Stashes, A Treasure Hunting Adventure.

[VegetableBasket]

I'm sure something like this has been suggested before, but this concept came to me in a dream and I felt obligated to post about it. I broke everything up into smaller sections, tried to keep everything concise.

1. Make Eximus units feel more like characters

In many ARPGs the leader/special/champion/etc units usually get randomly generated names. I think Warframe could benefit from giving a name to Eximus units (while they are being aimed at) based on their faction, and possibly given a rank based on their unit type and level. The corpus could have ranks that reflect their wealth or position in their cult, or the Grineer could have military style rankings. The real benefit of making Eximus units feel like characters though, comes next.

 

2. Give them stashes throughout the universe

These guys must be somewhat important, they are leaders after all, but they aren't carrying their life savings on them. What if when killed, they had a small chance to drop a special coordinate/key/cipher, some kind of info to lead us to their secret stash? This item could be combined with nav coordinates to build a map. A treasure map. Maybe in our quest log which I hope comes with Vor's Prize, we could get an entry which tells us where the stash is. "Major Vektar Shuum's stash should be In a red locker on Opik, Phobos."

 

3. ???

But there's a catch! Here's the opportunity to get creative. Here's just a quick example of what sort of "quest" this could lead us on.

 

What if we get there, and instead of finding his stash, we just find a note?

 

"To think we would not discover and seize this cache is a testament to your feeble intellect, perhaps your inferior genes are to blame. Regardless, Vektar, your debts have reflected unfavorably upon you. You have three days to bring a live Tenno specimen, as you promised, to my ship near Europa. Only then will we discuss the location of your prized possession.

 

-Zelus Arn

Corpus Templar"

 

But where on Europa? Better intercept some radio signals to figure out what's going on, am I right? Good thing Opik is an interception mission. So the Lotus tells us to start intercepting, and maybe we do, and our quest log shows us the ship in question is Morax, Europa. Maybe we get there and capture this guy, and interrogate him to find out where the stash really is. We go there and dig around for a bit, opening lockers and smashing crates to find what we're looking for, a nice stash of items! Or perhaps there are more twists and turns in store for us.

 

4. Profit!

I'm not going to dictate what should come in these stashes, but I'd say the best reward should include a little bit of everything. A bunch of credits, a handful of various resources, perhaps an alert only item or two, a few rare mods, some fusion cores, forma or very occasionally potatoes. Perhaps even little lore related items, like heirlooms or photos or journal entries, letters from family members, little remains and hints of the rest of the world or the people we just murdered. People are always asking for lore.

 

Obviously this should be somewhat balanced, but the rewards should be generous and varied enough that it was more or less always worth the player's time to complete the quest. There are a lot of options. Use your imagination. But the rewards need to justify the length of the adventure and ideally would not make the stashes a "grindwall." Players shouldn't feel obligated to do them because there is a .1% chance of getting a mega rare new mod. Perhaps we could get alternate art mods, mods with shiny borders, or other collectable things which don't interfere with gameplay or balance.

 

Controversy

Possibly even cosmetic items exclusive to the stashes? If these are rare enough and tradeable, they should always have some value and any player would likely not mind running a stash quest if they know it's possible to get a piece of armor or something to keep or sell. This wouldn't affect gameplay so it shouldn't be seen as a grindwall, but it would give just about every player something to hunt after. I know this would be unsettling with some people though.

 

So what does this accomplish?

-Adds lore by adding depth to the characters, exposition to the universe, and gives context to our missions.

-Potentially opens doors for decisions to be made which could relate to the proxy war system.

-Gives incentive to visit various levels and explore them rather than rushing through.

-Adds a reason to kill eximus units after we have Oberon.

-Adds a use for nav coordinates after we have Nekros.

-Potentially alleviates RNG frustration with the alert system.

-Gives people something to do.

 

Some loose ends

How would this work for infested?

Well, infested units are made up of Grineer and Corpus units, so this could actually work more or less the same way!

How would this work for drones/moas?

Good question. I can't think of a good solution to this, actually. Maybe they could have "tags" which indicate where they were built, since they're advanced prototypes or whatever maybe we could go raid the laboratory where they were built and discover something else on the way. It's a bit of a stretch but there are possibilities.

 

Would this be a lot of work for DE?

On the latest sound team stream, George said Steve wrote a program that translates English to Grineer, so generating these names should be a trivial task for at least that faction. This system could take advantage of the quest system being implemented soon for Vor's Prize, as well as the current mission types, star chart, and Eximus units. It obviously would take some work but it would primarily build on what's already there, which is why I think this is a feasible task.

