HIDEOUT BUILDING FEEDBACK

HIDEOUT BUILDING FEEDBACK
Hello devs, community people and hideout enthusiasts at GGG!

We appreciate your expanding on the tools, removing favour system limitations and the feature highlights of our work. That said, there are still some improvements to the system we would like to see implemented. We have had numerous discussions on this topic and this post serves as a collection of thoughts, frustrations, wishes and ideas of the entire hideout community for the future of hideout building.


QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENTS
First let’s address the flow of building and how clunky it can feel at times. Unintentional drag and misplace, losing an object in the sea of placed objects, trying to work around the edges and uneven ground, texture flickering…we come across quite a few challenges when putting a build together.

✦ UNDO, REDO, COPY/PASTE functions added to the tool.

✦ REVERT SHIFT+R KEYBIND CHANGE. Since you've added the clone function to Shift+R the default rotation no longer works while adding the object that is still selected. We have to place the decoration as is then re-select it to be able to rotate normally and it's massively frustrating. Please assign a different key to clone function and revert rotate keys to their previous functionality.

✦ REMOVE THE HUGE "EDITING" TITLE WHEN EDITOR IS COLLAPSED. It blocks view and gets in the way. It would also be helpful to have a checkable option to auto collapse the editor on mouse out/expand on mouse over.

✦ EDGE FINESSING: it would be so much easier to work with hideout bases if we could get an additional modifiable area at the edges without them being hard blocked. Sometimes the buildable area is even smaller than the texture edges suggest which leaves some unseemly gaps that are a massive pain to work around and try to cover.

✦ LIGHTING OPTIONS: A few selectable light adjustment options to allow us to change the day/night lighting in any hideout would be extremely welcome.

✦ DECORATION COUNTER BASED ON CATEGORIES. We have a decoration limit to prevent a massive performance impact on player systems which is fair. However, if there are decoration categories (such as effects and lighting objects) which cause a greater performance hit wouldn't it make more sense to add a stricter limit to those and a looser limit on non-problematic decorations?

✦ ABILITY TO REMOVE VISUAL CLUTTER. Some hideout bases are littered with vegetation and debris that is very difficult to work around. It would be a huge improvement if we could remove some of that so we can transform the base into a different environment type more easily.


ADDITIONAL TOOL IMPROVEMENTS
While the tool works decently and has already been improved there is so much more we would like to see, depending on if it’s possible within the engine and game.

✦ FULL OBJECT ROTATION including vertical rotation and diagonal manoeuvring.

✦ RESIZING of objects. Some conservative scale of sizing decorations up or down so that the textures don’t get obliterated but we get more choice in how to utilise them.

✦ Y-AXIS positioning. I’ve heard it’s a myth. Being able to sink objects into the ground or adjust their height above ground would be a massive game-changer.

✦ ELEVATION BUILDING. To elaborate on y-axis being extremely wanted and missing QoL of placing separate objects it would also be amazing if we could expand that into full elevation mode where we could add walkable floors and stairs (with full collision) as far as the hideout ceiling allows.

✦ DECORATION COUNTER displayed in the tool for the total number of placed decorations.

✦ OBJECT LINKING for easier maneuvering of combined objects.

✦ SELECTABLE LIST OF PLACED OBJECTS. Finding an object in a full hideout is already daunting enough but the ability to specifically select one entirely disappears under many conditions. Giving us a list of all placed decorations that we can scroll through and click on each one separately would fix this issue.

✦ COLOUR TINTING would be extra incredibly super amazing.


MORE DECORATION OPTIONS
So, we’re greedy. We always want more toys to play with. It would be really great if we got a couple free decorations added to the tool with each new league. There are also some wish items that keep being repeated by almost everyone so they bear mentioning:

✦ MORE SIMPLE BUILDING BLOCKS. We have zero free basic wall objects. Ground decorations could use more different sizes as well as some thickness options. Would be nice to get a few increased size water planes so we could create lake/sea illusion off buildable areas. We could also use more variety in blocking volume sizes and heights.

✦ OLD TEXTURES NEED AN UPDATE. This is understandably a big undertaking and might not happen before PoE2 but some of the textures look so old and pixelated they are barely usable.

✦ MORE LIGHT OPTIONS. We have very few light objects of fixed size and height which can't always be combined well with other objects and sometimes we have to choose to forgo them completely or compromise on aesthetics.

✦ MORE COLOUR OPTIONS. Mostly for light and effect objects, more options would be very welcome (especially coloured flames).


