Linear vs. Sprawling maps

[Steel_Rook]

If you've played Warframe for a while, you've probably noticed how procedurally-generated maps are put together. They're formed from individual tiles snapped together, with a "tree" structure stretching from the start room to the end room. A single path through the map exists between the start room and the end room - the Critical Path. Many rooms along the Critical Path have multiple exits, but all of those exists lead to dead ends - either immediately or eventually after passing through several intermediate rooms. If a dead end exists with more than one room with no exits (what I tend to call an End Cap), I tend to call this an "Offshoot." How extensive the offshoots are determines how "linear" or "sprawling" a map is. Let me explain - I'm going somewhere with this.

 

Linear maps: A linear map is a map with no offshoots. Every door in a room that doesn't lead to the critical path leads directly into an end cap. Once a player learns a tileset's collection of tiles, it's simple enough to look through an open door to tell whether you're looking at the critical path or not. Most newer tilesets generate linear maps. The Corpus Ship Remastered tileset is entirely linear. The Sentient Murex tileset is entirely linear. The Lua tileset (despite not being new) is entirely linear. This seems to be the direction DE are heading in.

Sprawling maps: A sprawling map is a map with large, branching offshoots. Doors that don't lead to the critical path can still lead to large rooms with multiple doors of their own, which can in turn lead to more such rooms. These Offshoots off the main path can branch several times, span significant distances and make up a substantial portion of the map's overall land area. Sprawling maps make it impossible to recognise the critical path unless you've either found the Exit or have exhausted all possible paths with an Offshoot. The majority of Warframe's tilesets and especially the older ones are sprawling. Grineer Gallen/Asteriod, Corpus Planet, Earth, Mars - these can all have massive offshoots that go for many rooms and lead nowhere.

 

A question:

My point in bringing this up is simple - do you prefer Sprawling or Linear maps? Do you approve of DE's move towards Linear maps as streamlining the experience in a fast-paced game, or do you feel that the move away from Sprawling maps is dumbing down exploration in a game which can use extra depth? I ask, because I'm honestly not certain where I fall on this spectrum, myself. If you've seen me post anything, you know I'm the explorer type - break all the container, open all the lockers, etc. Normally, I enjoy exploring all of the lengthy, labyrinthine offshoots. It's just fun. Having played some of the newer, more linear maps, however, I found that they can often be just as enjoyable even without the massive offshoots. There's generally enough exploration along the Critical Path and End Cap rooms, it gives me a good sense of where I'm supposed to be going and it keeps the flow of exploration fairly smooth.

Especially on a team (at least a team of friends who aren't going to try and speed-run every god damn mission), I've tended to find that Linear maps are a bit less boring. See, with Sprawling maps we essentially have to put the game on hold in order to go off on a tangent and explore a part of the map that isn't really part of the mission. It's just an area off to the side with lockers and containers. The experience is broadly the same whether what I'm exploring is an Offshoot or part of the Critical Path, except the latter feels like I'm also making progress. This feels incongruous to me, because I generally prefer more sprawling maps, but it seems like Warframe's larger, more elaborate tiles create this sense well enough without needing the map to branch.

Now, that's not to say I wouldn't want maps to branch more - far from it. Ideally, I would prefer for maps with multiple objectives like Mobile Defence and Spy to branch more overtly, with each objective at the end of its own branch. As it stands, these maps are usually pretty linear, with the objectives stuck on offshoots staggered throughout the critical path. However, a map which branches with paths leading solely to multiple objectives without dead end offshoots is still technically Linear, even if it's not a literal line from start to finish.

But what do you guys prefer? I'm curious to know.

[Loza03]

I feel like it depends on the tileset and game mode. It's not really a straight answer, but it's hard to summarise Warframe's content up in a neat bow like that.

