[Mission/npcs] Invasion Commanders And Conquest Rewards Art By Evergreenmind (Updated 12/2 - More Quips)

[Morec0]

If I could make a suggestion:

 

First, perhaps make them more game-play involved, and not just narrative expressions? I mean, demonstrating the plot more would be fine, but I think it should be justified with some game-play purpose first. Perhaps certain commanders are more likely / less likely to betray you, perhaps some are more likely to give you Weapons / Aesthetics / Gear, etc. Even if it's not fighting them, I do think if anything like this was added, they'd have to have some relevance to game-play.

 

Second, I'd like to see some Infestation characters. Regardless of whether or not we'll ever be able to side with the Infestation during Invasions, being threatened or reasoned with by figureheads of the Infestation would be pretty cool, especially if they also had game-play relevance. Things like Infested Cephalons, Amalgamations of flesh and metal, and fallen commanders of the other factions would make sense in this role.

 

Just my two cents; overall this concept expresses a lot of potential.

 

As I see it, these guys are just meant to add to the already-set Invasion system, which gives rewards on their own already. The appearance regularity of these guys aren't even meant to be set in stone - you could be guided by Krawn at one point during the mission run and then by Krim on the next run of that SAME node - which is in the interest of extending their lifespawn and tolerability in the eyes of the playerbase. It's never really you're supporting THEM, it's you're supporting their faction and they're the ones overseeing the Empire or Corporation's work.

 

And certainly vs. Infestation moments could be the case. While I HEAVILY doubt that siding with the Infestation will ever be a thing - they're pretty much "Always Chaotic Evil" - having a voice guide for them might indeed be cool, especially if it opens up room for the Infestation as a character to speak. Though that in itself raises questions of through which creature the Infestation will be speaking - especially since characters like Jordas only are able to exist after the Mutalist strain takes root.

 

But, as is obvious, the current setup is geared towards the Grineer v Corpus loadout, and new quotes would have to be designed around them dealing with the Infestation.

Edited November 15, 2015 by Morec0

[Rhekemi]

I think Krion means while you fight against the Infestation, they'll have smack to talk about you. Not that you will have the option to support them yet. (Though I do believe Krion has some thoughts on that in other threads, so maybe he is coming from the point of view you're addressing.)

 

I maintain (and agree with Krion) that giving them more in-game interaction, on some level, will make this even more appealing than it already is. It's not reductive to the concept.

[Morec0]

I think Krion means while you fight against the Infestation, they'll have smack to talk about you. Not that you will have the option to support them yet. (Though I do believe Krion has some thoughts on that in other threads, so maybe he is coming from the point of view you're addressing.)

 

I maintain (and agree with Krion) that giving them more in-game interaction, on some level, will make this even more appealing than it already is. It's not reductive to the concept.

 

And I agree with that sentiment about the Infestation, my only question was: what would be the face of it? Likely shouldn't be Jordas or Mutalist Alad - given the plot development matters behind them - sort of my initial go-to saying would be "it should be an updated Phorid rather than something new", but that's just me.

 

I personally see such a thing as being too much, given the reward structure already in place with Invasions, and not being able to line up horribly well with the intented randomness of who leads either in the battles - though, thinking about it having it be generated on a node-by-node basis might not be THAT repetitive, though it WOULD require a bit more programming work to get them set in stone. At most I could see the compositions of forces being altered up based on which leader his present.

 

Putting in accessories for something as frequent as invasions would cause issues with DE having to create more and more new content in order to keep the things fresh - it would basically turn into another Baro Ki'teer situation - and the idea of them handing out weapons falls into that same category, but on a worse scale due to the fact numbers would have to be balanced and that would REALLY get in the way of primary revenue methods for DE if we just tried to recycle already-in-game weapons.

 

At BEST I could see perhaps bonus gear bits, but as I personally have a problem with the state of gear and whatnot - ESPECIALLY energy restores - I'd have to give it more thought.

[Krion112]

-First Response-

Well, already I believe the Invasion system is flawed and repetitive, so improving upon it, and justifying it contextually with your characters, sounds like a far superior concept than just adding new characters to suit the existing Invasion system. I mean, if that was it, then why use your characters at all if DE could just use some of the existing characters and put them in that position? Unless your characters are justified by some game-play improvement upon invasions, I don't see much of a use for them when existing characters could be used to provide that dialog instead. See my point?

