Making The Void Hard To Access, But Rewarding

[BornWithTeeth]

_{[First off, a little disclaimer! I'd prefer for this thread to stay in General Discussion rather than Feedback, for a very specific reason: Feedback is for talking to the devs. General Discussion is for talking to other players, and it is players whose opinions I am soliciting.]}

 

 

I've seen a bunch of threads since SotR complaining that the Void doesn't seem all that special as a tileset anymore, and, well, I kind of agree. Let me lay out my reasoning:

 

When I first started playing the game, and had barely any Keys, the Void felt like a weird, eldritch place of great challenge. It was silent then, timeless, cold halls of gold and ivory, tucked below the surface of the material universe. It was pretty cool, is what I'm saying. (Now, that feeling kinda wore off after grinding the Void for hundreds and hundreds of hours, looking for Prime parts, and by now, the Void is actually among my least favourite tilesets.) Nonetheless, it's an interesting place, and has fascinating possibilities for gameplay!

 

 

However, SotR kinda nixed those possibilities, and it did so in two ways:
First it took Prime part acquisition out of the Void, which I am profoundly grateful for because I don't think I ever want to do another hour or 120 minute solo T3/T4 Survival again.
Second, it made the Void a regular location which people can visit any time they want for whatever reason. This is the part which I am not so certain about. Now, we can just go to the Void any time we want, and the only thing which is special about the place is that it's the only source of Argon Crystals.

 

 

How would people feel about making Void access hard as balls?

I would suggest making it so that all Void access would begin as basically a Void Sabotage in reverse, as a potentially random event. Access would begin by finding one of the Void Portal tiles on Earth, Venus, Ceres, Mars, Europa, wherever, and having to fight the miniboss to get the Key and break into the Void. Once in the Void, conditions would always be equivalent to T4, making it reasonably challenging while you're in there, and Corrupted Vor would always show up within a few minutes, drawn to a Tenno intruder. 
       What's in the Void, then? Objectives such as Relics, Endo, and caches of Void Traces and Argon Crystals.

 

Here's how I would structure it:

- On every planetary tileset, there'd be a ten percent chance that your mission map contains a Void Portal tile, and if so, the Lotus will inform you of this opportunity within the first few minutes of the mission. Critically, you don't get told of the Void Portal and the accompanying miniboss until you are in the adjacent tile. Once you know, you get the option to abandon your existing mission and go and raid the Void. Void Portals will not spawn in Syndicate missions, Sorties, Alerts, Invasions, or Fissures, only in regular missions.

- You enter the Void through the Portal tile, and upon arrival, you become alerted to the presence of three to five supply caches, hidden somewhere in the Tower, similar to Sabotage caches. Each cache contains rich rewards, very good rewards. 100 to 200 Endo, 100 Void Traces (enough in one go to immediately make a Relic Radiant), 3-5 Argon Crystals, built Forma, Corrupted Mods, Dual Stat mods, stuff along those lines. Stuff which will never be in the caches: credits, mods which can be acquired in regular star chart missions, amounts of Endo or Void traces which are less than 100. The first cache you access will always contain Argon Crystals.

- Corrupted Vor should have his drop table amended a little. Specifically, he should be guaranteed to drop an Argon Crystal on death.

- Enemy units in the Void would begin at the normal level for T4, and would slowly scale up with each minute you spend there. Effectively, the longer you stay in the Void, the more danger you are in, and the more risks you are taking to find those caches of Endo and Void Traces.

- The Void Portal remains marked on your minimap the entire time, and you extract from the Void by falling back to it and getting out.

 

 

 

 

I am aware that this idea has some flaws, but I think that there are ways to amend them.

- What if people start spawn scumming for the chance at a Void Portal? That means doing this thing where they spawn into missions and then abort if the Lotus doesn't tell them there's a portal? [The alert from the Lotus comes when you're in the adjacent tile, so there's no point in spawning in and waiting in the spawn tile to see if she says there's a portal.]

- But, this is gonna make it hard to get Argon Crystals! [Yep. This is the single biggest problem with making the Void a semi-random access thing. My suggestion was to make it so that if and when you do make it into the Void, you're guaranteed to come out with a handful of Argon Crystals, from killing Vor and accessing a cache.]

