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Spy 2.0


(NSW)Symberzite

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Warframe originally started out as a stealth-action hybrid, with certain frames having rather extensive mechanics based around not being seen or controlling your sound output. That kind of culminated in the Spy game mode, where you have to stealthily navigate around a room in order to extract the data. As anyone who has a decent amount of hours into the game knows, those missions go from being difficult to a walk in the park after one acquires Ivara and her augment that allows you to go through lasers. 

With multiple warframes and the operator being able to go invisible and/or bypass security, where are we supposed to get the challenge of those missions? The only Spy mission that tries to do something different with a set of puzzles instead of regular security is the one on Lua and we know how divided people are on it. 

Is it possible to overhaul those missions to have a minimum level of challenge without nerfing all the tools that DE gave us over the years?  

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I don't even stealth in most of my Spy missions anymore because I've decided that running Enemy Radar and paying attention to where the patrols are means I can just jump past them since parkour is silent.

Pair that with ample forgiveness for setting off alarms and the only time I (as I can only speak for myself here) have ever failed a Spy mission is when I was, am, and will be getting juggled between knockdowns and/or falling down a pit until the mission times out.

And it probably will continue to be the only way until they make getting spotted and alarms going off a bigger "oh f***" moment than it isn't.

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Interestingly, this is already Spy 2.0. We shall ask for Spy 3.0, or at least 2.5.

 

That said, I second this. I mean, I like to "challenge" myself by using no invisibility nor cheese nor tricks at all during Spy missions. But I use the term "challenge" quite lightly here, as... well... yeah.

I personally would like more modularity in the Spy vaults - roads to be randomly open or closed, enemies doing different rounds, so that we can't just barge in and repeat the same path we have already done 1000 times. A bit of a need to improvise.

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vor 33 Minuten schrieb (NSW)Symberzite:

Is it possible to overhaul those missions to have a minimum level of challenge without nerfing all the tools that DE gave us over the years?  

I think it is possible, although the Ivara Augment makes it tough.

Imo Parcour can be used to play a huge role in Spy Missions (and it has been done on some missions already).

 

If you really want to make a Spy Missions which doesnt get as complicated as the Lua Spys i can only think of one way:

Combine parcour and puzzles with time pressure.

 

For example, after you activated a console, you only have a certain amount of time to get to the next place to do something else.

This way, you can use Ivara with the Augment, but the time pressure forces even an Augmented Ivara to leave her safety for at least a short amount of time.

 

Edit: Just wanted to mention that i am specifically addressing the "Ivara Issue" if you want to call it like that, ofc not every Spy Mission should make sure that you cannot just walk through with her. Its perfectly fine to have missions which can be cheesed with her.

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14 minutes ago, (NSW)Symberzite said:

Warframe originally started out as a stealth-action hybrid, with certain frames having rather extensive mechanics based around not being seen or controlling your sound output. That kind of culminated in the Spy game mode, where you have to stealthily navigate around a room in order to extract the data. As anyone who has a decent amount of hours into the game knows, those missions go from being difficult to a walk in the part after one acquires Ivara and her augment that allows you to go through lasers. 

With multiple warframes and the operator being able to go invisible and/or bypass security, where are we supposed to get the challenge of those missions? The only Spy mission that tries to do something different with a set of puzzles instead of regular security is the one on Lua and we know how divided people are on it. 

Is it possible to overhaul those missions to have a minimum level of challenge without nerfing all the tools that DE gave us over the years?  

They are already challenging for veterans who choose ivara or limbo .... imagine increasing the difficulty for newcomers to the game .... it will only make them quit the game. Spy missions already have quite acceptable challenges. Just look at the missions of the sorties with espionage .... many activate the alarm and leave the game destroying the game. Maps such as kuva fortress, uranus, moon and jupiter have the most difficult spy .... and are the missions that cause the most problems in public games and in sorties. Whenever I see these missions in the sortie, I go alone because I am sure someone is going to screw up.

