Operator's personality, just for quests?

[Wings_Shakrun]

I recently finished the prologue of the apostate quest. And I have to say, it was wonderful. I loved the music, the scene, but most of all, I loved that short cutscene in wich the operator hugs the Lotus' helm. I thinks it tells a lot about the feeligs of the moment, and the nature of the relationship with Lotus. For me, the most enjoyable part of a story is it's character's growth along the events. This is why I like the operator that much, because it feels very human... In the quests. But out of there, I have two big problems.

An invisible operator.

The only things I've heard from the operator outside the quests are that in-game quotes without relevance that are more annoying that interesting. Even in no main quests the operator remains silent. We don't have kind of reaction when the not-creepy-at-all Rell's message is showed to us, no reactions to Suda's madness in the Octavia's anthem, no reactions, in general. Every time Konzu calls the operator "his favorite gun" we get... Nothing. Ordis is actually speaking with a wall in the orbiter, because there's no answer to anything he says, that has to be really sad. I don't want an operator's quote for every other quote in the game. But, maybe, something more that: "Excellent work. We'll interrogate the captive back at base. Your part is done here, Tenno." //  "You'd think they'd clone something a little less... ugly?". Because it makes no sense, can you imagine a mother-to-son conversation where one is talking about safety and the other about cats? It throws me out of the experience.

Does he/she even have a life?

How can you spend all of your actual life on a ship, only with your cephalon to talk with, and cannot say anything to him? Not even a good morning! Where's the so called Tenno honor? Why all the interaction that we've had with our mom is the Second Dream one and a hug to her helm? (I don't remember if it was another in The War Within, sorry). Why we keep going to Cetus with our precious Surah or Kin rank just to say: "Bounties?, That one".?

Hard as a rock, fragile as a crystal.

This is a short one. Why after have been almost killed twice beeing out of the warframe, he/she/whatever doesn't have a shadow of doubt about charging himself against a giant sentient, capable of killing him/her/whatever with a blink of an eye? Obviously I don't want a major change, just a little quote of fear or self-distrust will make it well.

In conclussion: I'd love to have a more alive operator, one who answers the questions, one who's more than a few quotes in a quest. Because is not a secondary character, this guys/girls/whatever, are our characters, those with whom we live our adventure. I have more than a thousand hours in this game, and I'm beginning to be tired of "My warframe is strong". Sorry if my english is not as good as I wanted, I just tried to let my view to be aknowledge.

[Yarizui]

Oh my god, I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thought this way - partly because your rather comprehensive feedback covers a lot of the bases I was thinking of talking about myself, which saves me a lot of trouble.

Personally, I feel like the problem with the operators as-is is twofold. One is the emotionally stale and unresponsive nature of them outside of quests, which you've already covered quite well. As you've already said, the lines we get are completely randomized. However, I'd also like to add that they're also somewhat inconsistent. Isn't it strange in the same Infested mission to hear the operator deliver lines like "Disgusting monstrosities! I think they absorb their victims," with a tone that sounds like abject horror, then to hear them speaking calmly and angrily about how "We should purge this place," then to hear them cheerfully joking along the lines of "What a mess. Let's clean it up!" With the lines we currently have, DE seems like they've tried to give us a response for every personality, so as to cover all their bases. But if those lines occur regardless of the personality of the operator in question, then it ceases to have any kind of relevance to the character in question.

This leads me into my next point. The second problem with Operators is the fact that we don't seem to have any control over who they are outside of quests. With the War Within, we've been given the option to make very significant choices for ourselves about what kind of person our Operator is. And, ever since Second Dream, we've been told that "This is who we are." Because of that, I find it to be kind of a glaring flaw that, as-is, the Operator might as well just be another pre-scripted NPC, since our input has no impact on the lines we get from them.

In short, I strongly agree with Leviathan, however, I'd also like to add a couple of additional suggestions on how to solve this problem. While each of my ideas might be a solution in and of itself, that also doesn't make them mutually exclusive, and honestly, I'd like to see all three of the following implemented.

The easiest way to do it would be to tie in the Operator's dialogue to the choices you make during quests. However, if this path was chosen, I would strongly implore you not to simply make it "Sun = good and nice" "Moon = edgy and evil" "neutral = anything in between." That doesn't solve the problem of lack of user input, it just means that instead of getting one set of randomized lines tangentially related to your character, you get to choose one of three. Instead, I'd recommend tying certain lines into certain prompts more subtly. For example, suppose you chose during War Within to kill the Queen yourself. That might serve as a trigger so that when you take a powerful hit, your Operator delivers some angry line about "I'll get you for that!" because you've already shown a bit of a vengeful streak. Other cases might be that, for example, if you chose "I embraced it," your operator is more passionate, brash, and perhaps even arrogant, while if you chose "I controlled it," your operator is more calm and composed, and if you chose "I hated it," your operator is more tense, nervous, or the like. This way, the choices you make clearly matter and help define who exactly your character is.

The second way to increase the relevance of the operator is much as Leviathan already suggested: allow us to interact with NPCs to some extent. This doesn't have to be earthshaking - just a few bits of casual banter would go a long way to help give us a sense of control over who we are and how we act within the world. If combined with my first suggestion, this could also provide another opportunity to determine the operator's personality in-system and decide what lines are triggered when. For example, an Operator who chose to go back and forth with Ordis exchanging terrible puns would likely act more cheerful and lighthearted than one who simply asked him for a report on the situation.

My final suggestion is a little less straightforward, so bear with me here. In addition to the occasional random lines during missions - which, as I already said, would be better if they were associated with specific situational triggers and tied to prior developments - I'd like to see a way for my Operator to interact with other players' operators during missions. In addition to an emote wheel, how about people who've cleared the Second Dream gain access to sending and receiving clips from a list of voice lines which they can trigger at will and broadcast to the party? Obviously, you'd probably need some kind of system in place to prevent spam, but I think it could definitely work. What if instead of Lotus calling us up and warning us that "It's the Grineer," another Tenno gave us a heads-up that there were enemy marines ahead, and that they wanted us to try sneaking in and assassinating them? They could also request healing or support, chastise hasty players for rushing on too rapidly ahead, or ask their team to head to extraction when they began to get overwhelmed. This could serve double duty as a way for players without microphones or who aren't comfortable with voice chat to communicate in real-time with their team without having to type out a long message. However, it could also include some lines "just for fun," as it were, to help build immersion and a sense of party unity. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could have seemingly scripted, movie-like events in the middle of just normal missions? Suppose you went down far away from your team, sent a message like "Don't worry about me, go!" but then got a response like "I'm not leaving you behind!" as your team rushed all the way back from evac just to save you. After all, as the Operator said during War Within, "This is my family now." I think we should be able to act like one.

Hehe. Sorry if this was a bit longwinded, and sorry to you, Leviathan, if I ended up stealing some of your thunder. In any case, I'll be keeping an eye on this thread, and I really hope DE notices!

[Wings_Shakrun]

7 hours ago, Yarizui said:

I'd like to see a way for my Operator to interact with other players' operators during missions

Although I think is a good idea, I believe that the NPC's interactions are more important to define the operator's personality because the NPCs have a pre-designed personality to answer the operator and in the operator's life, we spend more time with Ordis than with our clan members, for example.

[furturgamesliker]

i do think it would be nice to have some answers or questions the operator has for anyone in the game and i tend to forget my operator exist every now and then but with the operators silence it reminds me a bit of myself i tend to be silent aswell but sometimes i wonder why my operator is so quiet no words to speak off and maybe the operator could talk to other operatos every now and then with how they feel about this?