Ideas for future raid like contents

[PyschoGrizzlyBear]

 

Raid being removed from Warframe, means a significant part of "end-game" content being put on the backburner for who knows how long. They might totally revamp the existing dead button pushing nightmare Trails and back to more monster, alien, and clone shoot em up. Preferably the latter, those raids really pushed my buttons.

Anyways, I have new ideas and I like to start a discussion and share my ideas and hear your feedback and ideas on what future raid contents will be fun and rewarding in the long run. I'm going to talk about my love and hate relationship and the inspiration I got from Realm of The Mad God(RoTMG); if you don't want to read it, skip to my Idea Segment or to the Raid Progression Segment for maximum awe and confusion. And prepare your eyes to experience agony by this wall of text.

 

What is Realm of The Mag God?

Spoiler

 

I got most of my idea and inspiration from the web game: Realm of The Mad God. In simple terms: It is a 2D pixel bullet hell game that's like Dungeon and Dragons with somewhat of a looter/farm element. And it's free to play! The difficulty is: if you die, you die permanently and lose your character you've spent leveling and everything you had equipped and start over from scratch. And you will die... a lot as a newbie, only when you get the hang of it, will you progress through and start murdering Gods in your sleep. Only for the Gods to return again and again to murder you in your nightmares and return you back to square one. Now, who would ever torture themselves this many time, and why implement this in Warframe? See my idea segment. I've played this game back in 2012 and seen it been hacked and held ransom, circulate ownership couple times, and it never fails to deliver its' element of fun to its player. The core element being: it's free to play and true to its core. Just like Warframe, you can grind out all gear, max your character to it's highest level without spending a coin! The catch, of course, is cosmetics and possibly pet breeding can only be effectively gained using cash(exception of daily logins). 

In RoTMG(Realm of The Mad God), there are 14 different classes of 'heroes' with different play-styles and weapon and 1 unique ability. Basically, you and 60 other players enter this somewhat randomly generated open world and start off easy: fighting pirates, cubes, easily peeved bunnies, and fairy godmothers, etc. You gain loot drops and progress deeper into the world to the top of the mountain to fight "Diety" figures like Medusa, Dijiin, and Ent Gods. But that's not all! There are different events that will occur in the world that summons bigger and more powerful Deity that drops better loot and entrances to dungeons for even more monsters and loots! Once you have killed all the important Deities, the one and only Mad God (Oryx) teleport y'all to his castle entrance to feed to his guards and you fight through his castle to fin and kill him. He was supposed to be the grand boss fight, which is still grand, but with updates upon updates, more bosses and more loots were added that demotes him to the puny Mad God. I recommend that you try out this free to play game if you like: Dark Souls, DnD, Pixels, Bullet hell, loot, and progression. It even has a tutorial that explains the in-game chinks better than the current Warframe tutorial and it even alleviates the heavy lifting with trading, character lookup, forum, and a wiki of information all composed on one dedicated website(Realmeye). There is definitely some bad stuff since it's free to play and web browser based. But try out the game and make some suggestion on how your experience can make Warframe better. Their website is www.realmofthemadgod.com, you don't need to create an account to play, but you will lose everything if you delete your cookies.

 

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Idea Segment

• Firstly, I want to see raids introduced to the Plains of Eidolon or some similar open world on Earth.

Now, before you rattle off a reply about the existing bugs and problems in the plains, I believe DE can learn and solve those problems with their Venus open world expansion. A teleport to another player feature should be added(Stalker can teleport across the solar system to us without our consent, why can't we teleport?). The smaller Grineer structures should be randomly deployed around the map. They're not stationary and not bases, they should be randomly generated and serve a purpose: like collecting resources, scouting, spying, and stuff. This Raid can be accessed through Cetus and the requirement being a Surah of the Ostron and at least Mastery Rank 10 and the Plains becomes a bigger Open World experience with high level enemies that can one shot a new player, if they're not experienced. Each instance of this Raid can be joined or left and progression saved. (More in Raid Progression Segment)

 

• Secondly, New enemies should be added: wildlife(Angry bunnies, maybe even bears?), maybe monsters?(infested angry bunnies?), sentients, and new Grineers(love the Ghouls).

