones can only take damage from direct sources, meaning that no aoe or warframe skill can blow them up.

2.) Each spawned grineer is raging from an adrenalin burst what causes them to gain +50% movement speed till they reach the defense area, they also gain +50% damage resistance and  complete crowd control resistance for the first 5 seconds after spawn till they are in the vicinity of the defense area. This resistance does not nullfy skills it just temporarly disables them for the said duration.

3.) Each melee grineer unit has 20% chance to trigger berserk buff when they hit the pod. When berserk is triggered every unit in a 10m circle around the melee unit who activated the buff it gets the ability to shoot simultenously regardless of their number. (those who dont know enemies are programmed in a way what makes sure only 5-6 of them can attack simultenously). Melee units also now gain increased damage resistance and a passive health increase as they get closer to the pod.

 

Corpus:

1.) Corpus units spawn in nullfying bursts. These small bursts grant them 3 seconds of complete immunity to warframe powers and void attacks but also disable their own skills too. Warframes caught in the bursts are nullfied and get a magnetic proc, each burst is 2 meter wide. Corpus units cant spawn closer than 25 meters from the objective.

2.) Corpus units gain an energy boost when spawning making them hover over the ground, gain +50% speed while also gaining +100% shields till they reach the defense area.

3.) Each corpus unit spawning has 20% chance to become a commander. Max 4 commanders can be on the battleground at any time, they are basically eximus units without any aura skill. Depending on their type, human or robotic they grant each unit of their type 1% chance to fill up a bombardment meter when they are attacking in a 2 meter wide area around the defense pod. When the bombardment meter is full and a commander is still alive it can call down a nullfier strike on the defense objective removing all skills, draining all energy of each player and distrupting void powers, this also affects all corpus units removing all auras and skills they could use. The duration for the effect is 3 seconds, the width of the strike is 4 meter around the objective. If all commanders die the bombardment meter loses 50% of its current charge.

 

Infested:

1.) The infested literally grows out of the walls, in the process they also gain the ability to cloak themselves and become immune to warframe powers till they are atleast 3 meter away from the defense target or they attack a player. A faint outline can be seen on them and while the cloak is active auras (like eximus or ancient auras) are inactive. Attacking them with weapons also removes the cloak but grants 10% damage reduction for them for 3 seconds.

2.) Due to their ability to grow out of walls they instead of gaining speed buffs they just spawn closer to the pod, depending on the area they can even spawn on the ceiling if its atleast 4 meter away from the pod to fall onto it. The general spawn distance is between 4-15 meters.

3.) The infested is a swarm. Their numbers grow as time goes on, becoming an unstoppable force. With each unit killed theres 20% chance that 2 fast grown unit spawn near it. This number increases by 1 for each 5 wave (max increase is +10), units spawned this way dont have powers and cannot become eximus while they also have 50% less total health. The health decrease is lowered by 5% for each 10 waves and stops at -10% health. This means that its possible that killing 10 chargers spawn 100 more of them in the same round. The spawned units are technically degraded variants meaning that growth ancients dont have hooks, chargers cant do a spit attack and soo on, they are as special as regular grineer butchers.

 

Corrupted

1.) The corrupted utilizes the power of the old orokin technology. Each unit spawns with either an 50% speed buff and with corruption what prevents warframe powers from affecting them OR appear near around 10 meter from the objective from fissures.

2.) The towers are dangerous places and as such each wave before the 5th has 20% chance to spawn an orokin eye miniboss or a phasing maw both controlled by either corrupted Vor or by the entity called Neural sentry. These bosses spawn instead of other mobs and have the total health and shields of all units what would have spawned in that wave (armor is capped and doesnt scale). They focus on the players and not on the objective. They also gain increasing resistance to each skill what can cap at total immunity, they also take 50% less time under crowd control effects. The resistance is increasing for each attack but only affects that wave's boss. The immunity can be decreased or changed to another skill by using a different power on the boss or dealing void damage to it.

 

 

Interception

1.) Due to the need to keep multiple areas safe the enemies here dont get speed bonus but keep the spawn related defense bonus they got in defense mode (such as the spawning with drones, nullfier blasts or cloaks). They also spawn in much bigger numbers and more frequently.

2.) Each of these maps depending if they are open air or not get an orbital strike protocol or an emergency shutdown. The orbital strike protocol deploys a faction related strike to a random part of the map while the emergency shutdown is almost the same for each faction. Details below.

3.) Both the shutdown and the orbital strike commences once the tenno has atleast 3 nodes, the countdown starts somewhere between 10-50 seconds randomly with atleast 10-30 second break between each. Same rule for the corrupted effect.

4.) For a bit of lore and sense, change the decriptions and the Lotus monologues to say we are distrupting important communication and not stealing data. Thats what spy missions are for.

