Missions require more immersion

[AltusLive]

So while playing through many missions that require Lotus to do something, my group and I frequently find ourselves wishing we could just do it ourselves since she takes so damned long. We've got a solid group with insane DPS, and frequently find that there's at least one of us that can just sit around and have a drink since the entire area is fully contained. So why exactly can't we just do these things ourselves? Missions like Mobile Defence always feel boring as hell since they're "Go here, stand here for a bit, now go here and repeat." and many missions unfortunately follow the same formula. Hijack is "Go here, and stand beside this device while it moves forward." 

The most unique gameplay that's currently offered is Spy and Sabotage missions; and that's because they give you options for how to do things. There's no options in things like Mobile Defence; but there could be! So here's a few suggestions:

Mobile Defence
Keep all game elements the same, but give the players the option of interfacing with the console themselves to speed up the process. They could have to play some game like pipe drain or whatever. This is a chance to be creative and come up with some fun new game mechanic. Reward a successful game with time off the countdown timer, and punish a failed game with additional time (and the anger of your teammates).

This gives a new element that adds to multiplayer experience, and will lead to more team cooperation. Players will need to focus on protecting not just the console, but now the teammate working on it. 

Hijack

Why makes us just stand on top of the crawler like we so often do? Why not let us go in the thing and power it by completing puzzles as an option? Alternatively we could just drive the damned thing, with our speed directly linked to the drain of our shields. Got a high shield pool? Cool, drive fast! Low shields? Putter along slow and steady. There's a lot of options that could expand this mode past the literal caravan mission that it is.

Sabotogue

This mode is already one of the more creative one's they've made, but there's still a lot of room to expand on it. How about having an electric option that fries shields, lights, etc? We could then finish the level in super low lights with no shields (or even no HUD).



All in all, the biggest drawback from Warframe is it's lack of immersion; which is a direct result from it's lack of diversity in what you can do. The vast majority of missions boil down to "Shoot things until timer runs out, or the thing is dead", when it could be so much more than that.

[LABAL]

More immersive, you say? I'd sell my favorite underpants just for the ability to interact with various equipment. Turn on emergency power to make Eris a little bit brighter, for example. Or hack a door so it slams anyone passing through. The small things.

[AltusLive]

Just now, LABAL said:

More immersive, you say? I'd sell my favorite underpants just for the ability to interact with various equipment. Turn on emergency power to make Eris a little bit brighter, for example. Or hack a door so it slams anyone passing through. The small things.

See those would all be incredible things to do! They would actually give us the feeling that we had some control over the world we're in other than who gets to stay alive.

[Cray]

8 minutes ago, LABAL said:

More immersive, you say? I'd sell my favorite underpants just for the ability to interact with various equipment. Turn on emergency power to make Eris a little bit brighter, for example. Or hack a door so it slams anyone passing through. The small things.

World interaction is a beautiful thing. We need more.

 

More side rooms accessed via unusual means (ex: swinging a crane around, flinging what its carrying into a window), activated by obscure panel, maybe with a power cell or two for added challenge.

More nooks and crannies hidden inside vents and behind destructible walls.

More shortcuts opened by explosive barrels.

Activatable traps, such as buttons to open the outer doors in a shuttle bay, or turn a damaged reactor back on, electrifying the floor.

Lights that you can turn on and off.

 

It's the little things that make some tiles a delight to play on. Let's add some more.

[DarthBane1]

5 minutes ago, DeltaPhantom said:

Lights that you can turn on and off.

I agree with this. You know since this game is "Ninja's play free" and not "Tanks play free". 

[DSpite]

2 hours ago, Ice232 said:

So while playing through many missions that require Lotus to do something, my group and I frequently find ourselves wishing we could just do it ourselves since she takes so damned long. We've got a solid group with insane DPS, and frequently find that there's at least one of us that can just sit around and have a drink since the entire area is fully contained. So why exactly can't we just do these things ourselves? Missions like Mobile Defence always feel boring as hell since they're "Go here, stand here for a bit, now go here and repeat." and many missions unfortunately follow the same formula. Hijack is "Go here, and stand beside this device while it moves forward." 

The most unique gameplay that's currently offered is Spy and Sabotage missions; and that's because they give you options for how to do things. There's no options in things like Mobile Defence; but there could be! So here's a few suggestions:

Mobile Defence
Keep all game elements the same, but give the players the option of interfacing with the console themselves to speed up the process. They could have to play some game like pipe drain or whatever. This is a chance to be creative and come up with some fun new game mechanic. Reward a successful game with time off the countdown timer, and punish a failed game with additional time (and the anger of your teammates).

This gives a new element that adds to multiplayer experience, and will lead to more team cooperation. Players will need to focus on protecting not just the console, but now the teammate working on it. 

