Yet Another "Improving Rift Visuals" Thread

[IdrisQe]

So everyone loves Limbo, right?
^...Right?

Regardless of how popular he may or may not be, one thing I think nearly every player of him- and a great many allies- can attest to is that the Rift has really bad visual clarity in every single aspect (except Cataclysm unless your energy colour is pitch black).

There are 4 primary areas that have issues:

1. Telling if enemies and allies are inside or outside of the Rift.

With allies, there almost never seems to be any indication as to if they're riftwalking or not, aside from perhaps manually-banished sentinels or companions.
Enemies, on the other hand, have a really hard-to-see-at-a-glance effect around their feet to tell you they're in the Rift.
This can easily lead to trying to banish/unbanish the wrong things, not realizing you've banished/unbanished something, or simply having difficulty telling what IS banished at any given moment.

I would remedy this with the following solutions: Make the "banished" effect far more visible, either by making the current one more noticable (not great), or by making a new effect (and giving that effect to ANYTHING in the Rift, including ally Limbos, Defense Operatives, etc., not just enemies and some edge-cases) and make seperate effects for banished and unbanished enemies depending on if you're in the Rift or not; enemies in your current plane having no visible effect, letting you more easily focus on them.

Here are some examples:

This is a Lancer. Let's call him... Krog. He is in the Material Plane. You are in the Material Plane. Krog looks like this to you (and probably smells worse):

That's great! But what if some Limbo banishes Krog and you didn't see him in the act? Try looking for weird greyish flames down at Krog's feet, far from his head where you'll probably be focusing on... Or, alternatively, this is what he could look like when banished, viewed from outside of the Rift, on the Material Plane:

Now that's obvious! With the outline of course being the offending Limbo's energy coulour... And perhaps a bit less solid (gifs have transparency issues).
This may be a bit on the extreme side in terms of clarity, but it would only be in effect if you weren't on the same plane as Krog anyway.
So if that careless Limbo then banishes you, Krog will now look like this once again, seeing as you are both in the Rift:

The banish on Krog runs out! Who builds Limbo for such low duration?! But you're still in the Rift! How do you tell, at a glance, that he's back in the Material Plane?
Well since he, and all the other enemies trapped in the plain old plane of boring normalcy, will look like this:
Two options! One less fancy than the other! For the price of one!

Of course, if you then roll on out of the Rift, Krog, and his compatriots, will look like bog-standard Grineer once again before getting a Corinth to the face and proceeding to look like Kubrow Chow.

2. Telling if you are inside or outside the Rift.

The current visuals for being in the Rift kinda suck: Bad saturation that seems to sometimes be too much or too little, strange outline issues, and that weird hazy effect.
Sometimes it's glaring and eye-pain-inducingly low contrast, other times it's hard to even tell which plane you're in without doing an experimental dodgeroll.
How would I fix this? Make the effect more clear, probably with something around the border of your screen instead of those annoying screen-wide effects.
 

This is Krog's workplace before he got sent to Earth after knocking over a batch of Tyl Regor's fresh toobmen toobs:

And here's a rough approximation of how it would look in the Rift currently (unfortunately):

BLEH! So how about some neat around-screen effects instead? The center 90% of your screen is far more important for clarity than the outer edges after all:

Or, if that's too much, something like this even would be better than what we have:

Or heck, how about a third option which is once again even simpler?:

All of these, or really ANYTHING would be clearer and more pleasant on the eyes than what we currently have.

3. Telling how many enemies and allies are inside the Rift.
This one's simple: A UI element for Limbo that shows how many allies/enemies are in the Rift would be really appreciated. Doesn't even have to be fancy, could just be a generic buff icon shaped like his Rift Portal with a number.

4. Telling if you've held Banish long enough to expel everything from the Rift.
I appreciate the new functionality that lets you instantly remove everything but yourself from the Rift by holding-cast on Banish, but it has no animation or any other audiovisual cue of having worked... A short animation, even just copying his existing Banish or Stasis-End animations would be nice, as well as a simple sound, maybe a quicker Banish sound.
 

And that's basically it.

Sincerely,
    someone who likes Limbo but can't stand the audiovisual design of the Rift.

[(NSW)Gamer-Steve]

I think these would be some great improvements to Limbo's ability visuals, and the rift!