For missions like Exterminate or Sabotage where we have a clear objective, a linear map makes sense. It's A to B, we don't really need to deal with secondary objectives. Yes, Sabotage has the caches, but... there's never been any reason why one of the most hypothetically time urgent modes has that. We're going on board a ship and blowing up a reactor, presumably we have a limited amount of time to achieve that.

 

However, I also feel like Warframe's lacking that sense of exploration that really makes use of mobility. There's a lot of mystery and intrigue that linear maps can't deliver. If we ever get more 'Deimos underground' content, I dearly hope it'll be sprawling, or even devoid of objective markers. Wandering without any real direction in a hostile environment, at any time able to come across some old Entrati monument bristling with Orokin weaponry or a vile organ sac ready and able to add us to Deimos's ever-spreading mass.

[Famecans]

I would like to see more doors being used for the assembly, after a repetition time everything seems monotone

[Kaggelos]

Such an interesting subject, noice 😁

I also like exploration, and it also depends on the mission type. 

And yes, Deimos caves hopefully can become procedurally generated, that'd be dope

[Steel_Rook]

2 hours ago, Kaggelos said:

And yes, Deimos caves hopefully can become procedurally generated, that'd be dope

Deimos caves already are procedurally generated. DE were pretty proud about that during the reveal.

 

2 hours ago, Loza03 said:

However, I also feel like Warframe's lacking that sense of exploration that really makes use of mobility. There's a lot of mystery and intrigue that linear maps can't deliver. If we ever get more 'Deimos underground' content, I dearly hope it'll be sprawling, or even devoid of objective markers. Wandering without any real direction in a hostile environment, at any time able to come across some old Entrati monument bristling with Orokin weaponry or a vile organ sac ready and able to add us to Deimos's ever-spreading mass.

That seems like an entirely new mission type that you're describing here. Something to keep in mind, though, is the kind of map I think you're envisioning isn't really supported by Warframe's procedural generation algorithm. It's important to remember that all procedurally generated maps - ALL of them - are a tree structure with an entrance, an exit and only a single critical path between them. Clan Dojos are a SLIGHT exception in that they can have looping paths, but that's not applicable to procedural generation for two reasons. For one thing, Dojos are not procedurally generate - we build them ourselves, so we ensure the doors line up. For another thing, Dojos still follow the same tree structure as regular instances. Have you ever tried to break a looping hallway? You can only break it in the reverse order relative to how it was built, because the rooms still follow a tree structure. They appear to loop and holes in the environment let you move from one to the other, but the map DB still saves them as a tree graph with each node "belonging" to the one before it.

With that said, though - what about existing mission types? By this, I mean what about the mission types which appear on the Star Chart? Would you prefer Sprawling or Linear maps for them? The reason I ask is because it's a bit dissonant for me personally. In theory I prefer sprawling maps for exploration, but I haven't really found the linear maps of the Corpus Ship Remaster to be problematic at all. In my experience, they offer just as much exploration (if not more so, due to the larger more elaborate tiles) while also having a faster pace. Because we're always progressing forward and never deviating into dead-end offshoots, it feels like we're merging exploration and mission completion efficiency together. Sure, it's always going to be faster to just rush for the exit and ignore all enemies in-between, but it seems to me like linear maps provide a decent compromise. They let me "feel" like I'm exploring without getting completely left behind by my team-mates even when playing with friends.

I should note that Jupiter Remastered - the next most recent tileset remaster before Corpus Ship - isn't actually linear. It doesn't have very large offshoots, but it does quite frequently have offshoots several rooms deep. So maybe I'm wrong in thinking that this is the path DE are taking based predominantly on Corpus Ship and partially on the clearly unfinished Murex tileset. Who knows - maybe Corpus Planet or Corpus Ice Planet would be sprawling. I rather doubt it, however, given that Corpus Ship USED to be sprawling, but the remaster is linear instead.

[Chaemyerelis]

I like to feel like I'm exploring so I'd say I like sprawling more but is there really anything to explore in these tilesets that's worthwhile? 

