Making Missions More Interesting: Mini-Scenarios

[motorfirebox]

One way to make missions a little less Diablo-like would be to have premade drop-in scenarios that can occur in a mission. For instance, you're running through an Exterminate mission, and suddenly the Lotus warns you that there's a dug-in sniper up ahead. Whenever you leave cover, the sniper will try to get a bead on you; if he does, he'll snipe you for massive damage (maybe even flat percentile damage), generally enough to one-shot any frame through shields and maybe even through Iron Skin and other protections. So you have to work your way from cover to cover, fighting the enemies between you and the sniper's position, disable a few directional mines that the sniper set up to protect himself, and finally take out the sniper. If there's an area with no cover, then one tenno will have to jump out and get the sniper's attention while the rest sprint across the open area. Alternatively, if one of the tenno has a sniper rifle or bow of their own, they can try to take the sniper out that way.

 

Another example, there's a massive energy gate blocking your way. You can drain power from the energy gate by hacking four consoles; each hacked console drains the gate faster, but the consoles' active security detects the hack after a few seconds and begins routing power back to the gate, forcing you to re-hack each console every ten seconds or so. Essentially, it's a miniature Intercept mission that completes after one round.

 

Scenarios like this can appear in basically any map during any mission. In fact, since many such scenarios would probably require custom map tiles, each scenario could just be a map tile that gets dropped in, with enemy AI programmed to fill the necessary roles.

[SaucyTuckermax]

I like this idea

[metroidman12311]

we used to have this very early in the game but people complained about having the mission change during the run

[Brandr_]

Already have things like this. The lotus will rarely change the objective to something else

As for your idea, they'd make the game even more boring than it already is.

Rules of video games: 1: If it can randomly one-shot you with no warning: Bad idea

2: Having to find the three/four/five keys/terminals to open/powerdown the door is artificial time wall: Terrible idea, bloats the game with nothing but crap, at least fluff shows effort

[motorfirebox]

we used to have this very early in the game but people complained about having the mission change during the run

Well, I'm not talking about having the mission objective change (though I'm not opposed to it, either). These drop-in scenarios wouldn't change the mission objective, they would just provide some variety during the mission. So if you're running an Exterminate mission and you run into a sniper scenario, the sniper is just one of the mobs you have to exterminate.

 

Already have things like this. The lotus will rarely change the objective to something else

As for your idea, they'd make the game even more boring than it already is.

Rules of video games: 1: If it can randomly one-shot you with no warning: Bad idea

2: Having to find the three/four/five keys/terminals to open/powerdown the door is artificial time wall: Terrible idea, bloats the game with nothing but crap, at least fluff shows effort

We don't already have this, no. You're talking about completely change the mission objective; I'm talking about adding specific, premade scenarios to existing missions.

 

As for my energy gate idea, two things—first, it's just one possibility, if it doesn't turn out to be enjoyable, there are any number of other possibilities; two, it's a gameplay challenge, not a flat time wall. Unless a standard Intercept mission is also a time wall?

Edited January 10, 2015 by motorfirebox

[metroidman12311]

still, it's unneeded, to have an enemy such as a sniper (which grineer and corpus already have) would mean creating a room just for that enemy. to put a sniper into a random place on most tileset rooms wouldn't work because they were made for players to get around not for a sniper battle.

[motorfirebox]

Yeah, as I said, a lot of these scenarios would require a custom room. And while the Grineer and Corpus do have mobs who are armed with sniper rifles, they don't provide significantly different gameplay. They're just another mob type to shoot or stab. I'm talking about adding variety to gameplay.

[S.T.M.P.D]

The idea, at its core, is very interesting: Minefields, cliff scaling, etc. Done right it could be unique; done wrong it could add bloat akin to door lockouts.