Rescue Who? From That!? For What Reward!?!?

[Cytobel]

So, I was just thinking about my least favorite individuals in the entire warframe universe:  The Hostages.

 

    First, who are they?

Well, supposedly they're Tenno who were captured by whatever faction is holding them, or else they're some kind of innocent bystander that was in the wrong place at the wrong time.  If we're referring to simple people of no particular martial background, then I have little problem rescuing them from the Corpus or the Grineer.  If they were hibernating Tenno recovered before being awakened, then I still have small issue with rendering assistance.

 

    If you notice, I conspicuously left out the case of Tenno captured in battle, as well as any hostage of the Infested.  The reason is very simple: ninjas aren't captured alive.  This is part of what it means to be ninja.  Therefor, any "recovery" of a Tenno who was caught should follow the same guidelines as any other Capture mission:  Brutal beatings, followed by an excruciatingly painful teleportation.

 

    The hostages of Infested should be "rescued" with a flamethrower, just like all the rest of the monsters crawling around them.  You don't need Ackbar to tell you what the situation in question is:  It's a trap!  If the people are totally un-Infested when you find them, then the grueling race through the writhing bowels of whatever space hulk you're on is sure to get some spores imbedded deeply in their lungs.  But only if dripping tentacles don't take care of the matter more directly.

 

    And lastly. why should I save a $&*&*#(%& pud who thinks catching bullets with their teeth sounds fun!?

The answer should be "for the bonus".  I'm not a kind person.  I fly around the solar system teaching other "humans" a creative form of reductive multiplication involving an acute dislocation of their torso from their legs.  I need a bit of motivation to want to save something.  In a few cases (mentioned above) this question would never arise.  But failures and walking mutagen timebombs?  I need a bit more convincing than is provided.

--------------------

Really, more of a call for optional missions that involve deliberately killing a "hostage" the enemy are trying to escort out of my reach.  Sort of a "catch the rabbit" game, to prevent the enemy from securing them beyond Tenno reach.  Still it is a critique of the idea behind trying to save somebody that likely has the worst case of the "can't-get-rid-of's" you can imagine.

Questions?  Ideas?  Comments?

 

Edit:  I haven't slept for about 20 hours.  Forgive spelling and grammer errors, please.

Edited June 2, 2013 by Cytobel

[Feldgrep]

Stop playing warframe, go to sleep, then try again.

[57AV3]

I can agree there are some annoyances with the walking bullet mitt. (They like standing between me and everything I want dead making them bullet mitts because this isn't the kind of game where you stop firing when someone steps in front of you.) So I think it would be more interesting if say every time someone jumps in on a mission half way threw they get stuck in to the bullet mitt position. Then quest pops up, "Hey we just found out that bullet mitt is captured here go save them!" Then player who jumped in to the game has to wait locked up in a cell until the other player "rescues them" and then player who wanted to interrupt my game is now named bullet mitt for the duration of the mission. Now random people showing up have a quest purpose for being there and the rest of bullet mitt missions can be turned sideways and ignored.

Edited June 2, 2013 by 57AV3

[Cytobel]

Dammit Feldgrep, how dare you give me good advice?  Lolz

After a nap...  Umm...  Nope, still wouldn't rescue some of those wastes of flesh at triple base mission price.

Makes me think that "optional" objectives might fit more, instead of required secondaries.

[--GOOLOO_GOOLOO_GOOLOO--]

Acid.

[Cytobel]

Acid.

Do you mean "hey, Cytobel, you're on acid" or "kill it with acid!"?

I'm more about the second one there myself.  Was born nuts, thank you

[--GOOLOO_GOOLOO_GOOLOO--]

Yes.

Edited June 2, 2013 by GoatGodJohn

[JamnikPucek]

First, who are they?

 

Some of the rescue alerts hint at that, as well as the Lotus does. They are Tenno sympathizers. It would seem that the Lotus also uses other, non-Tenno operatives. Turncoats. Captured spies. Hells, even simple prisoners that can be used as labor or operatives in exchange for their lives. The Tenno can't be exactly choosers considered how outnumbered they seem to be. 

