Sortie defense needs to be reworked

[Countess_Hapmuhr]

Today's discovery for me was that the hostage now can phase through you. Making it impossible to trap him.  But that's not really why I'm making this topic, because it just highlighted something I've avoided realizing for a long while now: Sortie defense is now officially the most boring mission type in Warframe. (Yes, let's take a moment to let that sink in, the mini-game of herding the hostage into a corner actually made this game mode more fun.)

Now, I would write another page of why this is the worst thing since defection (which is another incredibly boring game mode if you ask me), but it's better to brainstorm solutions instead. 

My own thought about this is first to ask myself why I'm bored. Well, to boil it down to a sentence: It's the lack of options to actually make this something close to entertaining.
Either you can make the mode ten times slower by using CC or just assign someone to babysit him while the rest DPS everything. Either way, it's going to mean that everybody is bored or three people get to have fun while a fourth gets to just press use every few seconds. it's not difficult by any means, it's just incredibly tedious.

So what to do about it? Well, to combat the lack of options, how about allowing us some decision of where the hostage is located? Or their health? What about a mechanic that allows us to control how the hostage moves or fights or how their health options are? For instance, say you have enemies dropping a resource that you can take to a machine to make a drug that you can jab the hostage with in order to make them fight harder for a round? What about a drug that has both bad and good options? (Say a buff one round and a debuff one for the next?)

Or how about automated turrets? You know, slap some tower defense stuff on there perhaps? Hostage remains stationary in a room, most enemies die to our weapons, but then there's harder enemies which are arguably hard to kill, but that the turrets have a easier time to dispatch? How about trip bombs or mechanical traps like slamming hammers or pitfalls or electric floors? (which of course also are a danger to ourselves, fair is fair after all)

I honestly don't know, those are just some options from the top of my head that's preferable to the sleep-inducing version that we have now. 

And that's really all I have to say about it. I'm done running these missions, because the sortie rewards aren't anywhere near good enough to justify myself wasting 15 minutes of my life slogging through this.

[kapn655321]

18 minutes ago, Countess_Hapmuhr said:

worst thing since defection

 

18 minutes ago, Countess_Hapmuhr said:

What about a mechanic that allows us to control how the hostage moves or fights or how their health options are? For instance, say you have enemies dropping a resource that you can take to a machine to make a drug that you can jab the hostage with

So like, defection with hostage collision and Stim Packs, and a timer instead of a destination.

 

18 minutes ago, Countess_Hapmuhr said:

some tower defense stuff

I would absolutely adore some tower defense stuff.
Could use assets from Kuva Fortress.

Side thought:
Most boring mission type in Warframe is a Hijack with 2 mags.

Edited December 8, 2019 by kapn655321

[GruntBlender]

4 hours ago, kapn655321 said:

Most boring mission type in Warframe is a Hijack with 2 mags.

Stick an Inaros on the corpus rover and AFK till extraction.

Tower defense mechanics would be great, but at that point it's a separate gametype more akin to Infested Salvage than Defense. Which I'm all for, to be clear, but Defense it ain't. Better control over, or AI of, or just pathing of the defense objective operative would be nice. Maybe throw in a demolyst that does 20-50% damage to the target and a way to heal the target between rounds based on performance. Maybe give the ability to press a button TO spawn demolysts or extra heavy units that drop things that heal the target when killed.