[Richard Talks:] Rescue

[Yzjdriel]

It's time for Round Five.

We know there are some things in Warframe that are well done, there are some things need to change, and there are some things that just need a LITTLE bit of tweaking.

Let's dive right in.

This discussion will benefit from your comments, so please share your opinions!

I will not be talking about nerfs, powercreep, meta, or anything else that invariably ends up being a hot-button issue anywhere in this thread.  I would ask you all to do the same when responding.

Now then.

RESCUE MISSIONS

You love them, you hate them, you haven't played the game since before Specters of Liberty (U13.2), whatever you think (or don't think) about Rescue 2.0, it's a thing that exists.  And like everything else, it has its own place and its own issues.  Let's talk.

Simply Put:  You have exactly one job in a Rescue mission:  break Genius out of jail and reach extraction while s/he's still alive.

Pros:  Straightforward and largely uncomplicated, Rescue missions require some modicum of a plan and aren't too terribly difficult - your job is also made easier by the fact that Genius has a fairly decent AI.  Prison complexes are well-constructed and require tactics other than brute force for maximum efficiency and maximum reward-grabbing.

Cons:  If you do brute-force the prison, you meet very little resistance on the way out.  There is also very little actual consequence for Genius if you start the death clock.

Both cons are related to the death clock, but each has a different fix.

How to fix it:  Genius is in prison when you enter the holding area, and will continue to be in his/her cell until you unlock the door.  If there is an 'execution sequence' that starts when you trip the alarms, it stands to reason that it isn't going to be a big countdown to a guillotine.  There should be a measurable consequence to Genius for every second the countdown is running, as the enemy is using a time-active method of killing him/her.

For example, the Corpus would flood the cell with toxic gas, and the Grineer would use a similar (and slightly less effective) method, like a lower-potency gas.  Every second that ticks by on the death clock should deal damage to Genius equal to a percentage of his or her health such that the timer reaching zero corresponds with his or her death, a timer that made it halfway to zero corresponds with Genius being at half-health, etc.  Damage would not be permanent if you brought a way to heal them (or just let them go down and rez them), but it would mean that coming out of the cell after the countdown had been triggered would be a little more hairy at first, directly caused by the alarms going off (and in Sortie, where the alarms just go off when you enter, this would provide that much more of a decent challenge).  Seeing as this is a temporary setback at worst for a team who's come prepared, this should be a fairly easy change to make from a gameplay perspective (coding the health drain would take a little more time, but since we already have the on-screen timer it shouldn't be too difficult to add more lines that feed off the death clock).

The other problem is that you don't see many enemies outside the prison on the way out if the alarms are triggered.  Triggering the alarms should buff the enemy spawn rates considerably to give players more incentive to not just barge in and brute force things (the direct cause of 90% of failed PUG alerts - the other 10% is host migration).  If Genius is of value to the enemy, doesn't it make sense they'd throw more units at us to make sure Genius gets killed rather than just letting us waltz out the door with all the information?

Bottom Line:  Genius should suffer the consequences of us bungling the infiltration, and it should feel like the enemies don't want us to get away with Genius:  anything from buffing the spawn rates by a LOT once we break to giving Genius an infinite amount of enemy aggro would work.

 

I would appreciate your constructive criticism on this topic.

Have fun and be safe, Tenno.

Edited April 13, 2017 by Yzjdriel

[Sleepy_time]

I agree with you that there should be more consequence when you alert the guards. Something I always thought would be interesting would be to carry the Genius to extraction, like how you carry your operator in the Second Dream. What if when you alert the guards they start torturing the captive and cripple them. Then you are forced to carry them to extraction rather than have them follow you?