A big criticism of the environment design that I hope they work on in future content

[crocodarrel]

This is something a lot of people don't really notice, but still has a big impact on the perception of quality. It's been a consistent issue on all of the tilesets but because of how sterile Corpus and Grineer areas tend to be, it doesn't stand out so much there. But once Plains of Eidolon came out, it became impossible to ignore.

What I'm trying to call attention to here is how none of the environments look very lived in.

I'm talking boot scuffs on floors, random things being broken and cracked, and even random objects left on the ground due to people being in the middle of tasks just before we came into their place of work and shot them dead (1 monster remaining). This just isn't something the environment artists put time and attention into and it really hurts the believability of the world.

Once you start to notice it, because say you've been playing a game that does this really well that day (Kingdom Come Deliverance really made me notice when games don't do this) it becomes a bit of a distraction. And for most tilesets that's all it is, an occasional distraction, but in PoE it heavily damages my impression of the scenery whenever I come to a Grineer base where their structures are clearly just objects stuck into the terrain without otherwise having any effect on it.

The Grineer are clumsy, adorable, destructive bastards who move around with heavy machinery, yet their bases never have a single tire tread or foot print. The Ostrons, ironically enough, bring this issue more to a head because they represent one of the biggest pieces of quality worldbuilding the game has. Unless I am misreading DE's direction, the intent is to continually improve the believability and immersiveness of the characters and world as time goes on, and this oversight greatly hinders that.

This is your intervention Mr. or Mrs. Art Director. If you believe in truth, justice, and the cleansing power of Atomos, please do not continue to neglect the consequences the denizens of the universe should be having on their environments.

The occasional civilian facility wouldn't hurt either. I'm particularly fond of those Corpus locker rooms with hanging suits, and Grineer bunk areas for they way pull you just a little bit into the universe that we spend so much time shooting up.

Final note: It also really, really, really takes me out of the world when I run through the exact same "chunk" of level more than once in a map. The problem isn't that it's not believable that Corpus and Grineer would reuse architectural designs, but that the map chunks are themselves so big that they look too unique to be credibly repeating the way they do. Hallways are ok but I would definitely set it as a hard rule that large rooms can't identically repeat in the same mission. Immersion aside, it's also very disorienting.

Whew... I've been sitting on this for months.

Edited May 28, 2018 by crocodarrel

[taiiat]

i think some Tilesets have that look to some degree - Grineer Shipyards looks like the environment has been existing. there's a lot of stuff rusted out, worn, Et Cetera.

but some other Tilesets could perhaps use looks like that, yes. not all of them though, i feel like most Corpus places would be kept pretty clean and tidy while Grineer would be the ones to let things slide.

[Vicsvinny]

1 hour ago, crocodarrel said:

The Grineer are clumsy, adorable, destructive bastards who move around with heavy machinery

Love how you describe them.  

Honestly after my 1000+ hours both on PC and console, I never really thought of this. (And I'm normally one to search for Immersion in games) So thanks for plopping this thought into my head, and giving me a new perspective on the game!

But I totally agree with you. As far as I can tell, the Grineer must have some absolute killer janitors for keeping the floors almost spotless, and packing everything up in neat little crates. Those Galleons are up to cleaning standards. And I can believe the Corpus have a serious OCD issue, you'd be hard-pressed to find a speck of dust anywhere.

But looking at some of the other tilesets such as the Grineer Sealabs, Grineer Shipyards, the Kuva Fortress, Corpus Ice Planet, and literally every Infested tlieset, they're pretty good for 'Lived-in Standards', or at least hold some potential for it.

The Sealabs look and feel like a mad scientists lair. Tanks and tubes littering the set, water dripping from cracked windows and pouring down staircases. There's a lot of tiny details in the Sealabs that you keep discovering.

Ceres. One giant factory. With killable worker drones wielding buzz-saws and hammers. Immersion: 100%

Kuva Fortress, while it doesn't have junk littering the floors, there are bunkrooms, storage rooms, guard posts and mission briefing rooms. They have COFFEE MUGS on some of the tables. Beds have 'Blankets' and you can find armour, helmets, guns and other random misc. scattered around all of the small insignificant loot rooms.

