Make Dojos Great Again

[Mataske]

As the title states, the complaint is dojos feel like they exist for the sole sake of trading and research. Some people like decorating them to look nice, but in the end almost nobody sees it because a majority of players don't spend time in the dojo. They go in, get what they need from research or trading, and leave. Dojos feel completely unfinished. Did you know that the reactor room has 4 doors? You can only connect to the one that you built on. The rest are just kind of.. there. Not to mention that one looks like this. https://imgur.com/a/Hhxza4J . Also, why is the Dry Dock the only room with people in it?

That said, I have a few suggestions myself on a few things that could improve dojos, and I'm sure others have much better suggestions than mine.

First and easiest would be to address why people don't idle in the dojo instead of their orbiter. Allow people to form teams and access not just their arsenal but also their relics, Foundry, Incubator, and Operator from inside the dojo. Give people the tools they need if they want to hang out in the dojo so that they're not constantly flying back and fourth if something finished crafting.

Second, would be a whole bunch of possible improvements to the dojo in terms of functionality and aesthetic. Listing off a few ideas that vary in difficulty to implement.
1. New rooms. We got a room for Dry Docks trading Kuva Liches, but really there's not been much. Give us some different sized and shaped rooms, maybe some rooms with glass floors, or an aquarium room to show off donated fish. You get the point.
2. New Tools. As it is, there's not too much to complain about with the tools when you're more used to them. That said, there's plenty of room for improvement through more or improved tools. The biggest one I can think of on this that would make the dojos feel alive would be the addition of semi-programmable NPCs. Make a list of animations and routing options for different rooms, then add NPCs and let players make their own NPCs that follow their own schedules. As said before, only the Dry Docks have any people. All the other rooms feel desolate no matter how well decorated. This would be ambitious to say the least to implement, but it would also go the furthest for dojo improvements in my opinion.
3. Bugfixes. Are shown in the link before. The reactor room has a black space on the top floor that's not easy to get to. You can't connect to the other 3 doors in the reactor room. The reactor room(again) is filled with invisible walls. Reactors can have odd reflections from rooms with windows if placed properly(They are the problem child.) 

All said and done, I do love the potential of the dojos, but they feel like they're just glorified trading centers right now.

[AblazinGrace]

Agree on all counts, but your bugfix section is lacking.

1. How about the ridiculous 2 hour timer for room destruction? The only legitimate reason I can fathom for this is to give people a chance to change their minds, which is pointless since all resources are refunded. Or perhaps it takes 2 hours for the server-side to update (for their sakes, I sincerely hope not).
2. How about the abomination that is child components? I don't know why whoever coded this thought it was a good idea. I've seen posts dating back to 2014 of people complaining about this, and here in 2020 it's still a problem. There's not even an upside to this.
3. How about all the janky room collisions? To use your problem child as an example, you can't put a reactor to the side of the basic clan hall. There's plenty of room for it, and it's not touching at all on the map, but nope.

I'm positive I could find more if I flipped through the boards. It would be absolutely terrific for dojos to be fixed and fleshed out, but yeah at this point they're just glorified trading posts with a bunch of Halo Forge decorations thrown on top (Yeah, I said it. Fashion is the true end-game, amirite!?), and unfortunately DE seems to be more concerned with pushing out new skins than fixing things.

[(NSW)Belaptir]

20 minutes ago, AblazinGrace said:

How about the ridiculous 2 hour timer for room destruction? The only legitimate reason I can fathom for this is to give people a chance to change their minds, which is pointless since all resources are refunded. Or perhaps it takes 2 hours for the server-side to update (for their sakes, I sincerely hope not).

This make sense to avoid a troll destroying a clan in seconds. If someone wants to troll you because reasons, having 2 hours to cancel the destruction helps. However, this timer should be bypassed by someone with the rank of warlord.

21 minutes ago, AblazinGrace said:

How about the abomination that is child components? I don't know why whoever coded this thought it was a good idea. I've seen posts dating back to 2014 of people complaining about this, and here in 2020 it's still a problem. There's not even an upside to this.

God... Can we please eliminate these child components? PLEASE?

22 minutes ago, AblazinGrace said:

How about all the janky room collisions? To use your problem child as an example, you can't put a reactor to the side of the basic clan hall. There's plenty of room for it, and it's not touching at all on the map, but nope.

