Possible new game mode "Nightmare beyond the void".

[0_The_F00l]

I saw a post somewhere about the possibility to reset your account, and this is definitely NOT that. 

I have certain thoughts which I want to put forth as it's own topic and maybe I will add to it. 

I am more thinking along the lines of star chart runs tailored to difficulty and depending on how you clear it, you get a special reward. 

Pre requisites :

Unlocked arbitrations (which indirectly means you finished the whole star chart) 

Atleast one warframe at rank 30,

At least one of each weapon (primary, secondary, melee) at rank 30

Completed second dream. 

Haven't done a Nightmare run that day. 

How to Start :

The nightmare gate is unlocked as the last point in the void. 

You need to enter it with a frame, weapons (and companion?) of choice. 

Core Gameplay :

This would more or less be the same warframe we love but imagine starting with a frame of your choice at max rank with the entire star chart locked. So a separate instance of the star chart. 

But the catch is

all your mods and other weapons are in void storage, (I realise not being able to return to regular mode without quitting would indeed suck, and am considering you could switch between the modes at will and the nightmare one would stay as it was) 

Any new mods you get will always be broken versions. 

The operator is not accessible.

Enemies are still the same level but all nodes are nightmare nodes (enemy level would be base star chart level, sedna would still be less than 50). 

Success criteria :

Complete the star chart again and enter the nightmare gate to overcome your nightmare. 

You don't need to clear 100% of the star chart. Just get back to the gate, 

But clearing more nodes would increase the rewards. As each node grants you a Nightmare shard on first completion. 

You cannot gain extra shards from nodes you already cleared. 

Special modifiers:

After completing this once, you get the option to add more modifiers to make things even harder/challenging.

Like

melee only,

secondary only,

primary only,

Hobbled mode, 

Friendly fire on,

Bloodless (no healing effects work except if vampire node) 

Broken (abilities have cool down) 

that will give special bonus rewards / bonus nightmare shards after completion. 

 

Reward :

I haven't really thought too much about the rewards.

Maybe a syandana or armor piece with the helmet of the frame you chose (similar to the lich shoulder piece) for every frame you complete it with granted on completion. 

Anything from sortie rewards, cause why not. 

Void infusion of your weapon of choice to add void damage like kuva weapons (no RNG, fixed void damage percentage depending on modifiers) 

Gaining expertise on the weapon (different from mastery) of choice that unlocks one specific nightmare ability (vampire, death detonation, energy regen, overshields, parkour speed, status duration etc. ) that can be replaced but not stacked. 

You could purchase these from a nightmare shop like window when you are about to "wake up" . 

I would like some thoughts and suggestions before I take this to the suggestion/feedback forum. Specifically I would like more modifiers and suitable expertise and rewards. 

Edited February 12, 2020 by 0_The_F00l
Incorporated suggestions round 1

[(PSN)horridhal]

I wouldn’t play it, personally.

The star chart is a slog and a beating the first time through, I wouldn’t start it over from scratch.

[Chewarette]

Sounds awful tbh, that means everything would be sloggy as hell, Warframe/Weapons without mods yeah, and you can't even change throughout the COMPLETE starchart ? yeah, gotta find that meta weapon for all enemies.

Have you tried a Nightmare node on sedna with no mods ? Neither did I, but I highly suspect this would be nigh impossible - or like a 45-minute mission.

The point of Warframe is to progress through the empowerment of your items (through mods, mainly). Get rid of that and the whole game (hence your game mode as a whole) will become irrelevant and 100% not fun. If you ever want to propose a challenging game-mode/content, think about something that is adapted to fully powered warframes/weapons, not something that forces you to go there naked, nobody wants that.

[0_The_F00l]

29 minutes ago, (PS4)horridhal said:

I wouldn’t play it, personally.

The star chart is a slog and a beating the first time through, I wouldn’t start it over from scratch.

Ok, this game mode is not for you, that's OK. 

11 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

Sounds awful tbh, that means everything would be sloggy as hell, Warframe/Weapons without mods yeah, and you can't even change throughout the COMPLETE starchart ? yeah, gotta find that meta weapon for all enemies.

Pretty much, and it's not "no mods" it's "broken mods" that will be less than half as effective. 

14 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

.Have you tried a Nightmare node on sedna with no mods ? Neither did I, but I highly suspect this would be nigh impossible - or like a 45-minute mission.

I have actually, and barring exterminate it's manageable with an acceptable loadout within 15 minutes if you have some CC. I also did say that the enemy levels would be same as the base star chart one so sedna would be less than 50, I should probably highlight that in the main post. 

17 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

.The point of Warframe is to progress through the empowerment of your items (through mods, mainly). Get rid of that and the whole game (hence your game mode as a whole) will become irrelevant and 100% not fun. If you ever want to propose a challenging game-mode/content, think about something that is adapted to fully powered warframes/weapons, not something that forces you to go there naked, nobody wants that.