These enemies should have something like a Mob boss who is visually bigger in size(Maybe 2 Nox tall?) and actively sends minions and tries to kill you. RoTMG has a lot of different enemies with interesting boss/enemy mechanics, obviously, it's easier to implement in a 2D game than a fast-paced 3D game. But to create a good memorable raid content, Warframe needs to create some new spicy enemies. The most noticeable enemies added in the Plains were the Mortars(good), Ghouls(great), Butchers equipped with SAM(bad), and the Triple Threat Sentients(wholesomely awesome). The Gustrag 3 should be here along with Maniacs that attack in pack and target a single tenno. Maybe, a new gustrags or Grineer enemy segment where they kidnap Ostrons and inject them with Grineer steroids and turn them into Ogre or Giants. More big boss fights.

 

• Thirdly, Loot should overall make us more powerful but all can be lost with one careless death.

But in a game like Warframe, becoming more powerful in one end of the Solar System for progression and going back to earlier levels for loot grinding can cause some power struggle with low-level players and high-level players. That's why I propose to lock any progression to characters, such as added health bonuses, energy, and any other permanent stat increase in raid content only. Bosses in the Plains should drop coordinates(keys), parts, materials, or rare loot obtainable only from a certain area to forge new Zaws, weapons, and other stuff. Coordinates(keys from RoTMG to assassinate dungeon boss) should be used to assassinate different bosses around the Solar Chart with stage 3 Sortie(with 2/3/? conditions) level difficulty ramped up. These bosses have a higher chance to drop potions, relic packs, weapon parts, rarely Rivens, and other goodies. In RoTMG, when you start defeating higher tier enemies, enemies drop potions that can increase one of the eight stats to make you more powerful. 

In Warframe, defeating tougher bosses deeper in the map, you can gain a one-time use potion to increase your base stat. For example, defeating one mob boss might drop a lootable health potion that will permanently increase your health until you run out of revives, exit raid, or switch frames.  Enemies will no longer drop common/uncommon resource materials like alloy plates, ferrites, and stuff. Instead, they all drop ammo, health/energy replenish potion, weapon parts, rare resource(neurodes, wisp, nyth, sentrium, etc), and all other stuff discussed above. The more difficult the enemy, the better the drop. aka, a common Grineer butcher will only drop ammo and very rarely health/energy replenish potion. Now players will no longer have infinite inventory space to obtain everything, they can have an inventory space of 12 different items, but duplicate items can stack. Vacuum can pull loot in the heat of battle, but having a companion will double your inventory space. I suggest making Raid more deadly, by making Warframes who revive more than 3 times have them die "permanently" by wiping their stat increase from raid back to their base stat and losing the loot in their current inventory(Arcanes can increase revive numbers, but teammates/sentinels can no longer help revive you). Players can safely extract from Raids and keep their loots and also "repair" their frames with their corresponding spare parts(Neuro, Chassis, Systems) and restore their frame back to full revives. 

 

• Fame System: The more Boss you kill, the further you progress, and the more powerful your frame can become, the more fame you could earn when you die(permanently). When you die, the fame can be used universally as currency: maybe on Darvo's deal or discount on the market or special bounties from Konzu, special amp parts from Quill, special items sold by Nakak, or Suumbat will finally sell you ayatan sculptures. It can even be implemented for the Venus expansion. Fame can be converted to standing amoung syndicates with no penalty, but not the other way around. And Fame has no cap, you could die as many time as you want but u won't gain much fame if you don't do stuff, extra fame if it's a prime Warframe with prime weapons. Basically, the way RoTMG implements fame.

