Will Navigation ever work everywhere?

[Nichivo]

Is there an actual reason why when in Cetus, or Fortuna, we cannot access navigation, and travel to anywhere like we can if in our orbiter, dojo, or relay? Do these colonies not have space docks?

[MBaldelli]

Cetus has a Drop Pad, and Fortuna is underground.  Why would they need a navigation spot for utilizing the solar rails if they're down in a gravity well?  I mean it's not like we can use navigation consoles on mission maps and some of them are in space.  Some of them are even ships of the Corpus or Grineer that would have control areas and we don't utilize them during missions.

Never mind the mutation nonsense of the Infested on Eris and hell, the Hive Mission on Eris (Naeglar) often drops us in the navigation area of a corpus ship and we can't use that equipment to bug out of there.  

Not to mention that Earth has the Strata Relay,  Vesper relay is used by XB1 and Switch players (not PC) on Venus.

Is this what suggestions have become?  Requests for the lazy because they don't want to go back to their orbiters? 

[Nichivo]

47 minutes ago, MBaldelli said:

Cetus has a Drop Pad, and Fortuna is underground.  Why would they need a navigation spot for utilizing the solar rails if they're down in a gravity well?  I mean it's not like we can use navigation consoles on mission maps and some of them are in space.  Some of them are even ships of the Corpus or Grineer that would have control areas and we don't utilize them during missions.

Never mind the mutation nonsense of the Infested on Eris and hell, the Hive Mission on Eris (Naeglar) often drops us in the navigation area of a corpus ship and we can't use that equipment to bug out of there.  

Not to mention that Earth has the Strata Relay,  Vesper relay is used by XB1 and Switch players (not PC) on Venus.

Is this what suggestions have become?  Requests for the lazy because they don't want to go back to their orbiters? 

So a quality of life change is the equivalent of Lazy? Gotcha!

[Birdframe_Prime]

4 hours ago, Nichivo said:

So a quality of life change is the equivalent of Lazy? Gotcha!

Poor form, that player. Just because the response had a single line that was less than great, don't ignore the rest of the content.

There's likely a more practical reason why the two places do not have a Navigation console. One reason may even be the lore function of these places being on-planet instead of already in space with access to the Solar Rails.

A practical one I can think of, off the top of my head, is that DE really does only have a limited number of servers that can actually host instances of the social hubs. The game does rely far too much on peer-to-peer connections as it is, but that's how they're keeping it free-to-play. It's far easier to get a single person into any given Hub than it is to get four at a time, especially while loading in the mission results such as gains, Riven unlocks and so on. But they do manage that with Relays, so why would they not have that in Cetus or Fortuna? What possible reason could they have for that?

Maybe it's because they're already doing it for a more dedicated function? They aren't letting you load in and out of the regular star-chart missions because players are loading in and out of the Plains and the Vallis.

That could be the entire problem.

[MBaldelli]

6 hours ago, Nichivo said:

So a quality of life change is the equivalent of Lazy? Gotcha!

So instead of trying to counter what I gave you based on immersion and gameplay, you choose instead to simply disagree based on disagreement? 

All right I'll explain it to you based on the impressions that I got reading your original post, three times.

You are -- in spirit and essence -- going into a clan dojo that's no more than 50 capacity and then looking at either the architect or the warlord(s) of the dojo -- saying that the dojo doesn't have any teleporters to the labs -- requesting they do so install them because it's more convenient -- for you -- and then putting it under the banner that it's a quality of life improvement.  Never mind figuring out that all the labs are on the same floor and separated by a row of cross corridors.

@Birdframe_Prime went with the programmer approach, I chose the loreist and immersion when I responded.  I can also go with the most pragmatic of them all:  6+ years of experience.  DE doesn't listen to their own forums and selectively listens to reddit posts for reasons that don't entirely make sense to me.  They come off like the over-inundated developers that at the beginning of this journey for them listened too much to the player base and now that they're on the other side of success, ignore anything that isn't rabble rousing, screams of content drought, a potentially scandalous backlash or have indications that it's going to explode in the media.  If it hasn't already done so, like here and here. 

We (still) have a half-implemented melee system (in March of this year) that still continues to get negative criticism in a now unpinned mega-thread with empty promises -- from one of their moderators that still has a questionable past tied to the very moderator abuses and cronyism that the forums suffered through for years --  that it's going to be fixed and further improved.  However, many still wait and see whether it's going to be an empty promise on top of empty promises or further half-implemented and half-baked.  

