Hello, im Gringo. I just recently got around to signing up on the forums, even though I have been playing the game some time now. I would have preffered to post this in the feedback forum but I do not have permission to do so. First off I would like to start by saying how much I truly love this game. I have over 1000 hours played. However, recent changes seem to be coming in a way that is creating an unnecessary amount of tedium and making the game more unplayable. It was hard enough to get my friends to play the game before more tedium was added. Im also noticing alot lower numbers of players on servers since the recent update. All of my feedback will be oriented as somebody who plays multiplayer as well. Now for those of you stuck on single player still....what exactly is the reason you are still looting and hording for? I played single player for a bit while learning the game as well but at some point there is no reason to progress further in single player. Multiplayer is where the real game is and where you will find any sense of a real end game. In pvp you can actually lose things thus creating more of a reason to horde things. So you will have to excuse me if I feel like multiplayer aspects should be the focus of the game. So im gonna break down what I see as major problems in the game currently. 1. POI's Since the last update POI's are a real mess now. Im sorry but the range is just way too much. They shouldnt be shooting at me before I can even see them on the edge of my radar. In my opinion the range was about right before this update. It was bad enough being on foot or bike before the range was increased and getting shot up by a POI just trying to get some resources, harvest, explore, etc. They were outranging an SV still before at about the right amount. While lasers etc were a bit slow and easy to dodge before, the red lasers are too fast now. The most skilled pilot in the most maneuverable ship will not be able to avoid taking like 90% of the fire from those. The range has made it a real pita trying to explore a planet even with an SV let alone HV. The loot is awful now. It was already bad before. Now the risk vs reward factor has tipped so far to risk that its not even worth doing POI's at all. I already rarely did them before after establishing better resources. Because 1 or 2 of this ore and such here and there doesnt add up to jack squat at the end of the day unless you are just trying to get off a starter. I would only do them for things I couldnt gather on my own like weapon upgrades and armor. I would also much prefer bigger stacks of things vs looting more containers. Finally, the worst problem of the POI changes. Regen. We already had a set regen time on servers for POI's. Whether it be daily, every few hours etc. So I will give you some examples of the way regen works now. I started on a new server and when i got a halfway decent SV going, I go to take out the drone base on my starter planet. I took out all turrets, got pretty far down to the bottom but ran out of healing. So I flew back to my base made a few bandages and was litterally back in like 5 minutes. What did I return too? All turrets were back, all spawners and npc's I took out were back. Now I had cleared about 85% of the POI before I left to make bandages and the loot was so awfull that overall I was at a loss from attacking it. So was I gonna restart from scratch again? No, I abandoned my raid on it and cut my losses. Every day im seeing people stuck needing help at POI's because the minute they die, everything respawns and if there SV or HV was parked within 500m now it is destroyed by turrets. So what is the reason for this fast of regen? Some of these POI's take a while to clear, why should it have to be done all in one shot? I have never see an issue of players not being able to find POI's to raid before this extremely fast regen was brought in. There needs to be a big difference of difficulty between a POI on a starter and a POI on a hard planet. The way the last update worked it just amped them all up equally and starter POI especially are way too challenging for people just trying to make their way. The way people were making custom POI's with alot more turrets and what not was a much better approach to creating difficult POI's. Making the harder planet POI's have better turrets than easier ones would be a better approach. Also there is a great deal of balance issues between varying npc's. For instance I can take fire and laugh at a zirax with a minigun yet one with a shotgun will tear me up something quick. As it stands now, POI's are broken and I just avoid them all except ones like abandoned mines. 2. Loot Management The process of collecting, organizing and storing items was already a very tedious task. Yet I keep seeing items get reduced stack sizes further increasing the tedium. Loot management does not need further tedium added! All non ammo items should stack in the 999 stack size. But even better, could we change the 999 stack size to an even 1000? That 1 number increase will put it at a nice even number and will mean that everytime I create stacks of things i wont have to drop another stack on each and every one to fill the 9 short it being of a full stack. 3. Ammo The more ships and bases you start aquiring the more you really start to realize that making ammo for them all is a real pita! Some things like energy weapon ammo seems to add up quick enough but others like flak, rocket and a few others take hundreds of builds to get a few stacks. I feel like the best solution is for ammo to cost more to make but make an entire stack when built. This would be a tremendous benefit to the whole ammo making system. 4. Food and Medicine Recipes While I like the idea that more botanicals are getting a use for them now, I feel like recipes are getting too complicated. Some things just require too many ingredients. Also, too many recipes share same ingredients. Anyways, just some feedback from me. I really love the game. You guys have done some really great work. I just feel like some things are going in the wrong direction.