[NecroPed]

I think Warframe has place for both aspects. The game mode should dictate what type of map is used. A linear map wouldn't work for say, survival. But, it would work for some archwing missions. I like to sit back and analyze what DE are doing with map design though, so I'm not sure I have the perspective to say what's better. I like seeing what they're doing and trying to think about why they're doing specific things. Map design interests me, and sometimes seeing something that an artist has done gives me great ideas for my dojo (And potentially other unrelated projects). At times I feel like they're experimenting and trying different things to see how they work and I'm content with that.

[Hobie-wan]

7 hours ago, Famecans said:

I would like to see more doors being used for the assembly, after a repetition time everything seems monotone

Indeed. There are doors that are part of certain rooms that are forever closed that I'd like to see made occasionally functional into new junctions. Especially ones that are currently in dead ends.

[Kaggelos]

5 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

Deimos caves already are procedurally generated. DE were pretty proud about that during the reveal.

Seriously? I didnt even notice, not sure if thats a good thing or not. Unless you mean ISO Vaults, the others seem like they're always the same whenever I go inside them.

[Hobie-wan]

Yeah, they mean ISO vaults.

[Steel_Rook]

3 hours ago, Kaggelos said:

Seriously? I didnt even notice, not sure if thats a good thing or not. Unless you mean ISO Vaults, the others seem like they're always the same whenever I go inside them.

Isolation Vaults for sure. I'm pretty sure most of the other regular caves are procedural as well, though - at least I thought so. I've been doing a fair bit of spelunking looking for fishing spots and minable ores, and I could never seem to find the same cave twice. Now this COULD be an issue with every place on Deimos looking like every place else due to the overwhelmingly samey colour scheme and art design, but I thought caves reached through cave entrances marked on the map were procedural.

 

4 hours ago, NecroPed said:

A linear map wouldn't work for say, survival.

That's a fair point. The nature of Survival lends itself well to a large explorable space... Well, it does in concept. Not so much in practice given how everything about its implementation encourages players to sit in the same room for 30 minutes and never explore anything. This is beyond the scope of the thread, but I really wish Survival (and Defence, while we're at it) could be redesigned in some way that encourages exploration WHILE fighting. I'd also like to move Life Support away from kills and put it on secondary objectives of some sort.

I think part of the problem is that while all of us here seem to want more exploration, DE's game design rarely lends itself to that. What I mean by this is exploring often wastes time at best, and sometimes can even fail your mission - as is the case with Survival. Spend too much time moving around and enemies can't catch up, meaning you run out of life support. But now I'm going off-topic.

 

3 hours ago, Hobie-wan said:

Indeed. There are doors that are part of certain rooms that are forever closed that I'd like to see made occasionally functional into new junctions. Especially ones that are currently in dead ends.

I'm a bit torn on this. One the one hand, I kind of wish all tilesets could do what the Orokin Tower and Derelict tilesets do - let every door open, but stick an "end cap" behind most of them. Same function of blocking traversal past the door, but with a bit more "depth" to it. On the other hand, having locked doors that we can't access creates the illusion that there's more to the maps we explore than just the area we're exploring. If you've played Black Mesa - the Source remake of Half-Life - that uses "fake doors" all over the place. It makes the Black Mesa facility seem larger because it creates the illusion of all these spaces we imagine are there but can't access. It makes the space appear artificially bigger.

That does answer my question partially, though. It seems like you guys in particular want more sprawling maps with more offshoots that don't lead to objectives.

[NecroPed]

8 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

That's a fair point. The nature of Survival lends itself well to a large explorable space... Well, it does in concept. Not so much in practice given how everything about its implementation encourages players to sit in the same room for 30 minutes and never explore anything. This is beyond the scope of the thread, but I really wish Survival (and Defence, while we're at it) could be redesigned in some way that encourages exploration WHILE fighting. I'd also like to move Life Support away from kills and put it on secondary objectives of some sort.

