Missions 2.0: Give the community the tools to create new levels and "content."

[Rump-p]

As the title says, give the players modular tools (consisting of the "content" (assets) already in game that will allow them to make their own levels, complete with the modifiers, tile sets, and options. In game. 

 

-The Idea-

This would do nothing but help extend the longevity and potential of a game that is already brimming with so much creativity. Let the community create and implement different objectives and modifiers into the missions they would design, in game. Players could enter into some form of "simulacrum" letting them string together different pieces of tile sets. Setting spawn triggers, different effects that are already in the game (low gravity, fire, ice, ect.) and swap up objectives as you go, or have multiple running at once. Give the creators the ability to have the already recorded dialogue clips from various npc's play at triggered points in the level(s) to give it a form of narrative. Creator's could even tag sets of levels to chain them together. Let cross faction play come to life! Dedicated creators could make missions with branching paths, leading you to sabotage the corpus, the grineer, or both as they're pitted against each other. Defection missions could also have you extracting data, and defending the ship you'd be leaving in, all the while a portion of the squad could be rounding up and protecting more and more defectors. Let the mission a turn into last ditch survival effort to salvage loot should you fail the objective, all up to the creator. Have all the tools there, survival timers and life support, excavators and power cells, spy vaults, control over the number of revives and how players would be revived, defense objectives, hell, even archwing if you're feeling ambitious should this come to life, and any others I may have missed. Let players control the enemy scaling, spawning, and individual values of the stats they'd like to see play a role in their missions. Have creators set their own limitations on when the level can become playable: Maybe their vision has some spoiler elements, so only setting it to be available after a certain quest, or one of the preexisting criteria, like the star chart completion for arbitrations, the list goes on.     

For example, let players create a mission type that has an overall objective of extermination, killing as many targets as quickly as possible and moving from point a to b, but add more elements. Let one player act as a spy operative, splitting off from the main party optionally at the beginning in order to raid a spy vault (another asset already in the game). This could be an entirely optional facet at the level designers discretion, the player running off to open a spy vault that could "locate" (spawn) eximus units that count as more towards the exterminate counter, letting you complete the mission more quickly than you would other wise. Again, up to the level designer, let a set of triggers detect that the player has failed, but instead of failing the mission out right and devaluing cooperative play, the units still spawn but take longer to kill. And the overall time the mission takes to complete being reduced, that way the level could still make the "spy" portion worth the squads time even if it gets botched. Then have the squad meet up to complete another objective or finish their exterminate run. And this is just ONE scenario of what a set of modular level making tools could do to liven up the base exterminate missions, let players get creative!
 

-Some Potential Problems and Answers to Them-

"But what if I'm not seeing a level type I want to play?"

"But what if people made overly simple missions as a means to farm loot???"

"But how would we decide which levels should reward loot?"

You can decide! I imagine a modular system of portions of the already procedurally generated tilesets than can be snapped together, and simple options for base line objectives. More complexity and detail could be found in the matter of maybe hand placing assets in a sort of "forge" mode, and overlapping triggers and checkss for certain events or objectives that can be set up by more dedicated designers. Let these creations be made as part of their own "playlist" that gives no rewards, but players can vote on (after playing through) as a new mission type they'd want to see implemented, and then added to the game, even if for a limited time! Letting them play a vetted and genuinely tested level that they'd want to get rewards for, maybe temporarily entering a "sanctioned" playlist that then everyone could publicly play with each other, complete with their own different and useful reward pools (maybe let the creators suggest their own rewards). Incentivise the testing of levels even though unsanctioned missions might not have a reward pool in order to avoid level abuse. Give these tester's votes more weight when it comes to voting levels in. Of course, you could sift through the results further, maybe having community managers or staff see if a level is up to par with something you'd like to see players rewarded with loot for finishing. You could tag a level or chain of levels with a difficulty, and let people make content for the newer players to the game, the casual players of the game, or even the hardcore "endgame" fans. Maybe letting guides of the lotus weigh in more heavily, or better yet, implementing a trustworthy set of level "testers" that build cred by voting, testing (duh) and could eventually be trusted enough by staff, who would have more say than the masses in seeing which levels might get sanctioned. 

-The Fluff-

If you want a lore angle, you could tie it in with everyone's favorite orange soda can cephalon. Have Simaris claim he's been researching potential threats that the enemy factions might brew up, or tactics the infestation might adapt and evolve in to, to explain the player made creations. Then in the form of "sanction" the tactics and ideas (the levels) become missions in their own right (even if temporarily) with their own reward pools. 

-The Example-

Overwatch's workshop is a fantastic example of letting the players well, ~play~, with the assets and scripts of the game and of their own to make fun new modes. I understand that this might be a monumental task in regards to programming and development time, but taking one look at the various modding scenes that keep games alive even years later shows the pay off (skyrim came out in 2011... that feels surreal just typing it, and STILL has a huge dedicated community of content creators). This would let players make the content they want to see with the potential they feel, and obviously, is there. All the while everyone at DE can continue to make the ambitious leaps forward like cetus, fortuna, and soon rail jack. Warframe is a game I have loved for years, and has had me on the edge of my seat as I've watched it grow. Risks were taken, the second dream and operators, flipping the linear level styles on their heads and going open world all while implementing large boss style fights in the form of eidolons, counter to the games horse based nature, all of these lead to more content and more enjoyment over time. You can let us use the tools you've already put out to entertain each other in a universe we love (and one that we're willing to already sink thousands of hours into).

-The Future- (tl;dr)

Giving the players of the game the modular tools and ability to set their own modifiers and objectives (simultaneously), is the best way to get players the content they want to see in between larger pushes of your own designs. All tested by the community before being assigned their own actual reward pools, but still having means to incentivise play through either exclusive titles or voting. Creators could tailor their experience and vision to whatever players they wanted to. Everything from mashing certain aspects of levels to spice up missions and give a dash of flavor to newer players, to infinitely more difficult content aimed at your die-hard "endgame" fans.  

Let the creators, and by extension, your players, make the kinds of levels they would want to play, and see if they would fit the creative vision of your awesome game DE.

Levels made by tenno, for tenno.

 

Let me know what you think below, and if enough people are interested, hopefully we can get some kind of response from DE. But if nothing else, at least put that spark of an idea in their minds, as I hopefully did in yours.

Signed

-The (Hopefully) Soon™-Not-To-Be-So-Lone Tenno Operative that gives you 50 endo.


 

Edited April 26, 2019 by Rump-p

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

I expect that to be a glitchy nightmare, but I would love that.

An old MMO I loved called City of Heroes had a Mission Architect that let players create missions and dialogue for custom stories and it was amazing. 

[peterc3]

The rewards for this are the most important. Not enough and nobody plays it. Leave it entirely up to the players and people will absolutely find the least effort to farm the most resources. Have X person put up the rewards from their own pool and you've put an end run around trading restrictions.

This isn't Missions 2.0, it has nothing really to do with any of the missions in the game. This is essentially things already proposed by DE but somewhere in the always expanding queue of things to do when they have time.

[EinheriarJudith]

11 hours ago, peterc3 said:

The rewards for this are the most important. Not enough and nobody plays it. Leave it entirely up to the players and people will absolutely find the least effort to farm the most resources.

this is what people were doing in Star Trek Online.