My Feedback on Alad's Secret Jupiter Labs

[CrownOfShadows]

Mostly, I think they're fantastic. Here's why:

1. An alternative objective that is not spy, which is excellent.
2. Completely optional - the fact these are not required for anything at all is mostly great (except NW I guess)
3. Encourages deep exploration of a beautiful tile set, and gives some sense of the work that must have gone into crafting it, neither of which can be appreciated much while running normal missions
4. Can even be done in missions, mostly survival (not really practical in other endless, unless low level), but this can be a great way to break up the monotony since there's no objective to protect
5. The sheer variety of secret labs is impressive, I don't know how many variations there are in total, but there are a lot, which is pleasantly surprising for a such a relatively minor feature
6. Makes the most of WF's tiled levels - WF's system of random tiles stitched together has it's pros and cons, but this feature capitalizes on it and makes every part punch above it's weight. It elevates it to more than just a battlefield, but gives it some soul, plus it ties into lore, which is always a bonus. Also, the special Alad VO you encounter here is a wonderful nuanced addition that I appreciate - it helps make it feel special.
7. Creates a bit of layered experience. Since you can't open these doors without an operator (I haven't tried Xaku's void dmg) new players just running through the star chart won't experience them, but on return will reap additional benefits. This is great design imo - because your relationship with the environment evolves as you do a little bit.
8. The time limits seem perfect - I haven't had a single one that felt impossible or one that felt too easy - superior tuning here, they remain pleasantly challenging.
9. Duplicates - the fact that more than one of these can get populated into a mission is also awesome. It's hard to explain why exactly this is nice - perhaps it's simply having more than one opportunity. After doing one, finding another in the same mission feels like such a bonus, and because they're completely optional, it's no burden - I can just skip it if the first one took all my exploration energy.
10. The map indicators for the code switches that pop up once you've hit the main switch really help a lot and I'm really glad they were included - it takes just an edge of potential misery away and might well be the hair thin line that takes this from potentially annoying to fun.

There are a few things I think I would classify as negatives though:

1. Steep learning curve: the learning curve for these is super steep - if youtube walkthroughs didn't exist, hardly anybody would know how to run them, because it's very hard to explain what people need to do or look for. I think it would be good to provide some kind of in-game help for such an advanced feature, but there's a counterargument to this too, which is that it would lose it's secretive elite nature. This kind of secrecy is difficult in this age of walkthroughs and information availability though. Further, I would actually agree that the difficulty curve on it gives you a sense of accomplishment when you finally master it, which is nice. So while I'm classifying this as a negative, it's also positive. Whether or not youtube should be how people learn about these or not is my main point I suppose, but that goes for a lot of systems in WF. Also, I'm extremely curious how many people were even aware these existed before they were included in NW - because that's how I learned about them. If it was featured in a devstream I missed it. I would love to see stats from DE on how often these are run, both currently and before they were in NW. I'm guessing they were added to NW specifically because nobody was running them.
2. Rewards. Unfortunately, these are not long lasting rewards. Once you've run a half dozen of them you pretty much lose all reason to run them anymore, which is a shame, because they're unique and fun. Infusing some more evergreen rewards or more enticing rare rewards into the system would be beneficial imo, especially given how specialized they are and the amount of time that must be sunk into learning how they work, finding the switches and then actually running it.
3. Secondary depth. One very minor complaint I have about these is that I actually want the secret areas to be bigger - instead of one small room a larger multi-room or multi-chambered complex. It feels more like a maintenance closet than a lab - but, since these are actually embedded in the architecture, there may be real space constraints to them to some degree.
4. Enemy difficulty. This is also a minor complaint, and difficult to balance, but I would love the enemies in these labs to be really strong. I'd be curious what other players - especially those who have only recently completed the starchart - experience here, maybe I'm just too overpowered at this point, but I kinda crave a miniboss in these areas after all the work spent unlocking them - the sentients are ok, and the special crewmen here are a little chunky it's true, but I rather want something in the medium range between them and like the Ropololyst - a miniboss.

Let me briefly compare these to similar things in other tilesets.

We have the secrets on Deimos Iso Vaults. I think these are also good features, and share a lot of the same pros and cons. One thing I think is slightly superior about the Jupiter Labs is that they all work off the same basic system. It still involves a hunt, but once you've learned it, you know what you're looking for and it's easy to remember. In Iso Vaults, the secrets all kind of work a bit differently, which makes them a bit harder to learn and harder to remember. I've gone through the trouble of learning several of those only to forget them later through disuse, whereas I have also forgotten some of the switch locations for the labs, but I don't need to youtube it to rerun it - I just need to hunt. Like the labs, I think the iso vault secrets are in general fantastic additions but lack reasons to engage with. A special note on rewards here: simply adding a guaranteed scintillant to these secrets would be enough of a reason to invest in them while playing.

Another thing to compare them to is of course the Orokin Vaults in the Deimos missions. While the rewards in the Orokin Vaults are definitely better, the system itself feels much less sophisticated and less fun than the lab system. Even though it involves a hunt through the map - which the labs also do if you're there specifically for them - the whole thing is basically over as soon as you find the Orokin Vault door, whereas once you find the lab door that's just the starting point. The fact that the Orokin Vaults also require special gear items is a bit of negative too because it means if you run across one you can't just run it - you have to plan in advance and if you're going to that trouble then you're hunting the map for them, which isn't as fun as simply running across them, imo.

