Unlock "planet-Surface Tenno Hubs"! With An Rng Mission Area!

[Vorpal_Ocelot]

I was thinking about what could make this game feel more "whole" without adding a ton of "new" content, but instead using what it's best at, load-in mission style gameplay and dividing up current content into Rank appropriate limitations to make Mastery Rank worth something more.

 

If you're like many players who've played a few months, I'm sure you've realized that after you finish all the planet "node" missions, You move onto Voids and Derelicts that you just repeat hoping for loot and wait for new quest updates...

 

Now if you're just starting it feels like a good chain of quests, but after a month and a half you've seen everything there is to see. So I've brainstormed up an idea to "extend" what we love, without making it feel like a repeat... and here it is:

 

Planet-Level appropriate "Planet-Surface Tenno Hubs" with an RNG mission area! RNG Generated, like the mission nodes, but with a more "open" non-linear feel. Let me go into some detail:

 

After you play through a planet's mission nodes, all nodes besides the planet boss-node, you unlock a planet-level appropriate "Planet-Surface" style Tenno Hub (Like the Relays, but it'll be on the surface more like a "stronghold") You can say lore-wise that you've "secured" the planet's surface enough to start a Tenno Hub on it. These Planet-Surface Tenno Hubs will act identical to Relay stations, only on the surface of the planet in appearance and act like a small planet-side "Tenno Stronghold" (If you're on Earth's surface Tenno Hub, it'd be like a jungle, Mars like a desert and so on)

 

These "Tenno Strongholds" will simply be a planet surface relay, essentially. You could then recruit a squad of 4 Tenno who also have the Planet unlocked and load-screen out of the Hub by walking out of an exit. The loadscreen could be a short video of your squad Tenno walking through the environment (similar to Lisets flying down to the planet, but instead a short video of Tenno traversing over planet-unique terrain for just a few seconds) and you'd load into an RNG generated area. 

 

However, these RNG generated areas will not be linear, they will have a medium circular circumference area, not "huge" just medium in size and circular unlike linear mission nodes. These areas then can be explored (You can easily in 5 minutes of fast movement make it to any side-boundary). They would feature wildlife, plantlife and collectable resources as well as enemy patrols. These enemies are top-level for that planet, so Earth's enemies would be max level 15-17, because Earths mission nodes only go up to level 15 enemies.

 

(notice before I said you do *not* have to beat the boss node, just all the other mission nodes, to unlock these planet-side Tenno Hubs) **Reason being Boss nodes are sometimes significantly higher level than the mission nodes, Earth's boss node is level 20-25, the highest mission node is level 15**

 

The point, though, is while your squad explores someone stumbles across a "mission trigger." 2-3 mission triggers per area, like you find a cave and the Lotus pops up, marks the cave on the minimap and says exterminate the enemy within and it continues like an extermination mission. When the cave is empty you can walk out of the cave and look for the other two mission triggers. Note it's not a HUGE cave, but in fact very small, just a couple of good rooms, less than 75 level-appropriate enemies to kill) and explore again to find another "mission trigger". At the end of each "mission trigger" the squad gets a vote to either extract from the area via liset pick-up or continue looking for the next mission trigger. After 2-3 "mission triggers" you're squad is extracted via liset and taken back to the stronghold to buy/sell supplies for the next go at it.

 

Example: You load out of the "planet-side Tenno Hub" with your 4 or less Tenno squad. You load into and explore a medium circular RNG generated area until someone triggers "mission orders" and the Lotus marks and tells you what to do. It takes no longer than 5 minutes on average to trigger mission orders via exploration because the area is NOT huge, it's just circular and non-linear. You complete orders and decide to look for another trigger (up to 2-3 triggers) or extract after completing one. These areas have the highest level enemies that that particular planet can have relative to it's mission nodes. (Example: Earth has level 15 mission nodes, so this area would only have up to level 15-17 enemies.)

 

You might find a cave/stronghold to exterminate enemies, rescue a prisoner, or spy and extract data from. You might find yourself suddenly bombarded by waves of patrols and have to defend against a few waves. You might find something worth defending. Things like that, in this single RNG generated medium-circumference planet-side area. With the option to complete 2-3 discovered mission orders before extraction. You'd never know what was coming, so you'd want a well-balanced group of Warframes.

 

These areas would yield more resources and higher loot values than the node missions.

The highest level planet-appropriate enemies.

 

And the Tenno Hub on the planets surface would have 2-3 blueprints or appearance gear you can only get on that surface-side Tenno Hub. These blueprints don't have to be "new" they could be removed from the Market and put planet-side. Say for example, Earth's a low-level Grineer planet so its planet-side Tenno Hub would have 1 grineer weapon blueprints, 1 Tenno weapon blueprint with a Rank 2 limitation added to them. So you can now only buy a Grakata rifle and Furis pistol from the Earth planet-side tenno hub, and they are given a Rank 2 limitation. (Both of those weapons can be built mostly from Earth resources)

 

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How does the Warframe player base feel about this idea? Please give me sure yes or no feedback as well as additional simple ideas. Nothing that would be a ton of extra work for DE, but would make us feel like we've really done something other than unlocked another planet to "Node Grind" through!!

Edited August 4, 2015 by Vorpal_Ocelot

[Volume]

Sounds like you're looking for a mixture of Global Agenda and Tabula Rasa.

 

Both games are dead but they had lots of good ideas, this sort of thing included.

[Jamescell]

I'd rather see the larger player ship first. 

[IX-44]

Great idea. Would love to see a more open exploration tileset style than the usual run through it and kill everything tilesets we have so far.

 

 

 

Doubt we'd see it in the next two years though...

[Vorpal_Ocelot]

I love this game, and customizations, I just get so bummed out sometimes that im all decked out and feel like there is so little to do...