Perhaps that hold-to-expel could be limbo raising his arm up gradually, and snapping his fingers when the expel happens? Well, unless the standard Banish animation were re-used for that, or something. Or perhaps that animation could be done in reverse?

 

Some more food for thought :)

[LillyRaccune]

I agree with your assessment of the Limbo situation.

You've also made some great visuals! Thanks for sharing 😸

[VoidArkhangel]

hace 12 horas, IdrisQe dijo:

1. Telling if enemies and allies are inside or outside of the Rift.

 

I'd like this one better since the static can be very tiring for the eyes.

hace 12 horas, IdrisQe dijo:

2. Telling if you are inside or outside the Rift.

 

Also this, could have a transparent layer with the energy color or even the borders could be based on that color but overall its simple, doesnt bother the eyes and doesnt mess with the "panoramic view" too much.

[(PSN)jockhotty]

Well this an opportuity to voice my concern. There have been some mods released that relax or grant a pass on a passive power on a warframe(like Zeph's slow jump) I could use a mod on Limbo that removes L1  or a degree of sensitivity. Sliding is like one of the funnest aspects of this game. It is just never viable with Limbo you almost always go to the rift and then worse while you try to correct you can get stuck or spam the button. Obviously it is a mechanic that is not suitable for most Limbo lovers as a change. This is why I think that a mod is the way to go. Implementing  in a fashion that the Zephyr has, seems like the best approach. Any other ideas. Reassigning controller buttons is not suitable unless it is an assignment that happens only with Limbo equipped. This is a rough idea but I welcome polish or other concerns

[(PSN)mahoshonenfox]

I would prefer just desaturation effect. Nothing special. Anything in the rift becomes gray scale. If you're in the rift then the environment looks gray scale. Those are the simplest indicators I could think of that instinctively tells the player which plane they or something is in. Its still better than trying to spot the tiny ghost flames on their feet.

[Yuzuki-Prime]

I totally agree with everything and appreciate the effort you put into this.
The only thing I feel like I should point out is that putting the effect at the extremities of the edge of the screen is going to have varying results depending on the players monitor size and how close/far away they are from the screen.
Console players may have large TV's, PC players may have whackass 45:8 ultra curved 2000inch monitors. Resulting in some players not noticing their peripheral's as much as other players.
I'm not really the biggest fan of whole-screen effects either, but it definitely gets the job done at informing players...well...I mean, not right now, because the effect isn't noticeable enough. Maybe a better solution would be a whole screen flash that subsides to the edges of the screen over a short period of time. Get the best of both worlds with only 1 annoying sudden screen flash (but that flash effect could be tooled around with to make sure it's not too obstructive or seizure inducing)

[Flannoit]

All for making Limbo's rift visuals actually identifiable (instead of a gross barely noticeable plastic wrap layer over things) but I don't think static is the way to go, even for visuals.

[IdrisQe]

On 2021-09-03 at 8:48 AM, (PSN)mahoshonenfox said:

I would prefer just desaturation effect. Nothing special. Anything in the rift becomes gray scale. If you're in the rift then the environment looks gray scale. Those are the simplest indicators I could think of that instinctively tells the player which plane they or something is in. Its still better than trying to spot the tiny ghost flames on their feet.

Yeah I feel greyscale would work well, but at the same time, maybe have any creature in the Rift appear in full colour, while they would appear greyscale from outside the Rift. That would solve both the "am I in the Rift" and the "is that thing in the Rift" issues with minimal distractive...ness? I still sort of want some kind of animated aspect to the overlay, on NPCs and Players at least, not necessarily screen-wide- just enough that the enemies stand out at just a quick glance.

On 2021-09-04 at 10:02 PM, Yuzuki-Prime said:

I totally agree with everything and appreciate the effort you put into this.
The only thing I feel like I should point out is that putting the effect at the extremities of the edge of the screen is going to have varying results depending on the players monitor size and how close/far away they are from the screen.
Console players may have large TV's, PC players may have whackass 45:8 ultra curved 2000inch monitors. Resulting in some players not noticing their peripheral's as much as other players.
I'm not really the biggest fan of whole-screen effects either, but it definitely gets the job done at informing players...well...I mean, not right now, because the effect isn't noticeable enough. Maybe a better solution would be a whole screen flash that subsides to the edges of the screen over a short period of time. Get the best of both worlds with only 1 annoying sudden screen flash (but that flash effect could be tooled around with to make sure it's not too obstructive or seizure inducing)

Not so big on the screen flash, my partner already needs to be warned to close her eyes every time it switches between Fass and Vome in the Cambion Drift because the flashes are so painfully bright and sudden, and Warframe already has too many bright-coloured effects. If anything maybe a quick wavy-looking screen-blur when entering the rift that then goes back to normal over like half a second when entering/exiting.

