New player thoughts

[Victoria]

Some initial thoughts and feedback after putting a few hours into the game:

1. The difficulty curve for combat isn't actually that bad. Once you realize that shifting between speeds is important and that stealth highlights enemies, that's 90% of the curve done. That said, was the stealth system more extensive at some point in the past? It legitimately feels like something huge was cut from the game or changed in a hasty fashion, with the current combat system largely revolving around door camping.

2. The barter system is insane and bad in a near objective way, both from a UI perspective as well as a mechanical and even story based one. So, in an ancap future, instead of buying items with crypto you're forced to sell extremely niche specific items (which are useless outside of barter largely) for RNG lootboxes? While also being forced to hover over every single station in the game to see what they're buying or selling (and having to match icons to ones in your inventory because there is no text overlay for the specific needed items)? And the system massively dilutes the loot pool? And the lootboxes largely have junk? It's so bad that it's far easier to acquire gear and items just by running missions against certain factions. Seriously, I hope this gets fixed before the game releases.

3. Quasimorphosis is an interesting mechanic but doesn't feel implemented well. It's either a ticking time bomb that will probably kill you due to map generation RNG, or something managed with almost no effort by using alcohol/morphine/cigs.

4. The UI in general need some serious work, things are readable but it feels incredibly barebones. There should be far more tooltips. There should also be an in game database of enemies/items that you fill out.

5. This will probably change before release, but it would be really nice if there were lore terminals outside of story missions.

[Vovarush]

Originally posted by Victoria:

Some initial thoughts and feedback after putting a few hours into the game:

1. The difficulty curve for combat isn't actually that bad. Once you realize that shifting between speeds is important and that stealth highlights enemies, that's 90% of the curve done. That said, was the stealth system more extensive at some point in the past? It legitimately feels like something huge was cut from the game or changed in a hasty fashion, with the current combat system largely revolving around door camping.

2. The barter system is insane and bad in a near objective way, both from a UI perspective as well as a mechanical and even story based one. So, in an ancap future, instead of buying items with crypto you're forced to sell extremely niche specific items (which are useless outside of barter largely) for RNG lootboxes? While also being forced to hover over every single station in the game to see what they're buying or selling (and having to match icons to ones in your inventory because there is no text overlay for the specific needed items)? And the system massively dilutes the loot pool? And the lootboxes largely have junk? It's so bad that it's far easier to acquire gear and items just by running missions against certain factions. Seriously, I hope this gets fixed before the game releases.

3. Quasimorphosis is an interesting mechanic but doesn't feel implemented well. It's either a ticking time bomb that will probably kill you due to map generation RNG, or something managed with almost no effort by using alcohol/morphine/cigs.

4. The UI in general need some serious work, things are readable but it feels incredibly barebones. There should be far more tooltips. There should also be an in game database of enemies/items that you fill out.

5. This will probably change before release, but it would be really nice if there were lore terminals outside of story missions.

1) Combat was rebalanced some time ago to be more tactical. Door camping isnt the ultimate strat (although not a bad one) there are situations where it will bite you in the a**.
2)Current barter system is a stopgap transitionary solution.
3) Q-morphosis isnt as bad as you think. Surviving rapture events is relatively easy if you position yourself well in advance. can even be used to relatively cheaply deal with high difficulty high floor assasinations/captures because you only need to kill the boss and all the rest simply vanish.
The rest i agree with

[Victoria]

One thing I forgot: Higher difficulty tier missions feel way too long for the stakes. I'm not sure how (or if) this can be fixed but all or nothing hour long slogs are incredibly draining.

[Victoria]

I'm checking out the new beta currently as well, and first things first, extensive customization for individual difficulty settings and variables is extremely cool. Very good change, though I prefer to play on a slightly tweaked medium.

[Stealthkibbler]

Originally posted by Victoria:

One thing I forgot: Higher difficulty tier missions feel way too long for the stakes. I'm not sure how (or if) this can be fixed but all or nothing hour long slogs are incredibly draining.

once you have all the ship and drop pod cargo upgrades they become loot pinatas, I'd do a mission just to fill my entire cargo hold with clothing then deconstructing it all into rags.

I think with the new barter system this makes it even more fun to larp as an interplanetary garbage merchant.

[Red Bat]

1. The door camping thing actually used to be even more pronounced. You could open a door in sneaking mode, adjust your inventory, then switch to normal movement all without losing an action. This meant that the optimal strategy was basically always to open a door, fire a flamethrower, then close the door and block it. Used to be fairly easy to effectively never take damage if you consistently cheesed every door, but you also used to almost have to do that because armor didn't protect you enough to not get oneshot.

2. Next update will apparently let you buy barter resources directly.

3. My issue is between 600-1000 quasimorphis raises way too quickly. Once you hit 600, unless you've already cleared most of the floor it's gonna skyrocket to 1000 within about 20 turns. The way to deal with it is incredibly anti-climatic. You basically just wait at the elevator for it to hit around 900, then go back to a floor you already cleared, let the baron spawn on an empty floor, then kill him and continue the mission normally. If you ever try to just move on with the mission once you hit 600 and the floor isn't mostly cleared already, you are basically just setting yourself up to be mobbed with a boss fight unless the objective and the elevator are both really close to each other.

[MercxHaze]

Originally posted by Victoria:

One thing I forgot: Higher difficulty tier missions feel way too long for the stakes. I'm not sure how (or if) this can be fixed but all or nothing hour long slogs are incredibly draining.

i agree with this immensely, i cant stand missions longer than 3 floors and even 3 floor missions are freakishly long

it doesnt feel good when i play all the way through the floors and instantly lose 40 minutes of gameplay from something as minor as a misclick, it just makes me want to close the game, and the length makes it basically mandatory to bring qmorph drainers unless you want a legion up your ass, which really hurts when fighting the venusians who feel practically invincible at times, contrasted with every other alien who seem to just flop when you look in their direction