Make me want to break your pots and open your containers.

[Thanzilla]

When i started playing Warframe i was one of the players that opened every container and cache as well as killing every enemy encountered no matter the mission i was in. I found it very satisfying to do so because it reminded me of Link in legend of Zelda and breaking pots and bushes in order to get useful items. As i continued playing the game and got all the starter resources i needed though, the game devolved into a speedrun fest where all the rewards i need are at the end of each level. For example when farming relics, kuva or void traces, i just select the mission i can do the fastest and speedrun it in order to get the reward at the end, there is no exploring the level, breaking containers or shooting ALL of the enemies encountered (or in short full- clearing/exploring the mission). And that is where the boredom starts for me. I can bear to hear mom telling me that "this is a capture mission" only so many times before i get bored and mute her. "I know this is a capture mission MOM, this is the 60th time i run this mission in a row..." As i am sure you are already aware, DE, there are many types of players that fit in several categories. I like exploring and figuring how things work more than i like being as efficient as possible to get a game carrot or focusing on the social aspect of the game (thus i mostly play solo). But for a player like me, there isn't much to do once you leave the starting areas of the game.

Sure, you could argue that you added a few things to find out in Fortuna, like how to get past the electrified passage one of the caves or how to reach an unreachable place with a few containers in the middle of an underground lake which i am sure 90%+ (if you are offended by this random percentage that i used for the sake of emphasis then pretend i said "most") of the players haven't even found yet. Hell i am sure that even i haven't found them all yet even though i do like searching for things like that.After finding these two and seing that you didn't put any reward behind them i didn't have any reason to explore for further places like these. Fortuna feels a little bit like Fallout 76 in that regard. You come across something peculiar like an electrified passage, search your surrounding to find out how to get through, see the cable, look around some more look at the tire, jump on it and have a nice "A-ha!" moment, only to find a few seconds later that all this was all for naught. You might find a few random containers or a few more places to mine some ore but apart from that nothing particularly interesting.

Going back to normal missions now, as i said before once you get all the mats you need, there is no need to continue with exploring anymore and you just run each mission as fast as possible to get the specific reward you selected said mission for. That's a problem that needs to be addressed because it becomes boring pretty fast for players who like to explore and are at end-game levels. One way to do so is to implement high level missions (since this is for end-game explorers, not early game ones who already have a lot of things to "break pots" for) in the range of 80-150 with specific rewards that drop from the enemies as well as containers and caches. Think of a rescue mission that you don't do in 1 or 2 minutes but stay for 20+ breaking every single pot, opening every cache and killing every enemy you encounter and after rescuing the prisoner you actually defend him from incoming enemies while also searching for pots to break and containers to open instead of rushing to the exit while paying little attention to what is happening to him a la speedrun style. This could easily be achieved if enemies,pots and containers in said mission could drop:

1. Credits as a common drop, even players at end game need these and index announcer can be very annoying at times.

2. Kuva as an uncommon drop, you know we need it cause of the rivens we need to roll, give it to us in more types of mission. (i swear if that girl bullies me one more time by calling me a disgusting flesh thing i am gonna report her...)

3.Void traces as an uncommon drop. Void trace farming usually devolves in speedrunning a capture mission. Do not want.

4.Relics as a rare drop. Unvaulted and ranging random from lith-axi. Running low level mission for lith relics feels like a waste of time with fully decked out frame and weapons.

5.Vaulted relics as an even more rare drop. Again ranging from lith-axi and maybe only from a glowing big cache stash that has a very low chance to spawn each mission, rewarding full exploration of the level even more.

And ofcourse, no other rewards. No mods, no endo, no other resources.

This idea would not work in defense or other missions which generated a fairly small map size and of course excavation already provides way too many relics so it wouldn't really work really well there as well. But i think for all the other types of missions it would be a nice change of pace. Or better yet, you should just separate it from existing mission goals and just call it a new "Scavenge" mission where you are put in a randomly generated high level area where you have to scavenge for supplies, find secrets and kill enemies to get rewards, not finish the mission as fast as possible.

As far as the little secret places in fortuna, why not add a guaranteed toroid spawn in every one of them? Toroid farming is already easy enough with the orb fight so it wouldn't affect game balance much but it would provide a nice incentive to explore more of fortuna instead of just running to each mission marker and doing the missions as fast as possible.
I hope you'll think about it.

Thanks for reading,

 

 

 

 

Tl;dr: End game player rewards being almost always only at the end of each mission is a bad design decision as it discourages exploring. Plz fix.

