My ideas to improve base missions and some of its variants.

[MorteNexus13]

General Changes:

• All standard (non-endless) missions except Rathuum have resource caches.
• Most of the standard missions have challenges (like Cetus/Fortuna bounties).
• During stealth (alarms off), players have 25% more affinity, resources, and credits, and 50% more resource and mods drop chance (multiplicative boosters).
• Once the alarm is activated, cannot be deactivated.
• If a security camera detects you, or you go through the sensor bar or the laser barriers, alarms will be triggered.
• The only missions that start with the alarms off are capture, exterminate, rescue, sabotage and spy.
• Rotation rewards for all endless missions are AABBCCCC….
• Hacking a console will not speed up the time trial.
• You have 20 seconds to hack a console, or 10 seconds if the alarms were triggered.

Exterminate: The mission starts with killing between 40 and 60 enemies. If the alarm is triggered, the number of enemies will increase between 50%-200% (depending on the planet).

Capture: You have to interrogate the target, accused of stealing resources from which you can choose whether these resources, credits, endo, relics or mods, and some other illegal act (to justify why we do this mission, like swindle, invasion, acts of war, slavery, etc). 3 caches will appear on the mini map, which you can loot them or go directly to the extraction point.

Spoiler

At first you will only be able to capture it, but upon completing The War Within, you will choose whether:

• Capture it (Neutral)
• Let it go with a warning (Sun)
• Kill it (Moon)

Mobile defense: You have 2 minutes to protect each terminal. While protect them, you will have random objectives that allow you to hack the terminals faster, such as:

• Don’t let the terminal suffer any damage for a minute (Completing this challenge will cause the terminal to be hacked instantly)
• Kill a target with a device (it will reduce hacking time by one minute).
• Hack the terminal with the Parazon 6 times:
  • Each successful hack will reduce the time counter (5/6/7/8/9/10 seconds), but will also reduce your time to hack the console (10/9/8/7/6/5 seconds)
  • If you try to hack a console and you run out of time, you will suffer a magnetic proc until you lose all your energy.
  • You can also eject your Parazon and not risk losing your energy, but you will not be able to hack the terminal again and you will fail this challenge.

Hijack:

• Fomorian Power Core: Halfway through, one of the doors will not open and the Grustrag Three will appear, each carrying a key. You will have to defeat them and put each key in 3 different terminals to open the door and continue the journey.
• Cargo Rover: Along the way you will encounter with two Zanuka Hunters who will stop the vehicle unless you defeat them.

You will be rewarded with 4 Omega Isotopes or 4 Chryptografic ALU if you complete the mission.

Spy: If any alarm (including these from the vault data servers) is triggered, you will have only 5/4/3 minutes to complete the mission (depending on how many data servers you have stolen). The rewards will change depending of the alarms:

• Table C rewards: Steal the data servers without trigger any alarm.
• Table B rewards: Steal the data servers with the alarms on but without trigger the data vault alarm.
• Table A rewards: Steal the data having triggered the data vault alarm.

If you have stolen one or any data server, you will fail the mission. If you have stolen 2 data servers or 3 of them, having triggered all the data vault alarms, the spy mission will become an exterminate mission.

Defection:

• You will get a reward for each rescued squad.
• If you play in Solo, you will have to defend all of defectors (4 variants)
• Depending on how much defectors reach the extraction point, you will receive a different reward:
  • Rotation C reward: 4 defectors safe.
  • Rotation B reward: 3 defectors safe.
  • Rotation A reward: 2 defectors safe.
  • No reward: 1 or no defector safe.

Defense: Instead of 5 waves, you have to defend the objective for 4 minutes against an endless wave of enemies. Random challenges will appear which if you complete them; will reduce the wave time by 3 minutes:

• 3-minutes challenges:
  • Kill enemies using only your primary/secondary/melee/archgun weapon (minimum 50 enemies).
  • Don’t use any ability.
  • Don’t let the objective take any damage.
  • Use the operator for 2 minutes.
• Challenges that will reduce the wave time by 1 minute.
  • Kill X enemies with your primary/secondary/melee/archgun weapon.
  • Kill X enemies with your abilities.
  • Kill X enemies affected by 3 different procs.
  • Kill X enemies with critical hits.
  • Kill the enemy target.
  • Kill X enemies with the operator.

Excavation: Extractors don’t need power cells to work, but will now last a little longer (2 minutes = 120 Cryotic) and each power cell will reduce the excavation time by 5 seconds.

Interception: Staying close to a communication tower will increase message decoding speed by 10%, up to 40%. Also, it will be marked on the mini map which tower is trying to control the enemy.

