Making Missions Make Sense

[Aekhon]

Hi!

So, first of all, this is probably going to be a long post.  I will try to make it as readable as possible.

The point of this thread is to address some of the issues found in missions that don't make sense, or could be handled better.  I'll start with one that I think is pretty universal:  alarms/lockdown.

Alarms

So, an enemy spots you, shouts something, and all the nearby enemies get alerted.  One decides to go for the alarm, and you have a limited time to stop him/her before the map-wide alarm goes off - so far, so good.  When the alarm goes off, all enemies on the map are put into an "alerted" state, and some from nearby rooms come running to the room where the alarm was triggered - also good.  You kill all these enemies until no more come, then you shut off the alarm, and everybody just...instantly forgets that an alarm just went off?  Not so good.  At the very least, I think the alerted state should remain on enemies map-wide for at least several minutes after an alarm is shut off.  If another alarm is triggered during that time, enemies remain alerted for the remainder of the mission no matter what (if you're on a spy mission, you just failed).  In a perfect world, after an alarm is shut off, a scouting team should be sent into the room where the alarm was turned off to check things out.  If they spot the player and/or get killed before reporting back, the alarm should be automatically and permanently triggered again.

Lockdown

So, let's say you're a Tenno who doesn't mind being seen, so you ignore the alarms and just keep going.  Eventually, another enemy decides to go for an alarm panel, except this time, they lockdown the whole map, forcing you to interact with a panel to proceed.  From a gameplay perspective, this is more of a boon to the player than a hindrance, as while you cannot proceed, more enemies can't enter the room you're in either, giving you time to kill whatever poor fools are in the room with you, loot the room entirely, heal up, reload weapons - whatever you want to do.  Then, when you're ready, you hack the panel and proceed, and you keep going as if nothing had happened.  It both feels like a wasted gameplay mechanic and doesn't make sense from a lore perspective - they've got you trapped in a room, and that's as far as they're going to take it?

Here's how I think lockdowns should work:  once you're locked in the room, the enemies start stacking up at the exits to the room you're locked in.  The longer you stay in there, the more enemies stack up.  After three minutes (or whatever time is appropriate), the max number of enemies have stacked up on each door, they shut off the lights in the room you're in, and they breach from all doors.  Whether they kill you or you kill them, the lockdown ends.

Extraction

So, all Grineer and Corpus ships have these "docking ports" that are conveniently shaped and sized for Tenno landing craft (with the exception that the four of them are too close together for four Lisets to all be docked at the same time).  That already makes no sense (Grineer hate us and Corpus want to capture and sell us - why would they give us a nice, easy place to dock our ships on theirs?).  What's more, the rooms with these docking ports - the rooms we extract in - are not under any sort of guard at all and often don't even have doors or anything to secure them.  They're just sort of open to the hallway that connects to them.

Short of redesigning map tilesets and extraction cutscenes, this can't be fixed - however, we could still improve the situation.  Let's say that an alarm was triggered during the mission, and then later was successfully shut off (the Tenno successfully evaded the scouting team), and the enemies went back to a non-alerted state.  In this case, I think bulkheads should come down over all four docking ports, and the player should have to find/hack a terminal to raise them before extraction becomes possible.  After all, even though the player escaped detection, there will at minimum be a number of enemy soldiers missing, and that will be suspicious enough to suspect Tenno activity.

Secondly, let's say that an alarm is still active when the player tries to extract.  In this case, hacking to raise the bulkheads should no longer be an option - enemy command will have locked those controls down.  Additionally, there should be 10-20 enemies waiting in cover to ambush the player at extraction.  Once the player deals with the ambush, they must deploy/defend a laser cutter as it cuts through the bulkhead covering their docking port (obviously, waves of enemies attack while the laser cutter is doing its thing).

Alternatively, what if instead of bulkheads, the enemies set bombs on our landing craft that we have to disarm before we can extract?

