Void Relevancy - Giving the Void more to do

[Surrebral]

[This topic has been changed from Fissure Missions 2.0 to Void Relevancy]

 

Hello Tenno!

Lets face it. Nobody cares about the Void anymore. Ever since the relic system was introduced, the Void has only been used to farm Argon Crystals or do alerts that happen there. Everyone got burned out from doing tower key missions, which is completely understandable, but I miss the old days of going to the Void to get something special. In my opinion, the Void tileset is one of the most beautiful tilesets that DE has ever created, and it pains me that there is no reason to go there anymore.

So how can any of this be improved? Ever since the release of fissure missions, Ive seen multiple posts about bringing back Tower Keys. In a way, the Tower Keys were less grindy than relics and easier to understand, but there is too much work in fissure missions that would make it hard to revert back. There is an on going debate on the grindiness of fissure missions vs the grindiness of Tower Keys, to which I understand both sides. Key sharing was amazing back in the day, but the repetitiveness of running the same mission over and over again was a valid complaint. The same goes for fissure missions, which just puts grind on top of grind on top of grind. There needs to be a happy medium that incorporates both the feeling of "key sharing" and the ability to get loot faster with relics, and perhaps breathe new life into the Void. Below is my idea on how to address this issue. In no way do I believe I have the end all be all answer, which is why I would like your feedback. 

Made it this far? Great, and thanks for hanging in there so far! Lets get right to it. How can we make the Void relevant again?

Here is my idea:

1: Make Blueprints for Primes and Relics drop in the Parkour Challenge Rooms in the Void.

 - The Parkour Challenge Rooms are by far one of my favorite things about the Void. They are interesting and require some skill, but they are never worth running since there is no worthwhile loot to collect in there. Sure they get used occasionally for Ayatan Missions, but otherwise they are empty and void (pun intended) of rewards. I want to change this. By making Prime Blueprints drop in the Parkour Challenge Rooms, it would give players a reason to explore the Void and would make the Void relevant again. This also means that anyone can go out and get Prime Blueprints without needing to put forth something in return, makin it feel like key sharing. To make this work, every Parkour Challenge Room has three doors that start to lock like they currently do with increasing rewards as the player goes. The first couple of doors have relics and Forma as a reward and the final drops a Prime Blueprint. The rarity of the Prime Blueprint would fall in line with Mastery Rank and the location in the Void itself. For example; the Tigris Prime Blueprint would drop in the Sedna portion of the Void since it is MR 13 locked and currently the blueprint itself is rare.

The rooms themselves would need an update to make them more challenging and engaging, sort of like the Principle Rooms on Lua. To help make Operators more useful, they can open up previously locked chambers in these rooms that contain either vaulted relics, mods, or a slight chance at another Prime BP (will work in this).

2: Have Relics only contain Prime Parts

 - To make the process above work, relics will only contain prime parts for the blueprints they collect in the Void, making the list of relics smaller. One of the main complaints I see about Relics and Fissures is that they are too complicated and you need LOTS of them in order to get Primes, which I agree with. This way you know that if you go on a Fissure Mission, you will get a piece to make a Prime. Fissure missions would work as they do now, but the grind needed to get a certain part would be reduced. For Prime Warframes, the Neuroptics, Chassis, and Systems will remain as drops for relics, but the blueprint itself will be found in the void. As far as Vaulting is concerned, the relics that contain the vaulted pieces will not change, like it works currently, but the Void tables will no longer drop the blueprint. Ive thought about doing this the other way around, but this way makes more sense.

3: Allow the Operator to Void Dash through the Fissure to teleport them to the Void to shut down the Fissures.