Survival: 5 minutes after start the survival, mini missions will appear.

• Capture/Assassination: Capture/Kill the target in X minutes.
• Rescue: Rescue the target and bring it to the extraction point.
• Mobile Defense: Go with your team to a terminal and defend it (There is only one terminal with few shields and it doesn’t recover health).
• Cache recovery: Find 3 different caches in X minutes.
• Interception: Defend an area for X minutes and don't let any enemies approach it (similar to Liberation (PoE), but instead, you will lose control of the area if an enemy is inside it. You will gain control of the area if you stay inside her or kill enemies within the area).

These missions will be random and if you complete them, the time will increase by one minute and you will have to wait 2 minutes for the next mission. Otherwise you will have to wait 5 minutes for the next mission.

 

Bonus challenges:

• Exterminate: Kill all the enemies in less than X minutes without trigger the alarm.
• Capture: Don’t kill any enemy before incapacitate the objective.
• Mobile Defense: Complete the 3 terminal challenges.
• Hijack: Reach the objective in less than 1 minute.
• Rescue: Don’t let the hostage lose health.
• Assault: Deactivate the 3 Navar-Cannon systems in less than 1 minute.
• Spy: Steal the 3 data servers without trigger any alarm.
• Sabotage:
  • Drilling Machine: Destroy all the drilling machines in less than 1 minute (The counter starts by destroying the first drill).
  • Toxic Injector: Use any antitoxin.
  • Sealab: Find the 3 caches.
  • Hive: Don’t suffer any damage.
  • Orokin: Don’t let both consoles to take any damage.
  • Reactor: Sabotage the reactor without trigger any alarm.
  • Deception: Upload the datamass to the terminal in less than a minute.
  • Gas City: Don't let any enemy reverse the sequence.

Complete these bonus challenges will give you an extra reward.

 

Nightmare mission: If you complete all the nodes of a planet, there will be a box where you can enable/disable the nightmare mode for all nodes. The given conditions will be random and will change every hour.

Kuva Lich territory:

• On the left of the interface, it will appear the amount of spawn thralls (until a maximum of 10) and near of it, a 30 seconds timer that indicates how long the next thrall will appear.
• If the Kuva Lich spawns, another counter will appear showing how much units the Lich has converted (also until 10).
• The Kuva Lich will occupy all the nodes of a planet.
• At the end of the mission, it will show the Rage Meter status.
• Complete missions will reward you with murmurs:
  • Capture/Rescue: You will receive 5 murmurs when you capture or rescue the target.
  • Mobile defense: Each terminal hacked will give you 2 murmurs.
  • Spy: The first and the second data vaults will give you 2 murmurs, and the third one 3. If you trigger the vault alarm, you will receive 1 murmur less when you steal the data.
  • Defense, survival and excavation missions will give you only 5 murmurs, regardless of how many rounds you have completed. It will only depend on the number of thralls you defeat.
  • Disruption: Each conduit defended will give you 1 murmur, until a maximum of 8.
  • Interception: Each communication tower will give you 1 murmur if at the end of the round is in your control, until a maximum of 8.
  • Defection: Each defector will give you 1 murmur if you save it, until a maximum of 8.
  • Infested Salvage: Each console will give you 1 or 2 murmurs if it’s in your control, until a maximum of 6. If the console status is above 90%, you will receive 2 murmurs. Otherwise just 1.
  • Sabotage, Hijack and Exterminate missions will increase the Rage Meter.
  • Assassination: The Kuva Lich will occupy the assassination node and you can fight with it as if it was a boss (and in this way, partially make reality what we saw in the last Tennocon), but you couldn’t do this mission until you fill the rage meter. However, the Kuva Lich will continue to spawn randomly on any mission other than Assassination if the rage meter is full.

 

Archwing missions:

• Archguns in space do railjack damage (Ballistic, Plasma, Particle, Frost, Ionic, Incendiary, Chem). I would like to see some ideas of combined elements for railjack/archguns.
• Drop Railjack resources.
• Free Space tile set for Corpus and Infested.
• Endurance mission (Survival for archwings)
• Mix ground and archwing missions.
• Use the Archwing on some tile sets (such as Corpus ice planet, Corpus gas city, Infested ship, Grineer forest and Grineer asteroid fortress) as a means of transportation and fight against some flying enemies on the way.
• Make the Corpus ship (archwing) a bigger place so as not to collide every 5 seconds (Such as The Jordas Verdict trial).
• Share archwing and railjack enemies.
• Show a sphere instead of a ring on Interception missions.
• Improve the way to heal downed allies from a higher distance.

