Endurance Reconstruction Concept

[Voltage]

I've always been a player who has enjoyed high level endurance, but I've almost never done runs due to a couple factors.

1. The speed at which enemy level scales.
2. Rewards being the exact same over time (with some very insignificant exceptions like a Void Fissure Booster or how Affinity scales with enemy level).
3. Overall mission length/commitment (some modes like The Circuit, Void Cascade and Disruption alleviate this issue, but only within those modes, and some still require several hours of chained gameplay).

What dawned on me is that these things are entirely possible to address across the board, and it could reward players who reach level-cap, encourage players who like that content to jump into it, and lower the time commitment needed to play the mode at the highest levels without disrupting the way it currently works. This post will aim to provide additions and changes that would apply to all modes at the same time, breathing new life into most modes, while providing a replayability factor that doesn't lock many people out of participating. Some of these changes may seem radical compared to how they currently work, but the basis is for healthy engagement and dialing up the action compared to the power players have accumulated over the years.

Currently endurance missions scale anywhere from fast (Cascade, Disruption, The Circuit) to painfully slow (Survival). This tells players who want to reach a state of testing gear limits that they either need to confine themselves into the specific fast scaling modes, or spend 7+ hours in a Survival. This is not appealing to most players as the average person just doesn't have that kind of time. Steel Path alleviated this to a degree, but it wasn't a future proof solution. This is then compounded with the lack of rewards for staying this long. This has been good for the game in ensuring players aren't locked into farms that "begin after X hours" (like Steel Essence used to function). I believe this can be revisited in a way where players are not barred from entry, and the reward encourages players to make loadouts and eventually strive to level-cap atleast once per gamemode.

"Endless"

I want to start off with removing the "endless" part of endurance missions (with the exception of the Circuit due to how Tiered rewards function. I have feedback on The Circuit specifically if you wish to investigate that mode's feedback). Before comments spring about how bad of a suggestion this is, let's step back and examine how endless missions in Warframe are approached by players. You have the majority that go for one or a few Rotation C rewards, and you have the extreme minority who go as long as possible. Everyone in between are more on the side of group A rather than group B. If we apply how players typically approach these modes to how they are structured, we can reward group B with their achievement without ruining the experience for Group A who just wants a couple of rotation rewards. While approaching these two poles on the spectrum, the players in the middle can enjoy an accelerated scaling that appropriately pushes them towards level-cap without asking hours upon hours of their time. Changing the missions in this way also prevents players from creating any sort of AFK farm where they can go to sleep, work, or complete idle and come back to extract whenever they please.

For the sake of understanding, I will use Survival as a benchmark given it is just time at 5 minute intervals. Every other mode can be assumed to be a comparable amount of rotations equal to the time structures I am considering. Special missions will be mentioned where appropriate. However, the aim here is to treat all endurance missions equally in these propositions, no matter if it's Void Fissure Survival or Infected Salvage. The mission length would be limited to a maximum of 2 hours (or equivalent rotations) and split into three 40 minute sectors. The aim is to add congruency to mission length with the same end-point of a level-cap scenario. This also removes any sort of bug associated with hitting a rotation cap that breaks the mission (notably seen in Interception).

• Sector 1 (0 - 40 minutes)
  • Absolutely no changes are made here. For those who play endurance missions right now, there would be no changes to your gameplay.
• Sector 2 (40 - 80 minutes)
  • Enemy scaling ramps up tremendously. From 40 minutes to 80 minutes, the enemies quickly skyrocket in level towards 9999. The milestone jumps in enemy scaling would occur at 60 minutes to give the player ample time to extract at a C rotation should they feel that they cannot handle the scaling. At 80 minutes the enemies would reach level 9999.
• Sector 3 (80 - 120 minutes/extraction)
  • Enemies are now at maximum level and you need to survive and complete the objective for the next 40 minutes to score the final reward at extraction. This is where players can test level-cap enemies without a massive time commitment. Missions with rotations may be done much faster than 80-120 minutes, but this would be the ceiling of time required.

Rewards

Part of what drives many players away from these missions is the lack of change in rewards. Arbitrations offer their special reward rotations and Void Fissures provide boosters, but this is hardly enough to really grab the attention of players. Changing rotational rewards as the player accomplishes sectors would go down the route of locking out players who enjoy the rotation C and extraction gameplay. This is where many players fall, and it would be unfair to damage that. However, we can still use Sectors to sprinkle some changes and rewards that only encourages players without making a farm worse for those not progressing as far. This can also be used to preserve the achievement previously earned from the endless nature of missions that I proposed to remove. For example, Void Fissure boosters could cap out at 100% at the start of Sector 3.

Reaching the end of Sector 3 and extracting would grant the player a cosmetic to represent their achievement for that gamemode. Every gamemode would have a similar cosmetic. This could be a badge, sigil, glyph or similar item. The cosmetic would then display the number of duplicate completions earned for these items and gamemodes. Similar to Stratos Emblems and the Scarlet Spear badges, players would then be rewarded with a representation of their continued endurance gameplay elsewhere as they play. A profile stat could be incorporated here as well, but that wouldn't be necessary. Because each gamemode offers a different cosmetic, this encourages players to eventually round out their arsenal and earn atleast one "Sector 3 completion" of every endurance mode. Withholding from these cosmetics would not hinder your ability to farm the gamemodes at your leisure in their current form.

Adding something like this would preserve the achievement shown by players who want to reach these levels while allowing the mission to become much shorter and closer to the burst content that Warframe frequently adds.

In the end, I wanted to explore the idea of shortening endurance to just the action while still retaining the significance of reaching level-cap. These missions currently often feel drawn out and unrewarding. They've always felt like untapped potential to me as well, especially with the power ceiling players have reached.

Edited November 24, 2023 by Voltage