This game has an identity crisis

[Jingseng]

It doesn:t really have focus in what it wants to be. And it shows.

Does it want to be a colony game (like ONI)?
-Then the whole student thing, underschool, scrolls mechanics are pointless. Not only that, but colony games generally require you to balance population size and resource production/drain; in MOM, you hit a a pretty hard limit at 11 staff (12 hire is 500 adept scrolls). What even is the point of different foods and luxury? And with the restrictive room requirements, it becomes impossible to build in a way to handle increasing travel times.

Does it want to be a business/school sim (the way everything is presented)?
-Then large parts of the task and research system are nonsensical. I have master wizards who will teach a new generation... and they need to spend days researching tables. Beds. They spend more time building, gardening, cooking, hauling crap than they do teaching. In what school system do the teachers also do all the other work? Instead, the teachers are just basic laborers... who sometimes start classes without students and frequently ignore students waiting for classes to start. Why is it set up in a way for students and staff to be forgetable and disposable? Not only is that contrary to how schools work, it's contrary to how normal gamers play. Only sociopaths think of named, unique-appearing (even if randomly generated), one off 'people' as mere 'resource things'.

Does it want to be a 2D Explorer-sandbox (like terraria)?
-There's no exploration and resource regeneration is haphazard at best. There are some hard limits to how far horizontally (as soon as the land is not flat; but also in the preventing resources from reappearing) and vertically you can build. That's not even considering the delay in reaching foundation and side supports (which, by the way, where is the magic? Why does it take so long to get floating supports?). The room requirements aren't particularly balanced, and most foreclose the use of the underschool.
-Combat exploration of the underschool is far from exciting. Clear a room, walk back, Clear a room,. walk back. And it's the same thing each time, just a different set of enemies... which doesn't matter in terms of elemental affinities, etc. Like most of the mechaics, it's tedious.

Does it want to be an automation sim (like factorio, etc.)?
-There are lots of tasks that require player input which cannot be automated - such as croa nests. In fact, there are segments which are impossible to do without micromanaging (isolated tag, platinum task challenges). But then many of the game elements also become needless - the underschool, students... and the automation lacks any kind of purpose.

It's an interesting premise to a mix of genres... but instead of striking out in a new direction (as it would need to for a mix of genres), it carries a lot of baggage from pre existing games that just don't make any sense, especially for the premise. Seeds? Why? Weather events that affect crops, but not teaching (! in a magic teaching sim?) or combat (other than speed, for some bizarre reason). Helper units that are only capable of one task? Really, the saw blade body helper can't also chop trees, destroy nests, or kill rats with its saw blade body?

There is no purpose to the magic. Where are the mechanics of magic that affect the school or environment? Rituals to improve crop growth, rituals to improve combat ability, rituals to reduce the growth of pests, ritual to bring suits of armor (which already move) and gargoyles to life to protect the school? Shrinking and enlarging furniture.... just pointless tedium adding another work task that shouldn't need to exist at all.

I really hope the devs take some time to really think hard about this and figure it out. Otherwise the future is just confusing mechanics that don't add anything other than tedium.

[Jingseng]

There's more I could go into... like lack of distinction between staff levels, student levels, unfortunate pointlessness of weathervane/bell tower/clock tower.... but i think it's enough to go on =p

[Etalus]

Well said. It's carried almost entirely by the fantasy and potential but held back by the core game play.

[Jingseng]

Originally posted by Brohoof:

Well said. It's carried almost entirely by the fantasy and potential but held back by the core game play.

agreed. The initial changes by the devs (scrolls consumed, haulers less useful, high end cooking takes more time) all seem to point towards adding tedium and delay. It doesn't help that the roadmap is devoid of any details (or even ideas).

[MightyFox]

This game, (and the devs) are suffering from the all too common 'I have to please everyone' mentality. It wants to be everything, because it wants lots of sales, but because of that, it isn't doing well at being anything.

The game, Spellcaster University, knew what it wanted to be, and is a great game as a result. That's a game where you build a true magic academy and have to fight off an evil overlord over a multiple map campaign. It wasn't perfect. Many people complained about how rooms were created, but damn if it didn't do what it did rather well. I actually felt like I was teaching entire classes of students, and throwing them out in the world to fight the dark lord. It is still one of my favorite games to date.

Sadly, Mind over Magic knew what it wanted to be in alpha, but tons of player feedback (and the variety of opinions that come with it) have convinced the devs to change direction, and now it is trying to be too many things at once.

As a colony simulator, I don't think it works. I don't get that feeling that I'm teaching the next generation of mages, more that... I'm kidnapping small groups of children to use in my nefarious schemes. Large classes are next to impossible with the way the game is set up, and students learn so quickly, you hardly have the time to achieve their talisman goals before it's time to either graduate them, or forcefully induct them into your hermitage. There NEEDS to be a better game play loop for the 'school' aspect of the magic school.