Rewards should change too, but I will talk about that in a future post.

If you have some ideas or disagree on any of my suggestions, don't be afraid to comment and support me with more feedback.

Edited May 18, 2020 by MorteNexus13

[Scar.brother.help.me]

I like most of these ideas! (I didn't understand a few, but overall all the ideas are cool)

[MorteNexus13]

3 hours ago, Scar.brother.help.me said:

I didn't understand a few

Which?

[MorteNexus13]

General Changes:

• All standard (non-endless) missions except Rathuum have resource caches.
• Most of the standard missions have challenges (like Cetus/Fortuna bounties).
• During stealth (alarms off), players have 25% more affinity, resources, and credits, and 50% more resource and mods drop chance (multiplicative boosters).
• Once the alarm is activated, cannot be deactivated.
• If a security camera detects you, or you go through the sensor bar or the laser barriers, alarms will be triggered.
• The only missions that start with the alarms off are capture, exterminate, rescue, sabotage and spy.
• Rotation rewards for all endless missions are AABBCCCC….
• Hacking a console will not speed up the time trial.
• You have 20 seconds to hack a console, or 10 seconds if the alarms were triggered.

Exterminate: The mission starts with killing between 40 and 60 enemies. If the alarm is triggered, the number of enemies will increase between 50%-200% (depending on the planet).

Capture: You have to interrogate the target, accused of stealing resources from which you can choose whether these resources, credits, endo, relics or mods, and some other illegal act (to justify why we do this mission, like swindle, invasion, acts of war, slavery, etc). 3 caches will appear on the mini map, which you can loot them or go directly to the extraction point.

 

Spoiler

 

At first you will only be able to capture it, but upon completing The War Within, you will choose whether:

• Capture it (Neutral)
• Let it go with a warning (Sun)
• Kill it (Moon)

 

Mobile defense: You have 2 minutes to protect each terminal. While protect them, you will have random objectives that allow you to hack the terminals faster, such as:

• Don’t let the terminal suffer any damage for a minute (Completing this challenge will cause the terminal to be hacked instantly)
• Kill a target with a device (it will reduce hacking time by one minute).
• Hack the terminal with the Parazon 6 times:
  • Each successful hack will reduce the time counter (5/6/7/8/9/10 seconds), but will also reduce your time to hack the console (10/9/8/7/6/5 seconds)
  • If you try to hack a console and you run out of time, you will suffer a magnetic proc until you lose all your energy.
  • You can also eject your Parazon and not risk losing your energy, but you will not be able to hack the terminal again and you will fail this challenge.

Hijack:

• Fomorian Power Core: Halfway through, one of the doors will not open and the Grustrag Three will appear, each carrying a key. You will have to defeat them and put each key in 3 different terminals to open the door and continue the journey.
• Cargo Rover: Along the way you will encounter with two Zanuka Hunters who will stop the vehicle unless you defeat them.

You will be rewarded with 4 Omega Isotopes or 4 Chryptografic ALU if you complete the mission.

Spy: If any alarm (including these from the vault data servers) is triggered, you will have only 5/4/3 minutes to complete the mission (depending on how many data servers you have stolen). The rewards will change depending of the alarms:

• Table C rewards: Steal the data servers without trigger any alarm.
• Table B rewards: Steal the data servers with the alarms on but without trigger the data vault alarm.
• Table A rewards: Steal the data having triggered the data vault alarm.

If you have stolen one or any data server, you will fail the mission. If you have stolen 2 data servers or 3 of them, having triggered all the data vault alarms, the spy mission will become an exterminate mission.

Defection:

• You will get a reward for each rescued squad.
• If you play in Solo, you will have to defend all of defectors (4 variants)
• Depending on how much defectors reach the extraction point, you will receive a different reward:
  • Rotation C reward: 4 defectors safe.
  • Rotation B reward: 3 defectors safe.
  • Rotation A reward: 2 defectors safe.
  • No reward: 1 or no defector safe.

Defense: Instead of 5 waves, you have to defend the objective for 4 minutes against an endless wave of enemies. Random challenges will appear which if you complete them; will reduce the wave time by 3 minutes:

• 3-minutes challenges:
  • Kill enemies using only your primary/secondary/melee/archgun weapon (minimum 50 enemies).
  • Don’t use any ability.
  • Don’t let the objective take any damage.
  • Use the operator for 2 minutes.
• Challenges that will reduce the wave time by 1 minute.
  • Kill X enemies with your primary/secondary/melee/archgun weapon.
  • Kill X enemies with your abilities.
  • Kill X enemies affected by 3 different procs.
  • Kill X enemies with critical hits.
  • Kill the enemy target.
  • Kill X enemies with the operator.