On 2021-09-05 at 12:03 AM, Flannoit said:

All for making Limbo's rift visuals actually identifiable (instead of a gross barely noticeable plastic wrap layer over things) but I don't think static is the way to go, even for visuals.

I'm a fan of static as a visual effect when it's not overkill, which is what I was trying to go for here, but I can understand it not being a popular opinion, which is why I wanted to provide some alternatives and to spark discussion around better vfx!

The main reasons I went with static is that it's a subtle animation, but one that's still noticable enough for your eyes to be drawn to the affected enemies/allies and know instantly "that's the Rift effect", compared to a lot of other animated status effects in the game which are just some variation of "fancy energy-colour glow around enemies which is hardly distinguishable from every other energy-coloured glow status effect from a warframe power", while having nothing animated about it could still cause enemies to possibly get lost in the crowd.

 

  

On 2021-09-02 at 2:59 PM, (PSN)jockhotty said:

Well this an opportuity to voice my concern. There have been some mods released that relax or grant a pass on a passive power on a warframe(like Zeph's slow jump) I could use a mod on Limbo that removes L1  or a degree of sensitivity. Sliding is like one of the funnest aspects of this game. It is just never viable with Limbo you almost always go to the rift and then worse while you try to correct you can get stuck or spam the button. Obviously it is a mechanic that is not suitable for most Limbo lovers as a change. This is why I think that a mod is the way to go. Implementing  in a fashion that the Zephyr has, seems like the best approach. Any other ideas. Reassigning controller buttons is not suitable unless it is an assignment that happens only with Limbo equipped. This is a rough idea but I welcome polish or other concerns

While it isn't quite the same area as my topic (and I'd encourage making a seperate topic for it), there are two things that would make good Exilus "Un-Augments":
1. The removal of the Rift Portal. More often than not it's a nuisance, and if your allies want to enter the Rift they can usually just ask for a banish. As a bonus it could give 15% Ability Range or something, kind of like how Zephyr and Titania's "un-augments" give Strength equivalent to Power Drift.

2. Removal of the slide-to-enter-Rift as a mod. Maybe with the caveat that you can now banish yourself if looking at the floor for no energy cost, to replicate the functionality.

[Flannoit]

2 hours ago, IdrisQe said:

I'm a fan of static as a visual effect when it's not overkill, which is what I was trying to go for here, but I can understand it not being a popular opinion, which is why I wanted to provide some alternatives and to spark discussion around better vfx!

The main reasons I went with static is that it's a subtle animation, but one that's still noticable enough for your eyes to be drawn to the affected enemies/allies and know instantly "that's the Rift effect", compared to a lot of other animated status effects in the game which are just some variation of "fancy energy-colour glow around enemies which is hardly distinguishable from every other energy-coloured glow status effect from a warframe power", while having nothing animated about it could still cause enemies to possibly get lost in the crowd.

The only addition I have to this is, despite Revenant's thralls having an admittedly pretty big sign for what is an isn't a thrall (large marionette strings overhead enemies), it's VERY easy to lose his thrills in a crowd. Then again, his thralls are otherwise indistinguishable from regular enemies.

[IdrisQe]

12 hours ago, Flannoit said:

The only addition I have to this is, despite Revenant's thralls having an admittedly pretty big sign for what is an isn't a thrall (large marionette strings overhead enemies), it's VERY easy to lose his thrills in a crowd. Then again, his thralls are otherwise indistinguishable from regular enemies.

Exactly why I'm worried that if the effect doesn't stand out enough it'll get lost in a horde in this horde-shooter.

Honestly a fair number of frame abilities could use a VFX treatment to make their effects more visible and distinct from other abilities. They could do all sorts of effects on enemies to show they're affected by a particular ability in a unique way, Ephemeras and Peculiar mods in particular have shown that.