 

 

 

Most of all, I want to hear people's thoughts. Would you find this an interesting way of doing it? If you would enjoy something like this, how would you do it, what would you suggest?

 

Edited August 24, 2016 by BornWithTeeth

[AdunSaveMe]

The void was never hard to access, it was just a grind to access. Making it hard to access would solve nothing. It doesn't feel special because it doesn't reward anything special, there's no reason to go there, it has nothing to do with not needing keys.

Make it drop orokin cells in place of control modules and add relics to the rotations and the problem is solved.

[Terror-Of-Death]

I'd prefer it if this hard-as-balls mode were made as a few nodes in the Void, because the lack of choice would bum many out (including me).

[BornWithTeeth]

13 minutes ago, AdunSaveMe said:

The void was never hard to access, it was just a grind to access. Making it hard to access would solve nothing. It doesn't feel special because it doesn't reward anything special, there's no reason to go there, it has nothing to do with not needing keys.

Make it drop orokin cells in place of control modules and add relics to the rotations and the problem is solved.

How would you feel about adding Neo and Axi Relics to the Void cache tables? Remove Argon Crystals from the tables, and have every Void cache automatically including just one Argon Crystal, to prevent table dilution.

12 minutes ago, Terror-Of-Death said:

I'd prefer it if this hard-as-balls mode were made as a few nodes in the Void, because the lack of choice would bum many out (including me).

Hmmm. How about making it a system more like Fissures then? Sort of semi-permanent Alerts, where for roughly a third of the time, for an hour at a time, the Lotus can mark the location of an active Void Portal on your Star map.

[Terror-Of-Death]

Just now, BornWithTeeth said:

Hmmm. How about making it a system more like Fissures then? Sort of semi-permanent Alerts, where for roughly a third of the time, for an hour at a time, the Lotus can mark the location of an active Void Portal on your Star map.

That's pretty good. I just don't wanna be doing something else, or I have the wrong frame/weapons, and BOOM this hard-as-balls side mission explodes in my face.

[SeaUrchins]

I'm upvoting this just 'cos such system would trigger a huge amount of rage topics which are entertaining to read.

More grind for the grind god!

[BornWithTeeth]

6 minutes ago, Terror-Of-Death said:

That's pretty good. I just don't wanna be doing something else, or I have the wrong frame/weapons, and BOOM this hard-as-balls side mission explodes in my face.

 

Just now, SeaUrchins said:

I'm upvoting this just 'cos such system would trigger a huge amount of rage topics which are entertaining to read.

More grind for the grind god!

 

Y'all do remember that I'm the guy who advocated for:

- Having to do special Solar Rail Control Sabotage missions in order to get your carrier from the inner system to the outer system, navigating the star chart.

- Having Sortie level mission conditions (Radiation storm, extreme weather conditions, enhanced/experimental enemy armour) showing up at random for hours at a time on mission nodes, with no warning until a Tenno does the mission and discovers those conditions, at which point the node would be flagged as a hazard on the map.

- Making the Void nigh impossible to survive longer than twenty minutes in due to reality distortions if the Void shielding gets weakened.

- Having a roughly ten percent chance in any normal star chart mission for it to be an ambush, or for there to be an invasion of super high level troops from a different faction which you blunder into the middle of, or for the mission objective to change halfway through.

 

In my book, making Warframe hard as balls should have very little to do with just making the numbers on enemy armour bigger, and everything to do with making conditions unpredictable and unreliable. Like, several times during a serious session, you should ideally find yourself saying things like "Oh crap, I don't have the weapons loadout for this!" or "It's a trap!" or "Oh Jesus, everything's on fire, what happened here?!"

 

I would like it if, past about MR 6, Warframe considered all players fair game for maximum ambush. Literally every single time you spawn into a mission, you should be thinking "Is everything gonna go according to plan, or will BS happen?"

[Corvid]

28 minutes ago, BornWithTeeth said:

 

 

Y'all do remember that I'm the guy who advocated for:

- Having to do special Solar Rail Control Sabotage missions in order to get your carrier from the inner system to the outer system, navigating the star chart.

