I'd love to see some more flavor/polish in the Codex.

[Mad_Catter]

Hello! If you're anything like myself, you're an absolute nut for story and lore. Since the Second Dream, DE has certainly stepped up their game when it comes to lore and story within Warframe. One of the older additions was the Codex, a compendium of knowledge on your enemies, requiring scans to enter the data and reveal their elemental and physical weaknesses, and often giving insight into the enemies themselves. The added benefit of being able to spawn fully researched enemies in the Simulacrum means min/maxers or simple completionists have a vested interest in at least scanning basic faction enemies. But for a while now, the quality of entries has been degrading drastically. From simple typos to seemingly conflicted entries, to others simply appearing unfinished.

LORE 

Kuva is one of the more important pieces of the Warframe Story, and yet its related Codex Entry is about as barren as the conclave. Why? We had an entire cinematic questline revolving around the substance, but this is all they could muster? On that note, this is a gas of some sort, isn't the Kuva we know and love/hate a form of liquid? Yet the name simply labels is as Kuva. Does this mean that Kuva is naturally a gas? Or is it even physical? It must be since we drank it, but there's no notes to read into. Now this certainly isn't gamebreaking, but its a bit sad that such an important player in the story is left by the roadside. IN MY OPINION, it should look a bit more like this....

 

 

 

 

 

There we go! A dash of lore and a general roundup of what we learned about it during our related quest. Generally it'd be long winded or have a related story akin to the Synthesis Targets. But this if nothing else is certainly better than simply stating that it's Kuva and calling it a day. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HEALTH AND ARMOR

Another qualm I have with the codex is the inconsistency of assigning enemies or destructible's weaknesses to our weapons. A fairly optimal example would be the following. Lets think of two things in the game, and take a look at which has relevant data in the codex. I decided to use the Grineer Capture Target(An objective that requires you down it with weapon/ability damage) and the Kuva Siphon(A static objective that you cannot damage). Now reasonably, you'd assume that the objective that requires you to damage it would have its own table of things its weak to, and strong against, whilst the Siphon has no such table as you can't damage it.

 

YOU FOOL, YOU EXPECTED CONSISTENCY BUT ALL YOU WILL RECEIVE IS DISAPPOINTMENT

 

 

 

While we're on the topic of these two, how would you categorize them. Personally I'd assume that the Siphon would be classed as an "Object" and therefore be found in the Object tab in the codex, with the likes of crates and fish for whatever reason while the Grineer Target would be classed as an enemy, and therefore be found in the Factions tab, with the rest of our lovable bullet sponges.

Well they're both considered enemies, boohoo.

IMPROPER PLACEMENT AND ANGLE

 

Well, its big. it's too big to fit in the screen, even when it pans out you don't get to see the whole thing. Why doesn't the model shrink or have a large platform to view it on while the camera pans around it like a drunk driver like so many of the other objects/enemies in the codex? What warrants the Firbolg to its unique and frankly broken little cinematic sequence? And speaking of little unique sequences or backdrops, lets move onto the next topic.

 

 

 

 

INCONSISTENCY OF BACKDROPS OR SEQUENCES

 

Pretty sure I don't even need to talk about this one. You can just see whats wrong with it right here. Although it wouldn't be fair if I didn't mention that it used to be different. Originally the Lanx had its own underwater themed backdrop/scene, complete with bubbles and some props from Uranus. While I'm not sure why or when it was changed, it's clearly not functioning properly anymore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On that note, I'd like to bring up these two. Both found in the Object tab of the codex. Aside from being incorrect, take a look at the backdrop or scene. It's simply low quality. To be frank, it looks really bad. Not to mention that for the Fortuna cleaners it's simply thematically incorrect. As no such plant life exists in the coolant ponds of Venus. Frankly I'd much rather these "objects" have a similar pedestal like scene as many other things in the codex do. That way we could actually see the models without being obstructed.

 

BOSS FAVORITISM

While I may word it jokingly, some of the boss characters are simply under represented within the codex. While it may simply be due to them being older, or not having gotten a new design pass such as Kela De Thaym or Nef Anyo. It's simply inconsistent, and thats just enough reason for me to list it here. The examples being: 

Looking good Vor! Just as Koala faced as were were the day you got redone!

Stylish as always Salad! I see your War-Fur is there too!

Relevant as always aren't you Jordas?

Krill. 

And thats it. He's just there, not even holding his trusty and signature hammer. Y'know, the one he mentions in most of his transmissions? The one he supposedly destroyed entire Tenno Clans with? Again, this is likely simply due to him being one of the older bosses, and not having gotten his design redone in a more modern standard. Which is understandable as the codex as a whole is pretty undervalued and not entirely functional or relevant. 

TYPOS

Really just a bottom of the barrel nitpick, but quite a few of the entries aren't worded or spelled correctly. And while this may be moreso a problem with translated languages, DE is Canadian. And they speak and I'd expect, type, in English. So having these fixed would just be more lacquer.

