Endless Mode?

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The one thing that's making this less enjoyable for me than something like Dorf Romantik or Pan'Orama is that you just stop getting land masses after a while and that makes it less engaging for me since then I can't plan out something long-term, which the continental rivers definitely need. Most of mine just look like squiggly lines so I can meet the waterwheel's requirements.

Kind of related but trying to go for 3 unique animals feels like there is some kind of arbitrary stopgaps on it. You cannot even get 3 unique animals that all go in the same biome on smaller maps (at best there are 2 per biome that exist in the card pool) and on the biomes you can, the game will go a long time before giving you 3 unique animals in card draws that feels deliberate. When there are a limited number of land masses I can get, I feel like it's trying to really limit players from making as many biomes give the 3 unique bonus as possible by making it very luck-based on if you can get enough cards for it.

The result is that the game is too easy and feels like a sprint instead of a marathon. I can just abandon all my desire to make long term plans, build biomes with 3 of the same species in mind, make an ugly long column of tiles for rivers to flow, and be done with a map in 20 minutes tops. It's not difficult to clear the objectives to get bigger maps and those objectives feel too much like the entire point. We already have the puzzle mode, why does the main game need to feel like that too?

[barbazek]

I prefer well balanced puzzle than playing this game in endless mode. We know what we may get at each mile points. You can plan next moves in short/medium length. Game like DorfRomantik is basically game of chance. You never know what you get from draft pool.

To prove that I prefer "puzzle" (games with specific goals and limitations) than endless mode:
Puzzle: Preserve 110h, Slipways 100h
Endless: DorfRomantik 23h (and I play a lot weekly challenge - "puzzle")

In puzzle you can make your own goal. For me in Preserve is get as many points as it possible. I can play this game with excel and I love it. In other games challenging myself like use different development tree. Frostpunk has great challenges in many modes, but is a bit lame in endless.

So all I want to see in Preserve is more biomes, more puzzle and maybe more advanced weekly challenge. Definitely we do not need endless mode.

[FroBodine]

barbazek - YOU don't need endless mode. Others might want it, obviously. You can't say what you want is the definitive thing, when others want something different.

[barbazek]

FroBodine sorry, my opinion is defferent than yours. I can say what I think devs should do or not. So endless mode is a wasted time for them and I would rather like they focus on other aspects of a game. Some will agree, other not. Maybe is 70:30, 50:50 or 30:70 and Devs would decide to make endless. I don't mind if so, just want to raise a voice of everyone who disagrees.

[404_Not_Found]

Originally posted by FroBodine:

barbazek - YOU don't need endless mode. Others might want it, obviously. You can't say what you want is the definitive thing, when others want something different.

Yeah honestly I think it's rude when people come into someone else's thread and start saying "well *I* don't want this feature so YOU shouldn't have it either!" Comes off as a bit entitled.

Thanks for saying something about it though. I appreciate you.

[CascadeHush]

Preserve is clearly balanced around a specific ark and the end game map will be a particular size. Complaining about not being able to build rivers is a side issue, it's certainly possible to build rivers 30+ in length if you plan for it. You don't have to just build land masses in a straight line to do that. You can move animals around in your endgame to maximise the number of habitats with 3+. Less doable in the smaller levels, but still possible to get some. So the points you bring up to support the idea of needing an endless mode are mostly irrelevant.

At the end of the day you do have endless mode... it's called playing the game over and over again. It's okay to want an endless mode, but your arguments for it are not as good as you think. And I suspect that the majority of the player base will, in the long run, be happy with a limited time experience and building to a known size, and going in knowing that they can finish a level in a reasonable amount of time. And if they want to play again they can, maybe the same biome, maybe something different.

I absolutely would prefer the devs not waste time on this.

I think that some people are used to playing highly randomised games and don't understand a balanced game when they see one. The progression of what cards come out when, and the limitation of a finite level size, are both extremely well balanced, and in a world flooded by roguelikes, most of which are terrible, that is a precious thing.

I too got pretty bored with Dorfromantic after only a few hours.

I played Pan'Orama for 9 hours and got a refund because it crashed mid-run and there is no game save. Panorama looks pretty and has some really cool ideas, but to loose hours of progress because of a crash and not having an autosave because they want to prevent save scumming is appalling. It too is a really bad argument for an endless mode.

