Some Tile Sets Are Too Confusing And Poorly Designed

[(PSN)Joshhwwaaaaaa]

First off I love Warframe. Been playing over a year now. It's a wonderful game. 

But...

Some of the Tile Sets are poorly designed. It's clear DE wants style over functionality. But when I'm just trying to get to the next objective and literally can't find where to go even with the waypoints I think that's poor level design. 

It's not every Tile Set by any means but it's enough for me to want to gripe about it here on the forums. Worst offenders are some Eris Tile Sets and Europa Tile Sets.

With the new update coming down the road with Plains of Eidolon hopefully the focus will be open world environments and issues like this will be a thing of the past. 

Edited August 11, 2017 by (PS4)Joshhwwaaaaaa
typo

[(PSN)Joshhwwaaaaaa]

Just let me add that Kuva Fortress while frustrating I can clearly see that "complex and confusing" was the design choice so I feel it gets a pass.

[moose2142]

I could totally see that. Seeing teammates speed off and trying to follow them if you are not familiar can cause some anxiety and stress. "Don't wanna slow down the team at the same time I have no clue where to go"

I personally hate the kuva fortress level layout. I was hoping for a fortress, not a rat maze that keeps attackers out just by taking advantage of the fact we get a 2d map on a 3d environment. Dont get me wrong, I get its purpose, but I cry inside when I see sortie 3 on kuva fortress just for the map alone.

[(PSN)Joshhwwaaaaaa]

20 minutes ago, moose2142 said:

I could totally see that. Seeing teammates speed off and trying to follow them if you are not familiar can cause some anxiety and stress. "Don't wanna slow down the team at the same time I have no clue where to go"

I personally hate the kuva fortress level layout. I was hoping for a fortress, not a rat maze that keeps attackers out just by taking advantage of the fact we get a 2d map on a 3d environment. Dont get me wrong, I get its purpose, but I cry inside when I see sortie 3 on kuva fortress just for the map alone.

I feel your pain brother. 

[Walkampf]

38 minutes ago, (PS4)Joshhwwaaaaaa said:

Some of the Tile Sets are poorly designed. It's clear DE wants style over functionality. But when I'm just trying to get to the next objective and literally can't find where to go even with the waypoints I think that's poor level design.

Sooo.... you are a professional Level-Designer yourself?

[13QZXXTTX]

The Indicators or WP are the only thing stopping from being LOST.

 

[(PSN)Joshhwwaaaaaa]

1 minute ago, Walkampf said:

Sooo.... you are a professional Level-Designer yourself?

I've played video games for over 30 years in every genre. I think this qualifies me to talk about level design.

[Walkampf]

Just now, (PS4)Joshhwwaaaaaa said:

I've played video games for over 30 years in every genre. I think this qualifies me to talk about level design.

Well, i've been watching movies for roughly 30 years, that doesn't mean i'm fit to be an actor, a scriptwriter or a director.

 

Your "feedback" and i use this term very loosly in this context, is basically a rant.

First of all, you aren't a professional, thus  "It's clear DE wants style over functionality." is actually nothing more than your own subjective perception. It is not even closely as objective as you claim it is.

 

Second, what whould it take for the tiles to be "functionality over style"? The most functional whould be making nothing but featureless tubes for tiles. But whould that be fun? A videogames purpose is to entertain people. Style is a very important part of fun in videogames, thus your statement is contradicting itself. In other words, despite your 30 years of playing videogames, you do not even know what you want yourself.

 

Third, if you want to be taken seriously, why not point out actual problems? In this case, obviously naming at least one selected tile you are having an issue with. Instead you are pointing at something so large, that it is literally impossible for somebody to find a point to start working on the issue, thus rendering your feedback obsolutly useless and reducing it to nothing but a vent for you personal frustration.

[(PSN)Joshhwwaaaaaa]

Just now, Walkampf said:

Well, i've been watching movies for roughly 30 years, that doesn't mean i'm fit to be an actor, a scriptwriter or a director.

 

Your "feedback" and i use this term very loosly in this context, is basically a rant.

First of all, you aren't a professional, thus  "It's clear DE wants style over functionality." is actually nothing more than your own subjective perception. It is not even closely as objective as you claim it is.

 

Second, what whould it take for the tiles to be "functionality over style"? The most functional whould be making nothing but featureless tubes for tiles. But whould that be fun? A videogames purpose is to entertain people. Style is a very important part of fun in videogames, thus your statement is contradicting itself. In other words, despite your 30 years of playing videogames, you do not even know what you want yourself.