Hijack

Why makes us just stand on top of the crawler like we so often do? Why not let us go in the thing and power it by completing puzzles as an option? Alternatively we could just drive the damned thing, with our speed directly linked to the drain of our shields. Got a high shield pool? Cool, drive fast! Low shields? Putter along slow and steady. There's a lot of options that could expand this mode past the literal caravan mission that it is.

Sabotogue

This mode is already one of the more creative one's they've made, but there's still a lot of room to expand on it. How about having an electric option that fries shields, lights, etc? We could then finish the level in super low lights with no shields (or even no HUD).



All in all, the biggest drawback from Warframe is it's lack of immersion; which is a direct result from it's lack of diversity in what you can do. The vast majority of missions boil down to "Shoot things until timer runs out, or the thing is dead", when it could be so much more than that.

I'm not sure this "fixes" anything other then impatience.

We already just race past everything in maps, kill objectives and leave. You are basically asking for shorter missions ACROSS the board, and if DE wanted to make the missions shorter, they would just do exactly that. Shorter paths for the Hijack target, less tiles to navigate for the truck.

The "duration time" is not there as mechanic to "interact with", it's a fancy "timer". You are basically doing a simple Survival/Defense with a set timer, and you are asking for that timer to be made even shorter. If that timer is made shorter, then DE will need to up the enemy count or enemy spam to compensate, especially when you specifically stated "we have INSANE DPS" which means that the mission must be ALREADY mind numbing boring as you are unstoppable. You might be, the truck is not. Enough concentrate fire on that truck WILL mean mission failures regardless of how powerful the team is, if enough Alpha is delivered before the team can pin point and kill long range stuff.

I don't disagree with lack of interesting things to do, I just don't think allowing players to make builds to make missions even shorter - when they normally already run just at the 5 minute mark - even shorter.

Edited September 6, 2016 by DSpite

[Phaxtolgia]

I've seen a grineer open a locked container. How about killing an enemy while it's using a container keeps the locked container open?

How about intertwining tilesets, though I imagine that would be hard to code.

[AltusLive]

1 hour ago, DSpite said:

I'm not sure this "fixes" anything other then impatience.

We already just race past everything in maps, kill objectives and leave. You are basically asking for shorter missions ACROSS the board, and if DE wanted to make the missions shorter, they would just do exactly that. Shorter paths for the Hijack target, less tiles to navigate for the truck.

The "duration time" is not there as mechanic to "interact with", it's a fancy "timer". You are basically doing a simple Survival/Defense with a set timer, and you are asking for that timer to be made even shorter. If that timer is made shorter, then DE will need to up the enemy count or enemy spam to compensate, especially when you specifically stated "we have INSANE DPS" which means that the mission must be ALREADY mind numbing boring as you are unstoppable. You might be, the truck is not. Enough concentrate fire on that truck WILL mean mission failures regardless of how powerful the team is, if enough Alpha is delivered before the team can pin point and kill long range stuff.

I don't disagree with lack of interesting things to do, I just don't think allowing players to make builds to make missions even shorter - when they normally already run just at the 5 minute mark - even shorter.

Every Hijack mission I've played has consisted of a Nyx standing on top of the rover using absorb, and basically twiddling their thumbs for 2 minutes because we have near infinite energy. 

What I'm saying isn't that it should be shorter, but that it would feel a hell of a lot more rewarding if we were actually able to do something that directly reflects on the mission progress beyond the standard "Shoot things that move". The game can be scaled in many ways other than just adding more enemies or something of the sort to. You can add different terminals that you need to reach, different methods of hacking to change/delay the progress of the players, Forced methods to swap the active player who's working the console, etc.

Even things as simple as having door control to say force the enemies to travel through one compartment would be more than we currently have. Hell, how about having the option to have one team member hack security and control door flow during the defence mission? Anything of these ideas could take a very simple game idea and give it a world of depth.

[DSpite]

19 minutes ago, Ice232 said:

Every Hijack mission I've played has consisted of a Nyx standing on top of the rover using absorb, and basically twiddling their thumbs for 2 minutes because we have near infinite energy. 

What I'm saying isn't that it should be shorter, but that it would feel a hell of a lot more rewarding if we were actually able to do something that directly reflects on the mission progress beyond the standard "Shoot things that move". The game can be scaled in many ways other than just adding more enemies or something of the sort to. You can add different terminals that you need to reach, different methods of hacking to change/delay the progress of the players, Forced methods to swap the active player who's working the console, etc.

Even things as simple as having door control to say force the enemies to travel through one compartment would be more than we currently have. Hell, how about having the option to have one team member hack security and control door flow during the defence mission? Anything of these ideas could take a very simple game idea and give it a world of depth.

