Thoughts on Better Future and Hawkeye

[Hyperjunk]

TT's design philosophy is so strange... the two most recent corporations carry the same idea of "better at most tasks than the other corporations, but at a steeper price". You'd think every corporation would fill different niches by having different strenghts/weaknesses, but that only seems to be true for GSO, Venture and GeoCorp: all-rounders, fragile speedsters and hulking tanks, respectively - or "fast, normal and slow", the most basic, "play-it-safe" way to balance a roster of three characters. Even then, the balance is super janky, because you can build hybrid Techs to just get the best of three worlds with zero downsides.

On the other hand, Hawkeye and Better Future just seem to be... better, in every regard... but they're more expensive? You could compare them to the Protoss faction in the Starcraft games, or the Yellow Comet army from Advance Wars. They have stronger weapons and more defense, but they balance that out with high production costs that result in a smaller army overall. When the Protoss or the YC army is in the field, you get these cool matchups of "10 Goliaths vs. 30 Davids" and it's just... fun. They're fun to play as AND against, and feel very different from the other playable factions in each of their games, not just in aesthetics, but mechanics as well.

I think that's what they were going for with Hawkeye, but "higher production costs" simply isn't a significant downside in an open-world game, where a complete lack of time pressure means you have unlimited time to get unlimited resources and build a vehicle with no limitations, save for a supremely generous restriction on maximum size. You can just "Huge Quest" the entirety of the game's enemy roster with zero strategy or challenge, and the only penalty for that is running the risk of breaking otherwise salvageable parts from enemy vehicles - but even that isn't a significant penalty, since enemies never use weapons you haven't discovered yet, meaning you'll never get stronger from combat, only from sidequests. The most you can get out of a fight are repeat parts you can dismantle for money or resources and... I could now segue into the crafting mechanics, but I like to keep my criticism positive where possible, and there's almost nothing positive I could say about those... but it's worth a shot I suppose.

Crafty Mike is nice... and there's a really nice free-form feel to building conveyor belts... you can put them upside-down, build loop-de-loops, and it's neat to have conveyors running all around your harvester Techs, all the way from the drills/saws to the storage silos and factories. Excuse the corny metaphor, but I'd rather just not have noisy mosquitoes, as opposed to having mosquitoes and a tail to swat them away with, but TT doesn't set very high standards when it comes to game design, so...

In summary, the most engaging activity in TerraTech -- the combat -- is thoroughly trivialized by the existance of a faction specialized for fighting, never rewards you with superior equipment, never challenges you with superior enemies, and tries to penalize minimaxing by reducing the droprates for useless or obsolete gear. Vertical progression is doled out exclusively by sidequests, since leveling up your career grades doesn't give you much new equipment, instead it arbitrarily integrates that new equipment onto the reward pools for sidequests. Once you unlock the Hawkeye weapons, fighting outside of quests is so pointless that almost every HE quest is "Kill this many enemies" or "Kill these guys and their base" - a dirty rag in lieu of a band-aid, on top of one of TerraTech's biggest, ugliest blemishes.

That's probably changed since then, but from my experience, enemies never used weapons that were recently added to the game, so their power ceiling was much lower than your own, since updates always have weapons that are "the same as that one, but BIGGER!". So you can use the Big Bertha, the Megaton and the Fat Man, for example , but enemies can't. Letting that one slide, since I only remember that occurring pre-1.0.

Also, the kinaesthetics just don't feel good... but that's forgivable for an Early Access game, since that kind of thing is usually polished up in the "final touch" phase, not the early/mid-beta phase. Yes, that does mean I am treating TerraTech as an in-Early Access project for (what I think is) a much more lenient viewpoint for criticism. This is by no means intended as disrespect for the developers' work, it's simply a half-hearted defence of the game, moreso out of pity than anything.