I think part of the problem is that while all of us here seem to want more exploration, DE's game design rarely lends itself to that. What I mean by this is exploring often wastes time at best, and sometimes can even fail your mission - as is the case with Survival. Spend too much time moving around and enemies can't catch up, meaning you run out of life support. But now I'm going off-topic.

 

Yeah, I definitely agree with you here. Most of the time I don't even end up using life support. It also doesn't scale well to end game when taking drop rates, loot frames etc. into considering. I think arbitration is the only place I've been recently and actually popped one. Life support should be an objective to guide you to the location to do the surviving.

Perhaps something along the lines of being outside of life support radius drains your teams life support totals, life support stations prevent the drain in radius, enemies killed in radius drop life support. It would promote moving from point to point and sticking to the area, rather than mindlessly killing everything until you're bored/finished. 

As it is now, I find kuva survival a more accurate representation of what survival mode should be, while promoting the idea of moving around the map without spreading everything too much. 

 

In regards to defense I think a good example of the poor implementation of exploration : objectives is the new corpus tileset. The defense map has areas to explore, it has granuum void stations, it has rooms other than the spawn room and defense room. But, we still have to defend the objective so it's kinda irrelevant to have all that stuff available while the game mode itself draws us away from it. I would love for the whole map in defense to be utilized. But, not sure how to do that one without blurring the line between game modes.

[Hobie-wan]

1 hour ago, Steel_Rook said:

Isolation Vaults for sure. I'm pretty sure most of the other regular caves are procedural as well, though - at least I thought so. I've been doing a fair bit of spelunking looking for fishing spots and minable ores, and I could never seem to find the same cave twice. Now this COULD be an issue with every place on Deimos looking like every place else due to the overwhelmingly samey colour scheme and art design, but I thought caves reached through cave entrances marked on the map were procedural.

 

The other caves are definitely set. There's the one near the Necralisk that spits you out near the edge of the map to the right. There are a few dead end caves that have broken mechs at their end and one on the bottom middle of the map IIRC that ends in what looks like a collapsed Corpus hallway. The Iso caves are always the same at the surface down to the toxic room, then can differ after that door and of course down to the vault you get.

[(PSN)thegarada]

Sprawling for sure. There is already a very clear map indicator of where you need to go, so you are not going to get lost. I do like to go off the beaten path. It is not useful in Graineer tilsets, but in the Void you could find cool stuff. Also, makes the tilset feel more immersive. I am visiting a place not going to a committee selected playground.

I would like more randomization, in general.

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

First off, let me say how disappointed I am that you did not include the absolute worst offenders of sprawling maps in your examples:  Grineer Shipyard and Earth Forest.  Earth can be pretty linear, but if you're running the sabotage mission and hunting for a [Bite] you'll soon discover just how massive Earth maps can be.  Really though:  Shipyard.  Screw Shipyard, even though it's one of my favorite tile sets.  I love the way it looks, I love moving around in it.  I love how what looks to be an end tile that's just a closet actually goes vertically for over a hundred meters and hides some specific surprises for those that are kurious.  But the tileset can be so large, so sprawling, that Kuva Siphons and Synthesis targets almost always end up lost, somewhere far off the beaten path.  When all you want is Kuva, this is not fun imo.  When you're hunting scannables or just screwing around, it's great.

And that's sort of my opinion on linear vs sprawling.  It depends on what I'm doing.  If I'm after something specific and RNG is screwing me or I have a lot of whatever it is left to farm, I am 100% that guy that will optimize the fun out of a game to get it done quicker, because (hear me out on this.) the empty hollow grind of making no progress, or making slow progress in only one area isn't fun to me either.  So I will always choose the fastest, quickest, most linear option if I'm trying to get something done because there isn't a fun and efficient option most of the time.

But if I'm running just to run, like maybe a survival to see how far I can go, I get disappointed if map generation screws me over with a tiny map.  I choose the missions with the larger potential map spawn if I'm hunting scannables or something similar.  