Eye of the beholder I guess. 

this kinda already exists partially as the means to get the meatball frame. 

I will provide suggestions that I find interesting. I acknowledge your dislike for my thoughts, but I do not agree with it. 

[(PSN)robotwars7]

25 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

nobody wants that.

sadists want it though lol. the harder the difficulty, the more they scream "harder daddy!"  

I agree with you though, we need a mode like this to account for player abilities and weapons rather than prevent them. Capture Targets with Bodyguards that stay with them to protect them, Demolyst-type enemies in Mobile Defense that can one-shot the Terminal, unexpected reinforcements of much stronger enemy squads appearing to bolster the enemy in Survival, etc. 

we need some curveballs thrown at us, that's all it is.

Edited February 12, 2020 by (PS4)robotwars7

[Grave.Knight]

I want like a Endless version of Hijack (without the shield drain).

Anyways, nothing about your idea for a "game mode?" sounds fun. Sounds like what you want is a hard/speedrun mode for a single player version of Warframe.

Edited February 12, 2020 by Grave.Knight

[Yxivi]

How about just an access to the same star chart but higher enemy starting level. Or simply just more difficulty option when you click on a node: Hard, nightmare, hell. 
Let's call this new star chart as "Black Hole" coz it can be accessed on your normal star chart appearing like a black hole.
Hard is simply just harder enemies because higher level. Nightmare is the same with the normal nightmare but they aren't on random places anymore, any node will now have a nightmare mission always ready, the modifiers will rotate randomly so it doesn't become boring on the same node (cycles every hour?). And Hell is like Sortie with all its modifiers, and like the previous one, all nodes have a Hell mission ready, modifiers rotate randomly to keep things interesting.

The rewards for hard mode is 2x more than their normal counterpart, with slightly higher chance for the rarer mods to drop. The rewards on nightmare mode is ofc a nightmare mod and something shiny, idk maybe any one of forma, aura forma or umbra forma (this is determined by RNG haha). As for Hell mode, rewards are similar to Sortie but no ayatan and endo, forma is removed coz we already have forma in nightmare mode in the black hole, so we're only left with riven, kuva is 2x more than normal sortie, 3-day booster, exilus adapter, reactor and catalyst bp, and legendary core. 

Open worlds might be excluded from this black hole coz idk how are they going to go about adjusting eidolons and the orb spideys and probably gonna take a lot of work to apply all the change to the open worlds. But then, I'm no developer and this is just some idea. 😅
 

[Asphyxxia]

Sounds bad, but I'd play it.

[Diangelius]

Your game mode should be Otherworld and it should only need completing once. In the Otherworld, enemies' default level was tripled.

But the bonus given in the end should be worth it. Because this was like a big test, a big trial, we should be given something called Otherworld Mark. It gives a choice to add 30% warframe's stats into anything except Efficiency. Either it was 20% power, 5% range, 5% duration or you could choose full 30% range, etc.

Once chosen, and if you wanted to reset the Mark, you needed to spend like 50p each time.

If the reward was something we can just farm by other ways, like built forma (seriously 35p is not expensive), I would rather ignore it too.

[Chewarette]

30 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

Pretty much, and it's not "no mods" it's "broken mods" that will be less than half as effective. 

I have actually, and barring exterminate it's manageable with an acceptable loadout within 15 minutes if you have some CC. I also did say that the enemy levels would be same as the base star chart one so sedna would be less than 50, I should probably highlight that in the main post. 

Yeah, nightmare modes without specific changes are higher level baseline. Dunno what it does for Sedna but that's definitely really high.

And requiring CC, I'm sure in for this, but

1) Broken mods / no mods means pitiful range, duration and efficiency, hence painful to even play a control frame (which in return won't even have useful defensive mods, so kind of death sentence, not really skill related).

2) Narrows the meta once again. Need CC ? Forget about anything without CC.

Edited February 12, 2020 by Chewarette

[0_The_F00l]

15 minutes ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

sadists want it though lol. the harder the difficulty, the more they scream "harder daddy!"  

I agree with you though, we need a mode like this to account for player abilities and weapons rather than prevent them. Capture Targets with Bodyguards that stay with them to protect them, Demolyst-type enemies in Mobile Defense that can one-shot the Terminal, unexpected reinforcements of much stronger enemy squads appearing to bolster the enemy in Survival, etc. 

we need some curveballs thrown at us, that's all it is.

Interesting will add to the main modifiers/ gameplay parts. 

15 minutes ago, Grave.Knight said:

Anyways, nothing about your idea for a "game mode?" sounds fun. Sounds like what you want is a hard/speedrun mode for a single player version of Warframe.