 - Now here is the fun part, which will help reduce overall grind. Before a player completes TWW, they will need to go to the Void to get the Prime Blueprint, and then do a Fissure mission to get the Prime Parts. This might seem counter productive to the overall grind of getting prime loot, but that changes once the player unlocks the Operator abilities. Now when you do a Fissure mission, you have the option to Void Dash through a Fissure once you have completed the objective/collected enough reactant to crack the relic. Once the player or players Dash through the Fissure, they are teleported to the Void (Sanctuary Onslaught style) and have the ability to shut down the Fissure process. I imagine this like a sabotage mission in the Void, where the player has to destroy a machine or something. Once they do this the Fissures will close and the player can go back to the original mission by Dashing through a specific Fissure. What makes this interesting is that the player can find a Parkour Challenge Room while they are in the Void, effectively giving them two pieces of Prime Loot. The blueprints that drop from this mission will depend on the level of Fissure mission the player is in (so AXI missions would drop Sedna level Blueprints). This would give Operators more to do and give the players the ability to stop a Fissure.

This idea has been scrapped as it causes too many problems, and the focus should be one the Void.

 

Let me know what you think and if this solution would improve the game for you.

TLDR; Void needs more to do and it can be improved to offer more rewards.

 

Thanks to NeithanDiniem for help with the evolution of the topic.

Edited June 7, 2018 by DariusMcSwag

[peterc3]

6 minutes ago, DariusMcSwag said:

does anyone else find it weird that we Tenno don't try to stop the void fissures from happening?

Fighting the apparently sentient dimension that causes people to lose their minds and turns children into walking death? You think we are capable of telling it "No, bad Void."?

9 minutes ago, DariusMcSwag said:

TLDR; Void needs more to do and the grind for Primes can be reduced. Please read ideas 1, 2, and 3 for more details.

Yes the Void needs something. That being said...

The Relics are the Prime grind being reduced. If you played the game before Fissures/Relics, you must know that or are willfully ignorant of the actual experience of trying to get Prime parts that you wanted from Rotation C.

Unless you mean "Random Prime parts to sell", in which case DE isn't going to make your life easier.

[NeithanDiniem]

Throwing the BPs into the parkour rooms would just mean the grind goes up as people will have to volt-rush through the mission to find a not-gauranteed room that may appear, run it, and hope they get the one BP out of thirty that they want. That is more grind.

Edited June 7, 2018 by NeithanDiniem

[Surrebral]

I do remember the dreaded Rotation C. Personally I like relics and Fissures, I just feel that the amount of relics required to get Primes can be reduced. Giving the Void more to do would cut down on the grind for relics to grind for Prime Loot, plus this way you can kill two birds with one stone by getting a blueprint and a prime part in one mission.

Also for this to work the Parkour Challenge Room would spawns every mission, as I'm pretty sure it does now.

Thanks for the feedback

 

[NeithanDiniem]

2 minutes ago, DariusMcSwag said:

I do remember the dreaded Rotation C. Personally I like relics and Fissures, I just feel that the amount of relics required to get Primes can be reduced. Giving the Void more to do would cut down on the grind for relics to grind for Prime Loot, plus this way you can kill two birds with one stone by getting a blueprint and a prime part in one mission.

Also for this to work the Parkour Challenge Room would spawns every mission, as I'm pretty sure it does now.

Thanks for the feedback

 

Nope, it doesn't spawn 100%. Ive run plenty of times in the void and not had one. The still is bogged down by the 30 BP pool it has to RNG through and would only lead to people using volt to bum-rush a capture mission just so they can find the room and hope they get what they are looking for. The grind will increase and the void will still be as irrelevant as before.

[Surrebral]

1 minute ago, NeithanDiniem said:

Nope, it doesn't spawn 100%. Ive run plenty of times in the void and not had one. The still is bogged down by the 30 BP pool it has to RNG through and would only lead to people using volt to bum-rush a capture mission just so they can find the room and hope they get what they are looking for. The grind will increase and the void will still be as irrelevant as before.

The blueprint a player would get would coincide with the level of Fissure Mission the player would be on. I used the example of Axi would lead to Sedna related Void blueprints, since coincidently there are four paths in the Void. This means that the player would have a BP pool of around 9 for each type of Fissure mission or regular Void mission, not 30. Still you are right that people would probably resort to using Volt to run through the Void missions to find the chamber. Its not perfect.