To slightly hijack your thread though, and yet still stay on topic (completely ignore everything past this if all you wanted was my answer and not my suggestions.):  I'd really like it if all starchart missions had optional objectives to complete that would result in a few different things happening. 

1. Squad split up.  I run with some folks that understand how everything works and would be totally fine soloing whatever mission, but here we all are playing together anyway.  On pretty much any mission where we can split up and get multiple things done at once (like a Kuva Siphon or Hive Sabotage or Spy missions) we all manage to wordlessly split up and divide the tasks and get everything done extremely quick.  It feels great.  Instead of every mission feeling like a race where you're trying to outplay each other and be the one doing all the work it feels like you're a team, actually doing some space ninja stuff.  As long as there was an actual worthwhile reward for it, everyone could play and contribute instead of one guy nuking, one guy pressing objective related buttons and two people occasionally shooting stragglers.  It would feel more like a Tenno assault on a base/ship/whatever than 4 tenno going on a sightseeing tour on a straight line through the map.
    
2. Worthwhile rewards for optional objectives.  I have a million ideas for this.  Those ephemera that were supposed to be a badge of achievement but just turned into "I have good RNG or plat" should be locked away behind things like the Gas City secret labs.  Stick a piece of the BP for an ephemera in each of the labs, requiring that you open and collect all of them to complete it.  Stick little puzzles like this in every planet.  Put cosmetics in them.  Put a "mission booster" as an uncommon reward from caches that would double your gains from that mission, then stick caches in every mission.  Have a mission multiplier for resources and credits based on how much you cost the enemy through destruction of property (crates, looting, dead personnel, etc) to encourage people to not only kill more enemies instead of skipping them, but also wander the maps looting, looking for the optional objectives.  Early game NEEDS a better endo farm.  I've had to explain to so many newbies that they're just SOL on a reliable, fast endo farm in the early game.  Greatly increasing the chance for statues in the end tiles and "hidden" areas in the sprawling maps would mean that, combined with the rest of my suggestions, taking your time with each mission could actually provide new players with the things they need, instead of them learning from vets to just skip as much of the game as possible.  They've said before on more than one occasion they want us to slow down and engage with everything rather than bee lining through the map, hitting the objective and bailing.  They should be incentivising this instead of trying to force it through time-gates and other crappy tactics.  Huge sprawling maps full of things actually worth finding would mean more people actually engage with the mission instead of rushing it.  
    
3. Node Re-population.  If they stuck things like ephemeras, cosmetics, Universal Medallions, and evergreen items etc behind hidden areas and puzzles scattered throughout each planet, as well as the optional objectives for missions, they could lure tons of players back into the starchart as a whole.  Mission bonuses based on how much of the enemy's stuff you screwed up, mission boosters from caches, etc, you could tune it so that we had more than Hydron and SO/ESO as an affinity farm.  More than a few specific dark sectors as resource farms.  If they put in the work and actually made the rewards worthwhile, they could repopulate all these dead nodes that newbies are having to solo or beg in recruit for help with.

That's it for me hijacking your thread though.  Apologies on the length, I've been thinking about this for awhile.

[0_The_F00l]

I dont think there is an absolute right answer.

Both linear and sprawling maps have their place,

Linear maps are good for clear cut objective missions capture, rescue - you know where to go and there is a straight (kinda) line to get there efficiently.

Sprawling maps are good for the more endless/ spread out objectives like survival , excavation , disruption - where there are no wrong turns just closer or further from the exit once you are done with the mission.

The others with multiple objectives like spy . MD  can be somewhere in the middle.

The defense/interception ones are more a single tileset.

 

I personally feel the problem is there is no real "side objective" that incentivizes exploration after a point (sure the fragments , somachords, resources in crates exist but after you get it its kinda pointless)

I also feel that DE has actively decided to make the missions longer by adding more tilesets between you and the objective and the exit just so you dont finish it quickly rather than give more reasons to stay in the mission.

