Why are there so few genuinely large enemies in game?

[Space0ddity]

For the most part, no matter what faction you fight, there are almost no heavyduty/large enemies that are bigger than you by at least 3 times. Kuva guardians are the exception, but

Wouldn't it be nicer if we had more of them?

It feels really strange that there aren't  lot of enemies that take up space on the screen considering that this is a third person shooter.

Even better if bosses become bigger and thiccer, as for the most part, humanoid bosses like vor are really easy to evade and look really tiny on the screen.

Edited November 22, 2018 by ALOEDA1

[MacKerris]

Aren't they based on the human form? As such they are not going to vary all that much. Of course the infested could go just about anywhere. to be honest I'm tired of the MMO concept of bigger is badder anyway.

 

Then there is the game design itself. 

[Space0ddity]

1 minute ago, MacKerris said:

Aren't they based on the human form? As such they are not going to vary all that much. Of course the infested could go just about anywhere. to be honest I'm tired of the MMO concept of bigger is badder anyway.

 

Then there is the game design itself. 

Tossing in one or two a few waves wouldnt be that bad really. Corpus can wear mech suits, Grineer can have massive aug limbs like kela's, and Infested can just... grow

[BansheePrime]

For the most part, we’ve got the constraints of doorways.

[Space0ddity]

3 minutes ago, BansheePrime said:

For the most part, we’ve got the constraints of doorways.

That's actually a good point, but now a new open world is gonna come every year. We're gonna have to make larger enemies one day. Not to mention we already have tilesets like gascity that can do well with placing bigboys in the mix.

Edited November 22, 2018 by ALOEDA1

[MacKerris]

1 minute ago, BansheePrime said:

For the most part, we’ve got the constraints of doorways.

I think the game mechanics at this point have alot to do with it. For example look at the bosses in the open world environment. They are BIG, but indoors you can only get so big.

1 minute ago, ALOEDA1 said:

Tossing in one or two a few waves wouldnt be that bad really. Corpus can wear mech suits, Grineer can have massive aug limbs like kela's, and Infested can just... grow

I wouldn't mind bigger, but too big to fit doorways etc would strain my immersion...lol

[Me.KayOh]

25 minutes ago, ALOEDA1 said:

For the most part, no matter what faction you fight, there are almost no heavyduty/large enemies that are bigger than you by at least 3 times. Kuva guardians are the exception, but

Wouldn't it be nicer if we had more of them?

It feels really strange that there aren't  lot of enemies that take up space on the screen considering that this is a third person shooter.

Even better if bosses become bigger and thiccer, as for the most part, humanoid bosses like vor are really easy to evade and look really tiny on the screen.

Agreed. This is why I love the large raknoid variants! Grineer and infested need bosses of these sizes.

[Cubewano]

Because we've only just recently started doing tilesets large enough to facilitate such enemy types to a reasonable degree? Prior to landscapes a lot of play was in tilesets with tight corridors and ceilings. 

[RX-3DR]

Can't imagine how big of a mess a large Grineer or Corpus mech would be in many of the tilesets. It would either get stuck because a box sits on the side of the corridor or it would constantly clip through walls, ceilings and objects and potentially risk the really frustrating event where a weakpoint is clipping into the environment and being shielded completely from damage.

You can see they're slowly pushing out the experimentation in the Plains and Vallis as they first introduced transport vehicles with the Dropships and moving on to the larger Raknoid types. At the same time, they've specifically prevented the Raknoids from spawning inside the Corpus bases and caves. It's probably the start of a trend where we will see bigger, badder enemies in the open environment where there is no worry about space but hardly see anything new that deviates from the standard enemy in regular game modes.

[YukimaruLegends]

Open world large enemies make a lot of sense. The spiders are a good start, shame grineer doesn't have something like that. A grineer with body modifications to resemble Titans, While corpus use mech suits themed around animals or ride on enlarged Hyena quads as a mounted weapons platform.

[EmberStar]

Most of the enemy factions are essentially variant humans.  The Corpus are branching out into bigger robots (notably the Raptor, Jackal, and Raknoid types.)  Even then, most Corpus units are designed to work inside their existing starships (also known as the existing interior map tilesets) and need to be able to fit through doorways and hallways.  The Jackal boss fight is actually pretty funny, because at least as far as you can tell from looking at it, the thing is permanently trapped in its Boss Arena.

Big enemies are a problem from a game design standpoint.  Unless they're on perfectly flat floors, it can be difficult to animate them.  The inverse kinematics so they can keep all their appendages on the floor if they walk up an incline gets... weird.  You can see the problem in action if you play Ark at all - brontosaurs are decently huge, and often look like they just horribly dislocated one or more legs when they try to walk over a small hill.  Navigation meshes are also a problem, since big enemies tend to get stuck on stuff pretty easily.  And in Warframe, even *normal* sized enemies get stuck on stuff sometimes.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

as others have said, doorways make life hard when it comes to larger enemies.