TL;DR: Having multiple corporations is pointless if one of them is just better at everything with no downsides, like Hawkeye is, and Better Future is shaping up to be. The whole of TerraTech's gameplay cycle feeds into the combat, but the combat offers no challenge or variation and is willingly imbalanced unto triviality by the existance of the Hawkeye corporation, among many, many other factors. You can tell from hour one that TerraTech's combat system is meant for a player with ungodly low expectations, despite serving as the main feature of the game. When you can consistently, single-handedly defeat EVERY enemy in a combat-focused game using just one single attack from one weapon, that's when you're being outdone by almost every other game designer who's ever thrown their hat in the ring.


THOUGHTS ON THE "1.0.1.1" UPDATE
(HENCEFORTH REFERRED TO AS "9.0")

Better Future, huh? Seems like Payload decided to go the ARK: Survival Evolved route, which, granted, is preferable to the Edge of Space/Star Citizen route it was stuck in before. So far they haven't followed through on their roadmap at all -- as if you needed proof that the roadmap was just made-up nonsense -- , and... well, main campaign isn't even finished... but at least now we have a new corporation to play! Get hype, fellow urban youths! Let's check it out and... wait, it's not in the campaign. and it's not going to be until... Early 2019? That's two to five more months! And to top it off, the GDDs for Better Future is apparently "better than the other corporations, but more expensive"... exactly like Hawkeye, but now they float, I guess... I mean, you could just give Hawkeye new hover blocks to achieve the same result without bloating the game up with "the same old stuff from before but with a different look and ONE gimmick"... but it's cool, I suppose. Still better than nothing, which fits my expectations perfectly. I give TerraTech a 10/10 for doing exacly what I expected - beating around the bush for five more months. Thanks! Get hype!!

[Red Earth]

I could chime in with criticism, but you are just suuuuuch a downer I don't want to agree with you even on things I do agree with

[test]

better future was in their roadmap. There are some other unreleased factions in it. I remember brown cars from scrap which overcharges other factions blocks, white faction with experimental weapons and insect faction with weird parts.
I agree with balance being bad. In late game you just use rockets to snipe enemies. All enemies have rockets too so you cant use any other weapon. Tho enemies stupid and have lower range. Gameplay turms into "found red icon on minimap - press fire"

[76561198126064654]

Originally posted by Red Earth:

I could chime in with criticism, but you are just suuuuuch a downer I don't want to agree with you even on things I do agree with

[Hyperjunk]

Originally posted by Red Earth:

I could chime in with criticism, but you are just suuuuuch a downer I don't want to agree with you even on things I do agree with

I suppose that's the downside to focusing solely on the negative aspects. "Why this game I like sucks" is the style I'm most used to, it seems.

Not sure what you meant with this, though:

Originally posted by Red Earth:

suuuuuch a downer I don't want to agree with you even on things I do agree with

So that's how opinions work? If I get negative enough about the game, can I tide people back over to TerraTech's side? That's one way to bring disillusioned fans back, that's for sure

[Hyperjunk]

Originally posted by test:

Better Future was in their roadmap. There are some other unreleased factions in it. I remember brown cars made from scrap which overcharge other factions' blocks, a white faction with experimental weapons and an insect faction with weird parts.

Sure, "new corporations" is an item on the roadmap, but it's pretty deep into the "medium-term" category. So far, they haven't scratched off a single item off of either the "short-term" or even "next up!" categories. Why even set up all these little categories if you can't respect them for even a single update? Granted, no one knows for a fact whether the roadmap is or isn't bogus, but it just looks so bogus when you hold all the post-1.0 updates up to it.

Also...


I've been thinking about this thread, and Red Earth's response in particular has really stuck with me...

Originally posted by Red Earth:

I could chime in with criticism, but you are just suuuuuch a downer I don't want to agree with you even on things I do agree with

That really stung for some reason (pretend not to know that the reason is I'm not used to counter-criticism). I don't get it... hard as I tried to not come across as overly negative about TT's post-launch dev cycle, everything after the "TL;DR" just sounds like I hate the game like it's nobody's business. Guess that's what happens when I try to make negative criticism sound impactful or weighty? I just start looking like I hate everything about it? I guess so! But that's not the case at all.

