Plains diversity, dynamics, and potential lessons for Venus.

[SnuggleBuckets]

I've made these suggestions before, but almost always scattered around in different comments and topics.
I've had a soft spot for the Plains, and feel like they have potential, but currently lack some needed variety.

1. Adding Dargyns was good, now add an all terrain vehicle with multiple seats for coop players, and make their spawns fixed at grineer camps, so that once you find them you can make a mental note of finding them at XY coordinates on the map in the future.
2. More faction fighting, with Ostron/Cetus guerilla fighters every once in a while engaging with a grineer camp, and the player can join in to help their cause for some XP reward, just a minor side activity that can spawn,
3. Wandering traders, fishermen and miners. Cetus is a bustling market city, the plains need some folk who can spawn along the way, travelling back to Cetus to sell their bounties, and players running into them on the plains have the opportunity to buy from them for resources they've gathered something, or an optional job to escort them back safely through grineer territory, for the price of something they've fished/mined/gathered etc.
4. They're called the plains, they need a buffalo sized herbivore herd grazing out in the open during day time, passive but will defend themselves if threatened and sending the herd on a stampede, could be mammals or even some lizard descendants. Then with herds you need a pact animal hunting them, who lazily sleep around during the day and actively hunt during the night, could be Kubrows or a Bird descendant.
5. More territorial diversity on the map. Take the hunter animals above, A Kubrow den territory at XY coordinates where most of them reside and aggressively defend their territory. Caves could use their own unique dwellers. Grineer Patrols need to feel less random and more like they would have a path between camps for instance. Outposts not only under grineer control, but pockets of resistance.

The grineer Tusks feel really satisfying to engage in combat, the open fields, the whistles of mortar bombardments and incoming dropships give the feeling of a messy, dynamic, chaotic battlefield, and I want this lively feeling to extend outside the moments you actively engage with the enemy out in the open.

Honestly I would have preferred the next open area to have been Mercury or Mars rather than Venus, for the simple reason that then you could more starkly create a diverse territory for the map, as on Mars you could create a crossfire type no-mans-land, with a distinct Corpus side and a Grineer side, with active engagement in-between, or an apocalyptic wasteland on Mercury, with a massive Grineer stronghold in one corner trying to hold out against the tide of infested living out there in the open.

Edited February 27, 2018 by SnuggleBuckets
Added note on Mars & Mercury.

[Cheating_Husband]

7 hours ago, SnuggleBuckets said:

.Wandering traders, fishermen and miners. Cetus is a bustling market city, the plains need some folk who can spawn along the way, travelling back to Cetus to sell their bounties, and players running into them on the plains have the opportunity to buy from them for resources they've gathered something, or an optional job to escort them back safely through grineer territory, for the price of something they've fished/mined/gathered etc

I really like this suggestion.

[DSpite]

I'm not saying I disagree with the suggestions, but I will say that those would apply more to a map that is FAR larger then the one we have now and/or a setting that is not so high power based. I mean, imagine Warframes on the map of Far Cry 4, instantly vaporizing wildlife, and being able to fly an order of magnitude faster across the map than the little copter.

I'm all for making the plains feel more alive, but the only reason we go there currently is to brutally pixel-murder everything we come across on timed missions (for the most part), so anything else DE could add would just be a distraction. Would you really stop to sell stuff when there is a timer up? Even fishing is officially a solo or a "pre-arranged" exercise as not to bother everyone else.

Maybe this kind of ideas could be used on future larger maps?

[SnuggleBuckets]

7 hours ago, DSpite said:

I mean, imagine Warframes on the map of Far Cry 4, instantly vaporizing wildlife, and being able to fly an order of magnitude faster across the map than the little copter.

You're saying that like it's a bad thing :D Also, isn't that what's already happening?

7 hours ago, DSpite said:

Would you really stop to sell stuff when there is a timer up? Even fishing is officially a solo or a "pre-arranged" exercise as not to bother everyone else.

I honestly don't care for public matchmaking, as that always has strife and grief and people unhappy with how anyone is performing, so I see this as not a direct argument against anything I wrote (not that you meant it to be!).
I would stop to trade if I had the opportunity and my coop partner would also, and there could be easy ways to make sure they don't spawn within the areas that trigger timers. And to some extent, wandering traders would be there to minimize the tedium of standing in one spot fishing for ages, as you could buy some from a clear fisher coming in. And nothing is forcing us to engage in any of these activities, they are there to give us more freedom in how we go about acquiring stuff, and again to give more flare, variety and life to the currently rather empty plains.

But as you say, you don't necessarily disagree, more that you would want to see these implemented in a future larger map, I would also like that, but also like to see these retroactively added to the plains.

Edited February 27, 2018 by SnuggleBuckets

[SnuggleBuckets]

17 hours ago, DSpite said:

so anything else DE could add would just be a distraction.

I kind of want to emphasize that we precisely need distractions, more neat details and activities to grab our attention in this open map to constantly remind us that we could, whenever we wanted to, to do something else. Currently it's really easy to not be distracted because the reality is that there's not much to the plains, fishing and mining only appears if you look for them, if you bother to do so, leaving pretty much ONLY grineer and vomvalysts tellings us clearly that there is something else to these barren plains.

I've been playing a bit of Dying Light recently outside of Warframe, small maps packed with little activities, loot, hidden stuff, random encounters-- So much to constantly remind you that there's plenty to still do than merely parkouring to the next objective, giving the world a richer more varied feel to it.