Evolving Mission Types

[AlouetteSK]

Might as well toss this out to the void while I still feel like it. Copied from my post on another forum:

Been giving this a lot of thought seeing as I have put the game on hiatus for the most part (Lotus Alerts / Weekly 75% Coupon Gatcha aside). I think the core reason is that I have gotten bored of the main gameplay loops, especially with the power gap between low and high MR players (ignoring pay2skip'ers).

Take a mission like Capture. I run Ukko pretty much nowadays with Wukong.
Why? Because he is one of the fastest to speedrun the mission.
Why do that? Because it is the fastest ways to farm specific relics to get the prime parts I want. Also, the fact that the missions become monotonous after running the mission type into triple digits wears you out.

Or Exterminate, for another example. I pretty much primarily bring AoE nukers like Saryn, Mesa, or Equinox.
Why not slow down / collect all the map resources? Because I already have stockpiles of everything. DE really hates this, seeing as they keep adding more and more stupid one-time-use resources.

The problem with that? If I play with pubs, there might be some players who might want to explore the map, or play it at a slower-than-breakneck pace, i.e. anything other than optimized min-maxed speedrunning. What annoys me during any mission is having to wait for players, which is mitigated by being able to alt-tab at the extraction point. The worse roadblock is the friendship doors, specifically built to counter speedrunners. But that barely makes a dent in the problem, seeing as I immediately zip off after they finally open the door. The problem I cause is the loss of affinity to the slower players, as well as the resultant, as well as a loss of interactivity, handily summarized with this gif:

That is not fun for them. The most common retort is "Just play Solo / form pre-made groups". The former is annoying because it essentially redefines the game as a solo experience, which is not always optimal, considering some mission types just outright suck when played solo, e.g. relic runs due to lower enemy density. The latter would be more viable an option if there was a better matchmaking system, something like the old-school server list, which would more or less require one of the many things that that DE has been hesitant to implement due to costs and spaghetti code, dedicated servers.

 

On lower levels, keep them as is so that new players are not overwhelmed; unfortunately that means the whole speedrunner vs non-runner problem will still exist. To counter this, incentivize them to player harder mission types, and add twists. We all know how sometimes the mission type can and will randomly shift from something like capture to exterminate on the whim of the (simu)Lotus. And it is definitely quite possible to have multiple objectives, including optional one. So implement it.

Say you are running an exterminate. Have some random enemy unit spawn in that is more densely protected by some guard squad. You take them out, then suddenly it drops a data mass. Lotus (or some other character, seriously, they should think about getting some other actors to do things to make things interesting) will chime in that you can use that to obtain additional data to help your cause. Then you get a mobi-def objective added to your screen that you can also do for additional rewards. Hek, chain that extra with "Oh hey, this data shows that there is a VIP to capture/assassinate/free" for extra. In doing things like this, you slow down speed runners by getting them to do extra things instead of just nuke'n'go.

Another example: You run Defense mission, which in my opinion is the worst game type. Reason why I think so is because you sit there and babysit the target, and literally the only way to speed things up is to bring along SpeedVa. Revamp this so that you get additional objectives to bypass the wave. Say you are defending Naked Nick (stasis pod guy) from infested. On a random wave you get the additional objective to try and take out specific targets who drop some pickups that, when inserted into some terminal, similar to the Kuva Assault one, insta-gibs the wave. Or have some terminal you need to get data from in order to gain additional rewards, or even have a pile of resources that you can mobi-def to extract, a la Destiny glimmer cache. Also, every fifth wave I think should have a mini-boss.

Another one: You run survival. Lone Tenno Operative (LTO) needs help. You get a data mass that assists them. Or suddenly a miniboss shows up that is 'heading' towards the LTO. Take them out.

Somehow, I also would like some of the missions to evolve base on certain criteria, similar to how Destiny has the Heroic Public Events. Say you are doing an exterminate run. In every mission there is some computer out of the way that you can hack, or a machine you can destroy that will trigger something that makes the mission even harder with better rewards, even as simple as adding a timer to the run will do.

Here is another idea to shake things up, especially if you are doing endless runs. No additional rewards needed , but have it so that either before or after each extraction/reward chance you tack on some kind of thing that shakes up the mission, adopting from Disruptions. Suddenly the ship you are invading runs into some void fsckery and gravity shifts. Or suddenly a squad of X (Corpus/Grinneer/Sentients/Wolfie Squad/Syndicates) appears as well to fight the enemy type of the mission and/or you. They do their own thing, and you can either help or hinder them. Trick is that the more hostile ones can still be damaged by you, so you need to avoid (potentially) friendly fire via crossfire or AOE nuking.