Returning Player Impressions.

Returning to play after several years gone. Here are some of my loves and dislikes and impressions as a returning player (its been a few year). I may have more impressions as I go through the different ships for the first time again. So far I’ve only really experimented with HVs.


Loved the changes:.

1. The water is so much better.
   
   
2. Graphics are so much better in general - and i’m still using the same PC!
   
   
3. Much Much more block shapes!
   
   
4. In creative, actions done to remove blocks using the mutitool can be undone using the undo button.
   
   
5. The attention given to the first few days for beginners.
   

Dislike The changes:

I’ve always thought the HV was special/unique to this game, so I’m a bit sensitive to changes to the HV…

1. HV cannot climb up a 90 degree wall anymore. I miss this terribly. I don’t think it was necessary as some sort of balance.
   
   
2. HV downward speed (when going off a cliff) is artificially held back to something very slow even when NOT moving in any other direction anymore. How it was before was not great either, but this is just as artificial and less fun/dangerous (no chance of drowning in a lake or taking fall damage for instance) not to mention virtually removing any need for a building constraint that feels strange (good/strong boosters).
   

Changes I’d thought I’d see by now:

1. There are so many hidden shortcut keys for so many things, or just shortcuts for actions that you have to figure out in order to do things that I'm not going to list them all. The GUI should introduce them to us/have graphical interfaces/right click menus to the actions the shortcut is for and display the shortcut key (or the words NA or undefined or ND…) for almost all of them.
   
   
   1. This was by far the biggest failure the game had for me as a returning player. I knew I could do some things but couldn’t figure out/remember HOW… had to constantly go to the web and look things up, or browse the shortcut list - very frustrating. This was acceptable in alpha, but this is supposedly a released game now. For a brand new player who would not even know what is possible this is just terrible.
      
      
   2. If attempting to address this, a place to start might be God flying Mode (and the toggling of it) in creative, and the toggling between the WIFI connected device toolbar and the player toolbar in survival.
      
2. In creative, you still can’t test out how your base/CV feels as you move about within it because you still can’t get to the normal survival mode of operation for the jetpack. Instead you still have to spawn them in a survival game to test… annoying as heck. (Unless I couldn't find the option? Please let me know..) - or you have to just create your blueprints in a “survival” game while looking up all the console commands just to get started … which is also bloody annoying.
   
   
3. Use of the shortcut key for auto brake while using a HV toggles between 3 settings, when only two are relevent for an HV - that is two of the three settings do the same thing. (all three are needed for SV/CVs). I think this is not new? If it is then i guess this should go under changes i dislike!
   

 

Removing the hover engine was a really bad idea imo. Part of the fun of hover vehicles was racing them, and having big air was a fun aspect to it. Same for loop-de-loop ramps. Now HVs are basically less useful SVs that don't offer any advantages against an SV.

 

If I understand your complaint correctly correctly, you can switch between God mode and regular by pressing 'g' in creative. You may need to cycle your jetpack to get it working again after you do this.

Same concept applies to Survival, but you must first go into console and type in 'godmode', after which you can toggle it on/off with 'g'.

Hope that helps!

 

I think they have an issue with how the jetpack itself works in creative mode, not with cycling god mode.
In creative mode the jetpack is not the same as in survival mode. It hovers in place in creative, as if you are using god mode except without being able to phase through things.

I also share their frustration with how the jetpack works in creative mode.
I could argue that we already have god mode at the push of a single button so there is no reason for the jetpack to behave differently in creative than survival, flight characteristics wise.
It should be infinite fuel perhaps, but the flight characteristics should be the same IMO.

One of the reasons this can be frustrating is because many shapes that should be climbable, such as certain stairs , often times can't be and you have to jetpack jump up them (in survival).
Doesn't really work in creative mode since the jetpack isn't subject to gravity in creative and you have to actively descend after jumping.
You just don't get the correct feel of traversing certain angles and shapes in creative mode.

I believe that is at least one of the things they are referring to. I could be wrong though.

 

Yes you got this exactly right and explained it much better! Thanks!

 

Haven't been able to get them to work since they were removed. The commands for them no longer work

 

I'm almost 100% sure you guys are talking about two different things, but calling it by the same name.

The hover engines I know are the ones that keep the HV up to 3m above the ground.
Which is also what Taelyn is likely talking about.

@Fenra369 are you thinking of something else?

 

Insopor is correct, my apologies! I was referring to the Hover Booster. Not sure how I ended up typing Engine so many times. I'm also not sure but, it seems like some elements of the booster still end up working somehow even if they aren't triggered (in some cases HVs will randomly jump up, no idea what triggers it tho).

 

Not quite following, the booster as I understood was removed from vanilla completely, and the interface for the booster no longer exists. Is it still in the game somewhere? Or are you referring to the bouncing issues?

 

Instead of speculating over and over you could jump in game and look.
It was never removed.



They never removed it from the game.
Years ago they DID add the functionality of it to hover vessels that don't have one installed, simply for the purpose of recovering your vessel if it sinks under the surface of a body of water.

Both with and without it installed you still activate it the same, Shift+spacebar.
In all my years it never had an interface.
I think it DID have a charge progress bar at one point, but I also may be misremembering that with something else.

Now, the usefulness of it, along with most of the HV in general, has been reduced to basically nothing. But that is a separate matter.
The hover booster is not really useful anymore since as soon as you start trying to move forward it immediately stops rising up and begins descending.

This is not how it behaved in the past, no. It used to continue to rise until it hit its max height, which was determined by weight of craft and how many you installed.
But it continued to rise as you moved forward in the past, which is WHY is was useful so you could use it to get over objects easily.
Now it behaves very differently and it makes it really not have a purpose any longer.
HVs in general behave poorly as of late. They don't hover properly, snag on everything, etc, etc, etc. They have MANY issues at present.
In fact they have been near useless since their flight model was changed to make them all floaty and sink slowly like they are on a cloud. They have behaved like a pile of .... ever since then.

But the hover booster still remains and always has. It just doesn't function the same.