Warframe And The Possibility Of An Open World...maybe....probably....probably Not

[Drazhar14]

Open world for main hub areas, sure. Maybe have an open world city with outskirts for each planet. But to counter the grindy and repetitive nature of warframe, levels are randomly laid out. Unless they have a way to randomly generate open world levels, I'm not sure about it...

 

I definitely want to see larger tiles be added though. 

[Brahkest]

It would be pretty neat if an open world-esk system was made into a massive quest sort of thing. Where the world could be generated into this massive explorable thing with multiple missions and nodes in it (sort of like a planet but each node has lore and relevance to each other rather than just a set of random missions). This world could be explored using your liset/warframe/archwing/something to visit certain areas to start missions or to simply explore key points of interest. When not visiting the world, you would simply be in your liset doing missions or whatever as normal but when you want, you could fly to the world and continue more of the massive quest. 

 

This world could have some interactions with npcs, see some architecture or cities, and maybe some wild critters to fight or existing factions like corpus or grineer. The entire world would be somewhat open, being able to explore at your leisure but also structured as warframe is now, with quests and objectives. This would be a pretty big undertaking but I would love something like this, especially for environments since DE does a spectacular job with their tilesets. 

 

I always liked the quest system they implemented but I didn't like how every quest went through existing tilesets that looked the same as normal missions. It would be great if quests were set in a way that it actually felt like the world changed with them or had notable places that you would remember. Imagine an entire questline set in a corpus city and you get to explore things like a moa factory, an active shipyard, cultural points of interest or a Nef Anyo credit fountain all in the same area, not just in one mission after another. That would be neat I think :) I dunno about the specs of the game or engine but one can dream. 

 

*edit: grammar

Edited May 26, 2015 by Brahkest

[Djangofett]

The relays could be more "open-world" but instead, its all cramped up. I cant count all of the possibilities of what they could do to make the Relays more interactive.

[RabidBunny]

I'd like to see something like this instead of invasion. I'd love to see 10-20 Tenno storming a massive fortress complex during an invasion, at the moment attacking a ship 5 times doesn't feel grand enough.

[(XBOX)Lorewalker1022]

@Brahkest - I love the quests they have as well. But, like yourself, I do wish that some of these quests were done on tilesets that didn't resemble so many other tilesets as well. But you win some and you lose some.

[Gale47]

I'm pretty sure the engine limitations are a major hurdle when it comes to creating an "open-world" instance in Warframe. I mean, just look at Archwing. They had to shrink down everything so that the game could handle one such large map. I'd say this speaks volumes about whether open-world instances are viable in Warframe or not.

[Zirion_Bk]

This is a really interesting idea. Having a bit of an open world could add oh so much to the story and immersion of the game. I've always wanted to visit an actual Corpus or Grineer, or at least the Colony we either saved or destroyed during the Vor's Prize Questline.

[fatpig84]

I'd like to see something like this instead of invasion. I'd love to see 10-20 Tenno storming a massive fortress complex during an invasion, at the moment attacking a ship 5 times doesn't feel grand enough.

 

The PS4 nearly exploded when they had 8 men raids. Major FPS issues or the machine nearly grinding to a halt.

10 to 20 isn't happening (cos console players will complain).

Edited May 26, 2015 by fatpig84

[AcceI]

Lel wont happen. I wish it would but nah.

[(XBOX)Lorewalker1022]

@ fatpig84 - yeah I saw the same issues with fps on the last devstream or something. I think they were saying that's why they hadn't brought it over to console or something like that. But having more of an open world would be awesome. At least we should be able to interact with some civilians here and there (more than just seeing some guys standing around the relays), take some corpus or grineer side-quests (with some lore-adding story and plot maybe) here and there on new tilesets with new npcs....just to keep things fresh.

[RabidBunny]

The PS4 nearly exploded when they had 8 men raids. Major FPS issues or the machine nearly grinding to a halt.

10 to 20 isn't happening (cos console players will complain).

 

Fair play, i'm pretty sure DE could fiddle around and get something working. There was a bug on the PC a while ago (I think it was the Nova update) where people were getting 20-30 players joining.

[Omnimorph]

I've always thought that Warframe would make a better MMO than most of them out there.

 

What exists as Warframe now, with its peer-to-peer, could form a backbone of quick, easy-to-jump-into teamed missions, much like the radio/newspaper missions in City of Heroes/Villains.

 

Then on top of that, DE could gradually build a persistent world, with servers.  Start small (in fact they have started small, with the hubs), build it up and see how it goes. 

