Questing System! Hubs, Planets And Story Mode!

[Shanicus]

Quests! Loot! Mod cards! Credits! After the Devstream where they were showing off the Hubs and the possibility of a questing system, I started figuring out how such a system could work in ways that both a) are useful/rewarding to players and b)encourage players to explore new areas or do missions outside the standard Defense/Survival farming. The general idea is that there'll be 3 different types of quests – Hubs, Zone and Story.

STORY QUESTS:

 

Story quests are the base-level quests you gain access to whenever you enter a new planet, activating once you complete the first mission there. These missions are fairly simple - 1 Mission for killing the planet boss (Assassination), 1 mission for clearing out all the missions of the planet (Dominance). The rewards for the missions will vary from planet to planet, though they always contain at least 1 useful mod, credits and a rare resource from that planet.

For Planets like Earth and Eris that (currently) lack a boss character, the Assassination quest will instead be replaced with an Elimination quest, which requires you killing X amount of enemies across all the missions in the area.

 

Example:

Mercury Quests:
Assassinate – Captain Vor (reward: 5000 Credits, Serration, Morphics)
Dominance – Mercury (reward: 5000 Credits, Hornet Strike, Neurode)

Eris Quests:
Elimination – Kill 2000 enemies across the planet (40,000 Credits, 3x Rare 5 Core, 2x Neurodes)

Dominance – Eris (40,000 Credits, 3x Rare 5 Core, 2x Orokin Cell)

 

Earth Quests:

Elimination - Kill 1000 enemies across the planet (12,000 Credits, Contagious Spread, Neurode)

Dominance – Earth (12,000 Credits, Pathogen Rounds, Neural Sensors)

 

Phobos Quests:

Assassinate - ? (20,000 Credits, Hells Chamber, Gallium)

Dominance – Phobos (20,000 Credits, Split Chamber, Orokin Cell)

Story Quests are one-offs to encourage exploration of a node and to give newer players some good items as they play through. After you finish all of the Story Quests in the map, you should have a decent Credit pool to work with alongside all the 'required' mods to play around with (i.e. Elements, damage boosts, multishot).

 

ZONE QUESTS:

 

Zone quests are unlocked after you complete the Story Quests for a planet - these are kinda like 'mini-Alerts', in that several planets will be marked as 'quest zones' every 4 or so hours. These quest zones will act like 'double missions' - when entering a mission, you'll have 2 bonus objectives as opposed to the usual 1, so you may enter a Sabotage Mission and have to kill 50 enemies or enter an Exterminate and finish it without setting off any alarms (it'll be done so you can't get a Stealth Finish quest alongside a Defense/Survival).

 

Completion of a Zone Quest is alongside the regular mission but not a requirement - so if you fail a Stealth Finish, you don't claim the bonus rewards the Quest offered, but can still finish the mission itself. If you complete the quest, the rewards are added onto the extraction mission and shown in an additional tab of the Mission Screen 'Quest rewards'.

 

The quests themselves are tiered based on their difficulty - Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3, with Tier 1 being the easiest and Tier 3 being the hardest. General idea of them is as follows:

 

Tier 1 - 1.5x Mission Credits, +20% Affinity, Uncommon Mod or T1/T2 Void Key, Uncommon Resource

Objective types: Exterminate (kill 50-75 enemies in mission), Capture (Capture a special Leader-Type enemy that spawns) and Investigate (Scan 20 enemies in the mission). Exterminate cannot occur on pre-existing Exterminate missions.

 

Tier 2 - 1.75x Mission Credits, +40% Affinity Uncommon Mod/Rare Fusion Core, T1/T2 Void Key, Rare Resource

Objective Types: Rescue (save a Hostage in the mission), Spy (Capture additional intelligence), Sabotage (Destroy a special-spawned target) and Hacking (Hack a number of 'Weak Points' that spawn around the mission). Sabotage and Rescue cannot occur on Survivals or Defense missions.

 

Tier 3 - 2x Mission Credits, +60% Affinity, Rare Mod, T2/T3 Void Key, Rare Resource

Objective Types: Point Defense (Mobile Defense target), Escort (Defend a Tenno Operative who spawns in the mission for a short period of time), Assassinate (kill a special Leader-Type enemy that spawns) and Stealth Completion (finish the mission without raising the alarms). Stealth Completion cannot occur on Defense and Survivals, if a mission is tagged 'Stealth Completion' then the 'Under Attack' Environmental condition cannot occur.

 

So, something you could see is:

(Ceres) - Pallas, Sabotage (Tier 2 Quest - Rescue; Spare Parts, Capture II, Neural Sensor)

(Ceres) - Casta, Defense (Tier 3 Quest - Point Defense; Intensify, Survival III, 2x Neural Sensor)

 

After completing a Zone Quest it becomes unavailable for further play (you can join people doing the quest but you don't get any rewards for it); if you finish all the quests then you have to wait until they recycle to do more.

