Thoughts about normal missions vs endless modes

[Millenium_Yoshimitsu]

Hello DE and fellow Tenno,

it has been exactly six years since I started playing Warframe and it has been and still is one of my all time favourite video games. Throughout all the updates, changes and additions there surely were some up and downs, but such is just natural in a game as continually developing and huge as Warframe.

Some of the biggest alterations in the game are of course new mission types aswell as the change of already existing mission types. In this topic I want to share my thoughts - and those of several other Tenno i talked to about this topic - about both the gameplay feeling and the feeling  of immersion in those different modes. When looking at the different missions, there quickly appears a clear division between normal modes and endless modes and this division also marks the border of immersion in my opinion.

Normal modes, for example Assassination, Sabotage or Spy, give you clear targets to achieve and are completed as soon as you done the respective task. Their duration varies depending on the player wanting to rush the target or to explore the map and the missions usually give the possibility to fulfil their tasks in various ways, for example going full aggressive or stealth, several ways to approach vaults in spy missions and several ways to sabotage a reactor. As each of those finite missions give a certain goal and several possibilties of approach, they feel immersive and manage to stay mostly entertaining even after a long time. The Tenno fulfil their role as elite space ninja destroying, sabotaging, capturing or stealing crucial targets and objects, which makes sense in their guerilla-like warfare against enemy factions of massively bigger strength in numbers. I really would like to see more of those missions in the future. 

Révélation

Most of all multiple-stage missions like the Assault on Kuva Fortress, because it feels like a much more detailled and complex mission. Individual assault missions for every enemy faction or even every tileset would be wonderful.

Endless mission types oppose this immersion and gameplay feeling clearly because of several reasons. In none of these modes it is possible to achieve a certain goal, instead the player only works from minute to minute, wave to wave, zone to zone, etc. There never will be the point of clear success, as it is infinite after all. This alone is detrimental for both immersion and gameplay, but the following point drags them down even more: the sheer amount of enemies constantly running against the Tenno. This looks like a small issue at first, but it destroys the game feeling in various ways. First of all the former space ninjas famous for their tactical superiority and skills in stealth and silent warfare are reduced to dull mass killing machines, only built and equipped for maximum kill counts per second. The amount of tactics needed for endless missions varies between modes, but generally feels way lower than in normal missions. In endless missions players get the feeling that they could easily replaced by bots in their gameplay. I aswell as many other Tenno get bored after merely the first five minutes of any endless due to this. Furthermore enemies do not feel any special or dangeous anymore as they are thrown against the players in such inflationary numbers that noone is really caring about single enemy types anymore. Even elite enemies such as Noxes, Corpus Techs or Corrupted Bombards quickly reach a point where they just feel as common and spammed as the rest of the enemy pool. It spoils the potential of each single enemy type feeling individual and differently dangerous and deadens the players interest with this uncontrolled spam. And finally - even tho we found out that we are walking tanks of mass destruction and that there are no special enemies to fear - we feel completely irrelevant. The reason is pretty simple: Even after dozens of waves and several of thousands of killed grunts the enemy still keeps running against us as if everything before just did not happen. No matter how many die, there still come more and more and more and make every progress feeling meaningless. A sad fact that occurs in almost all endless modes, the only exception is Defection where the player at least gets some feeling of purpose and immersion by helping these defectors to escape. More infinte missions with such a goal would be great to help this category of missions becoming some more entertainable.

After talking about both finite and endless missions I have to share some thoughts about Extermination aswell, because this mission type currently is a mix between both. Back in the days (Greedy Milk Farm remembers) it was one of my favourite modes, infiltrating a ship or base, eliminating the crew and hunting down the very last enemies until the place was completely cleared, free to explore or to leave. It had a distinct feeling of progress and immersion. Sadly this completely changed since it got reworked and now comes with infinetely respawning enemies, making both Lotus' call "Eliminate everyone" and the whole sense of the mission pointless. When the Tenno reach the required kill count, the enemy is supposedly broken and on the run, but not only are there just as many enemies as before the 'extermination', they also keep fighting normally. It gets even more laughable in Crossfire Exterminations as the enemies will just continue fighting each other, with the actions of the Tenno being nothing more than a short distraction and in no way an incident to stop them. I heard several times that this changes of respawning enemies in Extermination were due to problems with missing enemies for the killcount, but with the new version this problem apparentally still occur, just in slightly different variations, so the rework was not benefically in any means imo.

Please keep in mind that this is the personal opinion of me and some fellow gamers. I am aware that many people like the endless mission types as for their usefulness for farming and level-grinding and I respect that. I wanted to share my thoughts and explanations to you to give some ideas how many people are embracing the immersion of this great game and would love to have more immersive gameplay modes to enjoy it even more. When it comes to my opinion alone, I do endless missions for the loot and normal missions for the fun, as simple as that. Please feel free to comment, I would love to hear your ideas and opinions.