Smooth down level geometry

[KuraiWolf2014]

A bit of a nuisance for me in this game (and many more games) is the level geometry. Specifically getting stuck running in place on random out cropping stuff that should be insignificant. Like decorative trims on walls stopping me mid wall run. It's quite annoying and shouldn't even be an issue, but it is. And sure you could work around these things, but these issues still persist. It is better to not have issues, than have to use a work around. It makes me think about Counter Strike. In CSGO the maps (especially dust 2) are lubed to the extreme and you rarely if ever get stuck on the environment. You could literally just pick a direction and keep walking and the only thing that would stop you is an obvious wall. No random lips on stuff, no jutting terrain, not even an awkward overhang stopping you from jumping (I'm looking at you void elevator shaft hidden room). And with warframe being such a parkour-centric game, it would make sense to smooth out the environments some to allow for a better experience. I know this isn't a big issue and there are far more pressing matters to attend to, but it would be nice to see DE take these criticisms into consideration when tweaking map designs for quality-of-life improvements. Just, whenever you guys can.

P.S. 3kliksphilip has some excellent youtube videos on this kind of topic (primarily for CSGO though). And his stair clipping videos are what inspired me to discuss this issue.

[AndyBeans]

IMHO many of the decorative trims are there to reduce parkour in some circumstances, such as preventing players bypassing things DE want them to overcome in other ways. I think it becomes less of a problem over time, as you learn the features/obstacles unique to each tileset. Those raising columns in the Void still get me... every... damn...time... lol

Personally I wouldn't compare WF to CSGO, the modular level creation of the former and (AFAIK) the latter using the same maps since it's mod days makes comparison difficult.

[KuraiWolf2014]

11 hours ago, AndyBeans said:

IMHO many of the decorative trims are there to reduce parkour in some circumstances, such as preventing players bypassing things DE want them to overcome in other ways. I think it becomes less of a problem over time, as you learn the features/obstacles unique to each tileset. Those raising columns in the Void still get me... every... damn...time... lol

Personally I wouldn't compare WF to CSGO, the modular level creation of the former and (AFAIK) the latter using the same maps since it's mod days makes comparison difficult.

Individual map tiles can be worked on over time. All I am really asking is to just keep this in mind when they inevitably tweak the tile sets. Also, those trims aren't really stopping anyone. They just get in the way when even doing things "legitimately" or "the way DE intended". Like having one of those large white chalk marks on walls DE means for you to use specifically. Even those "optimal routes" are obstructed quite often by decoration. And rarely do game developers use decorations like these as obstacles. A decorative trim is just that, a trim, nothing more and nothing less. When comparing games of different genres people like to say "easy for that game but hard for this one" when discussing changes like these. But the standards of map design don't really change between genres. In both Warframe and CSGO you want to have maps that aren't annoying to traverse. There isn't really anything stopping DE from simply turning off collisions for small insignificant decorations like trims. In any other game, that trim wouldn't have had an collisions to begin with. So why does it have collisions in a parkour based game? Even CoD, love it or hate it, had limited to no obstructions on wall run spots in BO3. Titanfall, even mirror's edge had less obstructions to block your wall running. In this day and age of advanced movement systems, games are being designed for smoother movement and less obstructions, but not every advanced movement game is doing that it seems.

 

Minor issue? Sure. But it is still quite jarring to get stuck on random clutter. And sometimes you try to parkour around something but manage to hit something else nearby instead. Lower clutter/prop density in some of the smaller rooms would help. Open up the map tiles, give us some breathing room, a place to stretch our space ninja legs. Maybe more verticality for use with the parkour. After all, some maps have ridiculously short "kill-barriers" like on mars. Like that one outdoor room on mars with the chasm in the middle and a couple zip lines. I often bullet jump up to the large metal walkway at the top only to get reset because I hit the "ceiling" of the map boundaries like two feet above the walkway.

[AndyBeans]

12 hours ago, KuraiWolf2014 said:

Individual map tiles can be worked on over time. All I am really asking is to just keep this in mind when they inevitably tweak the tile sets. Also, those trims aren't really stopping anyone. They just get in the way when even doing things "legitimately" or "the way DE intended". Like having one of those large white chalk marks on walls DE means for you to use specifically. Even those "optimal routes" are obstructed quite often by decoration. And rarely do game developers use decorations like these as obstacles. A decorative trim is just that, a trim, nothing more and nothing less. When comparing games of different genres people like to say "easy for that game but hard for this one" when discussing changes like these. But the standards of map design don't really change between genres. In both Warframe and CSGO you want to have maps that aren't annoying to traverse. There isn't really anything stopping DE from simply turning off collisions for small insignificant decorations like trims. In any other game, that trim wouldn't have had an collisions to begin with. So why does it have collisions in a parkour based game? Even CoD, love it or hate it, had limited to no obstructions on wall run spots in BO3. Titanfall, even mirror's edge had less obstructions to block your wall running. In this day and age of advanced movement systems, games are being designed for smoother movement and less obstructions, but not every advanced movement game is doing that it seems.

