Since the whole debacle about bomb mining and prestige wars I have been wary about the debug menu. To me it is a helpful tool for discovering mechanics in this game but I am afraid that it is being used by some people to easily min/max the mechanics and increase the gap between the casual and more dedicated players.
I am a PC player (lvl 151) but the fact that the debug menu and testing universes are only available to players on PC make the above problem only worse imo.
I’m sure it is challenging for the Devs because of the complications brought on by cross platform gameplay but there has to be a better solution. I know everything wont be fair 100% of the time.
Another concern I have is the more unnatural builds to accommodate max yields for farming. Yes this is a sand box game but maybe more natural style builds should be encouraged than some of the screenshot examples I have seen from the farming testing?
My proposed solution would be to limit the debug menu to the testing server and provide more tools or UI information to tell us things like altitude.
Don’t forget how foliage can be turned down on PC and not PS4. As well as those mods that make meteors more visible etc. Lots of things that give pc players an advantage over us console players.
Being a PC player, I don’t think the debug menu really gives that big of an advantage on the live server. Test servers should be available to everyone, regardless of what platform you’re on. I think the issue with the game being on PS4 is that Sony might not want game devs to put test servers on console, however, I don’t really see the harm it causes since you can attach access to the test server to a purchased copy of the game and it would be a separate game app you would launch from the console. It could very well be a limitation that Sony puts on game devs and not really something that Wonderstruck decided on themselves; which makes me feel like this game going ton console was probably a bad move because of how much time and effort was spent in developing the game for another platform. On the other side of that, the player population probably wouldn’t have changed much since Early Access.
As for unusual builds for farming, I think this is naturally going to happen anyways because of the building habits a lot of folks have expressed so far in the game. People are naturally going to gravitate towards the most effective way to get something but there will be plenty of people who focus on building visually appealing projects. The real project design challenge, IMO, is building a farm that is both functionally optimized and visually appealing.
I don’t think it’s really the dev team’s place to dictate how someone should build their farm so long as it isn’t done to offend someone.
EDIT: I do think that console and PC players should have access to the same stuff. I just think it’s Sony placing limitations on Wonderstruck on what they can and can’t do on the PS4 platform. It’s why console games don’t ever really get mods.
I mean with farming it will give a great advantage. Ps4 players will have to ask a pc player where something needs to be changed on the farm for it to be at max yield. Unless we just want our farms to look like exactly like some one else’s. And the foliage setting is not in the debug menu so I don’t see why we can’t get that option. Just like the ps4 pro looks exactly the same as the normal ps4. It doesn’t utilize the better performance of the pro. We should be able to get the min max graphics setting as well imo. Or at least some kind of form of it.
the hud details on crops display information about yield optimisations, the only difference it its stated as a % of the max possible (arguably more useful) rather than a straight multiplication factor.
I dont see how removing it from the live servers on pc should make anyone on the ps consoles better? Not fair true but can we just accept that both devices are different to a significant degree and those differences have consequences? I am not an expert at all on what it takes to implement stuff on ps that we have on pc but could it be ps limitations? Could it be Sony? Idk.
I am a pc player hence why we should all just accept things . Jk!
I doubt that its all due to limitations of the ps4. Have you seen what spider man looks like on the ps4 pro for instance. I mean with boundless we don’t have an option for the foliage. We don’t even have water reflections even tho I’m sure the console can handle it. The debug menu I thought was something they could put on the ps4 but the UI needs a overhaul. And that’s not something that happens over night nor is it something (imo) that should take precedence over farming,hunter, titans etc. Something that’s worked on little by little sure but to stop working on features that belong in the game no.
Yeah, I think Sony doesn’t like something called ‘Debug menu’ in a release game but simply renaming it doesn’t work either since it’s not exactly console friendly, you need a mouse and a keyboard attached in order to use it, so besides a rename it needs a full UI overhaul…
Sadly Sony doesn’t allow debugging UI’s i wonder what their definition of a debugging menu is and if a simple rename would suffice to allow it
They also do their own testing / vetting of patches. So it would be too cumbersome for the development process to have to wait on Sony each time they do a point udate since they sometimes do several in one day… which sucks… but hey I guess it’s like that to prevent freak bugs from frying your PS4 =/
If it had an UI which would work with a controller they would allow it with a rename but they also have standards for the user interface. It’s a console, people usually don’t have a mouse and keyboard attached to it…
After farming update, I think PS4 players are just missing coordinate live tracking benefit as color data (for most of things) will be available on client side I think coordinate/altitude tracker should be available without need of debug or jumping into places menu all the time (I don’t know how PS players actually check it)
Oh almost forgot, plot view is not available for PS players, which is awesome tool. I think when it came developers did say that they are looking way to implement it for all.
I really hope these features get available without need of debug menu
The touchpad is also a button, 2 actually, left and right side, but they are already being used by the game.
if you connect a PS4 controller to Windows for instance it can indeed emulate a mouse touchpad but it’s rather annoying to use especially since you then also need to press the touchpad down to get the left mouse click and of course that moves the mouse cursor again as well and the Debug menu is rather tiny…
And still this is not how a normal console user interface would work. There is already code in the game to emulate the mouse by using one of the analog sticks so that could be re-used as well and if they change the text size, etc. it would already be much better. But what would F1 be? and F9???
You probably should have quoted the entire sentence so people can get the full context.
Consoles seem to like putting limitations and restrictions on game developers. To me the only really good reason to ever put a game on them is the access to the potential customer base for the product. That’s about it.
I do think it’s a good thing we have as many players as we have. I think it’s complete BS how Sony manages PS4 and their console services. They need to be way more open to what game developers want to provide their players. Sadly there’s nothing we can do about Sony.
. Jk!
I think coordinate/altitude tracker should be available without need of debug or jumping into places menu all the time (I don’t know how PS players actually check it)