Edited January 12, 2019 by Thanzilla
typo

[(PSN)CaitaZatomi]

I actually like this idea a lot. Void traces are currently the bane of my life and Kuva aren't much better. Like imagine seeing squads where Master Thief and the Scavenge pet mod are brought along to feel meaningful. Even better, Id love to see the rarity chance of the item increase the more of the map you have uncovered. Not even like a ton, but enough to make you really wanna traverse the tile sets.

[(XBOX)AMONGTHEWEAK]

I second this, I don't really care for speed running, I like taking my time and going through a mission to explore possible treasures that await.

[WillardZ]

11 hours ago, Thanzilla said:

Sure, you could argue that you added a few things to find out in Fortuna, like how to get past the electrified passage one of the caves or how to reach an unreachable place with a few containers in the middle of an underground lake which i am sure 90%+ (if you are offended by this random percentage that i used for the sake of emphasis then pretend i said "most") of the players haven't even found yet. Hell i am sure that even i haven't found them all yet even though i do like searching for things like that.After finding these two and seing that you didn't put any reward behind them i didn't have any reason to explore for further places like these. Fortuna feels a little bit like Fallout 76 in that regard. You come across something peculiar like an electrified passage, search your surrounding to find out how to get through, see the cable, look around some more look at the tire, jump on it and have a nice "A-ha!" moment, only to find a few seconds later that all this was all for naught. You might find a few random containers or a few more places to mine some ore but apart from that nothing particularly interesting.

Not only in Fortuna. I reached so many seeming unreachable places and secret rooms that I haven't found before during the searching for syndicates medallions and resource caches. However in normal missions there are nothing but some normal containers at these places. Same thing for the orikin challenge rooms.

12 hours ago, Thanzilla said:

1. Credits as a common drop, even players at end game need these and index announcer

2. Kuva as an uncommon drop, you know we need it cause of the rivens we need to roll, give it to us in more types of mission. (i swear if that girl bullies me one more time by calling me a disgusting flesh thing one more time i am gonna report her...)

3.Void traces as an uncommon drop. Void trace farming usually devolves in speedrunning a capture mission. Do not want.

4.Relics as a rare drop. Unvaulted and ranging random from lith-axi. Running low level mission for lith relics feels like a waste of time with fully decked out frame and weapons.

5.Vaulted relics as an even more rare drop. Again ranging from lith-axi and maybe only from a glowing big cache stash that has a very low chance to spawn each mission, rewarding full exploration of the level even more.

And ofcourse, no other rewards. No mods, no endo, no other resources.

It is a bit hard to balance tbh, like a stomp rhino can easily break everything and also survive in a high level mission. But I really like the idea of kuva and void traces drop to stimulate people to explore, and a little chance of vaulted relics (just like mantis parts) as a surprise.

I don't know about credit, as the theme of 'profit' in Fortuna may result in even more credit drops from the next two orbs (125k from profit-taker now), and that would serve as an alternative way to farm credits if the orbs also provide arcane- or focus-related drops. I feel like transmutable rare mods, especially stance mods that are extremely painful to farm (Yes, I'm talking about Vengeful Revenant and Bullet Dance) can also be rare rewards, so that people don't specifically farm them in this way, but at least we have another way to obatin them.

[Elementalos]

2 hours ago, (XB1)AMONGTHEWEAK said:

I second this, I don't really care for speed running, I like taking my time and going through a mission to explore possible treasures that await.

When I first started playing Warframe I was really big on this. I'd play stealthily, explore every nook and cranny for every locker and every breakable.

But it didn't take long to realize that this was probably the least efficient way to play the game, because the containers that had anything useful were few and far between and there was no real reason to explore outside of hunting for sabotage caches and even those are rarely gratifying. 

It's a shame because it's still a fun way to play. I had a lot of fun trying to explore Fortuna when I first started to, only to realize that weird rooms deep in corpus bases and hidden nooks and crannies inside caves were all pretty pointless too.

[Thanzilla]

Thanks for all the replies. Upon further reflection i thought it would be better if they separate this from existing mission goals and just call it a new "Scavenge" mission where you are put in a randomly generated high level area where you have to scavenge for supplies, find secrets and kill enemies to get rewards, not finish the mission as fast as possible.

If only to diversify it from current ones and make it feel like a "new" mission type.

Edited January 12, 2019 by Thanzilla

[TinFoilMkIV]

I completely agree. There are a lot of really neat hidden areas to find in all the tile sets, but there's almost no chance of anything worth while showing up in them. I also really enjoy exploring the maps, but it seems like there's little point after seeing the secrets once or twice. And those are only worth a damn to people who just like to know things like that exist. I can understand they don't want people to feel like they need to learn all the secrets to play at full efficiency, but there's gotta be some middle ground between that and totally worthless.