How I’d Fix Defense Missions in Warframe

Defense missions are the worst. Well, OK, they’re not the worst, that reward goes to the likes of Defection missions. But Defense missions are all-round not particularly enjoyable. They’re also way more common than missions like Defection and Infested Salvage. Defense is so bad that people will intentionally leave Circuit missions to avoid doing them, especially on the Steel Path. These missions are terrible, so how do we fix them? Well, I’ve got some ideas.

No more operatives

The first and most basic idea is to not have an operative as a defense target. Their AI is absolutely stupid and they seem to run straight into danger. Sure, you can give an operative a weapon and have them do some damage, but that doesn’t fix their broken AI. Generally, someone has to babysit the operative, and it can sometimes be a full time job. Sure, static objectives are less interesting to defend, but it means that all players can do some killing, and all the enemies have a target to head to, rather than all vaguely running to an operative to kill them.

Have the defense target do something

In Mirror Defense, after you collect enough gems, the two big gems you have to defend will start defending themselves a bit. The beams of energy they fire aren’t utterly amazing, but it gives you a brief respite and it also gives you something to do while you’re busy murdering things. I’m not saying that every defense should be identical to mirror defense, but a secondary and optional objective would at least make babysitting an objective a bit more interesting. Maybe you could occasionally hack a console to summon MOAs or be able to activate an electric field around the defense target or something. Doesn’t have to be much, but an extra optional objective could be fun.

Make smaller rooms

The worst defense rooms are the big rooms. Massive spaces with multiple levels that enemies have to climb around. The absolutely worst maps are probably the Corpus Gas City and Corpus Ship tile sets, both of which span 3 different levels and are both insanely large. Another really bad map is the Grineer Forest tile set on Earth, which also has multiple levels for multiple enemies to get stuck on. Compared to the likes of Grineer ship defense (i.e. the map of Hydron), where enemies can come straight towards you and only occasionally need to climb up or down one level, the larger tile sets are triple the size.

These rooms take a long time to cross even if you’re a Warframe. And we have access to things like bullet jumps. Sure, some Corpus and Grineer can use zip lines to get close to the defense target, but only a handful of enemies will use them, and many will just run. And only a handful of tile sets have zip lines anyway.

Speed up the attackers

Another really annoying thing is when you get to the last few enemies. They’re almost always stuck in some side room, or somehow stuck because of their AI not telling them where to go. While having smaller tile sets do help with this problem, this doesn’t automatically fix the issue. Even on a tiny map like Hydron or Helene, enemies STILL get stuck in various corners. And they have a habit of just slowly walking to the objective, which slows down further. What could help with this is a countdown timer that starts when there are only 1-5 enemies left, and automatically despawns them after a set amount of time. You’d still have to kill every enemy in the wave, but the automatic despawner would protect you from times where enemies just refuse to cooperate.

Defense missions suck, but I think my ideas would make defense missions a bit more bearable. Because as they are, no one likes defense missions.