While it's plausible suggestion of yours might be a simple code improvement that can be implemented in addition to a mainline update drop, more often times than naught, It's going to be ignored.  The forums are littered with such "quality of life improvements" that end up collecting dust and cobwebs because -- yep, ignored unless it's been said on Reddit and doesn't fit the potentials described earlier.  

So do go on and disagree because you didn't like one sentence that called it out for what it was.  It's your right.  We are often entitled to do so if we have an idea we like shot down in an off-coloured manner because we have a lot of pride we suggest things seem worthwhile -- even if that worthwhile is only to us.

Now, take your choice which is more palpable to swallow.  

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, MBaldelli said:

with empty promises --  --  that it's going to be fixed and further improved.

To be fair, the last DevStream confirmed that at least a hefty round of fixes and changes to the melee system is coming with this month's mainline update. We'll get to see whether those promises actually are empty or not ^^

[FerockQuartz]

12 hours ago, Nichivo said:

Is there an actual reason why when in Cetus, or Fortuna, we cannot access navigation

No... or because its a non-Tenno Faction territory maybe?

This is quite not far form suggesting/insisting the NPCs from Cetus/Fortuna be inserted on Relays while Bounty Mission be on Navigation grid next to Sorties, Fissures, Alerts, etc., eh?

Edited October 15, 2019 by FerockQuartz

[Nichivo]

25 minutes ago, FerockQuartz said:

No... or because its a non-Tenno Faction territory maybe?

This is quite not far form suggesting/insisting the NPCs from Cetus/Fortuna be inserted on Relays while Bounty Mission be on Navigation grid next to Sorties, Fissures, Alerts, etc., eh?

It was just a question, not a suggestion, or anything else. I just find it odd I can go from a relay to cetus/fortuna, but not from cetus/fortuna to a relay. Likewise I find it odd, that if I am hanging out in cetus getting some lunch with konzu, and something important comes up I can't bring up navigation and go there. I am pretty sure my Orbiter is parked round here some where. Dude where's my Orbiter?

Edited October 15, 2019 by Nichivo

[DrivaMain]

Or better yet, what if we could access navigation from literally everywhere? Taking a page from Destiny here, but in that game you can go to any planet you want with a click of a button from wherever you are (hubs, Free Roam, missions). It will save a loading screen or two, which is a huge QoL for people who aren’t using SSDs or just want to start a mission immediately without going back to the orbiter.

[FerockQuartz]

11 minutes ago, Nichivo said:

It was just a question, not a suggestion, or anything else. I just find it odd I can go from a relay to cetus/fortuna, but not from cetus/fortuna to a relay. Likewise I find it odd, that if I am hanging out in cetus getting some lunch with konzu, and something important comes up I can't bring up navigation and go there. I am pretty cure my Orbiter is parked round here some where. Dude where's my Orbiter?

This brings the question why Cetus/Fortuna ever created for such inconvenience at all? I mean its just totally a genre or a (remote area) theme that doesn't much fit to have the same function as of an Orbiter or Relay in apparent state... odd yes I agree but consider the technological status differs between Cetus/Fortuna from Relay/Dojos/Orbiter(s)...

[(XBOX)Rez090]

5 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

A practical one I can think of, off the top of my head, is that DE really does only have a limited number of servers that can actually host instances of the social hubs. The game does rely far too much on peer-to-peer connections as it is, but that's how they're keeping it free-to-play.

DE using peer connections instead of servers is not how they keep it F2P. They can easily invest in dedicated servers, especially with all the prime access, tennogen and everything else that is bought with money. The only thing that I think peer connections actually do is let those on console without gold/ps plus is play the game but not see other players.

[Birdframe_Prime]

8 minutes ago, (XB1)Rez090 said:

DE using peer connections instead of servers is not how they keep it F2P. They can easily invest in dedicated servers

You hit me up with the price on renting dedicated game servers globally for PC, Xbox, Playstation and Switch players numbering in around 30-40k concurrent players daily depending on the platform, then multiply that for peaks, cost the losses for low usage, plus insurance for any down time those servers suffer out of normal usage, then get back to me. I'll be happy to talk about that then.

If it were that easy, then why does it take EA, Epic and Blizzard levels of money to actually do that and still have players complain about bad service?

