A world is more than a scenery: some concerns regarding Plains of Eidolon

[tnccs215]

I remember that, either in the first Devstream of 2017, or the last of 2016, Scott mentioned that expanding Warframe more into an openworld settings was something being considered. Months passed, and the community mostly forgot about this, but last week Plains of Eidolon was announced, and many people - myself included - where left surprised... And extremely excited.

Warframe has an incredible potential for lore and world building, and it's current "deploy/run mission/extract" system, while useful in gameplay terms, hinders its engrossing capabilities. One of the issues I had when I started Warframe (and an issue that never really left me) was how impossible it seemed to truly feel immersed in the universe. Plains of Eidolon, in all its 9 km² beauty, might be exactly what might fix, at least partially, this issue: there are little things better to make you feel immersed on a world than to simply hand you that world. 

BUT! There are issues. Or, in better terms, I have certain fears regarding what might come out of the oven. 

It is already more than obvious that DE has amazingly talented people designing their environments. The foggy, wild Earth, the oppressive Kuva Fortress, Europa's tundra and specially Lua (which is possibly the only thing I ever saw in a game using clipping as a work of art)  are genuinely some of the most beautiful sceneries I've seen. However, they are exactly that: sceneries. They are things you look to and fight in, but your and other's interactions with them are close to none. With the exception of enemies changing according to the tilesets, they mostly feel all the same (barring perhaps Lua, with its verticality - but even that is an exception). 

And a world is much more than that. A world is something you interact with, and something that interacts with you. It is more than a pretty scenery: it must be something that you feel you are living in, something that affects you as if it is its own entity populated by other entities with their own interests. It must be alive. 

Tere is a reason why  (I know this is an overused example, however, since it's map size has been repeatedly used in comparison to PoE, I might as well use it) Skyrim is considered an incredible example of openworld design, while Far Cry 4 (at least personally) is dissapoining at best. Skyrim is filled to the brim with much more than repetitions of the same cave (even though that also exists): it has an engrossing lore discovered through exploration, a multitude of people and creatures to meet, discover and interact with (be it through conversation, quests, or killing), several self-interested entities, and simply a lot of actually different things to do. Yes, it has beautiful scenarios, yes it has varied landscapes, but you actually feel you are interacting with them, and that they are indeed affecting you. The world is so uniquely and hand crafted that exploration, due to the new things it gives, is its own reward. Even if it is an illusion, you feel like you are dealing with a world bigger than you, a world that exists outside of your scope of existence. 

Contrast with said Far Cry 4, or Mad Max, (or really 90% of Ubisoft openworld games) whose interaction with the world is reduced to little more than scavenging the whole map for four different types of collectibles and endless rehashes of the same fetch/hunt/escort/outpost takeover quest... and you get little more than a pretty map where you know you are just dealing with automated digital systems and tricks, recycled ad infinitum in order to occupy as much of your time as possible so that you think it was worth the money you pay(ed) for it. 

Don't take me wrong: there is place for collectibles and fetch/hunt/escort/etc quests - but they cannot be the only thing there is to offer. There must be an enormous variety  of different things to do. There must be npcs with which we can  interact - more than human shaped trade posts, genuine people with histories, interests, beliefs, agendas and everything else that defines a person. The map must be itself unique - even if having a constant landscape, there are maps that are memorable, and maps that are not.

All in all, while I am hopeful that Plains of Eidolon offers as much as it has potential to, I am still worried that it might not - because making an engrossing and beautiful world is much more complex and time consuming than making a pretty one, and time is not something DE has ever had to spare. 

[vasvaska]

From what I've seen so far, it looks like one big tile. The "pick mission-run mission-return to ship" has been replaced with " pick task from the guy-do task-return to guy". DE has started that there is more to it, but that's what I've seen. 

There is also fishing. But that's just fishing imo. There are supposed to be collectables/scannables scattered around but those are passive things. 

What makes great open world games, like Witcher 3, great is their involvement in the world and the consequences or actions have. You can't have that in an online game like warframe as every scenario has to be somewhat unique. 