MTX ISSUES
GGG needs to sell MTX to continue making the game and we appreciate that. A lot of us buy plenty of supporter packs and some of us go entirely overboard in the store. However, there are a few very valid frustrations we all face concerning decoration MTX:

✦ DECORATION PRICING. It’s insane. The prices for a single item are so overboard most of us reconsider using them altogether. Not quite sure who the target audience for the hideout MTX is at this point, but please - if it’s not possible to sell them as an unlock then please at least multiply the count of objects we get per purchase. 5$ for a single decoration item is a hard no for a lot of us.

✦ LACK OF THEMATIC PACK BUNDLES. It would be a nice addition to the store to get discounted bundles of thematically linked decorations. Multiple pieces of different decorations of the same type for a reasonable discounted price (perhaps combine with previous point).

✦ BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS/UPDATED TEXTURE OBJECTS SOLD AS MTX. This feels kind of predatory, especially when we have a lot of old objects that are in dire need of a texture update to then see them sold at a premium feels pretty bad.

✦ EXCLUSIVE BASES BECOMING UNAVAILABLE. Please stop this. It plainly sucks missing out on hideout bases because they're either included in a supporter pack, or a league challenge making it impossible to obtain in the future.

The limited availability discourages us from creating builds for these base types since who would even be able to use them (even if we personally have them)?

✦ SCOURGE HIDEOUT DECORATION. This should be an exciting and fun object to use but it's mostly just another problem in its current form due to the decoration limit. If possible, please make it only change the ambience and add the objects placed while in Scourge mode on top of already placed objects in normal mode OR make it add a significant amount to the available decoration limit (at least 300 to make it usable).


HIDE UI OPTION
Hide UI option please.



Lastly, thank you for implementing this system and allowing us to have a relaxing hobby we can share with friends and community. Hope you continue to support it and communicate with us!

Much appreciated, hideout discord.

Please GGG.... all of this is so important! Also could you add a cherry blossom tree, or even some pinkish decoration maybe?

Hi, I'm G4nzo and I approve this message

I also fully agree with the above suggestions, requests and frustrations.

In turn, I would like to add my ideas.

SANDBOX

It happens that among the players there are talented hideout creators who have ideas that cannot be implemented in standard hideout bases, and there is no financial opportunity to correct this situation.
Therefore, I ask you to add a "sandbox".

What we want to see in it:
• Possibility to choose any of the existing hideouts.
• Possibility to use any MTX decors.
• Possibility to use any MTX portals.
• Possibility to see unopened/unavailable masters (if character dont meet this NPC).

This will solve the financial difficulties of the creators. But those who want to use these hideouts will have to purchase MTX.


DECORS WITH NOTHING TO COMBINE WITH.

There are decorations that I would like to use in my project, but it is impossible simply because they must be bundled with another decors.
For example, a safe from Heist, doors from Oriath, various arches, Synthesis bridges. This is what I quickly remembered. If you understand them much more.
Please add their partners - walls, podiums, and so on.


CHANGING THE ATMOSPHERE AND THE BACKGROUND.

Hideout creators can very easily find themselves in a situation where they like the landscape of a hideout, but it's from a different season. He can make every effort to hide the greenery in the stones and snow, create a winter landscape. But he is powerless in front of the background. Using Blocking Volume 25 saves, but not always, sometimes its size is not able to close the rainforest in Overgrowth Hideout. This is just one example. In addition, there is the problem of lighting. If you want to create a night in a daytime hideout, you can place a lot of Fellshrine Ruins 2, but they take up space, change the landscape and stop giving a shadow when they move away.

Therefore, we want to see:
• Decors in the Atmosphere section providing such effects as: Delirium Fog, Abyss Fog, Rain, Global shading from the "sun", red and blue sparkles from the Solaris and Lunaris temples, global Corruption. If you can add something new from yourself, we will be glad.
• Decors in the Layer section (not global, a square or a line with a huge range): Corrosion Synthesis, Darkness, Winter Storm (high white fog with snow particles), Sandstorm. So that players do not abuse the effects of the layer, placing them in the center of the hideout, make them irresistible (like blocking volume).
• Landscape decors: large rocks (summer, winter, neutral), very deep ledge, large lake or river, large frozen lake or river, large forest, large sand/snow dunes, large bridge, slums and Oriath city (most difficult). All of the above should work as a Layer - a square or a line with a huge range.


INCREASE RANGE INTERACTION WITH OBJECTS.

We can create the most beautiful Map Device, or hide Stash, Bench and the most problematic Heist Locker in an extremely creative way. And this is an incredible headache, because the objects have their own collision, which can put all the work to waste, because the objects cannot be used, since the character does not reach it.

Therefore, we kindly ask you to increase the range of interaction with objects and NPCs (it will be much easier than reducing or removing the collision of all existing decors).


