Feedback

[James]

Hello,

I binged the game and I believe I've completed all the current content that the early access has to offer. Overall I really enjoyed my time with the game and I think it can be a gem of a game with 1.0 and will be up there with Subnautica and Breathedge.

I do acknowledge that some of my feedback could just be on me and I understand it's early on in the early access period so some of these things are not a high priority but I thought I would drop some feedback and my thoughts here anyway:

Story progression

It's feels bit too disjointed, you start following the story of Elara and co. and it suddenly just kind of ends their story or you start finding logs from the Theta base crew before you've found all the Elara and co. logs and you kind of have to piece together what's going on. It would be nice if the game gave a little more direction to follow the narrative at least at the start, it is fun to piece together the mystery but it's not very satisfying when it's so disjointed.

Progression feels too fast

In my opinion progression is far too fast. You start off slow and it feels good to get those first few upgrades but after a few hours in I barely had the skipper before I replaced it with the summon vehicle, I had T2 vehicle modules unlocked before I had the vehicle unlocked so progression feels a little all over the place.

Since I already had the T2 modules unlocked when I unlocked the vehicle, I popped those in and then I was absolutely zooming around the asteroid belt like a race car, I never even played with it without modules or even the T1 modules. It feels good of course but it just comes so fast, it feels like we are lacking kind of a mid game between the real slow and real fast options and I skipped to endgame. The skipper comes and goes in no time as I said above, I think the skipper could be unlocked a little earlier or the vehicle unlocked later, or certainly the modules not be so easy to obtain (as I said I skipped over T1 modules entirely).

One more thing about progression, the hook could be good but it also comes way too late. I think by the time I unlocked it I already had the skipper, it was fun to play around with but it never felt particularly useful at any point, maybe it will be more useful later on in early access but I think it should be unlocked earlier as the speed boost could be quite handy before vehicles and T3 upgrades.

Visual progression

Again not a high prio thing but when you're on the skipper you can change the view to see your character on the bike, it's weird that you can't see any equipment on him but only the space suit, I think jetpack, backpack and oxygen tank should show and visually upgrade on the character model.

Docking Bay

I found it strange how the docking bay has those robotic arms attached to the ceiling but they don't do anything? I think it should work similarly to Subnautica and when docked then the arms should pick up the vehicle and automatically charge/repair it. Also allow the skipper to dock?

Some resources are too scarce

Fabric is painful to find and so is iridium. I've read around the forum that you can find iridium inside the green cloud but you need iridium for the toxic suit so you need go into the green cloud and likely cheese it to make the toxic suit so you can go inside the green cloud, a bit strange and unintuitive for progression, unless there's somewhere I missed to get iridium but I have no idea where else to find iridium other than a rare couple of rocks that I found.

Survival

The survival aspects of the game currently feel like an afterthought. Even without the free respawning resources (I assume this is a bug and will change?) you get so much free water and food from containers (burgers, donuts) and the plants in the bubble habitats I was getting more food and water from my exploration than I could use which is funny because the bars also deplete incredibly fast to the point where it's just kind of tedious since it's so easy to get resources it doesn't add anything interesting to the game. IMO slow down the rate of hunger and thirst and make food harder to acquire until the player can grow their own.

The health stat doesn't feel that great either atm partially due to lack of fabric but that could be resolved by either allowing a slow regen or some way to regain health without a medkit, my suggestion is to use the bed to heal, then the medkits and the fabric could be saved and useful for exploration.

Better descriptions

I think some better descriptions would be helpful. I was confused by what some of the tech was doing as the description wasn't very helpful, the one that stuck out to me the most for example was mining power, what does that even mean? I think I figured out it either lets you destroy larger rocks or higher tier of rocks? It's really not obvious from the description.

Posters and collectibles

Obviously not high priority but it would be great if we could have posters to put on the wall, the flickering poster in one of the crewmate's rooms is what comes to mind, I thought I would be able to pickup/dismantle the poster and use it at my own base and was disappointed that I couldn't! How about sprinkling around more posters that we can collect or other collectibles?

Other

- Is voice acting planned for the future? Not important but it's always more enjoyable and it could help with the problem of losing oxygen while trying to read the logs, it would be good if the log just played with VA while continuing to explore.

- Snapping mode doesn't seem to work? When I'm in the habitat and press R for snapping mode then nothing happens and nothing snaps.

If I think of anymore I'll edit the post accordingly.

Overall the game is great and I'm looking forward to seeing how it continues into early access and 1.0 launch.

[Bobzilla]

Nice recap. I'd concur, but unlike you I didn't get the summon vehicle until later in the game, so just flying around the asteroid belt pressing W and holding shift gets tedious. The player and skipper should both have the 'autopilot' feature as in the summon vehicle.

Combat seemed to equate well with the weapon level.

I did eventually find a container with loads of fabric, but was too late to be of much help.

I'd also add oxygen to the list as it runs out too quickly.

[James]

Totally agreed that autopilot should always be available!

[ZInventor]

Autopilot?

[ZInventor]

Originally posted by Bobzilla:

Nice recap. I'd concur, but unlike you I didn't get the summon vehicle until later in the game, so just flying around the asteroid belt pressing W and holding shift gets tedious. The player and skipper should both have the 'autopilot' feature as in the summon vehicle.

Combat seemed to equate well with the weapon level.

I did eventually find a container with loads of fabric, but was too late to be of much help.

I'd also add oxygen to the list as it runs out too quickly.

Fabric can be obtained through the plants on shielded asteroids

[seven]

Originally posted by ZInventor:

Autopilot?

Cruise control for the Summon. Or auto-walk.

Disagree about having it for the player since the jetpack is not infinite and autowalk without the jetpack would be too slow.

[j.bonaiuto]

I agree with you about finding the upgrades before even finding the vehicles.
I think I had some T2 or T3 upgrades before I even found the first one.
I was just picking a direction and trying to find things wherever I could.

I think the underlying need for the game some kind of - easy to figure out 'line of progression'.

With peoples play styles it is hard to come up with a line of progression that does not hold hands - some people scan constantly looking for clues, read every log and try to understand what and where they should be looking, others refuse to scan or read so need some kind of highlights to know what their next step should be.
Finding that middle ground, so you are subtly leading the player but not having to hold their hand can really be frustrating to developers.
Honestly I LOVE all the YouTubers who refuse to read logs, just flashing them on the screen for their watchers, and then act surprised when the explosive crates actually explode - wounding them - LOL

[Cuddly Robot]

I mean, the progression *is* pretty linear, if you're even remotely logical. You can *see* the first places you should go as soon as you leave the pod for the first time, and each step after them is revealed as you get to them - and anyone who ignores the transmissions that SHOW YOU THE NEXT LOCATION deserves to drift aimlessly until their oxygen runs out

Especially the second escape pod - the transmission TELLS YOU that they have silver (which you need for some of your first pieces of equipment)