Procedurally Generated.

[11.11.11]

So....

 

Them procedurally generated levels.

 

Anyone remember when this was touted as a feature to extend the lifetime of a tileset by allowing a multitude of different variations within a certain theme? 

 

Is anyone else more than a little concerned that with a few exceptions - missions remain a single path steam roll from spawn to objective to extraction? I mean sure, there's treasure rooms in the void, and some of the new tile sets are really quite innovative in what they manage to pack into a single tile. But our latest event is an escort mission where we follow a reactor along the same path through the same four rooms, while hacking terminals in the same locations while enemies spawn in the same places and only the location of the loot containers changes between runs. Thats the pinnacle of warframe map design for a special event map, expected to be played multiple times to gain the highest score for your clan or personal satsifaction.

 

Surely, the whole point of building a system to build levels - is variation. I'm not sure about most Tenno, but I can generally pick by now what tile is going to be behind the next door. Leave the spawn room - there'll probably be a corridor. Enter a corridor from a corridor - and there'll probably be an atrium or a centerpeice from that. Rinse and repeat until you reach the objective. From there its the same deal until the drop ship receptacle. Even in the void, you can usually tell if you're on the path to the treasure room as you're following a path of unlocked doors that dosn't lead to the objective indicator.

 

Of course I appreciate that DE are focused on other aspects of the game at the momment. Important stuff like pooping out remakes of weapons with gold trim, red tribal tattoos, or versions of warframes wearing tiaras. And yes, I know events take a long time to organize and the team is still usually working on them right up until the day in question, hence the patch that invariably always comes 6 hours in and fixes missing drops or makes a boss actually attack the player instead of glitching out in the middle of the arena. I get that DE has their plate full to overflowing.

 

But somewhere between closed beta and open, we seem to have all conveniently forgotten what procedurally generated originally was meant to become. In the beginning - there were only a few tiles. So the maps had to all be on a space station of some sort. Then we got the first tiles on grineer astroid bases and from there - the focus seems to have long been on adding new tiles - rather than sorting out how the system uses these tiles. 

 

 

 

I'd like to propose that: 

 

- Every mission - regardless of type should have multiple paths to the objective. -

We need about double the amount of unlocked doors. If a treasure room is going to be a dead end, make sure its lockers / crates contain more than just credits. There should be some reward for actually bothering to explore a bit.

 

- Maps should be about twice as dense.

Making lovely unique tiles that look very distinct from their neighbours is all very well and good. But spaceships and astroid bases are going to be made out lots of similar rooms. That's okay. Whats not okay is only having one entrance and exit from any room. At best there's one correct route and one or two dead ends in any mission. Personally I think it should be closer to 3-4 possible routes to the objective, 3-6 exits from any one room and as many dead ends as the compiler can handle.

 

- The location of enemy spawns should be logical but not predictable. They should surprise and attempt to flank the player.

This is the space ninja future. Enemies shouldn't just spawn in any room we're currently not in. We should hear alarm klaxons - see flashing lights over doors, be able to hack into the personnel files and lock doors to keep the goons off our trail. Enemies should tumble out of air vents, or spring out of cryopods. Maybe even beam down from the barracks, star trek style. None of this hearing enemies in the next room over, opening the door and finding a room packed with soldiers patrolling a canteen or locker room.

PIC

Look how proud they are of themselves. All hiding in one little toilet until you ran past.

 

 

- Don't put every single boss on a convenient stage or podium.

It would be so much more engaging if everytime you walked into a new room you had to stop and consider "could this be where the boss is?" - instead of opening a door onto a giant hanger with a large metal raised platform in the middle, bright lighting overhead and no random enemies in sight. I understand this is somewhat of a subjective point as DE likes to add their bosses with little cinematics and tie-ins to the plot(?) - but we could stand to see a few more stalker-type encounters. Its much more immersive when I'm huddled behind a desk praying to the lotus that its bulletproof, than when I walk into a room and instantly know to start charging my Lanka.