 

If you notice, I conspicuously left out the case of Tenno captured in battle, as well as any hostage of the Infested. The reason is very simple: ninjas aren't captured alive. This is part of what it means to be ninja. Therefor, any "recovery" of a Tenno who was caught should follow the same guidelines as any other Capture mission: Brutal beatings, followed by an excruciatingly painful teleportation.

 

Actually, the general course of action seems to be that if a Tenno is captured, they are taken apart and scavenged for Orokin technology. At this point it isn't even clear if Tenno can survive outside of Warframes. Or if they are even still organic in nature.

 

Let's assume they do.

 

Why the hell would fellow Tenno beat their own people? Its implied that they follow a honor code. That they are literally brothers and sisters in arms against an overwhelming force that is hell bent on destroying them to reach the Orokin tech they are seemingly trying to protect. Never, ever, anywhere does the Lotus imply that the punishment for failure is a severe beating, never is implied that the Tenno are driven by harsh discipline and bodily harm. In fact, it is quite the opposite, Tenno seem to hold the "moral high ground", as flimsy as it is considering the amount of killing they do, 

beating the S#&$ out of your allies is not good human resources management. The Lotus seems like she is aware of this.

 

Even in history, only leaders who were very poor at what they were doing used bodily and/or psychological harm as punishment for failure. Most of the worthwhile strategy and leadership treaties of both ancient and modern history seem to agree that it is a very, very bad idea. I can go into detail here if I really have to, but I hope that I don't.

 

Hells, the Tenno even have their own boogeyman that goes after them if they specifically target individuals for assassination (as opposed to sabotaging efforts to recover Orokin tech or stealing said tech from them) who seems to have been, at least in part, one of them. His ideology is extreme (assassination targets are not "innocents") but it seems to suggest that killing civilians is a big no-no in Tenno culture. Even from a tactical standpoint, its crossing a certain gray area if you start killing unarmed civilians. You loose one of the key advantages that any guerilla or insurgent style organization (which the Tenno seem to be) has - support or potential support of the people, eroding their enemy form the inside.

 

The hostages of Infested should be "rescued" with a flamethrower, just like all the rest of the monsters crawling around them. You don't need Ackbar to tell you what the situation in question is: It's a trap! If the people are totally un-Infested when you find them, then the grueling race through the writhing bowels of whatever space hulk you're on is sure to get some spores imbedded deeply in their lungs. But only if dripping tentacles don't take care of the matter more directly.

 

Who says they are hostages of the Infested? What about being trapped on a ship that got overrun by the infested in their cell?

How do we know how the Technocyte plague spreads? How do we know that it cannot be purged if done fast enough? Note that if the Grineer assault a infested ship mid-mission, they do not seem to wear any specific protective gear (ie the ones that do not have their faceplates still do not use them), for all we know the infection needs time to incubate properly. The Lotus implies that they have existed for hundreds of years. They are also Orokin - made. The Tenno are the direct descendants of that technology it seems. Unless the Orokin were stupid, I doubt they would have designed a bioweapon without designing a cure for it in case of accidental exposure.

 

Using that logic, any Tenno that suffered a suit breach during the fight with an infested (presumably that is what happens when they loose HP after getting their shields down?) should be purged as well. That is of course if we assume that they still even are human/organic in any part.

 

And lastly. why should I save a $&*&*#(%& pud who thinks catching bullets with their teeth sounds fun!?

The answer should be "for the bonus". I'm not a kind person. I fly around the solar system teaching other "humans" a creative form of reductive multiplication involving an acute dislocation of their torso from their legs. I need a bit of motivation to want to save something. In a few cases (mentioned above) this question would never arise. But failures and walking mutagen timebombs? I need a bit more convincing than is provided.

 

The first part is picking at imperfect AI. It could use some tweaking. Including a hold/follow command maybe, as well as learning to better take cover. The devs seem to be aware of this, as at the moment you do not actually have to extract the hostage, they just need to be alive by the time you reach exfil.