I don't think we'll see an NPC other than the grineer we are gonna kill. Maybe an undercover meridian operative that we come across from time to time? That be a nice touch. Like " dropship comes in, drops grineer, one of them instantly shoots the other in the backs then talks to us about stuff and we get a secondary objective.".

Who knows, maybe I'll be proven wrong. I do hope I'm proven wrong. 

[NinthAria]

I said this in another thread recently, but having an open world by itself isn't, in my opinion, very exciting. It's easy for a developer to present players with a big world and say "okay now go find your own fun somewhere in this box," but without some kind of direction it falls flat fast. The reason that good open world games (Breath of the Wild, Skyrim, more recent Fallouts, etc.) are so good is that they have worlds filled with stuff: Quests, towns, challenges, dungeons, treasures, you name it. All the developers need to do is give the players a nudge to demonstrate that their exploration will be rewarded, and players have all the incentive they'll need to start poking around, climbing on stuff, checking back at different times to see if anything changes, etc.

That all said, everything DE has said and/or demonstrated so far suggests that they're aware of those things, and it seems like they're really committed to making the universe feel more alive. So I suspect it'll be pretty awesome.

[babywrath]

Meh. I think it'll be fine. 

I don't want it to be too swamped with stuff to do that it becomes an entirely new game. Besides, they should put a limit to the amount of stuff you can do in PoE because they're planning on putting one on most of the planets. Earth is the first step. 

[tnccs215]

Just now, NinthAria said:

I said this in another thread recently, but having an open world by itself isn't, in my opinion, very exciting. It's easy for a developer to present players with a big world and say "okay now go find your own fun somewhere in this box," but without some kind of direction it falls flat fast. The reason that good open world games (Breath of the Wild, Skyrim, more recent Fallouts, etc.) are so good is that they have worlds filled with stuff: Quests, towns, challenges, dungeons, treasures, you name it. All the developers need to do is give the players a nudge to demonstrate that their exploration will be rewarded, and players have all the incentive they'll need to start poking around, climbing on stuff, checking back at different times to see if anything changes, etc.

That all said, everything DE has said and/or demonstrated so far suggests that they're aware of those things, and it seems like they're really committed to making the universe feel more alive. So I suspect it'll be pretty awesome.

I fully agree with your first paragraph, but fall more on @vasvaska's side in regards to your second. The thing is, making such an engrossing world takes a lot more of time and effort than simply scattering around some junk for you to collect. And the way warframe works, there isn't much beyond simply killing stuff in the game - that is, there isn't a lot of premade systems that can fill this void of things to do. And that means that PoE being indeed more immersive will take a lot more effort and require the introduction of a lot more stuff than one would otherwise think. So yeah, as Quiette Shy put on her video: "hope for the best, expect the worst"

[Xardis]

PoE is only another way for DE to make missions. Instead of crafting many tiles, they make 1 huge. I suspect that this will happen in due time to most other planets and DE will also connect those 2 gamemodes in some way.

[NinthAria]

1 minute ago, tnccs215 said:

I fully agree with your first paragraph, but fall more on @vasvaska's side in regards to your second. The thing is, making such an engrossing world takes a lot more of time and effort than simply scattering around some junk for you to collect. And the way warframe works, there isn't much beyond simply killing stuff in the game - that is, there isn't a lot of premade systems that can fill this void of things to do. And that means that PoE being indeed more immersive will take a lot more effort and require the introduction of a lot more stuff than one would otherwise think. So yeah, as Quiette Shy put on her video: "hope for the best, expect the worst"

They did say during the demo that they're already having to basically perform coding miracles with Plains because it's doing a hundred different things the game's never had to do before. So...I guess what I was getting at more than anything is I'm optimistic.