Survival

This mission type is one of my favorites from a gameplay perspective, but sadly, the in-game reasons behind it make no sense at all.  If our enemies can shut off life support, why don't they just do that any time they detect us on any mission?  How does this work on planetary surface missions (i.e. I don't think this mission type should happen on map tilesets where the player can go outside)?  If they're going to shut off life support, why send in countless enemies to attack us?  If Space Mom can send life support capsules, why can't she send ammo/energy as well?  Why do none of the enemies ever try to destroy or booby trap those life support capsules?  Why does Space Mom think 2000 credits is a "bounty"?

Anyway, what I'd like to do here is preserve the gameplay, but make it so that all (or at least most) of these questions aren't raised.  That means we need an excuse to keep an endless supply of enemies incoming and keep a ticking countdown clock that players must occasionally deal with.  I like the idea that we're there as a distraction for an unseen Tenno agent (though he does a terrible job at finding rewards - just sayin'), so that can stay, but the life support idea has to go.  What if, instead of that, when we first insert into the mission and set off the alarm, we plant a computer virus that helps to mask the Tenno agent's lifesigns from the enemy scanners?  We then have to occasionally re-upload the virus to other terminals in the map to keep it running, as the ship's/facility's computer system slowly tries to purge it.  The enemies would be there purely because we set off the alarm, and they could occasionally drop computer codes or data that buys the virus a little more time.  If the timer ever reaches zero, the Tenno agent is detected and forced to extract.  At that point (if that happens after the five minute minimum mission time), the enemy would fully focus on the Tenno in the map, and Ordis could come on the comm and tell the players that their Landing Craft have been spotted/found (I know they're stealth ships, but they're not invisible), and the players have x number of seconds to get to extraction before their landing craft are destroyed.

 

Okay, so that's all I've got for now.  Feel free to comment/poke holes in what I've posted!

Edited January 20, 2018 by Aekhon

[Siegfried_Stern]

That extraction idea is @(*()$ terrible, dear lord.

[PAX_NL]

Agreed with Siegfried about the extraction idea, the rest is pretty nice.

I especially like the lockdown idea with the enemies breaching into the room mechanic, I would love to see that in game.

[taiiat]

why exactly do you feel that going through Missions quietly should be nigh impossible? the Enemies are leaving Alerted state because clearing the Alarm sends an all clear.
it sounds like you're trying to make Players want to have Invisibility more, but they already use it prolifically as it is.
also Spy Missions don't fail because the Alarms are raised.... the Mission wide Alarms don't matter for the Spy Vaults.

 

your desires for Lockdowns makes it from technically a bit of a help to a Meta Farming method.

 

why does calling an all clear tell the Enemies that they've been attacked, exactly? it's an all clear. it means the threat is gone or has been dealt with. that's the point of clearing Alarms - that's why we have to hack it.... we're impersonating one of them to tell the Enemies we're not there.
and with countless sized Armies, how exactly are these Factions determining that there's missing Units? it's not like these Factions have particularly organized leadership.

have to wait or fiddle with a bunch of stuff to leave the Mission? that sounds great for an Endless Mission where Players may be trying to abandon ship. or great for most Missions in general that you just add standing around AFK time to the end of every Mission.
you can achieve the ambushing Enemies with AI trickery, which could look neat.

 

Life Support exists in Survival because it forces Players to:

• Kill Enemies
• not be Killed by Enemies
• move around the Map sometimes
• go to where they have Killed Enemies

each of these things is necessary for an Endless Gamemode to have the capability to be something active to do.
your renaming of Survival doesn't really change anything. why do we need a Virus, when we can clear Alarms from any ol' system panel? why do the Enemies have something relevant to that Virus? why don't the Enemies just destroy the system the Virus is riding in to end it quickly? where is Harvey Dent?

[Enxchiol]

I think the Alerted state disappearing does make sense. It could possibly be a false alarm or a signal the threat has already been neutralized.

[Aekhon]

11 hours ago, taiiat said:

why exactly do you feel that going through Missions quietly should be nigh impossible?

I don't.  You don't even need invisibility to do these things.  You can hide behind cover to evade detection if you want.  I do it all the time.  And why shouldn't spy missions fail when an alarm goes off?  You're in a facility that stores sensitive data.  An alarm goes off.  What do you think the Tenno are there for?  Doesn't take a genius to figure that out.

