Brain fart for an Exploration game mode

[Lakais]

The idea first formed when I was running around Lua, or the Moon as most know it. And whenever I saw the distant spires and little areas that look like habitation areas, I always wondered "Could I go there?... Just jump off this ledge and walk the incredible distance over the lunar surface and see what forgotten trinkets litter the old halls." 

Of course, we can't walk off the tiles (without glitching) because... that's a bit too crazy for DE to do right now. Instead, I thought about a new "endless" mission type. The idea in itself is simple: you simply explore. There is no overall objective of kill X enemies or survive for Y minutes. Every once in a while you might come across some pocket of Grineer or Corpus that you might want to exterminate. Or a single long lost spy vault. They are not objectives, they are just there and you can ignore em if you want. To extract, you have to be on an appropriate tile (so there's more then one) that has an option to call in Ordis. So basically any tile that has a large enough open space to play through the end-mission "get on board" animation can fit in. 

There is also the issue of memory. I think that the earlier parts of the map should close off as you advance further. The connecting tiles replaced with ones that show them to be collapsed. This is to stop the map itself from becoming bloated as you'll most likely be moving forward, there are no mission wide objectives so a lot of backtracking isn't required. 

I also thought about what tilesets made sense, thematically, for this mode. So far I came up with Lua, Earth and Europa, possibly Mars. Lua is perfect for exploration. It's basically the standard "abandoned ancient temple" But instead of temple it's a planet. Filled with trinkets, relics, other prospectors and things that have not been seen for centuries. Earth is a jungle, as such there is always somewhere to go. The ancient overgrown Grineer settlements proving the single-minded tenacity of the Grineer to throw materiel at a problem. Europa's ice and rubble would hint to us just how massive the ships they use can be, covering entire regions in debris and the valuable resources within. Mars is a colony older then all the records. There are ancient crumbling buildings and temples carved into canyons. Now covered in Grineer mechanisms, half rotted and weathered away in the sand. Picked clean. But maybe not completely clean... it is a large planet afterall. 

And then there is the elephant, Archwing. Many have asked for an exploration mode. To just be able to fly around asteroid fields and corpus ship junk, looking for rare resources. Hidden among these places could be pockets of habitation, places you could enter and exit if DE wanted to more thoroughly implement their arcwing-n-out system. Some habs are under enemy control, a few are civilians hiding away, maybe they need a little something that you can get or do for them and they are not above giving you something back for your help. 

Thematically the missions themselves would be heavily in favor of solo play. This isn't competitive. There's no cookie for simply staying longer or killing more enemies or speedrunning. The enemies don't scale up and they are relatively far and few. This is a solo op. This is you, the Tenno saying "Ok, I'm taking a day off." and going off to do something on your own, without Lotus involved. Even Ordis only appears when you call him in for extract. It's basically like going out on a hike. The "time/reward" ratio would be horrible. So it's not for those who want to get a lot of stuff over an endless mission. It's not for everyone, but I wouldn't mind chatting away in region chat, nibbling on a ration bar in the abandoned room with a broken window, as I watch the crumbling remains of Orokin glory in the distance on Lua. Wondering if the endless hallways and ruined pathways of the planet will ever take me there. 

And now I turn to you, my fellow Tenno. How horrible of an idea is this? 

[Falrul]

That does sound like a great idea but like you mentioned memory would be a huge issue, mainly for archwing.

I do hope to see that one day tho.

[Cenat]

This idea would be great if there were collectibles like medallions that give stuff that uncovers more lore, 4-5 caches and maybe a mini-boss like a member of the G3 or the Lynx. Also the random spy vault thing is pretty much one of the best things you mentioned in the whole thread. I think the tileset should be like a mix of different tile sets of the same planet and have passive loot rooms/parkour rooms that contains erm..containers. 

[Anavi_Ivy]

Personally, I always wanted to go around Lua and look through those Orokin remains. I sometimes just wander around map not strictly following my mission. And once I thought "Why is it not possible to find something from Orokin era here?". Just think about that. You are going through the ruins of some hall and you see something shining from the pile of dust.. - boom, it's some little statue, some remain of primed weapon/warframe.. Or anything just to make it more enjoyable for exploration! When you explore places there are chances that you will find something, isn't that right?( I am not saying that these missions should be used for farming parts, just had idea that it would be nice to stumble upon something c: )
Overall, really nice idea. It holds potential to be detailed A LOT. You get +1 by me.