RECLAIM BUTTON

Perhaps I am the only such person who, in the heat of creating another hideout, does not care about the aim of the desired decoration and hits the Dismiss button, which brings Huge pain, because not the last placed object disappears (which could pass for Ctrl + Z) but the very first one. And sometimes this first object can be one of hundreds, and it is very difficult to find the loss.
In general, can this button be removed and for an identical action it will be necessary to hold Ctrl before pressing it?

First of all, a big thank you to Revan for compiling our thoughts into one post. It sums up a vast majority of discussions in the hideout discord all of us had in the past months about decorating, many of them being reoccurring topics and not one-time talks. I wholeheartedly agree with everything written in the original post.

The first topic introduced needs no explanation; the Copy - Paste function that was recently added is more of a hindrance rather than a benefit, possibly due to the overlapping command with the reverse rotation. When decorating, each piece placed needs to be finessed. Nobody bulk dumps decorations one next to the other, unless you're again making something specific that requires it, like a wall. I have tried to use the function to my advantage many times but in all aspects besides wall crafting, copy pasting is in my way. Please either remove it or change the button that allows it. Give us back immediate reverse rotation, it is extremely frustrating.

Edges and uneven ground need no introduction either. Edges with collision units is why we mostly use massive decorations like fellshire ruins and large rocks to cover them; it is much more pleasing to the eye to use decorations that respect the average height of the hideout that I'm going for. When it comes to ground bumps I also have made a point for myself to use a large ground-type decoration that highlights the natural bumps a hideout has, so that I know how to design it around them. It's alright in sand and soil types of ground but Arboreal hideout? That's ramparts. Why do Ramparts have soil bumps?

All additional tool improvements are wishes we've been having for years. Some of us already have some ideas in mind on how to use tint, the height axis and even the vertical rotation. I cannot stress this section enough, Revan summed it up perfectly.

I want to chime in on the textures aspect and MTX. There are specific decorations, like Sarn Palms for example, that have amazing uses but everyone avoids them, because their textures have not aged well. At the same time MTX decorations that are pretty basic in concept, like a catapult, a cauldron or some trees can be massively and surprisingly unique, forcing the decorator to improvise a mashup of many decorations to achieve the same result, often times not in the same quality. For example, the Fireplace cone fire lighting cannot be achieved in any other way and its only available through this very basic - and seemingly very mandatory purchase.

It is my strong belief, and I believe it is shared among many of us, that MTXs should bear the unique signature of their theme, rather than a generic one that should be available as a baseline. While I understand selling to whale players is a top priority, I hope that profits from them are not based around selling trees and fireplaces but rather unique, high-end MTXs like celestial, demonic or nightfall pieces.

So I hope that we can reach a new balance in this issue by updating the base decoration textures - in line with PoE 2 as well - and shifting the MTX availability to favor not only whales but also decorators too. While ideally basic MTXs like the ones mentioned above would be better seen into the free rotation, a meaningful price drop would work as well.

Finally, the "save hideout" option is a reason enough for me to not trade with someone if I'm working on a hideout. Many of us have multiple drafts waiting for competitions. I am not allowing anyone to see my work and blissfully snatch it before I choose to submit it. When and how my work becomes public should be in the decorator's hands and not anyone else's. It's an issue of consent and boundaries here, if I may use these words.

Thank you for reading all of the above and thank you for the platform you've given us to be so creative.

+1 and big tnx to Revan for the initial well written post!


my addtion to the Wishlist would be:

HIDEOUT-ENGINE

1) Shadows are a major problem with higher resolutions getting more and more standart for many gamers as the prices went finally down for GPUs and ppl buy widescreen monitors >16:9 .
While the renderdistance of the shadows is 99% fine for 1920x1080 and in most cases up to 2560x1440 all looks "good" - if you then switch to 3440x1440 you may get a moving cutline on dark areas where further away all is bright and has no shadows beyond the line or you get poppin in and out of existance shadows from large trees etc. on the edges of the screen really breaking the Hideout.
A resolution bound shadow renderdistance increase would be nice but could drop systems below playable frames so an option like "widescreen hideout shadows" that could let us check the perfromance it takes and deceide if to use could be the best option not forcing anyone.

2) ON/OFF switch for every "normal" Hideout to completely disable all of its default lights and the direction of the shadows. This alone would double the options we have and give us a whole new world to play with. (just a parameter like "lightsource": 0/1 and we have to deal with the consequences)

3) The big brother of nr 2 would be a freely moveable (x/y/z) Default-lightsource of the Hideout with a full hue/ saturation / luminance control. But the simple one would go a long way allready.


additional notes on:

MTX ISSUES

The pricetag will just prevent me from using any mtx-decos (even those i have) from the store beside the hideout-bases for any hideout i publish.
And that will stay that way, until the decos come a way down in price or you get 10+ of them with a single purchase. I have bought 250+ stash-tabs but there is no world where i will ever buy 30 of the same walls at the actual costs!