Excavation: Extractors don’t need power cells to work, but will now last a little longer (2 minutes = 120 Cryotic) and each power cell will reduce the excavation time by 5 seconds.

Interception: Staying close to a communication tower will increase message decoding speed by 10%, up to 40%. Also, it will be marked on the mini map which tower is trying to control the enemy.

Survival: 5 minutes after start the survival, mini missions will appear.

• Capture/Assassination: Capture/Kill the target in X minutes.
• Rescue: Rescue the target and bring it to the extraction point.
• Mobile Defense: Go with your team to a terminal and defend it (There is only one terminal with few shields and it doesn’t recover health).
• Cache recovery: Find 3 different caches in X minutes.
• Interception: Defend an area for X minutes and don't let any enemies approach it (similar to Liberation (PoE), but instead, you will lose control of the area if an enemy is inside it. You will gain control of the area if you stay inside her or kill enemies within the area).

These missions will be random and if you complete them, the time will increase by one minute and you will have to wait 2 minutes for the next mission. Otherwise the time counter will decrease 1 minute and you will have to wait 5 minutes for the next mission.

 

Bonus challenges:

• Exterminate: Kill all the enemies in less than X minutes without trigger the alarm.
• Capture: Don’t kill any enemy before incapacitate the objective.
• Mobile Defense: Complete the 3 terminal challenges.
• Hijack: Reach the objective in less than 1 minute.
• Rescue: Don’t let the hostage lose health.
• Assault: Deactivate the 3 Navar-Cannon systems in less than 1 minute.
• Spy: Steal the 3 data servers without trigger any alarm.
• Sabotage:
  • Drilling Machine: Destroy all the drilling machines in less than 1 minute (The counter starts by destroying the first drill).
  • Toxic Injector: Use any antitoxin.
  • Sealab: Find the 3 caches.
  • Hive: Don’t suffer any damage.
  • Orokin: Don’t let both consoles to take any damage.
  • Reactor: Sabotage the reactor without trigger any alarm.
  • Deception: Upload the datamass to the terminal in less than a minute.
  • Gas City: Don't let any enemy reverse the sequence.

Complete these bonus challenges will give you an extra reward.

 

Nightmare mission: If you complete all the nodes of a planet, there will be a box where you can enable/disable the nightmare mode for all nodes. The given conditions will be random and will change every hour.

Kuva Lich territory:

• On the left of the interface, it will appear the amount of thralls (until a maximum of 10) and near of it, a 30 seconds timer that indicates how long the next thrall will appear.
• If the Kuva Lich spawns, another counter will appear showing how much units the Lich has converted (also until 10).
• The Kuva Lich will occupy all the nodes of a planet.
• At the end of the mission, it will show the Rage Meter status.
• Complete missions will reward you with murmurs:
  • Capture/Rescue: You will receive 5 murmurs when you capture or rescue the target.
  • Mobile defense: Each terminal hacked will give you 2 murmurs.
  • Spy: The first and the second data vaults will give you 2 murmurs, and the third one 3. If you trigger the vault alarm, you will receive 1 murmur less when you steal the data.
  • Defense, survival and excavation missions will give you only 5 murmurs, regardless of how many rounds you have completed. It will only depend on the number of thralls you defeat.
  • Disruption: Each conduit defended will give you 1 murmur, until a maximum of 8.
  • Interception: Each communication tower will give you 1 murmur if at the end of the round is in your control, until a maximum of 8.
  • Defection: Each defector will give you 1 murmur if you save it, until a maximum of 8.
  • Infested Salvage: Each console will give you 1 or 2 murmurs if it’s in your control, until a maximum of 6. If the console status is above 90%, you will receive 2 murmurs. Otherwise just 1.
  • Sabotage, Hijack and Exterminate missions will increase the Rage Meter.
  • Assassination: The Kuva Lich will occupy the assassination node and you can fight with it as if it was a boss (and in this way, partially make reality what we saw in the last Tennocon), but you couldn’t do this mission until you fill the rage meter. However, the Kuva Lich will continue to spawn randomly on any mission other than Assassination if the rage meter is full.