 

Third, if you want to be taken seriously, why not point out actual problems? In this case, obviously naming at least one selected tile you are having an issue with. Instead you are pointing at something so large, that it is literally impossible for somebody to find a point to start working on the issue, thus rendering your feedback obsolutly useless and reducing it to nothing but a vent for you personal frustration.

Thanks for taking time out of your day to reply. Your comments have been noted as "not useful". Move along now.

[Prany]

1 hour ago, Walkampf said:

Well, i've been watching movies for roughly 30 years, that doesn't mean i'm fit to be an actor, a scriptwriter or a director.

You however are fit to be a critic.

[Walkampf]

26 minutes ago, Prany said:

You however are fit to be a critic.

There is a massive difference between being merely allowed to voice critisism and being actually fit to be a critic.

Joshwaaaa however is the former. His "critisism" is hardly more than the angry tantrum of a child. The lack of a foundation or actual points is actually making it more of simple toxic behaviour, than it is feedback.

[(PSN)theelix]

2 hours ago, Walkampf said:

Sooo.... you are a professional Level-Designer yourself?

Yes, you have to be a professional anything to have an opinion on anything. 

 

Over the history of Warframe, it is clear these levels are not intuitive and have been the proprietor of the numerous waypoint changes just so that people can find out how to get places.  The fact that there are guides on Youtube on how to get to some of these basic tiles shows that there is a sizable demand for direction in this game, of which we have little. 

Coupled with the poor light balancing in this game it's painful and tedious just to go from point A to point B in a level. 

2 hours ago, Walkampf said:

Second, what whould it take for the tiles to be "functionality over style"? The most functional whould be making nothing but featureless tubes for tiles. But whould that be fun? A videogames purpose is to entertain people. Style is a very important part of fun in videogames, thus your statement is contradicting itself. In other words, despite your 30 years of playing videogames, you do not even know what you want yourself.

This argument in its entirety is flawed. 

No one argued there should be no style and all functionality, and it's hypocritical to say "you do not even know what you want yourself" when you can't properly comprehend what has been relayed. He is saying the design has sacrificed practicality for looks. E.G., a Solar Roadway isn't practical because not only is it not in a correct position to absorb the most amount of sunlight, it's constantly being blocked by the main reason it exists: the car that drives on it. Style was put at a higher priority than its main use. 

And in which case something is so "stylistic" it's difficult and tedious to go twenty meters in it, it stops being "fun" and moves on through to "annoying." Some of the most fun games are minimalistic. 

[Lost_Cartographer]

3 hours ago, Walkampf said:

Sooo.... you are a professional Level-Designer yourself?

Don't have to be a professional level-designer to understand what makes good level design.  And good level design is dependent on the game flow and mechanics in question.

In general, when it comes to navigating 3D worlds you want to minimize the amount of verticality in a given viewable horizontal area.  By that, I mean if you can keep it to one floor within an area, good.  If you're going to fill the space with a ton of cat walks, overhangs, and multiple levels all capable of seeing one another and they're criss-crossing all over the place, your going to put the player through hell unless you have some literal arrows every 4 feet pointing the way forward.  Verticality in itself isn't bad, it's the poor usage of it.  

The Kuva fortress is notorious for having a lot of vertical layers that also cover a lot of horizontal space within its tiles and these layers overlap pretty frequently, which is what makes it extra confusing to navigate.  There used to be some Grineer outpost (asteroid) tiles with a similar problem, and DE axed all of those for the reason that they were too confusing to navigate because of all the layer overlap.

Contrast with something like Earth's tiles, which all but one have ~2 vertical layers tops, each with a fair amount of horizontal space, but they don't perform much overlap.  This keeps them easy to navigate and our bullet jumping minimizes the difficulty of navigating those two different general heights in the tiles.  There's only one tile on Earth that comes to mind as being remotely confusing to navigate, but compared to the Fortress' tiles, it's really small.

 

Mind, when it comes to the Kuva tileset, there was a pretty clear intent on confusing design.  It's definitely far more complex on average than any other tileset, and part of that is so we get caught in all the damn traps littered all over the map while simultaneously having alternate paths around them.

Edited August 11, 2017 by Littleman88

[frandytanoto5]

it's useless talking to this guy, he's a troll like he wants his own warframe lul