Corpus Ice Planet feels like some huge Installation or ship crashed landed on it. I don't need to describe it.

Infested tilesets need no explaining other than: Eris. Have fun exploring.

But yeah, nearly every other tileset, (Maybe not Earth to SOME degree) needs some revisiting to 'touch up' the occupation. Doesn't matter if the Grineer have killer janitors or the Corpus have hyper-advanced Roombas, There will be tracks of mud and dirt from the soldiers boots on the floor. There will be dust. There will be (Insert Grime here)

Tiny details like this actually makes a difference DE, games quite immersive as is, why not make it even more?

[(PSN)JustJoshinEnt]

I think the main reason for this is that this game is meant to be fast-paced, leaping through halls and slaughtering hordes...Don't think they figured it'd be worth the expense (and it would be expensive) to invest in that kind of fine detail, given most will gloss right over it.

Hell, they've invested thousands of hours in the LORE, and look how many people overlook that and the flavor of the details .... and end up just hyper-focusing on raw numbers and data.  Shame.

I do appreciate those details, but I don't think less of Warframe for the lack of them.  Just don't think it was necessary for the type of gameplay, persay.

[crocodarrel]

42 minutes ago, Vicsvinny said:

Love how you describe them.  

Honestly after my 1000+ hours both on PC and console, I never really thought of this. (And I'm normally one to search for Immersion in games) So thanks for plopping this thought into my head, and giving me a new perspective on the game!

But I totally agree with you. As far as I can tell, the Grineer must have some absolute killer janitors for keeping the floors almost spotless, and packing everything up in neat little crates. Those Galleons are up to cleaning standards. And I can believe the Corpus have a serious OCD issue, you'd be hard-pressed to find a speck of dust anywhere.

But looking at some of the other tilesets such as the Grineer Sealabs, Grineer Shipyards, the Kuva Fortress, Corpus Ice Planet, and literally every Infested tlieset, they're pretty good for 'Lived-in Standards', or at least hold some potential for it.

The Sealabs look and feel like a mad scientists lair. Tanks and tubes littering the set, water dripping from cracked windows and pouring down staircases. There's a lot of tiny details in the Sealabs that you keep discovering.

Ceres. One giant factory. With killable worker drones wielding buzz-saws and hammers. Immersion: 100%

Kuva Fortress, while it doesn't have junk littering the floors, there are bunkrooms, storage rooms, guard posts and mission briefing rooms. They have COFFEE MUGS on some of the tables. Beds have 'Blankets' and you can find armour, helmets, guns and other random misc. scattered around all of the small insignificant loot rooms.

Corpus Ice Planet feels like some huge Installation or ship crashed landed on it. I don't need to describe it.

Infested tilesets need no explaining other than: Eris. Have fun exploring.

But yeah, nearly every other tileset, (Maybe not Earth to SOME degree) needs some revisiting to 'touch up' the occupation. Doesn't matter if the Grineer have killer janitors or the Corpus have hyper-advanced Roombas, There will be tracks of mud and dirt from the soldiers boots on the floor. There will be dust. There will be (Insert Grime here)

Tiny details like this actually makes a difference DE, games quite immersive as is, why not make it even more?

I agree, some of what I assume are the more recent tilesets definitely do a lot more of the quiet worldbuilding that I admire. I definitely noticed coffee cups in Kuva, and the Sealab in particular really blew my mind when I first saw it.

With PoE being the most recent thing, and only new landscape to be added since I joined the game, it was a bit of a let-down in this regard.

[Miser_able]

Take a good look at ceres. There's a dude crushed under a crate in one tile, and if it's still in the game there's a tile where a crate has a cup sitting on it. While it's not much, it's something. 

[o.0-]

There are some newer Grineer tiles that look really good, so I'd take it as a WIP to get more tiles up to that level, so really a matter of time for the devs to do what they need to, on their schedule.