 

Faction related changes:

 

Grineer:

Open area:

1.) The grineer orbital strike marks an area on the map with a slowly decreasing red circle what is 15 meter wide when it locked on the target. It always follows one of the players.

2.) The target is locked after 15 seconds and the strike immideatly starts. The grineer launches a flurry of missiles carrying fomorian infused warheads capatable of leaving behind an area of fomorian infused mist for 20 seconds what buffs the speed of the grineer units while hurts the players. A direct hit from this strike can easily bring down an unsuspecting player but deals no damage to objects or power based entities.

Enclosed space:

1.) If the area doesnt have open air the grineer commences an emergency shutdown. In this case the whole map goes dark and one of the tenno controlled nodes turn off for 30 seconds. The map is dark enough to make sure that without directly putting the flashlight on the enemies you cant see much of them.

2.) The grineer are marked with bright green "eyes" as they turn on their nightvision mode. With the expection of the butchers who try to blend in the darkness and gain complete power immunity, all units have bright green glowing eyes. Scorpions gain the ability to use their hooks to move around the map in the air with +100% movement speed, they can no longer hook the players but deal +50% damage if they strike a player from behind. As butchers, scorpions also try to blend in but their swooshing sounds can give them away while butchers are silent till they strike.

3.) The power shutdown is active for 30 seconds.

 

Corpus:

Open area:

1.) In an open area the Corpus fires an orbital laser at the enemy. The lasers current target is marked with a bright blue targeting laser what follows a player constantly. The marking time is 15 seconds and it has a visual effect of the marking laser vanishing.

2.) Once locked on the corpus fires a continous beam of plasma at the center of the target in a 5 meter wide area then finishes of the strike with a 15 meter wide explosion.

3.) The explosion leaves behind an energy anomaly what increases shields of both tenno and corpus but disables all powers void skills and eximus auras inside.

4.) The duration of the strike is 10 second the field is active for 20 seconds.

Enclosed space:

1.) Incase of closed maps the corpus calls out an emp strike disabling all electricity in the area, disabling a tenno node. In the darkness the corpus are marked by their glowing visors (or whatever those are called) and with glowing robotic parts, the only expection is the corpus stealth moa what has anti-moa style sniper attacks and the ability to leap strike (leaping with a shockwave at the end). This unit appears from regular moas, transforming in the darkness.

2.) Prod crewman also spawn in the darkness now armed with ohmas or lectas, they move fast but also produce more light.

3.) The duration of the emp is 30 seconds, while its active all turrets, cameras, sentry systems are deactivated.

 

Infested:

Open area:

1.) The infested due to their nature doesnt have access to weapons capatable of orbital strikes but they dont need it.

2.) The infested spread like a disease making them appear out of thin air. Players at random spots of the map will see a continous flow of infested spores what becomes more and more dense.

3.) After 15 seconds with a violent eruption and screen shake an infested area appears spawning infested in a 20 meter wide area from spores. While spawning and after spawning for 3 seconds these infested are immune to warframe powers and void attacks but they cannot capture points.

4.) The spawn area creates 3 units every half second, its active for 30 seconds and each unit has 50% less health compared to their regular counterparts. Units spawned this way cant have aura or eximus powers.

Enclosed space:

5.) If the area is enclosed the infested damage the energy systems to create darkness. Once in the dark they emit a faint light expect for the chargers who become fully cloaked but deal 50% less damage to players and cant capture. Eximus units emit light strong enough to illuminate a 10 meter wide circle around them. In the dark its also possible for a hunter to spawn. The hunter is an infested similar to the leapers with the difference of having large spikes on its arms and on its back. They are fully cloaked like chargers and deal +50% damage if they hit the backs of players. Max 3 hunter can be active at any time.

6.) The duration of the shutdown is 30 seconds but the tenno doesnt lose nodes in this case.

7.) The infested cloak is much more visble in this mode its no longer just an outline but more like they are transparent like colored glass, expect on chargers.

 

Corrupted:

1.) The corrupted doesnt need tricks like shutdown or orbital strikes. They just activate the Neural sentry when they need it.

2.) The activation sequence of a neural sentry is marked with a warning from Ordis or the Lotus with a chargeup of 10 seconds. They also tell when it ends.

3.) Once the neural sentry is active friendly fire is turned on for all weapons and each player appears as random "corrupted looking" enemy units. Also weapon switching (only if the player still has ammo), quick melee and void mode is disabled.

4.) Players can still differentate each other from the enemies with good communication, careful planning and observation. For example chargers are not corrupted units and who has ever seen a heavy gunner using corpus weapons?

5.) While the neural sentry is active the screen has a faint void corruption effect all over the map.  Each player gains a form similar to what weapon they used. Scorpion form only goes for melee users while tech form only goes for primary users.