 

I do believe DE should allow us to fight alongside the Infestation (ie, not during Outbreaks, but during actual Invasions on some of the more difficult planets), but that is an argument for another day. However, I do want to point out, the official statement was that the Infestation is actually Chaotic Neutral, as they are not inherently evil, it's just that their method of survival requires the suffering of others, but they do not intend for it to be sadistic. If you don't believe me, it was talked about when they first brought up the new Infestation design philosophy (at least, if I'm recalling right, because Mynki was discussing how most Fan interpretations of the Infestation are more sadistic than they actually are).

 

The only faction that has demonstrated Chaotic Evil is the Grineer; the Infestation are not intentionally destructive.

 

Either way, though, being a video-game, the game-play should definitely precede lore in this regard, and if DE wanted to allow players to fight by the side of the Infestation, then I say they could include it, even if it took retconning lore to achieve.

 

 

-Second Response-

As you have created new characters for the Grineer and Corpus to represent them in the Invasions, so too was I suggesting you make new characters for the Infestation. I suggested creating characters like corrupt cephalons or infested commanders, but it just needed to be something that could be spoken through by the rest of the hive-mind. It's not necessarily that these two characters would be individuals, but they would exhibit slightly different treatments of the Tenno.

 

As for game-mechanics, I touched on a few things, but I'll elaborate:

 

-Being from specialized parts of their whole factions, perhaps these characters would offer special rewards for the fights they lead. I'm saying each commander is specifically overseeing certain invasions (each faction can be actively apart of two invasions anyway, so maybe each commander is overseeing the different invasions).

For example, with the Grineer, one commander might be apart of Nightwatch, and will give out individual Nightwatch Aesthetics or Wraith Weapons, but the other might have its own variant set, or may even provide an entirely different set of things.

 

-However, each Invasion has a very, very low chance of providing these items and aesthetics, and would be more likely to give out credits and resources instead, but completing any invasions for these specific commanders may gain you slightly above credits or resources, such as mods or perhaps even sigils for these characters.

 

-This system would also alter the enemies you'd fight in combat. Whichever character was apart of Nightwatch would deploy Nightwatch troops alongside the regular soldiers, acting as a much more intimidating force, either helping or hindering the player based upon who they aligned with for this fight.

 

-A betrayal system; depending on the character, in order to help balance the potential greater rewards from this system, they could betray you mid-mission regardless of who you sided with. It would still add a point to who you fought beside, but they may try to kill you in the act of helping them. Certain characters will resist, or even completely ignore, this system, but others, especially the Grineer and Infested, would be more likely to betray you.

Imagine: you've almost finished cleaning up the Corpus, and suddenly the Grineer Commander contacts you, taunting you, and then ordering their Nightwatch squad to destroy you. It'd be a nice twist on top of the normally pretty repetitive game-play of the Invasions. Continued assistance or whatever interactions come afterwards could be provided with dialogue to give it context.

 

-This system could even be expanded to internal struggles, in which the different commanders from the same faction may battle each other over either power or over their ideologies. Tenno fight themselves in the universe (ie, Dark Sectors and Conclave), so it makes sense if our enemies also fought within their own ranks on occasion.

 

The difficulty in coding all this should be no problem; it would of course take time, but I do believe it would be an improvement on the existing system and could provide potential that could be expanded off of in order to make the universe feel more alive while also improving the game's design.

[Morec0]

< snip >

 

As I noted in the OP, the reason for using new characters (these or just brand new ones in total) is to avoid continuity issues. What happens if Regor shows up a few planets after we killed him in an Invasion? Same with Ruk? The idea is that these new characters wouldn't be featured as assassination targets or the like, and thus would be able to logically appear at all locations constantly without any headscratching of "wait, what?" - like how regular Alad V STILL sends Zanuka after you, despite having gone all... meat salad.

 

The Grineer strikes me more as "lawful evil" - being orderly about slaughtering innocents and the like. The chain of command there, while a little weak in some spots, is definitely set up more for that whole thing. As it is, though, I don't think the Infestation should be sideable with, to me is just doesn't make sense - even if they ARE chaotic neutral - for the Tenno to at all try to propagate the disease; even if used against the Grineer and Corpus they have to know allowing it to take root and grow against their enemies would only mean allowing it to possibly spread to innocents.

 

So while, again, I'm very much FOR the idea of the Infestation speaking with us during those attacks, I'm not big on us being able to side with it. But, as you said, this is a debate for another time.

