A few observations in the gameplay. I hope it will be improved.

[DIVAYTH FYR]

post update 12.05.24 - Thanks for the tips from other users regarding the crafting system.
But I still think that:
The crafting menu of building components for buildings is mixed with workbenches and furniture. I propose to make a clearer division into categories: 1) it is the construction of buildings. 2) Animal pens and animal traps. 3) Craft - crafting stations, whether it's armor, weapons, food.

Old thoughts - which have not changed yet:

The combat system.
I'm playing for the hunter class and I'm already regretting it. The only useful feature is the mask's ability to scan the area for enemies.
Ranged bow and arrow attacks are absolutely not playable. I couldn't figure out how to equip the arrows for about 10 minutes. And I just happened to guess that they need to be transferred to the bow icon. It's a pity that arrows just can't be equipped for a character. When the bow weapon is not active, the quiver with arrows disappears from the back - this is not critical, but there is no immersion in the reality of mechanics.

Archery is not effective for the following reasons:
1) The attack distance is extremely low.
2) The sight is very inconvenient from a third person
3) Getting into the head or neck, the damage is applied a little more but slightly. I managed to get three hits to the head and the level 7 enemy was still capable of action.
4) Enemies have superhuman reactions. they dodge the arrows in a somersault the moment you release the bowstring. Because of this, more than half of the arrows just fly into the ground.
5) Arrows cannot be collected from corpses or from the ground, they simply disappear.
6) It is impossible to dodge the attacks of enemy archers. I went on a mission to the enemy scout camp where there was a level 18 archer. He never missed shooting at me, no matter how I curled up and no matter how I tried to shoot from behind cover. As soon as I poked my head out a little, an arrow flew at me. With the perception of level 26 and dexterity 16, it was easier for me to kill enemies with a stone sword.
7) If the enemies can't get to you. (I shot at the enemies in the ruins from the top of a small mountain), they stop fighting after a couple of minutes and return to positions next to their campfire and on the way back they restore health colossally quickly, so quickly that even shooting them in the back and in the head 5-7 hits they do not die. When they reach their starting positions, they start attacking you again with full health, and you have already spent all your arrows.
8) secrecy. I don't know why, but in all games they don't understand that an archer (sniper) This is the same killer who depends on stealth. And for some reason, archers are always cut off this opportunity. You will be discovered at all times and everywhere in whatever castes you hide, no matter how far away you are, you will be discovered by all enemies, people and animals. It will not work out adequately to play as a hunter.

Conclusion: The hunter does very little damage, he attacks very slowly, he hides badly, everyone evades his attacks, but he cannot dodge other people's attacks. You will not be able to play as a hunter adequately.

There are still questions about character management - namely how they do the job.
I assigned an NPC tribesman to cut down a tree next to the tribe's campfire, first gave him a stone axe and later a bone axe. He indicated which box to put the tree in. After 3 hours of observation, I saw how the NPC periodically left the rest mat and ran outside, ran randomly to different places, did nothing and brought nothing for storage.
I tried to assign the second NPC to stone mining, but I did not see this option in the choice of work - perhaps the localization of the translation into my language is not quite correct here. It would be a little easier if we could specify for the NPCs what kind of resource we want to receive from them for specific types of work. As a result, I tried to assign an NPC to gather resources around the tribe's campfire, but he just sat there and did nothing at all.

Conceptual opinion. The game tries too hard to cling to the class system of development. This is already a relic that many players are just tired of. You should not depend on the choice of skills, abilities and specializations. Everything should be available to you for mastering and learning. By the way, this is partially implemented in the game, but not completed. I can improve the extraction of wood, stone, and reed harvesting. According to this principle, the skills of using different weapons seem to improve, but it is extremely difficult to fully understand. I like the idea that your skills grow depending on real-time practice and this should apply to all skills and abilities for everyone without restrictions.
Example: - If I'm a warrior, it doesn't mean that I dont want to train stealth. Everyone needs stealth for surprise attacks on enemy camps or for hunting especially dangerous animals. - If I'm an archer, it doesn't mean that I don't want to develop physical strength in the form of my carrying capacity and carry a lot of loot.

