The Future Of Warframe: How I Think Missions Can Be Improved

[Synthex]

Okay, So i was on the Design Council chat yesterday discussing the game with a few founders, and here's what we all thought, in the long run, would add more variety, replayability, and just plain fun to Warframe.

 

Firstly, more non-combat scenarios. We thought something along the lines of more parkour courses, environment interaction, and puzzles. This would add many possible scenarios to the game. For example, a tenno lands at the entrance of an ancient temple on earth with the goal of retrieving an artficact. They have to figure out how to parkour their way through the temple, maybe having to explore it much less linearly to defeat a couple of mini-bosses to unlock the door to the main chamber. After this, they will be able to retrieve the artifact and maybe awaken some frozen guardians which they will have to defeat or run away from. I think having a bunch of variability and multiple objectives in one level will add a lot more depth to the game and will make it infinitely more interesting.

 

Secondly, adding multiple ways of completing an objective. For example, if a tenno is tasked with gathering intel from the corpus, it would be cool if they weren't locked into one scenario, but could achieve this in multiple ways, like finding the ship captain and interrogating him with the choice to kill or spare him, finding the ship's databank and hacking it (with some sort of puzzle) to retrieve the info, climbing stealthily through vents to overhear coversations, or even something else. I think this would greatly decrease the linear feel of the game and add more options even if you're doing the same mission type. It would also be cool if there were multiple objectives, some of which were optional, or objectives which influenced each other. In the past, there was a multiple objective system in warframe, but it wasn't much fun becuase after completing an objective, the lotus would tell you to do something else. there was no context and no sequence of events leading to the second objective. To make objective transfering effective, the player has to see a scenario play out during a mission and see the context of the objective change.

 

Thirdly, more wide, open, and vertical maps. Many stealth games like Dishonored, Thief, and Styx, to name a few, have large, open vertical maps which allow the player to take many different paths to their goals and allow for the option of different gameplay styles like stealth, parkour, going in and killing everything all in one mission. These maps also give the player a sense that they're part of one gigantic world despite being instanced. These large maps are also just visually stunning. These large maps serve the second point of having multiple avenues of completing one objective.

 

More opportunities for discovery would make the game a lot cooler, something like finding hidden objectives in maps which would either change the mission altogether or change the goal of the mission. Say, you're supposed to destroy a heavily-guarded ship by going in and destrotying the core, but the difficulty of going after the objective directly is very high (maybe because of loads of robot proxies, code hacking, minibosses, whatever). However, on their way to the objective, a player finds a locked corpus door which the can hack. They find a dungeon with a grineer prisoner. The player can choose to kill them or help them escape. The player will be able to escort the grineer to a point where the can be picked up by their comrades, and the grineer call in a warship to attack the Corpus ship where their ally was imprisoned, destroying the ship. The player has effectively completely changed the course of the mission, but completed the objective of destroying the corpus ship nontheless. I guess this ties into my second point of multiple ways of completing a mission as well.

 

I really loved how in Warframe, it was possible for grineer or corpus to invade each other's missions while the player was in them. This is the kind of random event which has the potential to be used very effectively. In the past, there wasn't much immersion in the invasions, the only thing that happened is that grineer spawned in a corpus map and vice versa. This could be so much cooler. Random events have the potential to make the game MUCH more exciting. For example during grineer invasions of curpus ships, instead of just making grineer randomly spawn, the environment could be changed. Grineer pods smash into cielings and walls, lights flicker and shut off, red alarms go off, corpus run around, grineer slaughter them and so on. Making this change in environment and unit behavior would make the game much more atmospheric. Also adding other random events, not just invasions, could improve the game a lot. For example, a player is doing a sabotage mission, but an asteroid smashes into the ship and breaks it in half. The player has to reach the objective on the other broken half nd therefore has to enter an archwing sequence to get to the other side. Stuff like this would make the game a bit more unpredictable and just fun to play because you don't always know what to expect.