[Bizzaro21]

sounds like much fun, I do effing love big open spaces, just playing through the moon is a refreshment for me, having a bigass map to run through would be awesome

48 minutes ago, Lakais said:

And now I turn to you, my fellow Tenno. How horrible of an idea is this? 

ofc it is the worst ever :P

[xXx_mtv_xXx]

57 minutes ago, Lakais said:

The idea first formed when I was running around Lua, or the Moon as most know it. And whenever I saw the distant spires and little areas that look like habitation areas, I always wondered "Could I go there?... Just jump off this ledge and walk the incredible distance over the lunar surface and see what forgotten trinkets litter the old halls." 

I used to do that in Firefall. You know, because it's a persistent Open World MMO. But it got castrated a few months ago. 

So then I came here. To farm. In corridors. In instanced matches. With a few other people.

[Lakais]

40 minutes ago, Bizzaro21 said:

sounds like much fun, I do effing love big open spaces, just playing through the moon is a refreshment for me, having a bigass map to run through would be awesome

ofc it is the worst ever :P

It'd be the slow, "make your own fun" kind of fun. Unfortunately there wouldn't be much in the way of "big open spaces" unless we count the frankly massive rooms Lua has. And naturally it's the worst thing since dumpling milk soup. With oats. 

26 minutes ago, xXx_mtv_xXx said:

I used to do that in Firefall. You know, because it's a persistent Open World MMO. But it got castrated a few months ago. 

So then I came here. To farm. In corridors. In instanced matches. With a few other people.

I used to play FireFall way back when. What did they do? 

As for the idea. Basically it'd be endless corridors, but there'd be no straight up purpose for them. Which essentially is what open world games are. Purposeless, really wide corridors connecting rooms that have some shiny in them. 

 

[Lakais]

1 hour ago, Anavi_Ivy said:

Personally, I always wanted to go around Lua and look through those Orokin remains. I sometimes just wander around map not strictly following my mission. And once I thought "Why is it not possible to find something from Orokin era here?". Just think about that. You are going through the ruins of some hall and you see something shining from the pile of dust.. - boom, it's some little statue, some remain of primed weapon/warframe.. Or anything just to make it more enjoyable for exploration! When you explore places there are chances that you will find something, isn't that right?( I am not saying that these missions should be used for farming parts, just had idea that it would be nice to stumble upon something c: )
Overall, really nice idea. It holds potential to be detailed A LOT. You get +1 by me.

I really like the idea of finding little fragments and trinkets. Orokin ones on Lua. Mystery ones in the forgotten paths of the Mars colonies. Forgotten and abandoned Grineer and Corpus resource drops from Earth and Europa. 

Even if what we find are nothing more then fragments of some shiny trinket we can place into our ship. It'd still be fancy. Prime parts are a bit... iffy. Maybe void Traces? 

[Bizzaro21]

10 minutes ago, Lakais said:

It'd be the slow, "make your own fun" kind of fun. Unfortunately there wouldn't be much in the way of "big open spaces" unless we count the frankly massive rooms Lua has. And naturally it's the worst thing since dumpling milk soup. With oats. 

just seeing a big hall with echoes for every single sound is great, and as long as there are no rewards there or anything i need to farm from it, im all cool with it

i was joking lol

[Lakais]

Just now, Bizzaro21 said:

just seeing a big hall with echoes for every single sound is great, and as long as there are no rewards there or anything i need to farm from it, im all cool with it

i was joking lol

Ooooh, a large empty hall where the only sound is you and the echoes that bounce off the walls. I love it. It's all about the atmosphere. 

So was I :3 Though that soup is quite honestly vile. 

[xXx_mtv_xXx]

22 minutes ago, Lakais said:

I used to play FireFall way back when. What did they do? 

The Chinese owner of the studio fired most of the staff, some others resigned, and those who remained pushed an update which disabled half of the game's content and broke half of what was left XD so the game basically went from full release to alpha state lol. Then the devs went completely silent a couple months ago... 

