Feature Request: Player-Made Mission Maps | Map Creator | Custom Mission Storylines | Create Lobby

[Ceaseless_Watcher]

Title is pretty self-explanatory, but I'll elaborate:

Player-made mission maps: While warframe's procedural mission map creation is great for endless randomized content and interesting mission setups, I feel it lacks a focus in design that could make any map excellent for certain purposes. Prime example is when a mission is supposed to happen inside a ship, and yet the internal room structure has no rhyme or reason to it, skyboxes intersecting with playable areas, and a universal lack of circular tiling. In many cases, rooms that are spawned in randomly, could be linked together with a door they both have in the same place, but since the mission map didn't generate them to be connected, the door stays closed. Sometimes several layers of rooms generate on top of eachother, making the minimap useless or actively confusing. These reasons imo should be enough to let the community design some maps, and maybe even upload them to places like the Steam Workshop, where others could subscribe and download them to play on them. Many other games do this and they are not legally problematic, so it shouldn't be here either.

Map creator: Mainly to facilitate the above point, but also to let players feel the scope of a mission map. I would like to suggest a function to save some procedurally generated maps to edit or review later. On the money-side, players could be charged in platinum for more level slots above some generous baseline.

Custom mission story creator: Mainly to help the previous two points, but also as standalone feature to allow for multiple types of mission within a single session. Basically a custom raid creator.

Create Lobby: I propose to add an option to matchmaking where players can both create lobbys and search for existing lobbys with the following criteria:

• Node - by name (optional, for if someone likes to run a specifically named node)
• Lobby size (up to maybe 8-16 players, with repeated warnings about potential loss of progress due to host migration in high-capacity lobbys)
• Mission type (mandatory)
• Enemy (mandatory one or optionally several, several makes it a crossfire mission)
• Starting level (mandatory)
• End criteria (number of waves/minutes reached, enemies killed, objectives completed)

Furthermore, if implemented together with the map/custom story creators, I suggest the following to be optionally attachable to the mission:

• Additional reward (tiered options, based on community approval for the map/mission, easily monitorable through Steam or ingame systems)
• Written storyline (like that of Sorties, a brief, readable mini-story to accompany the mission)

Potential problems & solutions:

• Host Migration is still a major problem in general, so I suggest limiting the size of mission maps (which also encourages creative space usage), and locking whatever tileset the mission started on (for procedural generation within the custom lobby/story) for the duration of the mission.
• Glitchy/Incomplete tile collisions could result from certain tiles placed together in certain ways, and so I would suggest limiting slightly the types of tiles that can be put together.
• Kuria/collectible exploits could be prevented by not spawning them in custom maps.

[Oggyswe]

awesome idea tho working out a reward system to not be abused would be a big issue i feel.

unless you restrict the map making to not really being able to impact enemies and spawn behavior

[Frendh]

Yeah, reward system will be abused. Even if you can't change variables for drops you can manipulate map layout for maximum spawn or making easy killzones.

[MBaldelli]

3 minutes ago, Oggyswe said:

awesome idea tho working out a reward system to not be abused would be a big issue i feel.

unless you restrict the map making to not really being able to impact enemies and spawn behavior

You reminded me of Player Foundry's from Star Trek Online.  this was most certainly abused severely for the Dilithium payouts.  Cryptic (the developers of the game) with the strong suggestions of their owners at the time -- Perfect Worlds Entertainment - stressed to have it shut down..  Which it was.  

As for the OP.  This is a pie-in-the-sky suggestion...  Which unless you can prove knowledge of how the Evolution Engine works (This is the gaming engine for the game) this runs risks similar to the Cease & Desist Lawsuits that DE did issue to Void Glitch for Data Mining.  Yes, this was before your time based on the date of your forum creation ID.   You can google this and see just how coveted DE is about control of their game.  

[(PSN)SABRETOOTH1971]

While it's not exactly what you are suggesting, we are allowed to design rooms in our dojo with varying degrees of ease, and have been able to do so for years. Yet, we still get broken lighting, broken rooms and a very old archaic system underpinning room lay outs, that hasn't been changed for years. The fact you suggest something which can achieve better results, pretty much indicates that DE are never gonna go for that - if they can't upgrade the Dojo system after people have begged for changes forever, I doubt they will be prioritizing map making abilities. It's been a year since the last small changes to the Dojo system and nothing has been done since. Sure, it's not a priority for the vast majority of players or the Dev's, but if they are encouraging people to deck out there dojo's and ships for prizes, then the least they could do is fix some of the fundimentals of the building system to make it easier to achieve for those willing to make the effort. 

[CrownOfShadows]

It would be hard, and it would also be some dev burden because they still need to proof them and whatnot, but I've always thought that there was tremendous potential for tennogen levels. This would allow for tons of variety but DE would still be able to have a thumb on it's pulse.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

This will never happen.  It would be far too embarrassing for a player to use their art assets and end up making a better New War quest that didn't take them 6 years.