Glassmaker Part 3 - Poor Level Design

[Furoxin]

There are three distinct issues that arise from this terribly designed level. I would hope that DE sees this and recognizes the problem. There is a post or two in the "Players help Players" section, but we'll be touching on the tougher piece to our investigative nature.

1 - DE has built an expectation in their Glassmaker levels with the first two. Find the pieces of the puzzle and remember something about them as you move on. Easy right? Well, that's if you can find those pieces. The problem with the desaturated and mono-lighting that the level presents doesn't play nice. In fact, there's a poorly gated visual perspective on our randomly placed parts.
 

Spoiler

The above picture has a part in it! Can you see it? Not unless you're getting a button prompt. You will likely pass over it again and again, because it looks like everything else..
EDIT: The piece is actually set into the ground and has the same colors as what is around it. (Which is what I meant by it looks like everything else.)
 

Spoiler

 

2 - The directed lighting and desaturating of the level with the constant scanning doesn't do your eyes any favors. You're just dragging your cursor over the same dark material that you tried the past two or three times with the expectation that you perhaps missed something. Or worse yet, you're going in circles. It's not easy on the eyes when you look from the dark scheme to a flare from a beacon. And when you're crawling for those pieces, you're not avoiding it.

3 - This last bit is more a gripe about all three episodes: We're not moving very quickly. It was likely set this way so you don't miss anything needlessly, but the fact is, these levels are somewhat large for how slow you've been restricted to. Please, DE, let us move more quickly.

As of this posting, I've not found the 5th piece after an entire hour of very determined stubbornness and game design senses boiling. I've come to the conclusion that this level was just a shipwreck. It was not correctly vetted and needs to be fixed. I might be bugged and thus blocked from ever completing this episode otherwise. Players helping players has no solution for me, and others, and maybe plenty more who just haven't posted about it here.

[Kylo.]

I feel like your picture is way too bright. My game is way darker. Makes it easier to find it.

[Furoxin]

 

7 minutes ago, Kylo. said:

I feel like your picture is way too bright. My game is way darker. Makes it easier to find it.

I actually run near standard, slightly lower Gamma settings as the brightness of my monitor is turned down, its just personal preference for me. Now while I could mess with settings to gear out low-poly rendering and "spot" this, the point I made stands. It took me thirty minutes to find it, via square scanning.
No level, by design, should rely on a visual setting to be completed.

[aitch207]

Took me ages to look around for my fifth clue, which as it turns out was a viper in the bed thing at just the wrong angle so you can barely see it...

There is so much empty space that you just look around for ages trying to find one tiny little clue. For me 4/5 clues were in the area with the body, so the area with the orange ship and nearly everything (except one communication device) up the small ramp is pointless. I think in an attempt at trying to make people spend more time paying attention to Nightwave, they decided to add an unnecessary, and frankly boring, aspect of difficulty by limiting movement and adding empty space.

[Zandermanith222]

This map didn't need to be so big, especially with the movement speed, like two thirds of map was dedicated to a single piece of evidence that has no specific reason to be where it is. It doesn't help that the map itself is just a reused tile with unique assets in the part near the body, but the entire rest of the tile kept the same. I had just assumed they forgot to bother with boundaries till I found a non-obvious tablet sitting atop a console there.

It almost feels like they're not actually testing the level with in-game movement speed, probably just speeding around with devhacks to make sure everything functions, not taking into account just how sluggish the whole thing is in practice.

[Furoxin]

You actually make a good point aitch207. We've seen these tiles before. Many, many, many times in fact. We're not seeing something new, or something that we might be drawn into with some special piece of lore or anything.
Empty space with slow movement. It doesn't feel like this is an old, sad person's outpost that he's maintaining and living in. It's just another Uranus entry/exit point.

[DeltaPangaea]

Yeah, I came here specifically to try and find that last piece, the one OP posted a picture of.

One of the things that really annoys me is... we have this radar pulse thing going on, but it doesn't actually do anything? You'd think it'd give you some kind of clue where evidence was, but no. It's just... a random visual effect they decided to put in for some reason.

For clarity, if anyone comes here curious as well.

Viper on the bed. Comm part on the bench. Floof on the shelf. Book on the further-away console on the dock. Book on the floor in the back right by the round thing, OP's picture.

I thought the 2nd level was alright, but the third... Mh, not as much.

 

[(PSN)Hikuro-93]

My issue was with the second map. I actually found the current map to be extremely easy, as I've found all items in a matter of seconds, and managed to memorize them fairly well for the timed challenge.

Perhaps the different items also provide different levels of difficulty. I got lucky because I got Atomos (orange, stands out) and the Pobber floof (also stands out). I also knew there'd be at least 2 communication tablets (So I knew to look for them, per the logic of the 2 earlier episodes) and that'd be a special unique item (the comms device, in my case, which also stood out from the ground).