And now that we're talking... what about a dojo planner too?

[Educated_Beast]

1 hour ago, (NSW)Belaptir said:

 

And now that we're talking... what about a dojo planner too?

When giant new rooms are added, not even a planner will help.  What we need is the ability to look at dojo from overview map and move fully built rooms around that connect with each other.  We don't need to tear down a room at all, just move it to another space.  

We also need elevators with multilevels.  It makes no since if I want a 3 story dojo that I need 2 elevator shafts!   A simple floor selector is all that is needed.  Considering the dry dock takes up at least 5 levels total, this is very reasonable request.  At the very least, make the elevator shafts long enough so collision is not possible between lower floors!

And where is our orbiter?  Do we leave orbiter with lander and "park" it somewhere in the dojo?  If so, where is our lander room (like relays have)?  Do we teleport in, where is that transporter on orbiter?  Basically, we need a link between orbiter and dojo.  

All of this would draw community closer.  I do not think a personal quarters is possible in dojo for large clan logistics, but having a community forge, mods, etc., basically everything on orbiter may make a community hang out for starting missions.  Even though we have navigation, there is still things I must access in orbiter.  Eliminate need and I may just start missions from dojo.  Once many people do this, then the dojo won't feel so isolated.  Id love this and would finally start recruiting in my clan of two if that was the case.  

Edit - almost forgot, love idea of NPC on dojo.  One idea I had is ambassador rooms with the syndicates.  This would allow you to access the store and turn in points.  However, speaking to leader requires going to relay.  Once room is built, you would have some of thier operatives hanging around.  Same could be done for Earth and Venus.  

A lot of potential here.

Edited January 24, 2020 by Educated_Beast

[(PSN)FadedSpirit]

I love everything posted here so far. I have especially wanted the ability to more easily redesign dojos easily, being able to move rooms around without destroying would be a god send. My dry dock is somewhat off to the side when I would love it to be much more centrally located, but I don't want to destroy rooms I've meticulously decorated to do that.

I've wanted an aquarium room for the dojo since we've first gotten the ability to fish. I think I've actually posted about it before, or commented to support someone else with the idea. Decorative fish tanks we could place anywhere and donate fish too would also be amazing.

I would also love the ability to donate companions to the dojo and assign them to rooms. It would be lovely to have a kavat, kavats and moas as adorable guardians of a room. This could tie into the npc idea, where you could tell them to stay in one spot or wander an area, but I would be fine if they just wandered the room their put into like they would wander on the ship. Maybe we could also have a room where members of the dojo could display their companions without donating and other dojo members or invited players could breed their pets together or offer to buy imprints or something like that.

I also think they could manage personal rooms for dojos of they maybe acted as an instance instead? So it would be represented by one room on the dojo map. It could have a terminal with a list of everyone in the clan and you could select their name and it would teleport you to that players room. Only the player would have decorating rights to their room, they can only use their own resources to decorate the room, clan sizedoesn't effect decoration cost for the room and they could donate liset decorations specifically to their room instead of the dojo as a whole. It could even work in a way where if that player leaves or is kicked from a dojo when they join a new one their personal quarters are still in tact, to prevent any hurt feelings or shenanigans with donated items for the personal quarters. I think this could be pretty cool personally and I would love to have my own room at my dojo, it would also be lovely if we could finally get a bed for the operator lol.

[AblazinGrace]

7 hours ago, (NSW)Belaptir said:

This make sense to avoid a troll destroying a clan in seconds. If someone wants to troll you because reasons, having 2 hours to cancel the destruction helps.

Disagree, because:

• Architect is a privilege of rank, and (most) people have enough common sense to know not to hand it out willy-nilly.
• Again, all resources are refunded. Even if you accidentally gave permissions to a troll, you could undo the damage without much of a problem. At worst, the resources get spent on research, but I feel that's pretty negligible in terms of damage. Even if they spammed decorations everywhere or something, you could just delete and remake the room they're in and get everything back relatively quickly.

6 hours ago, Educated_Beast said:

We also need elevators with multilevels.  It makes no since if I want a 3 story dojo that I need 2 elevator shafts!   A simple floor selector is all that is needed.  Considering the dry dock takes up at least 5 levels total, this is very reasonable request.  At the very least, make the elevator shafts long enough so collision is not possible between lower floors.