In my eyes, TT has some of the biggest potential I've seen an indie game have in the last few years. It's everything we loved about vehicle-building games (It's so depressing that that's such a small genre), mixed with that cozy sense of permanence of an open-world game, and best of all, it was still in Early Access! Everything could change, grow and improve, given enough time and resources. Sure, it was just a 4-to-8-hour demo, but imagine what comes next! Right before we downloaded the game, they added this big ol update with a ton of new parts and weapons, and even "Big Pete", a brand-new character! "If they play their cards right, we could be looking at the next Terraria here!", we thought.

But it just kept getting less and less interesting. In the span of a single year, following this game's development cycle just turned into such a bore. Seeing the exact same EA project that was once advertised as a simple appetizer now being celebrated as a complete product was just... it was like yawning with your mouth closed.

They poured more and more resources into that rubbish PvP mode no one ever played. They stopped the weekly devstream and replaced it with footage of just them playing their own game. Updates got smaller and more infrequent, to the point where 1.0 (Their first major milestone!) just included some new songs. No fixing the controls, or the AI, or the crafting system, or finishing the single-player campaign, nothing. Just some songs. To this very day, GeoCorp, a corporation supposedly all about harvesting resources, doesn't even have its own conveyor belts. Cheesing is still the only reliable way to win fights. All characters speak in clearly placeholder dialogue, and "Crafty Business" is one of the worst, most unhelpful tutorials I have ever witnessed.

For heaven's sakes, to play as the new corporation, you have to buy a 5-dollar DLC, opt into the (Often unplayably bugged) Unstable branch, and even then, you can only play them in a mode with no missions or challenges, just a clinical-white blank void. And they have no weapons, even! All you can do for now is just mix-n-match them with other corporations' blocks to try and make something interesting, which you won't, because since you still can't visually customize your blocks, hybrid Techs look dreadful!


If this is going on for too long, and you think it's so negative that you find yourself willing to somehow rearrange your opinions and criticisms just to disagree with it (By the way, how do you do that?), at least know that it's not just because I want to dislike this game, or want my negative views of it to be validated. I used to be in love with this project.

But the months of waiting for tiny updates, the years of waiting for the simplest QoL features, the 1.0 update, the PvP mode, the allied AI still being broken, the crafting system still being broken, the placeholder "get X amount of Y resource" and "kill X amount of enemies" missions still being the bulk of the experience, the absolute lack of balance and polish in the combat leading to you either stacking shields or sniping with homing missiles, the responses from the devs sounding like soulless, clipboarded corporate white-noise, and so on, and on, and on... After you play through TerraTech for your first time, everything that comes from it and from around it is just... so... underwhelming. There's so much fundamentally wrong with TerraTech that I'm bored even of being upset about it. I'm just waiting for the devs to do something right so I can stop feeling foolish for trusting them.

[Gugnarr the Mighty Thewed]

No.

BF has wheels about the same as HE wheels.
BF has no armour.
BF has no mining gear.
They seem to be positioned as somewhere between GSO and Venture, with a different aethetic.
Average toughness, only large blocks are fairings.
Lots of hover, none of which are as good as Venture.
Some flight.
Wheels are slower than Venture, but still fairly fast, but not as strong or as convenient as HE.

I think they're fine.

[Hyperjunk]

Originally posted by Gugnarr the Mighty Thewed:

No.

Just comparing them to HE wasn't a good way to get my point across. I didn't mean to say they'll fulfill the same function or simply be a new paintjob over Hawkeye (Though I did end up saying exactly that), but rather that the Yellow Comet-esque "premium corporation" gimmick is already taken by HE, which itself can't manage to pull it off without feeling like an "OP Weapons" mod. There's enough harmony between the GSO, GeoCorp and Venture in terms of balance and function, but Hawkeye never felt like it belongs in the same game as those three: that neither does BF is what I was trying to get at.

Originally posted by Gugnarr the Mighty Thewed:

BF has no armour or mining gear.

Fair enough, but isn't that because they just came out? Seems strange for a harvester corp not to have any mining equipment, especially because they don't have any weapons either.