Conclusion and suggestions:
The character development menu should include three separate areas
1) your body - starting from specific indicators of physical development, strength and endurance, agility, athletics, the appearance of your character should depend on these criteria. Well, because a man with a height of 160 centimeters and thin as a chip cannot have physical strength greater than that of a giant two meters tall and weighing 200 kilograms.
2) there is something in the game called awareness or understanding (depends on the translation) on which it depends whether you can discover new technologies, this should also be a characteristic of physiology like intelligence and mind.
3) skills that open up depending on the implementation of new actions. - Well, being a caveman, I can't know how to shoot a bow until I create it or find it and try to use it on a live target or on a training target. And this applies to everything that the player does, in fact, everything for which can be improved as a skill - even skinning or extracting oil on a workbench - these are skills and abilities that should improve and it is from improving the skill that the quality of the result should depend. Of course, the quality of the result should also be influenced by how much more advanced equipment you use or the scientific method.
4)Unfortunately, the game does not have the ability to change the landscape. It's a pity that I can't dig out the lower floor for the foundation and basement of more advanced buildings in order to place the corresponding production facilities or warehouses there. or shelters for civilian miners.

The separation of the mask into classes is too strong and the illogicality of its acquisition at the very beginning of the game.
I think that the mask should be more technologically advanced as a phenomenon. - It really can be a relic of an ancient advanced civilization and that's why you can't just find it in the middle of the jungle. And you shouldn't be directly dependent on her. I propose for consideration:
1) The mask should not be a tool for hiring new barbarians. You must have the ability to communicate between you and unknown savages - so that you can attract their attention by waving at them, and start a dialogue and be able to invite them to live with you, intimidate, enslave. In general, there are many options, but they come from your communication and not from the telepathy of the mask.
2) The mask should be a technological product that is not divided into classes - the mask is universal and you can develop it separately in a variety of directions, from a banal aimbot, ending with radiation filters and connection to a drone, but it should not give you a buff. The mask simply offers different possibilities, for example, now you have opened night vision, and after a couple of levels you replaced it with a thermal imager, or a 3D scan of the area to search for a variety of loot. It is desirable that there are no restrictions in modifications and they can be combined depending on the number of necessary parts and new technologies for modifying the mask itself as a kind of foundation. For example, a primitive mask can combine up to 10 technologies, modern up to 20 technologies, advanced up to 30. And this can be applied not only to masks but also to your outfit as a whole.
3) You don't have to receive it. or get it by all means. It should be your choice whether to hunt for ancient relics or not. You should be able to create a technological alternative yourself. Similar to the helmet of a modern soldier, but in which there will be an order of magnitude fewer possibilities for combining technologies than a mask.

Disguise.
I want to see something more exciting than squatting and attacking from the back for those who want to play stealth. It is proposed to think about camouflage systems for the terrain such as - Ghillie. In the perspective of technology development, optical camouflage can also be reached.

Resources and energy.
This concept has become extremely tedious in games when your house is some kind of voracious creature that eats tons of resources out of the box. I personally was engaged in the construction of frame and clay brick houses and I can officially declare that absolutely any house deteriorates from dampness and from grbka gradually if it is not heated and communications are not periodically changed in it - that is, if people do not live in it.
But when the house is residential - heated, doors and windows are closed, depending on the climate and time of year, nothing will happen to the house. A house is not a stone and a tree, and certainly it does not depend on the campfire of some tribe. In Vietnam, people have been living in bamboo houses for decades with 100% humidity and constant tropical rains, and this does not cause their houses to rot and collapse. Their houses are collapsing from excess weight, or from a storm and strong winds, or from a fire. not to mention concepts such as a house made of roundwood, log cabin, stone or brick.

At the same time, the energy needed to operate the same mask. It is strange that all the functions in games are always reduced to the most primitive principle - pressed, got the effect for 10 seconds, recharge. It's already so boring to everyone that it just discourages them from using it. An example in a hunter's mask. Scanning live targets. I pressed the button, a wave passed that dedicated live targets to me at an extremely short distance but 360 degrees. which is useful. A few seconds have passed after the impact of the wave and I still see the targets in the red outline, after which the illumination of the targets disappears and I have to press the button again and expend energy.
It is absolutely far from reality simply because the waves (in the same parking sensors) That's not how they work. The wave shows you the outlines of the environment as long as energy is supplied to the device and every 100 seconds the wave leaves you and returns to you until you cut off the supply of energy.
All functions in the same mask should work on the principle of on/off, just like you turn on a light bulb at home.

