Glassmaker Feedback

[Lysserd]

Really great concept for a Nightwave season, I'm just seeing some problems with implementation. I love the aesthetic and the direction the story is taking. I also love the idea of being a space sleuth solving a case for the Nightwave. So, some feedback:

• Movement - Crime Scene
  • The movement in the crime scene is heavily reduced and I'm not sure why. I understand why full movement isn't available here, the player is being forced into being more observant to look for clues. The slow movement, however, is only frustrating and adds nothing aside from that frustration. Even if the ability to run were enabled it would provide some relief. As is, navigating the crime scene feels tedious. This is only compounded every time you revisit the scene to review your clues.
• Movement - Puzzle
  • The puzzle itself is, ultimately, a quiz so I don't see why this had to be a movement puzzle at all. As is I think the reduced movement options combined with a timer could easily make players panic and accidentally fall, which could easily feel unfair and thus frustrating. But, instead of addressing movement, I feel it may be better to drop a movement challenge entirely. Warframe is not ultimately a platform puzzler, it is a shooter. This puzzle could be a shooting puzzle: the player is provided a base Lato and expected to shoot the correct target. The point of the puzzle is to test knowledge of the crime scene, not the ability to perform platform jumps which only invite an irrelevant fail state.
• Clarity and Fairness
  • Fairness in design is a big topic in modern gaming. Put simply: when you fail at a challenge and you don't know why you failed, or feel you failed for reasons outside your control, it feels bad to the majority of people. Because of this it's important to communicate, literally or through gameplay, how a challenge works before it arrives. In Glassmaker there is very limited explanation as to how things work, which I feel fails the player. The puzzle challenge is not adequately communicated. Before entering the puzzle you have no idea how it will work. While it may be reasonable to expect the player to assume they're being a detective and will need to note their clues in another game, this is Warframe. Having a sleuth minigame is new to Warframe and a drastic difference from normal gameplay. There is also no in-game mechanic to take notes, or dialog/explanation that the player should be making their own notes outside of the game. Additionally the change in movement is not adequately communicated, movement in the puzzle does not match normal Warframe nor the crime scene. This wouldn't be an issue if movement weren't integral to the puzzle, but it is. The new mechanics of the puzzle challenge need to be communicated directly to the player through dialog or prompts, or the movement and mechanics of the crime scene could be changed to match the puzzle itself. Additionally, a mechanic to take notes in-game should be implemented as relying on the player taking physical notes is not good design and it cannot be assumed the player has 2 monitors for screenshots.
• Potential Currency Issue
  • The currency is generally fine as it matches the function of existing mechanics, but there is a small theoretical issue. Because the currency runs on a server timer to prompt the spawning of glass enemies in active missions it is possible, but unlikely, that a player may never encounter them. If a player were to play Warframe in short bursts, or with frequent breaks, it is possible to play in-between the server-driven spawn periods. This would lead that player to question if the currency even exists. Again, this is a small issue as a player dodging each spawn period would be extremely rare. But this could be fixed by spawning Glassmaker enemies on a per-mission basis similar to existing assasinations.
• Possible Bug?
  • It's possible that the puzzle itself is bugged. In my own first run of the puzzle I got into the jumping puzzle and the first choice was something like "transducer" or "transformer". I failed. I looked back over all 5 of my clues. Neither of those words appears in the name or description of any of them. I'm not sure if this is a bug or if it's a misunderstanding of the mechanics by me, but currently I'm not sure where I was expected to get that information if it appears nowhere in my crime scene so I'm assuming it's a bug.

[RyuhoTheDragon]

40 minutes ago, Lysserd said:

It's possible that the puzzle itself is bugged. In my own first run of the puzzle I got into the jumping puzzle and the first choice was something like "transducer" or "transformer". I failed. I looked back over all 5 of my clues. Neither of those words appears in the name or description of any of them. I'm not sure if this is a bug or if it's a misunderstanding of the mechanics by me, but currently I'm not sure where I was expected to get that information if it appears nowhere in my crime scene so I'm assuming it's a bug.

As for this you do have 3 options for that so you answer is possibly the third option tubular array. The correct answer is in one of the blue pads. It is highlighted almost at the end of the text. I noticed that players using colored UI get those highlights in color making it much more obvious than the one i use which made all text white just bigger.

As for bugs in my very run after the second jump a new platform never spawned at all: I ended up having to wait timer out and redo, so there are bugs and maybe one is that not all answers appear.

As for the remaining points you make in this thread very well put and explained. This is how feedback should be done when possible.

That being said i do like to say i never saw Sherlock Holmes solve a murder by jumping stones so this is unique space ninja method that makes no sense.

Edited May 15, 2020 by RyuhoTheDragon

[Lysserd]

10 minutes ago, RyuhoTheDragon said:

As for this you do have 3 options for that so you answer is possibly the third option tubular array. The correct answer is in one of the blue pads. It is highlighted almost at the end of the text. I noticed that players using colored UI get those highlights in color making it much more obvious than the one i use which made all text white just bigger.

I noted everything down in notepad file which ... I didn't save. All I can say for sure is that I did double check the 2 choices provided against every single word in the names and descriptions, highlighted or not, and that they appeared nowhere. Hearing from you that it should be one of the highlighted words only reinforces my thought that this is a bug.

