Indirect PvP Suggestions

[CrownOfShadows]

I want PvP because I love warframe, but I have nothing left to do. I'm a soldier without a war - errrr a ninja laying around in a dojo?

The beautiful thing about PvP is that it essentially creates infinite or near-infinite content.

The way I see it, if you want PvP in WF, you either need to create a new roster of frames or alt-frames (something like necramechs) that are built entirely for PvP from the ground up, OR you make PvP available but make it indirect. Both are good but I think indirect PvP is the best option for WF, as it leverages everything that has been done so far and doesn't need an entirely new system, while also preserving everything that's great. It plays to WF's unique take on co-op and it has a lot of potential for long-term multi-stage conflict. What exactly? I mean they are actively working against each other - even in the same mission - but the focus is NOT killing each other (even if that is possible). Some ideas/examples I brainstormed:

a). Tie in the syndicates. It's beautiful, actually, because ALL tenno ALREADY have conflicting allegiances. The syndicates clearly have objectives of their own and already employ the tenno as mercs - who would be surprised if tenno started fighting other tenno in that? Let's say Cepholon Suda is working on a dark project out somewhere (it's a shifty one ey? what exactly is it up to all the time?). New Loka gets wind of it, wants to sabotage it. If you have (x) standing with either, they want to recruit you. You have Suda tenno and Loka tenno in the same mission. The two teams can see each other, but are prevented from interacting directly. If the Loka tenno sabotage enough equipment fast enough, its a victory for them, whereas if the Suda tenno lock them out it's a victory for them. Throw in some heavy hitting ancients for Loka and some corpus tech for Suda. Maybe have some objectives in limited areas where it actually is possible to interact, but make them more minor so when people are getting one-shot it's more of  shrug (if you did this do not knee-cap frames like conclave - just let it play out - the variety is enough to be hella interesting even if counterplay is nil), and the rest of the map is safe. Award both teams for how much they get done. Toss in some secondary objectives or secrets. Toss in some surprises (I found a nest of nasty hyenas down here?) Provide plenty of ways for teams to slow each other down. Even more interesting - you could maybe maybe sometimes let one tenno from each team get through to the other side (maybe not loki or ivara qq) - and they just get to cause trouble for as long as they can (although you probably have to balance even the snot out of that so maybe not). Some residual bonuses to this being that we can further boost syndicate rewards, lore, and syndicate standings. IDK i'd sign up for that, sounds a lot more interesting than a regular mission.

b) Tie in the solar rails. Dunno what the big plans are for these, but I've always thought there's a lot of solar system and a lot of history floating around. And we obviously have FTL. All kinds of saliva-inducing possibilities out there. A clan established a (temporary) solar rail to a long forgotten site (i'm assuming the rails are navigation things). They send in tenno to check it out (via alerts probably) but WHOA is it gnarly in there - bro we need railjacks to get us in because it's a little off the path (and archwings get totally wrecked by defenses in one - and it's just madness trying to get a railjack in alive at all) and then spy specialists and super tanks and aoe specialists and defense specialists and necramechs once you're in. There's juicy loot but the rail shows up to others too after a bit. The establishing clan has priority but now it's half about keeping others out and half about raiding it before the rail fails. Complete some railjack missions that set up or re-enable space defenses that other people have to get through first, and they're tough enough to really slow them down. Complete some spy missions to disable the alert for everyone but the clan for a little bit. This is more macro style stuff PvP. Large scale objectives involving hundreds or thousands of players. Think fomorian fleet vs razorback - except it's all tenno directed - every mission done contributes to a larger goal. One truly great thing about this type of stuff is that it lets clans basically create content (yes I know they're not creating it directly, but they are determining when things are available which is almost the same thing). One interesting but complicated possibility that sprouts out of this is also having clan politics, but that's a WHOLE other discussion.