[(PSN)Cephalon_Snow]

You should check out the derelicts.

[(XBOX)PredakingXYT]

Can't really blame them, they do a lot based on what we ask for, and we never asked for this. Along with that (<<<) Warframe is famous for its movement ( super fast paced) and few tenno slow down enough to notice things like that, while I'm sure that would be a cool thing to implement, they have focused on so much more meaningful things, and have to work on so many more that your idea would likely become a side project

[Ketec]

They have fast cleaner drones and rollers, they fix and clean and paint everything all the time.

[lennieplop60]

I agree. Most tilesets just look like empty hallways filled with machinery

[Hypernaut1]

I wouldn't say this is a BIG criticism

[Goodwill]

As others have pointed out, they would need to slow down the gameplay because finer details would be a waste on resources and would only be done because a) a designer/developer doesn't have anything better to do b) they stumble across or learn a method to make adding in random details and decorations easier. Parkour 1.0 had much more interaction with the environment while 2.0 you just bullet jump over everything.

On that note, if they slowed down the parkour system... I'd be all for paying more attention to detail but right now it's just not going to be appreciated by majority of players.

[SenorClipClop]

A lot of the tilesets that lack that realistic, lived-in feel are at least like 3-4 years old. Back then, devs may not have had the time or resources to make tiles a priority, or they may have intentionally limited the quality of the tiles to keep the game running on less beefy computers (1080p 60fps is a lot more affordable than it used to be).

Nicer-looking tilesets are some of the newer ones -- Earth, Grineer Shipyard (newly remastered anyway) and of course PoE. Even Sealab and Kuva Fortress look pretty passably modern and they're a few years old

Edited May 28, 2018 by SenorClipClop

[Vicsvinny]

9 hours ago, Miser_able said:

Take a good look at ceres. There's a dude crushed under a crate in one tile, and if it's still in the game there's a tile where a crate has a cup sitting on it. While it's not much, it's something.

[(PSN)Zero_029]

I love this idea.

I want every planet to have unique tilesets tbh.

Nothing bothers me more thsn how identical Pluto, Venus, Phobos, Europa, & etc look.

I want every planet to have a unique tileset. DE should really buckle down on that after Venus' landscape map.

And I agree. Bases need to look lived in. Kuva Fortress is my favorite map duebto this. It looks lived in & real.

Grineer tilesets all need that aesthedic.

Corpus however have robots & labs. I think their bases SHOULD look clean & sterile.

[TrockBronze]

making the environment 'lived in' and alive beyond us fighting in it would be a worthwhile endeavor, however something like that would be really on the backburner of content. 

[Lakais]

This is a double edged thing but you have to admit that the whole "sterile, not lived in" feel is more tied to older tilesets. Kuva fortress, Infested Corpus and Uranus have quite a bit of this personality put into them. And lately I have been noticing quite a few end-tiles on Grineer Asteroid that are essentially barracks. Very lived in ones. And PoE grineer outposts have that in droves. 

But performance is also a thing. Having non-essential objects, textures etc in the abundance needed to create the sort of proper "populated" feel is one of these things that can very possibly spill over to performance issues. Also, it's not something that would get noticed that much. What with people going full Flash all the time, there's no chance for people to stop and "smell the roses" so to speak. 

Edited May 28, 2018 by Lakais

[-.SP.-G43riel]

12 minutes ago, TrockBronze said:

making the environment 'lived in' and alive beyond us fighting in it would be a worthwhile endeavor, however something like that would be really on the backburner of content. 

exactly

its not as if we wouldnt like having more tiles or more variation of them, its just that on great scheme of things it doesnt feel like its the most important thing to focus right now

[crocodarrel]

6 hours ago, (PS4)Zero_029 said:

I love this idea.

I want every planet to have unique tilesets tbh.

Nothing bothers me more thsn how identical Pluto, Venus, Phobos, Europa, & etc look.

I want every planet to have a unique tileset. DE should really buckle down on that after Venus' landscape map.