The secret labs feel like the current pinnacle of this type of thing from a mechanical gameplay point of view, and I certainly enjoy them the most. I classify these different from the many, many secret rooms in all of the tile sets, as they are step above in both design and investment, and I think both are great. The Lua Puzzles also come to mind, but I think these are inferior to Iso Vault secrets and Jupiter's Labs - although that's a bit of another discussion.

In conclusion, I think these are awesome uses of map space and provide depth, character and nuance to our environments. I wish that ALL tilesets had such well crafted features, and I'm here to advocate for them moving forward but also to advocate for expansion of them both in scope and in more reasons to run them when discovering them.

[TheSixOfDiamonds]

Your first negative point is why I ever bothered with them, sort of.

After a point, it's difficult to make a material reward that is enough to make me want to run them. I keep finding the door that needs to open, but it's literally "hey, here's a door with some symbols on it, good luck!"
There's zero direction. You can infer "look for these symbols"... but where? This is WF, and between Kuria, Thousand-Year Fish, and the little personal logs on Orb Vallis, I'm not going through that level of hunt, and that's how I expect it to be... because I've found 0 clues as to how to open the doors, even after consulting the wiki it's an enigma. It feels like a terrible puzzle, because most good puzzles (see: Quern or The Room series for examples) make you feel clever by giving you just enough to figure out what to do without it feeling like you're brute-forcing it or requiring outside assistance.
Also, as a note, I don't care if they made them "too easy" or "oh, just watch this video"-grade. You shouldn't need any outside help, period. Good puzzles are intuitive, not obscure.

The Jupiter tileset feels full of stuff that you can interact with, but every time I do, my reaction is "...and what did that do, exactly?"... because I see no change in the environment.

[Pakaku]

The labs themselves are fine in "quantity", they're only meant to be small side-diversions. Biggest problem I have with them is just getting inside in the first place. Symbols are obvious and fairly easy to find, and the second door is not obvious but easy to open once you figure out the trick.... but I still don't know where half of the power-grids are, so I can't even get started on the symbols half the time.

[CrownOfShadows]

7 hours ago, TheSixOfDiamonds said:

Your first negative point is why I ever bothered with them, sort of.

After a point, it's difficult to make a material reward that is enough to make me want to run them. I keep finding the door that needs to open, but it's literally "hey, here's a door with some symbols on it, good luck!"
There's zero direction. You can infer "look for these symbols"... but where? This is WF, and between Kuria, Thousand-Year Fish, and the little personal logs on Orb Vallis, I'm not going through that level of hunt, and that's how I expect it to be... because I've found 0 clues as to how to open the doors, even after consulting the wiki it's an enigma. It feels like a terrible puzzle, because most good puzzles (see: Quern or The Room series for examples) make you feel clever by giving you just enough to figure out what to do without it feeling like you're brute-forcing it or requiring outside assistance.
Also, as a note, I don't care if they made them "too easy" or "oh, just watch this video"-grade. You shouldn't need any outside help, period. Good puzzles are intuitive, not obscure.

The Jupiter tileset feels full of stuff that you can interact with, but every time I do, my reaction is "...and what did that do, exactly?"... because I see no change in the environment.

Haha yeah when I first was trying to figure them out I went to the wiki - actually didn't help me in the slightest, even with pictures. I had to actually watch someone do it to learn what was going on. Unfortunately, the same is true when trying to teach someone what to do - like you can't just describe it, you have to physically show them, like they have to literally follow you in the game.

I really think it would be good if there was some kind of help, like maybe if you could scan the locked door and get some kind of info about the main switchbox, or if you could scan the shielded consoles with the symbols for the same. Once people find their first main switchbox it more or less all seems to fall in place. Even scanning for a info is a bit obscure but at least it would be something that people might stumble upon. Better yet would be to use main switchboxes and like 1 symbol console for an orange door with just 1 symbol on it somewhere in the progression through Jupiter, in an inconsequential way, so people are taught how the system works and when they find it in the wild they have like an aha moment.

[CrownOfShadows]

7 hours ago, Pakaku said:

The labs themselves are fine in "quantity", they're only meant to be small side-diversions. Biggest problem I have with them is just getting inside in the first place. Symbols are obvious and fairly easy to find, and the second door is not obvious but easy to open once you figure out the trick.... but I still don't know where half of the power-grids are, so I can't even get started on the symbols half the time.

Yeah, and to be fair I can run a few of them super quick now - I know exactly where the switch is, just need to check the door for the correct order and boom, less than 30 seconds later it's all over, so there's a counterargument to making the rewards or enemies too good I suppose.

[CrownOfShadows]

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it - I wouldn't mind at all a tier structure to these maybe, with like a red door that's a 6 symbol unlock or something crazy, and leads you into a little labyrinth of evil science on the SP+ level. Maybe a purple door below that, and yellow door, that sort of thing.

That way if you're cruising through a map and happen upon an eight symbol black door you're like ohhhhhhh snap