My final response to the in-game survey after finishing the 300 weeks preview.

[Acrivec]

I'm posting here what I have posted in the end-game survey that was available in game main menu to share with you my end-thoughts:

Heatstamps need either complete removal, or move them to other mechanics. UI needs dark mode, scaling. Game needs redesign in terms of city sizes and people should not run around like the snow powder around is methamphetamines and not snow. I felt completely disconnected from the Frostpunk feeling, the struggle and fight with the cold, the warmth of the generator. People are just an excel sheet numbers, buildings no longer feel important, districts are just a cities skylines thing, not frostpunk.
Frostpunk is one of my most favourited games ever. The climate, feels, connection, emotions. Perfect, touching music. Immersion.
Frostpunk 2 lacks all of it, except from main menu music...

First time I played Frostpunk was after pirating it. After falling in love with it I've bought it on Steam and on Epic (yes, 2 times!) with expansions.
I've bought Frostpunk 2 deluxe in pre-order... I am severely dissapointed and I'm considering refunding the game.

You still have some time, guys. I really hope you'll redesign some of the game mechanics and get us back the Frostpunk emotions and feelings, the Frostpunk experience. Not cities skylines: frozen wasteland.
Some of your new ideas are great, like the council, the factions, the trail/railway system.
But the city building is just wrong. The temperature system is basically gone - I didn't feel connection to the Generator as the central, most important building. I didn't feel it generated any heat, I couldn't see it.
9000 population... I'd accept 900 at most in this size of the city. I do understand that we have more advanced buildings now, multi-floor and stuff. But 9000? No. And I've seen maybe 20-30 people moving around the city. And as I mentioned, they did not fight the cold, they didn't expecience the frost. They've been skateboarding on methamphetamines and leaving a neon-trails everywhere.
Time-wise the game just goes too fast. Frostpunk 1 gave time to emperace time. Every hour counted. Will my generator burn through the coal before day starts? Will I get it before next cold snap? Here time is just some distant, background metric.


Please, take a step back. Emberace the Frostpunk emotional connection to the citizens. Make buildings and districts more organic, less simcity areas. Make singular persons important. Make the frost fight real and the main aspect. I understand that we've 'moved on' after the first struggles of the first generators and that we're past the early problems. But we still should be able to control the temperatures much more, fight for heat, insulate against the cold.

And let me repeat myself, the heastamps have to go. "We have people starving!" Yes, we have! We have the resources to build food district.... oh wait, you didn't pay enough taxes, starve! :|


And side note about some pure technical things about the game:
1. UI scaling needs to be done ASAP. For me, on 4k and 27" screen I'd like my UI to be at least 1.5x. I'd like the text to be readable without having to get up from my position or really focusing hard.
2. UI should emberace more of the steel, coal, soot (visual wise), the right-side temperature chart should be very clear on where is 'now' (right now it's rounded on the left side of axis). Like in FP1, it should have an arrow pointing exactly 'NOW'.
Resources should be bigger and clearer on when we're losing them (with time left), like on FP1.
3. Please give us settings to enable/disable the most hated/loved settings in-games:
- bloom
- chromatic abberration (with a scale, please, not just on-off)
- motion blur (it's really bad!)
- depth of field settings, or at least photo-mode (but I guess this will be available on release :))
I'm playing on 4k everything on ultra max, and I did feel the buildings to be blurry which should never be a thing.
4. Starting movies/logos and main menu - set their framerate limit. 2000 FPS on the starting logos, 400-600 FPS in main menus. With in-game setting 60 fps limit only the main menu coil whine was gone, but surprise - on some tabs of the settings the limit was off anyway, going for 1000 fps!. The limit should be for the game only, the main menu and movies should have their own, separate limit.
5. Automatons 'motion blur' looks terrible, pixelated and buggy. I guess you wanted to have the same effect as on people skateboarding through city, but it should not be - automatons are much slower.
Also, automatons ignore the game speed setting and appear and disappear randomly.

[kylix999]

But why, junior PR managers wrote on forum that forstpunk 1 was never about city building but about politics and survival...