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I can not confirm that. i switched from diablo 2 with mods to warframe after many years. action with loot and secrets from vaults was in the foreground.
we really enjoyed playing in void and secret rooms was something very special. Loki with infinite invisibility has never really interested me. especially when you have to keep activating this skill. and mostly without any tactics or whatever.

Spy missions can also be interesting from time to time. but they do frustrate many. and not everyone has wukong, loki, ivara etc.
and actually you don't have to tweak that much here. I would do it this way:
1 unlock and you have an easy reward. also in dailies the mission is then considered "completed". with 3 unlocks you get at least 2 keys for fissures.

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If you don't like the mission as it stands challenge your own game, I do at times then sometimes I just want to dawdle around.

Take a big gun start blasting stuff trip the alarms, I get you want it harder but some people at times they just want to do it without the fuss, you have Lua Kuva Fortress if you want some extra stuff to do to get into vaults.

Even the new corpus ships have had back doors removed because someone at DE thought hmm these broken vents look bad I'm going to replace them with new ones. (which you cannot break now)

I've been with new players who have no idea how a vault works let alone how to backdoor them and bypass the main way in, to start to introduce more hoops for them will send them bald early. :tongue:

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28 minutes ago, ChargeBeam said:

I don't even stealth in most of my Spy missions anymore because I've decided that running Enemy Radar and paying attention to where the patrols are means I can just jump past them since parkour is silent.

But... that it literally stealth what are you even talking about. Just because you're not actively turning invisible doesn't mean you're not stealthing.

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vor 21 Minuten schrieb XRosenkreuz:

But... that it literally stealth what are you even talking about. Just because you're not actively turning invisible doesn't mean you're not stealthing.

hey the discussion shouldn't fail because of expression. and I find the contributions interesting.
you mean probably sneak. may be ... but invisibility and is invisibility.

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Well, the problem with spy missions is the same problem as the entire rest of the game: DE designed a challenge, and then they gave us the tools to completely bypass that challenge.

Personally, I think Lua spy vaults are perfect. They are difficult to figure out simply due to their complexity, but they aren’t actually hard to execute. And that’s what I like. You don’t need any special build or cheese. It’s literally just knowledge. I usually do it with my main Valkyr. You don’t even need the operator.

Figuring out the best way to run Lua spy was probably the most satisfying experience I’ve had in Warframe. I would like to see new spy vaults on remastered tilesets do something similar. The Jupiter vaults were pretty good but could have been better. The new Corpus ship vaults are largely the same as the old ones so I’m kinda meh on them. I think they have an over-reliance on cameras as a mechanic. I’d rather have to figure out how to actually get into the room, not just “shoot the camera before you go in and you’re good.”

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1 hour ago, (NSW)Symberzite said:

Warframe originally started out as a stealth-action hybrid, with certain frames having rather extensive mechanics based around not being seen or controlling your sound output. That kind of culminated in the Spy game mode, where you have to stealthily navigate around a room in order to extract the data. As anyone who has a decent amount of hours into the game knows, those missions go from being difficult to a walk in the part after one acquires Ivara and her augment that allows you to go through lasers. 

With multiple warframes and the operator being able to go invisible and/or bypass security, where are we supposed to get the challenge of those missions? The only Spy mission that tries to do something different with a set of puzzles instead of regular security is the one on Lua and we know how divided people are on it. 

Is it possible to overhaul those missions to have a minimum level of challenge without nerfing all the tools that DE gave us over the years?  

 

Hmm...

Perhaps we can use an incentive for stealth.

For example, increase rewards based on how less enemies have "detected" you, how many enemies you've killed without drawing alerting nearby enemies and how many times you casted abilities.