[CarrotSalad]

It depends so much on how much the map is utilised. Fortuna is my favourite open world map because it does have allot of things to discover along with identifiable landmarks. Cetus on the other hand feels rather empty and stale by comparison.

Good sprawling maps need identifiable landmarks. An example of what i mean is Grand Theft Auto 5 vs Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. In San Andreas it utilised the sprawling map so well while GTA5 had giant sections completely dead with no purpose to exist outside scenery.

Give them a reason to be that big, make giant landmarks, build race courses, put animals in different parts, enemy and ally bases, mineral rich caves and locations, fishing, Nature spots, barren spots, beauty spots etc. You cant do any of those things imho with a linear map so my preference should be clear. Sprawling maps are my favourite.

[prodi1600]

I'm all in for the procedural Sprawling but DE need to invest a lot into his tile-sets, they need to have a more openish vibe, some of the tileset are way claustrophobic and don't allow good mobility.

Example: Uranus in general, the T3 infested ships maps that resembles corpus ships that have been overcame by infestation, those are some of the worst design that ci can remember.

[Steel_Rook]

8 hours ago, (XB1)TehChubbyDugan said:

And that's sort of my opinion on linear vs sprawling.  It depends on what I'm doing.

I've seen this come up a few times now, so I feel it's important to address what may be a technical limitation. Do we know if a tileset can generate both linear and sprawling maps? Originally I was going to assert that we have no precedent for this, but having thought about it. I do recall feeling like some missions just generally have more "offshoots" than others on the same tileset. The one example I can think of is Orokin Towers, though I can't recall off-hand. I remember running some missions which had a very sprawling map with many offshoots, while on others it felt like every door but the way forward simply didn't open. I can't remember which mission type caused which map, though...

We know that map size can vary by mission type, likely by feeding the map generator a different number of tiles to generate the map out of, and possibly some other parameters (like % of tiles in the critical path). Graph mathematics is a fun subject, but it's sadly out-of-scope for this thread. My point here is that IF DE's map generator can be set to generate different map types within the same tileset based on mission type, then I absolutely support having both depending on the mission. My primary question, in fact, somewhat stemmed from my belief that each tileset could only have one type of map on it. If that's not true, then it somewhat undermines my quandary.

 

3 hours ago, CarrotSalad said:

It depends so much on how much the map is utilised. Fortuna is my favourite open world map because it does have allot of things to discover along with identifiable landmarks. Cetus on the other hand feels rather empty and stale by comparison.

Something to note here is I'm referring specifically to indoor, procedurally generated maps. By their very nature, Free Roam maps don't really apply here. All three Free Roam maps we currently have - Plains of Eidolon, Orb Vallis, Cambion Drift - are fixed. No map generation takes place on those. Mind you, I think DE need to seriously invest in procedurally-generated outdoor maps. Sure, the Drift has procedurally-generated caves, though people have already pointed out just how few caves actually are procedurally generated. No, what I mean is generating entire free roam maps from individual tiles. XCOM 2 does a really good job of this, putting maps together from pieces of various sizes, picking a few large "parcels" and then filling the gaps between them with smaller and smaller filler pieces. That's a square-grid tile-based game, granted, but I'm sure there are ways to do this in a more free-form style. Worse come to worst, bodies of water could be used to close the gaps. But that's a bit out-of-scope here :)

 

8 hours ago, (XB1)TehChubbyDugan said:

• Squad split up. 
• Worthwhile rewards for optional objectives.

Eh, this might be a bit off-topic but it's worth discussing anyway as it's relevant to the discussion of map linearity. Actually, I'd like to bring up the Payday series for comparison. Payday: The Heist is pretty much L4D with cops instead of zombies, and it follows very much the same linear map design. The mission requires players to push their way through a series of locations, sometimes with limited backtracking. Payday 2, by comparison, is very much its own beast. Maps aren't as large, but they're far more open, usually featuring one or more buildings with multiple entrances and the surrounding grounds. Players are tasked with finding, moving or defending objects within this open space in order to progress through the mission objectives, but there's usually very little progress through actual space - most of the map is available from the start.