 

The second is, because you are a Tenno. That is your mission. You've just went on a tirade how failure should be punished by a serious whipping. Not recovering something that your leader, the Lotus, deems critical to your effort would be such a failure. Ninja do not ask why. Just like spies don't. They do.

 

You can be all gritty and pseudo-dark here, but even immoral, practical or if we really, really have to stoop to that level, Bioware "evil" Tenno should realize that saving someone who the Lotus deemed important enough to send you to recover them has to have some benefit for the cause.

 

And, ultimately, if we want to go that route, nobody says that after the Lotus learns what she wants to learn form them she does not dispose of them in the nearest airlock. I doubt that, but there.

[--GOOLOO_GOOLOO_GOOLOO--]

Stop.

[Raiithe]

Why can't we retrieve hostages the same way we capture. Or maybe plant some kind of teleport beacon when we find em and just do a small defence of them for a minute or two and then they are gone and safe.

 

Rescue missions don't bother me until the higher levels. Enemies get harder obviously but also the chances of having to do a second obj. increase. I tend to hope it'll glitch and i won't have to get them out of there room, or leave them behind at an elevator (and gamble that no enemies will kill them between then and completion).

[Cytobel]

I like the ideology JamnikPucek proposed.  I actually welcome the paladin mentality in games, especially when the point is the senceless slaughter of tens of thousands of people who, for right or wrong, are now just as rightfully in charge of the areas they have dominion over as any group of humans has ever been.  The irony is absolutely delicious.  No, that isn't a deliberate slam at you.  I really just enjoy comparitive morality debates.

 

I don't go against orders in a mission.  I cannot.  It has nothing to do with free will or choice, and occasionally flys directly in the face of common sense, but orders are orders.  I merely point out the fact that I have no reason to go do these things.  The idea that a mission fails because a hostage on an infested hulk of a ship, literally crawling with weird biotech machine flesh, doesn't make it out alive after i completed my primary task is my problem.  I don't think it's safe to assume that such a person can be properly screened on site, and I wouldn't even let them ride on the outside of my ship.

 

The lore in-game hints that the Technocyte plague is a nanite infestation of some kind, and goes so far as to suggest that even coming in contact with items that were Infested can cause the Infestation to take hold in you.  The Ether Blades were made to "cleanse" infested Tenno, don't forget.

 

I'm not a "huggy-friendly" type of person who wants to save everything in this universe.  I cannot see my character being a hero.  At best, he's an antihero with a grudge.  He has no past, no family, and no friends.  The only ties he has are with his Clan.  He follows orders from the Lotus.  This doesn't mean he does it for the greater good, or even because it's right.  He does what he does because it's all he has left of himself.  At least, that's my read of the character.

 

As to the beatings for failure, you should look at some of the history of elite soldiers around the world throughout the ages.  Broken bones, deep lacerations, crippling bruising and fatigue...  These are all common, and death is not unheard of in even modern training programs.  Beating is not always simply for the sake of evil.  It can be used to condition a body against harm.  If someone is weak, then they need to be further trained before being sent back out to deep water, so to speak.  I would much rather be flogged for failure than dismissed from the only home I have.

 

As to Tenno moral superiority, consider the fact that the Grineer are a society on the decline, struggling against the coming darkness.  The Corpus are producing vast ships for trade and exploration, living by virtue of ancient technology scavenged form Orokin ruins.  We are an ancient weapon system of a lost civilization, reactivating ourselves to kill in the name of a people long dead and gone.  Is there a moral high ground to be had here?  Why are we the "good guys"?

 

And lastly, please understand the hope of this thread is to instill the kind of personality we're debating about into the husk that is Tenno, as well as encourage thoughts of alternative mission options in any od the Devs who see it, if any.  JamnikPucek, thank you for your reply.  I appreciate it when someone is able to disagree with my pessimism.  Voices like these would shape the future of the Tenno.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Cytobel

[Cytobel]

Why can't we retrieve hostages the same way we capture. Or maybe plant some kind of teleport beacon when we find em and just do a small defence of them for a minute or two and then they are gone and safe.