[NeithanDiniem]

10 minutes ago, DariusMcSwag said:

The blueprint a player would get would coincide with the level of Fissure Mission the player would be on. I used the example of Axi would lead to Sedna related Void blueprints, since coincidently there are four paths in the Void. This means that the player would have a BP pool of around 9 for each type of Fissure mission or regular Void mission, not 30. Still you are right that people would probably resort to using Volt to run through the Void missions to find the chamber. Its not perfect.

But that means that you have to be doing a fissure mission in the void rather than just doing void missions, and fissures are not guaranteed in the void often. This is further RNG on top of it because now you would need to wait for a fissure to appear on a void node instead of being able to go for it when you are available to play the game.

[Surrebral]

1 minute ago, NeithanDiniem said:

But that means that you have to be doing a fissure mission in the void rather than just doing void missions, and fissures are not guaranteed in the void often. This is further RNG on top of it because now you would need to wait for a fissure to appear on a void node instead of being able to go for it when you are available to play the game.

Did you not read point 3? I said that Operators would be given the ability to Dash through a Fissure and be teleported to the Void, Sanctuary Onslaught style. This could be done on ANY fissure mission, giving any Fissure the ability to yield two rewards for the player if they want. Please read the whole post. It answers most of your worries.

[NeithanDiniem]

1 minute ago, DariusMcSwag said:

Did you not read point 3? I said that Operators would be given the ability to Dash through a Fissure and be teleported to the Void, Sanctuary Onslaught style. This could be done on ANY fissure mission, giving any Fissure the ability to yield two rewards for the player if they want. Please read the whole post. It answers most of your worries.

This requires load times on all fissure missions to increase as they would now have to load the void tileset with the mission, it would also lead to an increased hit with AI as more AI packages would need to be loaded with the corrupted faction being loaded. No, it doesn't answer the one worry I have.

[Surrebral]

1 minute ago, NeithanDiniem said:

This requires load times on all fissure missions to increase as they would now have to load the void tileset with the mission, it would also lead to an increased hit with AI as more AI packages would need to be loaded with the corrupted faction being loaded. No, it doesn't answer the one worry I have.

Sanctuary Onslaught seems to do it just fine, and the AI are already in the fissure missions since they spawn Corrupted. Missions where a Void Gate is present do the same thing as what I've suggested, and there aren't insane load times there or a hit to performance. Everything Ive suggested works with how Warframe currently functions.

[NeithanDiniem]

3 minutes ago, DariusMcSwag said:

Sanctuary Onslaught seems to do it just fine, and the AI are already in the fissure missions since they spawn Corrupted. Missions where a Void Gate is present do the same thing as what I've suggested, and there aren't insane load times there or a hit to performance. Everything Ive suggested works with how Warframe currently functions.

Sanctuary Onslaught uses simplified mission generation because they don't need to make entire levels, only load a few tiles. The rooms there are not a part of the original room sets, which is why the changes to those rooms in onslaught don't affect the rooms outside of it. Those missions are also able to load the factions because they have less load time for loading the tileset. You aren't understanding how it is working in the game. Your idea would require the game to load 2 full mission maps instead of individual rooms like Onslaught does.

Edited June 7, 2018 by NeithanDiniem

[Etrionas]

7 minutes ago, NeithanDiniem said:

This requires load times on all fissure missions to increase as they would now have to load the void tileset with the mission, it would also lead to an increased hit with AI as more AI packages would need to be loaded with the corrupted faction being loaded. No, it doesn't answer the one worry I have.

Unfortunately @DariusMcSwag, while your ideas sound great they would make it very hard for lower end PC's to be able to cope, and while yes I agree that there is only so much consideration you can make there MUST be a minimum requirement to run the game that is a realistic price point for players.

An alternative would be to add some of the rarer mods to the loot tables of certain void tile sets that would encourage more void missions, but overall there is a great amount of potential for players to enjoy a whole lot of the game that isn't being harnessed, and yes I agree that DE should fix that in a fun and entertaining way.

