The Integration of Content Islands

[Skaleek]

So today i ran into this:

https://imgur.com/a/lTmP098

Turn this into one node. Always. Create a dynamic system where you start the node and any and all available tasks are contained within said node. You now have many different possible objectives allowed to be simultaneously or sequentially performed by just picking a node on the starmap. Simply have the node level be the highest of the objectives. In this case, the kuva flood, so the enemies would be level 80-100. Then you can just keep adding layers of content on top of the starmap instead of having all these branching tasks on the same node. I think this is worth the development work, and railjack will play nicely with this.

This is what I always envisioned when kuva liches were first announced. Think of it like the next level of mission invasion events like stalker, g3, zanuka.

[Drasiel]

No. I don't like kuva missions and I don't want to be forced to play them just because my random syndicate mission spawned on the same node. I don't want to fight lich level enemies when I'm grinding low level planets specifically because they are low level and I sure as hell don't want to deal with nightmare modifiers messing up the mission drop table for what I'm actually after. 

[Skaleek]

On 2020-11-02 at 5:25 PM, Drasiel said:

No. I don't like kuva missions and I don't want to be forced to play them just because my random syndicate mission spawned on the same node. I don't want to fight lich level enemies when I'm grinding low level planets specifically because they are low level and I sure as hell don't want to deal with nightmare modifiers messing up the mission drop table for what I'm actually after. 

First of all, you dont HAVE to do anything. If you dont want lich content, dont spawn a lich. If you don't want to do the kuva flood, walk by it and ignore it. Drop tables would be unaffected, why would they be different? It's layers of content on the base mission. The base mission stays the same, new objectives, encounters, and content become available based on what you've got available. As with all public games though, its a free for all if you join someone else's mission. So someone might be fighting their lich, but as with all missions, if you don't like the parameters, you can host, you can play solo, or you can play a pre-made.

To me, keeping all of this segregated is just creating more and more islands that become desolate and unused. This would be far more fruitful for matchmaking. It would also make missions extremely chaotic and different than expected at times.

The only thing I don't have a great answer for is the level determination. It's tricky, because some people like fighting level 1 enemies (for whatever reason. To me a level 1 and a level 50 enemy is equivalent, but i am quite geared. For that perhaps a more clever solution is required.

[Rawbeard]

18 minutes ago, Skaleek said:

dont HAVE to do anything

with your suggestion you literally DO HAVE to do all these thing. the only choice is not to play. might as well condense the entire game into one node, amirite?

[Skaleek]

24 minutes ago, Rawbeard said:

with your suggestion you literally DO HAVE to do all these thing. the only choice is not to play. might as well condense the entire game into one node, amirite?

You would only have to do the mission objective. The rest is extra. Kinda like the game right now. You dont have to equip a relic when you do a void fissure. You don't have to search out and do the kuva siphon in a kuva siphon mission. You don't have to kill your lich in a lich mission. The only thing you ever need to do in any mission is the base objective.

It's an idea, and while i doubt it will ever be adopted, It's also fun to brainstorm how to alleviate the emptiness of matchmaking on the starmap.  I like to think of how to integrate or dissolve the many many content islands that plague warframe.

I would love to be able to do a fissure and farm my lich at the same time, maybe hit a kuva siphon (or skip it if im in a rush) if i come across one. Dynamic content over static content islands would be a healthy change for the game, in my opinion.

I'd also love to be able to happen across fissure, siphon, and lich events in open world and in railjack. Tying all the content together would be pretty awesome, although it would need fleshing out and perhaps changes to the way to the base mechanics work.

[Drasiel]

4 hours ago, Skaleek said:

First of all, you dont HAVE to do anything. If you dont want lich content, dont spawn a lich. If you don't want to do the kuva flood, walk by it and ignore it. Drop tables would be unaffected, why would they be different? It's layers of content on the base mission. The base mission stays the same, new objectives, encounters, and content become available based on what you've got available. As with all public games though, its a free for all if you join someone else's mission. So someone might be fighting their lich, but as with all missions, if you don't like the parameters, you can host, you can play solo, or you can play a pre-made.