[kuchn]

well DE is great at hyping
...chains of harrow?! 4 capture quests and the operator thingy?
the octavia quest was just the same thing..flat..
and tbh..i'd be surprised if PoE is what we hope for... and if it is based around the lvl 30 scaling of the starchart u'd have to nerf yourself to enjoy it
i just hope it is more than the usual -> wait half a year or more for 45 minutes of gameplay<-

we'll see

Edited July 15, 2017 by kuchn

[UltimateGrr]

3 minutes ago, Xardis said:

PoE is only another way for DE to make missions. Instead of crafting many tiles, they make 1 huge. I suspect that this will happen in due time to most other planets and DE will also connect those 2 gamemodes in some way.

I would not be opposed to a hand crafted Landscape tile used to connect various procedurally generated "dungeons."  Like you're exploring the Plains, and find a cave network you need to use your operator beam to open like those doors on the mountain in TWW.  Hop out of the Warframe, open the door, and explore a cave formation that was made using the usual tile based system we use in missions right now, filled with high level enemies, and maybe some cool stuff to see/kill/loot.

Because I agree with a lot of what the OP is saying.  Skyrim, FO3 and FO4 are fun and interesting because there's always something to see over that next hill, or around that corner, while games like No Man's Sky are dull because there's nothing to see or do, despite having infinitely more places to go.

[(PSN)Silverback73]

59 minutes ago, tnccs215 said:

I remember that, either in the first Devstream of 2017, or the last of 2016, Scott mentioned that expanding Warframe more into an openworld settings was something being considered. Months passed, and the community mostly forgot about this, but last week Plains of Eidolon was announced, and many people - myself included - where left surprised... And extremely excited.

Warframe has an incredible potential for lore and world building, and it's current "deploy/run mission/extract" system, while useful in gameplay terms, hinders its engrossing capabilities. One of the issues I had when I started Warframe (and an issue that never really left me) was how impossible it seemed to truly feel immersed in the universe. Plains of Eidolon, in all its 9 km² beauty, might be exactly what might fix, at least partially, this issue: there are little things better to make you feel immersed on a world than to simply hand you that world. 

BUT! There are issues. Or, in better terms, I have certain fears regarding what might come out of the oven. 

It is already more than obvious that DE has amazingly talented people designing their environments. The foggy, wild Earth, the oppressive Kuva Fortress, Europa's tundra and specially Lua (which is possibly the only thing I ever saw in a game using clipping as a work of art)  are genuinely some of the most beautiful sceneries I've seen. However, they are exactly that: sceneries. They are things you look to and fight in, but your and other's interactions with them are close to none. With the exception of enemies changing according to the tilesets, they mostly feel all the same (barring perhaps Lua, with its verticality - but even that is an exception). 

And a world is much more than that. A world is something you interact with, and something that interacts with you. It is more than a pretty scenery: it must be something that you feel you are living in, something that affects you as if it is its own entity populated by other entities with their own interests. It must be alive. 

Tere is a reason why  (I know this is an overused example, however, since it's map size has been repeatedly used in comparison to PoE, I might as well use it) Skyrim is considered an incredible example of openworld design, while Far Cry 4 (at least personally) is dissapoining at best. Skyrim is filled to the brim with much more than repetitions of the same cave (even though that also exists): it has an engrossing lore discovered through exploration, a multitude of people and creatures to meet, discover and interact with (be it through conversation, quests, or killing), several self-interested entities, and simply a lot of actually different things to do. Yes, it has beautiful scenarios, yes it has varied landscapes, but you actually feel you are interacting with them, and that they are indeed affecting you. The world is so uniquely and hand crafted that exploration, due to the new things it gives, is its own reward. Even if it is an illusion, you feel like you are dealing with a world bigger than you, a world that exists outside of your scope of existence. 

Contrast with said Far Cry 4, or Mad Max, (or really 90% of Ubisoft openworld games) whose interaction with the world is reduced to little more than scavenging the whole map for four different types of collectibles and endless rehashes of the same fetch/hunt/escort/outpost takeover quest... and you get little more than a pretty map where you know you are just dealing with automated digital systems and tricks, recycled ad infinitum in order to occupy as much of your time as possible so that you think it was worth the money you pay(ed) for it. 