Originally posted by Gugnarr the Mighty Thewed:

...somewhere between GSO and Venture, with a different aesthetic.

Not to be too blunt, but that seems pointless. There's no use for an in-betweener of Venture and the GSO, because that's what a Ven/GSO hybrid is already. That spot's already taken. Again, for overlapping so much with the old corporations, BF feels like another mod rather than official content.

Also, the new aesthetic is really unoriginal. They stuck way too close to the images in the dev docs, I think, and "eco-friendly Aperture Science tech" isn't an interesting idea in the first place. Though granted, that's more to do with personal taste than anything.

Originally posted by Gugnarr the Mighty Thewed:

Wheels are about the same as HE wheels.
Average toughness, only large blocks are fairings.
Lots of hover, none of which are as good as Venture.
Some flight.
Wheels are slower than Venture (but still fairly fast) but not as strong or as convenient as HE.

Sure enough, they just sound like a slightly Venture-y GSO. Their last chance of having any personality is is the weapons, so there's that to look forward to for now. Not that I'm bating my breath, though! I recently beat Shadow of New Despair with my husband, and Payload doesn't stand the smallest chance against that game's futuristic weapon roster. Just look up "Wing Diver Rapier" real quick -- that's a level 0 starter weapon.

Maybe I'm incredulous because the energy weapons currently in TT are super boring? They're... tiddy little machine guns with faster projectiles... Imagine trying to compare that to a Rapier, or a Psi Cluster. They feel weaker than even the other guns in TT, which should be a capital insult (This team has NO idea of how to make guns feel good, and it's especially tricky to make laser guns satisfying).

Originally posted by Gugnarr the Mighty Thewed:

I think they're fine.

Sorry, but I think that means nothing. There's games where even stuff that's merely "fine" or "normal" is super interesting, because it's still a new way to interact with the enemies and world. TerraTech looks at those games and can't even muster the strength to say "what if...?".

So, in summary... Better Future...? Um, more like... like, "Batter Future"... because... because TerraTech's future looks as bland as raw batter. Very fitting for a game that came out half-baked. Yeah, I'll be here all night, everyone

[Gugnarr the Mighty Thewed]

Whether BF is worth it or not is dependent on where they are in the hierarchy.

If they are on a level with GSO, but more expensive, they're fine. But we need access to them a lot earlier.

If they are supposed to be like HE at the high end, then they need a boost. As tough as HE, and as light as Venture, but even more expensive.

Basically, they need to make up their minds about how the game is supposed to be balanced.

[Red Earth]

Originally posted by The Challenger:

I've been thinking about this thread, and Red Earth's response in particular has really stuck with me...

Originally posted by Red Earth:

I could chime in with criticism, but you are just suuuuuch a downer I don't want to agree with you even on things I do agree with

Well I'm sorry if I came off as dismissive. Having played Spore, SimCity, and Master of Orion, and not hating them, I'd go to forums and find 95% of topics were about why the game sux, (and topics that weren't that quickly became so) which was not what I came there for. I've even been accused of "enabling" the devs of MoO2 to abandon the game. My posts were 80% criticism, but apparently if you're not calling devs stupid and lazy then you're part of the problem.
So my patience for anything with even a hint of pessimism had been permanently exhausted.
Also I only played on the free weekend and then starting in September so I haven't been waiting for improvements as long as others.
Anyway, I haven't really played much in the last few weeks because there isn't much for me to do. I have maxed out licences, 2 million BB, and the tech I've used is relatively small and mostly GSO parts because I never really needed to build something bigger or better. I've been taking old techs and remaking them with a different corporation's equivalent parts. Then I send them off as invaders because there's nothing for me to do with them; maybe someone else can enjoy fighting it.
When a new Corp was strongly hinted at I thought I could start a new campaign and get the fun of scavenging and building with limited options again, but it won't be in campaign until next year.
The difference between, say, Lego and a video game is that they can set up rules and challenges and scenarios to adapt to, but there just aren't that many. I want more activities before more objects. Less noun, more verb.