I see BReaking Bad reference here, actually meth lab empire in frostpunk would be much more interesting than political simulator

[Acrivec]

I've just got someone tell me that Frostpunk 2 UI looks like 2008 Linux KDE, and It's surprisingly accurate! xD

[Acrivec]

Originally posted by kylix999:

But why, junior PR managers wrote on forum that forstpunk 1 was never about city building but about politics and survival...

If they say so - OK, but Frostpunk 2 lacks the survival vibe! Same emotions as with Cities Skylines when you're getting out of power or your sewage backs up... :')
In FP1 I actually felt bad when I failed to provide heating for people's homes or - worse - hospital.

[kylix999]

Originally posted by Acrivec:

Originally posted by kylix999:

But why, junior PR managers wrote on forum that forstpunk 1 was never about city building but about politics and survival...

If they say so - OK, but Frostpunk 2 lacks the survival vibe! Same emotions as with Cities Skylines when you're getting out of power or your sewage backs up... :')
In FP1 I actually felt bad when I failed to provide heating for people's homes or - worse - hospital.

Yes hope and discontent was very elegant and I cared about people a lot

[Izb]

I agree 100% with each of the points raised here.

I can understand the desire to change a good part of the gameplay and thus offer a new experience, but by trying too hard to be different, I believe FP2 lost sight of what made the essence of the original game.

I was very bewildered by my first steps in FP2: first, I felt completely lost in a universe I thought I knew (400 hours on Frostpunk and here I am back to being a noob). It's not necessarily unpleasant, and it's even rather challenging.

Except that...
Except that it doesn't quite work. The main issue is this problem of scale: how can one become attached to a population of 2000, 4000, 9000+ people? Where are the stakes if everything seems so distant (including the viewing distance with such limited zoom)? And in this mess of menus and options (It's a beta, I'm sure it will be improved), one can feel, little by little, an impression of loss of control but above all of detachment...

What becomes paradoxical is that by wanting to add so much, the game has become very generic. Just "another city builder" with that old hexagonal map (seriously? It's so unoriginal!)

It's such a shame and even more so because I don't see at all how this could change at this stage of development. It's a fundamental problem: it's neither technical nor cosmetic, it's simply another proposal too different to be compared to FP1.

This game mode will undoubtedly appeal to some (because it has qualities and the game is not stingy with interesting details), but personnaly, I've played far too many city builders from the 90s-2000s to find FP2 original.

Best of luck to the developers in the future, but it will be without me.

[Harris]

Originally posted by Acrivec:

I really hope

Sorry, but 11 bit replaced the Hope bar with Obedience a long time ago. The next logical step is executions of public enemies, so I wonder if they'll be tolerating threads like this one for much longer.

Originally posted by Acrivec:

Please, take a step back.

You do realize it's just not gonna happen a mere few months before the release? Changing a few numbers here and there for balance is the fullest extent of what could be hoped for.

[Blanch Warren]

I'm not saying all this talk of feelings is illegitimate, I'm just saying you all talk an awful lot about them

[Eltoron]

Originally posted by Acrivec:

And let me repeat myself, the heastamps have to go. "We have people starving!" Yes, we have! We have the resources to build food district.... oh wait, you didn't pay enough taxes, starve! :|

But this is how it works in real life. If its not a communism, if you don't pay people, they would spend their time trying to get this food in another way. People not a hive mind. In general they care about themselves at first and after that about other matters. Just look around. There is a plenty of things can be done even in starving countries. But somehow everyone thinks in a way "I'll better work right now for my own benefit and let's some fools perform unpaid work. And later we all will get profit from his work". This is why communism doesn't works in large societies.

[Blanch Warren]

Originally posted by Eltoron:

But this is how it works in real life.

Currency in the government is a modern institution, it doesn't simply "work in real life." It exists largely to facilitate commerce. If it's levied in coins rather than fiat currency, it comes with a slew of pre-modern problematic demands upon the population.

Heatstamps is one of the more legitimate complaints about the game. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me mechanically, even if it made sense thematically, which it doesn't. It's not at all particular clear what it is supposed to represent, though it is obvious that it functions as funds.

[Eltoron]

Originally posted by Blanch Warren:

Originally posted by Eltoron:

But this is how it works in real life.

No, you wouldn't generally expect to find currency in a frostpunk type situation. Even if it was instituted at a low level, you wouldn't find it at the government level. They would be operating with hard resources, and as necessary, work demands on the population promising to "take note" of the demands made.

