A "Mission 2.0" Suggestion - General Improvements and Revamps

[BlackCoMerc]

Played a bit today to kill some time. Mostly ran high credit and/or Endo alerts. Had a few ideas while running these missions, thought I would toss them out here:

 

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Exterminate 2.0 - Incursion:

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-Incursion Exterminate missions could either replace or exist along side the current mission version. An Incursion is a raid into an enemy stronghold. Whether its a capital ship full of Elite troops, a planetary base or asteroid outpost, the Tenno will conduct a covert raid to eliminate all enemies. 

-The mission has three sections, each separated by a Friendship door from the others. Each section grants its own reward. Tenno can extract as long as the first section is completed. All additional sections mean gradually tougher enemies, gradually improved rewards. 

-Caps off with a mini boss fight in a large, open room with verticality, and a mini boss featuring damage and power resistance (not immunity) and NO invulnerability phases. The three sections before it offer A, B, B rotations. The boss fight is a C Rotation reward commiserate with the level of the mission.

-Will occasionally feature interactive areas. Some maps might enable you to blow out a window in a Corpus ship, catching enemies by surprise and killing everyone in the room. Or destroy a parked Grineer mining rig, and the explosion takes out all nearby enemies. Other environmental aids can randomly present themselves in these missions - or not.

-Only the first tier of Exterminate is mandatory. This allows players who simply want a quick mission to still have one.

 

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Excavation 2.0 - Exploration:

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Tenno, we need to extract resources from enemy occupied zones. There are two ways to do this:

-Locate the enemy supply caches

-Call down Excavators and mine for resoures and possible, buried Orokin artifacts

This mission now features the loot caches from Sabotage. Either they are moved to this mission, or also exist in this mission, in addition to Sabotage. This is due to the fact that Sabotage is in a good place right now. Multiple objectives, three different final scenarios. Its busy enough. 

Excavation, meanwhile, is...hokey. Hard to take seriously. And it needs a major revamp. Like:

In this mission, you're main objective is the Loot Caches. The Lotus can tell you how many are present, and mark them on your mini map once you get close enough to them. 

While in the mission, you can activate certain hot spots in the open world portions of the map to call down excavators. These are fully charged, and will keep mining until you send them back up. Every 2-5 minutes (depending on testing and feedback) they provide a new reward, but enemies get tougher the longer you leave them running. Can use Rotation rewards.

Once you have found at least 1 loot cache, you can extract. Once you have mined for a certain duration using an Excavator (until the first reward) you can also extract. The more rewards you find, the tougher enemies become. 

Or not. I personally dont feel we need to be run out of the mission, since rewards will remain commiserate with the original level of the mission and will not scale as the enemies do. 

 

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Spy 3.0 - Infiltration

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-The whole map is a Stealth mission

-Enemies are very limited, but tougher than normal

-More air ducts, vents and alternate routes

-For ships, make use of an inner/outer hull, heat extraction tunnels, etc to allow routes with environmental hazards

-Each Vault has a primary Vault guard. If you take down the guard, they will drop the Passcode for their Vault. This will disable all traps and guards within that Vault but the Vault will not provide Bonus Affinity when you grab the reward, since you just waltzed in. Vault Guards are tough. Be prepared.

-Why do this: Missions about killing things can afford repetition. The sheer act of taking on enemies is dynamic and ever changing. Not so Stealthing a map. That gets old. Quick. DE needs to find a way or two to spice these up - such as allowing combat oriented players to tackle Vault Guards as opposed to Stealthing the mission. Or lots of routes, limited, tough enemies, etc. These need some changing up.

 

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Capture 2.0 - VIP Targets 

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Lets face it: Capture missions are pretty awful. Every target is power immune. Every run boils down to a foot race against enemies with artificial, ridiculous speed bonuses. Lets fix it:

-Multiple targets, with only the first one mandatory

-One reward per target

-Targets are damage resistant, NOT power immune. This is the type of mission that BEGS for careful use of stealth and powers in order to foster creative solutions. And we are denied that for no good reason at all. 

-Targets are GUARDED. Guards are Eximus, and tough. Targets themselves are softies, as they are VIP targets and will rarely, if ever, be actual soldiers

Lets stop the B movie foot chase that is literally ever Capture mission and make it something far better.

 

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Mobile Defense 2.0 - Espionage

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First and foremost, we are killing off the data pack. Carrying it - and subsequently being limited to your sidearm - never made any sense. In the real world I can put the Library of Congress or 10,000 cat pictures on a flash drive that will fit in my pocket, my hand...its tiny. Having this colossal by comparison data pack is nonsensical. Not to mention, picking things up if you drop them, swapping weapons or to your scanner while carrying this thing...these are NOT parts of Warframe on which you want to shine a spotlight. Highlighting this "feature" of your game is like having a dealership full of Corvettes and Camaros and shining the spotlight on your only Chevy Cobalt.

Second, Espionage can take multiple forms. Some missions, you will hack a terminal and guard it from enemies. Other missions, you might need to hijack several computer systems spread throughout a map. How you get to them is your concern. Just get there. Whether you ignore or kill everything in your path is not especially relevant.

For each terminal hacked/guarded/hijacked, you get a reward. 

Mission Tools:

These missions feature tools you can use to adjust the mission to your preferred style, and distract or ambush enemies. Some terminals, when hijacked, allow you to call reinforcements to their area. Just activate them a second time to do so, and it will increase nearby spawns while decreasing spawns throughout the rest of the mission for a duration. Use this to draw in more enemies for an Affinity rich battle or distract them from your next objective. 

 

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Interception 2.0 - Reach the Signal

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Enemies are transmitting a signal from this base, Tenno. We need to intercept this signal. But getting in will not be easy.

This is a total revamp. No longer en Endless mission, so, either replace, or coexist.

We need to reach the broadcast point of the enemy signal. Doing so means diving deep within a guarded facility. We need to deal with environmental hazards, tough guards, tight spaces and platoons of patrolling enemies to reach the signal. Use the Stealth route, or knock down the front door and kick the enemy in the teeth.

But know, Tenno: That signal transmission will be guarded. And shutting it down is tougher than just hacking the terminal. The Lotus will first need to get in - and then she can go to work. In the mean time, we will need to defend the terminal from the enemies, who would rather destroy it than allow us to intercept their transmissions and crack their codes.

This is a hybrid Exterminate/Base raid and Defense/Mobile defense mission. Recommend it cap with an battling an Eximus squad for the control center, or a mini boss fight to access the terminal, followed by a 2-3 minute defense. 

Optional: Add loot caches to maps, or multiple terminals for a pseudo endless variant.

 

And there we go. Just a few mission suggestions. Liven things up a bit.

 

 

[BAY35]

Love all of these ideas besides the loss of endless to interception. Also, the Vault guards in Spy 3.0 are kinda pointless, because Loki/Ash/Ivara + CL (Rakta) Dark Dagger/Karyst/CeramicDagger/etc. would make short work of them.