RIP in spaghetti, never forgetti ;_;

[Lakais]

9 minutes ago, xXx_mtv_xXx said:

The Chinese owner of the studio fired most of the staff, some others resigned, and those who remained pushed an update which disabled half of the game's content and broke half of what was left XD so the game basically went from full release to alpha state lol. Then the devs went completely silent a couple months ago... 

RIP in spaghetti, never forgetti ;_;

Dayum... I was wondering about going in and checking out if they'd done something fun with the game... 

[llls1cKb0ylll]

would love to see some open world instances for exploration or big battles/events with more than 4 players, at least in some planets, but due to the p2p system of the game that would require DE to invest not only in development but in servers to host those instances imo

if u looking for a pure unicerse exploration scify game, no mans sky coming soon, looks pretty bland tho

[Crawd127]

I have to say that I like the idea. It could also be something to explore the area for a new tileset and the mission objectives could be to seek to some important rooms for other missions, like the starting room for a spy mission, or cell rooms for rescue missions. Some kind of scouting mission to get some intel on the field in order to prepare the missions on this planet and find a specific landmarks. I will say it could be interesting.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

this basically intertwines with the idea of having a free-mode where you can explore entire Planets, or even the entire system, dotted with various optional objectives.

while it would be nice, this would extremely difficult and time consuming for DE to implement, not to mention quite expensive.

[PopGligor]

I always thought Warframe is much like Diablo II and this is why like the game. I still play D2, that's how much I love it. Warframe is much like it, but with a huge buffer (crafting) between getting something and being able to use it.

Diablo 2 had large, open maps and I would really love Warframe to get something similar. Open world, again instanced, without other players running around so people can explore in peace. Maybe still procedurally generated. Something that I can take my time with, and not just bullet jump to objective and then extraction.

[Lakais]

43 minutes ago, llls1cKb0ylll said:

would love to see some open world instances for exploration or big battles/events with more than 4 players, at least in some planets, but due to the p2p system of the game that would require DE to invest not only in development but in servers to host those instances imo

if u looking for a pure unicerse exploration scify game, no mans sky coming soon, looks pretty bland tho

Warframe was not designed for Open world. And though DE is looking into player hosted dedicated PvP servers, large scale battles don't really mesh well with the theme of who Tenno are, we are terrorists*. We are powerful, insanely so. But in an open straight up fight against Grineer or Corpus, we would lose. We'd simply be overwhelmed by their combined firepower. Even in the largest fights now we only engage enemies about a 10-20 at a time. Imagine 200 shooting at you at once. No mater how tanky any one of us is, we would melt. 

Basic idea here is not for some massive battle. But rather for wind-down gameplay. You walk and explore, enjoy the view. It's slow and in purely reward senses, completely unrewarding as far as time invested is concerned. Most mission types in the game are about fast paced combat or acts of skill and precision. This is essentially the Tenno version of going out for a hike. 

Don't get me wrong. The concept of massive events is neat. And we have these in some shape with the Fomorians for example. A single player, even a single group can not deal with the issue. But the way how all the maps and the entire game architecture is built does not go so well with too large groups. Trying to keep track of where the three other guys are is a task enough, now imagine if there was nine of them. You'd have no idea who is where. 

And the danger of all truly sandbox games like No Man's Sky is that they are inherently bland. It's up for the player to find the thing that interests them. And woe to someone who walks away for a while when playing because they'll have no idea where they were going and what they were doing at the time. 

8 minutes ago, Crawd127 said:

I have to say that I like the idea. It could also be something to explore the area for a new tileset and the mission objectives could be to seek to some important rooms for other missions, like the starting room for a spy mission, or cell rooms for rescue missions. Some kind of scouting mission to get some intel on the field in order to prepare the missions on this planet and find a specific landmarks. I will say it could be interesting.

The core idea is that there is no objective other then the ones you run across. If you find a group of enemies and you might get a little something for killing all of em. have a little firefight. You find a spy vault? Neat, but there's only one and nothing happens if you fail it. And you can ignore both of these if you're not feeling up for it. It's not "open world" as it is just basically enjoying the view with small activities sprinkled in. 

11 minutes ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

this basically intertwines with the idea of having a free-mode where you can explore entire Planets, or even the entire system, dotted with various optional objectives.

while it would be nice, this would extremely difficult and time consuming for DE to implement, not to mention quite expensive.