Don't take me wrong: there is place for collectibles and fetch/hunt/escort/etc quests - but they cannot be the only thing there is to offer. There must be an enormous variety  of different things to do. There must be npcs with which we can  interact - more than human shaped trade posts, genuine people with histories, interests, beliefs, agendas and everything else that defines a person. The map must be itself unique - even if having a constant landscape, there are maps that are memorable, and maps that are not.

All in all, while I am hopeful that Plains of Eidolon offers as much as it has potential to, I am still worried that it might not - because making an engrossing and beautiful world is much more complex and time consuming than making a pretty one, and time is not something DE has ever had to spare. 

Professional batters fail 2/3 of the time and yet we still wait in anticipation for them to do something incredible at the plate, right?

Cheer them on?

[(PSN)robotwars7]

TLDR: OP wants Eidolon to not be a massive boring space.

I totally agree. I'm hoping that we have a lot more stuff besides the fishing and crafting and night conflict we've been shown. I think it would be nice for each outpost to have a random objective (capture it's commander, destroy it's reactor etc.), as well as having plenty of random side quests to do for the Ostrons that also have some decent rewards. encounters where we can see Grineer and Corpus groups fighting and choose to either wipe out one side for a reward, or kill them all for fun. treasure hunting would be nice as well.

whatever happens, we shouldn't take Eidolon's release as though it's been finalized; this is simply an experiment to see if Warframe can function with an open map. if it receives a good enough reception, DE will likely expand upon it, and they haven't ruled out adding open maps to other planets in the system. in another year or so, we could even make it to another system entirely. who knows!

[Lost_Cartographer]

1 hour ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

TLDR: OP wants Eidolon to not be a massive boring space.

I totally agree. I'm hoping that we have a lot more stuff besides the fishing and crafting and night conflict we've been shown. I think it would be nice for each outpost to have a random objective (capture it's commander, destroy it's reactor etc.), as well as having plenty of random side quests to do for the Ostrons that also have some decent rewards. encounters where we can see Grineer and Corpus groups fighting and choose to either wipe out one side for a reward, or kill them all for fun. treasure hunting would be nice as well.

whatever happens, we shouldn't take Eidolon's release as though it's been finalized; this is simply an experiment to see if Warframe can function with an open map. if it receives a good enough reception, DE will likely expand upon it, and they haven't ruled out adding open maps to other planets in the system. in another year or so, we could even make it to another system entirely. who knows!

Knowing this community?  First 3 days it will be awesome.  Then once the honeymoon phase is over everyone will have either done everything there is to do or find some part of it too hard/grindy.  Either way, whining for days.

I wish more players could be happy with just shooting Grineer and experimenting with builds that don't boil down to "CC all the things, nuke the map, and minimize time spent touching the floor."  All this carrot chasing, map cheesing and ego boasting is just a recipe for disaster and sour attitudes.  Not that some of it isn't deserved in many cases, but people keep taking it to the extremes.

Edited July 16, 2017 by Littleman88

[Tesseract7777]

12 minutes ago, Littleman88 said:

Knowing this community?  First 3 days it will be awesome.  Then once the honeymoon phase is over everyone will have either done everything there is to do or find some part of it too hard/grindy.  Either way, whining for days.

I think they can avoid this issue if they can slowly allow more and more people into one instance. If they are stuck on just four people max (one squad) at a time, and take many months or even year or years to get to where lots of people are running around and can randomly help/see each other, it will indeed end cause people to lose interest far too quickly. I know they have more maps planned and they are supposed to be bigger, but I don't think a four man squad is going to sustain this long term. 

They need to allow at least a few dozen people to be running around with a chance to run into each other if they go to the same area of the map. Forcing it to just one squad makes it feel again, too instance based, too dependent on other players or their hosting, not actually truly open feeling, etc. 