[Marine027]

Good luck with that, DE sadly has a habit of ignoring and forgetting old parts of the game like this, Simaris research, Codex, etc. And i am sure the Leverian will be the exact same. Instead of expanding on existing things like the Codex and SImris we goten something lacking like Nora and Nightwave is story and lore wise. Another gimmick slapped on and soon™ be forgotten again.

 

I wish tho this would be a start to give glory back to the codex, especially leading players activly to it, since the game hasa big problem of never explaining anything to you.

[Mad_Catter]

Yeah, I'd really like it if they took a step back and polished all the stuff in the game thats been sitting in a corner crying.

[(PSN)Cephalon_Snow]

To be fair they did a good job with the other aspects of the codex such as kuria and fragments collections.  Big lore dump and time investment on both ends to complete.

But your main point stands..as with most things in warframe..there is a lack of consistency and it's a shame.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

3 hours ago, Mad_Catter said:

On that note, this is a gas of some sort, isn't the Kuva we know and love/hate a form of liquid? Yet the name simply labels is as Kuva. Does this mean that Kuva is naturally a gas? Or is it even physical? It must be since we drank it, but there's no notes to read into.

maybe it's a liquid, but in really small quantities it becomes as light as air? would explain why Siphons suck it in like a gas, but larger quantities seem to be a liquid that must be contained within a vessel. sounds crazy I know, but this is Orokin related, which means its likely a head trip. Siphons being classed as enemies is strange though.

3 hours ago, Mad_Catter said:

Lanx

did you also notice Lanx counts as an object? if anything it should be in the Wildlife category. all of the Fish and Servofish should be in that category.

3 hours ago, Mad_Catter said:

some of the boss characters are simply under represented within the codex.

this would be a good opportunity for Lore to be added on the bosses. we know how Vor got demoted from Admiral to Captain, but how did he become a feared relic hunter for the queens? he babbles on about the Janus key, but where did he get it? did he walk into a Void tower, and if so, how did he walk out without being Corrupted? (remember, this would be info about Vor prior to his Corruption.).

more background on Alad as well: if he really is Orokin, how did he survive the collapse? and why does he have a Dr. Frankenstein complex that tells him to experiment on things when he could use easier methods of making profit? Jordas and Krill in particular could have decent potential Lore behind them too, not sure what though.

3 hours ago, Mad_Catter said:

TYPOS

the typos regarding entries for railjack enemies are another clear sign that the update was rushed: no time to proofread, we need the update NOW! the Pilot's entry may have been written by someone who didn't see the model design for the Pilot and just assumed it would be male. the Crewship Typo could either be predictive text gone wrong, or a true mis-spelling. also note that it says it can be found on Venus, even though Venus isn't available in Railjack yet. is it planning ahead of time, or did DE cut out the Venus levels to get the update out faster?

overall, there's a lot that could be done to make the Codex better, but here's the thing: the amount of players that actually care about the Codex is a minority in the grand scheme of things, and most people will only consult the Codex for information regarding damage resistances and weaknesses. Lore is interesting to some of us, but we'd be expecting DE to put work into something that few players would actually interact with on a regular basis, and it can be argued that the game itself needs the time a lot more: I like the Codex and want to see it improved, but given a choice between that and fixing Railjack, I'd vote for Railjack a thousand times over. so overall, I wouldn't expect to see any fixes any time soon, especially since the Codex has to be expanded nearly every update.

TL;DR I agree with the OP, more lore would be nice. even the Codex entries for railjack were rushed and likely done at the last minute. I doubt we'll see any improvement though because few players genuinely use or care about the codex when the Wiki exists.

Edited January 14, 2020 by (PS4)robotwars7

[Mad_Catter]

15 hours ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

*The entire above comment*

Pretty much. 

On a nitpicky sidenote, the typos aren't unique to Railjack entities, some of the older enemies also succumb to this issue. Also quite a few of the basic enemies are simply described as "Heavily Armored", "High Damage"or  "Hurts you".

As for animals and Wildlife, I'd love to see them have their own tab, as Open World Areas seem to be the major focus for prior/coming updates(Duviri), and since conservation/hunting seems to be a fairly large fragment of the grind in those areas I'd believe it to be warranted. On that note, I'd like to see the descriptions of the animals updated to be descriptive of the actual species instead of the common, uncommon, and rare variants simply being "It's an animal".

I totally agree that the Codex is an incredibly minor part of the game thats generally glossed over by the vast majority of our community.(I simply spend an unhealthy amount of time there)But simply imagine a game where the Codex would be the vast compendium of knowledge its supposed to be, instead of the entirety of the game being wikibait. Railjack should 100% be the focus for fixes right now, but when we inevitably fall into another "content drought" I'd really appreciate it if DE instead of rushing unfinished content, refined what they already have. And maybe when they do they'll dig through the forums for suggestions and find some hastily thrown together post outlining some suggestions.