Capture and Excavation changes/suggestions

[Prosodical]

Hey, we've all heard arguments that old content in Warframe has grown stale, to some effect. Basic star chart mission types make up the bulk of the player experience, minus the odd annual event. Open worlds have added some slight variations on the standard mission types, but they're mostly unchanged. 

So, I want to start by examining some of the mission types: Capture and Excavation. I'll run through my experience of the mission, then suggest some changes. Lastly, I thought of a couple of problems with my suggestions. If anyone has more, I'd love to hear from all of you. 

How do we experience these missions now? 

Personally, if it's a capture, I either equip my fastest build setup, or don't bother. I bullet jump, slide and parkour through every room, chasing that mission marker. I down the bloke. I vape while I magic-hands him from existence. Then proceed to the green exit. I don't engage with the content. I'm barely even thinking. 

Now, why would I do this mission?

To get something behind it. Could be opening a relic. Newer players will be clearing star chart nodes to get to new areas. Could be a in a sortie/kuva siphon.

If I play warframe, I can safely expect to run this exact scenario dozens/hundreds/thousands of times, depending on my level of self-hatred (Infinite, if you're wondering). 

 

I suggest for Capture what many have already expressed: Make us find the guy, carry him out, and get info out of him. 

I like that the way captures start. Enemies are unaware. A tripped alarm causes the capture target to flee until we fail the mission from an unseen timer, but that timer is far too long. I'd like to remove the yellow objective marker until you're within range of the target, similar to Simaris targets. A group of players would have to dash the level, either using stealth to avoid alarms, or eliminating enemies in passing to keep word from getting out. When you find the target, you down him, then one player presses F to sling him over your shoulder. This would be a relatively simple animation to program. There might be some clipping through syandanas, but we'd get over it. 

The player carrying the target cannot use weapons, abilities, bullet jump, or parkour. They can run at reduced speed, use elevators or take the stairs. As soon as you have him, the alarm blares and the enemy take the gloves off. So, squad mates have to protect the carrier. At low levels, this would be easy enough for one person. Not so, at high levels.

Capture missions would be a tad more engaging. We'd actually have to work together, in this multiplayer game. 

So why would we do this mission?

Evac with the capture target, and you get a lead on some info similar to the Kuva lich murmur system. Capture targets yield some slice of info. This would make more sense for capture. Rather than capturing a target because Lotus says so, let us decide who to hunt. The mission details screen (which we all ignore except for the faction and the levels) could give some hint as to what info this target has. E.g., This target yields an excavation mission to open a relic (more later). This target yields a mission to get a vandal weapon part. Guaranteed. Targets could have more than one piece of info, and once you evac the target, mission blips could sprout around the star map, similar to sortie events. Rather than keeping this mission as a test of self-hatred, I want to make the payoff greater.

 

This brings me to Excavation missions. I want to make Excavations the sole means of opening relics. I had a lot of fun writing this part.

As is, when I land in an Excavation mission, I dash for that oh-so-important yellow marker, and a mcguffin literally falls from the sky and starts drilling straight down. From here, the mission devolves into the most problematic scenario that encompasses most of Warframe: kill efficiency. I must kill enemies as fast as I possibly can. And boy howdy, are they comin. Legions will appear, almost like magic. I better have only AoE and rapid-fire weapons equipped, and I better have done all my math beforehand. I must grab cans of blue Ninja Turtle ooze and slap them against the magic drillers until that number reads: 100%. Mostly though, kill efficiency is the game. If I'm playing at high level, I better have 6 forma on everything, including my boxers, cuz those excavators won't survive long. If my kill efficiency remains high enough, for long enough, the magic driller explodes because why not. And I'm met with that glorious on-screen text:

100 CRYOTIC

Why would I do this? To find random relics.

I would change this whole thing. Make enemies an afterthought here at first. The Grineer, for example,  have colonized this planet, but only that capture target knew what was underneath it. Or maybe they do? Players can bind a scanning tool to their gear wheel. We hunt for the exact spot just like with Simaris targets. When you find it, you call in a drop pod full of workers who break out space shovels and picks. They get to work. Konzu radios us that he's sending us some things. Sections of wall, turrets, and sandbags drop onto the planet. We have one minute to position these things into a maze ala. tower defense, just like we do with decorations. Then, the enemies come from select entrances, plus a few surprises. These turrets do a small percentage of enemy max health as damage, so they never get out scaled. Think of slow chip damage. We don't worry about power cells, we focus on killing the enemy through our shared maze, for a set amount of time, at which point the enemy stops spawning. We regroup at the dig site (now a sprawling hole) and the workers hand us an opened relic. 

This sounds much more fun to me.

Edit: After every round or so, Konzu drops a couple more turrets, and more sections of wall. Keep growing the maze. How long can this thing last? After 4 rounds, guaranteed gold-tier relic rewards every round thereafter. 

I anxiously await feedback. 