To make it truly feel living and dynamic, we need lots of real people who we can meet, that's the real draw imo that keeps is sustainable in terms of player interest. I know Steve said just four people was just to start, but we really should have closer to the number of the people allowed in the relay (50) or this is just never, ever going to be truly big, or take off the way they want. Starting off with only four is a mistake imo, even if it means having to wait longer. I think they should test their capacity with at least a dozen or so allowed, and not make them be in squads, allow people to enter solo, just have a max amount. Even just that dozen or so to start without forcing people to be in three squads of four or something, would really make it feel more dynamic and open and real. 

Edited July 16, 2017 by Tesseract7777

[Hypernaut1]

Lol at wanting PoE to be Skyrim. It's not going to happen..... at all!

Im excited about PoE, but I'm not expecting Skyrim. It will be a big open tileset at best. It will be a wide open space for the same exact grindy game play.

[Rakosta_Kai]

I see all of it slightly differently tbh...

For what it's worth, there is no TL;DR here.

So far, what DE has done is create a crazy quilt of disparate modes and loosely stitched them together. POE looks like a new kind of thread to me as opposed to a quilt patch itself.

The problem is... Unless they haven't shared it all, it's not sustainable... It's Archwing all over again.

POE needs to form a portion of the background that everything on Earth flows from.

People seem to want it to be this massive frontier where they are going to get 6+ months of engaging experience out of it... Until the next one released.

...That would be a tall order for any group as it would end up having to be Expansion pack sized to satisfy many players. 

Adding exploration and immersive elements along with an open world area that allows traversal through and transition into different missions/alerts should be the expectation. It's an open world... sorta (you probably have to load into areas like you would for City of Heroes or Anarchy Online) and the Open world acted as a backdrop to getting to mission points in those games.

Have open worlds allow seamless access from it into land-based missions/alerts with a bit of exploration and opposition with the state of the mission affected by how well you got into it.

For a practical example: A player should be able to access any land-based mission on earth from POE (and subsequent additions) via traversal and transitions.

...Now archwing matters aside from archwing missions for potential access to any land based mission.

But with that, something will need to be added to keep you running to missions in those areas...Enter a Random Mission Generator. 

• With the addition of a random mission generator (leave the VO out of this one)... And you have a workable system with tons of chase-able carrots that'll last a long long time.

This would be a spot that generates random missions with tons of enigmatic information sprinkled with lore in the mission parameters with difficulty/Reward Quality set by the seeker and their MR (MR just mattered).

• Make it accessible from towns, relays and dojos only and let it give a bit of Mastery Rank amongst the rest of the rewards. 

Now folks have a reason to go to the Relays and Dojos.  

Now Protecting/re-building the Relays matter.

• Add in the ability to allow  Clans to set Clan missions.

Clan missions would help foster clan cohesion and activity.

 Likewise, missions being determined by Clan Leaders would help foster the tone of the clan itself.

• Difficulty settings in this system mitigate the need for folks to complain about missions being too easy and encourage the social dynamic that DE seems to be leaning toward via groups. 
• Having a Random Mission Generator can likewise act as a new outlet for loot as the current modes loot tables are fairly packed as it is right now.

All in all,something like this becomes the thread for their crazy quilt  and allows open exploration areas like POE to actually be the background that all their modes can be pieced together on while checking off some of the pain points noted on the forums.

[Lost_Cartographer]

6 hours ago, Tesseract7777 said:

I think they can avoid this issue if they can slowly allow more and more people into one instance. If they are stuck on just four people max (one squad) at a time, and take many months or even year or years to get to where lots of people are running around and can randomly help/see each other, it will indeed end cause people to lose interest far too quickly. I know they have more maps planned and they are supposed to be bigger, but I don't think a four man squad is going to sustain this long term. 

They need to allow at least a few dozen people to be running around with a chance to run into each other if they go to the same area of the map. Forcing it to just one squad makes it feel again, too instance based, too dependent on other players or their hosting, not actually truly open feeling, etc. 

