Demo Feedback

[ToasT]

I want to echo some of the feedback others have given, and add my two cents, if developers are looking for CC. I hope nothing comes across harshly or as complaints, because I've spent over 24 hours playing the demo, just exploring and experimenting, and it's been very fun and rewarding!

This demo has really surprised me with what a fun idea and combination of elements it is. I love how it really rewards exploring in short loop gameplay in a fun and fairly addicting way.
The style, setting, and little bits of lore sprinkled here and there make something really unique and fun.

Areas I found need work or seem to have more potential to shine:
The gunplay is mostly really good, and the variety of weapons and accessories (plus oils and enchantments!) is really rewarding to tinker with and find different playstyle and loadouts.
There are some problems with this, though:

• We need a way to unequip accessories, even if only for a cost, with a specific item (maybe there is some kind of workbench unlocked later in the game that the demo doesn't show, a tool we can buy, or an NPC,) or only in town. As it stands, past an early, or desperate run where you have no resources or equipment, there is no incentive to use a lot of the gear you can find. Any of the "improvised" accessories like the improvised barrel shroud and Albatross suppressor currently have no reason to equip, aside from wanting a scavenged look, since you can't replace them with something better if you want to keep the gun, but locked yourself into a lower quality accessory choice - the same applies to trying something and finding it not to your liking, or just wanting to change gear.
  This isn't a huge deal, given how relatively easy it is to replace gear, and it seems like in further levels, you'll get access to better gear, and will need to replace things to put better enchantments on them, but it feels like it may compound once we have access to areas with better gear - the stakes will be higher with gear better than what we have access to looping the first area.
  If accessories could be unequipped, it would massively encourage experimentation, and let players try things out without having to worry about whether they're about to spoil the gun they've been enjoying through a run.
  
• Most of the guns feel good to use, but there are some consistency issues:
  The open sights you can equip require a lot of experimentation to figure out what they do, and how they compare to each other. The holographic sight is straightforward, but the Compact Sight seems to have the same zoom level as the Holo, even though it says is gives a 2x magnification; the Reflex Sight has higher zoom than the Assault scope which is listed as 4x. The Recon scope seems to closely mimic the Assault Scope, despite saying it's a 12x.
  There are also numerous problems with point of aim after equipping these to a bunch of the guns, which makes them feel terrible to use. Notably, the SOCOM9, Vrede, and the Ploika all keep the point of aim in line with where the iron sights are/were before equipping, after putting a sight on them. At first, I thought maybe it was set up to mimic a farther point of zero, but this seems consistent at any range.
  
• The Bore Chisels are an awesome touch. Being able to turn a .38 revolver into a mini shotgun is amazing. Equipping a 5.56 chisel to the Mossman shotgun was shocking to find that it just makes it take the new ammo type, but behaves the same as before, only doing 80x8 damage in a similar spread. I can't guess whether this is a bug, or it's intended to keep it functioning as a shotgun, just using new ammo type now.

Inventory management is rather the most difficult and frustrating element of the game, so far.

• The storage chest(s) around the Church feel generous when you first arrive, but between guns, gear, equipment, food, and crafting materials, it fills up far too quickly even if you are careful not to store junk or common items. It seems important to me that the player has some kind of limit to how much can be stored, so that you have to at least make some decisions, but if managing storage is this much of a handicap with just being able to loop the first area, I can only imagine how it might get when we have several areas to explore. I hope that the intention is to give more, or more kinds of storage as the player unlocks more of the area around the church. If this is the case, fantastic, but if not, it's quite a problem.
  Having some kind of fixed storage that's separate from the inventory chests around the church seems like a good solution, and feels even more important after finding once in 24 hours of runs that you can actually find your storage chest rarely in a dungeon - unfortunately it was useless to me at the time because it was full, so I couldn't stash anything I'd found and didn't desperately need any of the things in it for that run.
  
• I've seen a few players comment about this already, but I want to add my agreement that we need some sort of log or journal where we can record recipes we've learned or discovered in some way, rather than just relying on memory, even if there aren't any ways to figure them out apart from experimenting, or being told by NPC's like Scrip.
  It would be a pretty understandable design choice to push the player to remember important recipes and improvise if the game was more long-term survival focused, but with the way the loot and inventory is so random per run, based on what you might find, it currently feels like it's begging the player to just tab back and forth from the game to an inevitable wiki or guide that has all of the answers, which hurts immersion. It's also exacerbated a lot by the restrictive inventory management, since it's impossible to know if an unusual item (or organ) you've found is part of a valuable recipe you just haven't figured out yet.
  I have a pine cone and a worm taking up space, with no clue if they have any use at all, currently; I had 6 sawdust taking up space for many runs, until I gave up trying to figure out what I could do with them, in favour of getting the space they were taking up back.
  It would matter less if not for the incredibly impressive breadth of things we appear to be able to craft and cook, so needing some kind of dedicated function for this feels like a really good problem. xD
  (An extension of having some kind of journal might be that it could give more ways for players to learn recipes other than experimentation or being told/asking NPC's - perhaps you learn one or all of the recipes for an item once you pick it up, or have it, and the ingredients for it in your inventory at the same time. Perhaps you can find recipes as loot.)