 

A couple problems I thought of:

Capture missions might get old, as most things do when you do it over and over. Players are already hesitant to take sortie-level spy missions, because failure is such a common occurence. The changes I suggest would make capture missions more easily failable. Considering that players have been asking for more difficulty in Warframe for ages, why is it nobody wants to risk failure? 

Relying more on our fellow players may awaken our inner monsters. Could the renowned, friendly Warframe player-base survive this?

[Lokidus_Prime]

Interesting concept with the changes to capture, especially with targets yielding information that can be followed up on by unlocking the way to a specific reward - something like this is how i think murmurs for kuva liches SHOULD have been done, with doing certain mission types to get bits of info about the lich, but thats another can of worms.  Regarding the part where you have to carry the capture target is where it starts to fall apart a little bit.  It just slows down the process of what we'd already be doing, even at higher levels.  If the carrier retains their own ability buffs after picking up the target, then people would probably just bring a wisp and speed walk their way to victory, or use other frames that can apply buffs to make them immune/resistant to damage. If they can't keep buffs and/or be buffed by others, then that a) restricts how squadmates are able to help, and b) just promotes going with something modded to just tank the damage as the carrier.  Then there's also just bringing a sentinel with the cryotra modded for radiation that it will spray at everything, confusing the enemies who will then get preoccupied with shooting each other instead of the carrier most of the time.  Also, preventing the use of parkour may inhibit the ability to get through certain rooms on certain tilesets - jupiter, comes to mind, as im pretty sure there are some rooms that require more than just single regular jumps to get through it but dont have dashwires to bypass those jumps, assuming you could even use dashwires while carrying the target.

For the excavation, the concept of fortifying an area to protect something is interesting in itself, but not something that i personally find fitting for excavation.  One major flaw for the reasoning, is that other than to generate battery carriers, there is no requirement to kill any enemies.  If you have a frame with good CC capabilities and/or a means to shield excavators from damage, then no, you don't have to kill enemies as fast as possible (though its generally more enjoyable to do so). Another (though minor) flaw, is the argument with only receiving cryotic for completed excavators - yes, you gain cryotic for completing individual excavators, but in a standard mission, its 2 excavators to complete a round where a rotation-based reward is received in addition to that cryotic.  Even with needing 2 excavators per round, it's still one of the fastest endless missions to progress through since you can run multiple excavators at once.  That's not to say it doesn't need any changing, as those reward tables could benefit from some adjusting to make them more worthwhile.  Moving onto the excavators themselves, you mention that they are just "mcguffins that fall out of the sky", but then suggest all of the stuff to build fortifications basically falling from the sky as well.  While interesting in concept, the fortifications aspect overall sounds like it would function better as an alteration of defense rather than excavation, and even then certain frames with good CC/defensive abilities wound likely just negate the need to build any fortifications in the first place.

All that said, I do just generally like the idea changing up some of the older mission types to make them more fun and engaging, and to integrate factions/content from the open worlds (and other content islands) into the rest of the game more.

[Lutesque]

On 2020-12-13 at 12:59 AM, Prosodical said:

Hey, we've all heard arguments that old content in Warframe has grown stale, to some effect

Well.... Sort of....

They are indeed Stale but are still my preferred mission types compared to recent Additions.

On 2020-12-13 at 12:59 AM, Prosodical said:

 

I suggest for Capture what many have already expressed: Make us find the guy, carry him out, and get info out of him. 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO..... My Precious Parkour 😱 !!!!

I'm down with making us find the guy.... But for this to work the level design would have to follow suit.... Kinda like they did with the Corpus Ship Tiles in Spy Missions.... 

On 2020-12-13 at 12:59 AM, Prosodical said:

I'd like to remove the yellow objective marker until you're within range of the target, similar to Simaris targets

Il do you one better.... Remove it all together and have the marker only appear if:

Dave's dropping on Grineeer...

Hacking a Console...

Or interrogating an Elite Unit....

That that first and last one might be tricky to implement but it would be fun.... Sort of....

On 2020-12-13 at 12:59 AM, Prosodical said:

either using stealth to avoid alarms

I mean.... You don't have to use Steal to avoid Alarms.... 

Unless if you meant to say Avoid Detection ?

On 2020-12-13 at 12:59 AM, Prosodical said:

then one player presses F to sling him over your shoulder. This would be a relatively simple animation to program.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !!!! I want my Ninja Flips Back 😱 !!!

On 2020-12-13 at 12:59 AM, Prosodical said:

This brings me to Excavation missions. I want to make Excavations the sole means of opening relics. I had a lot of fun writing this part.

But....  😳 Why ? 😥...

On 2020-12-13 at 12:59 AM, Prosodical said:

Players can bind a scanning tool to their gear wheel. We hunt for the exact spot just like with Simaris targets.

You know... I'm not a Big fan of this specific Interaction of Synthesis. It gimps my movement in strange ways since it forces me into a First Person perspective when I Glide.