As it is, Prime Access, Tennogen and the amount of plat purchases are keeping the game afloat and the people that make it gainfully employed. DE are the kind of people that, if given more money, will hire more people to turn out this game quicker, not to waste it on trying to put in a feature that's not needed.

Besides, the game existed as peer-to-peer long before it came out on Consoles, so don't try to point at Xbox and Playstation premium functions as the reason. This game was designed that way from scratch because the investment in servers was (initially) a bad move because they had no idea whether the game would make it or not, and now it's because at the level of traffic they have the cost would be prohibitive.

In any case, that's kind of a non-argument here, you're even taking my statement the wrong way because I even point out 'The game does rely far too much on peer-to-peer connections as it is'. I don't like the fact that they run p2p, but it is what it is.

The fact that we do have to deal with is that the servers running the Cetus and Fortuna hubs already have a match-making point for going on missions, it's just dedicated to the Plains or Vallis respectively using a live method that's actually more specific than the Star Chart matching from your Orbiter, because it's specifically transferring people that are in instances of Cetus, ones that are already on the Servers and now have to move to p2p connections from there, not instancing it directly as p2p from individual clients. Meaning there may be a legitimate limitation on the ability to launch missions outside of that to the regular Star Chart missions, because of this dedicated function.

Outside of that, there are lore and even simple aesthetic purposes that not having this function available serves, so the OP is kind of out of luck.

The more simple explanation of it may be to ask 'if it were supposed to happen, don't you think they'd have done it already, just like they did for the Relays?' they've had literal years to do so after all.

[laney_family]

37 minutes ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

You hit me up with the price on renting dedicated game servers globally for PC, Xbox, Playstation and Switch players numbering in around 30-40k concurrent players daily depending on the platform, then multiply that for peaks, cost the losses for low usage, plus insurance for any down time those servers suffer out of normal usage, then get back to me. I'll be happy to talk about that then.

As an IT guy, I'll gladly spitball that this would run easily 150,000 on the low end for just the hardware, not even considering the cost of multiple external connections for redundancy.  This assumes they use a data-center instead of in-housing it.  In which case they would be looking at the cost of the cooling, clean space, racks, power, redundancy for all that (other than the clean room) not to mention techs to establish the infrastructure required.  I'm not trying to focus on this point to derail the topic but wanted to hit on it for anyone unaware its not as easy as one might think.

14 hours ago, Nichivo said:

Is there an actual reason why when in Cetus, or Fortuna, we cannot access navigation, and travel to anywhere like we can if in our orbiter, dojo, or relay? Do these colonies not have space docks?

I have actually considered the Opposite of this topic.  If our navigation is intended to be us setting course to a planet, and then launch the landing craft to take us to our destination from our orbiter why are we able to do that from anywhere other than said Orbiter.  Logically the landing craft cannot make long trips otherwise why do we have an orbiter to start with.  So we have to get in our landing craft , return to the orbiter, then navigate to the destination, then into the landing craft again, and to the final destination.  Seems we should not be able to access navigation anywhere other than the Orbiter... but thats my opinion

[Birdframe_Prime]

54 minutes ago, laney_family said:

As an IT guy, I'll gladly spitball

Thank you. So that's just the equipment, not the global housing (because we would get some serious lag if they in-housed it in Canada...) and costs of actually maintaining that would run far higher every year. That's not to mention the necessary function to provide it for Consoles as well, which have quite strict policies (from a quick google).

Nice to have somebody give us a base-line to work with. And yeah, I would far rather DE put that kind of money into actually making the game, rather than trying to convert us all to servers for a net... neutral-at-best result.

Again, though, for anyone else reading this, the cost of servers wasn't the point of the statement.

[sam686]

More confusion is, while at Fortuna or Relay, I joined a player located at Orbiter. The other player starts any mission like Sortie or anything, not related to Fortuna or Cetus. Complete mission and the game load me back into Fortuna and Cetus, no navigation. When I "return to orbiter" the game left squad. Why?

Maroo's Bazaar also do not have navigation. The landing point of Maroo's Bazaar is mostly the same as other relays, yet no navigation.

Dojo. While at Cetus, Fortuna, Maroo's Bazaar, or anywhere it isn't a mission, there is an option to load straight into Dojo without orbiter, and stay in squad. If not host, loading dojo won't bother anyone. If host went to Dojo or if host migrated to a player currently on Dojo, this will send other players into Dojo, including the matchmaking players from public missions that are now done. Dojo with Observatory have navigation which is good.

