Can we stop with excessively hidden search objectives?

[Crusher4881]

Search objectives are bad game design in any situation, especially when they're used as an excuse for level designers to screw over players by finding the most obscure possible hiding places for the items and giving absolutely no clues on their location. Cache hunts are bad enough, but at least there's an audio cue when you're somewhere in the area. But the newest nightwave had a piece of evidence so sneakily hidden (namely, looking exactly like one of the lights on the floor) that it's basically impossible to find without looking up every single possible evidence location (oh yeah, there's multiple locations too, because screw google apparently). Any sort of search objective with no way to get any sort of hint on the objective's location is a broken objective that is literally designed to waste a player's time on pointless stuff when they could actually be enjoying the game. At least when there's a huge grind-fest objective, you're playing warframe and continually making progress towards it, but without getting outside support, I could have sat at this search objective for 3 hours straight and made zero progress on finding the last piece of evidence.

Also, disabling the chat in the nightwave crime scene just makes it 10x worse, because instead of being able to get help from your clan to find the last evidence piece, you have to exit the crime scene to chat with your clan and then go back in, repeating until you finally find it.

[vanaukas]

Caches also are displayed on the map if you have a mod for loot radar (like animal instinct on companions), not just the audio cue. 

The pieces aren't "sneakily" hidden, and I'm surprised by the fact that people need a guide to find them, makes me think a lot about the decline of the difficulty on puzzle mechanics in games. Like, we jumped from OG Tomb Raider kind of puzzles/ secrets to literal shiny things with sounds and pop up prompts to avoid being called "bad designed". Sad.

EDIT:

Having a better understanding about the bad luck of some people who have a piece on a literal light spot makes me stop feeling bad for people don't being able to do this "puzzle", but it still impresses me and makes me sad the quality of puzzles in games, maybe I'm just nostalgic but some old games just push me to my limits (like ICO) and I love being challenged by puzzles, but this is not the case at all for that challenge (and I'm not asking for it here in Warframe or expecting it).

[(PSN)MYKK678]

No thanks. I like the new Nightwave and these investigations. If one of the objects was bugged or clipping into the floor i'd fully support this, but its meant to be an investigation, not a 2 minute tour. Take your time and the items wont be so hard to find.

[KIREEK]

Hidden content promotes exploration

For example, each map contains 1 dead end room with more crates and loot than the others, while this isn't very beneficial, in a survival this can be used without affecting the game time and over the many survivals you do, gathering the loot from this room can add up.

Caches are a nice way to increase the loot gathered in a mission, because, you see, warframe is effort based, if you spend time in missions to loot, you'll end up grinding less, there are players who do constant captures to get neurodes, only to quit the game due to grind, but if they kill, loot the maps and do sabotage for example, they might in a single run get several neurodes.

This expands to other rewards, like endo, credits, heck you may even get resources from areas that you don't have access to yet

Sindicate missions are a nice tutorial to locate statues and other goodies, you'll notice that while some are indeed hard to spot manually because they are mixed with other loot, some are often off the minimap (major hint), so if you see an icon in a place that isn't grey on the minimap, it can potentially be a statue, i also note that some rooms are absent of loot and ANY white icon in said room will garantee a statue, but again, this requires practice, you need to learn with each passage you do instead of just rushing.

DE places these things for players that go the extra mile, because over time, over 1000 or more missions, the gap is big.

[--F--NerevarCM]

Why everytime someone sucks at something in Warframe, they blame "bad game design"?

You need a gigantic golden arrow pointing the evidence to find it? Or you gonna say its "bad game design" because there isn't a gigantic golden arrow pointing to the other gigantic golden arrow that points to the evidence?

[Marine027]

vor 29 Minuten schrieb vanaukas:

Caches also are displayed on the map if you have a mod for loot radar (like animal instinct on companions), not just the audio cue. 

The pieces aren't "sneakily" hidden, and I'm surprised by the fact that people need a guide to find them, makes me think a lot about the decline of the difficulty on puzzle mechanics in games. Like, we jumped from OG Tomb Raider kind of puzzles/ secrets to literal shiny things with sounds and pop up prompts to avoid being called "bad designed". Sad.

It is the visuals simply, people see things different, the "scan wave" we keep emitting it is irritating honestly, why does it exist as fancy effect at all. Why does it not highlight if not very close simply. The bad design in this is simply how it goes away from all we had in this game so far, imagine i play a racing game and suddenly it wants you to play on foot and climb up walls to find some collectable.

It isn't hard, it simply can be frustrating, some people are simply having a hard time with certain effects, like motion sickness or weak to bright lights, i as example get literal headache of the Eidolon fights, it is way to much even on low settings. The visuals are just a mess, pretty or not.

[Magus_Tahir]

Lets not forget those special canisters in the Void that have whole built Forma hiding in them. Got about 10 Forma when farming mods on Marduk. 