And this applies to everything that requires energy. The simplest and most correct thing that is done in this context in the game is fuel for a bonfire. In fact, it is necessary to finalize the system for obtaining energy from the sun, wind, and hydroelectric power plants. reactors. Transporting energy by cables or by air if you are a Nikola Tesla fan. energy storage in appropriate storage devices. Charging different drives for devices. You should be able to create a battery for a flashlight or for a mask that has from 0.50 to 10000 Mah of energy and be able to take out the battery, replace it with a new one and put the old one on charge in the appropriate device. Also think about energy access for your tribe. I can be a globalist corporate who believes that people should "pay for air" and post this I will put energy meters in their homes to "strangle" them with electricity payments and pull every last cent out of them. Or I'm a committed socialist who makes everyone work to death so that everything is free.

The general conclusion:
Soul mask is inferior to its ideological predecessors like Canon and Rust. But even as a beta version, Soul mask is better than Myth of empires, which has been around since 2021.

[bravedogbfg]

I have to agree with everything you said here. I feel like this game is on the cusp of fun, but right now it is tedious.

I started to build a simple wooden house for example. For a setting in a rainforest, finding trees that drop logs is surprisingly a pain in the ass. Walls take 5 planks each. Planks require that you sit at the workbench and stare at the screen for minute after minute while you make them. Then I have to go to ANOTHER workbench and make the walls manually, then place them.

Are we still doing this in 2024? Really? If I have the materials, just give me a crafting hammer and let me build. The current gameplay is just boring. I get that we are supposed to get a bunch of slaves to work for us, great, but they all suck at their jobs.

[Noxsa]

O.O wall of text fried my brain, BUT the archery really needs love, i won't agree on all your archer points, like low distance, i hit and kill stuff from so far the arrow vanished out of view but is still there and does damage. the only thing i'd say they need to do is to speed up the draw of the bow, its painstaking slow especially for the none long bow types. they need to watch professional archers, they fire that bow almost faster then some can shoot a 6 shooter.
anyways, this demo was a great start of a possible great game. and i hope they ignore all the haters, because that's what they are, saying the game is bad without saying why, is just blind hate to me. not like this OP.

[DIVAYTH FYR]

I completely agree with you. In the pursuit of creating an ultra-realistic gameplay, the game becomes not an entertainment but another routine. Which you get tired of as well as from working in real life or from everyday household chores.

[Flint]

I think you misunderstand the receipes, when its says "Extra optional Matierial needed" it is OR not AND. For a bed, you need 19 Thatch, 4 Thick Rope and e.g. 10 Planks OR 10 Hardwood Planks OR 10 Premium Hardwood Planks.

[Xea]

you don't need to spend time crafting at the benches, you can let your tribe members do that.

[Bubu-Bubu-bu]

Originally posted by Flint:

I think you misunderstand the receipes, when its says "Extra optional Matierial needed" it is OR not AND. For a bed, you need 19 Thatch, 4 Thick Rope and e.g. 10 Planks OR 10 Hardwood Planks OR 10 Premium Hardwood Planks.

You are correct, but this BS should be removed from the game.

It might make sense for the developers to allow using higher-tier resources in lower-tier recipes, but it adds a lot of unnecessary complexity for no reason.

[Agent707]

I couldn't find a wall-of-text award to give you, but found something appropriate nonetheless. :)

[DIVAYTH FYR]

Originally posted by Flint:

I think you misunderstand the receipes, when its says "Extra optional Matierial needed" it is OR not AND. For a bed, you need 19 Thatch, 4 Thick Rope and e.g. 10 Planks OR 10 Hardwood Planks OR 10 Premium Hardwood Planks.

Thanks for your prompt. I sincerely thought that all the components are required for crafting, but it turns out that they can be selected - the subtleties of translation.

[DIVAYTH FYR]

Originally posted by Agent707:

I couldn't find a wall-of-text award to give you, but found something appropriate nonetheless. :)

Thank you for your attention

[DIVAYTH FYR]

Originally posted by Xea:

you don't need to spend time crafting at the benches, you can let your tribe members do that.

There are still oddities with job assignments. Perhaps these are the nuances of the translation. For example, I have not been able to assign a tribesman to mining within the range of the tribe's campfire, this is only possible if I find a mine.

[Grace O'Malley]

They need to hirer a sound/effect guy. Turn of the music and there is no sound from the forest!

[Noxsa]

yes the sound is wonky in spots.

[Mayhem/Maximus]

I had the opposite experience to be fair. If you look at the stats, every 2 points in perception is 1% more bow damage. Couple that with increasing tech and proficiency bonuses (up to like 50% I think); it becomes rather absurd the higher lvl you are. I see ranged as a mild grind early and then just easy later, especially with higher tech. But that doesn't mean your experience isn't relevant, just my cents.