 

- No mission should ever have the objective in the same place. -

This is something that earlier builds of the game managed to pull off. You'd sometimes find the reactor only two rooms from the spawn, with another 16 to the evacuation. Or it'd be right before the drop ship bay. Somewhere along the line though it was decided that this wasn't ideal, and a profile was introduced, requiring a minimum amount of rooms between certain key tiles. I think this decision was needlessly stifling. For example, Corpus endless defence on the 'dam' map at Kiliken. The pod can spawn in one of three locations on a huge open map, with enemies spawning in at several different points, and trying to take 2-3 different paths to the pod.

Now look, at the grineer galleon endless defense we got 3 updates later.

 The pod is always in exactly the same place, in exactly the same tiny little room filled with doors our of which enemies endlessly pour. This follows onto the next point...

 

- Combine map types and mission objectives.

Again another feature we saw once or twice, and never again. Remember those missions where you'd start out searching for a reactor and half way through the Lotus would have a change of heart and tell you to kill everything in sight?

 Sure they got annoying sometimes when you were all hyped to go hack some consoles, not kill people - but at least they added a bit of variation. By now we should have maps that start off as simple datanode gathering, then halfway through switch to destroying a reactor - which opens up a path to a cryopod - which you have to defend until it opens and then escort the occupant to extraction. We saw some of this in the multi-stage missions - with one or two objectives - or mobile defense.

 

But key thing that's once again missing is procedural generation. There should be some runs you get to free the hostage before blowing the reactor. Where if you fail one objective - instead of insta-failing the whole mission, part of the ship blows up and you have to struggle through zero gravity to reach the dropship before you die of asphyxiation. Once again I shouldn't walk into a room and be able to say "Oh here are the twin consoles for mobile defence." Because I've run it a hundred times and those two consoles are always the ones, and the 'artifact' always comes out on a little rail truck. There's no reason one of the consoles couldn't be two rooms away from the spawn - or the artifact on the other side of the station.

 

 

In the end, I think the day is fast approaching when DE is going to have to make a desicion. Either add some true variation and flexibility to the map assembly subroutines. Or stop pretending to generate anything other than loot containers, and hand craft the maps themselves. The fact is, even multiplayer shooters with man-made maps tend to get stale and repetitive much more slowly than warframe's - because they were designed to have as many different routes and angles of attack or defense as possible.

 

By a person.

 

Who understands that three hallways in a row shouldn't come before every single boss room.

Edited March 9, 2014 by 11.11.11

[CubedOobleck]

Yeah it would be nice if the generation was less linear and was more like a 'grid' similarly to other dungeon crawlers, but I bet DE would have to resize most rooms so that they can fit with each other correctly and all that work will be useless if the game automatically pathfinds the shortest route. I wouldn't mind pathfinding on my own, especially if the big map is entirely unlocked from the start of the mission.

 

Lockers and containers should drop more loot in general, they are hardly worth opening, except maybe void containers since they can drop mods, but I agree that dead-end rooms should offer even more loot than usual.

 

I'd like to see some procedurally generated decorations within the same tiles so that 2 rooms are never completely identical, for example the grineer propaganda/writing they have on the walls could be moved around or the big cargo containers could have more than one possible location within a tile, etc.

Regarding the hijack event, don't bash on that, the events are really just a way to preview new content in a fun way although it is not complete enough to enter the game entirely, just like we got to see the earth tileset during the cicero event.

Edited March 9, 2014 by CubedOobleck

[Playford]

I agree that the levels get stale and predictable after a while, however:

 

 

- Every mission - regardless of type should have multiple paths to the objective. -

We need about double the amount of unlocked doors. If a treasure room is going to be a dead end, make sure its lockers / crates contain more than just credits. There should be some reward for actually bothering to explore a bit.

 

This is a programming and level design nightmare and while tehnically possible, it would require completley rewriting the level creation algorithm and scrapping all the current tilesets and creating new ones from scratch.

 

 

 

- Maps should be about twice as dense.

Making lovely unique tiles that look very distinct from their neighbours is all very well and good. But spaceships and astroid bases are going to be made out lots of similar rooms. That's okay. Whats not okay is only having one entrance and exit from any room. At best there's one correct route and one or two dead ends in any mission. Personally It should be closer to 3-4 possible routes to the objective, 3-6 exits from any one room and as many dead ends as the compiler can handle.