 

Archwing missions:

• Archguns in space do railjack damage (Ballistic, Plasma, Particle, Frost, Ionic, Incendiary, Chem). I would like to see some ideas of combined elements for railjack/archguns.
• Drop Railjack resources.
• Free Space tile set for Corpus and Infested.
• Endurance mission (Survival for archwings)
• Mix ground and archwing missions.
• Use the Archwing on some tile sets (such as Corpus ice planet, Corpus gas city, Infested ship, Grineer forest and Grineer asteroid fortress) as a means of transportation and fight against some flying enemies on the way.
• Make the Corpus ship (archwing) a bigger place so as not to collide every 5 seconds (Such as The Jordas Verdict trial).
• Share archwing and railjack enemies.
• Show a sphere instead of a ring on Interception missions.
• Improve the way to heal downed allies from a higher distance.

Rewards should change too, but I will talk about that in a future post.

Edited May 20, 2020 by MorteNexus13

[BlackCat500]

I like a lot of these. For more conversation/ideas, do also check this thread:

There are two big posts in there that each have their own ideas. Gonna just shill for my own ideas as well since that topic was largely ignored, thanks to being so long.

[Scar.brother.help.me]

2 hours ago, MorteNexus13 said:

Which?

don't bother, I just didn't try too hard 😄 I like all of these ideas. Any changes to missions are welcome because right now half of them are brain dead "kill em all" and the other ones are just annoying because they take more time and effort and give little to no reward (some crap u don't care about after a few weeks of playing the game)

[Scar.brother.help.me]

21 hours ago, MorteNexus13 said:

Rotation rewards for all endless missions are AABBCCCC….

oh yes, I disagree with this, unless waves and minutes are halved, otherwise ABCCCCC..

to be honest I don't like the idea of waiting for rotations at all, I am cool with conditions like number of successful vaults, alarms/guard kills during rescues, caches found, I partly like the way rotations work in disruptions. But I hate the idea that I need to waste my time on rotations A and B if I only need something from rotation C during the other endless missions. This is a pure waste of my time. In my opinion - rewards should be the same, but the longer u stay, the more chances should be to get what you want. If all of the endless mission's rotations had the same rewards but rotation B had better chances for rare rewards than A, C had even better chances than B and crappy rewards were removed from later rotations (If you want them, just replay lower rotations) - then it could be AABBCC or something, but I'd prefer ABCDEFG.. the longer u stay and the tougher enemies you encounter.

Edited May 18, 2020 by Scar.brother.help.me

[Steel_Rook]

21 hours ago, MorteNexus13 said:

• During stealth (alarms off), players have 25% more affinity, resources, and credits, and 50% more resource and mods drop chance (multiplicative boosters).
• Once the alarm is activated, cannot be deactivated.
• If a security camera detects you, or you go through the sensor bar or the laser barriers, alarms will be triggered.
• The only missions that start with the alarms off are capture, exterminate, rescue, sabotage and spy.

Honestly, this is what stands out to me the most, and I strongly disagree. I've never been a fan of "stealth" in Warframe, but I've always been willing to play along with it when I can. Why not? It's the same as Stealth in Payday 2 - you play along for a while, inevitably the alarm sounds, then you fight it out from there. Creating penalties for sounding the alarms and preventing players from disabling the alarms is just going to make the game more tedious. Stealth in Warframe sucks ass. The last thing I want is to attach more penalties to its hair-trigger fail conditions. If players want to play with constant alarms going, we already have the option of doing so.

Spy is one of my favourite mission types because I like the Spy Vault puzzles, but turning those missions into FULL stealth wouldn't actually add to that. That right there would turn them into one of my least favourite, and pretty much relegate them to "play Ivara or Loki or GTFO." The more restrictions like these that you put on missions and challenges, the more you turn what is right now an open-ended task into a gear check. I fully agree that Warframe needs more complexity in its mission design, but "more failure conditions" is not the right way to go about it. I mean look at this:

21 hours ago, MorteNexus13 said:

• Kill enemies using only your primary/secondary/melee/archgun weapon (minimum 50 enemies).
• Don’t use any ability.
• Don’t let the objective take any damage.
• Use the operator for 2 minutes.

Why? Why any of this? These are not "challenges," they're "things that fail if you don't play along." There's no complexity in any of them - quite the opposite. They read like "play the game in a reductive manner because I said so." Limiting players from using their full ability set is not good gameplay. It's what game designers do when they officially give up on game balance and start trying to remove the complexity they can't control. Even Vallis/Plains challenges don't get this specific, usually simply requiring you to "do better." The only exception I can think of is "Capture target without killing anyone," AKA "the challenge everyone always fails." This is achievements at their very worst, as far as I'm concerned.

About the only one I really agree with is this one:

22 hours ago, MorteNexus13 said:

Survival: 5 minutes after start the survival, mini missions will appear.