 

It seems to me the only way the game can grow - sidewise, so to speak.

 

Long chains of missions in persistent environments, where you can accidentally hook up with other Tenno investigating similar things.  Larger map spaces - zones proper.

 

The game doesn't need to go the whole hog with the type of open world that's really only suitable for wandering adventurers in a fantasy environment (e.g. spider caves, dungeons where people meet up accidentally, as per older MMOs).  But it could have large persistent zones with branching instances.

 

So long as it doesn't go the route of casual=solo and put too much emphasis on individual stories, and so long as it retains the casual=social vibe Warframe has, it could be a great thing.  It might even get people talking to each other in MMOs again, instead of grimly going about their business, heads down, collecting shinies.

 

I recommend the team really look into how City of Heroes/Villains was done - it did some things wrong, granted (particularly, it lacked endgame), but the one thing it did brilliantly was provide a persistent world (as opposed to just multiplayer) in which people could play casually together, without needing to be in Guilds - where people could form teams for objectives really easily, without it having to be automated, and where PUGs would last for hours, picking people up and dropping them as they went. (Hard to believe such a thing is possible, right?  But that's how it was, and no game has managed the trick since.)

 

Key is to have a "leader" position with certain limited powers, and make it as easy as possible, and as rewarding as possible, to lead teams, so that people get over the courage hump and actually lead teams, invite people, etc., etc.  Also, offer as many opportunities as possible for the team to discuss things, but avoid bones of contention (e.g. in CoX, everyone could see what missions everyone had, so the PUG would quickly discuss what mission to do next; but there was no "dungeon chest" style loot that people could argue over and have bad vibes about).  Also, difficultly was scaleable by the team leader, so if, knowing s/he'd invited a few newbies, the leader could pitch the difficulty just right - to be challenging enough, but not overwhelming. 

 

Also really important is to have mission objectives (bar those which might be intimately story-related) automatically completed for a mission if you're on a team that's doing the mission, even if it's someone else's mission.  Don't put anything in the way of people playing together.

 

Because of the dead end of casual=solo that all developers seem to have gone down, all recent MMOs have signally failed to provide a casual social gaming experience. Warfame, with its solid multiplayer team basis, could be the first to buck the trend.

Edited May 26, 2015 by Omnimorph

[Xriborg]

From a technical perspective, I just don't see it being possible for this game.

 

The game has been designed for instance based multiplayer from the ground up. You've seen how buggy and jerky the Tenno relays are, and that's just people walking around. 

 

It's not that it isn't a cool idea. This would be a better pitch for a sequel rather than an addition to this game.

[wtrmlnjuc]

Concerning what others have said about the rogue-like-like nature of the game and its randomly generated levels, I could see it being possible if they do some tech undertaking and use one skybox and a bunch of open air tiles. Add some filler assets, create a "tunnel" connector creator and you'd be set.

 

As for open world, I'd like to see some planetside hideouts/speakeasies for Tenno and those looking for them to interact.

[indaris]

I don't really think open world fits Warframe at all. I certainly don't want it. I spend enough time running around the nodes, I don't need large open zones with random mobs.

WF has a nice design where you can get in, do a mission in a few minutes and then extract. Feels very ninja. Running around picking flowers and chasing butterflies is more of a Skyrim thing.

[Z123FFSS89]

I too would love this but I do remember in a devstream(not sure which one but it was archwing related) Scott said something along the lines of "planets are just for show and it'd be too much to implement." Not his exact words but that's what I got from it. I doubt we'll get it plus all the planets are getting destroyed. I do agree it holds the game back though.

[smithf]

OP Topic brings a chilling picture to my mind:

 

 

Imagine Conclave, 100x larger and having 1000 times more people...

[(XBOX)Lorewalker1022]

^ that would be insane....lol

[(XBOX)Grihaly]

Even if Warframe became open world, console wouldn't be able handle it.

[(XBOX)LordPuck]

Even if Warframe became open world, console wouldn't be able handle it.

Do you even Neverwinter?? :p

[(XBOX)Grihaly]

Do you even Neverwinter?? :p

Negative Ghostrider.

[(XBOX)LordPuck]

Negative Ghostrider.

Its free. Try it fer siths n giggles..... youll be back because no guns though lol

[(XBOX)Grihaly]

youll be back because no guns though lol

Exactly why I haven't tried it.

[(XBOX)Lorewalker1022]

I think it's time for Warframe to go full on Skyrim or Witcher 3 lolol...jk jk jk