6.) The neural sentry at deactivation also spawns void clones of players with the same gear they had, these clones are identical to players and try to kill them.

7.) The sentry is active for the end of the said round.

Edited October 9, 2018 by Fallen_Echo
clarification added

[Yuri_Doujinshi]

I only skimmed the article, but pretty neat ideas! I'm all for anything that makes Defense less of a drag to play, and I love the ideas for shortening the rounds. Interception isn't very boring as far as I'm concerned, but I'm one of those people who basically treats it like a survival mission. If everyone was sitting on their own point the whole time (as most squads expect you to do, and which is generally the most efficient way) I can imagine it could get pretty boring pretty fast.

[(PSN)OriginalEquinox]

Decent ideas and won't be so difficult since most of these have been in the game atleast once like the corpus laser in the Ambulas assassination and the blackout in the first Chains of Harrow quest. But as for the random spawn location one idk if they'll do it because of the amount of work that might need to be done

[DeaHamlet]

Just a little thing. I haven't finished reading everything but I wanted to give feedback on this:

"Change the defendable objective regularly and set up a variable on it so on each map it can spawn atleast in 2 zones. Even the smallest maps can have "active consoles" where important data is stored what the Lotus needs, we dont need to always defend frozen people. A console, some important cargo, a hacked corpus/grineer robot, anything can go."

That already happens on the Uranus map. In my experience most people leave when that map shows up or only stay for 5 waves. I have yet to meet a person who likes it. Contrast with the Uranus map that has a defense item in the middle that never moves. That map is actually harder because the mobs can shoot the item from anywhere, it's completely available for ravaging. Yet people will stay there rather than deal with the other map that moves the defense target. 

---

If you want difficult defense, you'd enjoy bounties with pugs. The ships bomb the heck out of the defense target, it's vulnerable from all sides, and there are a ton of mobs rushing it. All while you have one random with level 5 frame and useless low level weapons, one random fishing, and one random determined to shoot down ships but not very successful. It's quite a thrill. You're not allowed to play Frost or Gara. You will have fun. 

[Fallen_Echo]

3 hours ago, DeaHamlet said:

That already happens on the Uranus map. In my experience most people leave when that map shows up or only stay for 5 waves. I have yet to meet a person who likes it. Contrast with the Uranus map that has a defense item in the middle that never moves. That map is actually harder because the mobs can shoot the item from anywhere, it's completely available for ravaging. Yet people will stay there rather than deal with the other map that moves the defense target. 

Theres a misunderstanding here, i did not meant it as rotating around the map like the uranus one but as the objective is not always placed in the same place.

 

For example lets say you are on akkad, the pod is always in the middle of the larger room coviently placed to offer a wide area to the enemies to come and to you to manuever.

Now with my idea that map could have been rotated around so the pod is just under the big hole we jump in or in the teleport space what is there.

 

In many maps i could be possible to move the SINGLE objective we have a bit away so its not always the same stale experience.

I also meant that the objective visuals are regularly changed. Theres no need to always defend a pod, we can defend consoles, cargo, stolen bots, whatever.

[DeaHamlet]

1 hour ago, Fallen_Echo said:

Theres a misunderstanding here, i did not meant it as rotating around the map like the uranus one but as the objective is not always placed in the same place.

 

For example lets say you are on akkad, the pod is always in the middle of the larger room coviently placed to offer a wide area to the enemies to come and to you to manuever.

Now with my idea that map could have been rotated around so the pod is just under the big hole we jump in or in the teleport space what is there.

 

In many maps i could be possible to move the SINGLE objective we have a bit away so its not always the same stale experience.

I also meant that the objective visuals are regularly changed. Theres no need to always defend a pod, we can defend consoles, cargo, stolen bots, whatever.

That sounds cool. 

As long as we don't need to defend suicidal rescue targets. I am scarred for life from defense sorties.

[Fallen_Echo]

@Synpai Hello, i called you because i thought it wouldnt be nice to try to hijack or self-promote in your own thread.

I want to ask you what do you think of this suggestion here and do you plan to suggest some advanced missions what could make the regular ones more entertaining and rewarding?

[Synpai]

5 hours ago, Fallen_Echo said:

@Synpai Hello, i called you because i thought it wouldnt be nice to try to hijack or self-promote in your own thread.

I want to ask you what do you think of this suggestion here and do you plan to suggest some advanced missions what could make the regular ones more entertaining and rewarding?

There's some good variation  here, my favorite being the chance for more infested to spawn on kills.

 

I do think some of it may not be valid, by that I mean trivialized by the player.

For instance having a Toxin Eximus spawn anywhere in your vicinity while you're on Banshee is basically like having a bomb with .5s left suddenly dropped in your lap, by the time you process a reaction or attempt to flee it's already too late. I assume the defense systems apply to mobile defenses too?