 

Similair to above, also there are memory limits, there is only so much stuff you can shove into a level before the engine starts leaking all over the place.

 

 

 

- The location of enemy spawns should be logical but not predictable. They should surprise and attempt to flank the player.

This is the space ninja future. Enemies shouldn't just spawn in any room we're currently not in. We should hear alarm klaxons - see flashing lights over doors, be able to hack into the personnel files and lock doors to keep the goons off our trail. Enemies should tumble out of air vents, or spring out of cryopods. Maybe even beam down from the barracks, star trek style. None of this hearing enemies in the next room over, opening the door and finding a room packed with soldiers patrolling a canteen or locker room.

 

Teaching the enemy AI the art of dynamic entry? I approve.

 

 

 

- Don't put every single boss on a convenient stage or podium.

It would be so much more engaging if everytime you walked into a new room you had to stop and consider "could this be where the boss is?" - instead of opening a door onto a giant hanger with a large metal raised platform in the middle, bright lighting overhead and no random enemies in sight. I understand this is somewhat of a subjective point as DE likes to add their bosses with little cinematics and tie-ins to the plot(?) - but we could stand to see a few more stalker-type encounters. Its much more immersive when I'm huddled behind a desk praying to the lotus that its bulletproof, than when I walk into a room and instantly know to start charging my Lanka.

 

It would work for some bosses but not for others, I can't see myself fighting the Jackal in a narrow corridor for example.

 

 

 

- No mission should ever have the objective in the same place. -

This is something that earlier builds of the game managed to pull off. You'd sometimes find the reactor only two rooms from the spawn, with another 16 to the evacuation. Or it'd be right before the drop ship bay. Somewhere along the line though it was decided that this wasn't ideal, and a profile was introduced, requiring a minimum amount of rooms between certain key tiles. I think this decision was needlessly stifling. For example, Corpus endless defence on the 'dam' map at Kiliken. The pod can spawn in one of three locations on a huge open map, with enemies spawning in at several different points, and trying to take 2-3 different paths to the pod.

Now look, at the grineer galleon endless defense we got 3 updates later.

 The pod is always in exactly the same place, in exactly the same tiny little room filled with doors our of which enemies endlessly pour. This follows onto the next point...

 

Updating the defense mission tilesets for more variation? I approve, but it is another thing that would work well with some missions, not with others

 

 

 

- Combine map types and mission objectives.

Again another feature we saw once or twice, and never again. Remember those missions where you'd start out searching for a reactor and half way through the Lotus would have a change of heart and tell you to kill everything in sight? Sure they got annoying sometimes when you were all hyped to go hack some consoles, not kill people - but at least they added a bit of variation. By now we should have maps that start of as simple datanode gathering, then halfway through switch to destroying a reactor - which opens up a path to a cryopod - which you have to defend until it opens and then escort the occupant to extraction. We saw some of this in the multi-stage missions - with one or two objectives - or mobile defence. But key thing thats once again missing is procedural generation. There should be some runs you get to free the hostage before blowing the reactor. Where if you fail one objective - instead of insta-failing the whole mission, part of the ship blows up and you have to struggle through zero gravity to reach the dropship before you die of asphyxiation. Once again I shouldn't walk into a room and be able to say "Oh here are the twin consoles for mobile defence." Because I've run it a hundred times and those two consoles are always the ones, and the 'artifact' always comes out on a little rail truck. There's no reason one of the consoles couldn't be two rooms away from the spawn - or the artifact on the other side of the station.

 

The problem with this is that some people just want to jump in, do a quick mission and jump out, they don't want to collect 8 datamasses while defending a braindead NPC follower, while also trying to destroy a reactor, all of that taking 30+ min.

But I understand both desires, sometimes I'm not in a mood for a long mission, sometimes I don't want a mission to end and I just want mess around.

 

Edited March 9, 2014 by Playford

[11.11.11]

 

I agree that the levels get stale and predictable after a while, however:

 

 

This is a programming and level design nightmare and while tehnically possible, it would require completley rewriting the level creation algorithm and scrapping all the current tilesets and creating new ones from scratch.