That's a bit pie in the sky, I would think. I mean exploration mode makes sense on SOME planets. Like for example on Corpus Bases, you could probably hack a terminal somewhere and get the layout of the entire thing. So there isn't much to explore other then doing a raid and breaking every box. But Lua and Mars, for example, they have that promise of something else over that hill. I look out and you see buildings and ruins in the distance and I get that feeling of "There's cool stuff out there..." And by stuff I don't mean things you can pick up. I also mean interesting vistas, statues and rooms that look interesting. Experiences. Though admittedly, Corpus bases also have that feeling but not to such a grand extent. 

So the concept of essentially endlessly sprawling maps where the hallways just keep on going without a set overall mission is not THAT unthinkable. Old parts suddenly become inaccessible because the hallway collapsed or some ancient mechanism suddenly sprang to life. Forcing you to ever move forward, but practically there just to make sure the mission doesn't eat up all the memory. There being no "Mission Complete" condition other then you thinking that you've had enough finding the first "exit" capable tile and calling Ordis. The idea doesn't seem too out there. Sure it needs work. A lot of it. But it's not like the devs need to rebuild the entire system that makes maps. 

15 minutes ago, QuietBiro said:

I always thought Warframe is much like Diablo II and this is why like the game. I still play D2, that's how much I love it. Warframe is much like it, but with a huge buffer (crafting) between getting something and being able to use it.

Diablo 2 had large, open maps and I would really love Warframe to get something similar. Open world, again instanced, without other players running around so people can explore in peace. Maybe still procedurally generated. Something that I can take my time with, and not just bullet jump to objective and then extraction.

That is essentially the idea. Basically the map just keeps generating for as long as you are moving forward. Older parts getting cut off to save on PC resources. A primarily Solo mission type all about taking your time and enjoying the view. 

[(PSN)ArnnFrost]

*Brain farting intensifies* SMELL MY KNOWLEDGE!!! 

Yeah I remember many people suggesting ways to freely explore planets instead of the navigation and I too suggested doing that by Archwing and portals to go near other planets, aim at the mission then fly to it or some a landingcraft gets sent to you to go there

[Letter13]

Could be interesting. 

 

Alternatively, instead of one super huge endless "area", it could be split apart into endless "levels" instead; similar to how some games have "endless dungeons" where you challenge yourself by going deeper and deeper--the further down you go the harder the enemies get and the better the loot becomes. Like an endless defense mission but instead of waves it's a transition between 'floors'. That way you wouldn't have to worry about lack of memory because when you transition between floors it would un-load the previous level and load the next one.

You could toss bosses in as well every 5 floors or so as well for a chance at super great loot.

[Sajmonaki]

I fell in love with this idea. 

[Anavi_Ivy]

4 hours ago, Lakais said:

I really like the idea of finding little fragments and trinkets. Orokin ones on Lua. Mystery ones in the forgotten paths of the Mars colonies. Forgotten and abandoned Grineer and Corpus resource drops from Earth and Europa. 

Even if what we find are nothing more then fragments of some shiny trinket we can place into our ship. It'd still be fancy. Prime parts are a bit... iffy. Maybe void Traces? 

Yeah you are right. Primed parts are maybe way too much.
It would be nice to find something and bring it on your liset to keep it as memento. Nothing that would be actually used, more like just to be there with you so you can take a look at it and say "Man, that one exploration was amazing.". Or, you may find some kind of music box and once you open it, your operator may recognize it as a song that he/she heard before...
 

58 minutes ago, MarrikBroom said:

Interesting possibilities given you could have syndicates, Darvo, or even Lotus wanting you to collect little things from there; be it actual resource things, lore relevant things, or even the future equivalent of trading cards (y'know, before we all got Noggle obsessed.)

 

Could have some areas that would be locked off normally, but if you have a key (natch; farmable blueprints,) you can go off exploring. Deal with the odd ruin explorer or three dozen, possibly catch a glimps of Baro, and...

