It's not ready for Early Access IMO

[Peter™]

The game isn't ready for Early Access in my opinion.

This game reminds me a lot of Ark, in both; how it plays and its issues. I sincerely hope the devs don't take the Ark approach where the devs in that game ignores issues and instead focused on adding content instead. This game has an amazing concept, I just don't think it's receiving the love it requires. It feels like it's in early Alpha stages, not Beta and definitely not ready for Early Access.

Audio is bad.
I hope these are just placeholders because not a single bit of audio in the game sounds right. The audio cuts in and out constantly, random ambient recordings play with no directional audio. The foot steps sound so bad that I had to lower the volume. It's way too harsh. There's no variety to the foot step sound other than it sounds different depending on what surface you stand on. The storms are probably what expose the bad audio the most. Thunder sounds unrealistic, it's too loud, the rain cuts out completely so you can't hear it. You can't hear enemies until they already initiate their attack animation. No, the soul mask's *ting* is not a workaround for this.

Note: The audio cutting out issue has been fixed for me. Not sure if it was patched or if it was some sort of coincidence. The audio is a lot better now. The footsteps, at least in the jungle, sound fine now.

The UI is confusing and unintuitive.
The game just kinda starts and immediately throws a bunch of menus in your face and I immediately felt overwhelmed. There are too many menus, finding the right item to craft is difficult and time consuming. Search option works fine but I hate that I have to use it all the time. When you craft an ingredient, say Thick Rope for example, you have to spam click because there's no time to adjust the amount in the queue. Worst of all, if you run out of materials, all the recipes will auto-shift which causes you to craft something random by accident. Some UI elements don't update if you change your keybinds. There's also a prompt encountered that didn't have button labels set. I forgot which prompt; I think the delete world prompt.

AI is not great but also not terrible. It's mediocre.
You can tell the way the AI behaves that they're following a script. They don't move like normal people. It's very obvious when they initiate their zig-zag maneuvers. They also just kinda wait for you to raid them. They path around a little bit but that's it. Sometimes they just sit near a campfire and ignore you until you attack them. Their behavior makes no sense. Also on Hard mode, they instantly dodge arrows. Bows in general are very weak compared to melee, so on top of the perfect dodge that the AI does, it's the worst weapon choice to go with.

What changes I would like to see...
- First of all, fix the audio. Get rid of the placeholders and put some actual ambience in the game. Good audio vs bad audio makes or breaks the game. It is massively important to have good audio in a game so you can properly immerse yourself. Right now, I don't feel immersed at all. This should be a top priority.
- Try to simplify the UI. I know as a developer you've been working on it for so long that you probably can't imagine what's confusing about it. But put yourself in the perspective of a new player learning to play your game, or hire an actual tester. Don't rely on the playerbase to give proper feedback. You're gonna get mixed feedback because you have players commenting that are new to the genre and veterans that played games like Ark and gachas which have purposely convoluted menus. You need someone who is unbiased and knows how to properly test your game and give you proper feedback.
- Rework the AI. Think of how a normal person would behave. If you were a barbarian at a camp with 2 other barbarians, you would be doing something. Talking to each other, interracting with the environment, skinning animals, maybe put some outcasts in a cage near by that you can save and recruit. They're not just gonna wander around like they're defending a perimiter. And if they aggro on a player, they should shout out to call their friends. They need to feel more alive.
- Reduce the respawn rate, especially for loot Chests. The respawn is so short right now that you can just camp a ruin and kill and loot indefinitely.

That's all. I sincerely hope that you'll work on these issues and wont just ignore them like the Ark devs did, because I want this game to be good. You're sitting on a gold mine. Don't F it up. lol

Good luck to the dev team

[Kaos]

Even if it is not ready for Early Access, the devs either think it is ready or are forced to release it due to already having a release date. There are a lot of features that are not available in the demo like working Portals. Also, the game is going into Early Access instead of going live where entire portions of the game can be changed due to player feedback and sometimes it is necessary for the game to go into Early Access for the devs to realize that this feature needs to be changed or removed.