For example, lets say we use a variable: Stealth_Multiplier. (decimal/float number)

Per killed enemy without setting any other enemy to "alert" state will increase your "stealth_multiplier"
Per enemy that has detected you (by sight) will lower your stealth_multipler. Every undetected enemy on mission end will increase it however
Per ability casted GREATER THAN 5 will LOWER your stealth_multiplier. If abilities casted was less than 5, then on mission end, it will double your stealth_multiplier

The last line is important. This allows Stealth Warframes like Ivara and Loki to retain their stealth purpose, since you'll normally never cast their ability more than 5 times, but won't improve for warframes like Equinox. Spamming Sleep and then killing enemies will set your stealth multipler down and then back up (from the undetected kill), counteracting each other, and causing no effect.

The stealth_multiplier could be used to determine the level of rewards on top of the existing ABC reward structure. Such that, lets say, if your stealth multipler is greater than 8 (Arbitary), then increase your rewards by 2x.

Stealth_multipler will never be less than 1. So, with calculations in mind, your rewards on mission end will either be the same, or better. Never worse. So if you want, you can kill everything with no thought given for stealth, and not have a affect on rewards. Its just that the person who took more time and did Stealth on a mission thats called "Spy" will simply get more rewards.

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I don't think any amount of change to Spy missions is really going to be all that effective when we now have several frames who can turn invisible, silent, and capable of bypassing lasers. Unless you turn your vaults into Lua-style brain teasers, Wukong is just going to float through the whole thing effortlessly, and all that design work will be for nought.

Because of this, I think the problem isn't so much with Spy missions (the vaults are fine when using most frames), but with frames designed to trivialize them: I don't think we ever should have started giving frames the ability to bypass lasers, because that mechanic literally does nothing except turn off interaction between the frame and a vital part of the challenge of many Spy vaults. Even invisibility alone is a tool that prevents most enemies from interacting with us, which is why Loki used to be the king of Spy vaults long before Ivara or Wukong even existed. Really, stealth has always been a problem in Warframe, because it's always been defined as the frame either having an off-switch to enemy detection, or the frame having no real means of achieving stealth gameplay at all.

Because of this, I think the first step towards a more sane state of affairs would be to remove the laser-bypassing mechanics on Infiltrate and Wukong's Cloud Walker: it's fine if these frames get to pass through lasers without getting damaged or CCed, but they should still trigger their detection component. After that, it's a matter of seeing whether these frames can still trivialize Spy missions, and to which extent.

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21 minutes ago, Battle.Mage said:

hey the discussion shouldn't fail because of expression. and I find the contributions interesting.
you mean probably sneak. may be ... but invisibility and is invisibility.

I appreciate you wanting to be sure everyone's on the same page, but I know what I said, and I know what I meant.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stealth

Thank you very much.

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1 hour ago, (NSW)Symberzite said:

As anyone who has a decent amount of hours into the game knows, those missions go from being difficult to a walk in the part after one acquires Ivara and her augment that allows you to go through lasers. 

Even without Ivara those missions are a walk in the park once you understand them.
I mean I go through most vaults with whatever frame I have equipped....and its almost never a stealth frame and usually something like Excalibur, Inaros, Mesa, etc.  Once you actually understand the vaults, the back-paths, where the cameras are located and how the drones patrol its quite simple and easy to take any frame in the game and speed-run the vaults, even the annoying ones in Kuva Fortress and Uranus.

And that is purely from just learning the vaults, which no matter how "complex" (or IMHO 'annoying') you make the vaults once you understand "This is vault X, here is what you do...." it becomes utterly trivial to do it with any frame at any time.
Sure you'll trip people up the first or second time that they do the vault but then they'll have learned it and we are back to exactly what we have now.  Where the vaults are fast and easy and take zero real focus or thought.

1 hour ago, (NSW)Symberzite said:

With multiple warframes and the operator being able to go invisible and/or bypass security, where are we supposed to get the challenge of those missions? The only Spy mission that tries to do something different with a set of puzzles instead of regular security is the one on Lua and we know how divided people are on it. 

