More Precise Decor Placement Controls

[Verana_Bloodrose]

Hello!

Just investigating and exploring the new dojo tools to adjust the aesthetics and place décor. I'm enjoying the new changes but out of all of this I have two major problems that I'm facing, one of which I'll get more into depth about.

First, minor feedback: some areas of the dojo are not allowing me to place anything on them. The décor will simply show as red and invalid to place. As this is all about aesthetics, I can arguably understand not blocking the control panel in each room/doors, but I'd vastly prefer having ultimate freedom to design the dojo as I'd like. There are many evocative ways to combine and mesh décor, limiting the space causes issues.

Second, and the biggest thing that I can recommend which is what this post is actually focused on: Superior movement and control tools for far more precise placement of décor. The way it's working right now it's all tied to the camera which causes many issues. I'll go down the list of what I noticed immediately:

1.) Centering décor into position is extremely difficult. When moving the camera you're not adjusting by minor amounts, each press does a fairly large movement. This is causing me to have to adjust using more diagonal movements which has many unusual problems. It is a miserable task to line décor up perfectly.

2.) Using this method, you're not able to do what décor and housing enthusiasts call "cobbling," a process where you use multiple pieces of décor to create something brand new. This is because décor gets placed on top of other décor. Lack of décor is a separate issue (I'll vouch that simple décor pieces are THE BEST for this, but that's all I'll mention in this post of that) but what is available right now would benefit from more precise non-camera centric movement so that we can combine décor pieces to make something more evocative.

3.) It makes height adjustment a chore as well and clunky or unusual. This feeds back into point 1 of lining things up, but it's hard to get proper placement when you can't see the entirety of the décor piece and how it relates to other pieces easily. Being able to push/pull is great but it's a bandaid on what I'd call a major flaw.

4.) Rotation is actually pretty decent but could use some improvement. While it's not the most ideal to be toggling to get to different axis, it's workable. I'll address this also in my recommendation to fix these issues and allow greater adjustment controls below.

So given all this, and as I've been a housing/décor enthusiast for 5 years now, these are my recommendations to fix the above:

Allow for a separated décor control mode that is not based on your camera. The examples I'm going to give are Wildstar as the primary and Rift as secondary, which are both very similar in this. Both of these games use the x, y and z axis to allow you to control the décor. Instead of using the camera, the décor instead sits on a defined point in space (with x, y and z values) and can be moved or rotated using an arrow denoting a certain axis (e.g. y is a green arrow, x is red and z is blue) and to further assist rotating décor, a wedge can be implemented which you can click and drag to rotate the décor piece.

As I mentioned above, the rotation is actually in a good place, so in this case leaving it as is while not the most ideal form is still entirely workable. But ideally, these are all tools you have quick and easy access to as décor placement and adjustment often requires very fine and minute changes, making organic feeling controls very important.

Finally, I'd love to have a panel that allows exact x/y/z values to be assigned in a numerical format. This allows for the utmost of precise placement that can be used in conjunction with the above systems for extremely fulfilling and desired decorating of the dojo. With tools like these, the sky's the limit and you can make whatever your heart desires (décor cobbling willing, of course!)

 

[Syln]

I was kind of curious but after many attempt to do a grineer pipe nightmare in one of my hall i just quit out of frustration, the new dojo decoration system need to give the option to clip some pieces together more easily

[Esmea]

I concur; trying my own hand at trying to place certain objects led to frustrations and confusion around "why isn't this being allowed?"

The controls for placing décor are a definite improvement over the previous design, but it still feels like there is a long way to go for refining the décor controls. There is a lot of potential in this. Combined with the support for community creations, Warframe is in a fantastic position to be able to provide a rich and robust system for players to customize their experience and share their own methods of creativity in the game (e.g. art, modelling, decorating, etc.). Expanding on the decoration in the game feels good. I am thoroughly excited to see where this patch will take us, as well as further development in this category.