I quite like Rolling Steel, and I quite like the idea of short super intense missions. The trouble is that there’s only one of them, so, it doesn’t really accomplish the goal of being an alternate game mode separate from regular missions, and it also fails at being a shorter activity with less time investment. This is exacerbated by it being at present random whether or not it’ll be available on the mission board, but I believe that’s about to change.
That’s nice, but there NEED to be more of them. For this to work, there need to be, I would say, at least five different Operations to choose from, the more the better. And, I think a speedy release is more valuable than high quality here, since just having the variety is the important part. As I recall Rolling Steel had a lot of new assets pumped into it and possibly new tech to make that moving train and stuff, but not every Operation needs to be some brand new location with its own unique twists. Just making a handful of new Operations that are basically just slightly longer regular mission finales would be fine, at least for a start, if Operations are going to work as their own game mode. More complex and fresh mission types can always be added later.
Here’s a warning about this to drive home how much we desperately need more Operations if Rolling Steel is going to be available whenever we want. Gather round, children.
Once upon a time, in a far away land, there was a video game called Payday 2. Payday 2 was a game with a similar mission-based structure to Darktide, and it also had a Quick Play feature, and it also had players with levels and experience and skill points and purchasable equipment. That is, it too was a game where players could grind for money and experience points. All was well (not really of course, Payday 2 was a glitchy mess), until one day, when they released a heist called Hoxton Breakout.
For the amount of time it took to complete, it gave out a REALLY high experience reward, and we got paid a HUGE amount of money for it (despite the fact that we were breaking a guy (named Hoxton) out of prison and not actually stealing any valuables to sell).
So, turns out, there are a lot of players who are quite happy to play Hoxton Breakout over and over and over again, because it gave the best rewards per minute of play time, by far. For anyone who just wanted to grind for levels as fast as possible, it was EASILY the best job to do. For a while, Quick Play would give you basically nothing but Hoxton Breakouts, and it sucked. At least, it sucked for any quick-play people who wanted variety.
Actually I haven’t been back to Payday 2 in years; for all I know it could still be like this. But anyway. Darktide.
Rolling Steel isn’t the best way to make money or experience, but it IS the best way to finish certain jobs for Melk, in particular Finish 8 Missions and Finish X Missions With 0 Player Deaths, and it’ll finish Kill X Monsters along with them. Not to mention it’s really useful for completing certain Penances.
My prediction is that it almost certainly won’t be as bad as Hoxton Breakout, but if we’re allowed to choose what mission we want, a lot of people are going to mainline Rolling Steel over and over again in order to grind for Melkbucks. I know I will.
If you want to reduce the chances that players will do one mission over and over, you need to identify what players are grinding for, and give them multiple equal opportunities to get it. In other words, Rolling Steel should definitely not be the only mission that can be finished in under ten minutes.
Here are some of what I think would be simple and relatively easy to create short high intensity jobs that are still fun and interesting. I’m not sure if the mission being actually timed is an essential element of the concept or if the point is just “shorter mission that doesn’t have down time,” but if you do want them to all to be timed, I’ve thrown in suggestions for how they could be made time sensitive. I’ve even made each one fit into a different region so there’s one Operation for every tileset.
- Kill the Phage Tree
Chasm Terminus
Step 1: Bring back Hab Dreyko’s old finale. Though, maybe make it shorter, like only one scan sequence with like seven scan targets, no waiting between two phases. I actually liked the old phage tree event, though I understand why it was changed since it often felt like one of the hardest ones on account of most people not knowing how to cover their teammate who’s doing the scanning, so everyone would just get spread out and bogged down doing their mindless Fightin like they always do. But I think covering your teammates is an essential skill, so failure to figure this out shouldn’t be taken as a signal to change the event (especially since nobody bloody defending the teammate working on the probe remains a really annoying problem anyway). Players who do not cover their teammates should be destroyed.
Step 2: Make the current Hab Dreyko finale a separate much shorter mission. We drop in through some vents much closer to the tree, or perhaps we come in the way we left in Hab Dreyko and go backwards to the tree’s room, and then we do the biotic probe event. Add a monster after the first probe restart, throw in those poxwalkers with tentacle arms, and sprinkle a handful of pox gas spewing boils around the place and bam, new Operation.
This would fit in well with Rolling Steel because then these two Operations would each have their own unique hacking minigame that isn’t present anywhere else.
If time limits are an important element, the time limit in this one could be that the nobility are going to fire bomb the entire section in like fifteen minutes, but they can be talked down if the phage tree is destroyed. Alternatively, the phage tree could be about to release spores or something, so we need to kill it before it does that, otherwise it will spawn a bunch more phage trees, or release a giant plague cloud, or the region will get covered in bees, whatever.
(This would also have the added bonus of making Hab Dreyko actually an Investigation again YES I’M STILL ON ABOUT THIS )
- Latrine Duty
The Torrent
Everybody loves sewers! Also, they’re just like trains; a location that can realistically just be one big straight line.
