What's with the bad reviews?

[ENAK]

No really, half the bad ones talk about some glitches that were fixed with the first patch and the other ones seem to be on about Ixion being too difficult. Did I just not play it long enough yet? For me it seems like Frostpunk but in space (i.e. fun). Sure, it's pretty much "Golden Path the Video Game" but since I'm playing it for the first time - it's fun to discover the path. The difficulty was hard for the first 2 attempts but now on the third, it's pretty much smooth sailing...

So... Why so much hate for the game? Does it stat to suck at system 'x' or something?

/cheers
Enak

[Skyliner121]

Don't mind those reviewers. They also write bad reviews about Dark Souls for dying too much and doesn't realize, it's part of the game...

[ENAK]

Sure but... here it's almost 40% of reviews. :) Weird...

[Sylar Saren]

Personally i read a bad review because of gamebreaking bug you can lose 3h, 20, or more than 40h of game in juste 10 sec

[Purple Heart]

Originally posted by ENAK:

No really, half the bad ones talk about some glitches that were fixed with the first patch and the other ones seem to be on about Ixion being too difficult. Did I just not play it long enough yet? For me it seems like Frostpunk but in space (i.e. fun). Sure, it's pretty much "Golden Path the Video Game" but since I'm playing it for the first time - it's fun to discover the path. The difficulty was hard for the first 2 attempts but now on the third, it's pretty much smooth sailing...

So... Why so much hate for the game? Does it stat to suck at system 'x' or something?

/cheers
Enak

Gameplay wise, I've got random accidents every few cycles that causes injuries to 10-15 of my workers. This happens when they are happy and working conditions are optimal. And they take 10 to 20 cycles to heal. New accidents happen before the injured people from old accidents heal. Happens in all of my unlocked sectors at the same time. Game punishes me for playing good. Game punishes me even harder for playing bad. It doesn't make any sense. I moved the station and caused a blackout for 0.5 cycles(I have batteries they just didn't last long enough), this blackout led to an accident in hospital, which can't heal the people injured in the blackout, causing a death spiral because even if I transfer people from other sectors, it means I now have less workers than needed. So, they are overworked. They decide to riot against me and burn/disable other buildings as well. All because of something that happened for half a day. Stupid game mechanics that doesn't make any sense...

There are also some serious, run ending/game breaking bugs. My people are randomly starving despite having enough food, connected roads etc. Resource transfer screen randomly stops working. I opened sector 2. I now have some polymers I need to transfer from sector 1 to sector 2. I select the minimum amount in sector 1 then proceed to select the needed amount for sector 2 but I can't do it because sector 2 shows 0/0, meaning I don't have any storage for it so I can't even move the slider. I have storage for polymer in sector 2 with connected roads(even between the two sectors) and everything ready. Before this bug, I was able to transfer alloy just fine, I'm saying this just to let you know I know how to use the resource transfer screen.

TL;DR
Game needed a few more months, perhaps a year before release. Reviewers are right for writing a negative review. If I didn't buy it from epic, I'd leave a negative review too.

[Rashka]

I wrote a negative review, and it's because of gamebreaking bugs and lack of quality of life / polish.

There's a bug where your people starve to death even if you have enough food and mess halls, and all the mess halls have a green tick next to the food icon.
There's a bug where if you send a freighter with resources in order to resolve a science ship encounter, other freighters will start to collect those resources.
Science ships are 'stuck' until you resolve events. BUT you can delay resolving them indefinitely. Either allow the ships to leave or force me to pick an option.
Cargo and mining ships should be individually controllable like science ships.
Chapter 3 space weather should have made it clear it moves, and when it does. I can't be expected to look at the system map all the time.
No notification (audio or popup) when research finishes.
Fullscreen pop-ups/windows/tabs like the research screen should pause the game, not have it running in the background.
When a building finishes construction it should automatically turn itself off if it would cause a blackout.
Trying to turn on a building when it would cause a blackout should get you an error sound and stop you from doing so. Blackouts should only be possible via solar panel damage, essentially.

[Gaven]

Mostly hyper punishing random crap that you cant prepare for.

[loqque]

1. Too many people that are looking for more casual setting than this - Ixion actually requires some effort and micromanagement to make things work.
2. Some questionable decision by devs that make certain actions look really dumb. If some mechanics were redone like useless pops that do nothing but taking food and space - f.e, they could provide additional hull repair or science instead - it would be a viable reason to open these without complains.
3. Overtuned accident system - while you can easily avoid issues long term by some micromanagement with staff and building multiple infirmaries, this can be infuriating.
4. Certain mechanics should be explained better than they are.

Overall alot of nitpicking, but also game has it's drawbacks, hence mixed reviews. Also alot of whiners that gave up the moment they saw -1 stability on 250cycle because they thought its going to stack up and didnt even bother to continue and check next system.