As a dungeon crawler... it's boring. There isn't enough randomness, enemy types, or combat strategies to make the combat engaging, and the main incentive is largely the scrolls needed for research, which isn't a good incentive in my opinion. The dungeon NEEDS to be a real threat, as does the fog stemming from it, but doing this turns off 'casuals' that just want to sit back with their hot cocao and build their little magic school (there is nothing wrong with this by the way) The game already has a solution for this, via their 'Relaxed' and 'Relentless' mode, but it doesn't embrace it, instead making 'Relentless' only slightly more difficult and ultimately unrewarding.

Finally, to satisfy both these very different demographics, they add too many superfluous things that just make the game that much more frustrating. There are way too many ingredients for crafting right now, and the storage system for all of them is terrible. Instead of having lot's of ingredients, having fewer of them, yet requiring more with each advanced recipe, WHILE controlling the amount of ingredients the player has available, is a much better approach, and encourages decision making as to what players want to do with their school and helps focus them towards their goals. Meanwhile, the refining beasts aren't a bad idea, but I feel are poorly implemented, as they try to require students be in the school, withouth... really requiring students be in the school. There isn't any penalty if they aren't pet, it just takes more time to make things, and with the fog never truly threatening your school, (it only ever takes a few gutberries and a stack of wood to repel it when it gets close) you have all the time in the world. Making these beasts more valuable, or, having to choose between them to some degree, would be a better game play element, instead of just an extra step to those large windows I wanted.

[Jingseng]

Agreed, and very well said.

It feels like they started off with a premise, but weren't sure how to go about it... so they shoe horned it into a popular genre. And then while they had the idea, they didn't have that much in the way of content ideas, so they looked to the genre mechanics to fill in content, whether or not it made any sense.

and now there's just a kind of sense of 'purposelessness'. If they add more furniture, so what? None of it really does anything except provide either light, luxury (which doesn't do anything), or satisfy requirements (whicha re artificial and arbitrary to begin with). Add decorations? Also so what. Again, luxury is just requirements, and you are never really abl;e to get a good look at any of the stuff. And it just doesn't do anything. Add rooms to the underschool? More of the exact same. And about the only thing you can do with those rooms is build a scullery. Not even a geomancer hall, which would fit in perfectly underground.

More resources? Craft stations? More tedium, and not enough staff... and losing direction and purpose. Is it a school or a factory? It kinda seems like it wants to be a guild hall that sends out adventurers, except you don't send out adventurers and the underschool is boring.

More room types? Where am I going to shove them? I already have everything EXCEPT: geomancer hall, mage's hermitage (because oh good, micro managing), wood cuttery, and salle a manger. And my school is a chaotic mess of "i built this because I needed it and I didn't have the tech to build it any other way". And given the way roofs, stairs, ladders, spiral stairs, and weather works, it's getting extremely unmanageable.

The game needs a purpose, a vision, a goal before all that. Anything that gets added before that is potentially contradictory or pointless. And until it does, it's just a pretty digital ant farm.

[MightyFox]

Unfortunately, this is the problem with taking player feedback. Every player wants the game to be something else, and many players don't even know what they want, but they know they want it.

As a tool, this can be useful for refining a game's mechanics, but the devs instead seem to have decided to change the mechanics based on the myriad, and often opposing, opinions they got during the alpha; a tactic I have never seen work out well.

It reminds me of the problems created with Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, a game published by Ubisoft where players could play as both the attacker and defender of their personal castles. It has since been scrapped and replaced by a mobile title of the same name where all creative license has been taken away from the players. Anyway, during the games open beta, defenders constantly complained about attackers winning, while attackers complained about defenders making things too hard. It was i-m-p-o-s-s-i-b-l-e to please both sides, and the game eventually spiraled into an arcade-like mash fest, where only the absolute best of both sides could have any fun. There were many more problems on top of that, but that's the gist of it.

I'm hoping to see some real gameplay improvements soon, or I may have to give this game a thumbs down, because despite the praise from those hoping to get recognition from the devs (like a dog wanting a treat) I don't feel the game right now is all that good.

[Sephiroth]

Well said from all of you.
Also, looking at the last dev post, it's clear to me they lack any idea how to further deal with the problems/feedback. They call their post a "Roadmap update" but there isn't even a roadmap there, just 3 points (they don't even address the biggest problems, the absolutely lacking combat and purposeless underschool).
Sadly, this game looks like it wont get to the point of being something good.

[Jingseng]

there is some hope, but agreed. It will be clear in how they approach a next major update/how they address this "dial in the difficulty" issue.

Because you can't meaningfully dial in difficulty if you don't know what the game is about or trying to do. If there is no clear vision here, there is no meaningful adjustment.

So if the result of that is adding more tedium (haulers can't supply craft stations, food takes longer to cook, ignium requires less unstable... but now requires additional ingredient from the most difficult to acquire and annoying to farm plant... more 75x task medallions, more isolated room requirements... summoning/hiring costs increase/scale higher...) then the answer is clear =p

[Philtre]

Originally posted by Jingseng:

So if the result of that is adding more tedium (haulers can't supply craft stations,

Point of order: this change was not about "adding more tedium", it was about increasing the efficiency of task chaining. Under the prior system, once an item was created, a hauler would claim the station to supply ingredients, so the crafter would pick another task and wander off. After the ingredients were delivered, a crafter would have to notice the job and come back to it, but as soon as they finished the item, a hauler would claim the station... etc. Now the crafter brings the ingredients themselves. so they are more likely to see the job through to completion. I guess if you had your setup fine-tuned to the point that all crafting personnel had exactly one job and would just wait in place for the haulers to bring ingredients, you might prefer the old system, but for the broader population I think it's an improvement. Now we just need a better way to manage storage...