I personally find that the Payday 2 approach is probably the best way of handling a modern horde shooter, for two simple reasons - it's not about killing enemies and it's not about getting to a location. Most horde shooters - and Warframe among them - suffer from one or both of these problems. L4D suffers from an overwhelming emphasis on reaching the end of the map, which causes players to just rush past all the enemies. Warframe has the same issue. Titanfall 2's Frontier Defence suffers from an overwhelming emphasis on killing all enemies in a "wave," often causing players to camp enemy spawn points and ignore strategic objectives. Warframe has the same issue. Payday 2's focus on defending an objective which can't fail but can be delayed while searching for optional loot is I think the best compromise. It means you kill enemies because they're in your way and you succeed by completing objectives.

All of this is to say that a sprawling map with optional objectives would improve the Warframe experience, at least for me. Especially, by the way, if these are non-trivial objectives. Right now, the only optional objectives we ever have are Hidden Caches, but they're not "an objective." They're collectables - find them, interact with them, leave. What about a door that needs to be burned through via Moltacoil found somewhere on the map? What about a vault which requires hacking several consoles scattered throughout the map? What about a loot cache which requires physically moving multiple cannisters to extraction in order to secure them? Meaningful objectives we can stumble upon while exploring would justify the existence of sprawling maps. Because right now, there's no point in exploring offshoots. There's never anything in them that you can't find in the critical path.

As to rewards? My "simple and dirty" solution would be to just give players an extra reward rotation per bonus objective accomplished. Cosmetics and such are nice, but you only really need those once until you have them. Letting players run the equivalent of multiple missions in one run by getting multiple missions' worth of reward rotations through bonus objectives might be just lucrative enough to convince people to explore on a regular basis.

[Teridax68]

I think if we're going to stick to maps with a single critical path, linear ought to be the way to go -- the Corpus Ship tileset I think does a good job of providing a linear critical path with lots of side paths for some degree of exploration, as does the Corpus Gas City tileset, a map that itself is fairly linear despite the size of its tiles. The problem with "exploration" at the moment in Warframe is that there isn't really any sort of substantial or evergreen reward for going down those side paths -- at best, the player may find a few resources or a cache in the relevant mission, but that quickly becomes irrelevant when the player obtains what they need. Additionally, spending time exploring in that sense is fairly rote and requires the player to make the decision to explore without knowing what rewards are out there, whereas perking one's ears up when one hears that distinctive ringing sound while along the critical path has at least somewhat more of a chance of catching the average player's attention. In general, exploration isn't really that valued at the moment in Warframe, and unless DE somehow figures out how to give us an evergreen reason to look for things in tilesets (and even so, there's likely a better way of going about that than constantly checking our minimap and bringing an Ignis or Limbo), I'd say linear design with more layered tiles should probably be the way to go.

[Steel_Rook]

11 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

I think if we're going to stick to maps with a single critical path, linear ought to be the way to go -- the Corpus Ship tileset I think does a good job of providing a linear critical path with lots of side paths for some degree of exploration, as does the Corpus Gas City tileset, a map that itself is fairly linear despite the size of its tiles.

Interesting thing about those two tilesets, actually: Corpus Ship is now a LOT less sprawling than Gas City. Corpus Ship has a single critical path with no offshoots - only dead ends. If you open a door it's either going to lead towards the objective/exit, or will be an immediate dead end. Some of the Corpus Ship dead end tiles are quite massive, admittedly, so they resemble offshoots themselves. However, I can't recall ever seeing a door lead to a room with multiple exits unless it's part of the critical path. Please correct me if you've seen otherwise.