As for the darkness, if I'm being honest I play this game while watching shows on Netflix and still do fine. Does the darkness remove the radar as well? We almost have this with the Dense Fog modifier. I guess it would make the Kavat and Naramon Enemy highlights more valuable though so that'd be neat, but there's a portion of frames that would go unaffected by any one of these since they buff themselves or allies and melee doesn't discriminate on what you can see necessarily as much as what's around you and not behind a wall. I still think it would be a nice variation.

Orbital strikes (A la Keyla De Thaym?) are pretty neat for interception! But then we have the all mighty operator power for anything telegraphed to the player x.x

 

But I do enjoy the behavioral changes you suggested regardless. +1

 

 

To me a good chunk of them sound like they could be implemented as "Peculiar Simulations" a way for players to make their own difficulty and add variation from the post you commented on. With a system like this you could change any and every mission to be chaotic for you.

I.e:

Peculiar Nesting Doll Simulation:  Enemies have a chance to spawn more enemies when killed by a player with this active.

Peculiar Orbital Simulation:  The player is occasionally targeted by Orbital Strikes (only damages people with it active).

Peculiar Blind-Fight Simulation:  The player is periodically (at random) surrounded by darkness.

[Fallen_Echo]

1 hour ago, Synpai said:

For instance having a Toxin Eximus spawn anywhere in your vicinity while you're on Banshee is basically like having a bomb with .5s left suddenly dropped in your lap, by the time you process a reaction or attempt to flee it's already too late. I assume the defense systems apply to mobile defenses too?

I mainly planned for regular defense here but i guess it can be added to mobile defense too. As for the eximus, their auras as disable as long as they cloaked. IF we add in a brief moment for the ancients and eximus units on them to "get concious" this can be fixed.

1 hour ago, Synpai said:

As for the darkness, if I'm being honest I play this game while watching shows on Netflix and still do fine. Does the darkness remove the radar as well? We almost have this with the Dense Fog modifier. I guess it would make the Kavat and Naramon Enemy highlights more valuable though so that'd be neat, but there's a portion of frames that would go unaffected by any one of these since they buff themselves or allies and melee doesn't discriminate on what you can see necessarily as much as what's around you and not behind a wall. I still think it would be a nice variation.

Have you ever seen the darkness bug?

This is a rare bug what turns of map lightning. It can be as dark as the upper pic or as dark as the lower one.

The point would be that here the special units spawn more than the others. Some of them are either long range attackers, while others are completely power immune.

I guess if they are still not sturdy enough we could put an anti-melee modifier on them too.

1 hour ago, Synpai said:

Orbital strikes (A la Keyla De Thaym?) are pretty neat for interception! But then we have the all mighty operator power for anything telegraphed to the player x.x

The grineer one can kill a player instantly if it hits them directly while the corpus one makes a player unable to use operator mode and powers too. I was careful enought to make sure they are not as easily avoided by just activating void mode.

1 hour ago, Synpai said:

To me a good chunk of them sound like they could be implemented as "Peculiar Simulations" a way for players to make their own difficulty and add variation from the post you commented on. With a system like this you could change any and every mission to be chaotic for you.

I.e:

Peculiar Nesting Doll Simulation:  Enemies have a chance to spawn more enemies when killed by a player with this active.

Peculiar Orbital Simulation:  The player is occasionally targeted by Orbital Strikes (only damages people with it active).

Peculiar Blind-Fight Simulation:  The player is periodically (at random) surrounded by darkness.

Sounds like some great fun, this is why i already link your post to some other drought topics where people seek solutions.

[(PSN)guzmantt1977]

On 2018-10-03 at 2:52 PM, Fallen_Echo said:

Snip.

Interesting ideas and well articulated. It brought to mind the event with the hyena pack that kept draining our energy. 

The first time I played one of the missions (stage 1 was a defence mission) we lost the objective. I was stunned. Then I did some build shuffling (as did most people, it seemed) to adapt to the situation. It was thrilling and I enjoyed myself. But with the higher risk came greater reward. 

I think that these suggestions are a good idea and it would be nice to have some of them, perhaps as a regularly reoccurring event. 

[Fallen_Echo]

Now that DE deployed the new "hard mode" the boredom really starts to show its teeth as we die more to enemies because we are spacing out than because its legit hard.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

Might help if the enemies weren't so mindless in defense/interception missions.

When the grineer is scripted to just follow a set path to the pod, and even while I'm shooting him in the back he completely ignores me and keeps on his mindless script without running for cover or something to fight back,

and it plays out exactly the same each round;

that gets boring fast.

 

 

imagine if they were smarter? instead of the identical set route they could respond to my threat and try to take different routes to avoid me? etc...

Halo CE has been out how many years now? and the enemy AI in that old game is still superior...