 

How would this work in a group versus solo?
I'm tempted to say this should be a solo oriented feature. Obviously your friends are welcome to come along for the ride, but I think it would be nice to have something to do while your friends are offline so it doesn't feel like a "waste" if you want to go it alone. If it was too easy to hitch a ride on a stash quest, everyone would be rolling in the loot, so it needs to be kept more personal, I think. Another way to view it, stashes could be the counterpart to Orokin vaults, which essentially require a group.

 

That's all I've got for now, hopefully I've intrigued you.

Edited June 8, 2014 by VegetableBasket

[Psychotoxin]

I'm liking the idea of this...

[NaniteCircuit]

Sounds fantastic.

[Trenggiling]

You have a up vote from me! (and I'm glad to see someone else who thinks when they dream ^.^)

 

>snip<
I'm liking the idea of this...

That is a side vote silly XD

[Psychotoxin]

That is a side vote silly XD

Not if you have my definition of "up". :P

[youngminor]

hell yes, this idea is amazing

[notionphil]

Hope I intrigued you.

Oh my goodness. Simply brilliant.

This relatively small repurposing of "good RNG", eximus and alert systems would inject a healthy dose of depth and 'purpose' into Warframe.

[Renegade343]

VegetableBasket,

 

Would you mind if I link your thread to my suggestion thread so that the idea can still be heard if you do not update this? 

 

The idea is excellent and exciting (I can already place myself into your proposed game). 

 

EDIT: As for Eximi naming, I would prefer if it is only reserved for Eximi Leaders (which I proposed about in my suggestion thread), as that will then make the gameplay even more interesting. 

 

Renegade343

Edited June 8, 2014 by Renegade343

[VegetableBasket]

VegetableBasket,

 

Would you mind if I link your thread to my suggestion thread so that the idea can still be heard if you do not update this? 

 

The idea is excellent and exciting (I can already place myself into your proposed game). 

 

Renegade343

Yeah pass it along however you want!

 

 

Oh my goodness. Simply brilliant.

This relatively small repurposing of "good RNG", eximus and alert systems would inject a healthy dose of depth and 'purpose' into Warframe.

Means a lot coming from you. :)

Edited June 8, 2014 by VegetableBasket

[Renegade343]

Yeah pass it along however you want!

I have already linked this thread to my suggestion thread. Please check if the short summary conveys your meaning of this thread. 

 

Link: 

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/236973-some-suggestions-to-make-gameplay-more-engagingrewarding-gas-eximus-radial-disarm-modification/ (see A small collection of fixes/changes/tweaks section, bottom-most point). 

[VegetableBasket]

I have already linked this thread to my suggestion thread. Please check if the short summary conveys your meaning of this thread. 

 

Link: 

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/236973-some-suggestions-to-make-gameplay-more-engagingrewarding-gas-eximus-radial-disarm-modification/ (see A small collection of fixes/changes/tweaks section, bottom-most point). 

It's close enough, but I didn't mean specifically that you would need to do interception missions, just that you would collect information or be lead on a trail of missions based on what you were doing. You could intercept coordinates of a ship with treasure aboard, or interrogate someone to find it, or steal them through a spy mission, etc. The game could generate an objective that makes sense for what you're doing. Just a quick example of another sort of quest

 

You kill a charger eximus, and find a data drive with some documents about collecting stolen inheritance from a jealous brother. This plan belonged to a corpus guy who met his end to an infested. His notes have coordinates to a ship which is coincidentally a spy mission. You go there and recover some data which reveals that ship belonged to the guy you found in the infested. You also discover the location of the guy's brother's ship (corpus capture) you capture some guys and interrogate them, they tell you the guy you're looking for was arrested by some grineer grunts. You do a Grineer rescue and save the guy's brother, he tells you his stuff should be in a crate somewhere on Ganymede (exterminate) on Jupiter, a Corpus level captured by Grineer who killed his father (and the story comes full circle). He thanks you for saving his life and tells you he'll throw something extra in if you slay all the Grineer there, and promises to put a good word in for you with the Corpus faction (for proxy war purposes). You dig around and find what you're looking for. Maybe in the stash, among the other loot, there is a letter to the original guy, from their father, saying how he wished his brother hadn't squandered his life and referred to the brother as a "disappointment," making the player cry a little. The rescued brother sends you an email a week later saying he defected and has become a Tenno sympathizer. "Oh, that's cool" the player thinks.