- Having Sortie level mission conditions (Radiation storm, extreme weather conditions, enhanced/experimental enemy armour) showing up at random for hours at a time on mission nodes, with no warning until a Tenno does the mission and discovers those conditions, at which point the node would be flagged as a hazard on the map.

- Making the Void nigh impossible to survive longer than twenty minutes in due to reality distortions if the Void shielding gets weakened.

- Having a roughly ten percent chance in any normal star chart mission for it to be an ambush, or for there to be an invasion of super high level troops from a different faction which you blunder into the middle of, or for the mission objective to change halfway through.

 

In my book, making Warframe hard as balls should have very little to do with just making the numbers on enemy armour bigger, and everything to do with making conditions unpredictable and unreliable. Like, several times during a serious session, you should ideally find yourself saying things like "Oh crap, I don't have the weapons loadout for this!" or "It's a trap!" or "Oh Jesus, everything's on fire, what happened here?!"

 

I would like it if, past about MR 6, Warframe considered all players fair game for maximum ambush. Literally every single time you spawn into a mission, you should be thinking "Is everything gonna go according to plan, or will BS happen?"

 

And most players would rather the game was predictable. Failing a mission because of factors outside of your control may work for some games, but Warframe is a game where success is dependent on you knowing not to overextend yourself.

[Terror-Of-Death]

10 minutes ago, Corvid said:

And most players would rather the game was predictable. Failing a mission because of factors outside of your control may work for some games, but Warframe is a game where success is dependent on you knowing not to overextend yourself.

This exactly. I'd prefer not to lose loot because something expected goes %$# up.

[BornWithTeeth]

Yeah, see, I'm of the opinion that things going unexpectedly %$# up should always be a niggling concern in the back of a player's head. Like, any time that you ever leave your ship, you should be intensely aware that things could go pear-shaped at literally any moment due to unknown factors. You know. Like in an actual battlefield with limited intel.

[Corvid]

Just now, BornWithTeeth said:

Yeah, see, I'm of the opinion that things going unexpectedly %$# up should always be a niggling concern in the back of a player's head. Like, any time that you ever leave your ship, you should be intensely aware that things could go pear-shaped at literally any moment due to unknown factors. You know. Like in an actual battlefield with limited intel.

Except we don't have limited intel. The Lotus has informants, so we always get sent to the places where we will have the most impact.

What you're asking for is an entirely different tone for the game.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

it's not a bad idea, but I would probably rework the Void differently myself. I would put caches in all of the Void Missions that have chance to drop Void traces, Endo, Orokin Cells etc. maybe have a treasure room that can only be accessed by solving a certain puzzle and has a high chance of a rare container. right now there isn't enough incentive to enter the Void unless you need Argon Crystals.

[(PSN)Stealth_Cobra]

I think what the void needs to be updated with caches and other treasures like other similar, more recent maps... Perhaps bring back orokin keys in a form similar to Orokin Derelict Keys too... Craftable in some way to restrict access slightly, without necessarily adding a new grind wall.

I think the Orokin Moon is the pinnacle of what I expect from such types of locations nowadays. The fact it includes a series minigame/ trials that give exclusive mods gives a good incentive to explore and spend time in these, while you keep stumbling unto epic rooms with old Orokin Vestiges. The fact it houses a new type of enemy with exclusive mods also helps. While it's probably not enough to keep players playing said tileset for months, it does give it a very distinct identity, and perhaps DE could add new trials every now and then / rotate modes in trial rooms or something.

Likewise, Orokin Derelicts have their Orokin Vaults, Treasure Rooms and Now Kavats, giving you three pretty nice incentives/reasons to go there. Every now and then , we get a few new corrupted mods ,which brings people back into these, once again not a bad idea.

The void nowadays has what, argon and played out Treasure Rooms who'se only payoff are random mods most players already have.. If they were to add a few exclusive mods / endo caches/ forma / catalysts / reactor caches or anything like that, it would really motivate people to go back there now that the prime part incentive has been removed.

That said, I think eventually, some of the primes should be moved into the void as drops...