 

Not really. The rooms don't actually have to physically line up with one another. I'm not sure if you've noticed - but sometimes when the spawn count gets too high, opening a door will reveal a black void instead of the room beyond. This is because the engine appears to dynamically load the rooms connected to the one you're currently in as you progress throughout the level. It would simply be a matter of adding more unlocked doors, and having enough spare rooms to link to each doorway.

 

Even if thats not how the level generation system works, all that would have to be rewritten is the generation algorithm. The current tilesets are fine - not every door has to lead onto a connecting room. They can lead to connecting passageways or corridors that link to the next room along. At the most there'd have to be a pack of connecting tiles (hallways and such) made up to help with situations where there wasn't a hub room that would fit. 

 

 

 

Similair to above, also there are memory limits, there is only so much stuff you can shove into a level before the engine starts leaking all over the place.

 

 

There are. But I find it hard to beleive we're even beginning to scratch the surface with that. Aside from maybe texture memory, the game sits at a steady 1.2gb usage on my system - and being a 64x application it should be easily able to address up to 4x that amount. 

 

If nothing else it would be nice to have half as many fancy particle effects on loot containers - or tons of braindead NPCS - if it meant a level that wasn't more linear than a ruler.

 

 

 

It would work for some bosses but not for others, I can't see myself fighting the Jackal in a narrow corridor for example.

 

 

I can understand, but honestly I'm at the point where the sheer challenge of fighting Jackal in a tiny little corpus corridor with only a single exit, having to hide behind crates and try and time my fire to avoid being shredded to pieces by him, or take the risk of charging in and bashing him on the head - would be a refreshing change of pace. Even if he did instakill me the first 3 times. The game is so lacking in difficulty, maybe even a bit of the artifical variety would help a bit. Though I understand not every boss would work well roaming the corridors so to speak.

 

 

 

The problem with this is that some people just want to jump in, do a quick mission and jump out, they don't want to collect 8 datamasses while defending a braindead NPC follower, while also trying to destroy a reactor, all of that taking 30+ min.

But I understand both desires, sometimes I'm not in a mood for a long mission, sometimes I don't want a mission to end and I just want mess around.

 

 

In that case - have different missions for different experiences. Just as we do with nightmare mode. Want a quick little skirmish to grab loot? Run Mars. Want a long drawn out epic campaign? Go to the outer terminus. As it stands the only real difference between missions are the faction, tileset and enemy hp level. There are no faction specific mission types - the outer systems don't have longer campaigns - or ones with different objectives. One really wonders why both corpus and grineer have the hots for stealing Tenno cryopods. Other than repetitive game design that is. 

Edited March 9, 2014 by 11.11.11

[VentiGlondi]

DE already talked about multiple paths on a livestream. I don't remember what they said other than "It would be really hard to do on this engine.".

...or something like that

[Playford]

 

Not really. The rooms don't actually have to physically line up with one another. I'm not sure if you've noticed - but sometimes when the spawn count gets too high, opening a door will reveal a black void instead of the room beyond. This is because the engine appears to dynamically load the rooms connected to the one you're currently in as you progress throughout the level. It would simply be a matter of adding more unlocked doors, and having enough spare rooms to link to each doorway.

 

My understanding of the level generation is this: during the loading screen the level is generated, once you are in, there is no additional generation, the rooms that are black voids are loaded and in memory, and physically exist, but the graphics effects (textures, lighting) aren't, this is in an attempt at optimisation.

 

 

Even if thats not how the level generation system works, all that would have to be rewritten is the generation algorithm. The current tilesets are fine - not every door has to lead onto a connecting room. They can lead to connecting passageways or corridors that link to the next room along. At the most there'd have to be a pack of connecting tiles (hallways and such) made up to help with situations where there wasn't a hub room that would fit.

 

The thing is, the current tiles are not designed to work that way. Just using the current tiles with a new algorithm could cause tiles overlapping, misaligned doors and loads of other problems.

Those connecting corridors you mentioned? Creating a corridor to connect every combination of two tiles would be a lot of work, for multiple paths, you would need to connect several tiles to eachother with those corridors, that would ba (a lot of work)^2

 

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see that kind of level generation, but half-assing it is not the way to go.