 

This could all happen through procedurally generated text and wouldn't require any significant voice acting or cutscenes. You could have a quest log which tracks all this stuff which you reference between missions. The game could at any point generate a feasible direction for the quest to go in, maybe with a precise start and end.

 

This ended up being a really long post but I hope you can see where I'm going with this, haha. Regardless your description is fine, I'm not bothered by it.

Edited June 8, 2014 by VegetableBasket

[Cobalt313]

This seems pretty neat. I agree with adding cosmetic items to the stash because then you have something special to grind for that isn't particularly important in case you don't feel like grinding.

[Renegade343]

Speaking of Interceptions, I have an idea (just something I thought up in 10 minutes. It is relatively unpolished): 

 

Since the proxy wars are coming at a later date, we can utilise Interception Missions to collect military data for the faction we are supporting. The war data fragments are rewarded in a cumulative fashion (e.g. Finishing the first wave of Interception will reward 2 military data fragments, while continuing and finishing the second wave of Interception will reward 2 + 3 = 5 military data fragments). The reward will be on top of the Interception wave rewards, like the Earth Interception in Tethra's Doom. 

 

Once we have collected enough data fragments for the faction we are supporting (20 - 30 war data fragments, for instance), we can give the fragments to the faction in order to allow it to build a one-time coordinate cipher to send to us (will be sent via in-game mail, with 1-3 real-time day(s) required to create the cipher to be sent to us). The coordinate cipher, when used, will select a random node to become a personal alert (invite-only or solo), with a reward at a certain location in the map once we enter the alert. The reward can either be in the form of a rare resource, a rare Mod, or like VegetableBasket's suggestion, a small piece of lore (but more focused on military/research lore, instead of personal, everyday life lore). 

 

The military/research lore will appear as snippets in the Codex Lore Entry (new entry to fit both VegetableBasket's and my suggestion of dynamic lore), and said lore will be categorised in entries (i.e. Grineer Military Lore Entry, Corpus Research Lore Entry etc.). Collecting enough of the snippets of lore will make a full short story, and that short story will be stored in the relevant set within the relevant entry. Then, we can collect more snippets to unlock more stories within a particular set, until all the snippets in said particular set are collected, in which it will become a chapter. There are three chapters per entry. 

 

This is just something to make Interception and Proxy Wars more interesting. 

[Renegade343]

It's close enough, but I didn't mean specifically that you would need to do interception missions, just that you would collect information or be lead on a trail of missions based on what you were doing. 

Edited based on your meaning. Please check again (just so you know, I am not good in reading comprehension). 

 

Link: 

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/236973-some-suggestions-to-make-gameplay-more-engagingrewarding-gas-eximus-radial-disarm-modification/

[SHADOWSTORM-NZ]

These are great ideas, +1 for me. Well thought out (or dreamt out as the case may be ) the cosmetic stashes are nice reward touches. Cheers

[VegetableBasket]

Edited based on your meaning. Please check again (just so you know, I am not good in reading comprehension). 

 

Link: 

 

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/236973-some-suggestions-to-make-gameplay-more-engagingrewarding-gas-eximus-radial-disarm-modification/

Very apt description. :)

[jjpdn]

DONT WORRY, LOYAL CITIZENS OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM!

THE TENNO ARE HERE!

THE TREASURE HUNTERS OF THE HIGH SEA- UH... SPACE?

THE PIRATES OF THE... UM... CLONE WARS AND CAPITALISM MONARCHY?

THE LOYAL PETALS, THIEFS AND ARMOR OF THE.... LOTUS! UM... THAT DOESN'T SOUND RIGHT.

 

 

 

......................

At least... well... we are at least... hm... nothing.

 

(-_-)

 

 

 

+1

Edited June 9, 2014 by jjpdn

[Quatrez]

Ready Crew, we going for some stashs hunting. Argh !

[locojuan]

geezz h christine mother of lotus!! every day i feel more connected to this part of the community.

@vegtable. i dont only love the idea, i was thinking the exact same thing. it happened the same with notionphil's "dumb ai" post.

i also had in mind that bosses should be behind a lil bit of lore too. in the way that as you get close to their nodes, capture, spy and all that sort of mission would provide you with info about that especific boss. some brackground on why and how they got to their rank and so. even more, some weakness could be discovered as you progress to their nodes. this would help with the issue of entereing a boss fight w/o knowledge about what gear you might need or how to attack (no real need for the wiki anymore. instead, we get self earned ingame intel).