And I agree. Bases need to look lived in. Kuva Fortress is my favorite map duebto this. It looks lived in & real.

Grineer tilesets all need that aesthedic.

Corpus however have robots & labs. I think their bases SHOULD look clean & sterile.

Planets looking like other planets would only bother me if there were other factions than Grineer and Corpus that we were heroing to death in them. I mean, why would the Grinner redevelop their fleet's architectural aesthetic just because they moved some ships to the next world? But encountering the exact same chunk of level more than once in a mission? It's a starkly distracting beacon of artificiality, at least to me.

1 hour ago, Lakais said:

This is a double edged thing but you have to admit that the whole "sterile, not lived in" feel is more tied to older tilesets. Kuva fortress, Infested Corpus and Uranus have quite a bit of this personality put into them. And lately I have been noticing quite a few end-tiles on Grineer Asteroid that are essentially barracks. Very lived in ones. And PoE grineer outposts have that in droves. 

But performance is also a thing. Having non-essential objects, textures etc in the abundance needed to create the sort of proper "populated" feel is one of these things that can very possibly spill over to performance issues. Also, it's not something that would get noticed that much. What with people going full Flash all the time, there's no chance for people to stop and "smell the roses" so to speak. 

haha, I do admit that. In fact I admitted it a few posts above yours. The newer tilesets are definitely an improvement in this regard, but that means Plains of Eidolon is a big step back IMO. It's not so much the objects that are present in the Grineer bases on the plains, it's the way the terrain itself has so clearly not be affected by their activities.

As for performance you are surely correct that there would be some degree of performance impact for an increase in visual fidelity. I wouldn't pretend to know what tradeoff makes sense when from a business perspective for DE, and as an end user I don't need to know that. It's fine enough to shine a light on whatever is important to me, and let DE make the call. I really hope they'll at least grab the low hanging fruit and mold future terrain a little though.

[OniDax]

I wish there were village ruins all over the Plains of Eidolon, to make it look like people once lived there. Also wish Mars had more civilian stuff around (not just homes carved into the rock, but old abandoned markets and stuff.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

there's definitely room for improvement though DE seem to focus more on new Tilesets (and now landscapes) rather than revisiting old ones. Grineer Tilesets are fine in this regard: rusty and broken machinery, toxic waste spillages and aftermath of industrial accidents, and power cables snaking along the floor. Corpus tiles could have half-finished proxies, crates of merchandise and random gadgets lying around. they brought back the loudspeaker, though now it speaks in the Corpus' language so most of us have no idea what it's saying, and it can be hard to hear sometimes.

i also can't help but notice that all Grineer tiles have personal Quarters and bunk beds, while the Corpus have none, the closest I've seen is the Changing rooms with the Crewman suits on the walls and Lockers, with those small benches in the middle. do Corpus sleep attached to the wall like spacemen or something?

[(PSN)JustJoshinEnt]

16 minutes ago, (PS4)robotwars7 said:

there's definitely room for improvement though DE seem to focus more on new Tilesets (and now landscapes) rather than revisiting old ones. Grineer Tilesets are fine in this regard: rusty and broken machinery, toxic waste spillages and aftermath of industrial accidents, and power cables snaking along the floor. Corpus tiles could have half-finished proxies, crates of merchandise and random gadgets lying around. they brought back the loudspeaker, though now it speaks in the Corpus' language so most of us have no idea what it's saying, and it can be hard to hear sometimes.

i also can't help but notice that all Grineer tiles have personal Quarters and bunk beds, while the Corpus have none, the closest I've seen is the Changing rooms with the Crewman suits on the walls and Lockers, with those small benches in the middle. do Corpus sleep attached to the wall like spacemen or something?

Possible Corpus, being much more for the extravagant lifestyle, perhaps do not live on base.  They may have chambers elsewhere, or take ships to go "home" when off-duty, thus why they have locker rooms on-base.  Grineer are much more primitive and they just work till they drop and then make new ones.  Infested...are infested.  Being gross is their strongsuit, so...meh.

