Reoccurring Events and Timeline Integration: New Story Progression Proposal

[-NR-SirLimbo]

Basis:

For a long time I've heard people talking about bringing back events, especially the lore-heavy events from years gone back. I support this but have a different idea on how to implement it. Note that "Event" in this thread refers to both Events and event-worthy Operations.

Let's take a look at Alad V. Most meet him on Venus for the first time, the 2nd planet, so very early on. But he had a lot of story tied to him. Imagine as a new player meeting him there early on, then again infested on Eris, then the normal variant helps you in The Second Dream. New players will be confused. They don't know about the Tubemen of Regor event and how it played out. Even though on PS4 Nef Anyo won and technically Alad V should still be infested as far as I know even there he is the one involved in The Second Dream. There probably should be a small transition on PS4 to show Alad V somehow getting cured without Tenno help.

Bringing these events back once would simply mean that in another year the next batch of new players has no idea what happened, just as it is currently. One could bring them back like the Ghouls or Operation Plague Star, though if players get to the Second Dream faster than this they still won't know what exactly happened.

All in all I believe the lore of these events should be present when a player has advanced enough into the story for them to make sense. Imagine new players doing the Tubemen of Regor without even knowing that Alad V has gotten infested, having just met him on Venus.

 

Proposal:

Bring back these Events in a 1 or 2 week cycle (for now I assume 1 week), but do not make them accessible for everyone and integrate them with other Events, Quests and Junctions. I have made a sort of “timeline” of what it might look like. This is not a fleshed out thing, just a first attempt:

For example, until you have defeated Mutalist Alad V on Eris you do not get the ability to participate in the Tubemen of Regor event. However, as soon as you unlock the event you get to jump into the current cycle, and once you get X amount of score you get the reward you may start The Second Dream. The benefit of this would be having players experience a comprehensive timeline that explains to them why in this case Alad V went from normal to infested back to normal, why the Stalker is after him and why the Tenno owe him.

Some things are way back even though one might imagine they ought to be sooner in the timeline. For example after The War Within all the various Warframe quests. Why Revenant is easy, one needs to get standing with the Quills, so it's not possible any sooner. Why the rest of the Warframes, apart from Harrow who is the next story quest? Mirage's "Hidden Messages" was the first Warframe quest as far as I know, so one might think it should come sooner. But one of the mission nodes is on Sedna, so the soonest possible is after its Junction. The other Warframe quests I threw in there, mostly because I think they fit there, but of cause it's always possible to "trickle" them out one by one, especially with the long no-event, no-side-quest, no-junction are coming below. We really need a bunch of events in this game to fill this hole.

That raises the questions: Should players be able to complete events multiple times and get the rewards of the opposing side of the conflict if it exists? Should there a limit how many times players can complete the same event? Should they just disappear once they have been completed once? What about all of the Orokin Reactors and Catalysts? Should new players get their hands on so many easy potatoes? Like 20+ a week? That would be overkill. The rewards should be balanced out. I wouldn't allow players in events with a side to chose to even go and get the rewards of the other side in the next cycle. What would probably be a good idea is a sort of "Event Merchant". The gist of it would be collecting points when scoring in the events and exchanging them for all sorts of related items, mods, weapons etc at specific vendors in probably Relays. Have such a scored run per event once per cycle and it's another weekly goal.

More than that, allowing only a set amount of scores to count towards the points gathered for the event merchant every event cycle would make it another item on the weekly to-do list in Warframe. Some might like it, some might not, but the latter should know that if they ignore it nothing for them would change to how it is now.

To sum it up: Events run on a weekly or so cycle, being unlocked as the player progresses in the story and participation in any cycle to a set goal will unlock the next part according to the timeline. This may or may not exclude events like One Thousand Cuts which do not bear such significance for the main Story, though of cause they should run as well. With Event Merchants and weekly chances to accumulate more points along with MEANINGFUL REWARDS for NEW PLAYERS AND VETERANS ALIKE it could be another thing to do as the part of a normal Warframe week.

Especially for new players the early events could offer some free slots to allow them to expand their arsenal without hitting the paywall in their first few days. As veterans wouldn't be excited about it, maybe put these things into event merchants instead.

