Umbral Awakening

[AlfredDean]

Considering that there was discussion of how to make warframes sentient temporarily via farming and crafting a 1 use item (it was called echoes of umbra or something, idr) I propose that instead, in keeping with the ever increasing quantity of umbra forma, that a system be added where if you put 3 umbra polarities on a frame, you can unlock a secret quest (only available after completing the sacrifice) that is a much  rerun of the umbra retrieval part of the sacrifice with new voice lines. Upon its completion, you get another umbra forma, that frame becomes sentient and you are given a special umbra-polarity augment that has minor effects for one or more abilities that goes into the aura slot (9 or 10 cost). Not only would this potentially offer a plausible challenge by forcing both old and newer players alike to use their operator throughout a mission, but it could also add a huge amount of interesting and unique content, as well as lore, to the game. If you give unique voice lines for each frames and tweak the type of challenge to better fit the frame's themes it would provide a much needed time sync that would give enough reward to be worth said time, unlike many other time syncs in this game (no offense, I love warframe, but base Ivara just isn't worth it man) 

 

tldr 

redo the rogue-frame-retrieval sacrifice for every frame in a way that gives an interesting and rewarding time sync while expanding each frame's baskstory

 

 

Some merits and challenges present in this concept-
Challenges:

Even though changing a tile set and replacing a bunch of voice-lines is much less work than making a normal quest from the ground up, there are 40+ frames right now and even if it takes 1/5 the effort of a normal quest, that's still the equivalent of 8+ quests of work

Making fun and interesting missions can be difficult it they're all made from the same base

It's hard to make a good augment, and making an especially powerful one for the aura slot would be extremely hard to do without disincentivising using potentially more interesting other interesting styles of play could be a struggle

 

Merits: 

It could be a great source of lore and give many players the backstory and personality that they so crave in their warframes for less work than many other methods

It would be a great break from content droughts for many people

It could be made into a legitimate challenge with proportionate rewards, which is a rarity these days

 

 

Okay, I'm done rambling, give thoughts and suggestions about weather you think this is a good idea, and how it could be made better

[(PSN)Mordecai_Vrykul]

the AI is so bad on the Umbra sentient i wouldnt see any value in it, personally.

Also there are maybe 5 or 6 frames that actually need all 3 umbral mods for certain builds. there are some frames, like hyldryn off the top of my head, almost have zero use for the umbral mods, or can work maybe 2 max.

[BiancaRoughfin]

1 hour ago, AlfredDean said:

I propose that instead, in keeping with the ever increasing quantity of umbra forma, that a system be added where if you put 3 umbra polarities on a frame, you can unlock a secret quest (only available after completing the sacrifice) that is a much  rerun of the umbra retrieval part of the sacrifice with new voice lines. Upon its completion, you get another umbra forma, that frame becomes sentient

I would like to propose you re-do the Sacrifice questline, pay very very close attention to what is mentioned about how Warframes are made and as to Why Umbra has some sort of sentience.

[-ODIN-SwoleChef]

I made a post a while back that touched on this a little with some other broad ideas if you wanna take a look.

[AlfredDean]

On 2020-02-04 at 2:32 PM, BiancaRoughfin said:

I would like to propose you re-do the Sacrifice questline, pay very very close attention to what is mentioned about how Warframes are made and as to Why Umbra has some sort of sentience.

I'm not saying that umbra isn't a special case. If he weren't, we'd have umbras of every frame by now. But if DE is going to allow us to use other frames as sentient, this is a much more interesting way to do it, especially lore-wise. Besides, it's been loosely established that the first version of every frame had some sort of similar process involved in their creation, so having this special forma that is intrinsically linked to the only naturally sentient warframe could easily explain any discrepancy.

[AlfredDean]

On 2020-02-04 at 1:29 PM, (PS4)Mordecai_Vrykul said:

the AI is so bad on the Umbra sentient i wouldnt see any value in it, personally.

Also there are maybe 5 or 6 frames that actually need all 3 umbral mods for certain builds. there are some frames, like hyldryn off the top of my head, almost have zero use for the umbral mods, or can work maybe 2 max.

fair point, I'd thought of that while I was writing the post, then forgot to add it in, the idea was related to how umbra starts with the 3 polarities, but this is just a random concept, so changing it to 2 forma probably wouldn't be that big of a change 

[AlfredDean]

On 2020-02-04 at 3:16 PM, hugeblackdude said:

I made a post a while back that touched on this a little with some other broad ideas if you wanna take a look.

ill go check it out, ngl the special aura mod idea was based off of a concept by Violet_Xe a while back about potentially having a special quest and/or reward for a raid (he does raid concepts all the time) where you would choose 1 of 3 permanent, immutable perks for your frame. If you wanted the others, build another of that frame. The idea was that it would give a fresh new take on a frame's abilities, kinda like augments, but have a permanence and weight not found anywhere else in the game