Clear some chaos goo out of the sewer system tunnels before the cistern flushes in fifteen minutes, otherwise it will overflow and dump infected sewage water all over a bunch of lower Tertium.
Involves putting detonator packs on huge piles of corpses that are clogging up drainage pipes in the floor or walls, possibly killing one or more Corruptors, and possibly tiny patches of pox gas boils all over the place.
- Chimney Sweep
Metalfab
A major exhaust system has been tampered with by the heretics, and it’s going to result in an explosion unless we can get in there and reopen the vents. This map is also completely linear, but it’s a vertical tunnel, not a horizontal one. Players must ascend a massive vertical shaft. Something similar to the elevator shaft in Power Matrix just before the final room, except instead of the elevator there are walkways and stairways and the occasional ladder all along the edges. MOST of these maintenance access walkways will have safety handrails. Probably.
Many of the enemies are ranged, and many of them will spawn on the opposite side. The platforms and walkways opposite the ones the players are on aren’t very far away (close enough that flamers can just barely reach from one side to the other) but they can’t be reached on foot. There’s plenty of cover on the players’ side though, so even if everybody is out of ammo, one can still sprint and crouch their way through until ammo can be found and not get shot up too badly.
At the top of the shaft is a short hacking section, maybe with a Corruptor to kill, and possibly some other buttons to push or levers to pull, which will realign the pipes so that the whole manufactorum doesn’t erupt in flames.
- Gas War
The Hourglass
Another idea born from the concept of just slight variations to the enemy spawning formulas can make for a nice change of pace: Oops All Bombers and Flamers.
Players must fight through some of the big wide open areas of the Hourglass destroying toxic fuel tanks (same asset as the blighted stimm tanks in The Warren and at the end of Dark Communion) while hounded constantly by bombers and flamers. Bombers and flamers specialize in area denial, and they’re at their most lethal in tight spaces without much room to maneuver. It would be really annoying to fight Too Many Bombers And Flamers in simple hallways, but I think it could be fun to fight Too Many Bombers And Flamers if it were in big open areas with fewer than the usual amount of mobs. They’re still dangerous and constantly shuffling the players around, but since there’s plenty of room they’re not too suffocating unless the players get too careless and get boxed in by a horde, or if they just suck at killing bombers and flamers. But, if players really suck at killing bombers and flamers, they deserve to lose, because it’s important to get good at killing bombers and flamers in this game.
I also think bombers especially lend themselves well to the high intensity and forward momentum of an Operation. Some specialists, like snipers and hounds, can make players try to be a bit more defensive, like being more cautious and hiding around corners, but really the only way to deal with bombers is to fight even faster, because that jerk needs to die as fast as possible.
Time limit could be the heretics are getting ready to flood something important with explosive fuel which would cause a massive explosion, so we need to blow up their fuel before they can do that.
To add another possible interesting complication, perhaps we could have to haul a bomb of our own from one end to the other, then chuck it into a pit or something, almost like a Payload match from TF2. Could also work for Latrine Duty, if hauling our bomb through waves of bombers proves to be too annoying.
- Vomitorium
The Carnival
Basically I just remembered that the exit pathways into ancient Roman arenas were called vomitoria and I had a vision of the players being stuck in the Carnival’s Arena with endless poxwalker hordes and needing to fight like three Beasts of Nurgle at the same time.
So they’ve turned the arena into a daemon pit now, covered in Nurgle goo and pox gas spewers, and they’ve got like five daemonhosts in the center (who are possibly invulnerable so players can’t just all bring thunder hammers and sweep them up), so the players have to go around the outer ring and try not to shoot into the middle, or get tossed into the middle by the beasts or by mutants or whatever. The objective is to find and kill a handful of Corruptors and/or a bunch of Admonition Ritualists who are scattered all over the place. Fewer Elites and Specialists than normal, but more Monsters, mostly Beasts. No groaners, only poxwalkers. Many, many poxwalkers.
Fun idea, but maybe a tall ask, they could be summoning a greater daemon. Obviously a Great Unclean One is way above our pay grade and I wouldn’t ask for a fully animated model or anything just for us to get a glimpse of it in a cutscene as we fail the mission, but it would be pretty kickass if the failure cinematic shows us a huge fat green hand reaching up out of the summoning circle like the Infernal in the Warcraft 3 opening cinematic or that bit in Cabin in the Woods. Come to think of it, you might not even really need to model anything new; it’d probably look fine if you just scaled up a Beast of Nurgle’s hand or a Plague Ogryn’s hand. Actually, it might look better as a scaled up Burblespew Halescourge hand, since he’s fat and gross. Then you just retexture it with Beast skin. Big fat gross green hand reaches up out of the goo in the middle of the arena, Morrow is like “Well this is gonna suck…” fade to black, mission failed screen.