Again, it doesn't matter if you have invisibility, or use operators, or anything else.  They are still trivially easy once you learn the vaults.
Even the Lua spy vaults are damn easy once you learn your preferred path and what you like doing....which in 99% of cases is avoid the one simon-says puzzle because it has a very high chance to de-sync if you aren't host meaning you aren't shown the right order to solve the puzzle!
Which brings up another issue with adding more "puzzle" vaults: Way too high of a chance that the puzzle will break and just not work correctly for certain members of the group.

I mean the iso vaults still occasionally have the issue where if you aren't the host the password for the vault lock will just be the same symbol repeated 4 times.

But here's the thing: Once you know the solution to a puzzle it stops being a puzzle.  It just becomes something that wastes 5 seconds as you absent-mindedly go through the motions.

And then what happens once most of the players have learned the new puzzles and paths in the spy vaults?  We will just literally be right back here with people complaining that they are too easy because they have all been solved.

1 hour ago, (NSW)Symberzite said:

where are we supposed to get the challenge of those missions?

And please tell me: How many times can anyone be expected to solve a puzzle and still go "Oh this is fairly challenging....."

I mean even with high level puzzle boxes in the real world once you figure out how to solve them once or twice they become fast and easy to do.

The challenge in the spy missions isn't really doing the vaults, its learning the vaults so you can do them quickly.  And guess what?  You've already learned them!  Without a literal infinite variety of vaults the vaults will all eventually become utterly trivial and boring stuff that you can do in your sleep.  Its rather hard to "unlearn" how to solve a puzzle and get through something with some amount of speed.

And even if they removed invisibility, removed ivaras and Limbos ability to go through lasers, removed kid mode invisibility, the vaults will still be utterly trivial to complete and won't have any "challenge" to them.

1 hour ago, Dhrekr said:

I personally would like more modularity in the Spy vaults - roads to be randomly open or closed, enemies doing different rounds, so that we can't just barge in and repeat the same path we have already done 1000 times. A bit of a need to improvise.

Here's the thing: Spy vaults (mostly corpus) used to do this more...and it just became "Look for the right broken vents...and if you don't see them just get ready for the long road".  It didn't really do much and its why most vaults have 2 or 3 paths to finishing the mission.  DE somewhat moved away from it for some unknown reason which is a shame.
I mean in the U shaped corpus spy vault with the moving laser walls there is the ability for a few vents to be open that let you bypass the entirety of the last section of lasers...or they could be closed and you can only bypass half of them or sometimes not be able to bypass any.  Just depends on what variation you got.
But regardless of whether they bring it back or not it will still largely be the same as we have now: You learn the alternate paths; very quickly see what is open and what is closed; and then you just repeat the motions you've done 10000 times as you move along the open path into the vault.

6 minutes ago, Aadi880 said:

<SNIP>

Question:
How would any of this work in multiplayer?

I mean what would happen if someone comes in with a saryn and starts spamming abilities and killing enemies while the others wanted to do the mission "stealthily" to complete the vaults and get maximum rewards?
Is the rest of the group being punished by the one person who just wants to kill things while their team-mates do the vaults?

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18 minutes ago, (PSN)sister-hawk said:

Personally, I think Lua spy vaults are perfect. They are difficult to figure out simply due to their complexity, but they aren’t actually hard to execute. And that’s what I like. You don’t need any special build or cheese. It’s literally just knowledge. I usually do it with my main Valkyr. You don’t even need the operator.

I believe its because its parkour orientated. There currently no tools such as the fabled "no_clip". As long DE doesn't add no_clipping, any parkour oriented puzzle vault is fine.

And frankly, I've been wanting a gamemode regarding warframe's parkour ngl. 

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I'm just wondering why everyone only talks about ivara for spy missions... she's clunky to move around with while invisible.

Meanwhile loki has all the freedom of movement in the world, can switch teleport with his clone, and is much easier to obtain.

And that's for regular stealth invisibility, wukong is also a thing.

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14 minutes ago, Fallen77 said:

I'm just wondering why everyone only talks about ivara for spy missions... she's clunky to move around with while invisible.

Meanwhile loki has all the freedom of movement in the world, can switch teleport with his clone, and is much easier to obtain.

