Idea: Missions 2.0 (Quests)

[Ithloniel]

I've been playing Warframe since around the first week or so of Open Beta, and I love the game.  Still, I understand that feeling when older players quit due to repetition, or newer players don't continue with the game.  Clearly, something is bothering them when they say things like, "This game is repetitive."

 

"Repetitive" is a word I often here in connection to Warframe.  I've had a similar feeling in the back of my head, but I couldn't put it into words.  In fact, I found the word "repetitive" far too general.  It didn't accurately describe this feeling I had... this one hang-up I seemed to have about my favourite game.  I sat there trying to identify the problem.  Why would anyone call this game repetitive?  FPS games are just repetitive PvP, and nobody complains about that.  MMORPGs are just repetitive exploration, social networking, farming, and grinding, and while it illicits complaints, why do those same MMORPG players complain about Warframe?  It took me a while to place that feeling, and I think I figured out where it is coming from.  The one problem Warframe truly has is the mission system.

 

Warframe's mission system provides us with a number of nodes on a plethora of planets/satellites where we can jump into spcific goal-oriented missions.  Some of these missions are linear, point A to point B, while others use timed or wave based objectives.  While this provides us with purpose for each individual mission, this creates a set pattern to the game that must be fullfilled each time you play.  New tilesets, guns, and frames cannot dissway the feeling of mission repetition.  FPS players feel the AI gets boring, and they want to focus on the competative edge, while MMORPG players want more social gameplay and exploration free of mission constraints.

 

As far as I can tell, the best way to do this is to strip all missions off each node.  Make each node capable of spawning units and loot when players enter a game, but don't limit the nodes to specific mission objectives.  Instead, use your new Quest system.  Each Quest turns on objectives on those nodes, allowing you to complete your "Lotus registered mission" upon spawning in that node.  If your objective is to rescue someone, that captive is spawned upon entering the mission.  If your objective is defense, the cryo unit or artifact you are defending spawns somewhere in that mission.  If your objective is to exterminate the enemy forces, you set a specific number of enemies that have to be killed, and since each map will spawn enemies continuously, regardless of the mission, you just have to kill your set number of enemies to complete the mission, even if more enemies exist on the map.

 

What this means is that each node is capable of any mission at any time, as the Lotus sees fit to assign it.  There can be a mission list that Lotus provides, and a reward offered per mission, usually in credits or simple resources.  The list would be RNG-based, and function much as the current Alert system does.  In fact, it could replace the alert system completely, and occasionally offer higher-end missions.  Missions could be time-based for either accepting or completing (either you have a set time to accept the mission, or a set time to fully complete it).  All missions spawned are directly related to the game's host, not the other players, meaning that there will be a higher incentive to find players with shared objectives through Recruitment Chat or elsewhere.  This also means, if you choose two objectives, you can complete both of them at the same time on the same map.  Say you accept one defense mission and one mobile defense mission on E-Gate: the defense mission won't become active until you pass the blue circle around the cryo you are defending, much like a regular defense game, and the mobile defense mission won't become active until you put the data module into the ship's computer, like a normal mobile defense game.  You could even complete missions simultaneously by selecting an exterminate and a defense on the same planet, and fullfilling your exterminate quota while in a defense.

 

Alternatively, you could go to a node where you have no mission set at all, and either run around killing enemies until you feel like extracting, or you can help other players complete their missions.  If you happen to share an active mission with a game's host, you will complete that mission too.  If you don't share a mission, you will have simply helped them achieve their goal.

 

The only thing I see as a possible issue with this idea is If a host-change occurs.  Perhaps, if another player shares a mission, it will switch to them.  If nobody shares the mission with the host, the map respawns without an active mission and just becomes a missionless map as per normal.  Another option is, the mission is kept regardless of whether the new host has the mission active or not, so if they complete the mission, anyone with the active mission can complete it.  If the host didn't have the mission set as active in their mission/quest log, they won't get anything, but at least they were able to continue after the host-change.