 

The last point I wanted to make was related to combat. Right now, especially at high levels, players just blow through levels at breakneck speed, and don't focus much on combat. Shoot, run, shoot, run, shoot, run, done. Making combat a bit more tactical can really make the game feel a bit more challenging and can make even high level players actually focus on combat instead of rushing. This can be implemented in different ways. Making more units cooperate with each other and set up tactical scenarios for the players which can't easily be rashed through. For example, players need to get through a hallway, but there are grineer patroling it. The enemies are powerful, so big groups can be deadly, and rushing head-on should not always be a viable solution. Say, if there's a grineer sield unit and a bombard, the shield unit can have a large shield which is similar to one that roman legionaires had, and the bombard hides directly behind the unit, so he can't be shot from the front. He periodically glimses out and shoots rockets at the players, who have no opportunity to take him head on. Players will have to use abilities or try to time a wallrun around the duo so they can rush past them and take them on from the back. If there's a group of shield lancers, they can form something of a shield wall to surrounf the players or puch them to a certain position on the map allowing other units to close in. Maybe adding units with tactical purposes will make gameplay much more interesting. Also, making enemies at higher levels bullet sponges that do little damage is a bit uninteresting. Make them do high damage and have decent health, but give them a vulnerability which can be exploited. For example, one unit can be weak to melee, and the unit potecting him is weakened by blind. this can create an opportunity for player cooperation that allows a player to cast an ability to weaken the first one as another player rushes in to melee the second. Making more units and making them actually dangerous whilst giving them all tactical roles and appropriate strengths/weaknesses will force players to approach combat with more care instead of blowing through it without thinking.

 

I really hope someone from DE sees this. I don't expect any of this to be implemented, I just want to throw some ideas so people can mull them over and just consider them or maybe read them and come up with an idea of their own. I'm pretty open to any criticism and would really like to hear what the players think of this. Thanks.

 

 

[eksby]

These are really great ideas. I think if there are more tactical enemies, our warframes should also have the ability to get up faster. Right now the knockdowns brings you down for a second or two, which can get you killed if enemies are more difficult. You can get stunlocked down too easily with the current system, if there are many enemies with knockdowns around. And they're space ninjas, honestly they should have a quicker recovery time, maybe something like Metal Gear Rising does. 

[Momoynator]

I'm all down for parkour maps. I'm a big fan of the Assassin's Creed and Prince of Persia series after all.

[saltshaker42]

These are pretty good ideas. +1

[Damuranashi]

This is so wonderful! And now with the incoming syndicates, you can do the objective in a way that can make one syndicate like you and other hate you.

[latarzanla]

Maybe Syndicates will inject some form of your points in the game. I would love random events, but instead of the Lotus saying her usual stuff i'd put Ordis do some sort of translation of the invading/defending faction's strategy so the player could react accordingly.

[Synthex]

This is so wonderful! And now with the incoming syndicates, you can do the objective in a way that can make one syndicate like you and other hate you.

This is something I thought of but didn't really add because the post was terribly long as it was.

 

Also, sorry for not commenting on my own post for 7 hours. I had to go to art class :P

[Lakitel]

 Some of these ideas have been suggested before, but overall its solid work. I think that the main point here is that DE should start to focus more on horizontal expansion of the mechanics that already exist in the game, instead of adding new ones for the sake of vertical expansion.

[taiiat]

I think that the main point here is that DE should start to focus more on horizontal expansion of the mechanics that already exist in the game, instead of adding new ones for the sake of vertical expansion.

and i've seen Reviews for Warframe and other games that reflect this. games that have a long road, but the Reviewer is far more focused on that it's a long one or two lane road, and that it starts to get stale when that road never really changes.

 

and that's certainly a big issue. those Reviewers pointing that out so adamantly as while they acknowledged there was a long road ahead, so that you'd have something to do for a long time to come, what you had to do was very limited, lacking horizontal expansiveness, allowing Players to play how they want.

and then those Reviewers stopped playing the game they were reviewing long before they got to the 'end', because they got bored of doing the same thing, so finished up their Review and moved on to something else.

 

 

that should be a concern. player retention vs shiny things that attract prospective customers. there's a lot of fish in the sea, and when you're already popular, you don't need to hold shiny things up to get attention so much anymore. make something people want to play, and they'll come naturally. but more importantly, as many of them as possible will stay.

 

i'm sure we've all atleast once played a game that got stale quickly, and found out that the rest was.... effectively just more of the same, and lost most of our interest, having little to look forward to.

[Synthex]

~zzziiip~

i'm sure we've all atleast once played a game that got stale quickly, and found out that the rest was.... effectively just more of the same, and lost most of our interest, having little to look forward to.