 

 

There are. But I find it hard to beleive we're even beginning to scratch the surface with that. Aside from maybe texture memory, the game sits at a steady 1.2gb usage on my system - and being a 64x application it should be easily able to address up to 4x that amount.

 

If nothing else it would be nice to have half as many fancy particle effects on loot containers - or tons of braindead NPCS - if it meant a level that wasn't more linear than a ruler.

 

There are people running the 32bit version of this game on 2 gb of DDR2. Instead of a proper graphics card they have a potato (not the orokin kind) shoved into their PCIe slot. Sad but true.

 

 

I can understand, but honestly I'm at the point where the sheer challenge of fighting Jackal in a tiny little corpus corridor with only a single exit, having to hide behind crates and try and time my fire to avoid being shredded to pieces by him, or take the risk of charging in and bashing him on the head - would be a refreshing change of pace. Even if he did instakill me the first 3 times. The game is so lacking in difficulty, maybe even a bit of the artifical variety would help a bit. Though I understand not every boss would work well roaming the corridors so to speak.

 

Artificial difficulty might be fine for experienced veterans.

On first time players it leaves the impression of a bad game and P2W.

I forgot to say it in my previous post, but I agree that boss rooms and encounters need variety, but again, it needs to be done properly.

 

What you need is endgame content, and that doesn't exist... yet.

 

In that case - have different missions for different experiences. Just as we do with nightmare mode. Want a quick little skirmish to grab loot? Run Mars. Want a long drawn out epic campaign? Go to the outer terminus. As it stands the only real difference between missions are the faction, tileset and enemy hp level. There are no faction specific mission types - the outer systems don't have longer campaigns - or ones with different objectives. One really wonders why both corpus and grineer have the hots for stealing Tenno cryopods. Other than repetitive game design that is.

 

I agree completley.

[FlyDungas]

On one of the streams they said that because of the way the generate the maps it is impossible to make multiple objective paths. This is the real killer in my opinion as it guarantees every mission to be basically the same. When you are just following an objective marker to get your reward, it doesn't even matter what room you go into next or whether there is enough variation between them because they are just backdrops for shooting enemies. Even rooms that are more interesting don't REALLY change anything because unless you're playing exterminate the most logical thing to do is safely make your way to the next one to get your reward faster.

 

I see the game as having two basic types of missions. A linear type where you essentially just follow the objective maker from room to room, and a slightly more dynamic type that remedies this by restricting you to specific locations. Randomization and which rooms you get actually makes a difference in the second type. Like in survival the room you get capsules in actually affects your strategy, especially with the fancier ones like trap rooms in the void. Do you wanna leave them on and use them against your foes for free life support, or take em down and play it safe? Oh crap lots of life support is falling on that ice bridge what do I do? That kind of thing.

 

The first type is kind of hopeless though. I honestly think it would be best to ditch procedurally generated maps on these game types and rework them into static versions with multiple paths to the objective built in, maybe multiple and optional objectives, hidden treasures, ventilation systems for stealth travel, maybe open up maps like Earth and Phobos to add an element of verticality and remove those invisible walls/ceilings and incentivize parkour, etc.. It would open up a lot of map design options as well, rather than having to mold everything to fit in with the "room" progression. Everything they already have made could be used to make these maps initially but I think the important thing is to get rid of the restrictions that the map generation system imposes on missions and I can't think of any other way to do it

 

This game just doesn't seem built to support that kind of map generation. In a Diablo type game it works because it keeps you from knowing where to go every time you replay a zone. Here its just visual flavor because you replay the areas WAY more often and you have the objective marker telling you where to go anyway. 

Edited March 9, 2014 by FlyDungas

[11.11.11]

Geeze these posts are getting a bit long arn't they <_< 

 

Might be time to start consoldiating our ideas a bit. Anyway, here's my 2 cents: 

 

 

The thing is, the current tiles are not designed to work that way. Just using the current tiles with a new algorithm could cause tiles overlapping, misaligned doors and loads of other problems.

Those connecting corridors you mentioned? Creating a corridor to connect every combination of two tiles would be a lot of work, for multiple paths, you would need to connect several tiles to eachother with those corridors, that would ba (a lot of work)^2

 

Don't get me wrong, I would love to see that kind of level generation, but half-assing it is not the way to go.