To me, keeping all of this segregated is just creating more and more islands that become desolate and unused. This would be far more fruitful for matchmaking. It would also make missions extremely chaotic and different than expected at times.

The only thing I don't have a great answer for is the level determination. It's tricky, because some people like fighting level 1 enemies (for whatever reason. To me a level 1 and a level 50 enemy is equivalent, but i am quite geared). For that perhaps a more clever solution is required.

I already play solo, and I am quite happy to have a lich who I can avoid when I don't want to play him, even on his own nodes. The drop tables in warframe are always effected by the mission on them. Sabotage missions lose their caches when a syndicate mission is active. End of mission rewards are changed to nightmare mods for nightmare missions, the entire structure of missions is cut in half to down to a third for invasions because you are expected to play 3 of them. This would be a massive undertaking to make all these thing play nice with each other and completely screw up the time invested/reward given balance. All it would benefit are efficiency farmers. we already played with unselectable mission types years ago and they sucked and people hated them it's why we have the option to play each mission separately in the first place.

Your idea might force more people together but it also removes a hell of a lot of choice and I'm not down for that.

[Dhrekr]

11 hours ago, Skaleek said:

You now have many different possible objectives allowed to be simultaneously or sequentially performed

You remind me of a Mitchell and Webb sketch where a customer walks into a clothes store, explains what he wants, and the person who works there remarks that he's asking for an suit that is simultaneously a formal evening dress, a casual sportswear, a pajama, and can be worn at a funeral.

The goal of merging the content islands is laudable, but this ain't it. You'll end up wanting to do the spy vaults but are going to be interrupted by a pub noob who has just triggered the start of the Survival mode, and the vaults are being filled with mooks. You'll want to do the Excavation but half of your team has accidentally bumped into the Capture target and are going like "oh we'll just catch him, give us two mins, just running after him" while the enemies are chomping on your excavator. You want to complete the sabotage and need someone to help you with a two-console door but your three random teammates have decided they're doing a Defense and they write "wtf chill with your sabotage, we don't care, we're not helping you".

 

And I know what you're thinking now. "Well, if I want to do the Spy objective, then I know that I shouldn't do public, otherwise I'll just get paired with derps who accidentally trigger the Survival objective, so I'll recruit". And guess what. That's exactly what a Spy node is about.

I see no advantage to this suggestion. What you gain in "everyone is in the same node" you lose tenfold in "no one works at the same objective and that's how you fail at everything".

[PhiThagRaid]

I made a similar post called "Combining missions" on this topic. I think it can be a good addition to shrink the amount of different missions on the same node that is currently splitting the amount of people who play on each of those missions.

Some issues have been brought up due to the different things people have unlocked in the game, but I believe it can be done similar to caches and Deadlock sidemissions.

[PhiThagRaid]

12 hours ago, Drasiel said:

we already played with unselectable mission types

Just curious what you are referring to here? Is this something quite old relating to the old star chart? Since I've been around for 4 years and it all seemed to be the way it is currently.

[PhiThagRaid]

6 hours ago, Dhrekr said:

You remind me of a Mitchell and Webb sketch where a customer walks into a clothes store, explains what he wants, and the person who works there remarks that he's asking for an suit that is simultaneously a formal evening dress, a casual sportswear, a pajama, and can be worn at a funeral.

The goal of merging the content islands is laudable, but this ain't it. You'll end up wanting to do the spy vaults but are going to be interrupted by a pub noob who has just triggered the start of the Survival mode, and the vaults are being filled with mooks. You'll want to do the Excavation but half of your team has accidentally bumped into the Capture target and are going like "oh we'll just catch him, give us two mins, just running after him" while the enemies are chomping on your excavator. You want to complete the sabotage and need someone to help you with a two-console door but your three random teammates have decided they're doing a Defense and they write "wtf chill with your sabotage, we don't care, we're not helping you".

 

And I know what you're thinking now. "Well, if I want to do the Spy objective, then I know that I shouldn't do public, otherwise I'll just get paired with derps who accidentally trigger the Survival objective, so I'll recruit". And guess what. That's exactly what a Spy node is about.