 

HUB QUESTS:

 

Hub quests are the big quests, acting as completely separate missions as opposed to Zone Quests which just add a layer to pre-existing quests. Hub quests operate entirely through the hub – you accept and hand-in the quests here, leaving to do quests that require you to go out in the System though some may be completable within the hub itself.

 

The Quests are varied, ranging from simple Resource Collection missions to Assassinations against targets like Vey Hek and Lephantis. A few quests I've thought of that could happen are:

Gathering - Collect X of a Resource for the quest giver (5,000 common resource, 1500 uncommon, 5 rare)

Army Breaker - Extended Exterminate mission (300+ targets) with a high level 'General' Leader-type that spawns in the last 10 enemies.

Assassinate - Eliminate one of the bosses in the world, but at a greatly increased level

Sturdy Defense/Survival - Survive X Waves/Minutes in a Survival or Defense mission

Void Explorer - Complete a T3 Void Mission (Survivals and Defenses follow the same rule as the Sturdy Defense/Survival above)

Weapon Comission - Construct a weapon (Non-equippable BP is provided with shorter build time) for the client

Shutdown - Extended Sabotage and Spy mission, eliminating high-priority targets like Tanks and ships or sabotaging Cruiser engines, all the while gathering information.

Prison Break - Extended Capture/Rescue mission, assaulting a prison block and capturing high-profile targets (Commanders, opposite-faction prisoners) while also rescuing whatever civilians/Tenno held in the camp.
Favors for the Board/Favors for the Queens - Do a high-level mission against the opposing faction, earning favor with one but irritating the other (like Invasions but for other mission types and higher leveled). CAN earn Deathmarks from these quests.

 

The Hub Quests are all fairly high leveled (35-45), but that is to off-set the possible rewards from these missions - alongside high credit rewards and multiple rare resources, you can also earn previously-released Event Mods, Nightmare Mods, Corrupted Mods, Void Key Packs, Catalyst/Forma/Reactor BPs... all the good stuff that tends to be incredibly hard to come by. Unlike Zone Quests, if you fail one of the objectives of the these quests on those missions with multiple objectives you outright fail the mission and have to start it over again. Due to the nature of the rewards there are only 10 Quests every day, 1 being an Assassination and the other 5 being a variety of the above.

As for how the missions work, there are 2 different ways :

– for Gathering Missions and Weapon Comission missions, you leave the hub to gather the resources and build the weapon – if you've got the resources in your inventory or a weapon from a previous quest you didn't hand in, you can complete the quest immediately by re-clicking the Quest Pylon in the Hub.

-For the other mission types there is a Tenno Transporter nearby where you select when you/Your party is ready. The Transporter allows you to select which mission you want to be deployed on before taking you to an 'Armory' Room where you can change your load out or invite other people. After you've done that there is a secondary panel in the Armory where you initiate the mission. Completion of the mission will take you back to the hub, where you can hand in the quest or activate the Transporter panel to get into another mission, then just hand them all up in a big clump.

You CAN skip the Armory room if you want (an option like 'Activate Mission, No Armory' will be available on the mission select screen), it's just there so you can change things out between missions or make sure you didn't forget anything/anyone.

A typical 'Quest Log' could look something like this:

Quest 1: Gathering Mars Supplies (3000 Salvage, 10 Morphics, 1 Gallium)

Reward: 30,000 Credits, 5x Neural Sensor, 300x Oxium

 

Quest 2: Weapon Commission – Prova (unique BP - requires 20 Fieldron samples, 1000 Alloy Plate, 1000 Salvage, 3000 Nanospores, 3000 Credits)

Reward: 15,000 Credits, Void Key Pack

 

Quest 3: Sturdy Defense – Varro, 20 Waves

Reward: 30,000 Credits, Blaze

 

Quest 4: Weapon Commision – Soma (unique BP: requires 4 Morphics, 500 Rubedo, 2000 Salvage, 400 Plastids, 3000 Credits)

Reward: 15,000 Credits, Heavy Caliber

 

Quest 5: Void Explorer – T3 Capture

Reward: 10,000 Credits, Orthos Prime Handle (stacks on top of the Void Rewards)

 

Quest 6: Army Breaker - Mercury

Reward: 30,000 Credits, Volatic Strike

 

Quest 7: Army Breaker - Pluto

Reward: 30,000 Credits, Detron Barrel

 

Quest 8: Prison Break - Saturn

Reward: 30,000 Credits, Bleeding Willow

 

Quest 9: Favors for the Board – Capture Grineer Targets (5 Targets in 1 mission)

Reward: 3x Fieldron, 40,000 Credits, Pistol Pestilence

 

Quest 10: Assassinate Vey Hek
Reward: 50,000 Credits, 2x Orokin Cell, 1x Catalyst BP

 

[Blackout751]

This is extremely well thought out, simple and yet sophisticated with content for all players regardless of ranking... I like it. If this is the sort of quest system we can expect, I'll be a very happy Rhino - and so will everyone else looking for that level 50+ enemy onslaught while earning delicious, delicious potatoes and Forma and rare mods all the while.

Edited April 14, 2014 by Blackout751