 

11 hours ago, taiiat said:

why does calling an all clear tell the Enemies that they've been attacked, exactly?

Think of it this way:  you're a soldier in a secure facility.  An alarm goes off in the next room for a few minutes.  You hear sounds of combat.  The alarm then suddenly stops.  Are you seriously going to think, "Oh, guess everything is okay now?"  You don't think that somebody in command is gonna ask what happened and/or send some people to verify that it's all clear?  This doesn't take that much organization - it's basic operational procedure.  Besides, we can tell from the radio in the orbiter that the Grineer and Corpus both have plenty of organization - enough to set up checkpoints, at least.

 

11 hours ago, taiiat said:

Life Support exists in Survival because it forces Players to:

• Kill Enemies
• not be Killed by Enemies
• move around the Map sometimes
• go to where they have Killed Enemies

Life support does none of these things.  We kill enemies in missions regardless of life support.  We avoid being killed regardless of life support.  Moving around the map in a survival mission is actually something you don't want to do if you're farming.  The rest of your comment suggests that you don't understand that I'm not trying to change the gameplay of a survival mission, just make it make sense from a story point of view.  You don't want to clear an alarm in a Survival mission:  you're the distraction, remember?  You want the enemies to come to where you are so the operative doesn't have to deal with as many.

[Aekhon]

12 hours ago, Siegfried_Stern said:

That extraction idea is @(*()$ terrible, dear lord.

Why?

[Aekhon]

2 hours ago, Enxchiol said:

I think the Alerted state disappearing does make sense. It could possibly be a false alarm or a signal the threat has already been neutralized.

I disagree.  There would need to be some sort of communication from command that it was a false alarm or that the threat has been neutralized before I'm going to relax after an alarm.  That's going to take time.

[Aekhon]

12 hours ago, PAX_NL said:

Agreed with Siegfried about the extraction idea, the rest is pretty nice.

I especially like the lockdown idea with the enemies breaching into the room mechanic, I would love to see that in game.

What's wrong with extraction?  It's already part of Sabotage missions depending on how you sabotage the Grineer reactors.

Thanks for agreeing about the lockdowns, though!

[taiiat]

42 minutes ago, Aekhon said:

I don't.  You don't even need invisibility to do these things.

Think of it this way

Life support does none of these things.
Moving around the map in a survival mission is actually something you don't want to do if you're farming

no you don't, but being Invisible is the reliable way to do so, since there are many points through a Mission where you cannot avoid Enemies in a reliable fashion.
you're insisting that several Gamemodes should require certain Mods or Equipment to play reliably. i wholly enjoy the AI Awareness update that happened, i can play an entire Mission without being Invisible or even have a Suppressed Gun and still technically be Stealthy - but that's not practical if you can't reset Alarms.

i didn't ask for a fanfic, i asked for an explanation. they have a secured system, if it sends an all clear, it's all clear. they're the only ones that can use it, it's secured.
unless you recruit Federal help to audit anything and everything to do with your Accounts at any place each time you login to them - you do the exact same thing with all of your secured things. you use them, and you do not automatically assume there has been a security breach.

 

you're joking, right? if you're not then gimme a minute to stop laughing.
if you're not, then you don't understand what Life Support exists for at all, or the Game Design behind Survival.

moving around some amount is actually very important for Survival - if you understand how Enemy Spawns in Survival work. you can AFK if you have Desecrate or Pilfering Swarm, but outside of that hiding in a corner is extremely antithetical to a Survival Mission. (but, so is crossing the Map from one end to the other.)

[Aekhon]

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

you're joking, right? if you're not then gimme a minute to stop laughing.
if you're not, then you don't understand what Life Support exists for at all, or the Game Design behind Survival.

moving around some amount is actually very important for Survival - if you understand how Enemy Spawns in Survival work. you can AFK if you have Desecrate or Pilfering Swarm, but outside of that hiding in a corner is extremely antithetical to a Survival Mission. (but, so is crossing the Map from one end to the other.)