I could totally see the Corpus having some kind of massive crewman-piloted mech though, like a Gundam type thing. it could have the works; Protective shields, laser cannons, powerful missiles and thrusters that allow it to jump great distances. the Grineer could have their massive walking land Tank  that was shown a while back; heavily armoured and operated by a crew with many guns and defenses mounted to it. the Infested already have Lephantis and Hemocyte but another big baddie from them would be quite cool (though maybe focus on making it different than Lephy and the Hemo with a totally different model and emphasis on things like tentacles instead of Toxic AoE attacks.)

giant Sentient boss could be on the horizon (and we have Eidolons), but what about the corrupted? a giant flying fortress of some kind? a mythical creature made of void energy? a manifestation of the Void itself perhaps? i think this would be the most interesting in concept. 

[(PSN)grayscale358]

9 minutes ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

the Infested already have Lephantis and Hemocyte but another big baddie from them would be quite cool

Jordas Golem? But on land?

 

We should be seeing bigger bosses with the Sentients coming soon, and probably that flying eidolon thing as well.

[-AiLuoLi-]

10 hours ago, ALOEDA1 said:

That's actually a good point, but now a new open world is gonna come every year.

I sure hope not.

[Rakosta_Kai]

37 minutes ago, -AiLuoLi- said:

I sure hope not.

We know they have at least one or 2 more inbound.

Hopefully they are like Fortuna and not POE.

 

On Topic: In the ship tilesets they just wouldn't work due to hoe limited they'd have to be located...Bigger mobs on the open worlds are happening so it's all good there.

What I would want to see is archwing missions revamped to make them more engaging and interactive which should let  them put large enemies there.

Edited November 22, 2018 by Padre_Akais

[Firetempest]

Waiting on PoE to be updated with OV enhancements and toss in a few Grineer Dreadnought armors and roller tanks.

[IggySnow]

IMO DE has always struggled with enemy design ever since the game launched. Pretty much every enemy in the same faction looks the same, with little variation to tell them apart. Most of the time the only thing that changes between enemy types is the gun they are holding, or a slightly different tint in colour.

I mean just look at this.

Every single one of those does something different from the rest, but they all share the same body shape and silhouette. Iv spent 2000 hours in missions and even I couldn't tell you what each individual one does just from looking them.

The only saving grace that DE has when it comes to enemy design is that they are only alive for 2 seconds so I guess it doesn't really matter too much.

[FlusteredFerret]

12 hours ago, ALOEDA1 said:

For the most part, no matter what faction you fight, there are almost no heavyduty/large enemies that are bigger than you by at least 3 times. Kuva guardians are the exception, but

Wouldn't it be nicer if we had more of them?

It feels really strange that there aren't  lot of enemies that take up space on the screen considering that this is a third person shooter.

Even better if bosses become bigger and thiccer, as for the most part, humanoid bosses like vor are really easy to evade and look really tiny on the screen.

Mainly I'd say because this is a horde-type game...quantity over size.

Also, bigger doesn't necessarily translate to better / more challenging / more fun / whatever gameplay. I would say its easier to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers, whereas its easier to concentrate on single large enemies and manage the combat effectively.

We've already got eidolons, Lephantis, those huge Infested things that appear during plague star events, as well as the kuva Guardians you mentioned. Its like any gimmick...use it too much and it starts being ordinary, commonplace and no longer special / surprising.

 

[BlueFan99]

Does anybody know when are we going to get the four-legged grineer tank in plains?

 

This thing:

 

[xXDeadsinxX]

4 minutes ago, BlueFan99 said:

Does anybody know when are we going to get the four-legged grineer tank in plains?

Who knows, my guess is that they either scrapped the whole idea or it got pushed onto the back burner while they worked on other projects and probably forgot about it.

[BlueFan99]

1 minute ago, xXDeadsinxX said:

Who knows, my guess is that they either scrapped the whole idea or it got pushed onto the back burner while they worked on other projects and probably forgot about it.

It would be a shame to scrap it completely. I mean the model and the animations are pretty much done, I am pretty sure they just pushed it back

[xXDeadsinxX]

Just now, BlueFan99 said:

It would be a shame to scrap it completely. I mean the model and the animations are pretty much done, I am pretty sure they just pushed it back

I agree, it definitely looks cool that’s for sure, I guess we will have to wait and see.

[zetheros1]

Larger enemies require more work, and are more technically difficult to implement; materials, animations, and total polycount. Texture sizes for a normal corpus or grineer is probably 1024x1024px, more likely 512x512px or even 256px if DE is efficiently using UV space.

A larger creature like the Teralyst will be made of multiple 512,1024, and perhaps a 2048px texture map thrown in there. The larger the creature, the larger PBR maps you'll need, and the more polys you'll need, meaning more processing power allocated to rendering a larger character.

Animations are an entirely different beast. Tenno are smaller, and thus larger creatures will need unique animation sets idle1, idle2, idle3, jumpstart, jumpmid/falling, jumpend, walk, run, sprint, shoot, melee, etc - All while keeping combat with the Tenno and/or other smaller enemies in mind. Larger creatures will also need inverse kinetics as collision with the environment is basically inevitable - and perhaps even specialized navmeshes, or some other technique to allow walking and climbing on walls, like what we're seeing with the new Orbs.

TLDR; it's a fair larger amount of work compared to simple reskins.

 

Edited November 22, 2018 by zetheros1