 

This is just some food for thought.  I have no idea how easy/hard this would be to implement, but I imagine it would be a fair bit of work.  I know DE has done a tonne of overhauls to their game in the past, and they are great at producing/updating/changing ingame content, so perhaps this idea is feasible down the line.  I really don't know, but I thought I'd toss it out there.

 

Hope you've enjoyed the read, and sorry for the long post, but there was a lot to this idea I needed to get out there.

 

TL;DR: The current mission system makes repetitive objectives on each node, locking out our ability to feel immersed in the Warframe world and easily explore the solar system.  Instead, if we could accept missions through the new quest system, or something like it, and also have the option to travel to nodes without any mission or objective, the "repetitive" feeling some players have would be aleviated.  Let's call this the Open Mission System concept.

 

Thanks for reading,

Ith

Edited September 8, 2014 by Ithloniel

[Vaikiss]

man dat wall of text 

[Ithloniel]

man dat wall of text 

 

If you have a suggestion of how to condense it, I'd appreciate it.  :)  I thought of using spoilers, but I didn't want to nest everything either.  There was a lot to cover.

[Ianrama]

Well... the text is in very reasonable size for explaining such complex idea.

I found it quite interesting. It will add a lot more sense and immersion in the game.

 

But I see just one serious problem that can occur -  when you play with random tenno on the field, is pretty easy someone to 'troll' the mission, starting other objective and respectfully - fail it for the squad. Like you team with tenno whose objectives are defence and Mobile defence. Big part of the team start defence mission, but one get the datemass to the terminal and start MB...  imagine how bad it can feel even if he not fail the objective.

 

The problems are not impossible to be solved, of course and i'm curious to where DE will expand their changes. Because your idea sounds like a lot of "scrap and patch" work to be done, yet i play Warframe from a lot of time and see how much DE changes stuff. So nothing is impossible... ;)

 

 

P.S.: sorry for my bad english.

[Ithloniel]

Well... the text is in very reasonable size for explaining such complex idea.

I found it quite interesting. It will add a lot more sense and immersion in the game.

 

But I see just one serious problem that can occur -  when you play with random tenno on the field, is pretty easy someone to 'troll' the mission, starting other objective and respectfully - fail it for the squad. Like you team with tenno whose objectives are defence and Mobile defence. Big part of the team start defence mission, but one get the datemass to the terminal and start MB...  imagine how bad it can feel even if he not fail the objective.

 

The problems are not impossible to be solved, of course and i'm curious to where DE will expand their changes. Because your idea sounds like a lot of "scrap and patch" work to be done, yet i play Warframe from a lot of time and see how much DE changes stuff. So nothing is impossible... ;)

 

 

P.S.: sorry for my bad english.

 

Well, that is a problem already.  I've done survivals where people go AFK for 20 minutes at a time, or Defenses where a Frost drops snowglobes where the enemies run from instead of on the cryo.  I've seen players purposely lead captives into giant mobs, and I've seen other players trigger every Life Support Capsule on a T4 map for no reason, but selfishness, because they "wanted to extract sooner".

 

Albeit, these troll players are very few and far between.  The high majority of my Warframe experiences are great.  Something like 95% of my experiences are with good players, and any mistakes are honest ones.

 

I would instead argue an Open Mission System, like the one I am suggesting, would allow for new tactics to handle multiple missions.  Maybe, your squad thinks they can handle two objectives at once.  Perhaps they don't, and failed to properly communicate and accidentally triggered both objectives.  Now they have to scramble their teamwork to accomplish both tasks, without failing, or abandon one of the tasks.

 

I think this type of possiblily gives the game an interesting twist, increasing the need for player interaction, teamwork, and communication.  If anything, that will make the game even better, and by mixing more than one mission at a time (when they happen to be available on the same node) will give mission objectives a fresh new feeling every time.