Ahh one other thing I forgot to add. Turrets on player CV's also have too much range on surfaces now. When I fly in to land I often find my turrets firing at POI's that are way far off. Way way further than even they can fire with the range updates.
Hmm I actually think the regen thing may be something to do with the server settings on a new server i started on at the same time of these updates. I guess I havnt done any single player or jumped on any of my other servers. So disregard that one if that is the case.
1: Yes they should. They're too easy otherwise. If you're struggling with dealing with them, ask for help. Even after the current update there are strategies that can get any player of any level into a POI with minimal risk. Regen is a server setting, and always has been. Loot is indeed bad, but I showed a picture of it to Hummel and the impression I got was that it's not intended. 2: It is indeed, but it sounds like the devs are listening, hence recent talks on topics like automization, etc. This was in the recent survey, so it stands to reason that if players rated it as a priority then the devs are looking into it. 3: Energy weapons have always been at odds with physical weapons for damage vs operational costs. Rockets still seem better most of the time. That aside, I don't have ammo problems typically. A lot of the core ammos are just iron+wood fundamentally, and even bigger stuff like rocket and homing rocket ammo is generally core mats + magneseum, all in ready supplies. Now, that said, I don't know how bad resource management is on multi-player, so maybe that's a bigger deal when everyone's competing for the same resources. But feasibly basic stuff like cannon ammo, minigun ammo, and rifle ammo can essentially be constructed in large quantities just from smashing up some rocks and cutting down some trees. Easy work for even a low-level HV with a harvester. All that said, yes, it would be nice if energy weapons justified their steep device and ammo costs. Currently I don't feel they do.
3000 hours all in SP. Wouldn't say I'm stuck on SP, because I enjoy SP. I haven't tried MP and I'm sure it would be just as cool. I loot and hoard because I enjoy looting and hoarding... until I feel I've progressed enough then I start a new game where I build something different, somewhere different, and begin hoarding anew!
The problem with this proposal is that it ends up hurting players just starting out. Sure, if you've got cargo boxes full of raw materials, then crafting 100 rockets at a time seems like a good idea, but if you only have the raw materials for 10 rockets, what are you going to do?
I'm adding a feedback for A8 in here because I can't post in the Feedback parent thread. Lowering either the spawn rate, the spawn radius or, the spawn count of the spiders seems like a necessity at this point. I can't go more than 15-20m without aggroing 3 or more groups of 4 at a time. I can't mine or gather anything when I'm constantly running around hordes, just to have more spawn again near a deposit or POI which only adds to the numbers. In early-game, salvaging Titan wrecks to build up a decent weapon and enough ammo just to be able to mine a single deposit is not an option. Especially when I already put the resources needed into an HV BP to get around the increased size of the planet.
I tried to point that out in experimental, but a lot of the vocal folks asking for more survival and greater challenges are bored long term players. Once you've played for 1000 hours and learned all the tricks, I can understand looking for newer and greater challenges. Unfortunately that kills it for new players, and less hardcore players. The packs of spiders, and outdoor roaming poi guards. Wait till you encounter those..some of them launch rockets. That's a one shot kill
Been there...1 patrol of 5 all had rockets...it's a good thing I was in a HV and could strafe around while getting back out of range.
Maybe it is the seed, because I played Alpha 8 rc 1 and rc2 and rc3 and now a normal alpha 8 release and while i sometimes run into spiders it is not non stop. Sometimes i can even spot them before i run across them and even from new spawn with just the survival tool a group of spiders is killable without dying. While the worlds are big why would you build an HV before a drill? You get a portable constructor down and can get a bike pretty quickly that lets you run away from spiders easily just keep it on your hot bar put it down if attacked and drive off. Next I get a drill and saw and bio fuel you can cut down trees for so its not hard to get. You can attach a core to one of the wrecks to get a constructor and armor locker or go for the HV or SV from the factory after that. On the starter planet I havent run into a single patrol yet, other than drones or talon. If you are unarmored frankly you should get 1 shot by a patrol of 5 alien enemies, thats something you should avoid until you either have better gear and weapons or a sv or hv, with either of those they are trivial
Heavy Window Blocks: They start out opaque and the multi-tool's rotate option doesn't work with symmetry. It'd be nice if they started out clear instead of opaque. The 'clear' option is still really dark. No diagonal pieces. The symmetry tool is not working on Heavy Window B and C when trying to paint them. Paint applies to both sides of the window. In this case I think I'd rather be able to paint each side of it different colors.