[(PSN)Deeceem]

I did quite a few of them (Kuria, PoE fish, all Somachords etc.) and I still agree that the implementation is awful. The scanner display going on and off is probably the most annoying thing when searching something. For example Dargyn pilots or conservation animals in PoE.

It also is off to suddenly walk slowly and scan every corner. 

Caches are honestly more of a learning process. Once you learn the spawns and way DE hides stuff it becomes routine.

Specifically regarding the Nightwave Act 3 investigation 3 one - I assume the orange data pad - yes, it was cancerous and looking at the ground for something that felt like forever wasn't really engaging for me personally. I had no issues with any of the others so far though and generally think it's a nice addition.

[S3EK3R]

If you have trouble finding the "excessively hidden" caches I pity you.

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

Have you tried finding all Kuria? Nightwave is baby stuff compared to that

[(PSN)Deeceem]

vor 11 Minuten schrieb (XB1)C11H22O11:

Have you tried finding all Kuria? Nightwave is baby stuff compared to that

Have you tried Guantanamo Bay? Regular prison is baby stuff compared to that.

Are you a Jabroni? What kind of argument is that? Something worse existing doesn't negate the existence of a smaller issue.

[SpicyDinosaur]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)Deeceem said:

Have you tried Guantanamo Bay? Regular prison is baby stuff compared to that.

Are you dumb? What kind of argument is that? Something worse existing doesn't negate the existence of a smaller issue.

Okay! I just have to comment on this miscarriage of justice. The Rock would NEVER call someone else dumb. He is a goddamn delight.

[TARINunit9]

39 minutes ago, vanaukas said:

The pieces aren't "sneakily" hidden, and I'm surprised by the fact that people need a guide to find them, 

It's actually just one specific piece. Every single thread I read on this Nightwave is the same pattern: "i got four of the five clues, but I can't find the orange journal." And when they finally do find it, it was in the most difficult of it's possible spawn points, inside a yellow volumetric light

These are not stupid people, because 14 of the 15 possible clue spawn points are normal and reasonable, and these players track down those spawns just fine. It's just this one specific spawn point that turns out to be kinda bad

[(PSN)Deeceem]

vor 39 Minuten schrieb SpicyDinosaur:

Okay! I just have to comment on this miscarriage of justice. The Rock would NEVER call someone else dumb. He is a goddamn delight.

To be fair I didn't call anyone dumb. I asked if they are dumb. A small but important difference. Jabroni will be the replacement. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

2 minutes ago, (PS4)Deeceem said:

What kind of argument is that? Something worse existing doesn't negate the existence of a smaller issue.

Try interpretation.

Nightwave investigations aren't hard at all. Some people are not searching well or just want to rush through it to get those 7k points

Why the 3rd one caused complaints is beyond me, just because this investigation has a bigger map? 

[(PSN)Deeceem]

Gerade eben schrieb (XB1)C11H22O11:

Try interpretation.

Nightwave investigations aren't hard at all. Some people are not searching well or just want to rush through it to get those 7k points

Why the 3rd one caused complaints is beyond me, just because this investigation has a bigger map? 

Try reading the thread.

[Zentun.]

I stuck at 4/5 clues, i saw alot of prints about the possible locations, no luck at the moment, maybe its a bug.

[MagPrime]

I really like the crime scenes but with the amount of bugs that happen, we should have the ability to reset or shuffle the crime scenes in case we get bugged and an item or two doesn't spawn.

Just pay Kuva and NW credits or something and have the crime scene reset with new evidence locations.

[VarrickDTT]

I think that the Nightwave Investigations would be a lot less aggravating if the movement speed wasn't slowed down as much as it is.

I guess DE didn't want people bullet jumping around all over the place and 'ruining the atmosphere', or going so fast that they keep missing clues. With how it is currently though I find it just gets annoying fast when you have to start your 4th crawl around the map because you missed a clue that's the same colour as part of the floor.

It somewhat reminds me of that one Fortuna bounty where you have to 'scan' 4 Solaris bodies that are usually all right next to each other, and each one locks you into an animation for 10 seconds. I understand that they did it to add a bit of depth to the situation and doesn't take long to do in the grand scheme of things, but it just feels like an unnecessary waste of time.

[(PSN)Hopper_Orouk]

1 hour ago, Crusher4881 said:

are bad game design

Why do people keep saying this?

They don't know the meaning of a good game design anyway 

It's almost like they want reinforce their argument with this sentence 

[Lutesque]

1 hour ago, vanaukas said:

The pieces aren't "sneakily" hidden, and I'm surprised by the fact that people need a guide to find them, makes me think a lot about the decline of the difficulty on puzzle mechanics in games. Like, we jumped from OG Tomb Raider kind of puzzles/ secrets to literal shiny things with sounds and pop up prompts to avoid being called "bad designed". Sad.