Another note, now that Dark Communion is a thing and you’ve got the assets made for little chanting dudes and big spell effects and green energy barriers, you could stick a similar Chaos Ritual basically anywhere and call it a time sensitive mission. Fight through Wherever, reach and kill the cultists doing the chanting, or they’ll conjure some disaster.
- Lost Mail
Void Sector
A shipment of Moebian Steel from the foundryplex was shot down and has crashed elsewhere in the Void Sector, but it made a lot of noise so all the heretics in the area are heading there too.
This one isn’t linear like the others, but rather it all takes place in a single giant room. Though, not the same finale area as the normal Void Sector mission because that would be boring.
Players arrive at the crash site, and then must locate several heavy cases of Moebian Steel, which are scattered all over the room in randomized places. Just like the ammo stealing finale of Chasm Logistratum, players must then haul the heavy cases back to the storm raptor. Or rather, probably to a big cargo elevator in the middle of the room that goes up to an inaccessible landing pad where the storm raptor is waiting.
Here’s a fun concept, rescuing the pilot could be an objective. Possibly optional for bonus cash and exp, like collecting scriptures. I’m imagining the pilot is a heavy object entity just like medicae terminal batteries or cryonic rods etc, except it looks like an incapacitated veteran. Players can pick him up and carry him over their shoulder, just like any other heavy object. Probably can’t throw him though. Maybe just has like zero throw distance, so if you try you just plop him down right at your feet.
Might be too happy an ending for this game, but, if it works well, maybe rescuing a prisoner or an injured wyrmwood agent or something could become an objective for a future mission.
For a time limit, the vehicle that was shot down crashed into some big important looking plasma-whatsit that is now about to go critical, so we’ve got fifteen minutes to get in and get out before the place gets bathed in radiation.
- Defend Aegis Station
Throneside
Players drop in on the middle building of Aegis Station, the same place we left last time. The station is under attack from the Bridge of Many Martyrs, demonstrating why it was a good idea to take the station back in the first place.
The main thing in this mission is a preposterously large number of enemies come down the bridge. Unlike in usual missions, enemies don’t come from everywhere, seeing as we control the station. They only come down the bridge, but there are a lot more than usual. An ocean of poxwalkers, with periodic waves of tougher guys like packs of elites or groups of bombers and groups of snipers, etc, and then for the big finish it could be like three chaos spawn/plague ogryn at once or something. Players can shoot at the oncoming enemy forces all the way across the bridge, but there are so many that it’s nearly impossible to kill everything without any enemies reaching the walls, especially hound packs or bulwark squads, even if the station is stocked up with tons of ammo.
This could just be a straight Survival type map, hold out for ten minutes against an infinite horde plus a few waves of elites and specialists, seeing as Mortis Trials have shown that’s pretty fun, or potentially the super horde could end after a few waves and we need to push across the bridge in order to stop some new oncoming threat. Like, maybe the heretics are filling an armored truck full of gas bombs, and we need to get over there and kill them before they can finish fueling it up (blow up some gas tanks like in the Warren) or cursing it with Nurgle juju (kill some ritualists like in Dark Communion).
Here’s a pretty big idea that might be too large an ask, but it would potentially be really handy asset to have for later: The walls are manned by allied guardsmen NPCs. I imagine they could basically just be reskinned scab shooters who don’t talk, or Veteran Bots who all have infantry lasguns or autoguns and wear the standard Guardsmen armor uniform like all those guys hanging around on the Mourning Star. If too many of them get killed, more could spawn in from inside the station and move up to reinforce the walls after a little while, or they could just stay dead and the players would just have to deal with having no NPC help. Instead of following the players around, they would all have a “home” spot and wouldn’t go to far from it, except maybe to revive a downed player, if they’re able to do that. They might not be, but it would be nice if they could since otherwise you’d have the scenario where a player gets sniped and goes down right next to an allied guardsman who just stands there while they bleed out, which would be really frustrating and silly looking. Bots reviving players wouldn’t make it too easy either, because they’re still Bots and Bots are awful, and these Bots would likely be even less effective than normal ones.
If allied NPCs are too tall an order, which I realize they almost certainly are, the briefing could just specify that the station was overrun, and Dukane just fire bombed the whole place to prevent the enemy taking it. This killed all the invading enemies, and also all our guys. Their heroic sacrifice will be remembered, probably. The station is now empty, and there’s another giant wave of heretics on approach, so we have to get in there and hold the line for a bit until another few guardsmen squads can be flown in.
So there we go, a gaggle of new Operation ideas. If these don’t seem all that new or exciting, yes that is the point. These ideas are built around the idea of being (I think) relatively easy to develop. The most important thing is that Rolling Steel must not be the only Operation, because it will get very boring very quickly if we’re allowed to do it over and over again, because people WILL do it over and over again, so they can finish 8 missions as quickly as possible for Melk.