I understand it perfectly.  Whether or not enemies drop life support in a survival mission is irrelevant - you're going to kill them anyway.  How do I know?  Because they're attacking you, and you don't want to die.  The only reason life support exists in a Survival mission is to add a ticking clock element.  That's it.  It in no way forces you to kill enemies, nor does it need to - you were going to do that anyway.  It in no way forces enemies to attack you - they were going to do that anyway.

I've run hundreds of Survival missions, both solo and in groups.  If I'm there to farm, I never move around.  I find a room I like and I stay there.  That's how you farm.  Life support will spawn in that room (if I choose a good room with multiple LS spawn points).  You look for a large room with at least four entrances to ensure the maximum number of spawns coming into the room.  Moving to another room only slows that down, because it takes time for the hoardes of enemies to catch up to you.  That's time you're not killing, and that's time you're not looting.  If you're playing with multiple people, you want them all in the same room (and preferably a room with a lot of LS spawn points and four doors, as above).  If they're spread out or moving around, it divides the spawn among them.  That leads to downtime - nobody wants that.

[taiiat]

35 minutes ago, Aekhon said:

I've run hundreds of Survival missions, both solo and in groups.

then surely you should know how Enemy Spawns works by now. Enemies Spawn a room or two away from the location that they were Killed, and travel towards the Players. where the Player is located is not particularly important. infact you can encounter Enemies more often if you are moving between some areas so that you are going to where the Enemies are Spawning. like i said... not moving and crossing the entire map is neither a great thing, moving some is recommended.
your information is outdated, before the 2 years of painstaking work spent on Survival to make it work consistently and not break half the time.

what you're looking for is to have Enemies within your sight, rather than Killing Enemies as fast as possible (the point of the Mission). you'll certainly have a consistent trickle of Enemies if you hide in a corner, but your total Killing Rate suffers because of it.

[(PSN)JAyMaN002]

Il y a 20 heures, Aekhon a dit :

Hi!

So, first of all, this is probably going to be a long post.  I will try to make it as readable as possible.

The point of this thread is to address some of the issues found in missions that don't make sense, or could be handled better.  I'll start with one that I think is pretty universal:  alarms/lockdown.

Alarms

So, an enemy spots you, shouts something, and all the nearby enemies get alerted.  One decides to go for the alarm, and you have a limited time to stop him/her before the map-wide alarm goes off - so far, so good.  When the alarm goes off, all enemies on the map are put into an "alerted" state, and some from nearby rooms come running to the room where the alarm was triggered - also good.  You kill all these enemies until no more come, then you shut off the alarm, and everybody just...instantly forgets that an alarm just went off?  Not so good.  At the very least, I think the alerted state should remain on enemies map-wide for at least several minutes after an alarm is shut off.  If another alarm is triggered during that time, enemies remain alerted for the remainder of the mission no matter what (if you're on a spy mission, you just failed).  In a perfect world, after an alarm is shut off, a scouting team should be sent into the room where the alarm was turned off to check things out.  If they spot the player and/or get killed before reporting back, the alarm should be automatically and permanently triggered again.

Lockdown

So, let's say you're a Tenno who doesn't mind being seen, so you ignore the alarms and just keep going.  Eventually, another enemy decides to go for an alarm panel, except this time, they lockdown the whole map, forcing you to interact with a panel to proceed.  From a gameplay perspective, this is more of a boon to the player than a hindrance, as while you cannot proceed, more enemies can't enter the room you're in either, giving you time to kill whatever poor fools are in the room with you, loot the room entirely, heal up, reload weapons - whatever you want to do.  Then, when you're ready, you hack the panel and proceed, and you keep going as if nothing had happened.  It both feels like a wasted gameplay mechanic and doesn't make sense from a lore perspective - they've got you trapped in a room, and that's as far as they're going to take it?

Here's how I think lockdowns should work:  once you're locked in the room, the enemies start stacking up at the exits to the room you're locked in.  The longer you stay in there, the more enemies stack up.  After three minutes (or whatever time is appropriate), the max number of enemies have stacked up on each door, they shut off the lights in the room you're in, and they breach from all doors.  Whether they kill you or you kill them, the lockdown ends.