 

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Raid Progression Segment

• Raid in an open world map should be able to host 16 players more or less(RoTMG has different maps each that can host up to 60 players that can't bullet jump(But can teleport)), depending on the outcome. The only requirement is that you be Surah(Second to top rank) of Cetus and Mastery Rank Ten to take the quest and drive the Grineer out of Cetus for good. Basically, you can load into an instance of a raid with random public or with a squad and begin with typical trash mobs like butchers and lancers and progress further into the "realm" to kick Vay Hek off Earth/Cetus. New players loading in will have their Warframe at their current rank level, but installed mods and arcanes are locked until you "level up" and unlock the mod slots. Leveling in Raid is saved for that Warframe, but lost when it dies permanently. The map should be expanded and the forcefield taken down, with a touch of randomness here and there to keep things fresh. Vay Hek will know that the tenno are planning to take back the Plains, because of his spies in Cetus(maybe it's Pedlek) and has sent mass reinforcement to fortify the Plains. Swarms of butchers that attack in groups and not armed with SAM will be tied to low-level zones but will disappear as you go further into the realm and replaced by more difficult enemies(variety of animals, monsters, Grineers, and Sentients). 

 

• To kill Vay Hek, you have to kill all his henchmen(commanders/boss) in the realm, when half-way through Vay Hek realizes we are pushing his troop off the Plains at an alarming rate. He decides to experiment with his latest creation and sends superiorly modified Ghouls(Special Eximus unit?) and Sentients that he has weaponized properly and refurbished to kill you maggots. As the raid progresses, you will realize that Vay Hek creating Sentients to fight you is not realistic. And then Lotus agress with this and inform you that Hunhow has infiltrated and created a 'pact' with Vay Hek to claim Cetus and it's tower. Now, Quill will open up and offer blueprints for more powerful amps(And Amp melee?), but the resources to create them are said to be extremely rare(can obtain from high-level Grineer/Sentient fights). High-Level areas always have at least 3 special conditions afflicted in its vicinity. At 95% completetion, Vay Hek will come down to Cetus to greet you, short battle. Once you have cleared all boss off the plains, Vay Hek will regretfully call a retreat of all troops and taunts you to follow them. From here on, no one else can join the game and no one can be invited back to this instance of the Raid. Vay Hek's stronghold can either be on a super Grineer galleon/Fomorian or a secret underground base that looks like the Kuva fortress since it's hard to inhabit the Earth's surface as we've seen. 

 

• We follow his troops retreat with the Sentients on our Lisets(Maybe we get to fly them for once) to Vay Hek's secret hideout with Vay Hek's in his new bird suit and Hunhow nowhere to be seen. You have to progress through the base to the 2 guardian and sentient that guards to their chamber and defeat them, who drops a key to their chamber. There you will see Vay Hek vowing to turn you into maggot stew, (I would like to see someone's idea of his boss fight), but once it looks like you've defeated him for good, surprise! Hunhow betrayed Vay Hek and took his dying body frame and seeks revenge against the tenno. He sees the troops have weakened us and we're the only thing standing between him and his opportunity to take control and eventually take the Cetus with iron Hek's fist.( I would also like to see someone's idea of this boss fight). Nearing the defeat of Hunhow's boss fight in his refurbished Hek bird suit, he decides to call quits and disappear in a flash and leaves a closed sentient portal that can only be opened by a key that is rarely dropped by Sentients defeated on Cetus. This will lead to the final boss fight? Will you continue on? Or will you quit to fight another day? Quitting here, you get to keep all current awards and repeat the raid for more and more loot to max stat your frame before facing the final boss battle (Remember, whoever quits here can't rejoin and the squad has to continue by themselves). Should reward some really good loots, like Hunhow sentient theme weapon and armor? We don't have any sentient weapon beside the War and broken war.  New weapon should be for each sentient you defeat and absorb through the weapon, it's made more powerful but lost when you die permanently. Maybe operator can put on armor and you can make Hunhow into a 3piece amour suit. 

 

Spoiler

Extra weird commission when Lotus see you wearing her Dad's corpse. Hunhow's boss fight will only weaken him as he explodes into a million pieces, but he can always resurrect himself because of sentient magic and his true form is buried elsewhere. And the beloved Vay Hek will wake up in confusion with amnesia in bed with chicken noodle soup. When he recovered from his illness, he plans to invade Cetus again. Only to be thrown into the Sun again by the tenno when they return. This "Raid" might seem tedious and might take a long time to complete, but anyone can join or leave before the epic showdown of Vay Hek and Hunhow with the progression tied to that specific instance.