Hopefully this isn't too much of a wall of text, or too much of a rant. I really am impressed with what's in the demo so far, and I'm looking forward to following development. This was an easy Wishlist for me!

[Warlance]

We definitely need a way to remove accessories, given that weapons 'rank up' and the game incentivizes investing into weapons, it seems unreasonable to expect us to rank up another of the same gun to try out different attachments. on that note it should also be possible to replace enchantments and oils with different ones although I wouldn't expect to be refunded them like I would attachments.

Scopes 100% need adjustment to more closely match what they say they are and what their real life counterparts are to match up with expectations.

I would assume the 5.56 shotgun is unintended, as I'd expect it to turn the shotgun to work like a slug, but if its intentional that would be quite interesting.

The current storage chest, in my opinion, needs to have much, much, MUCH more storage. these types of games where dying means you lose all your items, highly incentivizes supply hoarding, and similar 'extraction' type games like say zero sievert offer a lot of initial space, with greatly expanded storage available as upgrades. Either merchants need to stock a much wider and consistent item supply with buy/sell prices being brought closer together to allow for a more 'liquid' supply of items, or preferably the storage options should be massively increased. after a few full runs of the caves it feels really bad having to decide to sell some of the items I want to experiment with because I found better ones, and this being only the first area, makes me worry how bad the problem may become. I also would advise against multiple storages, as that introduces needless tedium going between them, having tabs in the storage chest would be much more ideal.

The recipe log is also a good idea, I also think finding scraps of paper with recipes written on them would be good, as I'm sure there's plenty of recipes to be found.

[YAGA]

Thanks for the feedback, this is some good stuff!

* I will change some of the descriptions on the scopes to closer match their actual zoom levels. Scopes in Sulfur, like in many FPS games, both provide a PIP Zoom, as well as a FOV reduction. This is why some scopes may feel like they have more or less zoom than they actually have. We approximate the zoom level stated in the discription from this.

Holo, Compact and Reflex should all have no zoom levels. It is an error that the Compact Sight shows a 2x zoom level, because when we first implemented it, we gave it a very slight PIP zoom.

* There will eventually be a feature that allows you to unequip attachments.

* When it comes to recipes, we have a bunch of things in the pipe that should improve the system and especially finding recipes in world.

* Chamber Chisels do need a bit more work in some edge cases, we are aware of this and actively tweaking numbers to make these edge cases behave as you would expect. Shotguns into any other caliber is a good example, since shotguns retain their high spread. If that spread was something that came from the ammo fired instead of gun used, that would fix this issue. I can't wait to make a Mossman into an ultra accurate 5.56 rifle.

* As for the inventory size, stash size, what items are important etc. I can't say too much yet other than that we are watching and listening to the community and will make changes to this to hopefully improve the experience. :)

Thanks again for the excellent feedback!

[ToasT]

Thanks for the reply, it's good to know you guys are reading feedback and actively tweaking and adjusting stuff (apart from obviously still being in development.)

I spent a good bit of time equipping the different open style sights of different kinds to copies of the same weapon, specifically to try to test out what the different zoom/fov adjustments they came with were initially because I noticed that they come with different crit% bonuses. (In my feedback, I didn't really differentiate FOV vs optical zoom, but that's definitely the distinction I was failing to articulate, it's good to know you guys are very aware of what they're doing, etc.)

It was baffling how all-over-the-place they seem, at least compared to their limited descriptions, or expectations based on real-world function. I was confused at first why the Holo and Reflex have different stats, and assumed it was just for the sake of mechanical differentiation, or to give them a sense of one being "superior," but then realised how different of a FOV adjustment they have, and started to really experiment.
Combined with their different crit bonuses, they're definitely not as intuitive as they could be, but it's also good that they at least are different from each other. Better in-game descriptions could help (especially with the Compact not actually having any zoom any more.)
The FOV adjustment of the Reflex seems massive, for what it is.

It would also be nice to see at least one that gives a useable sight reticle but no FOV change to make them more obvious to pair with shotguns or fast SMG's that you might not want to focus in with while aiming.

I avoided/ignored the Recon scope for the longest time, because based on the description/stats, it just looked like a worse version of the sniper scope - same zoom level but lower crit% - until I found a spare one and equipped it just to see how it actually differs. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it has a very useful mechanical function that differentiates it from a sniping scope, in how it presents with less FOV focus, and a slightly magnified optic (and not the 12x in the description.)
I struggled to tell if its zoom/fov was different from the Assault scope.

Swapping the Mossman to 5.56 was one of the first things I wanted to try, after experimenting with most of the weapons, seeing what I liked, and what was practical. A pump action, scoped slug shotgun was exactly what I thought I was building, until I fired it and got a spread of 8 5.56 impact points on the wall. xD

The game is already really fun and engaging, even just with a first level we can loop in the demo, seeing how excited the community is with this demo, and seeing lots of good feedback.

What's got my hyped for a future release is the amount of raw potential in what you guys are building.

[snowhite]

Originally posted by Murderman:

I can't wait to make a Mossman into an ultra accurate 5.56 rifle.



OH YEAH