[404_Not_Found]

Originally posted by CascadeHush:

Preserve is clearly balanced around a specific ark and the end game map will be a particular size. Complaining about not being able to build rivers is a side issue, it's certainly possible to build rivers 30+ in length if you plan for it. You don't have to just build land masses in a straight line to do that. You can move animals around in your endgame to maximise the number of habitats with 3+. Less doable in the smaller levels, but still possible to get some. So the points you bring up to support the idea of needing an endless mode are mostly irrelevant.

At the end of the day you do have endless mode... it's called playing the game over and over again. It's okay to want an endless mode, but your arguments for it are not as good as you think. And I suspect that the majority of the player base will, in the long run, be happy with a limited time experience and building to a known size, and going in knowing that they can finish a level in a reasonable amount of time. And if they want to play again they can, maybe the same biome, maybe something different.

I absolutely would prefer the devs not waste time on this.

I think that some people are used to playing highly randomised games and don't understand a balanced game when they see one. The progression of what cards come out when, and the limitation of a finite level size, are both extremely well balanced, and in a world flooded by roguelikes, most of which are terrible, that is a precious thing.

I too got pretty bored with Dorfromantic after only a few hours.

I played Pan'Orama for 9 hours and got a refund because it crashed mid-run and there is no game save. Panorama looks pretty and has some really cool ideas, but to loose hours of progress because of a crash and not having an autosave because they want to prevent save scumming is appalling. It too is a really bad argument for an endless mode.

I mean it's fine if YOU like playing that way, but I want something that doesn't feel like I have a limited number of moves to do things in.

It's not that it isn't doable for me, I just think it makes an uglier map.

Also, you can't just "move animals around" at endgame, you get a finite amount of recycle cards and I'm not sure if you ever get more. Changing a biome from 3 of a kind to 3 unique would take up 2 cards, so you can't do it for every biome once the game actually gives you 3 more animals.

That sucks about Panorama though, sorry that happened to you. I think the devs should prioritize an autosave since that prevents savescumming a lot cleaner anyway and losing so much work is terrible. I don't know how you managed to get a refund though after 9 hours. If I could get refunded on Preserve, I probably would. It's fine, but not what I wanted, and there's other stuff on sale I could've gotten instead, so now I regret buying it.

Either way, I think coming into someone's thread, throwing around "The points you make in favor of this are irrelevant," and dismissing how I want to play is a bit rude. Maybe you should grow and change as a person if you are this insecure about how other people would like to play a game?

[Vakacius]

Hello 404!
first of all thank you for your well-ariculated opinion and insight!

Actually Dorfromantik was one of our major inspirations three years ago when we first started designing Preserve (along with Islanders and Terra Nil) However we didn't enjoy two things while playing DR - that you do not interact with the tiles once you lay them down and that the main game mode is endless (which starts out very fun, but becomes a slog as your placement options gradually grow).

These two things actually became one of our core design principles:
1.) we wanted to create a map in layers, so that the players interact with tiles multiple times (you adjust the terrain, place flora and create habitats, place fauna inside, delete it, make space for a lake, place a natural wonder etc.)
2.) we wanted the maps to have a finite size. It was our design principle from the beginning that we want to craft a map building experience that will take 15 / 30 / 45 minutes for small / medium / large maps. Making maps with finite sizes gives us much more control over balance, RNG and overall player experience. This is one of the founding pillars of Preserve and tearing it down - although possible - would result in a non-balanced game which would either be too easy, repetitive or frustratingly RNG heavy and thus not really fun to play.

In other words endless games need to be designed as endless from the very beginning. Adding an endless mode to a non-endless game later is possible, but will very probably not be very fun and will need a lot of redisigning.

A small note on the side, endless maps would also be very performance heavy, making the game very taxing to low end computers and consoles (such as Nintendo Switch).

Hope my reaction explains our situation. Thank you for your understanding!

[404_Not_Found]

Originally posted by Vakacius:

Hello 404!
first of all thank you for your well-ariculated opinion and insight!

Actually Dorfromantik was one of our major inspirations three years ago when we first started designing Preserve (along with Islanders and Terra Nil) However we didn't enjoy two things while playing DR - that you do not interact with the tiles once you lay them down and that the main game mode is endless (which starts out very fun, but becomes a slog as your placement options gradually grow).