But I would. We are at this situation right now. 10% of Earth population are starving. 30% have no proper access to safe water. 46% doesn't have access to adequate sanitation. And we are (you and me) doing nothing with it right now. Just discussing new game in beta access. So yes. I easily can imaginate the situation where the part of a big society are starving and no one wants to works for free and prefer to try to solve this problem (if he has this problem) directly. You are not an army commander or great communist leader after all. You are just a hired manager with some far from full power. And if people under your management really trust you - you can ask them to make something free of charge (ask a faction for money and build something on this money).

[Ceo]

I agree with OP, although I did come around to the heatstamps in my second attempt. Might just be that because this is Beta, it feels as if there is no logical path to why that is the main resource for building.

Frostpunk 1 has wood, steel, coal, power cores and people. I feel that Frostpunk 2 should have the same, including oil (I suppose) and maybe something else to spice things up a bit?

[Eltoron]

Originally posted by Blanch Warren:

Currency in the government is a modern institution, it doesn't simply "work in real life." It exists largely to facilitate commerce. If it's levied in coins rather than fiat currency, it comes with a slew of pre-modern problematic demands upon the population.

Heatstamps is one of the more legitimate complaints about the game. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me mechanically, even if it made sense thematically, which it doesn't. It's not at all particular clear what it is supposed to represent, though it is obvious that it functions as funds.

Again. I guess you completely miss the point. You have several resources in game with different propouses.
1. Population. We need this to make the work done. And it's a top limiting factor of how big we can right now.
2. Trust, tension, faction reputation. It's a political resource limiting our decisions and sometimes allowing direct action in case of faction reputation and abilities.
3. Frostland teams. A special resource with the only purpose to make something in frostlands.
4. Heat, shelter, food, materials, goods and coal. It's a city resources. In general we do not directly using its directly. We just influencing the flow. Trying to balance supply and demand. Actually it's not even our resources because we have nothing to do with them.
5. Heatstamps and Cores. Our only direct currency to perform most city actions. Actually heatstamps is a resource that limits our expansion.

Ah, there is also a Guard Teams, but I have not interact a lot with them.

So in general - Food, materials etc represents the state of the City economy. They are the answer to the question "How it's going?".
Heatstamps represents you ability to expand and progress. They answer to the question "What/how much can we do right now?"

It's really have a sense in game mechanics.

[Blanch Warren]

Originally posted by Eltoron:

Heatstamps represents you ability to expand and progress. They answer to the question "What/how much can we do right now?"

That doesn't actually indicate what they are.

[BigDaddyD]

I get that the game is still far from release, but it feels bland and lifeless. There are some really good ideas. I like council and faction system and the idea of expanding your city further with specialised districts and colonies is interesting. But this is more like Per Aspera than Frost Punk. It is no longer a city builder, you no longer care about your population or your decisions, there is no life in the city. The game feels sterile.

It's a pity, they had a brilliant concept and then decided to reinvent it.

[Acrivec]

Originally posted by Eltoron:

Originally posted by Acrivec:

And let me repeat myself, the heastamps have to go. "We have people starving!" Yes, we have! We have the resources to build food district.... oh wait, you didn't pay enough taxes, starve! :|

But this is how it works in real life. If its not a communism, if you don't pay people, they would spend their time trying to get this food in another way. People not a hive mind. In general they care about themselves at first and after that about other matters. Just look around. There is a plenty of things can be done even in starving countries. But somehow everyone thinks in a way "I'll better work right now for my own benefit and let's some fools perform unpaid work. And later we all will get profit from his work". This is why communism doesn't works in large societies.

In real life we're not surrounded by endless frost death plains. Those people don't really have other options.
If the whole city is starving, and we could _ALL_ build the source for food, which everyone needs or will die, we should build it. Even without the mighty manager consent. If they have the resources and they are truly starving, they will build it themselves, for themselves. Maybe not full scale, but they will build it, instead of starving, because this is literally the only way of getting food.
They won't smuggle contraband from other cities or suburban. They won't grow it themselves outside the city. If they don't build, even though they have materials, because they won't get paid with heatstamps, they will all die the silliest way possible. They will die of being stubborn.