I see no advantage to this suggestion. What you gain in "everyone is in the same node" you lose tenfold in "no one works at the same objective and that's how you fail at everything".

I think the general system would unify the objectives somewhat to not become what you describe. A capture mission could stay a capture mission, but with a main target and perhaps extra targets for those missions that have merged in. Think Main cap target, one for syndicate if mission is active on that node, kuva addition would just spawn the siphon as usual, lich would just allow the lich and his minions to spawn and finally fissures would only add the fissure conversions to happen. Something similar could be done for all other missions, where the mission type stays constant, but there are just additional events that occur within the mission.

[Skaleek]

7 hours ago, Dhrekr said:

The goal of merging the content islands is laudable, but this ain't it. You'll end up wanting to do the spy vaults but are going to be interrupted by a pub noob who has just triggered the start of the Survival mode, and the vaults are being filled with mooks. You'll want to do the Excavation but half of your team has accidentally bumped into the Capture target and are going like "oh we'll just catch him, give us two mins, just running after him" while the enemies are chomping on your excavator. You want to complete the sabotage and need someone to help you with a two-console door but your three random teammates have decided they're doing a Defense and they write "wtf chill with your sabotage, we don't care, we're not helping you".

I dont think you understand the concept. The base mission doesn't change. No where in warframe can a spy mission become a survival. The base missions don't change. Bonus objectives like fissures and kuva siphons are just layers on top of the base content. There is an exception where sometimes a capture or MD will become an exterminate, but thats no different than what we have now. You can't have a defense/sabotage. The base mission stays the same. It's not all that different than what we have now, except that you could say have a fissure in the same mission a siphon shows up.

1 hour ago, PhiThagRaid said:

I think the general system would unify the objectives somewhat to not become what you describe. A capture mission could stay a capture mission, but with a main target and perhaps extra targets for those missions that have merged in. Think Main cap target, one for syndicate if mission is active on that node, kuva addition would just spawn the siphon as usual, lich would just allow the lich and his minions to spawn and finally fissures would only add the fissure conversions to happen. Something similar could be done for all other missions, where the mission type stays constant, but there are just additional events that occur within the mission.

Exactly this. It's a rough idea, and by no means perfect, but I think it would be a great step towards integrating more into railjack and open worlds as well.

[Kaggelos]

I love this idea. Sure, like you said, it a little rough around the edges, but the core concept is dope. Connectivity of content is something I'd love to see in the game ^^

[PhiThagRaid]

2 hours ago, Skaleek said:

I dont think you understand the concept. The base mission doesn't change. No where in warframe can a spy mission become a survival. The base missions don't change. Bonus objectives like fissures and kuva siphons are just layers on top of the base content. There is an exception where sometimes a capture or MD will become an exterminate, but thats no different than what we have now. You can't have a defense/sabotage. The base mission stays the same. It's not all that different than what we have now, except that you could say have a fissure in the same mission a siphon shows up.

Exactly this. It's a rough idea, and by no means perfect, but I think it would be a great step towards integrating more into railjack and open worlds as well.

Do you think only one objective should exist or multiple when it comes to syndicates? I'd personally say multiple, given that there is a downside to performing a mission for a syndicate that is not your main one. I'd it's either that or to ensure other players don't mess up your standing(which when kept could have some interesting gameplay, but will require that you be able to prevent others from completing the syndicate part, more on that in the next paragraph). If we were to prevent players from messing others' standing up we would need to change how standing is earned from syndicate missions. Currently you get a flat bonus at the end of the mission, but this can not be done when the prevention is in place. A semi solution could be to only give the standing reward to players with the correct syndicate sigil, barring that I don't really have an idea how to prevent such a situation.

