Laser Barrier

[inkBot]

I don't want to come across like a n elitist $&*^ here,

We'll see.

... maybe I have been gaming for too long,

Right there.

Your gaming career does not make your argument any more or less valid.

but is it really necessary to have every little aspect explained, or is it alright to ask the player to think?

If you read my post again you'll see that I don't argue that everything should be explained fully. But there's a difference between something being cryptic to the point where it's a problem, and something that is cleverly hidden. As it stands, the laser barriers are of the first variety.

You also ignored the second part of my argument. If the barriers are supposed to be as frequent as they currently are, then they are definitively in need of redesign.

A players patience for a task is related to the complexity of the task, and the frequency of the task. If the barriers are to be left as-is, then I'd argue that they should pop up around 2-3 times per map. 4 at the very most. Currently you run into them at pretty much every turn.

Edited January 20, 2013 by inkBot

[Ced23Ric]

I wouldn't call it a career. I just game alot, and the connection of cameras to automated security devices happens in more than one game, movie, comic and book. As a side effect, I ran into a few laser barriers myself, but then I stopped rushing like I did before, made the connection from previous experience and now laser barriers neither slow me down, nor are they an issue.

Whenever I walk into a room, I scan for camera spawn points, take the cameras out and march on. I hardly see active barriers these days because of that change in behaviour - so, for me, they are simply no issue. And this is were I am saying, that this perception may be inherently flawed, as I have a lot of previous exposure to such connected environmental props, which makes it a very mundane task for me to take out cameras, on the level of an understood reflex. I am not validating my argument - if anything, I am offering my understanding that my point of view is flawed due to personal predisposition.

______________

But, nevertheless, coming from that point of view, I don't see the need for a redesign, if anything, I am asking for even more intricate/complex traps or static defense systems that require more investment than shooting an object that is screaming to be shot. The Corpus have a shortage of men, lorewise. Automated systems, aside from the MOAs and Ospreys seem just natural for them. I am looking for folloing powerliney to take out forcefields, activating terminals to call up bridge elements, defeating minibosses to get keys to control rooms, where a hall stuffed with rocket launchers can be deactivated.

That'd be wicked.

Edited January 20, 2013 by Ced23Ric

[inkBot]

I will agree that once you know what to do, it impedes you very little. So I think the issue is more about introducing the element to new players in a more efficient way.

[johncage]

the thing about them, is that sometimes your teammates in another room trigger the camera and you're stuck catching the grid.

[V1RTU5]

big issue i have on pluto mostly is corpose/infected missions where infected set off the camras and u cant do anything about it. this needs fixed asap

[10twenty4]

Not only excalibur, but Loki can use its invisibility to walk past the lasers.

[kaelan]

I don't want to come across like a n elitist $&*^ here, but the connection of atomated defenses (laser barriers, turrets) to cameras is a natural one, is it not? I mean ... maybe I have been gaming for too long, but is it really necessary to have every little aspect explained, or is it alright to ask the player to think? Because I did not encounter the barriers as an issue after I bumped into them once or twice. The natural solution was taking out the blinking, shining, beeping cameras that switched colours whenever the barriers came on and the turrets started shooting.

Another post has mentioned some of the problems with this line of thought, but anyway:

The first problem is that you don't understand how the average player is going to approach this. They're most likely going to be running around a mission with some random other players they picked up by selecting a planet in Online mode and getting automatically matchmade with others. In practice this means that at any given point in time, while 2-3 of you are working your way through a room, some other guy is off exploring the deepest uncharted nethers of the enemy base, setting off every camera within a square kilometer. This happens literally every time I PUG a Corpus mission. When the laser barriers are turning on and off effectively at random because of something entirely outside of your vision (likely not even on the map), with no other feedback, the player is going to assume that they *are* random (in my case, I honestly had concluded they were on some sort of a cycling timer and that I just had to wait for the lasers to go down!)

Even if everyone is in the same room as the camera, you have a couple other problems: There are probably enemies in the room. If there are enemies in the room, the player is not going to be looking at the ceiling. Well, if a turret fires at them they might look at the turret. Then they'll shoot it, and then they'll go back to looking at the enemies.

Even if some intelligent player spends his entire time scanning the ceilings for cameras (which, honestly, I do at this point in Corpus missions), they won't find anything that looks like a camera, because some genius decided that the cameras should be absolutely buried in an enormous, blindingly bright green/red glow that looks more like a giant halogen lamp than a security camera. Unless you manage to aim at the right part of that huge glowy blob and shoot it, you could easily be convinced that it is a decorative light and not an interactive object. *Every* new player I play with has trouble with this, even once you explain to them how the laser barriers work, it takes them quite a while to get the hang of finding the cameras.

Also, the little sound cues for the cameras are pretty subtle. I honestly didn't notice them for the first 2 or so days of play because they were drowned out by all the other gameplay noises. If you're dealing with a group of serious players (on mumble or ventrilo or something) I doubt they would ever hear the camera noises unless they knew to look for them.

It is also a problem that hacking terminals is the universal way to deal with security systems in Warframe, except on Corpus vessels where *you still have to hack terminals* but inexplicably the cameras and doors are rigged into some separate system. I think if you look at the laser door/camera thing in isolation you could claim that it's logical, but it's not logical within the wider context of the game.

The game mechanics also make the laser barriers a bigger problem than they would be: Lag means that you can run through a door and not see the lasers until you're already through it; lag can also mean that the lasers will go down (because a camera shut off) and then go back up before you get through. In both cases you can then end up stuck *inside* the door or on the other side or all sorts of other things can happen. This sort of buggy weirdness does not help people form an understanding of how the barriers work.

[V1RTU5]

this is my simple list of habits to keep in mind

1)they are always in the same spots so get use to the maps and they are easy to find (i know this comes with exp)

2)if you shoot camras lasers go away

3)if u shoot a badguy in frount of a camra it goes off. (this is anoying when the camra is right on the other side of a door)

4)infected set off camras too so make sure u clear rooms and shoot all camras from previous rooms

5)camras show up on enemy radar.

6)if your gona explore do ur team a favor and shoot them.

fallow those and life will be that much more simple

[Crominix772]

this is my simple list of habits to keep in mind

1)they are always in the same spots so get use to the maps and they are easy to find (i know this comes with exp)

2)if you shoot camras lasers go away

3)if u shoot a badguy in frount of a camra it goes off. (this is anoying when the camra is right on the other side of a door)

4)infected set off camras too so make sure u clear rooms and shoot all camras from previous rooms

5)camras show up on enemy radar.

6)if your gona explore do ur team a favor and shoot them.

fallow those and life will be that much more simple

This helped tremendously.

[Telzen]

It's quite enough that I get knocked down and have to ponder on my mistake for 5 seconds, is it really necessary for me to lose half my shields or even health whenever I run into one of these?

Half? They seem to one shot me. Its especially nice when the lasers pop right as I am entering the door.