Where's the challenge?

[BDSwagMuffin]

I've been enjoying the most recent demo until I had all islands purified. The island building is fun and I don't think I've played another game that allowed you this much freedom in building a vehicle/base. Trying to get your island populated with "terraforming" resources that you can share with other islands to purify them was an interesting little journey and decently rewarding gameplay loop for something as limited as a demo. I did however notice a few things that had me worried about the lifetime of the full game.

1: No detrimental effects on death? I can just park my island right next to an infested island and throw myself into the combat as many times as I wish? Kinda devalues the already simple combat even further. Hopefully full release will have more challenging enemies (and the improved tools to tackle them) but if all I have to do is park my respawn point close and go in with infinite, inconsequential revives I might aswell turn godmode on for all the difference it makes.

2: Why would I cook? The buffs are negligable with how simple the combat is and non-punishing death is. and you're not required to eat to stay alive. I wouldn't even call the game a survival game because the only possible cause of death is combat (not counting falling out of the sky because you can glide infinitely if you're not stupid), it is as much a survival game as the average rpg or fps is. Really hope the full game will come out with a survival mode where food and water actually matters.

3: There's no skill needed to pilot the glider. You don't even need momentum to get started, you can just hop up from a standstill and climb as far as you want. It's basically creative/noclip mode with minor extra steps. There was no need to get a feel for the glider as it is as basic as swimming is in most other games. Aviation should have atleast some measure of difficulty behind it, thats what's makes it interesting and rewarding, just look at any other game where there's a glider mechanic or the focus is on realistic aviation. It'd be nice if the base-game glider for the fullgame wasn't this overpowered, and you slowly build up to the demo glider with glider customisation.

"Aloft’s feel-good "survival" is more about rewarding positive action than punishing mistakes."

I hope "challenging the player" does not equate to "punishing mistakes"

I really want this game to do well, the building system and base customisation is awesome and huge, I love the implications of the windpower-and-pulley system from the trailers, but if there is no challenge to overcome, it's really more of an elaborate sandbox rather than a survival game.

[dtt.scanner]

It is, as you say, an elaborate sandbox, not a survival game. This is the intended design. Lo-Fi coffeehouse mellow.

A few players, like you and I, have requested an optional survival mode, where food/water/sleep matters. I hadn't thought about adding a level of consequence to death, but perhaps at the very least losing everything you are carrying. It would mean that, even if you keep almost everything in storage, you would have to re-make all of your gear before "jumping back into battle," which would make the food buffs much more important, as they increase combat ability and survivability. Optionally, you could have a "drop pile" that could be picked up, but you would still need to re-gear for going back in. I suppose you could keep a "hope chest" full of supplies ready to go in case of death, but it still requires an effort.

There is actually one consequence to death already (small, but it's there). You lose the resources you would have gained from all of the opponents you triggered on the map, as they will have de-spawned and will not re-spawn for that island. The islands do reset with fungus over time, if left on their own, and even the hidden chests are re-filled, but it is a fairly long wait time.

Future enemies I believe are scaled to be more difficult (bomb/poison-throwers, etc), so the defensive buffs of the (future) clothing may become necessary as well. Possibly anti-toxins, defensive weaves for explosions, or even actual armor, etc.

[rdbury]

As mentioned in the previous comment, some of these things may be the result of it being an early version and the fact that we're restricted to the "tutorial" area at the moment. I, for one, am still skeptical though and it seems like there is a trend where each new change dumb's down the game in some way. I started noticing this in the previous demo, so we're going on two versions now where the game just gets easier and easier, and following the trend the final release will be the easiest one yet. I'm not saying it has to be Dark Souls level of difficulty, but as a player I want something I actually have to chew on for a while. Originally I was sold on the flying, but it seems that's been dumbed down like everything else since you don't have to worry about stamina anymore. Back in the day I played Pilotwings 64 and they had gliders as in Aloft. But in Pilotwings things like momentum and altitude actually mattered; you had to find updrafts and use them skillfully to stay in the air. In Aloft they added updrafts but made them completely unnecessary because you just point up to fly up. And yes, I crashed and died dozens of times in Pilotwings before getting the hang of landing safely, but it was so satisfying when I finally did it. In Aloft you just aim at the ground and you're fine. The game has a lot of survival elements in it, sort of a Don't Starve with flying. But a survival game with no consequences for dying? It's hard to see the point.