[robbie.price]

we got the tiny chests . . . it's a start, but having to build 15 tiny chests outside of each eating room, and then having the gutberries run past the capacity limits . . . and having to build more food to max out at least all but one of the food places capacities.


Certainly the 'roadmap' was disappointing.

But all that said, I like the game and find myself returning to it. Yes the 'relentlessmode' is still longer term risk free, yes the battles are not (yet at least) dynamic, But I can see the potential. there is groundwork laid.

They took out the quest-motivation line, but they probably will replace it before the full release, I am hopeful the game will improve from here.

[MightyFox]

Originally posted by Philtre:

Point of order: this change was not about "adding more tedium", it was about increasing the efficiency of task chaining.

But i do think it's telling that, given all the more serious problems the game currently has, this was where they put their most immediate attention.

The thing is, they had a system that worked. It wasn't perfect, but it worked. Now, they don't have a system. They have a collection of ideas that aren't really meshing well with each other. I was into a lot of the alpha advertising. I was sold a game where I would train students to plumb deep and dangerous depths in a Lovecraftian setting. The current game feels like a bait and switch to me, and I don't like it. I'm a patient man, and I'm willing to give the devs their time, but had this been the release version, I'd have considered a refund.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by MightyFox:

But i do think it's telling that, given all the more serious problems the game currently has, this was where they put their most immediate attention.

Well, as a person who plays colony management sims for the colony management part, I always welcome task management/AI improvements; far more than, say, "more difficult combat". I don't see most of the things people have complained about in this thread as "serious problems"; in fact I disagree with many of the criticisms raised. I definitely see room for improvement, but the things that I care about are more on the lines of inventory management (please complete a partial stack before starting a new stack in a different chest!) and a stronger rationale for the higher-tier classrooms.

I played the demo almost from its first days, and I never got a "lovecraftian" vibe off of it.

[MightyFox]

Originally posted by Philtre:

Well, as a person who plays colony management sims for the colony management part, I always welcome task management/AI improvements; far more than, say, "more difficult combat". I don't see most of the things people have complained about in this thread as "serious problems"; in fact I disagree with many of the criticisms raised. I definitely see room for improvement, but the things that I care about are more on the lines of inventory management (please complete a partial stack before starting a new stack in a different chest!) and a stronger rationale for the higher-tier classrooms.

I played the demo almost from its first days, and I never got a "lovecraftian" vibe off of it.

Lol. Well, this is exactly the point I made earlier. You and I have very different opinions of what would make this game better, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that the devs want to please both of us, but their recent attempts seem to betray a lack of experience in being able to do so.

I unfortunately missed out on the alpha, but the early trailers of the game, (back when I had just beaten my third play through of Spellcaster University) had a much darker background, more tentacles, and definitely gave off a very Lovecraftian vibe. I don't mind that they ditched that aesthetic to an extent ( I actually don't like lovecraftian very much) but there was definitely a larger focus on teaching and exploration which doesn't seem to be in the game now.

I do hope both of us get what we want out of this, but only time will tell.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by robbie.price:

we got the tiny chests . . . it's a start, but having to build 15 tiny chests outside of each eating room, and then having the gutberries run past the capacity limits . . . and having to build more food to max out at least all but one of the food places capacities.

Much easier system: go into the Consumption menu and forbid anyone from eating Gutberries. Your Vivified will eat Gutberry Soup instead. Place a Pantry near the dining hall, and set it to accept only meals, but NOT Gutberries. Now you can keep your Gutberries in the kitchen, and all your other meals near your dining room. You will need to make a custom Consumption rule for anyone who has a medallion that requires them to eat Gutberries, but you would have to do that anyway if they weren't a Vivified, since no-one else will voluntarily eat the things...

[Philtre]

Originally posted by MightyFox:

I unfortunately missed out on the alpha ... but there was definitely a larger focus on teaching and exploration which doesn't seem to be in the game now.

I do hope both of us get what we want out of this, but only time will tell.

The demo was rather different, in that the only way to push the fog was to graduate students, meaning sending them to fight a boss (if they failed, no push happened). This definitely gave you an incentive to constantly train students, but they felt extremely disposable and interchangeable; you figured out what wand combination worked best to beat the boss you wanted to challenge, and then just churned out a set of people with that wand combo every X days. I think the current setup is overall more interesting, even though I preferred the auto-battler mechanic over the current turn-based one I have to manage personally. I do like that the dungeon - ahem, Underschool is more structurally interesting and varied now, rather than a predefined set of boss fights. I love the special objects you can find at the ends of the side-branches, like the student altar things.

I do hope the devs find a good place for both the people who want higher difficulty and/or more emphasis on combat, and the people who want more basebuilding / management / automation / character growth, although for selfish reasons I would prefer it if they put a larger emphasis on the latter. :D