Floor selector might be going overboard. This doesn't exist in relays or in missions; adding it for dojo would mean opening the possibility for the former, meaning much more work for devs.

6 hours ago, Educated_Beast said:

And where is our orbiter?  Do we leave orbiter with lander and "park" it somewhere in the dojo?  If so, where is our lander room (like relays have)?  Do we teleport in, where is that transporter on orbiter?  Basically, we need a link between orbiter and dojo. 

Edit - almost forgot, love idea of NPC on dojo.  One idea I had is ambassador rooms with the syndicates.  This would allow you to access the store and turn in points.  However, speaking to leader requires going to relay.  Once room is built, you would have some of thier operatives hanging around.  Same could be done for Earth and Venus. 

Both great ideas, but maybe no ambassadors for Earth/Venus. Wouldn't make sense lore-wise. We can now contact them from the orbiter via the syndicate radio thingy (wasn't a thing when I stopped playing years ago, am happy for it), but having an ambassador for a couple small colonies doesn't seem realistic.

6 hours ago, Educated_Beast said:

All of this would draw community closer.  I do not think a personal quarters is possible in dojo for large clan logistics, but having a community forge, mods, etc., basically everything on orbiter may make a community hang out for starting missions.  Even though we have navigation, there is still things I must access in orbiter.  Eliminate need and I may just start missions from dojo.  Once many people do this, then the dojo won't feel so isolated.  Id love this and would finally start recruiting in my clan of two if that was the case. 

• On the subject of community forge, mods, etc., this will never happen. There wouldn't be any point in doing anything if all the endgame players just dumped resources into a pool for their clan mates to have. You'd also be effectively cutting DE out of potential platinum purchases.
• As for navigation, I could actually get behind just doing everything from dojo. This would still leave the choice up to the players. Personal preference, lack of an observatory, or lack of a clan outright are all factors that would decide this choice. Only reasons I would NEED to go to orbiter would be for cyst management, possibly breeding, and personal quarters (because it doesn't seem realistic to have two personal quarters, and linking the one from your orbiter to the clan would be too much work).

[(NSW)Belaptir]

1 minute ago, AblazinGrace said:

Disagree, because:

• Architect is a privilege of rank, and (most) people have enough common sense to know not to hand it out willy-nilly.
• Again, all resources are refunded. Even if you accidentally gave permissions to a troll, you could undo the damage without much of a problem. At worst, the resources get spent on research, but I feel that's pretty negligible in terms of damage. Even if they spammed decorations everywhere or something, you could just delete and remake the room they're in and get everything back relatively quickly.

I have rooms where I've spent days working. Not talking about a room that takes 2 hours of "work" to be decorated but something closer to 50 hours of game if not more (it's probably more, actually). It's not about the resources, but the time some of us invest in creating cool rooms for our dojos. This being a safe lock is good for us. However, as i said (and you snipped when quoted me), it should be something that a warlord can and should be able to bypass.

[AblazinGrace]

Just now, (NSW)Belaptir said:

I have rooms where I've spent days working. Not talking about a room that takes 2 hours of "work" to be decorated but something closer to 50 hours of game if not more (it's probably more, actually). It's not about the resources, but the time some of us invest in creating cool rooms for our dojos. This being a safe lock is good for us. However, as i said (and you snipped when quoted me), it should be something that a warlord can and should be able to bypass.

Going back to where I mentioned halo forge, I can understand your frustrations. It's also understandable that creating something new and detailed without a specific plan would take that much time. That said, if it takes you that long to REbuild something, I feel that's more your problem.

Regardless of circumstances, a simple feature to save room layouts aka templates to some personal menu (to prevent trolls from griefing your saves; maybe have a way to share them as well) would solve this issue, and could be applicable in other areas of dojo design, as well. Think seasonal decor, course architect, etc.

I snipped because warlords should have all rights, period.

[(NSW)Belaptir]

Just now, AblazinGrace said:

Going back to where I mentioned halo forge, I can understand your frustrations. It's also understandable that creating something new and detailed without a specific plan would take that much time. That said, if it takes you that long to REbuild something, I feel that's more your problem.

Regardless of circumstances, a simple feature to save room layouts aka templates to some personal menu (to prevent trolls from griefing your saves; maybe have a way to share them as well) would solve this issue, and could be applicable in other areas of dojo design, as well. Think seasonal decor, course architect, etc.