• Capture/Assassination: Capture/Kill the target in X minutes.
• Rescue: Rescue the target and bring it to the extraction point.
• Mobile Defense: Go with your team to a terminal and defend it (There is only one terminal with few shields and it doesn’t recover health).
• Cache recovery: Find 3 different caches in X minutes.
• Interception: Defend an area for X minutes and don't let any enemies approach it (similar to Liberation (PoE), but instead, you will lose control of the area if an enemy is inside it. You will gain control of the area if you stay inside her or kill enemies within the area).

And that's mostly because this is the only one where you've actually injected a degree of complexity beyond just adding more failure states. Survival is one of the game's most reductive modes, usually boiling down to finding a dead-end hallway, staying in one spot and shooting down incoming enemies like a Turret Section. Having bonus objectives to chase and reasons to explore is a good thing. And even there, you couldn't resist penalising people for not engaging with the gimmick by docking us time. Why not simply reward players with extra Life Support for completing them? Why does everything have to be internalised within the context of penalties?

[MorteNexus13]

6 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Honestly, this is what stands out to me the most, and I strongly disagree. I've never been a fan of "stealth" in Warframe, but I've always been willing to play along with it when I can. Why not? It's the same as Stealth in Payday 2 - you play along for a while, inevitably the alarm sounds, then you fight it out from there. Creating penalties for sounding the alarms and preventing players from disabling the alarms is just going to make the game more tedious. Stealth in Warframe sucks ass. The last thing I want is to attach more penalties to its hair-trigger fail conditions. If players want to play with constant alarms going, we already have the option of doing so.

I was thinking of benefiting stealth players or those who complete missions without triggering the alarm, just like when you gain extra affinity for stealthily killing an enemy (I mean, we're supposed to be "ninjas"). In Payday 2 there are missions where you can do stealth or loud, only loud or only stealth, and if you complete a heist with stealth, you have extra experience for the next one. Currently there is no difference between alarms on and alarms off except the enemy respawn... Now that I thinking, that do you think about the idea of benefit players who haven't triggered alarms or received no damage with 5% extra drop and 10% extra drop chance for the next mission until 25% and 50%, respectilly?

6 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Spy is one of my favourite mission types because I like the Spy Vault puzzles, but turning those missions into FULL stealth wouldn't actually add to that. That right there would turn them into one of my least favourite, and pretty much relegate them to "play Ivara or Loki or GTFO." The more restrictions like these that you put on missions and challenges, the more you turn what is right now an open-ended task into a gear check. I fully agree that Warframe needs more complexity in its mission design, but "more failure conditions" is not the right way to go about it.

It's supposed to be a spy mission. You cannot let them see you stealing or obtaining information, unless it is a Raid where stealth no longer matters and you have to do something to get what you are looking for and complete the mission (in fact that type of mission existed but long ago It was removed). And I don't want the people to use Loki, Ash or Ivara to complete this mission, but put yourself in the enemy's shoes: "You are protecting something of great value and thieves are coming to steal it. You know that you cannot do anything against them so you have no choice but to destroy it", like when you trigger the vault's alarm.

You still can use any warframe that you want, but don't let the enemy activate the alarms. And if they do, you have X minutes to steal the remaining dates before they are deleted (5 minutes if you haven't stolen any data, 4 minutes if you stole one data, or 3 minutes if you have two of them), so the time is your enemy now, and better be quick before you fail or have to kill all the enemies.

6 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

These are not "challenges," they're "things that fail if you don't play along." There's no complexity in any of them - quite the opposite. They read like "play the game in a reductive manner because I said so." Limiting players from using their full ability set is not good gameplay. It's what game designers do when they officially give up on game balance and start trying to remove the complexity they can't control. Even Vallis/Plains challenges don't get this specific, usually simply requiring you to "do better." The only exception I can think of is "Capture target without killing anyone," AKA "the challenge everyone always fails." This is achievements at their very worst, as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah, I admit that I had a harder time thinking about it, this is why I suggested first changing 5 waves for an endless wave, for each round. And the "capture target without killing anyone" it's annoying, I admit it, but because of my companion/sentinel, but it didn't occur to me what challenge to do except "capture the target in X seconds" but the interrogation was what in my opinion screw it.

Talking about survival...

6 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Why not simply reward players with extra Life Support for completing them? Why does everything have to be internalised within the context of penalties?

The extra life support sounds like a good reward, and I'm gonna delete the "time count will decrease 1 minute" part because I think this is too much.

I suggested these challenges not because I wanted to limit the gameplay, but because I want to tempt players to finish rounds faster and/or get more rewards. You can keep playing as if those challenges don't exist, but it's up to you.