Absolutely right. Also, the whole design of warframe should lead it to being a gameplay-driven game. The whole idea is just "go out there and just do missions". If this is 99% of what people can do in the actual game, then the 99% should be good. I would have understood if there were some role-playing aspects or some kind of story, but there just isn't. The whole game is missions. To make the 99% good, the first thing that should happen is by making it feel less like the same thing. They try to do this by changig factions and tilesets, but that only makes the game look different, not feel different. Players should feel like they're actually encountering different situations that aren't repetitive. Also, if the combat was outstanding, then it would have made up for the repetitiveness somewhat, but it's not. Player's don't even focus on combat (which is why I suggested changing it). All warframe levels are just essentially running down a hallway.

[Xeo_Nespydonum]

Sounds great!  More diversity is always good.

[Synthex]

 Some of these ideas have been suggested before, but overall its solid work. I think that the main point here is that DE should start to focus more on horizontal expansion of the mechanics that already exist in the game, instead of adding new ones for the sake of vertical expansion.

Yeah, the main idea was to make missions much more varied and more interesting to do, and to make players run missions for fun rather than to grind for rewards.

[taiiat]

and to make players run missions for fun rather than to grind for rewards.

! the madness.

 

 

on topic:

it is indeed important to make Missions feel less samey, and not only for player retention, but that's certainly a significant part.

 

it's such a core part of the game, that it seems like an obvious answer to me that it would be important for that large bulk to be a wide enough foundation that the rest of the game can also have sufficient horizontal option.

i wouldn't say the combat as a whole is... not good, persay. it plays well for most Guns (aside from some still being tied to Framerate, >.>). which i would expect to be the case, since Digital Extremes has a lot of experience with Unreal.

Melee certainly leaves much to be desired, but that's another story.

[TinFoilMkIV]

...

 

Firstly, more non-combat scenarios. We thought something along the lines of more parkour courses, environment interaction, and puzzles. This would add many possible scenarios to the game. For example, a tenno lands at the entrance of an ancient temple on earth with the goal of retrieving an artficact. They have to figure out how to parkour their way through the temple, maybe having to explore it much less linearly to defeat a couple of mini-bosses to unlock the door to the main chamber. After this, they will be able to retrieve the artifact and maybe awaken some frozen guardians which they will have to defeat or run away from. I think having a bunch of variability and multiple objectives in one level will add a lot more depth to the game and will make it infinitely more interesting.

 

Secondly, adding multiple ways of completing an objective. For example, if a tenno is tasked with gathering intel from the corpus, it would be cool if they weren't locked into one scenario, but could achieve this in multiple ways, like finding the ship captain and interrogating him with the choice to kill or spare him, finding the ship's databank and hacking it (with some sort of puzzle) to retrieve the info, climbing stealthily through vents to overhear coversations, or even something else. I think this would greatly decrease the linear feel of the game and add more options even if you're doing the same mission type. It would also be cool if there were multiple objectives, some of which were optional, or objectives which influenced each other. In the past, there was a multiple objective system in warframe, but it wasn't much fun becuase after completing an objective, the lotus would tell you to do something else. there was no context and no sequence of events leading to the second objective. To make objective transfering effective, the player has to see a scenario play out during a mission and see the context of the objective change.

 

...

 

Overall good ideas, I would love to see this sorta thing in game. For one we needs some of the really rare features like the hidden parkour vaults in the void to either be more common when searched for and/or have lesser versions of them in more tilesets. Maybe not quite the blatant deathtrap courses the vaults have but perhaps finding a damaged part of a ship and the course would be inside areas that aren't meant to have people attempting to navigate such as inside actual moving parts of the ship.

 

It would also be nice to have the old faction switch event back but using the invasion type transitions where the opposing faction shows up and eventually transitions into the attackers territory.

 

Lastly I though the gate crash event had an excellent secondary objective system, where it was entirely optional but handed out decent rewards to make exploring and clearing extra areas truly worth while. I'd like to see more things like the caches show up but not necessarily announced right off the bat, perhaps only being notified if you either did something special or wandered close enough to one of the secondary objectives. Also that's one of the big problems with the hidden rooms and such, there are some really cool areas around but they offer virtually nothing of any value whatsoever.

Edited October 19, 2014 by TinFoilMkIV

[Synthex]

Wow, the topic was pretty dead for a while. Anywho, I think that one of the things I mensioned that I want to see the most is bigger / more open maps. Something that makes you feel like you're in a massive space and allows for some freedom of exploration. I think that would be pretty essential for introducing more advanced mechanics like multiple ways to complete objectives and random events, tactical combat etc.