• I could see a unique event happening on Lua where 'your' tenno comments. Something like 'I remmeber when-' and Ordis cutting them off. 'Operator, sometimes it's best to just let go.'
• Possibly a small screen if you come upon a random spawn of Baro (he isn't selling. Him and you commenting on the both of you being ghosts of long dead people sifting through bones' or something. Possibly even have you help Baro find some bit of pottery or something.
• Clem on Lua just... being Clem and Darvo hailing you 'Good to see you my friend. Hey while you're there you want to help Clem out on a little thing?' and if you choose to a small 'hunt the widget' thing happens, or possibly you and Clem surviving for five or so minutes. 'OK I think that's the last of them. Stop by sometime so I can properly thank you.'
• Random Syndicate spawns. I mean truly random, How they react depends on your standing. Neutral they kinda ask you to move along please they don't want a fight. Hostile attack you, friendly/have standing with you get short missions to either help them unlock some door they can't get to but you can (space ninja,) find a thing, or just randomly sit/talk.

I adore first one. It's so small detail but really adds to the atmosphere.. And other ones are nice too.

I think I would be able to spend 4 hours straight walking through maps on these kinds of missions

[Lakais]

17 hours ago, Letter13 said:

Could be interesting. 

 

Alternatively, instead of one super huge endless "area", it could be split apart into endless "levels" instead; similar to how some games have "endless dungeons" where you challenge yourself by going deeper and deeper--the further down you go the harder the enemies get and the better the loot becomes. Like an endless defense mission but instead of waves it's a transition between 'floors'. That way you wouldn't have to worry about lack of memory because when you transition between floors it would un-load the previous level and load the next one.

You could toss bosses in as well every 5 floors or so as well for a chance at super great loot.

That is also a very valid option. As the original idea would of seen old parts of the map being procedurally cut off, the concept of "floors" or more aptly "regions" as you move from a more frequently traveled areas to more abandoned or secretive ones. And the idea of bosses is neat. But I get a niggling fear that if these bosses and enemies became a thing, fighting as such would become too much of a focus.

16 hours ago, MarrikBroom said:

Interesting possibilities given you could have syndicates, Darvo, or even Lotus wanting you to collect little things from there; be it actual resource things, lore relevant things, or even the future equivalent of trading cards (y'know, before we all got Noggle obsessed.)

 

Could have some areas that would be locked off normally, but if you have a key (natch; farmable blueprints,) you can go off exploring. Deal with the odd ruin explorer or three dozen, possibly catch a glimps of Baro, and...

• I could see a unique event happening on Lua where 'your' tenno comments. Something like 'I remmeber when-' and Ordis cutting them off. 'Operator, sometimes it's best to just let go.'
• Possibly a small screen if you come upon a random spawn of Baro (he isn't selling. Him and you commenting on the both of you being ghosts of long dead people sifting through bones' or something. Possibly even have you help Baro find some bit of pottery or something.
• Clem on Lua just... being Clem and Darvo hailing you 'Good to see you my friend. Hey while you're there you want to help Clem out on a little thing?' and if you choose to a small 'hunt the widget' thing happens, or possibly you and Clem surviving for five or so minutes. 'OK I think that's the last of them. Stop by sometime so I can properly thank you.'
• Random Syndicate spawns. I mean truly random, How they react depends on your standing. Neutral they kinda ask you to move along please they don't want a fight. Hostile attack you, friendly/have standing with you get short missions to either help them unlock some door they can't get to but you can (space ninja,) find a thing, or just randomly sit/talk.

It'd be interesting if you could offer the things you found to those significant people. What you get in return is up for grabs. A handful of Plat, a fusion core or two, some ducats. Essentially this Exploration mode would be the Tenno we play going off on their own. This isn't a sanctioned mission by Lotus nor a request by anyone else. It's just you with an eye on the horizon and a stack of sandwiches in your back pocket. But running across any of them sounds like a very interesting idea. 

15 hours ago, Anavi_Ivy said:

Yeah you are right. Primed parts are maybe way too much.
It would be nice to find something and bring it on your liset to keep it as memento. Nothing that would be actually used, more like just to be there with you so you can take a look at it and say "Man, that one exploration was amazing.". Or, you may find some kind of music box and once you open it, your operator may recognize it as a song that he/she heard before...

It'd be nice if the trinket had some use, even if just for us. Maybe each trinket you found had a chance to unlock a fragment of a song from the game's soundtrack you could play in your ship instead of the grineer radio messages. Or as you said, a music box you can fill out. Random single colors off of Color Palettes (even ones you have unlocked, it's random). But that might also be going a bit far.