 

---

 

The big thing about the Infestation is that it's really just ONE character, though. One massive True Hivemind, a million voices all thinking and speaking in unity as a single creature, as is demonstrated by Jordas. The question then became one of "who acts as the visual representative of it?", but I have a very neat idea I'm working on for that.

 

 

 

Reworking the invasion system is NOT my intention here, just adding more flair to it to make it a little more unique and interesting. In the future touching back at the Invasion system might be a fine idea, and if you want to use the characters I've presented here for that by all means go ahead. However, for a largest part, I feel that trying to throw in cosmetics and the like would just skew the missions further in one direction or another, because you can't really compare credits or even fielderon to a rarespawn weapon or cosmetic - to me the REAL update to this would be the ideologies on display, the showing of Grineer and Corpus attitudes through the characters that might cause for the more lore-minded players to reconsider one or the other based on their experiences. In that regard maybe tying a certain character pair to any invasion set WOULD be a wise idea.

 

And yes I noted the enemy bit. Bringing in Nightwatch itself MIGHT be a bit overkill, but that would depend on what happens to them when they get introduced proper back into the game. I'm thinking more along the lines of "more lancers for Krawn, more Scorpions for Krim" kinda deal, but there possibility for variation... while, again, HORRIBLY lopsided against the Corpus, would be a welcome addition indeed.

 

The betrayal mechanic WOULD be cool, and I myself have also wished for the ability to just kill EVERYTHING - Grineer and Corpus alike - during those missions, but as I see it in BOTH of these scenarios the current threat is the enemy faction over the Tenno - and the only character's who'd get all backstabby would be the the Grineer two, which makes things HORRIBLY lopsided in that regard.

 

As for infighting - keep in mind that the Conclave is less "infighting" and more training against ourselves; EXTREME training because of the whole "we can't die" thing, but training nonetheless. Not that you really NEED an excuse for the Grineer to go at each other's throats, or even the Corpus if the situation warrants it, but really I think something like that just interrupts the general feel of the whole scenario. The invasions determine which faction controls a node after they're done, to have Corpus v Corpus would really sort of remove that kind of lorenerd factor from the equation, cause it to just come down to the rewards. I agree that bigger results from a faction taking an area SHOULD be in place, but that's a rework to the system for another time - and with the star chart getting updated DE itself might have some ideas in regards to how Invasions will play out.

 

EDIT: Actually, all of this has got me thinking... I'll work on this a little more and get back to all of you.

Edited November 16, 2015 by Morec0

[Morec0]

Updated with the "Conquest Reward" system, an idea based around rewarding those that support the faction that is the most victorious in any Invasion attack.

[Morec0]

Updated with Infestation Outbreak-related characters. Due to the nature of these the list is much smaller and they aren't viable for Invasion rewards; also due to their nature I felt it more fitting to create new characters than just recycle the older ones.

 

Art will come... eventually

[Morec0]

Updated with some example unique rewards for the Conquest victories, notably among which are some... poorly-made sigils... Eh, at least Hassik's looks... decent.

[Leonidas3]

Amazing work! Keep it up!

[Morec0]

Amazing work! Keep it up!

 

Sadly there's not much more to keep up. I've got two (maybe three if I change my mind about the Infestation's voice) artwork pieces to have made and add but after that there's not going to be much more to add in. MAYBE I'll be able to make a few more quips - especially with the fact that they'll now be facing off against specific characters - but eventually the updates will stop and this will fade into nothing.

 

That's sort of the problem with a lot of concepts, especially mine; unless you're CONSTANTLY adding more and more newer and newer pieces to it or have managed to attract a cult following (i.e. Typhus) eventually you're doomed to have everyone lose interest.

Edited November 24, 2015 by Morec0

[Brachion]

There aren't many ideas that I think should definitely be added to the game, but this is one of 'em.

[Morec0]

There aren't many ideas that I think should definitely be added to the game, but this is one of 'em.

 

I'm glad to hear it ^.^

[Morec0]

I've edited in some additional quips for the Invasion bosses, specifically I've added quips for particular matchups - so Ruena vs Hassik will have unique matchups to Ruena vs Loa

[Morec0]

Looking at the sortie system and seeing it suffers from the EXACT same problem as Invasions and so many other things in the game, I think these characters (both Invasion and Outbreak, as applicable) could be extended to deal with them.

 

What do you think of the idea?

[Rhekemi]

I think syndicate commanders have started speaking to Tenno during the recent updates (I don't think they always did), so this concept still seems viable.

 

I see no reason why it couldn't be applied to invasions and sorties.