 

 

Granted, it would probably take a bit more effort than simply having the idea and pushing a button to make it happen, but I really don't see that connecting corridors have to be so complex or resource demanding. We already have several variations of the things for every tileset. Some of the simplest are just 4 exit hubs, where usually only two doors are active. At the least, those other two doors could simply be unlocked as well, even if they just lead to janitors closets. At best - they would add in a wide range of t-shape connectors, cross connectors, multi level connectors etc etc to allow the level generation to truly breathe a bit. Yes this would take time and effort, but honestly - I don't see much effort and time being put in at the momment by anyone other than the art and animating team. A lot may be happening behind the scenes, but I put forwards that either more of that needs to come to light - or DE needs to expand significantly, so that enough can be done in secrecy to trickle a size-able amount through to us on a regular basis. Maybe its about time they had a dedicated level design team. 

 

 

There are people running the 32bit version of this game on 2 gb of DDR2. Instead of a proper graphics card they have a potato (not the orokin kind) shoved into their PCIe slot. Sad but true.

 

 

Those people are already getting shafted so to speak - with each new tile-set that comes out horrifically optimized. Again this is a somewhat tangential issue. But DE certainly isn't worrying about maintaining a minimum hard-wear requirement. They can't even manage to release maps with uniform texture compression, or rendering modes that actually function (like DX11, which mysteriously vanished two patches ago.).

 

I happen to run the 32bit version of the game myself most of the time. Because at least it dosn't suck up 3gb of RAM then suffer a UI glitch that crashes the game. Unlike the 32 bit version.

 

Artificial difficulty might be fine for experienced veterans.

On first time players it leaves the impression of a bad game and P2W.

I forgot to say it in my previous post, but I agree that boss rooms and encounters need variety, but again, it needs to be done properly.

 

What you need is endgame content, and that doesn't exist... yet.

 

I understand the need to provide a somewhat level playing feild for all players, new and old alike - but as I previously suggested - split missions into seperate subgroups / regions. Have an area of long complex missions with high pay offs for the more veteran player, and shorter, easier to understand ones for beginners. That for a long time has been the role Mars graduated towards. The void was meant to be an attempt at some sort of end-game, but once again they failed to understand the dysfunction of their RNG system, and it became a trite farming grounds like everywhere else. Nearly all the LFG requests in region and clan chats, are for the void, and though they may not be the only people playing the game, there's a large denomination of players towards the upper end of the mastery curve. Its getting a bit beside the point of this thread (level generation) - but Warframe has largely become a long drawn out cycle of repetitive mission types on maps with barley any variation - for the sole purpose of grinding mods, mastery, or points for an event. So that when the next update comes out, you can repeat the same all over again. 

 

What I may be asking for is endgame content, and that dosn't exist....still. 

 

 

On one of the streams they said that because of the way the generate the maps it is impossible to make multiple objective paths. 

 

Then I question why they ever built a level generation system in the first place. If they started with the intention of having fully realised random level structure - then realised half way through that the engine (somehow) couldn't be made to fit that role - why didn't they come to us the community and say: "Look guys. Early on this was a feature we could support, but it dosn't look like its going to end up that way." Instead of basically never discussing it and instead saying "Oh look what we made Tenno! Sexy new tilesets with trees and everything! Arn't they great!" 

 

Several times its been mentioned that they breifly discussed level generation during one specific livestream, I think it was somewhere around the 19 mark or so. The thing is, that's one mention in living memory. Of a core feature of the game's map design. There should have been, and still should be - a lot more back and forth between the community and DE over this, whether engines can support XY or Z. 

 

 

 

This game just doesn't seem built to support that kind of map generation. In a Diablo type game it works because it keeps you from knowing where to go every time you replay a zone. Here its just visual flavor because you replay the areas WAY more often and you have the objective marker telling you where to go anyway. 

 

This may be the case now. But one wonders why - when it was their express intent from the beginning to create a game that did support truly variable map generation. Thats not a case of a game not being designed to include a feature. Thats a case of a game failing to reach its design specifications for whatever reason. 