I mean perhaps each individual planet could have a similar system to the Fomorian and Razorback... but again, maybe the community could come up with a cool way to create more enjoyment out of this wonderful content that really isn't played as often as I would like. *Cough* Redo alert drop tables cos they are outdated *cough*

[Surrebral]

7 minutes ago, NeithanDiniem said:

Sanctuary Onslaught uses simplified mission generation because they dont need to make entire levels, only load a few tiles. The rooms there are not a part of the original room sets, which is why the changes to those rooms in onslaught dont affect the rooms outside of it. Those missions are also able to load the factions because they have less load time for loading the tileset. You arent understanding how it is working in the game. Your idea would require the game to load 2 full mission maps instead of individual rooms like Onslaught does.

Crossfire Exterminate missions do the same thing. There is an instance where you enter a Grineer pod and it takes you to another map entirely to finish the mission. Both of those maps contain multiple rooms and different factions. However I do see your point, and to make this work the Void tileset would have to be smaller in scale than what we are used to, since the mission is fairly simple once you get there. This is why I asked for feedback in the first place since I knew there would be things that I didn't think of.

[Etrionas]

@DariusMcSwag, please keep the good ideas coming mate. It's not that we don't like your ideas, I do, they sound cool, but I just don't think it would be feasible given the load on performance that a mission like that would take.

I mean hey if it is possible that would be great, but I think the team will be creating more and more of these wonderful open worlds for us to explore and maybe that will tie in even better with the current tilesets.

[NeithanDiniem]

Just now, DariusMcSwag said:

Crossfire Exterminate missions do the same thing. There is an instance where you enter a Grineer pod and it takes you to another map entirely to finish the mission. Both of those maps contain multiple rooms and different factions. However I do see your point, and to make this work the Void tileset would have to be smaller in scale than what we are used to, since the mission is fairly simple once you get there. This is why I asked for feedback in the first place since I knew there would be things that I didn't think of.

Which again is set specifically for that mission type. That mission only loads the 2 tilesets, generates a single split map using those, and loads specific members of the factions.

You are going about splitting up the items in the void the wrong way entirely. First off: If this idea is to work at all DE would need to remake the treasure rooms. They are chump change at this point and provide no actual challenge. They would all need to have multiple locking doors based on time, so make it where the best reward is locked off if you are not fast enough, with the best reward being your prime part. Next, you dont lock the reward to a fissure mission, just put it in the void as it stands and split them by which of the 4 branches of the void you are in. Each branch is directly in relation to the old levels of the tower keys, so they are effectively your "ages" there. Keep the treasure room as a not guaranteed spawn to keep control over how many of these are farmed, followed by reducing their ducat values to prevent easy farm of ducats without relic investment.

[Surrebral]

6 minutes ago, Etrionas said:

Unfortunately @DariusMcSwag, while your ideas sound great they would make it very hard for lower end PC's to be able to cope, and while yes I agree that there is only so much consideration you can make there MUST be a minimum requirement to run the game that is a realistic price point for players.

An alternative would be to add some of the rarer mods to the loot tables of certain void tile sets that would encourage more void missions, but overall there is a great amount of potential for players to enjoy a whole lot of the game that isn't being harnessed, and yes I agree that DE should fix that in a fun and entertaining way.

I mean perhaps each individual planet could have a similar system to the Fomorian and Razorback... but again, maybe the community could come up with a cool way to create more enjoyment out of this wonderful content that really isn't played as often as I would like. *Cough* Redo alert drop tables cos they are outdated *cough*

Who knows what kind of specs Warframe will require once Plains of Venus comes out. Hopefully it wont change too much.

[NeithanDiniem]

Just now, DariusMcSwag said:

Who knows what kind of specs Warframe will require once Plains of Venus comes out. Hopefully it wont change too much.

Im not expecting it to change too much. Plains I feel was more the grass rendering bogging it down, like how it got bogged down on normal earth tiles. Not too sure if that will be as heavily used on Venus. Increasing the size of the map doesn't do too much over all since they have LoD mesh and culling. They are removing support for XP and 32 bit as well sometime in the future, no ETA, but that will also remove a bottleneck that is DX9. All in all I think it shouldn't be too much heavier of a load on a PC than PoE is.