Tnx GGG for this amazing feature - but you started it - and now we want more ;)

I also fully agree with the above suggestions, requests and frustrations.

I want one thing

HIDEOUT-RECORDING-ENGINE

100% free moveable camera for recording Hideouts. Only having one single perspective (over your character) limites the showcase of Hideout by a lot.

Here's to hoping that hideouts, being my most favorite feature of this game, are important to the developers.

All I want for Christmas is for the light source to be removed from the standard portal device, or at least make it such that it can be toggled off!

Also, would it be too much to ask for some non-mtx tall walls to build castles with other than the shrine pieces??

Feed the creativity, GGG!

With Love,

Keld

I fully agree with every idea shared here until now and most of them after. So far I really appreciate changes done to hideouts like the unified hideout system back then, the removal of favor and adding new bases and decorations from time to time. However, I still think the hideout community deserves more attention as I think making hideouts is one of the most fun parts of this game and even for some; the only endgame.

I want to share my thoughts on official hideout competitions as I have more hideout competition running experience than hideout building experience, and changes I had in mind about hideouts are already present in this thread.


RULES AND RESULTS
Rules are set to create equal competition for everyone and they need to be applied if set, if not changed in the next competition or on the run if needed. When rules are not exactly applied, they create discomfort and mistrust, followed by lots of drama. There are many examples of this, I want to share one. In the last hideout competition, a submission broke a rule, it was brought to attention and nothing was done. I would remove that submission from winners, slide the rest (like 20th to 19th, 19th to 18th, and on), and pick a new one as the last. If it's hard to track submissions according to that rule, you can remove it in the next competition. My thoughts here also apply to all types of official competitions as I've seen no action being done after it turned out that some winners broke rules in a few competitions. There is nothing wrong with saying "We're sorry." and making a small reassessment, we're all human after all.
18.01.2024 Edit: Unfortunately this happened again in the 2023 Hideout Competition. I told you in an e-mail before you announced the results.

SEPERATION OF MTX AND NON-MTX IN 2 CATEGORIES
A large portion of the player base is only using non-MTX hideouts. When the competition is separated into 2 categories like this, people not interested in MTX will check the non-MTX category results as they will be able to see all of them gathered there. And people who buy MTX or are interested in MTX will also check the MTX category results. This was done in the Well-Dressed Exile competition and I think it resulted pretty nicely. This change will also stop the speculation about MTX-included works being favored more over non-MTX works, as it will be %50-%50.
18.01.2024 Edit: Thank you for doing this in the 2023 Official Hideout Competition!

TRANSPARENCY ABOUT JUDGING
I think competitors should have the right to know who will judge their works and how. I also think it will be most professional if hideout competitions are judged by level designers. In the 2020 hideout competition, level designers commented on top 5 entries but it wasn't clear if they did the judging or not. If it becomes clear that most fit and experienced artists are judging the submissions, I'm sure there will be more submitters who will say "They are doing their best.". If a similar route was followed in the Well-Dressed Exile Competition, that speculation wouldn't come up for example.
18.01.2024 Edit: Hideout Competition 2023 announced level designers are doing the judging for the first time ever with the results announcement saying "Level Designers: We saw a lot of strong entries in both categories, and we each had favorites that didn't make it into our overall top 3 picks.". Thank you for this! The only problem I see here is it would be better if this was announced at the start of the competition. Because to be able to reach this info, newcomers would have to check Competition 2020 and even there it wasn't certain if level designers were doing the judging or not, they just commented and there were only 2 of them. I also think it will be better if their ranks are shared in future competitions if there are any, such as seeing "Head Level Designer" would be much more confiding before starting a creation for a competition. Knowing how the judging process works would be awesome as well. The more transparent, the better.


These are my thoughts about hideout competitions. I avoided clearly pointing out a few things on purpose to not bring up previously created drama. I hope they are still understandable. And I really hope ideas shared in this thread will be implemented. As a player aiming to go deeper in hideout building, I would love to see an improved hideout building system. Just like the game is being improved to Path of Exile 2, why not Hideouts 2 as well? :)

Rotating camera might also be of use to us in checking previously unseen corners to fix, besides recording. Sometimes I hide a lamp inside trees, for example, and won't realize it's not centered properly if I don't move my character to the other end of the room.

Get it, go into recording mode, check corners you hadn't previously checked. That sounds immaculate.