Edited May 18, 2020 by MorteNexus13

[MorteNexus13]

6 hours ago, Scar.brother.help.me said:

oh yes, I disagree with this, unless waves and minutes are halved, otherwise ABCCCCC..

to be honest I don't like the idea of waiting for rotations at all, I am cool with conditions like number of successful vaults, alarms/guard kills during rescues, caches found, I partly like the way rotations work in disruptions. But I hate the idea that I need to waste my time on rotations A and B if I only need something from rotation C during the other endless missions. This is a pure waste of my time. In my opinion - rewards should be the same, but the longer u stay, the more chances should be to get what you want. If all of the endless mission's rotations had the same rewards but rotation B had better chances for rare rewards than A, C had even better chances than B and crappy rewards were removed from later rotations (If you want them, just replay lower rotations) - then it could be AABBCC or something, but I'd prefer ABCDEFG.. the longer u stay and the tougher enemies you encounter.

It depends of the rewards, I guess. Maybe you want something that you can obtain only in A or B so you don't need to stay in the same mission for a long time. I'm agree with you about the same rewards and higher chances to get the rarest rewards (like relics).

Maybe in Hardmode and Ultra Hardmode (if those were implemented) could be ABCCCC... or CCCCCC... respectilly.

I was thinking about a rotation D for those who play for more than an hour (or 12 rounds) against enemies lvl 200, but the problem is the rewards.

[Steel_Rook]

18 hours ago, MorteNexus13 said:

I was thinking of benefiting stealth players or those who complete missions without triggering the alarm, just like when you gain extra affinity for stealthily killing an enemy (I mean, we're supposed to be "ninjas"). In Payday 2 there are missions where you can do stealth or loud, only loud or only stealth, and if you complete a heist with stealth, you have extra experience for the next one. Currently there is no difference between alarms on and alarms off except the enemy respawn... Now that I thinking, that do you think about the idea of benefit players who haven't triggered alarms or received no damage with 5% extra drop and 10% extra drop chance for the next mission until 25% and 50%, respectilly?

Right, but the problem is that you're raising the game's difficulty DRASTICALLY by preventing people from disabling the alarm. There's a substantial difference in enemy spawns between Alarm On and Alarm Off. And just to head off a potential argument, it's not that Warframe is "too hard." It's that an option exists right now for a player who's struggling to disable the alarm and cause enemies to back off. Those who want more challenge (or, realistically, more XP) still have the option of just not disabling the alarm. I'd actually go one further and give people the option of hacking Alarm consoles at any time to RAISE the alarm, and maybe even open a few nearby lockers via Master Key.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to rewarding players for playing stealthily. Spy Vaults already award three times the XP for hacking a Vault without raising the alarm. Hell, I'm a fan of the currently-existing XP bonus for chaining stealth kills. Well, I would if DE hadn't broken the trigger for it to where NOTHING but backstabs counts. Warframe's stealth system is too far on the shallow side to really lean too heavily on it, but being able to get "stealth kills" off of partially-alerted enemies would be nice, if you manage to kill them quickly enough after they spot you. Might also be nice if they didn't spot me from a mile away in darkness, and if my pet didn't open fire on them for no reason.

What you're proposing, though, isn't a reward for Stealth. It's a penalty for Loud. I don't feel that Warframe needs MORE hair-trigger failure states. What you're going to do is exactly what ended up happening to Payday 2 - people built dedicated "Stealth" builds which weren't suited to open combat and constantly restarted the mission the first time the alarm sounded. Because that's what penalties do to people. I know you don't want people to just use Ivara and Loki, but you're designing game modes which basically mandate their use. Oh, sure, you could get away without using them, just like you could run Scarlet Spear without relying on Limbo. Everyone did anyway. Game design informs player habits. When you lean too heavily into "don't be seen, don't be hit," you inevitably lean into invisibility Warframes.

 

18 hours ago, MorteNexus13 said:

It's supposed to be a spy mission. You cannot let them see you stealing or obtaining information, unless it is a Raid where stealth no longer matters and you have to do something to get what you are looking for and complete the mission (in fact that type of mission existed but long ago It was removed). And I don't want the people to use Loki, Ash or Ivara to complete this mission, but put yourself in the enemy's shoes: "You are protecting something of great value and thieves are coming to steal it. You know that you cannot do anything against them so you have no choice but to destroy it", like when you trigger the vault's alarm.