To make it truly feel living and dynamic, we need lots of real people who we can meet, that's the real draw imo that keeps is sustainable in terms of player interest. I know Steve said just four people was just to start, but we really should have closer to the number of the people allowed in the relay (50) or this is just never, ever going to be truly big, or take off the way they want. Starting off with only four is a mistake imo, even if it means having to wait longer. I think they should test their capacity with at least a dozen or so allowed, and not make them be in squads, allow people to enter solo, just have a max amount. Even just that dozen or so to start without forcing people to be in three squads of four or something, would really make it feel more dynamic and open and real. 

Looking back at any open world game, history tells me that most people find running into other players rather annoying as it easily gets to the point where people are competing for mobs to kill.  This will be exacerbated in Warframe, where people frequently tote around the power to spray and pray down a whole army with a sweep of the mouse, or pressing 4 and watching as an ability does all the work.  We already kind of have this problem in standard Warframe co-op play where one person hits some channeled ability that decimates the enemy and races through the map, leaving the other 3 members to simply follow along with nary a chance to shoot anything.

Until such a time as DE curbs Warframe and weapon power considerably - and this WILL have to happen before enemy power can be addressed which will get people in a tizzy - frequently running into other players in the open world is only going to make it dull and frustrating.

 

Finally, if One is going to mention "the Kaiju Sentient at night," history also shows the more people involved in a fight, the more it just turns into a cluster-f*** of mindless ability and attack spam.

[Tesseract7777]

25 minutes ago, Littleman88 said:

Looking back at any open world game, history tells me that most people find running into other players rather annoying as it easily gets to the point where people are competing for mobs to kill.  This will be exacerbated in Warframe, where people frequently tote around the power to spray and pray down a whole army with a sweep of the mouse, or pressing 4 and watching as an ability does all the work.  We already kind of have this problem in standard Warframe co-op play where one person hits some channeled ability that decimates the enemy and races through the map, leaving the other 3 members to simply follow along with nary a chance to shoot anything.

Until such a time as DE curbs Warframe and weapon power considerably - and this WILL have to happen before enemy power can be addressed which will get people in a tizzy - frequently running into other players in the open world is only going to make it dull and frustrating.

 

Finally, if One is going to mention "the Kaiju Sentient at night," history also shows the more people involved in a fight, the more it just turns into a cluster-f*** of mindless ability and attack spam.

Aren't these all issues that can be solved by going solo, if one does not wish to run into other humans, or just do the "kaiju at night" with a small squad? I believe Steven said that people will be able to go solo if they want, and I doubt that will change as he allows the maps to hold more people over time. 

 

[tnccs215]

On 16/07/2017 at 0:40 AM, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

whatever happens, we shouldn't take Eidolon's release as though it's been finalized; this is simply an experiment to see if Warframe can function with an open map. if it receives a good enough reception, DE will likely expand upon it, and they haven't ruled out adding open maps to other planets in the system. in another year or so, we could even make it to another system entirely. who knows!

I mostly agree... but the problem is that 1)If the final product, be it an experiment or not, isn't a good execution in the first place, people won't like it.  And (since DE tends to be extremely dependent on player reception to new features) if people don't like it, they don't expand on it. I mean, Archwing could have been a good thing, if DE had just listened to the criticism, ignored the bashing, and made it good - instead of moving past it. Even more, 2)DE suffers from creative ADHD, which means that even if people do like it, nothing ensures us they will indeed improve and expand on it as much as they should. They have done so in the past, and they most likely will do so again

[tnccs215]

On 16/07/2017 at 4:17 AM, Padre_Akais said:

Snip

Mh... I like your vision. 

I think it is pretty much indisputable that "So far, what DE has done is create a crazy quilt of disparate modes and loosely stitched them together." The starchart serves exactly for that: easy addition, removal and replacement of nodes and mission types. Though the f2p, under-financed origins of Warframe, make this a rather logical choice - mostly in terms of its convenience to the developers - it came at the cost of immersion. 