 

Benefits:

• New Players as well as (I suggest) Veterans get to (re)experience the Events. They can be released in one big update, hopefully with replays of all quests including Warframe quests, but also used as one-new-thing-every-week updates to combat content drought.

• New Weekly goals, assuming rewards are good enough even after the first completion.

• Better lore explanation and temporal order of the story.

 

Issues:

• Having to evaluate which events to include and which not (for example, some like the Fusion Moa Event only showed off new enemy or mission types). For lore purposes I would like to have ALL(!) events that bear any kind of information on the Warframe universe to cycle, if only for lore purposes. If possible lock certain enemy types like Fusion Moas and Oxium Ospreys behind their quest if all of the players in a group do not have set quest completed.

• Having to work out a new "Event" tab in the Starchart and integrate the system into the game, unlocking events with the completion of story quests and other events, and having event completion as another requirement for other story missions.

  • Likely when this is the case there would no longer be quests rewarded through junctions. The codex as it is would likely not be enough to have players figure out what they have to do to get the next big quest. But something as simple as a tree like this should make most people understand what is going on. Still, add to this frustrating to-do list a full codex-quest section rework...

• Having to deal with the potential issues from over-farming event enemies, event weapons, etc (like Maiming Strike if acolytes are always present) and re-balancing the rewards of events.

• Potentially having to implement score counting and event merchants for the various events.

• Updating events to run with newer mechanics.

 

Conclusion:

All in all I don't know how much work it would be to implement all of this. It may easily be a lot and with Fortuna/Railjack/The New War at the moment I don't see a chance to squeeze this in. But in the future it would be very interesting to have everyone who wasn't in it from the very start half a decade ago experience for the first time an ordered story of Warframe with all the events, all the operations and all the rewards they bring. It's not just bringing events back, it's more than that: Ordering the Story and Event history in Warframe and expanding this system with future events.

 

That's all. Any questions, criticism, comments? Then out with it!

Edited October 23, 2018 by -NR-SirLimbo
Uploaded an older version, ironed that out some mistakes like typos

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

I'm all for it. As long as it's a change to the Ghouls-Razorback-Ghouls-Plague Star-Ghouls-Ghouls-Ghouls-Fomorian-Ghouls-Razorback-Ghouls...I couldn't be happier.

[-NR-SirLimbo]

vor 35 Minuten schrieb (PS4)Pauloluisx:

I'm all for it. As long as it's a change to the Ghouls-Razorback-Ghouls-Plague Star-Ghouls-Ghouls-Ghouls-Fomorian-Ghouls-Razorback-Ghouls...I couldn't be happier.

I'd be happy just NOT having an inbox message every single time ghouls start and end. It should only be the first time your account sees it, then no more.

[peterc3]

All of these proposals to have old Events made into Quests assume DE doesn't know how to introduce any of this when the reality is they just don't have the time or resources to devote to something they may know isn't worth it to work full time on.

[-NR-SirLimbo]

vor 38 Minuten schrieb peterc3:

All of these proposals to have old Events made into Quests assume DE doesn't know how to introduce any of this when the reality is they just don't have the time or resources to devote to something they may know isn't worth it to work full time on.

It's not about making literally everything here into a quest or anything.

Take for example A Favor For Darvo. It's a single mission you can look up in the wiki (http://warframe.wikia.com/wiki/A_Favor_For_Darvo). We don't need a huge quest about that or anything. We just need to, in this case when the Earth-Venus junction is cleared, have him send such an inbox message and give this mission marker on the starchart. Then the exact same mission plays out as it did a long time ago. The reason why it's in there isn't because it's a 1 1/2 hour long cinematic quest, nor does it need to be that. It's a bit more info on Darvo and the Stalker, done in <10 minutes. Something simple that just pops up, you do it, you know the world of Warframe a bit better. Anyone who hasn't played from the 27th to the 29th of November 2013 will never ever know that it happened, unless they get told about it or look it up the same way I did. What's the big problem in not simply having this one-time little bit of lore float around? Nothing that I'd know of.

That's all. Have existing quest repeatable, have old events, tactical alerts and such micro-missions active for everyone to experience the full history of the Origin System. It's not so much about making new quests, that's what for example The New War is for, it's about giving new players every opportunity to dive into the lore just as the day 1 access year 6 still playing people did.