Dynamic Missions A.k.a. Rng Done Right (Must Read)

[Lord-KEK]

this post is related to this other one i did on general feedback, feel free to check out https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/490616-a-radical-idea-for-a-new-game-mode-hardcore-mode-no-grind-required/#entry5518272

 

however this post is focused on how this idea of dynamic missions could look like, also i know this sounds kinda like fan fiction, but i believe the game Already has the tools necessary to make it happen and DE has some very talented personnel, you can make this happen DE i believe in you.

 

so here it goes, but remember, the sequence of events are determined by RNG, this is just an example.

 

The mission starts like this:

 

LOTUS: One of our top spies, is trapped inside an orokin tower, you mission is to get him out and bring him to me, however we don't have the means to get you into the tower directly, so you will have to use a grineer void portal to get there.

 good luck tenno.

 

-so the tenno cell, starts on the earth tileset, following the objective marker, to the location of the void portal (like usual) , however in the middle of the mission...

 

LOTUS: Tenno you must secure the area before going trough the portal, leave no survivors.

 

-Basically a "change of plans" now is a small exterminate mission (30/40 enemies?)

-after all enemies are dead, the tenno reach the void portal (again following the objective marker)

-but guess what, "the sisters" (Sprag and Ven)  are there with the void key, the players must kill them to get the key, so the portal can be activated

-Players go trough the portal, now is the Orokin Tower tileset... (like void sabotage in reverse)

 

LOTUS: The neural sentry knows you are here, it has cut off all life support systems, stand by...

 

-now its a void survival, but somewhat different, because:

 

LOTUS: Tenno you must reactivate the life support as fast as you can, find the consoles and hack them, i will provide A LIMITED number of life support capsules in the mean time.

 

-remember those consoles inside those dead end rooms in the void? players must find them all and hack them, no ciphers allowed, highest hacking difficulty.

-all of this in the middle of a regular survival mission.

-so if the players succeed, then:

 

LOTUS: Good job tenno, find the operative and get him out

 

-players follow the objective marker to a previously unaccessible part of the tileset (Red door/ locked door) to the middle of the Void Defense tileset

-in the middle, a cryopod with the rescue target inside

-now a player has to hack the cryopod to rescue the target, but then this happens:

 

Corrupted Vor: do you really think it was going to be that easy? you will not escape this sacred place alive, tenno!

 

(distorted transmission) LOTUS: Tenno... the cryopod... defend it.....(transmission ends)

 

-now is a defense mission of just 5 waves, corrupted vor spans on the 5th wave, lots of corrupted enemies attack the cryopod, from all directions

-if the players "win" this happens (read bellow) if the players lose (Read next post)

 

-the cryopod releases the rescue target (regular rescue mission)

 

LOTUS: Excellent job tenno, get the hostage out of the tower before the key melts down

 

-Basically the extraction part of the rescue mission, with a timer

- after the players return to the earth tileset, the room of the void portal, is empty...(the extermination apparently worked)

 

LOTUS: well done tenno, get to extraction

 

-the extraction marker appears, to lead the players to the extraction point, however when the players get there...

 

Vayhek: Tenno!! how dare you to come here and destroy my beautiful portal! Brothers!! Kill them! kill them all!!

 

-now i envision this part like this; its similar to the third stage of the Trial (Raid)

-four towers, have to be destroyed with tritium bombs, but NOT to make Vayhek vulnerable, but to the destroy, some anti-air defenses on top of them

(these anti -air defenses prevent the liset from landing)

-so: destroy 4 towers, while dealing with Vayhek terra frame, plenty of grineer units, and keeping the hostage alive at the same time

(Madness i know, but potentially very fun)

 

and then the tenno extract, mission ends.

 

LOTUS: Mission complete, the operative is safe, chose your reward (player gets to choose reward, blah blah blah)

 

as i said in my general feedback post, this is AN EXPERIMENT, i do not say this is the way warframe should be,  this is just a concept, that i will like the community and the devs to explore and discuss.