Maybe we will get to see the Cetus Tower in a future quest and that quest can be used to better this Raid idea for future development. But again, most of my ideas are from RoTMG and playing it can definitely give new ideas(Despite Warframe being a futuristic space ninja shooter with magic and RoTMG is a medieval DnD looter shooter on steroids). I think this is a solid challenging raid that can be tied with progression and can be easily repeated and easily lost. I would love to see what other people have to say about this future raid-like content. Is it too much? Too little? Failure or Success? Bugframe at it's buggiest? If we want future raid content, do we want more of what I've described or more button pushing LoR or meat slapping JV? Or something else?

 

I just love RoTMG, and getting to see a future raid like content that implements some or most of what I suggested can be what I spend most of my end game time doing. Not sure if this violates any copyright laws, and I know Warframe wants to be unique and original. But some of those idea, I've suggested can be implemented for future contents or raid contents. If you've read the entire post, give yourself a pat on the back. If anything, question, harass, or make a suggestion/change for my idea. 

 

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Tl;DR 

-Create an open world Raid that's on Cetus.

-Anyone can join as long as they're Surah of Ostron and Mastery Rank Ten or greater.

-Hopefully, create a squad of 16 or more players?

-Teleport to other player feature added. 

-Raid mission: Kick Vay Hek and his troops out of Cetus' Plain.

-The Tower forcefield will be disabled on the Plains for you to go nuts(Bigger world and more enemies)

-New enemy types, wild animals, infested monstrosity?, Grineer, and Sentients.

-Vay Hek's spy in Cetus(Possibly Pedlek) informs Vay Hek, he sends all his troop and top commander onto the plains to defend his position and take Cetus.

-You have to wipe out Vay Hek's Commanders and bosses on Plains to fight Vay Hek himself.

-Your warframe rank is preserved in Raid, but some mod slot/arcane slot are locked until you level up and unlock more slots.

-Commander/Bosses drops rare loots, raid items, and potions.

-Common enemy drops common items.

-Potion can be used to permanently increase stat points(Health, Energy, speed, strength, armor, etc).

-Perma-Death condition. Revive 3 times and you die permanently. Leave raid to heal by using neuro, chassis, system of warframe to replenish Revives. Can be affected by arcane revives.

-Friends and sentinel can't revive you.

-Inventory space lowered down to 12 items. Duplicate items can stack. Common/uncommon resources don't drop in raid.

-A companion(Kubrow, Kavat, MOA, birb, etc) will double your inventory space. A sentinel will provide only half inventory space increase and continue to suck stuff up.

-Perma-Death means you lose all loot currently on you and all the stats you've gained on that frame. The Frame isn't lost, it just got revert back to it's based stats.

-Fame system that awards fame when your character dies to its last revive.

-Fame is universal currency: Special items sold by special people, special quest, special discounts, fame conversion to standing points for factions, etc.

-Commanders/Boss in Raids will drop weapon parts, rare items/resources, mods, potions, and coordinates(keys).

-Keys are coordinates to boss fights around the Solar system, these keys are consumable.

-Keys creates a mission where an assassination mission with enemies that will actively engage and stop you from reaching the priority target.

-Assassination mission is Sortie 3 level with 2-3 condition modifiers and boss drops potions, relic packs, weapon parts, Kuva if the fortress is nearby, rarely Rivens, and other goodies.

-50% completion of boss clearing on Plains, Vay Hek will interrupt and send in specially modified Ghoul units and experimental Sentients properly equipped with weapons.

-You scream, your squad screams, Lotus screams, the sky rains laser down on our eyes and we abort the Raid and Cetus is doomed.

-Turns out, Hunhow is a sneaky sentient and made a pact with Vay Hek and agrees to enlist his Sentients to fight the tenno. His true motive remains unknown.

-Once it's 95% complete, Vay Hek will come down to the Plains to greet you personally.