And that's for regular stealth invisibility, wukong is also a thing.

Likely because that's what they were told to use, and use it. She also doesn't need to be invisible the entire time either.

There's also the parazon mod Untraceable, which provides enough stealth to complete pretty much all vaults regardless of Warframe choice.

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2 minutes ago, Tsukinoki said:

Question:
How would any of this work in multiplayer?

I mean what would happen if someone comes in with a saryn and starts spamming abilities and killing enemies while the others wanted to do the mission "stealthily" to complete the vaults and get maximum rewards?
Is the rest of the group being punished by the one person who just wants to kill things while their team-mates do the vaults?

Frankly, I don't play pubs because they NEVER end well in spy missions.

I would say, as much as I don't like to say it, that the problem here is the players. One could make the same argument in an exterminate/defense mission, where one player decides to AFK leech everyone's work and rewards...

 

That said: If I were to include Coop:

Have stealth multipliers separate for each player. If everyone's stealth multiplier is high, then the average stealth multipler is calculated. This average will be added to each players' existing stealth multiplier, and from that, the rewards from each player is calculated separately. 

If one player's stealth multiplier is too low, then his stealth multiplier will be ignored entirely when calculating the average. But they will still gain the benefit of the calculated average being added. Reason? So that they don't feel left out. idk.

Thats what I came up with, Ofc, I don't think I can cover every possible scenario tho

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2 hours ago, Aadi880 said:

 

Hmm...

Perhaps we can use an incentive for stealth.

For example, increase rewards based on how less enemies have "detected" you, how many enemies you've killed without drawing alerting nearby enemies and how many times you casted abilities.

For example, lets say we use a variable: Stealth_Multiplier. (decimal/float number)

Per killed enemy without setting any other enemy to "alert" state will increase your "stealth_multiplier"
Per enemy that has detected you (by sight) will lower your stealth_multipler. Every undetected enemy on mission end will increase it however
Per ability casted GREATER THAN 5 will LOWER your stealth_multiplier. If abilities casted was less than 5, then on mission end, it will double your stealth_multiplier

The last line is important. This allows Stealth Warframes like Ivara and Loki to retain their stealth purpose, since you'll normally never cast their ability more than 5 times, but won't improve for warframes like Equinox. Spamming Sleep and then killing enemies will set your stealth multipler down and then back up (from the undetected kill), counteracting each other, and causing no effect.

The stealth_multiplier could be used to determine the level of rewards on top of the existing ABC reward structure. Such that, lets say, if your stealth multipler is greater than 8 (Arbitary), then increase your rewards by 2x.

Stealth_multipler will never be less than 1. So, with calculations in mind, your rewards on mission end will either be the same, or better. Never worse. So if you want, you can kill everything with no thought given for stealth, and not have a affect on rewards. Its just that the person who took more time and did Stealth on a mission thats called "Spy" will simply get more rewards.

That's not a bad idea. Well, WF already has an issue with reward scaling but still. Maybe have a system like Hitman where you get a penalty for alarms and killing everything that moves? Make it optional to deactivate the security system, but have a small chance to give an extra/upgraded reward if the player chooses to do so. 

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5 hours ago, (NSW)Symberzite said:

With multiple warframes and the operator being able to go invisible and/or bypass security, where are we supposed to get the challenge of those missions?

I'm guessing that nobody wants to hear this, but there's a pretty simple solution.  If you want to be challenged by missions, stop using tools that trivialize those missions.  Play your stealth missions with Excalibur and you'll have a more enjoyable time.

Every mission type has Warframes that trivialize it, and if you want to go super meta, yeah, Warframe is a game that can quite simply be crushed with proper preparation.  Spy is no different.

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I say we go back to Spy 1.0, but with a couple tweaks.  You have to bring all 4 datamasses to extraction, and they don't combine so if you're on your own you have to pick them up one at a time.  Also they're so heavy that you need both hands, and can't fight back at all while carrying one.

</sarcasm>

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