I want to like this game but...

[Abrecan]

There are so many great things about this game but the aspects I have run into that I don't enjoy really sap the fun for me out of it. (I am still in the first area for the record and all my play time has just been exploring this space and trying lots of different approaches)

1. I made a hacker/tinker build. My combat skills aren't great, but i can turn on plenty of robot companions to follow me. I have tried to fight twice with this minion army and both times at some point during the combat, the game just stops working. Music, idle animations, selecting most anything like the save menu pops up the "can't do this in combat" message, but for all intents and purposes - the combat switching sequence just breaks. I have to kill the game to fix it since I am not allowed to open the menu to just simply reload.

2. Controlling robot minions is an even worse chore. They either stand idle and do nothing while I get blasted 2 or 3 turns after combat starts or they run out of the room we are fighting in. Doesn't happen every time, but it happens enough that its obvious this robot minion system needs more work. Worse thing is if you try to control them yourself before getting into combat. I have several of them, but i'm only allowed to direct one personally at a time... why? Why is my minion having and using ability not based off the corresponding skills? The biggest problem is controlling a minion seems to make number 1 happen at a higher rate.

3. I love isometric games. I grew up playing Balder's gate and Fallout 1/2. This game hits those vibes so well. Its beautiful and fun. BUT! You have so many tap area issues. It really makes the game a chore in certain tight quarters areas. Example, remember I am the robot minion master, well there is a door in the center of the first area with a guy in front of it, all i will say to avoid spoilers. I found a different way past that door and if anyone is familiar with the area I am talking about, the quarters are quite cramped in that room. There is a floor hatch I am trying to select, but one of my robots are diagonally in front of it, so closer to the camera then the hatch is, but that shouldn't be a problem right? I mean, they aren't even on the same square, so i should be able to select the hatch and go down, RIGHT? (Even if the robot was on the hatch, i still should be able to right click on the hatch and select go down. RIGHT!?) No! in both instances I described, I just keep selecting my minion and cant ever ever ever select the hatch. I am basically stuck there! This happens a lot especially in some of the tight quarters with minions around.

4. Why am I not able to cheat in this game? Its a single player game. Let me play the damn thing how I want to, not how you want me to. Why go out of your way to make it so my novice level experience with cheat engine doesn't work. I want more skill and stat points, I want to see every that I desire while i am going through the game. I don't want to have to replay this game many times to see ♥♥♥♥, its not that special. Let me get my rocks off. You even made editing the save file difficult with my base level understanding of. Can't use notepad ++. come on guys, let me play this game i bought off you my way, when i choose to do so. (Maybe someone knows a way to do this that i haven't learned yet and I am open to hearing about it, message me)

[Kamaz from Pahris.Entertainment]

Oh, thanks for the extensive feedback!

Number 1 is a bug, I will investigate. (2. might be related)

3. is a fair criticism, I'll agree and take note.

4. I have nothing against cheating in games but I also did not want to spend an additional effort to build special cheating tools. For our internal testing we use console and directly edit character - but that's something that can break the game if you don't know the code structure.

As for files - originally, we had human-readable and easily editable save files but those take up around 7x more space than compressed and, since in the later versions we added saving on many story points (stars in the menu), the save file size became an issue in the context of Steam Cloud. Files are now simply compressed with zlib.

[Abrecan]

More feedback for you then

1. Why does this game have this random dice roll mechanic if you aren't going to use a better random seed generator on load. Example, I am trying to lock pick a door, it is going to be 50/50, ok so if I save the game before and try and fail, eventually I will load and try and scum my way through right? RIGHT?? No, that isn't how this game works. So if I had to guess, at any point in time, every single interaction point is set in stone what I am going to "randomly roll" because lets face it Mr. Dev, it's not really random because you predetermined it. Here is how I came to this conclusion. So I have my scenario above and I roll the dice and I get -2. Well that fails the 50/50 so I don't pass the check. So I reload, try again. Another -2. This happens 3 times in a row. I move on and dismantle a droid nearby and pass. Decide to try the door again. NOW I get -1, and if I would have saved before (Which I did by the way) and reload, now I get a -1 every single time. WHY? Why did you design it this way? Why do I have to go perform another check to change the outcomes of a check I have never ever interacted with in my characters existence. Why even have the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ random rolls if I am pre-determined what my results are going to be before I even get there. Fix your dang random seed, at least have reload change my results so its not so obvious you pre-determined my roll before I even knew I was going to perform a check on a given interact-able...

