Lots Of Very Constructive Feedback On Invasion And Infestation Systems.

[Aure7]

TL;DR They lack depth, variety, purpose, and It's nothing close to what It could have been. (and what I expected)

 

There are few good threads floating around but I'd like to put it all in one and expand further.

 

INVASIONS

 

1) Invasions are the most booring and repetitive missions that currently exist when you consider that each one has to be done 5 times.

Some tiles make those missions just a tiny bit interesting, but it barely adds anything since the procedural level generation is getting very old and primitive, so even though the level designers do a great job, that job they made is shown to us hundreds of times in a same exact way. (more on that later)

Suggestions:

more engaging invasions with turret destruction, capture points, vehicle escorts, or other elements that would make them more exciting. Posted in https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/171615-invasions-theyre-boring/

I can simply say that currently War in warframe universe is really stupid.

Tenno are super soldiers, they can handle the most extreme of the tasks and yet all they do is run trough the same exact ships hundreds of times to spam their ult ability and blaze trough the level leaving friendly AI all confused and running in circles. What I mean by this is that you'd expect tenno to affect the war in the most subtle and smart ways. By shutting down specific systems, ships, turrets, rerouting important war ships or assassinating war commanders. And exterminating entire ships only when it is vital and enemies are about to win something that they should not win. This all could be driven by procedural generation and some other factors. Battle pay could be payed when a set of varied tasks is completed and something big is achieved.

 

2) There's a distinctive lack of balance in corpus vs grineer fight and what areas they control on the solar system.

There really seems nothing but RNG behind invasion locations and battle pays. There is no point to make invasions when they are determined by random potatoes or even worse - something like harvester. It is supposed to be something tenno are a little afraid off, but instead it pushed this enormous wave of farmers to farm the hell out of these invasions and fight for the grineer, because for some odd reason instead of putting detron with insane prices on the energy research, they slap it onto harvester which produced chaos.

Suggestions:

1. The original owners of the planet get a high probability of attacking back after an invasion (with a superior reward for helping the faction that is reclaiming their node).

2. Just like how attacking factions can attack more nodes if they succeed, the same should follow for defending factions. (If they successfully defend an attack, they either move to reclaim another node and/or nearby nodes under attack get a buff for the defenders.)

3. As a faction wins more and more nodes, Their reserves for battle payouts starts to run dry, and they begin offering payouts inferior to the defending faction.

4. Put in penalties for helping the more powerful faction (Remember, keeping balance in the system is our job).

These are really good, posted in https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/171366-suggestion-invasions-what-corpus/

This doesn't mean that there must be balance at all times. Little event like wars that bring diversity are welcome, there simply needs to be a good code running these invasions to keep them interesting. I'd be awesome if things like gradivus dilemma happened naturally without further DE interference just because the system is powerful enough to gather and unite the community.

Maybe even dynamic and changing nodes, so new new ones can appear and old ones disappear.

 

3) Invasion tiles and invaded node tilesets are weird and repetitive.

As I said previously, not only these are exterminate missions over and over again with useless AI, the 5 missions you have to repeat happen on 80% identical maps, with 1 same exact tile connecting the grineer and corpus ships being always there. Nothing wrong with these tiles in particular, but it's very awful to run trough them over and over again. And the main reason for this is that procedural level generation just can't do anything else with those unless there are more tiles added which will all eventually become repetitive since it's the same exact room with same exact polygons every time.

 

In addition, it can become weird to fight enemies in a location that does not belong to them. It kind of makes sense when a faction takes over the ship or a base, but these nodes can then last for weeks and probably months if the invasion system is derpy. So what do they do there? I bet they can't even use their enemy's technology and equipment, so they just sit there ready to be farmed for more mods and affinity. (Or oxium on sedna in current case)

 

INFESTATION

 

1) Once again, clearing the infestation can become a little tedious because of 3 mission requirement, but it's a lot better than invasions.

The fact that all kinds of missions can occur on infested nodes help, but again a better system could take place in the future, where a set of clever tasks must be achieved by the community to successfully deal with the infestation, in each case those tasks may vary (instead of node simply keeping the mission type)

 

2) Exterminate missions have extremely repetitive maps with repeating tiles. Also enemy diversity is poor.

For example infested corpus ships will always have this giant hangar with a portal, before that goes the elevator, after the portal will always be the same exact room. It's all really well made, but running trough it hundreds of times with corpus ships flying in and being stuck in the same exact position, enemies spawning similarly every single time? No thank you.
 

Not to mention that regardless of the node, faction, mission type. You will always meet grineer infested (crawlers), corpus infested (walkers) and ancients which I assume belong to the derelict tileset. I'd be great if there were other similar infested heavy units that originate from grineer or corpus. More on the lack of infested diversity: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/162458-why-all-infested-are-so-identical/

 

Problem for both - friendly AI

 

I think I don't even have to talk much about this, we all seen it discussed several times. DE really desperately needs more programmers that could work on this because the rates at which things are improving here are bad.

 

Friendly AI units are useless in invasions, especially when you have bunch of novas or rhinos coptering trough levels and blowing everything up on low level nodes with high ranked gear because they're all so impatient. Friendly AI guys simply become something to draw enemy fire and add to the atmosphere. They very often fail to find a good target and to cooperate together. They are nothing but objects to set up a scene when rhino dramatically flies in to stomp everything. They simply spawn in right before you enter to make the place feel alive.

 

 

 

Edited March 9, 2014 by Aure7

[Kaian-a-coel]

I support these ideas and would like to add my own to it: Starmap revamp ideas

 

I feel like it could interact very well with the ideas presented here, although mine are a wee bit more demanding on the coding side... x)

[Aure7]

nobody cares about this?

[Aure7]

still nobody cares? Yes rhino prime is looking good but this is core gameplay.