[upuaut2]

well in my opinion iit is. that's exactly what EA is. this game was ready for EA even on the previous demo. compared to what is available right now on steam. this game is not only playable 100 % but also highly enjoyable.

but there is plenty of room for improvement and polishing

i agree on the Audio. and sleep needs changing badly .

and yes the game has huge potential.

[Latone0505]

I agree I hope they look at the Ark team as "do not do" lessons. I disagree - this is pretty ok for EA - as long as they legit treat it like EARLY Access. If they listen to the community and make improvement.

100% on the confusing menus. It took me forever to figure out how to queue up tasks for my peons to do for (I'm with you, I kept trying to spam it and being super annoyed until I found it) - and it was only when I looked at another thing and realized there were key tips at the bottom of some screens that I found it. I kept looking for them in the Game Settings. Which also means I can't rebind them to things that make sense to ME - but that is an EA thing they might add someday. and exactly the kind of feedback I think devs can collect in EA to make the game better. If a bunch of people say "I hate the default keybinds, let me change it" the devs can decide if that's worth the work.

Crafting menus desperately need overhaul. Even just some toggles of "hide shtuff I haven't unlocked" would help. Bleep, I hated scrolling through Bronze stuff when all I wanted was bone or stone for my peons. And yes, there's a search I know. I don't like it. It felt twitchy. And I mean that literally, the like blinky-blinky as it tries to adjust instantly to what I'm doing made me slightly nauseous. Thank God I'm not epileptic because I'd be seriously scared of using the search box at all.

My biggest complaint is one of my most common with devs who love Multiplayer. If I am in single-player, why can't I pause? Like I get it, on a server with others you >can't< pause. But if I'm running on my pc and shtuff - I want to pause. And this isn't an academic issue. I have a toddler at home and sometimes I have to be able to stand up and move away from my PC _immediately_ to go address things like "There's a sugar ant in my bathtub!" (the horror) and if this dev wants me to be able to play this game when my kid is AT ALL IN MY HOUSE - I need to be able to hit pause. Where I am. Instantly.

[Peter™]

Originally posted by Kaos:

Even if it is not ready for Early Access, the devs either think it is ready or are forced to release it due to already having a release date. There are a lot of features that are not available in the demo like working Portals. Also, the game is going into Early Access instead of going live where entire portions of the game can be changed due to player feedback and sometimes it is necessary for the game to go into Early Access for the devs to realize that this feature needs to be changed or removed.

I wasn't talking about features. The game has missing and lacking basic functionality. Most importantly audio. If you're missing something as basic as audio, you have no place selling a game, regardless if it's Early Access. You can't just prototype a game and sell it. But people do it because Steam allows it and players are so used to getting shafted now, that they've even started defending bad practices.

[Latone0505]

Originally posted by Peter™:

I wasn't talking about features. The game has missing and lacking basic functionality. Most importantly audio. If you're missing something as basic as audio, you have no place selling a game, regardless if it's Early Access. You can't just prototype a game and sell it. But people do it because Steam allows it and players are so used to getting shafted now, that they've even started defending bad practices.

There are a LOT of bad devs out there abusing EA. and there are some who really engage and listen to their EA people (Planet Crafter is a recent one where the devs felt very responsive to the community and clear on "yeah, we hear y'all say this yes/no and why" throughout EA - and wouldn't ya know they released into 1.0 with pretty decent reviews - like overwhelming positive. Raft was similar.)

I am willing to watch a dev early in the EA process and see how they respond - because IMO that's the key: are they just selling the game early to make $$$ or do they legit want feeback from players to make the game better.

[Kaos]

Originally posted by Latone0505:

Originally posted by Peter™:

I wasn't talking about features. The game has missing and lacking basic functionality. Most importantly audio. If you're missing something as basic as audio, you have no place selling a game, regardless if it's Early Access. You can't just prototype a game and sell it. But people do it because Steam allows it and players are so used to getting shafted now, that they've even started defending bad practices.

