Feedback on "No Overworld Fast Travel" playstyle

[wormingdead]

I've been playing CoQ without the overworld fast travel for a while now and wanted to put my thoughts somewhere. The format of this post will probably be single sentences or small paragraphs per thought.

I don't know the official terms, so I'll call the 3x3 set of maps that is an overworld tile a map set and the single map screen a map.

• The biggest complaint I have is that a lot of game time is waiting for freezing/thawing to finish. Obviously, I don't know how much of that is because of Unity, but any improvements would be appreciated. Maybe it would be possible to load/save whole map sets, instead of just the single map every time.
  
• Having to count map traversals or constantly check the overworld map is kind of a hassle when trying to get somewhere specific. It'd be nice if there was some way to set a destination on the overworld and then traversing maps would give you some sort of notification if you had veered off course. I don't think it should work underground, but if the game lets you travel on the overworld without getting lost, I'd like to do the same while moving through maps. It's especially easy to lose track because of all the combat that is happening on each map.
  
• It'd be nice if there was a way to turn off overworld movement so I don't have to worry about ruining my self-imposed "No fast travel" run. The feature should probably force the player to only take the "Current location" destination from the overworld.
  
• Carrying around a bedroll so that I can use it to sleep through the night is neat, but I'm not really clear why waking at "The Shallows" or "Harvest Dawn" aren't always options.
  
• It can get kind of hard to keep track of which maps have been explored. I think having an indicator for when I've been to all maps in a map set would be helpful, as it's the only way to find ruins and such.
  
• More generally, it'd be nice if I could set up a warning system for when power cells drop to a certain power level, so that I don't have to be constantly checking my inventory to make sure they don't run out.

Thanks for reading

[Zalpha]

Nice post, I like it. I don't have anything to add to it but I like the ideas suggested/requested.

[MayoCulpa]

I second a lot of these!

A text message directional indicator would be hugely helpful. Your set destination(s) could be whatever you'd highlighted in the Locations screen. At each screen transition you would get a message saying "you think X is about Y parasangs to the northwest" or something. Like in the log along with the message of what the square's terrain type is (salt marsh, tarry desert canyon, slime-soaked jungle etc). It wouldn't appear if you were lost. If you had a compass bracelet or precinct navigator, or maybe even the appropriate Wayfaring skill, the information could get more precise.

I would also dearly love an "explored," "3/9 squares explored" and/or "cleared" marker in the overworld description for a parasang. That would be a lifesaver if, say, you were doing a town quest where you had to discover a snapjaw fort 3-7 parasangs west of a salt weep, and all the indicated parasangs were hills or desert canyons. Then you could only waste precious bits tinkering up grenades to blast a path through a shale hillside to reach squares that you had NOT explored yet.

The memory-saving options in the game options menu did help me some with slow load times. But indeed if there's any way to slim that down even further I would greatly appreciate it.

[Faital Ryuu]

Originally posted by wormingdead:

I've been playing CoQ without the overworld fast travel for a while now and wanted to put my thoughts somewhere. The format of this post will probably be single sentences or small paragraphs per thought.

I don't know the official terms, so I'll call the 3x3 set of maps that is an overworld tile a map set and the single map screen a map.

One square on the overworld map is called a "parasang." Each subdivision of a parasang is called a "zone."

Originally posted by wormingdead:

• Having to count map traversals or constantly check the overworld map is kind of a hassle when trying to get somewhere specific. It'd be nice if there was some way to set a destination on the overworld and then traversing maps would give you some sort of notification if you had veered off course. I don't think it should work underground, but if the game lets you travel on the overworld without getting lost, I'd like to do the same while moving through maps. It's especially easy to lose track because of all the combat that is happening on each map.

Whether or not you're on your overworld map, there's an option in the journal under Locations, where you can check a box to have that parasang highlighted. In a recent update, they made labels for each landmark on a parasang that correpond to what zone they're in with the 8 cardinal directions and Center being the labels each location has. If you're using the overworld map as simply a map and not as a means to fast travel, this feature should still help to see if you're on track or off course.