 

Rescue missions don't bother me until the higher levels. Enemies get harder obviously but also the chances of having to do a second obj. increase. I tend to hope it'll glitch and i won't have to get them out of there room, or leave them behind at an elevator (and gamble that no enemies will kill them between then and completion).

I don't think that any hostage who hasn't earned the horrible pain of an unsheilded teleport should be sent out through such means, but you make a very good point.  I mean, it sounds like those poor bastards we capture are in worse pain when teleported than when we shoot them.  You'd need to screw up pretty badly to earn something like that.

Yeah, the tone of that last sentence seems to go against earlier opinion, but considering the "correct" punishment for failure in societies that have had a ninja-analog, you might see where I'm coming from.

[JamnikPucek]

I like the ideology JamnikPucek proposed.  I actually welcome the paladin mentality in games, especially when the point is the senceless slaughter of tens of thousands of people who, for right or wrong, are now just as rightfully in charge of the areas they have dominion over as any group of humans has ever been.  The irony is absolutely delicious.  No, that isn't a deliberate slam at you (JamnikPucek).  I really just enjoy comparitive morality debates.

 

I don't go against orders in a mission.  I cannot.  It has nothing to do with free will or choice, and occasionally flys directly in the face of common sence, but orders are orders.  I merely point out the fact that I have no reason to go do these things.  The idea that a mission fails because a hostage on an infested hulk of a ship, literally crawling with weird biotech machine flesh, doesn't make it out alive after i completed my primary task is my problem.  I don't think it's safe to assume that such a person can be properly screened on site, and I wouldn't even let them ride on the outside of my ship.

 

The way I always viewed this is that Tenno are not given a reason, they act.

 

I also do not think the hostages are actually expected to ride on the Tenno infiltration/exfiltration vessels but are rather picked up by the same undefined "recovery teams" that pick up cryopods. Possibly ships manned by other rescuees. 

 

Though I can totally agree that us, as players, could know that reason. Lore/plot enchantments are somewhere down the pipeline as far as I know.

 

The lore in-game hints that the Technocyte plague is a nanite infestation of some kind, and goes so far as to suggest that even coming in contact with items that were Infested can cause the Infestation to take hold in you. The Ether Blades were made to "cleanse" infested Tenno, don't forget.

 

It does not seem (to me of course) that the Technocyte plague infects on the spot, but rather it is a process. And yes, since they are Orokin manufactured nanites, it is plausible to me at least that the Lotus who seems to be very much in tune with Orokin technology is able to disable or reverse the infection, providing it has not ran too deep.

 

At this point its all guesswork obviously, but even if we consider its original purpose - it would be much more practical for the plague to be slow working, infecting as many hosts as possible and slowly mutating them so by the time someone discovers that something is wrong, it is already too late.

 

I'm not a "huggy-friendly" type of person who wants to save everything in this universe. I cannot see my character being a hero. At best, he's an antihero with a grudge. He has no past, no family, and no friends. The only ties he has are with his Clan. He follows orders from the Lotus. This doesn't mean he does it for the greater good, or even because it's right. He does what he does because it's all he has left of himself. At least, that's my read of the character.

 

If the Tenno actually have any character to speak off seems to be still in the air (though I do remember mention that yes, each Warframe is meant to be a different 'hero') but yes, that is more or less the vibe I got from you. I personally do not see my own like that, but well, decent fiction (imho) allows multiple interpretations, all of which can be valid. 

 

As to the beatings for failure, you should look at some of the history of elite soldiers around the world throughout the ages. Broken bones, deep lacerations, crippling bruising and fatigue... These are all common, and death is not unheard of in even modern training programs. Beating is not always simply for the sake of evil. It can be used to condition a body against harm. If someone is weak, then they need to be further trained before being sent back out to deep water, so to speak. I would much rather be flogged for failure than dismissed from the only home I have.

 

I am not familiar with a Modern, effective military that uses bodily harm as punishment and motivator. All literature I read on the topic seems to suggest that in most cases, inflicting body harm does more harm then good. To my knowledge, the only bodily harm that comes to modern soldier is through training accidents. The only exception to this rule that I know off is Special Forces, however even there to my knowledge bodily harm or worse is not intended, but rather a side effect. This is a topic that can probably be debated long and hard without any real consensus and I'm fairly certain that I do not know enough details to really go into it. Military training and conditioning can be a complex thing. Even more so in a situation that the Tenno are in. 