[livinghell]

Originally posted by Rashka:

I wrote a negative review, and it's because of gamebreaking bugs and lack of quality of life / polish.

There's a bug where your people starve to death even if you have enough food and mess halls, and all the mess halls have a green tick next to the food icon.
There's a bug where if you send a freighter with resources in order to resolve a science ship encounter, other freighters will start to collect those resources.
Science ships are 'stuck' until you resolve events. BUT you can delay resolving them indefinitely. Either allow the ships to leave or force me to pick an option.
Cargo and mining ships should be individually controllable like science ships.
Chapter 3 space weather should have made it clear it moves, and when it does. I can't be expected to look at the system map all the time.
No notification (audio or popup) when research finishes.
Fullscreen pop-ups/windows/tabs like the research screen should pause the game, not have it running in the background.
When a building finishes construction it should automatically turn itself off if it would cause a blackout.
Trying to turn on a building when it would cause a blackout should get you an error sound and stop you from doing so. Blackouts should only be possible via solar panel damage, essentially.

THIS
THIS
THIS!!!!

[Rashka]

Also ridiculously imbalanced research costs, especially for upgrades.
30-40 points + research time to see what the specialization requirements are for tier 2? Is that a joke? Any other game would show me this for free. Should be free research / only cost time.
30 points to auto-repair buildings? Should be 5 points max
Ship upgrades are per ship class instead of being global. Ship speed at least should apply to all ship types (except the station itself perhaps)
Research costs for main quest items should be reduced or removed completely

[Darklordofbunnies]

Currently, the game is very buggy/poorly optimized. Accidents cascade out of control massively early on, but if you make it out of chapter 2 there's really nothing to do as you conjure infinite resources from poop once you get recycling tech.

Also, the story itself is...not good. It's kitschy, cliche, & shows a puddle-deep understanding of issues they are trying to pontificate about. It's also set currently, so there's like 0 replayability once you get a run past Ch. 1.

I'd really love a sandbox mode divorced from their story set, with procedurally generated systems. The mechanics are there, it's just implemented very poorly.

[Gaspote]

Originally posted by Darklordofbunnies:

Currently, the game is very buggy/poorly optimized. Accidents cascade out of control massively early on, but if you make it out of chapter 2 there's really nothing to do as you conjure infinite resources from poop once you get recycling tech.

Also, the story itself is...not good. It's kitschy, cliche, & shows a puddle-deep understanding of issues they are trying to pontificate about. It's also set currently, so there's like 0 replayability once you get a run past Ch. 1.

I'd really love a sandbox mode divorced from their story set, with procedurally generated systems. The mechanics are there, it's just implemented very poorly.

Remember that frostpunk didn't had endless mode on release. That's something that could come later.

[tiby_alexander]

YES IT IS NOT BAD TO HAVE DIFICULTY LEVELS TO FOCUSE ON STORY AND TO MANNY INJURES,please excuse my english

[Darklordofbunnies]

Originally posted by Gaspote:

Remember that frostpunk didn't had endless mode on release. That's something that could come later.

That's my hope. A straight sandbox could do wonders for the game, & might even alleviate the harshness of story mode by giving people more space to play.

A couple of decent balance patches to make Ch 1 & 2 a bit less punishing & something to up the difficulty later on might give the game some longevity, but the story itself is the problem.
Frostpunk had multiple, legitimate decision points that lead to victory for its story missions where Ixion has the right choice & the wrong choices for its decisions. You either intuit the dev-approved proper choice or get hosed out of resources/crew.

I'll use a chapter 1 decision as an example: the choice of what to do with the dead bodies from the mega-station. The right answer is to leave them there, even though repatriating the bodies of loved ones makes some intuitive sense. However choosing that costs you 4 crew & nets you nothing.

Frostpunk would have a choice point like that give you a similar penalty, but would net you a law choice or perhaps take your people on a religious path. Here you get "bzzt, wrong answer".

[Flavalicious]

Its a hard management game forsure. I love this genre, played every game even related to this and I came really close to losing 2 or 3 times in Chapter 2 on my way to the start of Chapter 3. Im stabilised now and doing well but if you come to this game without an established background in this genre i could see you being turned off.

[Bad Whippet]

People don't understand what the game is, basically. Banished caught the same flack, yet is now recognised as a decent game.

Most of the negative reviews are only after an hour or two - that's not nearly enough to get into the game. People buy this thinking it's "Anno in Space". It's not though - it's not meant to be a city-builder - it is a colony survival game which is VERY different. It's more like Frostpunk or Banished in Space, and it is as brutal as I imagine it would be if this sort of thing happened in real life.

It's TOUGH - by design. It's an easy game to get into (very well designed and so simple to learn as a result) but it's brutal to beat - and that's the fun in it. Like all tough colony-survival games, there's a lot of fun in starting over and wanting to do better, and inching further forward on every retry. I'm saying this as someone who HASN'T beaten it yet, and yet I'm 60 hours in and loving it.