New War as an opportunity to reintroduce Trials to the game.

[Vennikyo]

Hello and welcome.

Knowing all too well how busy, with Fortuna p.2, Baruuk and then Railjack, You guys at DE are right now, and being aware that next chapter to our crazy main story in the game 'the New War' is both pushed back in favour of earlier scheduled content and in very early stage of development of itself I decided to come forth with crazy idea about future of the game we all love deeply.

During TennCon's presentation you teased us with a glimpse of the future. For those of you fellow Tenno who don't know what I'm talking about or/and new players who just joined us with release of the Fortuna update I'm going to include the official trailer to give you context right away.

 

So. To the meat and bones. My crazy suggestion is to reintroduce Trials with it or right after. (Warframe's version of mmorpg raids that was removed midway after the Plain of Eidolon related updates. For more information what Trials were I'm sending you here: https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/The_Law_of_Retribution)

But there is a catch! Instead of reworking existing (currently retired) Trial The Law of Retribution I propose to make entirely new one with fresh, refined formula.

(I'm well aware of scarcity of resources and development cost of new elements of the game both time and monetary-wise.)

Bear with me on this one.

1. What am I even talking about, what do I want and what I imagine could happen.

LoR was (in majority) a puzzle Trial with only one boss to fight. As puzzles are awesome, I believe many of us would like a real encounters in form of boss fights with multiple mechanics to learn over time and to overcome as a team. LoR was short and strongly disconnected from other parts of the game hence not all players had a chance to participate in them.

(Personal note here: My previous clan has died entirely, because of LoR removal. We used to have weekly schedule on it and it built strong bonds and companionship between our clan memebers. Sadly it came to an end.) 

I'm not sure how far set in stone 'the New War' is a the moment be it lore-wise or gameplay-wise so I don't know how possible it is to:

• 1. This huge asteroid/ Sentient motherbase/ Sentient Warship /Fleet could be a new open world structure with Trial as it's part.
• 1.5. or as a Trial itself.
• 2. Key aquisition would require farming enemies / repeatable quests or even bounties within the premise of this huge ship. Fighting various Sentient enemies.
• 3. Introduction of or rather solidification of Sentients as a faction with several types of units.
• 4. In the new Trial I would aim for 10 bosses and 1 boss extra as Bonus for highest level dificulty. All boss encounters with individual mechanics and gimicks to overcome.
• 5. Three difficulties:
  • A) Initial - in order to complete main questline you have to do this Trial in it's entirety at least once. This will have big impact on assuring that content will not be exclusive and will not be something that 3-5% of game's population would participate in, but everyone. Baby steps, slower mechanics and high tolerance to mistakes. Quest type of loot, Paracesis level of rewards.
  • B) Normal - at this point you should more or less know how to play, what are the bosses and what mechanics they have. Normal speed of mechanics, lower tolerance to mistakes, requirement of higher team cooperation and communication. Eidolon type of loot, arcanes, mods, blueprints, weapons parts.
  • C) Nightmare - 'end game' difficulty, fast mechanics, very low tolerance to mistakes, one-shot mechanics, Bonus Boss. Highest tier of rewards, blueprints, fully level up arcanes, decorations, cosmetics and very low chance for fully built new weapons (maybe even with potato). Weapons could be also build with blueprints and drop would be just an extra.
• 6. Trial size should be increased from 8 to 12 players (maybe more if there is a way to not butcher performance to death). From the technical point of view It could be achieved with techniques currently used for Relays, Cetus and Fortuna. A server instanced hook with invite only. This would allow to retain good quailty of the connection for all raid members. 
• 7. Something I thought about for quite some time now. Something that I bet [DE]Steve would like very much. Introduction or rather come back of original Warframe's main protagonist - the 'Dark Sector' guy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Sector) as new Guide / Important NPC, as Lotus seems to be gone for good and turned out been a traitor (as far as we know???). He could be strongly tied with persuing Sentients fighting the endless fight to destroy them or something around that. As well as Railjack this would be fine addition that has it's roots in the ancient times and plans DE had for the game. I think.

 

This is just part of ideas I have and I don't want this post to be too long so I will leave it at that for now.

 

Fellow Tenno. Before you decide to crucify me for interrupting DE's god's plan or demending anything keep in mind that my propositions are mere suggestions that (I think) would allow game to evolve on yet another amazing level and make fun and engaging experience we can enjoy. I decided to share my thoughts be it good or bad, but if anything worth considering, knowing the strive and hunger for return of Trials I hear from other players almost every day.

 

Thank You for reading and I'm looking forward to hear from You. Share Your own interesting ideas and things you would like to see in regards to the Trials being tied to main storyline.

Cheers,

myself

 

P.S. If there is an interest on part of DE I'm willing to share more details and design everything myself and with team as necessary. @[DE]Steve, @[DE]ScottP please feel free to message me via private message for more information on the matter.

Edited December 13, 2018 by Vennikyo

[Gabbynaru]

OR, how about this. How about they don't introduce old content and call it new. How about they make something new, more interesting, not so prone to complete collapse if you just as much as look in it's general direction and not so walled off even Trump would feel jealous?

[SDGDen]

23 minutes ago, Gabbynaru said:

OR, how about this. How about they don't introduce old content and call it new. How about they make something new, more interesting, not so prone to complete collapse if you just as much as look in it's general direction and not so walled off even Trump would feel jealous?

have you read the post.

 

thats litterally what the post is about...