[(XBOX)Rez090]

9 hours ago, sam686 said:

Maroo's Bazaar also do not have navigation. The landing point of Maroo's Bazaar is mostly the same as other relays, yet no navigation.

Maroo is for trading only, also it's an abandoned relay.

[Steel_Rook]

Can I ask the opposite question - why is it not possible to leave a public instance without breaking squad? That right there would solve the need for on-site navigation altogether.

[Birdframe_Prime]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Can I ask the opposite question - why is it not possible to leave a public instance without breaking squad? That right there would solve the need for on-site navigation altogether.

Now that's a great question, and it may be to do with how the hosting works again; I'm no programmer, but having a little knowledge of it I would suggest that going into a public Relay/Cetus instance as a 4 man group is actually spaghetti coded. The server is actually treating the host as a proxy to transmit to the rest while in that server, so technically only one computer is connected to the Relay, but it's a session of four players from that connection. If you try to leave, you can only ever break the group, because the Server isn't talking to anyone but the group host. To leave the group you have to establish your own connection to the Relay server, or head back to your own Orbiter without them.

Meanwhile, it's possible if you make a group within the Relay, all that's doing is pre-marking the four of you to be matched together, and then triggering off the instance of the game session with whoever becomes the host exactly as the game normally would if the four of you matched from your Orbiter.

So if you go in as a group, you can only leave as a group or leave alone, if you make a group in the Relay you can break up that group without re-instancing yourself.

[Steel_Rook]

20 hours ago, Birdframe_Prime said:

Now that's a great question, and it may be to do with how the hosting works again; I'm no programmer, but having a little knowledge of it I would suggest that going into a public Relay/Cetus instance as a 4 man group is actually spaghetti coded.

I'm sure there are technical issues, but there is precedent for exactly what I'm proposing. I believe public spaces like Relays, Cetus, Fortuna and such are remotely hosted on DE's dedicated servers. However, the Plains of Eidolon and the Orb Vallis are both locally instanced and hosted on the local host's own PC. A squad of players is able to transition from Cetus/Fortuna to the Plains or the Vallis without breaking the team, so some mechanic exists to maintain that. I'd like to see whatever mechanic is used there be reused for when leaving Cetus/Fortuna/Relays via means other than the main gate.

The primary issue here is DE don't want to give the host too much power, but here too there is precedent. If a squad is set to Friends Only or Invite Only, the host is able to pull the entire squad out of an instanced mission by abandoning the mission. I don't believe that's how it works in Public squads. As such, I'd recommend pulling the entire squad out of a public space when the host leaves it, but only if it's set to Friends Only or Invite Only.

Long story short, I believe both the technical implementations and logistical solutions already exist.

[(XBOX)l Saminator l]

On 2019-10-15 at 6:00 AM, Nichivo said:

So a quality of life change is the equivalent of Lazy? Gotcha!

Don't forget, whenever loading into Fortuna or Cetus, the loading time is quite a bit longer than loading in and out of a mission. So I'm sure if we were to enter navigation and a mission from Cetus of Fortuna, it would probably take even longer to load back after completing a mission, which for many would probably become a pain, and would just go back to their ships to use the Navigation there. 

[Birdframe_Prime]

3 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

However, the Plains of Eidolon and the Orb Vallis are both locally instanced and hosted on the local host's own PC.

To that I refer to what happens when a Host leaves a regular mission: Host migration is where the system takes the remaining people and transfers the old host's data, progress on the mission etc. to the new Host and attempts to reconnect the remaining two people to that. It's often pointed out that this is terrible.

But when a Host is connected to a Server, and the group is connected to the host, what then happens if the Host disconnects? It has to match the three remaining people to the Server instead of the Host, thus you get three new connections to the Server, not the more complicated process of making a new Host, giving that host all the data from the instance, then connecting the remaining two people to that Host and only then connecting that Host to the Server.

That may not be how it works, but it's the explanation I can find for what happens and it does make sense from what I know of host/client connections and how they're formed.

[(PSN)thefallenloser]

On 2019-10-15 at 12:10 AM, MBaldelli said:

Is this what suggestions have become?  Requests for the lazy because they don't want to go back to their orbiters? 

QoL change = lazy on the forums these days, apparently...