Sometimes, you need a certain amount of "gameplay and story segregation." When story and theme clash with gameplay, I'm of the opinion that gameplay should win. The way Spy Vaults work right now is exactly this kind of compromise. The actual Vaults follow the logic you're proposing, with cameras and lasers tripping an alarm and putting the player on a death clock. However, Spy Vaults are segregated from the rest of the mission, allowing for the Stealth failure conditions to be restricted to JUST those sections. Additionally, Spy Missions have a margin for error, with most requiring only 2 of the 3 vaults. I personally feel this works fine. There's plenty of incentive to not get seen INSIDE the Vault, but one doesn't have to sweat every enemy in the entire map.

Here's the thing - I hate stealth and I still love Spy Vaults. Never really feel the need to use Loki or Ivara or even the likes of Wukong or Wisp to tackle them. I stealth with Inaros, and it works just fine. But here's the thing - I stealth only the specific puzzles, which have enough in the way of clever design to allow for an "inelegant" approach. I don't stealth the rest of the map, because it's slow and tedious and prone to failure outside my control. Some guy saw me across the room and fired, now people in the neighbouring tiles are alerted and I don't even know where they are to go stop them. Unlike in Payday 2, Warframe doesn't give me waypoints to enemies about to call the police. An again - people who want to stealth Spy Missions fully can still do that. The option is there and stealth kill bonuses are NOT insignificant. I just don't feel that this should be a NEED.

Long story short, I don't feel the need to add more failure conditions. Warframe already has far too many. If you want to add incentive then by all means go ahead... But Spy Missions already have plenty of incentive.

 

18 hours ago, MorteNexus13 said:

Yeah, I admit that I had a harder time thinking about it, this is why I suggested first changing 5 waves for an endless wave, for each round. And the "capture target without killing anyone" it's annoying, I admit it, but because of my companion/sentinel, but it didn't occur to me what challenge to do except "capture the target in X seconds" but the interrogation was what in my opinion screw it.

If you ask me, Defence sucks ass as a game mode altogether. For me personally, it's by FAR the worst, most reductive of the standard mission types. It's also very susceptible to cheese from a select few Warframes. A Frost Snowglobe or a Limbo Cataclysm over the objective makes SUCH a massive difference that I have trouble justifying bringing anything else. Kind of the same issue I pointed out with "Stealth Frames" above. Plus, the actual main objective just... Boring. Sit on your hands and shoot enemies as they come towards you. Yeah, I played Virtua Cop, too.

I've proposed radical redesigns for it in the past. My current model is using the Jupiter Sabotage mechanic of giving players a number of consoles to defend, that the enemy has to physically hack in order to start "draining" the objective. This changes two things - players no longer have to physically shield the objective from long-range fire and can afford to NOT bring "barrier tanks," and players have multiple locations that they need to take care of, similar to Interception. At THAT point, you can have more dynamism in the way you're proposing. But the game mode itself is just too "blah" to really do much with it at its present state.

 

18 hours ago, MorteNexus13 said:

I suggested these challenges not because I wanted to limit the gameplay, but because I want to tempt players to finish rounds faster and/or get more rewards. You can keep playing as if those challenges don't exist, but it's up to you.

We might just have different goals here, I guess. Personally, I'd rather see Survival take LONGER, but offer more to actually DO for the duration. It's an endless mission type, it makes sense that those would keep us around for a while. My issue with Survival is that it takes place in some of the game's largest, most expansive maps yet most people (myself included) rarely leave the starting area. I really like your suggestions, because they give us reason to roam and reason to explore. They give us reason to use more of the map than whatever dead end hallway will spawn the most enemies.

The problem with Survival right now is that it leans VERY heavily into combat if you want to stay positive on Life Support. Exploring puts you ahead of spawned enemies, which means they take longer to reach you and thus longer to refill your Life Support. This is why I proposed adding more Life Support for secondary objectives - essentially to compensate players for the time they spent fiddling with them. There's a "rouge-like" called Flame Over, where you fight a fire in a large building on a fixed timer. You can take extra time to save people and do side missions, and you're rewarded for them... With more time on the clock. Do them fast enough and you gain time. The game starts you with 5 minutes, but a full run can take an hour and a half.

Honestly, what you propose - Survival with side objectives - is probably the closest Warframe gets to Payday 2. You fight enemies on the way to objectives, not so much for their drops. I'd genuinely like to see that.

[(PSN)IndianChiefJeff]

Solid Lich ideas. I'd take anything that could chip away at that grind any day.

 

[Scar.brother.help.me]

I also like how bonuses stack during relic missions, +25% affinity, +25% credits, +25% resources, +25% resource drop chance, some enchanted relic
If it was implemented during any endless mission and without the fifth reward so that we get each booster again every 20th minute/wave.