Hmm, I knew I forgot something, thanks for highlighting, 

Will add "friendly fire always on" and hobbling to the list 😛

9 minutes ago, Yxivi said:

How about just an access to the same star chart but higher enemy starting level. Or simply just more difficulty option when you click on a node: Hard, nightmare, hell. 
Let's call this new star chart as "Black Hole" coz it can be accessed on your normal star chart appearing like a black hole.
Hard is simply just harder enemies because higher level. Nightmare is the same with the normal nightmare but they aren't on random places anymore, any node will now have a nightmare mission always ready, the modifiers will rotate randomly so it doesn't become boring on the same node (cycles every hour?). And Hell is like Sortie with all its modifiers, and like the previous one, all nodes have a Hell mission ready, modifiers rotate randomly to keep things interesting.

The rewards for hard mode is 2x more than their normal counterpart, with slightly higher chance for the rarer mods to drop. The rewards on nightmare mode is ofc a nightmare mod and something shiny, idk maybe any one of forma, aura forma or umbra forma (this is determined by RNG haha). As for Hell mode, rewards are similar to Sortie but no ayatan and endo, forma is removed coz we already have forma in nightmare mode in the black hole, so we're only left with riven, kuva is 2x more than normal sortie, 3-day booster, exilus adapter, reactor and catalyst bp, and legendary core. 

Open worlds might be excluded from this black hole coz idk how are they going to go about adjusting eidolons and the orb spideys and probably gonna take a lot of work to apply all the change to the open worlds. But then, I'm no developer and this is just some idea. 😅
 

Yeah, I was thinking of modifiers like that, but then I realised what's the point of harder enemies? They take more time to down even with big numbers? Why not smaller numbers on both sides if the same amount of time would be taken anyway. 

Why get a bullet sponge enemy with 1000000 ehp while the frame and weapon does 100000 damage when I could get an enemy that has 1000 ehp and you do 100 effective damage.

The overpowered mods paired with bullet sponge enemies are the problem, we need to counter them both together. 

I do not mind the reward suggestions themselves. 

Open world could be on a live Nightmare rotation. If at all possible from a development point. 

[Helch0rn]

We have 232 mission nodes + 25 railjack missions

if you need 10 minutes per mission you are looking at 38 hours nonstop gaming just to complete the start chart

thanks but no thanks

 

[Yxivi]

6 minutes ago, 0_The_F00l said:

Interesting will add to the main modifiers/ gameplay parts. 

Hmm, I knew I forgot something, thanks for highlighting, 

Will add "friendly fire always on" and hobbling to the list 😛

Yeah, I was thinking of modifiers like that, but then I realised what's the point of harder enemies? They take more time to down even with big numbers? Why not smaller numbers on both sides if the same amount of time would be taken anyway. 

Why get a bullet sponge enemy with 1000000 ehp while the frame and weapon does 100000 damage when I could get an enemy that has 1000 ehp and you do 100 effective damage.

The overpowered mods paired with bullet sponge enemies are the problem, we need to counter them both together. 

I do not mind the reward suggestions themselves. 

Open world could be on a live Nightmare rotation. If at all possible from a development point. 

Welp, that boils down to the balance problem of this game. Players want hard enemies. Unless DE does something about the balance issues and smarter AI, we're just stuck with bullet sponge enemies as "difficult content". We're talking about players reaching the highest mastery rank which means they have all of the items in the game and maxed out most of it, I don't know what kind of challenge this game can provide to those players but stripping them of all their progress just to make it feel challenging is not the way. What's the point of progressing if at the end of the day, it will just be taken away from you just coz "challenge"? 🤔

[0_The_F00l]

6 minutes ago, Helch0rn said:

We have 232 mission nodes + 25 railjack missions

if you need 10 minutes per mission you are looking at 38 hours nonstop gaming just to complete the start chart

thanks but no thanks

 

Relatively fair point, 

Hence have made changes (just updated) and you only need to reach the gate to complete it. 

You will also be able to freely switch between nightmare and regular instances - we can do it for railjack already. 

5 minutes ago, Yxivi said:

Welp, that boils down to the balance problem of this game. Players want hard enemies. Unless DE does something about the balance issues and smarter AI, we're just stuck with bullet sponge enemies as "difficult content". We're talking about players reaching the highest mastery rank which means they have all of the items in the game and maxed out most of it, I don't know what kind of challenge this game can provide to those players but stripping them of all their progress just to make it feel challenging is not the way. What's the point of progressing if at the end of the day, it will just be taken away from you just coz "challenge"? 🤔

It is also about the intrinsic + extrinsic rewards based on effort and investments. 

What's the point of progressing is something you yourself will have to identify and answer ,

I cannot tell you that even after sitting on more than a 120 rivens with the best loadouts at MR 28 as there is no point other than fun and self satisfaction for me. 

Balance is indeed a part of it, but the thrill of accomplishment is another.