Hello all,
I’ve been following the game since it was Oort, and recently decided to purchase it on sale.
I’ve been enjoying the game to an extent, the worlds are unique and it certainly has a relaxing but immersive playstyle to it.
I’m really excited for the PS4 crossplay and I feel that will bring more life to the game.
I also purchased the game because I heard the devs were responsive and really took player feedback into consideration.
Let’s get into the things I didn’t enjoy, and the feedback I have as a new player.
I’ve been discussing most of my thoughts in the community discord as to get an even feel of what everyone things so that I can expand my feedback.
- The leveling and progression system
I’m not going to lie, but by looking at the progression system it seems like someone wrote a list of skills and just threw them in without really thinking about the
effects it could have with the players, and their different playstyles. The progression system doesn’t feel like a progression system, there is not enough reward for the time it takes to level up.
It ends up feeling more like a content-locked timegate that can never fully be opened, and this is by far the most frustrating thing in the game for me. I’ll detail every tree as deep as possible.
Core - I personally hated sprinting, crouching, and even the compass being locked behind core skills. I believe it would be much more efficient to combine every skill in this category.
To further assist new players, they could be given their first skill point as a tutorial in sanctum, for this skill, that would help show the how do I do this, why am I doing this, and what does this do aspect of skills.
Attributes - I believe the attributes should be scrapped out of skills, and put into their own category entirely. Attribute points should be rewarded on leveling up, and separate from content-based skills.
This will allow people to build an “mmorpg” like character, without restricting them because they specced everything into different crafting paths.
Item Crafting - I do NOT enjoy recipe locking at all. As a matter of fact, one of the earliest things I did was go out to purchase a refinery so that I could get some nice smooth stone for my house.
After placing it I found that I had to unlock common block recipes, which requires common machine recipes anyway, so buying a machine in this game is almost completely pointless in my opinion.
I think locking only the crafting-stations behind skills would be balanced for a couple of reasons.
Players would be able to sell machines, and since their recipes are not locked, they would be worth more money to players who don’t want to spend their skill points for crafting stations.
Players would be able to buy machines and craft the recipes available to that machine, which still takes time and effort to get the resources, without pumping out 2 skill points just to use it.
For players who want to specialize in crafting trade, I would still keep furnitures and ingredients under a skill lock, this will make carpenters who can sell furniture and such.
Additionally I would add skills that increase the speed and reduces the cost of crafting, so that players who spec into crafting can make more out of their time and material than those who dont spec.
Tool Mastery - I honestly think this tree is mostly fine, maybe add some special abilities like mining more area, or a short activated skill.
Exploration - This is also mostly fine, I’d do away with shout range because it’s pretty annoying to respond and not have the other person hear you because you have no points.
The rest of the skills fit rather nicely.
Equipment Crafting - I would combine this with item crafting somehow, also mostly fine.
Combat Mastery - Neat, pretty efficient, would like to see more active skills, other effects.
Abilities - Also mostly fine. Maybe move antagonist and shadow effect to the combat tree, because that’s really what it’s for.
Above all I believe skill points shoult NOT be maxed out, or give us enough to unlock everything, and here are my reasons why.
It stagnates the character, once I unlock everything in mining, what am I to do for the rest? I will be forced to find another player, or spend gold, which sucks if I want to play alone.
I will be forced to create another character, which is pointless in this regard because the time it takes to put my items away, log out, log in, get my items, and do something else, I could have just done anyway on the first character.
What is the difference between 1 maxed out character with 1 big shop, compared to 3 specialized characters in 1 big shop? Literally nothing, except for the mmorpg aspect.
Speaking of the mmorpg aspect, if we lock attributes to levels and not skills, then players can build and be efficient with what they want, while still building some sort of RPG archetype character.
Having attributes still locked would encourage people to make different types of characters like tanks, healers, dps, whatever else you need in an mmo, while still allowing them to be able to craft what they want.
I know the devs, and people like having specialized characters, and I believe unlocking skills wouldn’t affect that much.
Is it really unfair for someone to spend twice the amount of time learning another trade, just to have half the effectiveness you would have focusing on one trade?
Systems like this work perfectly fine in games such as Runescape, and minecraft sevrers with mcmmo or other rpg plugins. Even though all skills are unlocked you will still see specs.
Time + Effort = Results. Some people won’t want to put in the time or effort to go down multiple paths.
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The Inventory
I spent the most amount of my time sorting through the mess of the inventory. The crafting window is annoying, and I haven’t quite gotten used to the way rotating between two hands works.
Generally I just go back into my inventory and click the item again. It would be nice to be able to assign the same item on multiple slots. That was I can have 1 2 3 4 be a torch and a different tool.
Maybe there is a way and I just haven’t quite found it. I really don’t care to look at my citizen stare around as much as I’d like to see a bigger crafting window, or some sorting options. -
The Life
What really turns me off from big ambitious games like this, and huge minecraft servers, are that everything seems dead. You’ll have these massive beautiful creations, but nobody around. A ghost town.
Even if the playerbase was in the thousand or more range, with how big everything is it would still seem pretty spread.
I would like to see generated structures with npcs, maybe wandering NPC characters, just something to add a little life.
Speaking of NPC characters, even just adding an “npc” shopkeeper to your shops would work wonders. Someone’s gotta be there to sell the stuff you’re buying, HECK, it’s in the trailer!
This would also help with townlike structures. Maybe an NPC for an inn, or shops in town, little things like that.
In a scenario that nobody is online in the area I’m in. I can be exploring, 20% health, weapons low on durability, stumble across a small village.
Nobody is online, but it still has life and charm to it. I can repair my gear at a blacksmith someone built and hired, rest and heal at an inn someone build, and hired an npc to manage.
Just a little bit of quaint life can go a long way for a game like this.
Thanks for reading my feedback, rant, or whatever you want to call it. I appreciate it.
Discussions are encouraged! Please pitch in, depate with me, or toss more ideas!