 

TL;DR dynamic missions could potentially make the game way more exiting, immersive, challenging, less repetitive, more complex, and more lore related.

Basically RNG for the missions, and not the rewards.

 

plenty of combinations could come out of this, in the next post i detail what if the mission fails.

 

also many thanks to this user, he has a similar concept for assasination missions, check it out https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/451204-assassination-missions-rework-dynamic-challenging-stealthy/

WHAT IF the hostage dies? mission failed? NOT THIS TIME!

 

this is to give a second chance to the player to get "second class" rewards (no prime parts here D: )

 

so lets assume the cryopod is destroyed, or the hostage dies cuz of reasons, instead of "mission failed" the players get a second chance for another mission, should they chose

 

here is an example:

 

(Now lotus is kinda pissed now) 

LOTUS: you have failed me tenno, the operative is dead, this mission is a failure

however if you don't want to return in shame, and empty handed i have another mission for you, your choice.

 

-a menu pops up, similar to the menu that pops after 5 waves of defense are completed with the following options

 

(Left) Abort mission (Right) Accept new mission

 

-abort mission is a no-brainer, the player returns to the liset like usual

 

-Accept new mission, will give the players a new primary objective (this will require a loading screen i believe)

 

so here it goes, remember this is an example:

 

LOTUS: i have received information, that suggest the corpus are responsible for the fate of our agent.

you will have to infiltrate corpus data vaults and retrieve any information you find

don't fail me again tenno.

 

-so using the loading screen as a segway (sort of) the players are now in a corpus ship

 

LOTUS: To infiltrate the data vaults you must first, destroy the power core of the ship, this will cause a temporary disruption in the vaults security protocols

 

 

-basically a sabotage mission, the spy 2.0 vaults are present but inaccessible until the power core is destroyed

-So the players destroy the power core, the players hack the vaults, like usual but then...

 

Corpus Crewman: (corpus language) "the tenno are here, initiate ship lockdown"

 

-alarms goes of, plenty of corpus start spaning, areas of the ship enter a perma-lockdown, and then:

 

ORDIS: Operator regular extraction is impossible, (then, gliching) ILL HANDLE IT!!

 

-a part of the hull blows up, the players are dragged into outer space, in some sort of cinematic segway, then...

 

ORDIS: Archwing deployed operator, (then, gliching) GET DA HELL OUTTA THERE!! (then normal again) ill be waiting for you at the extraction point operator.

 

-SO the mission turns into archwing, kinda like arch-sabotage (the extraction part)

-With multiple lockdowns across the tileset (bullet sponge doors) (no hacking required)

 

and then well, the players reach extraction and the mission is over

 

The players gets to chose "second class rewards" kinda like a consolation price, blah blah blah

 

 

so what do you think? do you find this interesting? do you find this more fun that playing void survival/defense over and over?

 

now this is more of a personal question to the game developers, i hope (if you read this) to take this as a philosophical question rather than pointless criticism/personal attack.

 

Do you (DE) want your game to be remembered as an awesome third person shooter/hack and slash hybrid with dynamic gameplay and a very happy player base? 

or a grindfest full of repetitive gameplay, awesome ideas but poor execution, and a forum full of players complaining about RNG and stuff?

 

i remember myself playing for days at a time, unreal tournament, an awesome master piece, so much fun, such a great legacy

 

well those are my 2 cents, i might get a warning post for the last part but i had to get that out of my chest

Edited July 22, 2015 by Lord_GoldenEye

[-Amaterasu-]

Corrupted Vor: do you really think it was going to be that easy? you will not escape this sacred place alive, tenno!

change "Corrupted Vor" to "Corrupted Hek" and you may have just created the single most convoluted mission I have ever seen could be nice to see game types merged so they all get some form of play

[ShadowBot-X-4.9z]

actually sounds like an interesting "event" before it can be implemented into the game. 
can accumulate points for the stages completed, then be rewarded based on most points obtained from one run, like most event missions.
nightmare mode should be created.

