Infiltration Game Mode

[Cyberian_vs]

So we've had Survival for a good while now and its become one of the most popular game types, but theres always been that notion of the "Lone Tenno Operative" collecting all your goodies. Warframe has always been a team game but the whole idea of a space ninja does work with a lone agent doing difficult subterfuge, and thats where my game mode idea comes in.

 

The Concept

 

As a lone Tenno, you need to infiltrate a ship's most highly secured location - its vault. This is guarded mostly by automated traps (so damaging lasers, corpus knockback laser walls, arc traps, auto turrets) and a small security force since most are preoccupied with the survival team (not real time, just fitting in with the game). Since the survival team has triggered every alarm on the ship, systems are going down to redirect resources and each section of the vault is venting any possible intruders. Hence you have a time limit from section to section - your 5 minute intervals.

 

The Gameplay

 

The mission would be similar to a really difficult set of rooms similar to that of the orokin treasure rooms (remember how some used to be pretty damn hard?). You would go from room to room dodging lasers, jumping wall to wall to wall to ledge, zigzagging through complex rooms of varying spaces, all the while keeping up with you time limit and making sure enemies don't spot you. Enemies will have set patrol paths and if they see you they will run to an alarm and set it off, calling more guards to shoot at you from walkways around the maps and triggering more traps unless you stop them. If you succeed in reaching the vault, you are presented with 2 options, take your reward, or move deeper losing your chance for that reward. Once you hit the 4th vault (or 3rd, just keeping in line with current survival rewards) you reach the final vault and take the reward without a choice.

 

For balance the lasers and traps will do percentage damage per tick, so if you just touch it youll take one tick worth of damage which could be 10% of shields + health total, or if you stand for a full second that could be 5 ticks to 50%. Also warframe abilities would need to be disabled (magnetic energy resonating from the core of the ship?) as Iron Skin, Wormhole, Switch Teleport etc would just break the maps.

 

The Benefits

 

- Players can compete with each other on individual skill, not relying on others

- Good chance to put heavy focus on parkour (current or 2.0 if developed)

- New and old players put in the same boat, damage mods and great weapons wont be necessary

- Creates an entirely new warframe modding option to counter knockback and move fast

 

The Drawbacks

 

- Will require brand new maps tiles for each tileset so could be alot of work

- Time balance could be hard to work out so that you cant finish the map in 2 mins and make it redundant

- Solo game type not traditional for warframe so many may not like it

- Treats you as a generic warframe, different warframes wont make too much difference 

[Cryless]

Infiltrating a base sounds nice as long as we get the option to take cover behind a corner just like in Mass Effect.

[Kthal]

Sounds like a great idea, and you have acknowledged the major drawbacks. Just mentioning this, but you could consider this "Spy 2.0", with each package being deeper in the ship.

 

New maps are not a bad thing, but do take time. The maps could be generated by assigning each tile in the set an 'average time', then generating rooms in sequence until a decent limit is set, then entering the player with the shown time starting from a trigger point.

 

In terms of the timing, it would need to have that flexibility, with any mission being theoretically completable with any frame (although increasing difficulty meaning no margin for error on the later areas).

 

Solo is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as there is variety. I have had some positive experiences playing duo, so this could be opened to 1-2 players, with occasional friendship doors, like at start.

 

This last problem is a big one, but it shouldn't be needed. Each frame is unique specifically because of it's abilities, limiting this breaks the game. I parkour around maps quite a bit, and no single frame has an answer for every obstacle. With good tile design, removing abilities shouldn't be necessary.