There's no difficulty in looking for something without a clue. As a Tomb Raider player yourself you should know full well that Pixel Hunting is bad design and the later Tomb Raider games dont ask you solve something by finding that tiny thing that blends into the Environment. 

1 hour ago, (PS4)MYKK678 said:

No thanks. I like the new Nightwave and these investigations. If one of the objects was bugged or clipping into the floor i'd fully support this, but its meant to be an investigation, not a 2 minute tour. Take your time and the items wont be so hard to find.

Investigation implies you cab atleast use your brain to come up with a reason for why certain objects are in specific places. What night wave gives us is just random crap scattered all over the floor without rhyme or reason.

1 hour ago, --F--NerevarCM said:

Why everytime someone sucks at something in Warframe, they blame "bad game design"?

Why is that theres always a try hard who doesnt want the game to improve ?

1 hour ago, --F--NerevarCM said:

You need a gigantic golden arrow pointing the evidence to find it? Or you gonna say its "bad game design" because there isn't a gigantic golden arrow pointing to the other gigantic golden arrow that points to the evidence?

Actually  that would be nice.... 

In my case i literally walked over the last piece of evidence 3 times before i noticed it wasnt just yet another floor light.

36 minutes ago, SpicyDinosaur said:

Okay! I just have to comment on this miscarriage of justice. The Rock would NEVER call someone else dumb. He is a goddamn delight.

Didnt The Rock talk alot of Smack during his wrestling career ?

35 minutes ago, Follordark said:

gettin good intensifies...

and there is an obvious light from the objects what more do you need, a map?

Aaaaaaaand Ignored.

33 minutes ago, (XB1)C11H22O11 said:

Nightwave investigations aren't hard at all. Some people are not searching well or just want to rush through it to get those 7k points

Nobody is saying they are hard...

Theres literally nothing in there that is challenging about finding these things.... you either get lucky be happen to be looking at the right spot at the right time or Very slowly and very carefully scan the immediate surroundings ever 3 Steps to make sure you dont miss that document thats just lying on the floor.

36 minutes ago, (XB1)C11H22O11 said:

Why the 3rd one caused complaints is beyond me, just because this investigation has a bigger map? 

There have been complaints about all of them.

2 minutes ago, VarrickDTT said:

I think that the Nightwave Investigations would be a lot less aggravating if the movement speed wasn't slowed down as much as it is.

I would like this too.

 

[MagPrime]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)Hopper_Orouk said:

Why do people keep saying this?

They don't know the meaning of a good game design anyway 

It's almost like they want reinforce their argument with this sentence 

Someone they agree with said it once, so that means it's the magic phrase to get what they want. 

[Serafim_94]

No, seriously though. Nightwave needs "i #*!%ing give up" button.

The only detective game I ever played was LA Noire, but I absolutely loved it. This Nightwave, or, god save us, Sacrifice quest... aren't that. They are just horribly designed, unfun sequences with literally no gameplay but painful checking of every corner of location clearly not designed for the task.

Want an example? #*!%ing 3d sequence of glassmaker. In any PROPER quest game you'd be investigating those submersibles, and not just searching for a #*!%ing thing that looks like a natural light source. Here, they exist solely because they are part of the tile.

[(PSN)Yggranya]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Deeceem said:

Have you tried Guantanamo Bay? Regular prison is baby stuff compared to that.

Are you a Jabroni? What kind of argument is that? Something worse existing doesn't negate the existence of a smaller issue.

Have you played monster hunter world? All the stupid desicions of the developers that get called out get deflected like this. Seems to be leaking into other games now.

 

56 minutes ago, (XB1)C11H22O11 said:

Nightwave investigations aren't hard at all.

Ahh, the good ol' "difficulty". Bumbling around hoping to bump into whatever it is you are looking for is not difficulty, it simply adds nothing to games. Can you honestly say you enjoy it, or does it make you feel good to say "i found it, you just suck you filthy casual" (no one said that yet, but we will get there, as per the usual).

And no, i have no problem with them. As soon as i tried exisiting the first one and it said "crime scene" it was pretty obvious what to do. It still isn't adding anything interesting to simply running around. seems that they wait for you to find a certain amount of them before the rest of them appear.

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

11 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

Theres literally nothing in there that is challenging about finding these things.... you either get lucky be happen to be looking at the right spot at the right time or Very slowly and very carefully scan the immediate surroundings ever 3 Steps to make sure you dont miss that document thats just lying on the floor.

It's not really about luck you just do a search minigame and of course you're gonna have to pay attention to the surroundings maybe that's why they made us slow in this. This reminds me of one Sherlock Holmes game where clues only glow if you get close to it

If I had to complain about these "investigations" is that we're just grabbing the 5 things we don't actually piece things together Nora is the one that has to do that which is kinda of a shame and not what I thought it would be when they showed it on the Livestream.