Originally posted by wormingdead:

• It'd be nice if there was a way to turn off overworld movement so I don't have to worry about ruining my self-imposed "No fast travel" run. The feature should probably force the player to only take the "Current location" destination from the overworld.

While I don't find much fun in this, a good game should have comprehensive options, whether they're in the actual game itself or in the options menu. I wouldn't hold my breath on this particular feature however. Traveling on the overworld map is very integral to the game. When you use it, game time passes at a different rate than when traveling between zones, and you have dice rolls done each parasang you travel to determine if you discover a new landmark or get lost. The Wayfaring skill tree as well as certain items can reduce the odds of getting lost and improve the odds of finding new places. Wayfaring specifically makes it so you travel over certain areas of the world map faster, which means that even less time passes than if you were going zone to zone. With having the world map function as just a map, you make an entire skill set and at least three items and an item mod obsolete. What you're basically suggesting is an entire game mode where game time progresses at a fixed rate and the player has to navigate a massive world zone by zone. The aforementioned skill tree and items would either need repurposing or else get removed from the item pool altogether. Again, options are good. If the developers made this a game mode, people besides you would probably play it at least once. But how much demand is there for this type of gameplay? If this could be modded in by the playerbase, great! If not, this particular idea is a taller order than you think.

Originally posted by wormingdead:

• It can get kind of hard to keep track of which maps have been explored. I think having an indicator for when I've been to all maps in a map set would be helpful, as it's the only way to find ruins and such.

We ALMOST have this as a feature. On the overworld map, when you select which zone you want to visit, all landmarks will appear as an option, and if there's a landmark in the center of the parasang, it will label that landmark as being in the center. But this leaves out zones that have no landmarks if you've visited them. The work-around to this is you name each location that you visit in your journal, but this can add up to many unnecessary entries in the Locations section of your journal. Perhaps a new feature when holding Alt on the Overworld map would be nifty to highlight all completely-cleared parasangs? There will need to be some thought into this to make this feature useful while maintaining immersion. Adding this to Alt is something a bit makeshift since it won't accommodate individual zones, but it'd work, right?

Originally posted by wormingdead:

• More generally, it'd be nice if I could set up a warning system for when power cells drop to a certain power level, so that I don't have to be constantly checking my inventory to make sure they don't run out.

What's already in the game are certain items that are powered have a boot sequence which takes X number of turns. When the device is fully powered, you'll hear a sound effect on that turn as well as a message that prints in the combat log saying that particular device is operationally. Similarly, if a device becomes unpowered, whether because of a depleted cell or because of EMP, you hear a different sound effect on that turn as well as a message printing what happened.

In real life, if any electrical device that uses battery power or fuel has an indicator for low charge/fuel, it's a visual thing that you have to look at. Off-hand, the only audio cue I've heard of something saying it has low battery are smoke detectors, but I wouldn't doubt other things have an audio cue as well. In Qud, the way we look at these things is, surprise, surprise! Inventory management. You have to either navigate to your inventory or your equipment screen to check the status. Naturally if you're all out of juice in something, you have to go to your item in question to replace the energy cell anyways. The procedure is nigh identical if an energy cell is low on power instead of wholly depleted. We already have audio cues for when a device becomes fully functional or non-functional, whether a "low battery" sound is necessary is debatable. I personally think this should be a case-by-case feature for whichever items could use it and not universal. Maybe it can be an item modification you can apply with Tinkering? Unless you have low-capacity cells, a low-battery sound effect is unnecessary since many powered objects don't drain energy that quickly. The Forcefield bracelet and the similar-in-nature item Stopsvallin use energy very rapidly, but you're expecting that, so again, is a sound effect necessary? Both items are micromanaged, so the sound effect would most likely be redundant in a turn-based game.

As for your other points, I'm either in agreement or neutral, and I don't have anything to add to those other points.