The reason you can stand on the rover with a Nyx using absorb is the same reason you can stand in a Snow Glove in Infested Defense and twiddle thumbs. There will ALWAYS be a way of setting up an ability in a situation that will trivialize that situation.

If you just add "busy work" it does not make the game more fun to play, it just adds more trivial thing to do for arbitrary reasons. If I wanted to play Tetris to open a door, I'd just play Tetris and be done with it. We need missions that actually focus on us being more tactical in a combat sense, not mess with buttons and levers.

I'd rather have enemies running around a base trying to shut down power controls or defending power relays to shields that block progress or force the team to split up and/or prioritize objectives. The entire game revolves around combat, we just need the combat to be more interesting then aim-shoot-dead.

[AltusLive]

59 minutes ago, DSpite said:

The reason you can stand on the rover with a Nyx using absorb is the same reason you can stand in a Snow Glove in Infested Defense and twiddle thumbs. There will ALWAYS be a way of setting up an ability in a situation that will trivialize that situation.

If you just add "busy work" it does not make the game more fun to play, it just adds more trivial thing to do for arbitrary reasons. If I wanted to play Tetris to open a door, I'd just play Tetris and be done with it. We need missions that actually focus on us being more tactical in a combat sense, not mess with buttons and levers.

I'd rather have enemies running around a base trying to shut down power controls or defending power relays to shields that block progress or force the team to split up and/or prioritize objectives. The entire game revolves around combat, we just need the combat to be more interesting then aim-shoot-dead.

I disagree with you saying the entire game revolves around combat, and it's clear that DE is at least attempting to shift the game more towards offering a variety of gameplay with things like Lunaro now existing. I remember back when running stealth missions didn't actually get you anything and was just an option you could do if you felt like taking it slow. Now they've added things like bonus affinity for stealth kills, etc. They clearly want to offer variety to game play; but simply haven't gotten to it yet.

What you call "busy work" is just a game aspect that's been implemented poorly. The difference between something being there just to keep you busy, and a memorable aspect of a game is really just how fun what you're doing is. So personally I've always enjoyed little mini-games that break up the standard pace of the game, and so I like to go do those. That's probably why I'm normally the first person to try to go hack consoles when given the chance. For people that don't like that sort of thing though, they can more often than not simply ignore it, or build ciphers to skip it. That's kinda what it means to give options. Also, as a side note: it's not trivial busy work if it actually gives you a result (such as decreasing the wait time, or like activating turrets or whatever).

While I agree that the idea of having power controls and defensive points is fun, as is the concept of objectives to choose to prioritise, those are all more or less the same thing in the end of "shoot till dead". The entire problem is that, as you say, the entire game revolves around too much combat and not enough tactics. Tactics is letting the environment do a lot of the work for you, and planning your mission out ahead of time so you do the least amount of fighting possible to get the most reward out of it. So as was suggested in previous posts things like closing doors, turning off the lights, etc. are all possibilities that increase immersion and give you options for gameplay.

Finally touching on the Nyx absorb/Front Snowglobe problem. This is entirely a result of a game that's designed itself around aspect in the game, and not actual gameplay. If hijack involved more than just "Stay alive and near this thing until the game is done", then simply absorbing your way through it wouldn't be much of a factor. Just the same, if mobile defence was about more than just "defend area X, then defend area Y" you wouldn't just be able to snowglobe the area and then DPS you're way through the level. We need things that are requiring actual interaction, rather than just min/maxing your guns and choosing the most broken frame for the job. That's why things like Spy missions are so unique. There's of course frames that are better or worse but ultimately it comes down to what personal skills you have, how patient you are, and ultimately is a reflection of actual user interaction; rather than saying someone putting a dipping bird on their ultimate as Nova.

[LABAL]

8 hours ago, DSpite said:

I'm not sure this "fixes" anything other then impatience.

It's not about "fixing" something as much as it is about variety.
Variery is the spice of life. Variety, not salt.
DEvs are already making some progress in that direction bit by bit.
Maybe they need some encouragement? Some cheering for them, so they know we appreciate the effort and want to progress further in that direction.

I hope I haven't said anything inappropriate yet.

[AltusLive]

7 hours ago, LABAL said:

It's not about "fixing" something as much as it is about variety.
Variery is the spice of life. Variety, not salt.
DEvs are already making some progress in that direction bit by bit.
Maybe they need some encouragement? Some cheering for them, so they know we appreciate the effort and want to progress further in that direction.

I hope I haven't said anything inappropriate yet.

I think that sums it up pretty well. It's not really that anything is broken; so much as it is not wanting to eat pizza for every meal. Pizza is delicious, but if I have to eat it for every meal for a month straight I'm going to punch the person that tries to give it to me after that. Give me some cake to mix things up a bit!