Where to start? Well, I’ve spent about 200 hours in game so far (I know it’s not much for you vets, but if you combine my other gaming experience, I may have good ideas) and I have come up with ways that this game could be improved. There’s nothing saying that the game isn’t good, it’s great in fact, simultaneously frustrating me and keeping me playing. It’s stimulating, to say the absolute least. I’ve dug up rocks, I’ve dug up dirt, I’ve dug anything that could be dug, and I dig the digging. In that way, resource collection is pretty rad, and complete for the most part. Which brings me to my first point.
As an independent resource, http://boundlesscrafting.com/ is pretty much one of the absolute best user generated gaming resources, giving me a simple “cookbook” for everything in the game as of yet. However, that’s not the point I’m actually trying to make. That cookbook is incomplete. I feel as if everything collected should be able to be used in a recipe in some shape or fashion, excluding the color change or “filler” recipes that most games have to bulk up their pages. As with everything I over explain, I should probably provide an example. The easiest and most worn out one is Gravel. It’s just useless. In my opinion, it’s an ugly block, and logically doesn’t make much sense that I’m breaking down my crafting benches creating rocks when I have hundreds of pebbles that I can make use of. Transmuting it into riverstones to use as ammo for slingbows, runes or something else that would make use of tiny pebbles would be rad, but not generally needed. However, what’s the deal with concrete? It’s a simple recipe, real world, cement, sand and gravel. Easy peasy. But sand is used for glass, so I can’t include that other tint-irrelevant block in my gripe. There’s brick mixtures, but what do they use? Stone and clay? It’s strange that clay is actually super fine gravel in a suspension, the very building block of stone-age civilizations. Make use of the stuff or don’t include it. If it’s purely decorative, then that’s also considered a use, but as an innovative Oortling, I would like to make logical technological advancements, and I completely understand if it’s not a direct mimicry of human advancement. Like how I can make a buzz saw on the workbench without actual metal matching it’s requirement. Somehow the ancient tech component changes the copper into a steel blade. So, that departure from the point aside, things should be used if they are in the path of gathering. Ice, Glacial Ice, Gravel, Etc.
Piggybacking off of that idea, there should probably be more uses for more commonly acquired items, and maybe reduce the dependency on rarer items in everything. Tallow should be able to be used for something else other than torches. Sap should be able to be used for something other than glue. Leaves, man, leaves. Otherwise, the player ends up with a needlessly huge amount of supplies with no purpose clogging up their limited inventory space, inciting the pack rat in all of us, hoping that one day it all gets used.
Interesting skills. C’mon, guys, I’m sure you all have complaints about the current leveling system, and the lack of adaptability of different builds. I’ve already touched on the weekly respec cooldown, but this is addressing the over arching issue of cookie cutter builds. Every level, stats should increase. Every level you should get HP / Damage / etc. You should have an option for specialization, of course, but making it so that every character uses their skills in a broadly identical pattern really harshes my mellow. The holy trinity of gaming is something you dudes in the dev department seem to be leaning into, but I find that I put points in almost all the same places regardless of my build. There’s only a few recipe skills, and the bulk / mass crafting ones are kind of a must. If every character eventually takes a skill, because they either need it or it is required to advance to the next tier of difficulty, it should be granted with experience, and not objective skill points. Skill points should be for cool, normally inaccessible things, that add flavor and uniqueness to a build or class. For example, double jump is a given skill. You kinda need it. Same with ledge grab, since climbing mountains without having to jam on your space bar is kind of more of a need than a luxury, unless you’re one of those gamers that play Dark Souls for the masochism and not the skill. Give us cool, useful stuff, that would make us unique and specialized, you dig?
Portals! God, I love your portals, they are kinda one of the most unique things about this game, and they make the tedium of travel a bit more varied and fun. But! There’s somethings about it that kinda make them feel like a crutch for gameplay, and not really the stellar, dynamic idea that I embrace. To explain that a bit more, it’s awesome that we have hubs, like Mobius Plaza, Portal Seekers, and Hunter’s Highway, but what happens if the population swells? Really, if there’s only 12 planets, those hubs make it so that players lose their sense of wonder, just slamming them through the systems at super speeds makes the planets feel a bit contrived, taking away their charm and reducing their environmental differences to just two factors : color and level. Well, I’m going to have to farm a level 3 planet because I’m max level. Dang, the number of planets gets reduced to 4. Oh shoot, I need to get some rubies taking the number to 1. Time to go to Vulpo… the red one. That’s not really how I want to think about the worlds. I want to be a bit more interested in them, and I want to see what each one has to offer. This ties into speciation of your critters, too. I get that there’s a bazillion ports, so it’s feasible that the planets kind of have limited species richness. Like Spitters are Spitters, because somewhere along the line, old great great grand pappy Spitter went on a walkabout through someone’s port and now they’re infesting all of the connected planets like a tiny, angry plague. But, how did they adapt to toxic worlds just by walking through some dude’s port? There would need to be a logical evolutionary pathway that lead to their continued survival. I mean, this is me nitpicking because I’m grasping at straws trying to make the planets feel alive. Really trying here, because I love this game, and I don’t want to lose any semblance of immersion that I may have had. I mean, you guys make amazing concept art all the time, I can’t imagine that you don’t want to follow that organic channel, watching your little Spitters come to life so we can all cherish the adventures of Great Grandpappy Steve the Sultry Spitter.
Resource distribution is kinda wonky. I love the fact that if I claim a plot for a mine, the surrounding resources undergo wild regeneration making each trip unique. However, lets get into the idea that I’ve had my nose to a rock, sniffing out the most efficient path to my loot. Having a sonic sounder would be amazing, giving me a general idea where to dig, based on the echos from a device. I mean, I’m already making out with the dirt, might as well ping around me every now again. It would be oh so very useful to have something like this for oh so many reasons.
How about something that makes me feel like I’m changing the world around me? Impacting the environment with my continued logging of the same grove, creating an uptick of other trees that would normally fight for resources? Or, possibly all of the Spitters around Therka Market get the hint that there’s hundreds of Oortlings running around on a daily basis, and maybe, just maybe, it’s not a good place for them to start a family. So they could go on their portal hopping adventures with their Sexy Grandpappy. It’s just the little things, adding some some heat maps, player tracking or some other logistic demographic function so you devs could make the worlds feel like they’re actually being blanketed with grand Spongebob statues and everyone’s shop plinths. Just a little impact would make all the difference in the world. Literally. Completely literally.
For the love of all that is holy, please clarify the technology tiers. I get that I’m just a lone Oortling plopped down on a planet to gather sticks and rocks, but how is it that I create a workbench (with a metal vise that uses no metal - refer to my previous statement about Hell Gravel) then immediately start creating spark cores and this super high end tech with no real understanding of how the hell I am so resourceful. If I really was this crazy good at making something from nothing, then why did I end up on this planet in the first place? Adding some more text to quest objectives would totally clear this up, and it’s super simple to do. Then again, it wouldn’t really explain some of the other wacky leaps, but at least I wouldn’t wonder how I created spark wire, or even got the idea how to. Maybe I am that Oorting good, who knows?
I will keep updating this, but, please understand that these criticisms come from a place of very real, very tangible love for this game. I wouldn’t invest the time writing about this unless I actually wanted to see it achieve it’s full potential. 