I snipped because warlords should have all rights, period.

Even if you plan something, building it will take time. And when you're building something complex, that time, even having the things planned, will not be short. Think of a puzzle. Even if you have it "planned", you know how the design must look and everything, there's still a lot of time that involves building the stuff, specially when it's complex. Or are you telling me that you're able to assemble a 2k pieces puzzle in half an hour? To me, you're talking as if you'd never built a complex room in your dojo.

On one thing I agree, saving room templates would be really helpful. But that still doesn't mean that the two hours should completely disappear. It's a safety measure that only a few in the clan should be able to bypass, but should still be there for safety for the rest.

[AblazinGrace]

1 minute ago, (NSW)Belaptir said:

Even if you plan something, building it will take time. And when you're building something complex, that time, even having the things planned, will not be short. Think of a puzzle. Even if you have it "planned", you know how the design must look and everything, there's still a lot of time that involves building the stuff, specially when it's complex. Or are you telling me that you're able to assemble a 2k pieces puzzle in half an hour? To me, you're talking as if you'd never built a complex room in your dojo.

On one thing I agree, saving room templates would be really helpful. But that still doesn't mean that the two hours should completely disappear. It's a safety measure that only a few in the clan should be able to bypass, but should still be there for safety for the rest.

Respectfully disagree on all counts. Also, I've built plenty of pretty rooms in that past albeit on xbox. No need to be rude.

[(NSW)Belaptir]

3 minutes ago, AblazinGrace said:

Respectfully disagree on all counts. Also, I've built plenty of pretty rooms in that past albeit on xbox. No need to be rude.

Didn't meant to be rude, my apologies. But still the point stands. There's a lot of time involved on building a room even when you have it planned. It's not "my problem", you can't just dismiss it saying it's my problem ignoring the fact that behind a room there's a lot of time investment even when you have everything planned. As I said, assembling a 2k pieces puzzle takes a lot of time. And this is the same.

[AblazinGrace]

Just now, (NSW)Belaptir said:

Didn't meant to be rude, my apologies. But still the point stands. There's a lot of time involved on building a room even when you have it planned. It's not "my problem", you can't just dismiss it saying it's my problem ignoring the fact that behind a room there's a lot of time investment even when you have everything planned. As I said, assembling a 2k pieces puzzle takes a lot of time. And this is the same.

When I said 'your problem' I more meant that everybody's mileage will vary; it wasn't directed specifically at you. Poor choice of words on my part.

[KochDerFrettchen]

Sounds like fun.

-Allow all-chat access (Region/Recruit/Trade) while in the Dojo

-Do not break group when leaving the Dojo, do not move people around when they're in/out of the Dojo and join a group, just let the grouping feature be independent of where the player is as long as that location is not a mission.

-Create ease-of-access to the player's personal resources and builds (Arsenal, Mods, Foundry, etc.) from within the Dojo (maybe have an accessible parked orbiter with these menus outside of it?)

-Other unlockable/researchable things like Syndicate and Conclave access from the Dojo to reduce loading screens further

-Warframe.Market style trade postings, where clanmates can plunk down a list of things they desire to trade and recommended prices with easy-access to send the player a private message for when they're out of mission or online.

-More activities for within the Dojo.  Fishing competitions (No actual resource rewards, just leaderboards like the obstacle course?), that chess-like game from the Umbra quest fleshed out, the other 'Arcade' games (Frame Fighter), player-controlled displays for personally created games (perhaps only clanmates with decoration rights could alter the text/formatting of the signs), even simple goofy things like Rock/Paper/Scissors.

-Opt-in group voice chat (localized per area? Entire Dojo? Options?)

[Sir-Swerving]

Id love to see some more variety in dojo rooms, Especially recreational ones, The gardens are cool but there's a lack of empty rooms of various sizes to decorate with,

Y-Shaped or U-Shaped connectors, (Connecting two paths from one direction to one path in the opposite direction)

Square 2-way and 4-way connectors, (Spamming the Dojo with the same hallways and cross-connectors gets bland)

Variety of dead-end creative rooms, (Empty rooms that are either the size of a Tenno Lab or a Barracks without the clan size attachment)

Edited January 25, 2020 by Sir-Swerving