[Kamaz from Pahris.Entertainment]

This is, of course, intentional. Imagine if you are playing a table-top RPG session and you have a skill check. You roll a dice to pick the lock and...fail. That's it, you move on - look for an alternative solution. This is the same idea here - Space Wreck is about embracing failure and looking for another way to progress; that's the gameplay.

[no_idea_for_a_name]

Originally posted by Kamaz from Pahris.Entertainment:

This is, of course, intentional. Imagine if you are playing a table-top RPG session and you have a skill check. You roll a dice to pick the lock and...fail. That's it, you move on - look for an alternative solution. This is the same idea here - Space Wreck is about embracing failure and looking for another way to progress; that's the gameplay.

Yes, but that doesn't require you to disable save-scumming to achieve your vision. You're
actually going one step farther than needed. Had you not disabled that practice, those who wanted to embrace your vision, could have simply not reloaded and those who actually wanted to succeed at the roll would have.
To be honest, I was reading the comments to decide if I wanted to buy this game or not and this single thread made me decide not to.

[Kamaz from Pahris.Entertainment]

Had you not disabled that practice, those who wanted to embrace your vision, could have simply not reloaded and those who actually wanted to succeed at the roll would have.

I see your point but have to stand by my decision. I actually was reluctant to add roll persistence but, after testing the behaviour with free random, decided to enable it.

[Kamaz from Pahris.Entertainment]

However, I did provide alternative ways to deal with the randomness - you can find an in-game item Nominal tablets. Take some and for a good while random is removed from any roll; that is, if you have tinker 3, you will always "roll" 3 while the drugs are in effect.

Also, even without these drugs, you can re-roll skill checks; it's a limited number of times, of course, but that's a solution if you have failed an important skill check but you think it was because of a "bad" roll.

Having said that, though, the random distribution has a natural distribution curve, the Bell curve, which is what you encounter in nature. That means, if you got Tinker 3, you'll roll around that value most of the time.

[no_idea_for_a_name]

Couldn't this simply be a configuration option, on by default, I guess, but that could be disabled for those who dislike it? Or would this require too much re-work?

[Abrecan]

Your logic Mr Dev is completely incorrect. If I am playing DnD and it had a way for me to save before i interact with something that required a dice roll, then every time i load up, I never ever ever rolled any dice for that situation. My currently loaded self has no idea about it, me the player may have knowledge about it, but my character doesn't. If I go an interact with and roll a dice, and I get a -2 lets say. I then decide to reload my save, I am now a version of that character who hasn't done that interaction and who hasn't rolled the dice. So this version of my character when they go to interact and roll the dice again, they should eventually get a new number as is the nature of rolling dice. If my DM asked me to roll a D20 for a check and I got 5 on the D20 and then he said you know what lets redo the encounter i messed up, roll the D20 again, the D20 most likely won't be a 5.... Thats the point of a dice roll Mr Dev. Its suppose to add random-ness into a closed system. If you didn't want random-ness then you shouldn't have done a dice system, its very deceptive and once people learn about this it WILL turn some people off from the game.

[Nachtmahr]

Originally posted by Abrecan:

Your logic Mr Dev is completely incorrect. If I am playing DnD and it had a way for me to save before i interact with something that required a dice roll, then every time i load up, I never ever ever rolled any dice for that situation. My currently loaded self has no idea about it, me the player may have knowledge about it, but my character doesn't. If I go an interact with and roll a dice, and I get a -2 lets say. I then decide to reload my save, I am now a version of that character who hasn't done that interaction and who hasn't rolled the dice. So this version of my character when they go to interact and roll the dice again, they should eventually get a new number as is the nature of rolling dice. If my DM asked me to roll a D20 for a check and I got 5 on the D20 and then he said you know what lets redo the encounter i messed up, roll the D20 again, the D20 most likely won't be a 5.... Thats the point of a dice roll Mr Dev. Its suppose to add random-ness into a closed system. If you didn't want random-ness then you shouldn't have done a dice system, its very deceptive and once people learn about this it WILL turn some people off from the game.