Corpus Gas City, by contrast, does have offshoots at least some of the time. I've seen many occasions of a door off the critical path leading to a room with multiple exits, which itself either leads to dead-end rooms or often to at least one more room with multiple exits. It all ultimately leads to a dead end, but with some amount of "splitting" that I've not seen in the Corpus Ship tileset. But again - I suspect that might differ per mission. I'll have to keep an eye out - I have started to suspect that the "sprawliness" of a mission might vary within the same tileset.

 

16 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Unless DE somehow figures out how to give us an evergreen reason to look for things in tilesets (and even so, there's likely a better way of going about that than constantly checking our minimap and bringing an Ignis or Limbo), I'd say linear design with more layered tiles should probably be the way to go.

Actually, a question while you're here: How would you feel about bonus collectables that offer extra reward rotations from the underlying mission rewards? Say you're running a Spy mission that also has three Hidden Caches, and each gives you another roll on A, B and C rotation respectively. Would that be sufficient for "evergreen rewards" or do you feel it wouldn't cut it? It's an idea I've thrown around here and there but I don't know that I ever got an opinion on.

[Teridax68]

5 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Actually, a question while you're here: How would you feel about bonus collectables that offer extra reward rotations from the underlying mission rewards? Say you're running a Spy mission that also has three Hidden Caches, and each gives you another roll on A, B and C rotation respectively. Would that be sufficient for "evergreen rewards" or do you feel it wouldn't cut it? It's an idea I've thrown around here and there but I don't know that I ever got an opinion on.

I feel it wouldn't cut it for the same reason current caches don't cut it -- once you get the rotation rewards, there's no reason to care about the mission itself, let alone the exploration. Bar the occasional exception post-content update, we run most missions not because of what's inside, but because we're completing the mission for some other purpose, be it a sortie, a relic run, Nightwave, and so on.

When you look at it, exploration rewards in general are almost completely overlooked in Warframe's loot system: ordinary crates drop some resources that we end up swimming in very quickly, and even the rare crates that have an exceedingly rare chance to spawn only offer a small selection of rewards we quickly end up not needing. By contrast, killing enemies gives us mods on top of these resources, and enemies are much easier to seek out. If we really wanted to make exploration worth it, we probably ought to make rare crates much more common, and put genuinely valuable rewards in them -- mods that can't be found anywhere else, maybe even warframe component or weapon blueprints -- and keep updating those with new content updates, just as the same is done with enemies. There's likely more to be done with this, e.g. hidden bonus mission objectives and the like, but that's an entire discussion by itself.

[LuckyCharm]

I much prefer linear. The map that we have currently is pretty bad at saying where to go so linear at least usually gives. Clear direction to head. 

That said if the tilesets were like the good original grineer mines and the original corpus ships i wouldnt mind sprawl but i literally hate the new maze like tiles thst keep getting reworked. I dont like the kuva fort, i dont much care for the new corpus ships and i avoid the new gas city like the plague. These have so many changes of elevation and places to get stuck that Its just a nightmare trying to play some frames in em

[Kaggelos]

18 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

overwhelmingly samey colour scheme and art design

preaching to the choir man. My eyes hurt now. Too much red, brown, and orange

[(XBOX)TehChubbyDugan]

12 hours ago, Steel_Rook said:

-snip-

Most tilesets can generate a map that's kind of in-between sprawling and linear.  Even the most linear tilesets we have still have fairly frequent offshoots.  In my experience, mission type greatly effects how many offshoots you'll get and how large they'll be.  One of the few exceptions to this seems to be Grineer Shipyard, which is always sprawling and massive, regardless of mission type.

As for extra rotation rewards, one of the issues the starchart faces right now is that the majority of the reward tables for regular starchart missions, and I mean the vast majority, either literally don't have a mission reward (exterminate on most planets.) or everything in the table isn't worth running that specific mission for because it's stuff you're pretty much guaranteed to get everywhere.

If they reworked the drop tables to give things worthwhile and gave us sprawling maps with optional objectives I would totally play regular starchart again.