Fast travel in the post-game

[frostee]

Hi devs, I've finished the game and honestly it left me with a lot of thoughts, not all of them positive. The gameplay, music, and general design are competent and fun, but there's just too many things that irks me as a seasoned metroidvania enjoyer. One of these being fast travel.

I mean, I get that sometimes you don't want the convenience of fast travel to cause players to ignore the level design and movement abilities, and/or create situations where intended paths are skipped because fast travel exists. But this game is built like a maze, and so excessively so that after finishing the final boss I just lost all interest in uncovering the map because I know the path to those areas are just painful. Each biome only has 1 teleporter and the workshop shortcuts are barely enough to cover the size the each sector. Plus even at the end game with most of the upgrades, enemies and hazards still feel as deadly and bullet-spongy as they were in the beginning of the game, so traversal never feels rewarding. At least in Metroid games you get ridiculous movement powers at the end game that makes re-running older biomes a breeze; here the thought of reliving all those platforming challenges just for the sake of a few fragments is a no-go for me.

Simply allowing for fast-travel between save points would be a great help in my opinion. That, and an optional radar or something like that to highlight every remaining collectible on the map would make it a great motivation for completionists like me.

PS: I hope the sales figures are good for you guys. MM deserves a sequel. Whoever did the room designs (not the overall sector design), and who made all those shortcuts in these segments, you (or team) deserves a fancy meal.

[tucho]

Hi frostee, thank you for your feedback, we already made the game more accessible with the post launch updates, at the beginning it was a more hardcore experience, causing that a part of players get frustrated, so we made it a bit more accessible. We already added more fast travel and a lot of QoL features, but reviews now are quite good and to make the game even more casual, aside of betray the original spirit of the game, probably would cause that a part of the players that currently are enjoying the game, would consider it not challenging enough (we also had feedback on this sense).

The option on add a casual mode (aside from standard and retro ones) which allows the players to travel through the save points, was always on the table, maybe we give it a second thought.

Originally posted by frostee:

PS: I hope the sales figures are good for you guys. MM deserves a sequel. Whoever did the room designs (not the overall sector design), and who made all those shortcuts in these segments, you (or team) deserves a fancy meal.

Thank you, I'm the guy behind both (we're a very small company!), I'm glad to hear that -at least partially- you've enjoyed it! :)

[inkysnoot]

Please add this as a late game upgrade, not something you have from the start as it will ruin the exploration imo. Most of the time, your reward for exploring is a shortcut, and shortcuts would lose their value completely if you had savepoint travel from the start. This game definitely needs savepoint fast travel for completionism tho as the areas are massive and the teleports are spaced so far apart.

Amazing game btw. So far, it's one of the best metroid games I've ever played and I've played a lot.

[frostee]

Yeah, if only sector 7 had like a fast travel thing you can find after you complete the gauntlet to get to the final boss area.

[tucho]

Originally posted by frostee:

Yeah, if only sector 7 had like a fast travel thing you can find after you complete the gauntlet to get to the final boss area.

Have you played the 1.2 version? you have a shortcut to the Workshop just before the final boss area.

[frostee]

Originally posted by tucho:

Originally posted by frostee:

Yeah, if only sector 7 had like a fast travel thing you can find after you complete the gauntlet to get to the final boss area.

Have you played the 1.2 version? you have a shortcut to the Workshop just before the final boss area.

I get that you guys have turned the workshop into kind of a fast-travel hub, and yes I know there's a shortcut (fun find btw). Just saying, as a player, when we get to that point, those of us will usually delay the final fight to clear out the map. The lack of fast travel spots and the fact that most biomes require us to go through platforming sections again (not that the movement abilities make these any easier), means it's expensive to make mistakes and end up in dead ends. The lack of fast travel spots in this game is currently a big discouragement for me to 100% the map, and that's a regular thing I do with metroidvanias. Out of the 30+ MVs I've owned on various platforms, I can count on one hand the few that I didn't bothered to 100%, and this game is unfortunately one of them.

Anyways, I know your mind is set, so I won't comment on this further. Just adding my thoughts here from a player perspective.

PS: FYI, the nuance here is the lack of fast travel spots, not the lack of fast travel functionality itself.

[tucho]

Thank you very much for your feedback anyway, as I said, the option of adding a more casual game mode which allow fast travel through save points was some times on the table, so if we find some time to work again on a major update for the game in the future, maybe we recover this idea.