 

We do not know enough about the Tenno to make a judgment one way or the other imho, so for the time being either option seems correct. Hells, different Tenno cells might adhere to different training and punishment methods. I know that clans are suposed to be "polarized" via certain structures in the future as stated in the U8 dev post, maybe this can be a further way of customization that affects types of missions or something somewhere down the line.

 

In fact, maybe this could be the basis for one aspect of PvE based competition. Or even PvP when clans of different ideologies meet in an arena style setting to resolve their disputes. Or something ;)

 

And lastly, please understand the hope of this thread is to instill the kind of personality we're debating about into the husk that is Tenno, as well as encourage thoughts of alternative mission options in any od the Devs who see it, if any. JamnikPucek, thank you for your reply. I appreciate it when someone is able to disagree with my pessimism.

 

I usually do not like "morality" style choices in games, I find most of them way to transparent and simplified or, on the flip side, trying too hard to be "bittersweet" by pulling a "GOTCHA! EVERYONE DIES!" 'twist' on you. I'm sure somewhere in there is a consensus, but few games that I can remember off hand even came close to it.

 

Either way, you are welcome ;)

[Cytobel]

I am not familiar with a Modern, effective military that uses bodily harm as punishment and motivator. All literature I read on the topic seems to suggest that in most cases, inflicting body harm does more harm then good. To my knowledge, the only bodily harm that comes to modern soldier is through training accidents. The only exception to this rule that I know off is Special Forces, however even there to my knowledge bodily harm or worse is not intended, but rather a side effect. This is a topic that can probably be debated long and hard without any real consensus and I'm fairly certain that I do not know enough details to really go into it. Military training and conditioning can be a complex thing. Even more so in a situation that the Tenno are in. 

I'd suggest you look up Spetsnaz training, U.S. anti-torture training, and then crank the volume up to 11.  The idea of ninja implies that the Tenno are even more elite than any modern special forces training regimen can produce a rough analog to, and that implies even more brutally demanding training methods.

As for military background, all of my friends joined up out of high school.  Some of them even came out of it without being disabled.  I had the chance to speak with an old Army sniper once, and he informed me that he'd had his hand deliberately broken as part of his anti-torture training process.  I have no reason to view this claim as a lie, as it wasn't the first time I'd heard it.  He was just the first real person I'd spoken to about the matter.

 

I'm not sure that the Lotus can be viewed as a "leader".  I think of it as a source for mission info and direction.  Given what they are, the Tenno would need a guiding influence, but I'm not sure why "she" chooses "her" targets, or what "her" goals are.  I am not even sure wether "she" is a human or an ancient AI controller.  This really throws a monkey wrench into the idea of moral action on the part of the Tenno.

 

-----------------------------------

 

And just like that I go off topic.  This is a thread about supplemental rescue missions.  Any more of this and I might have to report myself, or move the topic to a different category.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Cytobel

[JamnikPucek]

I am familiar with Spetznaz training, but they do not exist anymore. Not that GRU is much less "extreme" as their predecessors, but their effectiveness suffers as a result.

 

Anyway, as I said, this is a topic for a different discussion and ultimately I can agree that such extreme training and conditioning can have its benefits. To me, they do not outweigh the cost, but well thats opinion. I would need to dig around through sources about the psychology of both approaches and seems like we agree to disagree on principle anyway.

 

I am very curious about both the Lotus and the Orokin myself. There is great potential for a non-cheesy "shades of gray" situation both within and without the Tenno community depending on how its fleshed out in the future. And, hopefully, both approaches as we discussed will have their place. That and more.

[--GOOLOO_GOOLOO_GOOLOO--]

Who's the BULBA!?

[3XT3RM1NATUS]

[57AV3]

Guys I figured out what they are. The people we rescue are Tenno that can't afford a Warframe because they are pour and don't have the cash op option.

[Cytobel]

Lolz!