 

 

In summary. Level design is long past needing direct addressal by DE. Even if they simply have the integrity to admit their origional plans are no longer the goal, and they've shifted in another direction. It would be ideal if they would up their ante and hire some more level compilers, or shift their focus away from trying to provide endless distractions - but that might be hoping for a bit to much at this point in time. It may only be my personal opinion, but I'm ever increasingly disappointed with what they manage to release at the end of each month. It may simply be that warframe is no longer the game for me - but I find it baffling when a lot of the issues that plauge the game - have been directly addressed and brainstormed by players on the forum, yet DE does nothing with that feedback.We've all written multi-paragraph mini-essays in this thread, and I doubt we'll see anything come of it for at least another 4-5 month's, if at all.

Edited March 10, 2014 by 11.11.11

[Aure7]

No you're not the only one https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/161873-procedural-level-generation-needs-to-evolve-itll-allow-missions-with-much-more-depth/

 

but there are too few of us.

[11.11.11]

No you're not the only one https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/161873-procedural-level-generation-needs-to-evolve-itll-allow-missions-with-much-more-depth/

 

but there are too few of us.

 

I really do have to wonder, just who DE is listening to these days for their feedback. Judging by the continuous spam of new weapons and tilesets with the same repetitive structure as all the old ones - I'd have to say its nobody I know. 

[FlyDungas]

     I think its a risk vs. reward thing. They could focus on improving the generation and end up wasting resources getting nowhere, they could hand craft static maps  and find that people don't really like them etc.. I'd suspect that there are enough people playing and supporting the game that repetitive maps aren't an important enough issue. Most feedback regarding really big issues seems to be overlooked because it would take way more work to implement/rework from the ground up and usually involves too many text walls to hold people's attention (like this thread lol no offense I contributed to it and still am).

     Really the players seem to be more concerned with grinding out their next drop and complaining about things that slow them down. The repetitive maps haven't stopped them from doing it all the way up to rank 14 and I'm afraid this is a sign to DE that this isn't a real problem. Which I guess it isn't if you play this for the loot chase, which I unfortunately don't.

[Aure7]

     I think its a risk vs. reward thing. They could focus on improving the generation and end up wasting resources getting nowhere, they could hand craft static maps  and find that people don't really like them etc.. I'd suspect that there are enough people playing and supporting the game that repetitive maps aren't an important enough issue. Most feedback regarding really big issues seems to be overlooked because it would take way more work to implement/rework from the ground up and usually involves too many text walls to hold people's attention (like this thread lol no offense I contributed to it and still am).

     Really the players seem to be more concerned with grinding out their next drop and complaining about things that slow them down. The repetitive maps haven't stopped them from doing it all the way up to rank 14 and I'm afraid this is a sign to DE that this isn't a real problem. Which I guess it isn't if you play this for the loot chase, which I unfortunately don't.

interesting maps could contain interesting ways to gain rewards, thus lowering the feel of "grind"

[NovusNiveus]

 

Oh, I do miss them big old U8 zergs.

I feel like the maps used to be bigger than they are now, in that the game would generate a lot more than just the objective path, although I could be wrong. I miss just &#036;&amp;*^ing around in the level looking for crates and lockers for half an hour before getting to the actual mission.

[11.11.11]

 Really the players seem to be more concerned with grinding out their next drop and complaining about things that slow them down. The repetitive maps haven't stopped them from doing it all the way up to rank 14 and I'm afraid this is a sign to DE that this isn't a real problem. Which I guess it isn't if you play this for the loot chase, which I unfortunately don't.

 

Sadly I have to agree. DE seems more than happy to bask in the praise of their swarms of new players (are there really that many still these days?) - rather than listening to the criticism of those who've been around since closed beta. Thats not to say that our views are somehow inherently correct - simply that those who haven't played for more than a hundred hours, are unlikely to see a lot of the serious underlying problems. Its only when you run out of gear to level and resources to grind - and end up running the same missions that you've done a hundred times over, against the same enemies that still just scale upwards until they mash you into the floor - that you look at your 14 mastery rank and wonder why you bothered.

[FlyDungas]

This sure would be a better start than deadly light bulbs lol