 

Also, thanks for reading my whole post Ianrama.  :)

Edited September 8, 2014 by Ithloniel

[Ianrama]

Well, that is a problem already.  I've done survivals where people go AFK for 20 minutes at a time, or Defenses where a Frost drops snowglobes where the enemies run from instead of on the cryo.  I've seen players purposely lead captives into giant mobs, and I've seen other players trigger every Life Support Capsule on a T4 map for no reason, but selfishness, because they "wanted to extract sooner".

 

Albeit, these troll players are very few and far between.  The high majority of my Warframe experiences are great.  Something like 95% of my experiences are with good players, and any mistakes are honest ones.

 

Yeah... i have same experience and i'm happy it didn't happen so often. Still i'm thinking with just open field and few missions run simultaneously is much more... appealing for 'trolling'. But is not so great issue that can't be solved... i think.

 

Whatever. I really like your idea and i'm curious to where warframe will expand, because Devs add a lot of new things and they need to add more new stuff if they want to keep their players in the game. I have some fears of course, but until now Devs are keeping their level, so i didn't have from what to be disapointed. AND i think is good to have nice and fresh ideas from the community , which are well explained - to give new food for thought for the devs... :) So keep up the good work, mate! ;)

 

P.S.; sorry for my bad english, i think is time to go rest some time.

[ViralSpiral]

The problem are the tilesets. Open worlds would make tiles useless, and designing a completely new overworld will take too much time and effort. This sounds great otherwise...

[Ithloniel]

The problem are the tilesets. Open worlds would make tiles useless, and designing a completely new overworld will take too much time and effort. This sounds great otherwise...

 

I never said I wanted an open world :p

 

I was suggesting we use the tilesets we have already.  In fact, the only tileset change that would be needed is either adding cryo defense locations on already existing tilesets, or adding the defense tileset itself to already existent randomly generated maps.

 

Here is a post I just made on my reddit thread on this subject.  I figured it was relevant, and a decent explanation for how my idea would work:

 

EDIT: Vay Hek was a bad example, in the spoiler below, because he functions within his own special mission.  Lech Kril would make more sense, or Vor.  You get what I mean.

Well, that is kind of what I am going for here. The idea is, you can choose your missions, or choose to go places without any missions at all. You can try to get a decent resource reward in a mission, or farm while exploring a mission-free map. You could even play on a map with two different missions at once, and it would change how the experience would play out.

 

Eg. Say you accepted two missions, both on Kiliken: One was an excavation, and one was an assassination. Say, the assassination stated Hyenas were in the vicinity. That means, when you go to Kiliken as host, the map would have excavation sites you could use to start that mission, and one of the tile-sets you'd run across would end up being a boss arena. While you are trying to do the excavation, you could run across the boss tile  and end up fighting Hyenas too. You could ignore everything, and run to extraction, and collect all your farmed loot and exp, but you'll fail the two missions and not receive the mission bonus exp or mission reward. Oh yea, I forgot to mention that in the original post: mission bonus exp could totally be a thing.

 

This theoretical mission could've just as easily been an assassination mission for Vay Hek instead, or maybe it wasn't even an excavation and it was a rescue, and part-way through the rescue you have to fight Vay-Hek. See what I mean? The possibilities are endless. It would take a lot of work, changing how missions currently function so they could fit together seamlessly, and working out the bugs, but I do think it is a feasible idea.

Edited September 9, 2014 by Ithloniel

[(PSN)EK_NOX]

I am glad I am not the only one that finds the Tilesets very repetitive and also in my opinion, linear. For a game like Warframe, I feel like linear map design is terrible and inhibits all of the other mechanics in the game like parkour, stealth, and just missions in general. Planning on making a post about tilesets soon and will use you for reference. Good post, Remnant Emperor (Ithloniel), but there are some things that should be tweaked and remade. For example, I do not like the idea that the missions will be RNG-based (you didn't say RNG but you implied).

Edited December 14, 2014 by (PS4)EK_NOX