There are a LOT of bad devs out there abusing EA. and there are some who really engage and listen to their EA people (Planet Crafter is a recent one where the devs felt very responsive to the community and clear on "yeah, we hear y'all say this yes/no and why" throughout EA - and wouldn't ya know they released into 1.0 with pretty decent reviews - like overwhelming positive. Raft was similar.)

I am willing to watch a dev early in the EA process and see how they respond - because IMO that's the key: are they just selling the game early to make $$$ or do they legit want feeback from players to make the game better.

Another example is Baldur's Gate 3 and Starfield. Baldur's Gate 3 was in Early Access for years and received Game of the Year while Starfield was never in Early Access and had a lousy launch. Then there is Kerbal Space Program 2 which released in Early Access last year and the current state of the game is up in the air due to the Publisher deciding to shut down the dev studio. They only had minimal communication with the team and usually only a week or two after a new major update was released.

[Tha_T1p]

compared to what most developers push out into EA, this is above an beyond most of those, so I'd say it's ready, at the same time, if you don't think so, just don't play and wait for a content update or 1.0 release. Early Access is just that, and it doesn't mean you have to buy into it and consume the game until you've rendered it lifeless, if you think it needs more time to cook, it's perfectly fine to give it more time to cook. Unless your buddies are playing daily in discord yapping your ear off about it, I don't see how that approach wouldn't work.

[Zuko]

Think my main concern is that they plan to release PvP into EA without any open-public PvP-Test. And tbh, playing around there's obviously going to be severe balance issues for those that are looking forward to the PvP as the main-content.

[Rogue]

Originally posted by Zuko:

Think my main concern is that they plan to release PvP into EA without any open-public PvP-Test. And tbh, playing around there's obviously going to be severe balance issues for those that are looking forward to the PvP as the main-content.

PVP is doomed. There's no anti-cheat. You can play-pretend with friends but actual pvp is now pure toxic who can cheat the best. PVE might has issues too, due to area blocking. You just started out with a hut, while the cheater(s) has a wall stretching from northeast to south-west blocking you already to later content or resources. lol.

There's no balance, 1 vs 1 the weapon which has fastest burst damage wins. Many vs many is a blurred chaotic mess and there's no defining siege weapons and tactics.

Very obvious, if you had play a bunch of similar games with pvp.

[Rock Paper Super]

Originally posted by Zuko:

Think my main concern is that they plan to release PvP into EA without any open-public PvP-Test. And tbh, playing around there's obviously going to be severe balance issues for those that are looking forward to the PvP as the main-content.

I mean... that's what EA is for: testing. Why would they do a public test before the public test? It would just be another round of FOMO marketing like the current public demo.

[Rogue]

Originally posted by IcyTorment:

Originally posted by Zuko:

Think my main concern is that they plan to release PvP into EA without any open-public PvP-Test. And tbh, playing around there's obviously going to be severe balance issues for those that are looking forward to the PvP as the main-content.

I mean... that's what EA is for: testing. Why would they do a public test before the public test? It would just be another round of FOMO marketing like the current public demo.

This is borked, you paid for a product to their tester. Mind blown. This is the new generation of gamers... Pretty sad in my opinion. Just use simple logic, you know the massive issue already, no anti-cheat->pvp is doomed and you need EA for "testing"...

I guess most will just hide in their private servers instead of playing official.

[Buliwyf]

the industry will die if we let every steam profile with an anime catgirl tell us the things we make arent good enough

[H3llF!r3]

EA can stand for 5-10 years, lots of companies do it so........

[123]

Early access is the worst thing to ever happen to gaming. Its all beta.

[Kaos]

Originally posted by skeezy:

Early access is the worst thing to ever happen to gaming. Its all beta.

Depends on the company. Some games from indie companies that would never see the light of day can get the required resources to finish the game while greedy corporations will abuse Early Access and shut down game development once they have enough cash from their customers or more accurate to say their victims.