 

Minor issue? Sure. But it is still quite jarring to get stuck on random clutter. And sometimes you try to parkour around something but manage to hit something else nearby instead. Lower clutter/prop density in some of the smaller rooms would help. Open up the map tiles, give us some breathing room, a place to stretch our space ninja legs. Maybe more verticality for use with the parkour. After all, some maps have ridiculously short "kill-barriers" like on mars. Like that one outdoor room on mars with the chasm in the middle and a couple zip lines. I often bullet jump up to the large metal walkway at the top only to get reset because I hit the "ceiling" of the map boundaries like two feet above the walkway.

I don't really agree that standards for level design are entirely universal, as I mentioned previously CS maps have had "millenia" (in gaming terms) to be optimised and are not subject to procedural generation. I do agree that individual tiles can be refined, but I'd suggest that this is not a high priority for either DE or the majority of the userbase.

Titanfall 2 is an interesting comparison, I really enjoyed the parkour in that. However, I do think that TF2 had much more space in their maps so Respawn had to smooth out obstacles to enable players to make the larger leaps required for longer parkour "moments". It took me quite a while to learn good routes around some of the more open maps before I could reliably avoid plodding along the ground like a noob. In Warframe I sometimes have issues avoiding parkour, due to the abundance of walls in every direction.

Steve recently mentioned that he wants to rework the traditional nodes to change the pace of the missions and "add more ninja". Although that strikes me as re-introducing stealth to the current "speedrun" meta, it could also entail optimising levels to smooth the rough edges too.

[KuraiWolf2014]

18 hours ago, AndyBeans said:

I don't really agree that standards for level design are entirely universal, as I mentioned previously CS maps have had "millenia" (in gaming terms) to be optimised and are not subject to procedural generation. I do agree that individual tiles can be refined, but I'd suggest that this is not a high priority for either DE or the majority of the userbase.

Titanfall 2 is an interesting comparison, I really enjoyed the parkour in that. However, I do think that TF2 had much more space in their maps so Respawn had to smooth out obstacles to enable players to make the larger leaps required for longer parkour "moments". It took me quite a while to learn good routes around some of the more open maps before I could reliably avoid plodding along the ground like a noob. In Warframe I sometimes have issues avoiding parkour, due to the abundance of walls in every direction.

Steve recently mentioned that he wants to rework the traditional nodes to change the pace of the missions and "add more ninja". Although that strikes me as re-introducing stealth to the current "speedrun" meta, it could also entail optimising levels to smooth the rough edges too.

Well, CS may have had time, but it had to start somewhere. I trust DE to smooth things out in time. This game will hopefully last for a long time. Maybe even reach WOW levels of longevity.

[Chappie]

if you find a particular surface causing too much parkour'ing issues...make a post w/ a screenshot.  DE has been very quick to make updates to issues in certain tile sets that are absolutely terrible in movement .20 because of movement 1.0.  

However, what you are asking for a whole scale rework off pretty much every single tile set because of movement 2.0 which probably isn't going to happen.    DE makes change as they can...but putting effort into make the tiles optimal with tenno who have hyperfast movement skills isn't in their best resource usage IMO.  For the most part the tiles still work okay but I'm curious to see what the gas city rework does since that is where we want to look in terms of what DE can/will do for future tile reworks as they come along.  

[(NSW)Sk0rp1on]

On 2019-04-30 at 3:57 AM, AndyBeans said:

IMHO many of the decorative trims are there to reduce parkour in some circumstances, such as preventing players bypassing things DE want them to overcome in other ways. I think it becomes less of a problem over time, as you learn the features/obstacles unique to each tileset. Those raising columns in the Void still get me... every... damn...time... lol

Personally I wouldn't compare WF to CSGO, the modular level creation of the former and (AFAIK) the latter using the same maps since it's mod days makes comparison difficult.

I wouldn’t say it’s to reduce parkour, just make it challenging. You have to maneuver effectively in order to be fast. Getting stuck in unfair ways and having to slash-unstuck is a pain though.

[Teridax68]

I think in general, any game's levels should be designed to accommodate the player's mode of traversal: in the case of a game with a parkour system like Warframe, this means its tilesets should be made to be enjoyable to traverse via parkour. In practice, however, there have always been some problems even with the most fun tilesets, as there are all too often cases of level geometry designed maybe for aesthetic purposes, but that cause the player to snag when they should be moving smoothly. In the absolute worst cases, like the Corpus Ice Planet or Infested Ship tilesets, the geometry is so jagged and claustrophobic that it is practically impossible for the player to move around without catching on some corner or the like. In this respect, I very much agree that many tilesets need to be smoothed down and have their little frustrating bits removed, as happened recently when DE did a pass to remove a lot of lips at the top of ledges or vents.

[AndyBeans]

3 hours ago, (NSW)Sk0rp1on said:

I wouldn’t say it’s to reduce parkour, just make it challenging. You have to maneuver effectively in order to be fast. Getting stuck in unfair ways and having to slash-unstuck is a pain though.

I've never got so stuck on scenery that I've had to /unstuck. I must try harder!

[Kefirno]

That icy tileset with corpus debris is the worst offender.

This won't be such a problem is we still had coptering...