As for the tilesets...DE probably figures that when the NEW tilesets are sufficiently advanced, they can just swap them in, like they did to Earth, with an overhaul.  No need to revisit when you can more easily design from scratch.  They're likely taking the Venus Open World as an opportunity to do just that.

As for the PoE, I find there is a LOT out there that points to the Grineer being present.  There are large drills digging under the wall around Cetus, you can actually blow them up, too!  The mines, the giant pits.....  Also remember, PoE gets criticized by this community alot as "not up to par with expectations" but it was just the ALPHA Open World, to see if the concept even worked!  That is to say, they just wanted to see if people could RUN an open world map at all, or even enjoy doing so.  Turns out there were issues to resolve, and so they've been doing that in prep for the next one.  It wasn't half-assed or anything, but more accurately, it was just given a semi-finished state to get it "out there" and see how well it worked.  If they went TOO far on the polish, performance issues would have been even worse!  Most likely why they didn't have Tridolons off the bat either.

So far, I think it's all been pretty solid.  I enjoy the little "Lived in" tidbits more than most. I've written and hosted/created several Online MMORPGs (small scale) and I understand how important world building is, but I also understand how much practicality factors in when your To-Do List is growing.  Twinkies on the counter suddenly don't matter as much when compared to Weapon reworks and Stalker quests, ya know?

[(PSN)Zero_029]

6 hours ago, crocodarrel said:

Planets looking like other planets would only bother me if there were other factions than Grineer and Corpus that we were heroing to death in them. I mean, why would the Grinner redevelop their fleet's architectural aesthetic just because they moved some ships to the next world? But encountering the exact same chunk of level more than once in a mission? It's a starkly distracting beacon of artificiality, at least to me. 

haha, I do admit that. In fact I admitted it a few posts above yours. The newer tilesets are definitely an improvement in this regard, but that means Plains of Eidolon is a big step back IMO. It's not so much the objects that are present in the Grineer bases on the plains, it's the way the terrain itself has so clearly not be affected by their activities.

As for performance you are surely correct that there would be some degree of performance impact for an increase in visual fidelity. I wouldn't pretend to know what tradeoff makes sense when from a business perspective for DE, and as an end user I don't need to know that. It's fine enough to shine a light on whatever is important to me, and let DE make the call. I really hope they'll at least grab the low hanging fruit and mold future terrain a little though.

Well what I mean by this is that too many of the planets are identical.
I'm not saying all the technology should be different.
I'm saying that the room design/shape, outside portions, & perhaps terraforming/atmospheric technology should be different.

For example, Mercury's Tileset is identical to Sedna, Saturn, & sometimes (rarely) Ceres.
The outside of Venus is identical to Neptune, Pluto, Europa, Corpus Controlled Mars Nodes, & (on very very rare alerts) Jupiter.

Nothing bothers me more than when I am walking across the surface of Pluto and Eris & look up into the sky to see Jupiter glaring down at me, massive in size...almost as if the planet I am on is orbiting it like a moon.
Or when I exit one of Venus' frozen caverns to see Jupiter gracing the what should be a thick & cloudy Venutian sky.

I just want the planets to feel unique.
For example, a Corpus base on Pluto should have heaters, atmospheric control rooms, red hot coils & etc to keep the base from freezing over.
A Grineer base on Saturn should have processors that are refining the gas & etc.
I'd like Sedna to have the crimson red hue it's sands & rocks have. (I'm SUPER excited to see how Sedna's landscape would look. A crimson world...so damn cool!)

[SenorClipClop]

9 hours ago, Lakais said:

it's not something that would get noticed that much. What with people going full Flash all the time, there's no chance for people to stop and "smell the roses" so to speak. 

You make a good point. But man, I absolutely love playing Solo semi-regularly. Dictating the pace of your own combat, stopping to explore, stealth or like you say, smell the roses -- it's real good. Sure it's not "optimal" or "efficient", but at the end of the day it's a game and it's about enjoying yourself. I would really recommend people try and play solo more often.