Edited July 22, 2015 by ShadowBot-X-4.9z

[Lord-KEK]

change "Corrupted Vor" to "Corrupted Hek" and you may have just created the single most convoluted mission I have ever seen could be nice to see game types merged so they all get some form of play

 

that is just evil, muhahahhaa

[BlackCoMerc]

Good ideas here. Love the combined mission types.

 

Couple of things: Please, ditch the "No Ciphers, Hardest Hacking Difficulty" clause. Hacking mini games - not just this one; ALL of them, ever - are sufficiently annoying without taking away the Ciphers we pay credits to craft. 

 

No random, forced Archwing segments. Not every player has a maxed out Archwing frame or even enjoys the game mode. Forcing players into this mode without prior notice could mean an auto-fail for a lot of players.

 

Still, this is something DE should look at. Might make you think twice about the 'best for this mission type' frame.

Edited July 22, 2015 by BlackCoMerc

[Lord-KEK]

Good ideas here. Love the combined mission types.

 

Couple of things: Please, ditch the "No Ciphers, Hardest Hacking Difficulty" clause. Hacking mini games - not just this one; ALL of them, ever - are sufficiently annoying without taking away the Ciphers we pay credits to craft. 

 

No random, forced Archwing segments. Not every player has a maxed out Archwing frame or even enjoys the game mode. Forcing players into this mode without prior notice could mean an auto-fail for a lot of players.

 

Still, this is something DE should look at. Might make you think twice about the 'best for this mission type' frame.

 

yes you got a point there, for that i suggest, an adjustable dificulty setting or dificulty based on the planet the dynamic mission takes place( you know earth-easy, ceres-hard)

 

and a lable to let the player know that the mission COULD contain archwing segments

 

that is to prevent spoilers xD

[Chr1st16n]

This is possibly the best thing I read tonight

[Heptimus]

Thought about adding your "Hardcore Mode" into this gamemode? It would be an immense challenge that i'm sure a lot of veteran/skilled players would enjoy.

I think the mission could contain Archwing if it was selected prior to starting the mission. Basically, you'd get a large amount of settings to tweak, like the faction(s) you are facing, Bosses, Archwing / no Archwing, Hardcore mode / Normal mode, the types of gamemodes (extermination, defense, rescure, etc.) you'd prefer the mission to contain (though this might be exploitable) and other options.

The problem about this is that they would need to do voice acting, custom animations, transitions, custom / altered objectives and probably other things, which might take a while.

However, they could make a 'cut-down' version, with no voice acting, custom animations, transitions or whatever. Then players could play this gamemode and give valuable feedback, despite lacking some features. After all, this game is still a Beta, better use it for what it's worth.

[Lord-KEK]

Thought about adding your "Hardcore Mode" into this gamemode? It would be an immense challenge that i'm sure a lot of veteran/skilled players would enjoy.

I think the mission could contain Archwing if it was selected prior to starting the mission. Basically, you'd get a large amount of settings to tweak, like the faction(s) you are facing, Bosses, Archwing / no Archwing, Hardcore mode / Normal mode, the types of gamemodes (extermination, defense, rescure, etc.) you'd prefer the mission to contain (though this might be exploitable) and other options.

The problem about this is that they would need to do voice acting, custom animations, transitions, custom / altered objectives and probably other things, which might take a while.

However, they could make a 'cut-down' version, with no voice acting, custom animations, transitions or whatever. Then players could play this gamemode and give valuable feedback, despite lacking some features. After all, this game is still a Beta, better use it for what it's worth.

yes of course and i see the connection to the "mission crafting" that the devs were discussing for the new starchart

 

but the key is to make the mission objectives as random as possible to avoid, repetitive gameplay