If we allowed players to indeed mess up other players standing, some method would be needed to help prevent the objective from being completed. This would introduce a bit of a PvP element to the PvE section of the game, but it is quite debatable whether anyone would like that. Regardless, here's a small list of things people would need to do to prevent completion(some of these missions do not have syndicate equivalents currently, for those I'll suggest one first):

• Arena:  You get a team mate which you must defend for your syndicate. People with the correct sigil will be able to heal it, but non-sigil team members cant. Loki could perhaps be a counter here, teleporting the syndicate into a swarm of enemies.
• Assassination: New Syndicate specific bosses might need to be added. This boss could perhaps flee once the true mission boss is killed, thus making the counter killing the main boss.
• Capture: 2 targets. Non-sigil team members can heal/shield the cap target and perhaps cause a lockdown.
• Defection: Should be easy: specific faction squad spawns(Not that anyone will be playing it)
• Defense: Base stationary objective and moving target. Non-sigil players can target moving syndicate target, but with dramatically reduced damage, since defense objectives have quite low health.
• Disruption: 5th conduit, mission ends once 4 are done. If the syndicate conduit is not opened, no standing.
• Excavation: Hmm, not too sure how to make it possible while also having a counter... Perhaps a marked enemy that when killed drops a special energy cell that converts the extractor to the syndicate's. The counter is that someone else kills and picks up the cell while staying away from the extractor, preventing the conversion.
• Exterminate: Perhaps something similar to Assassination where there are a set of targets from the syndicate, but they flee once the Exterminate target is reached.
• Hijack: Something similar to defence, 2 trams, once can be damage by non-sigil players
• Invested Salvage: Just add a 4th console, the lack of tokens to refill the purifiers can be the counter.(Resource war)
• Interception: 5th optional tower, can be hacked by non-sigil players, but they become vulnerable to damage from other players while doing so. It needs to be active for >50% of the round.
• Mobile defense: Extra terminal, a fight for who picks up the datamass
• Rescue: 2 cell locations, main one and one that is to the side of the mission(can be skipped). This forces 2 players to open the door for it to open the bonus objective(a sort of vote) Might not allow counter enough, though.
• Sabotage: No idea as of yet
• Spy: Extra vault, counter by triggering alarms
• Survival: This can have a conversion similar to excavation with a powercell, then it becomes similar to Kuva survival.

These are all just suggestions of how they can interact, but it should explain give some direction on what it can be.(If they are even willing to allow in mission PvP type things)

[Skaleek]

3 minutes ago, PhiThagRaid said:

Do you think only one objective should exist or multiple when it comes to syndicates?

A question i hadn't really considered but you've presented a solution that I think satisfies the extra difficulty. Of course DE would have to tweak their automated map generation to include multiple objective points but that really shouldn't be outside the realm of possibility. For Assassination you could have it be similar to Assault where they need to perform a mobile defense or a capture first. The problem with adding objectives serially to any mission is you are in fact increasing the length of the mission. So if someone just wants to farm Raptor as fast as possible, it would slow them down (Which is actually in line with DE's general design philosophy to be perfectly honest).

[Drasiel]

7 hours ago, PhiThagRaid said:

Just curious what you are referring to here? Is this something quite old relating to the old star chart? Since I've been around for 4 years and it all seemed to be the way it is currently.

waaaaay back in the day when there were only invasions, nightmare, and syndicate missions as additional mission types Only the most recent mission appeared on a node. If you wanted to play only a a specific mission type like say the base node, you had to complete all the additional types above it in order to gain access to it (and remember this was when you had to complete 5 invasions to complete them and they didn't disappear right away so you could wait an actual week for an invasion to go away) While this idea combines them into one mission you could complete all at once I still don't want to go back to having to play with extra junk thrown into my mission when I just want to farm some polymer or something. I especially don't want the level to change up the highest "modifier" on the mission.

[Skaleek]

On 2020-11-03 at 5:54 PM, Drasiel said:

I especially don't want the level to change up the highest "modifier" on the mission.

I get it, it's a valid argument. I don't have a clever way to solve that particular issue. Maybe they could only make this layered content in steel path or something. So the price you pay for the "efficiency" you gain, is that enemies are level 100-150? The only issue i see present is that it splits the current population of relic runners, but to be honest its one of the new things that stays heavily populated in Warframe.

[(PSN)adrian80]

Maybe start with something specific, like allowing void fissures in lich nodes. That’s one thing I’d like to streamline.

[MacIntoc]

In fact, it would be nice if DE add 1 node per planet with 3-4 mission type at same time.