They were all in the area around the victim, despite my gamer sense telling me at the time they should be scattered through the whole area and near the spots where the map ends. I hope the next ones are like this Scene 3.

[Ryeiss]

I really want to know what's the developer goal behind this Glass Maker series questline. If you want to let us(players) want to know more about story. PLEASE PLEASE don't make these down below:

1.) Highly dependency on individual PC Specs and Lighting set up. -- Objects is really hard to spot and no are no other mechanic to find them easier, heck sometimes I even think the environment SFX pulses will help me locate these clues, but it ain't helping, or I am just pure blind. 

1a.) If you're trying the make the clues hard to find, please find a balance, and have some mechanic if I stay in there for long period of time, there will a sound playing in the background, sound cues volume high to low, depending on my (player) location.

2.) The FoV, OH GOD the Field of View in this mode, ITS KILLING ME here, obviously I can't says this for others as well, but its hell kinda killing me, the longer I stayed in there, the more headache I get, the more frustrate I became to look for the last clues. 

3.) The movement speed. Oh lord, this paired with (2.), it's killing me inside out, seriously. What were you guys thinking ??

-----

Basing on (2.) and (3.). It feels like you purposely made me playing this game mode, and extends my active play time ? What ? Is this for real ? I really hope its not your intentions or by designs. Or at least this is what I experiencing right now, and I am also being brutally honest here. 

Above all, I wouldn't feel so frustrated because of (2.) and (3.) . Henceforth, coming back to my main questions. What's your goal behind this Glass Maker Series Questline? If you're trying to play nice and wanting player to know more about lores and story, please make it easier. Since, I find this game mode shouldn't be challenging at all, and I am also aware it is hard to find the balance, but please, god, I hope you (developer) is gathering all these feedbacks and do something about it. 

PS: I know this is new method or trying out new game mode for Nightwave series, so I understand fully and hope for your upcoming fixes or AT LEAST SOME ITERATIONS to improve quality of playing or GAMEPLAY experience.

Cheers,
To those who took the time read my rant and my feedback. Take care everyone.

[Luciole77]

same here...took me about 1 hour.

[xombob89]

Yeah I must agree these things are sometimes way too hard to find because they look like anything else in the map and the painfully slow walking doesnt help either. I don't understand wheres the "fun" in this, after another 20min of walking back and forth I just felt so annoyed I felt it in my chest...

And like someone already said the last map was unnecessarily large too, I walked around it so many times until I found this ground colored datapad leaning on some floor deco looking like piece of the ground.

[Furoxin]

There's enjoyment in doing the classic Noire style investigation, and the slow walk can be immersive for the lore and to let Nora get the time to speak about what we've found, but the fact that it is the only speed is what we're hung up on. This isn't some interactive cinematic that forces your character to move and act without player input when you approach objects of interest. We're literally restricted to a single pace.

The intention of these Nightwave seasonal missions is to string some lore in along with a quick mini-game. If that mini-game loses what the intended purpose of it is, (Inspector CLUE-so), then why do it?

I had a short discussion with some other people and I found these solutions to a couple of the issues that the events produce to players like us. There are potentially many others who aren't speaking about it, but DE needs to be more mindful, imo.

1. Include something new. You already have plenty of assets for what you want, make it appear new.
2. Give us the option to move more quickly. It doesn't have to leap or run or spin, but a faster pace to cover the ground.
3. The scanner is an immersion tool. But, via game design, the emanation from the player is confusing us. Either remove the scanner effect, have it emanate from the glass victim, or have some sort of glass-like texturing around the "region". This would vastly improve immersion if the effect doesn't mislead the player into thinking it should highlight something when you've obviously just tried to make it a classic seek and find.

[Unimira]

The locations aren't fixed either, found the weapon in a dark corner beside the ship. Had two clues beside the body, two more on the other end of the map and final one beside the ship.

The one beside the ship was stupid:

Spoiler

 

The game seem to dynamically make that corner extra dark (unless looking straight at it), you can actually spot the weapon if you stand farther away i a spot where game doesn't do this "adjustment".

[Pinegulf]

i concur. walking slowly around looking for small clues... It's fun for small amount of time. After 15 mins it just gets frustrating. (Yeah, I suck at finding these.) 

[UUDDLRLRBA_START]

The search area needed to be smaller, IMO. Walking around the entire docking area was unexpected and annoying.

[JOMITH]

On 2020-07-08 at 11:59 PM, Furoxin said:

As of this posting, I've not found the 5th piece

Did you find the transmitter behind the wall where the ship is on the side of where the grineer is, I tried including a picture but it doesn't like me, there's also the solaris code on the same wall as where the clue you were talking about before, good luck!

I agree, I spent way too much time on this mission, I hope that they fix it because the mystery quests are fun 

[TerryKuuuu]

2020/7/10 AM1點31分 , Luciole77 說:

same here...took me about 1 hour.

Me too. If I didn't click in here, I would never know the last one is here...