[RyuhoTheDragon]

Not 1 minute ago i saw a post about this possible bug and at least 1 other player complained about only having 2 options as well and on that same question.

I'm sensing a theme showing.

Try looking at the blue pad behind the dead guy and bellow the ayatan star, the answer is on that one, if its not showing anything then it is clearly a big bug and my advice is screenshot it and send it to support.

There isn't any other way for me to help you if it is a bug.

Edited May 15, 2020 by RyuhoTheDragon

[(XBOX)DA ZACHYZACHY]

23 hours ago, Lysserd said:

Glassmaker there is very limited explanation as to how things work, which I feel fails the player

I got it straight away. It’s really obvious that the clues are what the questions are about.
You know what’s worse than the game giving too little hints? The game holding your hand. I know it’s a lot for many gamers, but being forced to “think” is great, and gives a “a-ha“ moment that to many modern games don’t give. You can’t have a murder mystery that tells you everything.

If anything I think it’s too obvious. 

23 hours ago, Lysserd said:

The movement in the crime scene is heavily reduced and I'm not sure why.

It makes it feel eerie, and a bit more moody. If you could bullet jump, sprint and roll like every other part of the game, it would feel just like any other mission. Maybe a “tiny” boost to the speed is needed.

23 hours ago, Lysserd said:

I failed. I looked back over all 5 of my clues. Neither of those words appears in the name or description of any of them.

It’s in there. All the things you must remember are highlighted, or you must remember the person they are taking two, or make note of the characteristics of an object. Basic motor function can getting any functioning human past these puzzles.

 

[Yotanido]

When I just tried the quiz thing, I couldn't even see the options until I got really close. The background was so incredibly bright, it made the options basically impossible to see.

They could have at least put it on a dark background or something instead of putting a glaring light behind...

[(XBOX)DA ZACHYZACHY]

6 minutes ago, Yotanido said:

When I just tried the quiz thing, I couldn't even see the options until I got really close. The background was so incredibly bright, it made the options basically impossible to see.

They could have at least put it on a dark background or something instead of putting a glaring light behind...

Turn down your brightness, or reduce bloom. It’s not their fault if you badly configured the games settings to blend all whites into one object

[Alpha_Tango]

If DE placed a Continue/Cancel option after the narrator speaks and the 60 second timer shows up it would have been a far smoother sleuthing for me. Having that option before you start the puzzle speaks tons already with a clear hint of impending risk of losing something. I probably reviewed all my clues again and came back just to be sure.

I went blind anyway the first time around so I failed but got it on the 2nd try.

[Steel_Rook]

23 hours ago, Lysserd said:

noted everything down in notepad file which ... I didn't save. All I can say for sure is that I did double check the 2 choices provided against every single word in the names and descriptions, highlighted or not, and that they appeared nowhere. Hearing from you that it should be one of the highlighted words only reinforces my thought that this is a bug.

You should have been given three options. Every question has three possible answers, and your particular version of the crime scene will randomly roll one of the three at first visit. If you only saw two choices, chances are you either missed a platform or the game really did bug out and didn't give you one.

 

53 minutes ago, (XB1)DA ZACHYZACHY said:

I got it straight away. It’s really obvious that the clues are what the questions are about.

Good for you. By the propensity of these exact same threads which continuously crop up on the forums, it's clear that a large number of people aren't having the same experience. The actual Quiz doesn't have anything in it to suggest it's a quiz. You cite "questions" but there's no clear indication that these ARE questions in the first place. It's presented as a jumping puzzle, similar to an MR test, right down to the short timer. When the only source of "difficulty" is guessing the developers' intention, that's not difficulty worth sticking up for.

Go back to Portal 2 some time, and listen through the developer commentary. That game manages to communicate the bulk of its game mechanics directly through visual design largely because Valve went back and reworked areas where playtesters became confused. Ever wonder why Portal 2 has different Material Emancipation Grid visuals? Because Portal 1's fields borrowed from the Half-Life 2 Combine were too faint and players kept not seeing them until they destroyed a cube. Similarly, the fields flash briefly when shot with a portal to clearly communicate that they can't be shot through. This isn't "handholding," it's good visual design.

 

On 2020-05-15 at 8:12 PM, Lysserd said:

This puzzle could be a shooting puzzle: the player is provided a base Lato and expected to shoot the correct target. The point of the puzzle is to test knowledge of the crime scene, not the ability to perform platform jumps which only invite an irrelevant fail state.

That has the potential to cause players to think it's a shooting puzzle, because again - that's ALSO a Mastery Rank test. The easiest way to communicate that this is a Quiz which expects you to answer questions not beat a dexterity challenge is to remove the dexterity element altogether. Host the quiz inside a glass room, offer the player three doors to run through, remove the timer. Walking through a door requires no manual dexterity so there's no reason to assume this is a challenge and choosing one of several doors is fairly universal symbolism for making a choice. Maybe give the player some cardinal direction, as well, so that a new player who starts looking around doesn't miss the appearance of the doors/platforms/whatever.

[UUDDLRLRBA_START]

On 2020-05-15 at 10:57 AM, Lysserd said:

I noted everything down in notepad file which ... I didn't save.

F6 - screenshot. I used screenshots for my note taking.

Welcome to 2020.