 

40 minutes ago, Vennikyo said:

7. Something I thought about for quite some time now. Something that I bet [DE]Steve would like very much. Introduction or rather come back of original Warframe's main protagonist - the 'Dark Sector' guy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Sector) as new Guide / Important NPC, as Lotus seems to be gone for good and turned out been a traitor (as far as we know???). He could be strongly tied with persuing Sentients fighting the endless fight to destroy them or something around that. As well as Railjack this would be fine addition that has it's roots in the ancient times and plans DE had for the game. I think.

dark sector isnt canon to warframe. within the warframe universe, hayden tenno doesnt exist.

 

[Altagraive]

As long as it's not standing on buttons and not outruling most frames outright I'm all for the new raids/trials.

But as they used to be, they were terrible and not worth learning, playing and spending resources on their keys.

They were just garbage honestly.

And 98% of playerbase not touching them for YEARS is a good indicator of that.

I don't miss them AT ALL.

 

Warframe is an action game, puzzles have no place as the focus in an action game.

Darksiders 1 and 2 were failures because of that, and Warframe's own trials were  a failure because of that.

DO NOT make puzzle trials DE, or the will be just as dead as previous ones.

[----Legacy----]

Still waiting for the solar rail conflicts to return, these were removed in order to get a rework way before trials were even a thought in steve's mind and we still have no info about them 

Edited November 23, 2018 by ----Legacy----

[uxx0]

I wholeheartedly support the introduction of any new, fun and challenging content.

11 hours ago, Vennikyo said:

2. Key aquisition would require farming enemies / repeatable quests or even bounties within the premise of this huge ship. Fighting various Sentient enemies.

Make it joinable after a quest and don't hide it in the marketplace again. Make rewards limited to one daily completion. Otherwise find a clever way that it doesn't just get farmed to death, although this mostly depends on the rewards.

11 hours ago, Vennikyo said:

4. In the new Trial I would aim for 10 bosses and 1 boss extra as Bonus for highest level dificulty. All boss encounters with individual mechanics and gimicks to overcome.

It doesn't always have to be bosses. The problem with WF is that we have way too much damage, so it's either damage gating or more mechanics that need to be overcome. Meaning puzzles, wipe phases, parcour sections and all that jazz. Parcour sections would be something I'd especially love since it seems to be so underused in the rest of the game. 2-5 bosses/encounters also seem way more feasible than 10.

11 hours ago, Vennikyo said:

5. Three difficulties:

Difficulty could also be created by ingame challenges that up the rewards. Take Eidolon kill vs. catch as an example.

11 hours ago, Vennikyo said:

6. Trial size should be increased from 8 to 12 players (maybe more if there is a way to not butcher performance to death).

Double the usual squad size seems to be a good rule of thumb. You could also tie the number of players to difficulty or rewards (leaning more towards the latter). Having the players host is intentional to avoid having dedicated servers. Saves money. But that's for another discussion imo.

11 hours ago, Vennikyo said:

7. Something I thought about for quite some time now. Something that I bet [DE]Steve would like very much.

Any kind of introduction would actually be nice, but not a must have in my eyes. It's kind of been done for JV with Salvage as introduction to the injector mechanic. Since raids in many games are endgame content it would actually be detrimental to the supposed difficulty if you hold the player's hands by explaining every step.

 

 

10 hours ago, Altagraive said:

As long as it's not standing on buttons and not outruling most frames outright I'm all for the new raids/trials.

Being forced to be somewhere within a certain time is a legit design strategy used in many other game's raids. Eidolon hunts and ESO both force even stricter metas in terms of frames. That point is moot.

10 hours ago, Altagraive said:

And 98% of playerbase not touching them for YEARS is a good indicator of that.

Maybe because it was buried in market without any advertising? If you go by that logic we might also just remove Conclave. Sadly we lack insightful statistics to make up any conclusions by ourselves.

10 hours ago, Altagraive said:

Warframe is an action game, puzzles have no place as the focus in an action game.

Warframe needs mechanically challenging content to make it interesting, not just gear checks. The arguments for and against endgame challenges have been discussed in numerous other threads already. Thing is that WF has been catering to a more casual crowd for a while now, putting real endgame challenges on low priority for DE.

And how does one exclude the other? Destiny shows how you can combine those quite well and make it fun. Obviously raids ought to be reworked, but in my eyes it would be more than worth it. It might give rewards worth coming back for, giving it way more replayability than the annual 30 minute story quest, it might provide lore just as well and if there were leaderboards again it might also provide competition. Many birds with one stone.

10 hours ago, Altagraive said:

DO NOT make puzzle trials DE, or the will be just as dead as previous ones.

Please do make more puzzles. Lua missions were a great idea and I'm sure I'm not the only one wanting to see more of such unique mechanics in other missions or even raids.

You can't go in with the mindset of appealing to everyone here, though. Endgame or atleast challenging content will shut off a part of the playerbase and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Many players will take it as something to work towards to. There is however a thin line between tedious challenging and fun challenging which needs to be treaded carefully.

Edited November 24, 2018 by uxx0

[peterc3]

5 hours ago, Altagraive said:

DO NOT make puzzle trials DE, or the will be just as dead as previous ones.

So make them the exact same as existing content, just more players to eliminate any sort of ability to change up gameplay or do anything interesting other than bullet sponges. What is the value in this content being made?

Trials had very little support in the company as it was and I think that it was completely gone by the time they were removed.

6 hours ago, Vennikyo said:

6. Trial size should be increased from 8 to 12 players (maybe more if there is a way to not butcher performance to death). From the technical point of view It could be achieved with techniques currently used for Relays, Cetus and Fortuna. A server instanced hook with invite only. This would allow to retain good quailty of the connection for all raid members. 

Here's where you've lost me and probably DE.

If they can't/won't add dedicated servers for the game, they won't for a single game mode, especially for one that goes way above the existing requirements. The Relays don't have any combat. No spawns. To say they could use those techniques makes me wonder what it is that you think is going on.