Extraction

So, all Grineer and Corpus ships have these "docking ports" that are conveniently shaped and sized for Tenno landing craft (with the exception that the four of them are too close together for four Lisets to all be docked at the same time).  That already makes no sense (Grineer hate us and Corpus want to capture and sell us - why would they give us a nice, easy place to dock our ships on theirs?).  What's more, the rooms with these docking ports - the rooms we extract in - are not under any sort of guard at all and often don't even have doors or anything to secure them.  They're just sort of open to the hallway that connects to them.

Short of redesigning map tilesets and extraction cutscenes, this can't be fixed - however, we could still improve the situation.  Let's say that an alarm was triggered during the mission, and then later was successfully shut off (the Tenno successfully evaded the scouting team), and the enemies went back to a non-alerted state.  In this case, I think bulkheads should come down over all four docking ports, and the player should have to find/hack a terminal to raise them before extraction becomes possible.  After all, even though the player escaped detection, there will at minimum be a number of enemy soldiers missing, and that will be suspicious enough to suspect Tenno activity.

Secondly, let's say that an alarm is still active when the player tries to extract.  In this case, hacking to raise the bulkheads should no longer be an option - enemy command will have locked those controls down.  Additionally, there should be 10-20 enemies waiting in cover to ambush the player at extraction.  Once the player deals with the ambush, they must deploy/defend a laser cutter as it cuts through the bulkhead covering their docking port (obviously, waves of enemies attack while the laser cutter is doing its thing).

Alternatively, what if instead of bulkheads, the enemies set bombs on our landing craft that we have to disarm before we can extract?

Survival

This mission type is one of my favorites from a gameplay perspective, but sadly, the in-game reasons behind it make no sense at all.  If our enemies can shut off life support, why don't they just do that any time they detect us on any mission?  How does this work on planetary surface missions (i.e. I don't think this mission type should happen on map tilesets where the player can go outside)?  If they're going to shut off life support, why send in countless enemies to attack us?  If Space Mom can send life support capsules, why can't she send ammo/energy as well?  Why do none of the enemies ever try to destroy or booby trap those life support capsules?  Why does Space Mom think 2000 credits is a "bounty"?

Anyway, what I'd like to do here is preserve the gameplay, but make it so that all (or at least most) of these questions aren't raised.  That means we need an excuse to keep an endless supply of enemies incoming and keep a ticking countdown clock that players must occasionally deal with.  I like the idea that we're there as a distraction for an unseen Tenno agent (though he does a terrible job at finding rewards - just sayin'), so that can stay, but the life support idea has to go.  What if, instead of that, when we first insert into the mission and set off the alarm, we plant a computer virus that helps to mask the Tenno agent's lifesigns from the enemy scanners?  We then have to occasionally re-upload the virus to other terminals in the map to keep it running, as the ship's/facility's computer system slowly tries to purge it.  The enemies would be there purely because we set off the alarm, and they could occasionally drop computer codes or data that buys the virus a little more time.  If the timer ever reaches zero, the Tenno agent is detected and forced to extract.  At that point (if that happens after the five minute minimum mission time), the enemy would fully focus on the Tenno in the map, and Ordis could come on the comm and tell the players that their Landing Craft have been spotted/found (I know they're stealth ships, but they're not invisible), and the players have x number of seconds to get to extraction before their landing craft are destroyed.

 

Okay, so that's all I've got for now.  Feel free to comment/poke holes in what I've posted!

So personally, I agree with what you’re saying bro. You want realism in missions. And it seems like most people on here are brainwashed by “video game reality.” 

But in real life, enemies should be performing the way you’re saying. Only ones I can’t really agree with is alarms: because hacking sends an all clear to enemies. And shutting off lights in lockdowns: cause we have flashlight heads anyway lol 

Your Survival rework is a great idea tho! I was just thinking the other day how dumb it is that we need life support anyway, half the time it doesn’t make sense. Installing a virus instead of hacking alarms makes a lot more sense. I think it’d be a fun challenge if enemies actually could destroy the life pods/ malware pods since they’re so vital. What if our extraction rooms were the ones locked down? And we had to hack into those to escape. Would probably only be for ship missions tho, planets would be easier I guess  

[Gandergear]

the alarm idea isn't fun low level play, introducing it for sedna/pluto? sure.