You are drunk. You talk gibberish and your logic is not how probability calculations work. Just because you rolled a 5 doesn't mean that it won't be re-rolled. The bell model is a correct depiction of probability. You don't want proper randomness, you simply want easier skill checks because you don't want to live with the outcome or reload multiple times.

[Agent Orange]

Not sure I understand it fully, but if the game is doing something to prevent save-scumming tactics to get by all skill checks then I applaud it. Nothing ruins a CRPG more than the fact that you can save and reload endlessly to remove all stakes from choices, although I get that people want save anywhere for the convenience. It seems like roll persistence is a good compromise.
I would even like to see the game add some sort of iron made mode with only saving on exit.

[Abrecan]

"If my DM asked me to roll a D20 for a check and I got 5 on the D20 and then he said you know what lets redo the encounter i messed up, roll the D20 again, the D20 most likely won't be a 5...."

This is exactly what I said - "...most likely won't be a 5 again..." If you look how I describe the behavior he programmed -

"So I have my scenario above and I roll the dice and I get -2. Well that fails the 50/50 so I don't pass the check. So I reload, try again. Another -2. This happens 3 times in a row."

He didn't create randomness, he has predetermined before I even get to that check what I am going to roll. If I wait 1 minute or an hour, If I reload the save one or 100 times, I get the same number. His dice rolling is just an animation that plays to reveal the number he has already determine way in advance that you would roll for that check. That is not the way dice rolling works in real life and that isn't how it should work in these games, look at any popular genres of this game, it doesn't work like that. Thats because they understand every time a dice is picked up and rolled, it could and should be any one of those numbers on the dice. If people enjoy no save scumming, thats a different argument and justification and not one the dev gave. He compared it to DnD and I showed why that is flawed. If you guys enjoy no save scumming, cool, i don't enjoy it as much. Doesn't make either of us right or wrong, I am just stating the dev logic is flawed here for why he did it and doesn't make sense. I would be really happy to see an optional toggle to turn this logic on/off, then every one wins. Anyway, try communicating without insulting in the future is my only note for you @nachtmahr

[Sloane]

> That is not the way dice rolling works in real life

Yes it is. So basically you're giving this a bad review because you're mad you can't cheat, lol.

[JC]

Originally posted by Abrecan:

He didn't create randomness, he has predetermined before I even get to that check what I am going to roll. If I wait 1 minute or an hour, If I reload the save one or 100 times, I get the same number. His dice rolling is just an animation that plays to reveal the number he has already determine way in advance that you would roll for that check.

It's called a random seed, All those dice are just pre-rolled. They are completely random, (well as random as modern computers can get which is actually simulated but that's another issue, the person that cracks that will a billionaire.) but that's totally off topic. You load up a new random seed and they are all different numbers. Dungeons Of nahuelbeuk launched with a set seed, so people actually had to come up with new strats to solve fights, after a lot of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ from players wanting to save scum, they relented and added it as an option so people could just Reload till they beat the fight, verse actually coming up with a strat that worked. I'm guessing that is the same philosophy here, Think and figure out another way to beat the objective.

Seeing it's a short puzzle/strat game that can be done with out combat, my guess is it's a way of making people figure things out, verse RE-load till you get the outcome you want which would probably make the game even shorter.

Some games will load a new random seed on Reload so people can "cheat" and save scum. But it's the exact same system as the set seed, only you can't RE-load into a new seed.

[no_idea_for_a_name]

The weird desire for forced conformance from players has always baffled me. Why exactly is leaving the choice to the player a bad thing has never been explained though.

Originally posted by Agent Orange:

Not sure I understand it fully, but if the game is doing something to prevent save-scumming tactics to get by all skill checks then I applaud it. Nothing ruins a CRPG more than the fact that you can save and reload endlessly to remove all stakes from choices, although I get that people want save anywhere for the convenience. It seems like roll persistence is a good compromise.
I would even like to see the game add some sort of iron made mode with only saving on exit.

Why would the possibility to save-scum ruin the game for someone who doesn't like it?
The implication always seem to be that players are basically not really proper humans, since they apparently have no will of their own to decide not to engage with a game mechanics when it is available. If you don't like to save-scum, but the option is available, basically you're implying that you're forced to use it, because you're not able to decide not to?!

[Necroscourge]

Yeah, probably going to wait until cheats or mods come out. The idea of rolls being pre-rolled and set in stone is REALLY sketchy to me as a long time tabletop rpg player.