The idea of "hub worlds" - which, if I read you correctly, seems what you are describing - is a tried and true method of instilling both immersion and a sense of freedom, while still allowing more elaborate, smaller, specific mission oriented nodes and tilesets to exist. Have a big world that you walk around and explore, and have several "dungeons" (in Warframe replaced by already implemented missions) lying around. Even if people, after sometime in the game, end up ditching on-foot transversal for any equivalent of fast travel to the mission they want - here easily replaced by the chart system - the simple existence and previous experience of a transverseable world (and specially one you are obliged to travel for the first time you want to go to a mission) connecting everything is enough to give a sense of structure and ground to the game. 

That said... I'm not sure that will be implemented that way, for much of my dismay. 

Elaborating, the whole "Plains of Eidolon as a hub world" idea obligatorily changes massively the dynamics of the geo progression in the game - how important a planet is in the grand scheme of things.

Right now, changing planet is as easy (and perhaps more importantly, gives just as much sensory feedback as) clicking a button. With how easy to transition it is, each planet as only a symbolic meaning at best. While DE tried to solidify and increase the differences between planets with the introduction of junctions and level changes, they ultimately failed to do so in a sufficient way. Players still reach the end of the Star Chart around half the middle game (with effort, but they do), and they still have little or no reason to even try to see earth and mercury as anything other than different globes in a map.

However, Plains of Eidolon as a hub world - and specifically, Plains of Eidolon as Earth's hub world - would create this differentiation. Earth goes from "just the globe with foresty missions" into being a proper World, with a specific personality, a specific setting and specific difficulty.  It would also organically increase massively the time a player spends in a planet, thereby slowing down their progression in terms of effective power (read, mods).

And the fact that, though Plains of Eidolon creates this massive change of paradigm, does so only locally, this might be too much of a change all at once, on only one place. Earth would become not only a planet with identity, but also the only planet with an identity. Experiencing Earth as a true world, only to then jump on to the Liset and deal with the current starchart system would make the game nothing short of schizophrenic.

The fact that Earth is the very first planet to be experienced by new players only make these matters worse. the nature of big opens maps and the shear amount of possible things populating them (or, at least, the shear amount of things that should populate it for it to be an engaging hub world) would obligatorily make Plains of Eidolon (and, by connection, Earth) a central part of the new player experience - simply because new players will obligatorily spend so much time there that, for pacing's sake, the first feeling of the game should go from "becoming able to space travel at the end of the first mission" to "deal and experience the open world for a substantial part of the early game, with space faring capabilities being a precious reward at the end of it". And to go from experiencing a rich, deep world into the clusterf*ck of disjointed, disposable missions that the game is now will be such a shock that players will feel they will be in a completely different - and ironically, if this is well implemented, considerably worse - game.

This means one of two things: get an hub world for most, if not all planets (I suppose Gas Giants and Uranus can deal with just a Relay like Hub, due to their innately innospitable nature - though flying through Jupiter's storms in an Archwing might be something amazing to do) in order to avoid geotransversal schizophrenia... Or ditch the hub world idea altogether, and just make Plains of Eidolon just a big map.

And yes, there is a possibility that DE will choose the former instead of the later. They mentioned how they wanted new open world maps to be introduced after PoE, which means that, even though it would be gradual, a transformation from the current "stitched together missions" paradigm into a "each planet is a world" one might be not only possible, but even planned. But that does not cover all the issues. Even though it might be temporary, the schizophrenia will still be there. The game will feel as if it is under renovation because it will be - and since there is a total of twelve planets in the chart, it will be take a looooong time for the process to be complete.

Even in the advent that they we do get a hub world for all, there are a lot more problems to cover - specially in what pertains to scaling and progression - but I honestly think I already presented enough justifications for why I simply don't think DE will apply your idea. Though, then again, most of them are based on the premise that design dissonance and convolution are a big no no, and DE might perfectly not see it that way. It definitely wouldn't be the first time. So yeah, I can be wrong. I might even hope I'm wrong, but the way I want to be wrong demands a lot more work.