"Story" Continuity: No. Progression COHESION: Maybe? (In a word: "BRIEFING")

[(PSN)xxav1xl6ivax]

A (extremely) modest suggestion.

One of the most successfully accomplished concepts that has maintained over the course of development, (reaching back to the Dev Diary #1), has been the presentation of new content in ways that are consistent with not forcing a story onto players.

It's very unique and challenging (and sometimes a little ... too ... oblique) to incorporate "content" that sets up Narrative Frameworks, rather than imposing Story.

Leiji Matsumoto would probably love Warframe (being that he hated continuity). Sometimes it seems a bit surprising that paths have never crossed between DE and Mamoru Oshii.

Initially the assembly of Warframe was too loose, and too dependent on the community holding together much of what a new player would need to know or learn, for "Third Party" Publisher/Distributors to feel confident in aiming promotional efforts towards a large demographic of potential players, until what could (arguably) be considered as the first incarnation as a cohesive "GAME."

The Star Chart Reborn with the Specters Of The Rail Update.

That was what it took for Sony to finally push Warframe up to my attention, after six months of trying, and mostly failing, to find games in its "store" that would stick when pitched at the profile of my interests.

It hit so well that I easily mistook Warframe for a New Game that was being offered as part of my PS Plus membership.

 

A similar cohesion drop-out comes in with the remains of the Mutalist Alad V progression.

The idea of providing linkages concerning particular node of progression, from which the background circumstances have fallen away into the past, is nothing new.

I just had an idea for a way to fill in enough of the narrative context for what is required, or going on, in moving from mission to mission in certain parts of the charted progression, to make enough sense to players who weren't around when the whole of it was put into play. It could, conceivably, be extended to other areas of fill-in left at loose ends and incorporated directly into the Nav Drop-downs.

 

"Briefings."

That is, basically, what "mission briefings" are for.

It's also what many missions seem to inexplicably lack.

The idea is to simply make "briefings" available, accessible, and optional, but not mandatory, for providing cohesion (not "continuity") between certain linked series of progressions across the Star Chart.

 

Just a thought. 

 

[TARINunit9]

10 minutes ago, (PSN)xxav1xl6ivax said:

To cut to the quick, there's just one sort-of sticking point that I have seen come up repeatedly, and has even felled me in later times when trying to help new[er] players: the remains of narratives past.

When someone asked me to help collect Animo Nav Beacons, my initial response was, for what? That operation is over. Even I didn't realize that parts of it had remained behind on mission nodes, requiring the same to-do chain for progression, while leaving no clue as to why.

I disagree with this example. Sure it's just an artifact to you. But a new player reaches Pluto, sees the boss node is locked behind Animo Nav Beacons. So what are these for? Well the resource itself tells you: "Used to locate the Ambulas production facility." Cool.

So you farm enough and enter the mission, and NPCs start telling you... stuff. One of them is that salesman CEO guy who talks when you mouse over the mission, that's neat. The other is... Ergo Glast, OK he's from the syndicates. Not sure why he's here. OK and they're talking about "shadow investors"? That you don't have any context for- Wait, now they're talking about something called "Animo". And from context clues we can tell that it's A) a priority target, B) a collaborative project between the boss and Glast, and C) makes the Ambulas robots stronger.

So you get into the boss fight and you fight more Ambulas robots. And when they run out of health you hack them, that part's normal. Glast pops in to tell you the next game mechanic: don't let the enemy hack them back. You repeat this three more times, and then the hacked Ambulas robots are on Bek's ship. And as a finale, Glast just smiles smugly and turns the hacked Ambulas robots back on, blowing up Bek's ship from the inside.

New players are definitely missing some context for why Glast is there and what Animo is, but the game mechanics guide the player through the actual fight, and once it's over there's enough coalescing clues to let you know what the real target was and how you just destroyed it

[(PSN)xxav1xl6ivax]

There appears to be a lack of cohesion between the post and the response.

[(PSN)xxav1xl6ivax]

Hmm ... This reminds me, being over Riven capacity and with so much more content yet to catch up with,* I haven't played a Sortie to check in with for a while:

Does the Talking Ambulas (that was replaced with the Ambulas Reborn Operation) still make appearances for Sorties?

That's the Ambulas that has a spiel about "the pinnacle of the war smiths art," but doesn't appear anywhere in Warframe any longer... except the text briefing for a Sortie that frames the situation as being run by the Ambulas (just not the Ambulas that's in Warframe now).

THEN we get a little reprise of the (old) Ambulas waxing mecha poetical.

Or we did.

Does the talking Ambulas still come up from time to time, or did it finally get put out to pasture? 

* (Not to mention the new upcoming vehicle for delivering context concerning content; the Comic Book with background about Yareli. That was what ultimately returned my thinking to the matter which has been brought up in numerous posts, concerning context vanishing after new content is installed via Operations.

Having read about as many that point out the remains of Ambulas Reborn as I have about Mutalist Alad V or the Accolytes, with most of them prefacing elaborately impractical systems that should be installed for ensuring the CONTINUITY of the STORIES, and the rest describing impossibly ridiculous ways to restructure the entire game around forcing the "STORY" onto a track, the idea of having a totally non-compulsory option to activate briefings for contextual cohesion along certain paths of the Star Chart hierarchy seemed like something phenomenally simple (by comparison) that could totally do the job.)