-100% completion: Vay Hek and troops retreat from Cetus. You can choose to stop here or continue. No one else can join this specific instance once the Boss fight is initiated. If you leave, you can't rejoin.

-You follow Vay Hek to his secret hideout on your Liset.

-Vay Hek gets a new bird suit

-A big Kuva Guardian and Sentient guards Vay Hek's chamber.

-Defeat for key to the door

-Vay Hek wants maggot soup fight scene

-90% health lost. Vay Hek suit and Vay Hek himself? Is possessed by Hunhow

-Refurbished sentient Vay Hek bird suit with smaller sentient minions

-Defeating Hunhow and he escapes through his sentient portal.

-To follow through the portal, you have to use a key rarely dropped by Hydrolyst or other Eidolons on the Plain.

-Save progress here or risk everything and continue to Hunhow boss fight.

-Good loot and Sentient theme armor/weapon dropped by Hunhow.

-Operator armor of Hunhow, maybe provide extra protection and magic.

-Extra Fame rewarded for each Raid completed on death.

Edited March 8, 2018 by PyschoGrizzlyBear

[Morndawn]

I wanted to write my thoughts about raids, but I will join this thread instead.

I think the idea with boosting during a raid only is great, I don't understand much of the fame part - I think it could be abused by dying a lot? and frustrating for some players or groups where someone would be too weak and couldn't be revived, but maybe if it could work udner some conditions. I agree with more players involved - I really miss that in Warframe, but I wouldn't add it to Eidolons, because of all the limitations there and it has some bosses already. But I don't fight the boss, because it is not attractive for me really - I wish I could fight a really big boss with a lot of players.

 

So now my thoughts:

I saw some video from Destiny 2 and I saw they have what warframe don't, because it started as a small project and had its limitations. That is fights with big bosses with hard mobs in big open areas, but not countryside necessarily, only big cool openspace. Warframe has a lot of different areas, but they are not that much different - it is alternative to grineers, and as I said some time before - Corpuses are a bit boring and when I saw Destiny 2 - it just confirmed it for me. I mean it is OK as it is, but it would be great to have maybe corpsus like bases, but a bit more colored, different - I know that it is with infested Eris, but that is too small. 

About raids:

I never did any raid because it was locked behing 100k key and it was hard to get to any group outside of a big guild. I wish I could do them again, but with better access and without overly complicated mechanics outside of combat. I believe it is important part of a game as some kind of endgame together with complicated mission - warframe is missing both. There are just high level enemies. 

So I wish there would be:

1. raid without complicated mechanics outisde of combat, but with a lot of players to ojin - in a space or under water even fighting a big monster

if it would be on some plains, it would be easier to join - just choose - play public - join open space, but the problem is if it is possible technically, so I really want to play jordan verdict, but in this easier mod - not easier boss, I hope it is clear what I mean. 

2. complicated missions for 4 players with more of stages - like assault on a fortress, where you would have to capture different part and it would be clearly different graphically - not just generic grineer rooms, but really you could see you are outside, you are in an amoury and so on, with stages described according to that. So it would be stage A - capture their gate, or find a side exit, kill some miniboss who would cause alarm and brign soldiers, kill another miniboss, who is in an armory with special weapon, then go to the main boss of that fortress. Like all the mechanics from a raid, where it was too much complicated, but applied to this. It would be timed - if you would fail timer, it would be tougher, because you would fail to prevent them from causing alarm, bringing big cannons, etc. But you could still do it. 

In warframe everything is so fast and generated, that is fine first, but then you start longing for some handcrafted mission, which still could be generated, but only within some boundaries, like: it would be always a bit different, but always a fortress, so you could see the difference and those rooms would have names - not everything random.

 

 

[PyschoGrizzlyBear]

I agree with what you said about the Corpus being feeling less loved. The Grineer faction feels better developed with a larger variety of enemies that look different with different varieties of close combat, support, tank, special and heavy units. For example: scorpions, shield lancers, heavy gunners, troopers, lancers, bombards, napalms, etc and boss battle where we fight the Grineer directly responsible for their action instead of some product of a greedy madman Corpus(ie. Jackal, Ambulas, Raptor).