[Surrebral]

4 minutes ago, NeithanDiniem said:

Which again is set specifically for that mission type. That mission only loads the 2 tilesets, generates a single split map using those, and loads specific members of the factions.

You are going about splitting up the items in the void the wrong way entirely. First off: If this idea is to work at all DE would need to remake the treasure rooms. They are chump change at this point and provide no actual challenge. They would all need to have multiple locking doors based on time, so make it where the best reward is locked off if you are not fast enough, with the best reward being your prime part. Next, you dont lock the reward to a fissure mission, just put it in the void as it stands and split them by which of the 4 branches of the void you are in. Each branch is directly in relation to the old levels of the tower keys, so they are effectively your "ages" there. Keep the treasure room as a not guaranteed spawn to keep control over how many of these are farmed, followed by reducing their ducat values to prevent easy farm of ducats without relic investment.

I completely agree that the challenge rooms don't really offer too much of a challenge. I personally would love to see more parkour elements like the Lua Principle rooms. The reason I wanted the ability to jump through fissures is so that it could cut down on grind, plus it would give operators more to do than just hunt eidolons. Operators will probably do a lot more once The Sacrifice comes out, so who knows what will happen.

Do you think the treasure rooms should have relics in the first couple of doors before the BP to help with the grind?

[NeithanDiniem]

Just now, DariusMcSwag said:

I completely agree that the challenge rooms don't really offer too much of a challenge. I personally would love to see more parkour elements like the Lua Principle rooms. The reason I wanted the ability to jump through fissures is so that it could cut down on grind, plus it would give operators more to do than just hunt eidolons. Operators will probably do a lot more once The Sacrifice comes out, so who knows what will happen.

Do you think the treasure rooms should have relics in the first couple of doors before the BP to help with the grind?

It would make sense for them to contain relics, as I have always felt since the change to the relic system. The treasure rooms only having a few containers to loot for the off chance you get a mod of some kind, with most being junk anyways, barely made them worth the effort to even break the containers in the starting room, let alone complete them. Making them have relics of older eras further into the reward room line would make them have some worth for players to complete. Id be happy walking out of a treasure room with a relic or two, plus a BP if your idea were added. As for Operator use, there are ways they can encourage their use in treasure rooms certainly.

[Surrebral]

14 minutes ago, Etrionas said:

@DariusMcSwag, please keep the good ideas coming mate. It's not that we don't like your ideas, I do, they sound cool, but I just don't think it would be feasible given the load on performance that a mission like that would take.

I mean hey if it is possible that would be great, but I think the team will be creating more and more of these wonderful open worlds for us to explore and maybe that will tie in even better with the current tilesets.

I will and I'm glad I'm getting feedback. Can't call something complete if it isn't covered in red ink. The more suggestions I get the more flushed out the idea will be.

On another note I wish they would just update some of their older tilesets. Specifically anything that deals with Infested it could look way cooler and so much creepier.

[Surrebral]

1 minute ago, NeithanDiniem said:

It would make sense for them to contain relics, as I have always felt since the change to the relic system. The treasure rooms only having a few containers to loot for the off chance you get a mod of some kind, with most being junk anyways, barely made them worth the effort to even break the containers in the starting room, let alone complete them. Making them have relics of older eras further into the reward room line would make them have some worth for players to complete. Id be happy walking out of a treasure room with a relic or two, plus a BP if your idea were added. As for Operator use, there are ways they can encourage their use in treasure rooms certainly.

Absolutely. It always bothered me that the great Orokin Empire only kept about 5000 credits, a rare mod maybe, and a handful of Ferrite in their super complicated treasure rooms. As far as Operator use, I would love to see more puzzles that included their powers, kind of like TWW chambers minus the Golden Maw. I think it would be awesome for the Operator to be able to open up previously unreachable side rooms that either contained more relics or even another BP.

[Surrebral]

Topic has been changed to better suit the conversation. Thanks for the feedback!