c) Construction is almost as fun as war. You might think WF is all about war - but when you start thinking about WF in the context of PvP you realize... actually its a nice break from that and it really is more about construction. We never actually fight each other, but we do build a hella lotta stuff. And we do have a *ton of resources ey? We could probably build some freaking cool * but.... maybe we're not all on the same page. Maybe some of us are building stuff with help from the corpus and others with the grineer. Maybe things get out of hand. Maybe we end up having a little mini tenno civil war with lots of building and a bit of real fighting, with huge space constructions duking it out, maybe with some heavy alternative gameplay options (like turrets in RJ, plenty of opportunity to jump into special mechanisms we built). Maybe the victor controls a little bit of the solar system, and we gotta build another one to try and kick them out. Idk, spit-balling - but it feels like it has potential to be a lot of fun and a sort of investment outside of gear grinding.

 

Some further design thoughts:

- would personally de-emphasize gear as the reward for pvp as much as possible. This is so integral to WF that i doubt its possible to really do, but the less people are fixated on getting special gear the more vibrant and long-lasting the pvp gameplay will be. For example - take Protea. Getting Protea made Granum Void gameplay a reality. Had to practically fight to get on a squad. Once x% of the player base got her though - i mean try and find a squad for that these days huh? If you do that with pvp ... there is no emoji for the level of sadness - you don't want people to abandon it once they've got their cookies - that's the exact opposite of why we want pvp. Long term conflicts with large scale goals can be awesome. If you have to have loot - whew, maybe make it a last-day cash in at the end of a huge conflict so that it's not tied directly to day-to-day gameplay or something. Maybe obfuscate it by one or two or three levels okay - so that you get a huge amount of parts from pvp, and you then have to build those parts into other parts, and then take those somewhere completely different - just.... just get it out of there as much as possible. Divorce the rewards from the gameplay. Do the nightwave thing if you have to. (okay I can see maybe doing some looty things at the start to make sure people at least try it out - i can guarantee you if you made a warframe exclusive to conclave everyone would at least play it long enough to get it heh [plz do no such thing])

- would personally avoid all leaderboards for all pvp activity. If you give people a goal, they will chase it. Would likewise avoid rewarding (x) pvp kills if that were made possible. Focus on other things, that's what WF's great for. I'm not here because I want the greatest and most competitive pvp experience of my life - i'm here because the game is awesome when I have something to do, and I want to do it with other people, and nothing is as interesting or dynamic as playing against others.

- would personally design some missions specifically catering to exact warframes. Scarlet Spear was the only thing in warframe that ever taught me why I should care about limbo in the slightest, and I thought that part of it was great - idk if you even anticipated that. Do more stuff like that. Make it so that you HAVE to take Rhino on this part. Or you HAVE to be invisible on this part. Or you HAVE to use Hildryn to get through another part.  Or you HAVE to use spectres or Loki's decoy for this part. Cater to frames, kits, abilties, even mods & companions. I would also do some high level stuff to really test what warframes are capable of - this is what was exciting about steel path but it basically boils down to whether or not you have naramon, blood rush, weeping wounds and condition overload. Make a gauntlet of damage that only a god-like Inaros can barely scrape through, or a gauntlet of security that only Ivara can make it through using everything she has. I'd love stuff like that. Doesn't have to be mission-ciritical, but just having it somewhere in the game would be great. Spy is legit one of my favorite game modes simply because so few frames do it really well, and I think it would be even better if hardly any could do it at all.

 

What you guys think - that enough PvP to be satisfying and interesting or you need the real deal? If you need the real deal - yeah, I think creating special frames/alt-frames is the only real way to do it - absolutely impossible to balance what we've already got.

 

Love you guys, Love Warframe - keep on rockin!

 

[(PSN)sdaly96]

the plans for the solar rails died out 6 years ago sadly. There was a pvp aspect to them which i enjoyed but it was taken out.

 

[Jackdarsan]

Yep I am with you, I too have fallen into the trap of running low on things to do and Conclave sticks out since I have not been able to do much, I think in the 2 and half years I have been able to play 1 game. 

[(PSN)Pragmatic_2015]

Might be a bit late to the party and this is coming from a console user. Having a dedicated conclave recruitment channel that you can opt in/opt out of by enabling/disabling in the options menu would a start.