Grineer factions even have different variants across each planet, with Earth having green camouflage, Mars with brown camouflage, and Uranus having stronger and more superior clone specimen from Tyl Regor work including entirely different enemy on Cetus, Kuva fortress, and in Rathuum. An entire event has different Grineer enemy(Nightwatch). Whereas the Corpus only has crewman with different color suit symbolizing rank, nullifers, MOAs, Bursas, ospreys, and skater boys. Their faction stays the same across each planet and their only variation is on Neptune locked away in the Index. Venus expansion will definitely add new enemies, but only on Venus.

 

So obviously, if DE wants to create a new type of Raid, they will reuse enemies that already exist. With the Grineer faction having the most abundant variety of enemies, implementing nightwatch, Tyl Regor enemies(They exist on the sea lab on Earth), Rathuum bosses, current Cetus troops, ghouls, and they already have a great variety of enemies for us to purge play against. They could just add new sentients, Grineer(recolored and purposed), and other wacky enemies if they want. Also, Corpus never got their own Trail :(.

 

• I like the fame system, since you will definitely die a lot in this Raid when players first begin playing(just like when the Teralyst was first introduced) and fame will be calculated by numbers of bosses you've participated in killing(ie RoTMG). Players can't cheat the system by constantly killing themselves(ie fame is directly tied to progress: more progress=more fame). But if you do run out of revives, your fame is rewarded and you will be known across the Solar System as the Tenno who was dancing during a boss fight and died.

 

• The way fame is rewarded, if you do die and fail the raid, you still will be rewarded with fame points you can spend elsewhere. Example: you are rewarded with 1500 fame on death. A percentage increase from doing special task(ie: never using teleport: +4% fame, using prime frame: +1% fame, using prime weapons: +1% fame, etc). If those criteria are met, you will be rewarded with 1590 fame for you to spend across the system. Use 80 point for an exclusive ayatan sculpture from Suumbaat, Argon crystal for 50 points, 60 points for cetus wisp, maybe buy fish parts/gems for some fame, spending fame points on special bounties that rewards special loot, etc. 
  • This way, it's like the plague event: where you spend points on what you want, except it's not limited to just Nakak, it's universal! Convert your fame to standing in Conclave, Simaris, enemy faction, etc. There will be no fame cap, only way to earn fame is through Death. 
  • System can't be spammed by dying a lot, because it rewards less point for less enemies killed. Ex: 1 easy enemy is worth 1/100 points, 1 medium lvl enemy is worth 1/10 points, high lvl enemy is worth 1 point each, with bosses varying from 4-10 points, special assassination bosses with 5-20 points, completing first stage(clearing Cetus 20-200 points), defeating Vay Hek(150 points), defeating Hunhow(200 points), killing Hunhow(400 points), etc. So obviously, people can't abuse this by constantly killing themselves if they didn't kill anything(particiapted). 
  • It's also a High Risk/High Reward system, since you can lose everything by continuing to stack up more fame. But if you doe die, you lose everything, but to compensate, you can spend some fame on some rare/exclusive items. Maybe Nitain Extract for 150 points?

Rewards and fame progression system is incomplete and I'm not a major in economics, so maybe someone can come up with a better risk/reward system.

[Morndawn]

It could work in some way - it sounds like reworked xps into something what feels more rewarding maybe. 

I realised I sounded a bit like I don't like Warframe, but it is more like a feeling I'm trying to describe, but I cannot find good enough example. I realised that there are other open missions too - like on Sedna, but there is no good loot, so there is no point to go there. So I wish they would distributed the ordinary and special loot more, not just orocin cell, polymer and such in everything, morphic, and other being useless. So maybe with more focused grind like that you start to feel like there are repetitive missions, because you don't visit so often those, which are different. 

But that feeling was maybe that those missions in Destiny are more vertical, so it feels bigger. and with more regular bosses which take time to kill and have more of stages. But maybe it is because warframe is so fast, so everyone just run through.