These two things actually became one of our core design principles:
1.) we wanted to create a map in layers, so that the players interact with tiles multiple times (you adjust the terrain, place flora and create habitats, place fauna inside, delete it, make space for a lake, place a natural wonder etc.)
2.) we wanted the maps to have a finite size. It was our design principle from the beginning that we want to craft a map building experience that will take 15 / 30 / 45 minutes for small / medium / large maps. Making maps with finite sizes gives us much more control over balance, RNG and overall player experience. This is one of the founding pillars of Preserve and tearing it down - although possible - would result in a non-balanced game which would either be too easy, repetitive or frustratingly RNG heavy and thus not really fun to play.

In other words endless games need to be designed as endless from the very beginning. Adding an endless mode to a non-endless game later is possible, but will very probably not be very fun and will need a lot of redisigning.

A small note on the side, endless maps would also be very performance heavy, making the game very taxing to low end computers and consoles (such as Nintendo Switch).

Hope my reaction explains our situation. Thank you for your understanding!

That is unfortunate. I enjoy the tile interactions, but feel like my work means too little when I cannot work on the same project for hours. I felt the same way with Station to Station, though I also do like that game, I hurt for having one big thing instead of several small things.

I've played for 2.3 hours. Is it too late to request a refund?

I regret that your community has been very aggressive/condescending toward me in this thread and it's soured my desire to participate in good faith. I would've taken your answer much better if it didn't come after a couple other people were rude. I hope they do not represent the bulk of your community.

[CascadeHush]

You don't need to quote an entire post just to reply, you are just clogging up the internet with junk nobody needs.

Nobody here has been aggressive. Disagreeing with you is not aggressive, especially when presenting reasoned arguments that you have made no effort to counter. Instead, you just told people to get out of your thread. That is aggressive.

Frankly I'm surprised you didn't tell the devs to get out for not providing you with the answer you wanted.

Getting a refund past the 2 hour window when you don't have a valid reason might be a stretch. But you can always ask and if you haven't abused the system in the past they may well overlook going 20 minutes over. Whatever you do, don't put anything in the box where it says 'reasons for refund'. Nothing you could say there would help your case.

[404_Not_Found]

Originally posted by CascadeHush:

You don't need to quote an entire post just to reply, you are just clogging up the internet with junk nobody needs.

Originally posted by CascadeHush:

Nobody here has been aggressive.

Right.

[Asuzara]

I would love an endless mode. It gives me motivation to play the game over and over again. Because if I have the objectives (achievements) finished for the biomes, there is no reason for me to play them again. Sure, you can just play them again for the fun of it, but I'm very checklist driven and squeezing out a few more points is not good enough to justify spending an hour on a bigger map.

That being said, I understand the design principle of the game. The answer of the dev is transparent and clear. I'll still put 30 hours into the game which is great! Just won't be 200+ hours. 😄

[mbutton15]

Originally posted by Vakacius:

2.) we wanted the maps to have a finite size. It was our design principle from the beginning that we want to craft a map building experience that will take 15 / 30 / 45 minutes for small / medium / large maps.

Well that's interesting to hear. 45 minutes to do a large map!!
I couldn't actually quote my play times. But as an example I once played a weekly challenge map over at least 3 sessions!!
Spent over an hour last night on a large Jurassic and still have 6 land masses yet to unlock. :)

[mbutton15]

I've just been checking the faq linked on Discord.
I've never tried it, but it seems there is a 'Creative' mode. Not sure how that works, but maybe that has an endless'ish element to it?

[oldladygreybun]

Originally posted by Asuzara:

I would love an endless mode. It gives me motivation to play the game over and over again. Because if I have the objectives (achievements) finished for the biomes, there is no reason for me to play them again. Sure, you can just play them again for the fun of it, but I'm very checklist driven and squeezing out a few more points is not good enough to justify spending an hour on a bigger map.

IF it's the kind of thing that feels fun for you, then there is a lot of replayability in getting higher scores than 'just' the Gold ach. in each. Because there is a sizable room of higher scores possible, above the Gold (take a look at the leaderboards for the 3 EA biomes, and you'll see). Although perhaps that's in your take of "squeezing out a few more points".And not something that everyone enjoys, of course! But thought I'd mention it, in case you had the impression that the Gold is very close to as far as it goes, kind of thing.
And there's the creative mode, too, like mbutton writes, but maybe that doesn't appeal either...

Or you do the achievements, and put the game aside, as 'done'. Of course :-)