Review: After 1 hour

[Bosscunt]

My Background

I am an avid lover of strategy, sim and mmorpg's. Been gaming since the beginning of 1994.

Summary

This game did not deliver enough to keep me engaged for more than an hour.

Positives

• Concept is great (so much potential here)
  
• Art style is nice
  
• Good time sink for an hour (max)
  
• The "uplink" style game-menu? 10/10

Negatives

Whilst I understand this is in EA, I suspect you guys are open to criticism, opinions, perspectives. Consider that in my game time, I played 1.5 hours on on the fastest speed:

Subscribers take too long to level up

It suggests for me to build a level 4 area while I still have a global quest for 100 subscribers to reach level 2. 1 hour in and out of 3000 subscribers, only 70 were level 2, which didn't seem to login and hit the level 2, 3 and 4 region's I created (not even once).

I suspect the AI need's to be greatly improved here. Once a player is level 2, move to the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ level 2 region I created for you.

Overcrowded, Create more inn's you reckon?

So, 30,000 comments about being overcrowded, so in which case I used up the entire level 1 region with inn's, potions, blacksmith shops and a small enough spawn with high respawns count so that subscribers could kill more, and die less. This by no mean's solved the problem, I found that subscribers weren't smart enough to spread out once a new inn was created so I ended up with a good 10 inn's which, had nobody nearby.

This included moving my starting waypoint and respawn in a more centralized location to try and widen the spread of subscribers across the region.

It's worth mentioning that my first playthrough I had to create a brand new level 1 region due to overpopulation lol. (found this quite funny, but realised I was just being inefficient)

GM Tickets unsolvable

10,000 tickets and 30 GM's (maximum number of GM's), it appears there is a logical issue here. I take note that this greatly affects the unsubscribe rate.

Optimzation

I have a 7700k i7 and a GTX 1070 with 32gb of RAM, this game is simply unplayable at a certain zoom.

More regions, more subscribers, more online players and spawns you have, greater the lag, need's some focus here.

Alt + tab? Don't do it

Don't do it, caused a crash more times than I care to count.

Auto-saves lag, introduce a splash

If the game is going to lag while trying to perform an auto-save, introduce a nice splash gui so I don't think my computer is having a meltdown.

A better tutorial

The tutorial was insightful, but didn't explain enough about the actual mechanics or how to progress through the game.

• What are the benefits of shops? (This is logical from an RPG perspective, but how does this affect game mechanics?)
  
• What is a good spawn size? Is this subject to surrounding players? (I noticed larger spawns were worse than smaller)
  
• A HUD for power consumption? (nowhere to be seen)
  
• Is there any foreseeable benefits to level up stats? If so, what are they? Is there anything else that affects these bonuses?

Content, sure you seen this coming

I'm not going to go on here. You know what it is. Would have been nice to atleast seen my level 2-3 region's get populated.

Applying styles to respawn

Using the "Forest", holy ♥♥♥♥. LOL. You can't see a damn thing.

Paths

Wasn't the worst I've seen, but this need's some love and attention, my OCD was going of the richter scale trying to make some straight lines.

Anyting else?

Yeah, plenty, but this is all I have time for (this is all the time this game was worth).

Any ideas? Improvements? Features?

I'm a business analyst, I have hundreds of ideas, don't hesitate to reach out if you would like to have a discussion :)

Here's some off the top of my head:

• Money, there is no concept of player money
  
• Equipment available, purchasable with money
  
• Players can drop items (for other players to pick-up) - You could introduce this as a "perk" or level-up reward
  
• Classes (Tank, Healer, Mage, Ranger) - Diversity (targetted at party play)
  
• Parties - Be cool to see players join forces to conquer foes.
  
• Could hire someone to clean-up trash - You could introduce this as a "perk" or level-up reward
  
• Player and monster DPS (improve leveling speed?)
  
• In-game events? (Double exp? Cheaper items) - You could introduce this as a "perk" or level-up reward
  
• More monster diversity
  
• Categorization and search capability for "scenery"
  
• Introduction of classes (Secondary, Third classes?) - You could introduce this as a "perk" or level-up reward
  
• Player rankings (Be cool to see top 50 players, and last login time, and find out why top-level players are leaving)
  
• Reason for unsubscribing (What the hell is going on with my mmorpg?)
  
• Player requests / Demands (What the hell is going on with my mmorpg?)
  
• Underground caves (Might help to optimize the game)
  
• Dungeons (Might help to optimize the game) - Potential to create a dungeon?
  
• Bosses visually different - Be nice to see a distinguishable difference between regular mobs and boss monsters
  
• World Bosses - Tying directly into the party play, be cool to see 100 online players take down a world boss
  
• Multiplayer support - With the increase of game complexity, comes great responsibility - With more mechanics and more features, could co-op a game and have a friend help to create the realm.
  
• Better toolset for designing regions/areas - This could introduce a new mechanic for players overall happiness with the game. (More scenery, more diverse areas = happy, otherwise plain and boring landscape = unhappy = more likely to unsubscribe)

With a wider feature set, you could even slow down the game speed, so that players will actually want to spectate what's happening and perhaps "watch" their top-tier/top-level players.


I have faith,

Bossqunt (Bosscunt#6624)

[CASTEL]

Subscribers taking too long to level up and overcrowding seem to go hand in hand. I had not yet realized this myself, but I just saw the dev explain it on the Discord. When your level 1 area is overcrowded there most likely won't be enough monsters to go around for everyone (and thus players will level up very slowly). The density of monster zones can be increased for this.

I can't determite from your post whether or not you have done this, but you can have multiple starting points and thus create various points in 1 region where your players can start playing. I've seen people handle it much better than I have so far, but I keep on trying (as long as it is solvable it shouldn't change too much in my opinion, a bit of problem solving is part of the tycoon genre and it would be an absolute bore if everything always goes flawless).

And yes, I have also learned that alt+tab is a no go :)

> Money, there is no concept of player money

You can click on an individual player and see the money they have to spend on your game (and their bank balance; when you get a player addicted they are willing to use their savings). Would be nice to eventually get some statistic screens for this, power consumption and other stats. The more the better if you ask me.
> In-game events? (Double exp? Cheaper items) - You could introduce this as a "perk" or level-up reward

Haven't seen this mentioned before. Really like that idea!

> More monster diversity

One of the most requested features right now I believe and should be coming. I think the game desperatly needs it too. Diversity in monsters and player clases. I hope these will be tied in with the upgrade tree. Would also love to see player races that they have to buy with real money.

> Multiplayer support - With the increase of game complexity, comes great responsibility - With more mechanics and more features, could co-op a game and have a friend help to create the realm.

I have seen this mentioned a few times before... and I'm not a fan of it. There is so much potential here and personally I'm totally fine with a game being just singleplayer, especially a tycoon-like game. I rather have the development time go towards the singleplayer experience than trying to make it work with multiplayer.

> Better toolset for designing regions/areas

Definitely. I really like building in this game, it reminds me of some other creative games that I adore. I think expanding on that would be a good move. Especially if th game will eventually get workshop support, so that we might get some creative modders creating objects and the likes as well.

Right now, I have a bit of a love hate relation with building. I do love it, but I also get frustrated with paths and buildings moving the terrain and my scenery being all messed up because of it.

[Bosscunt]

I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my feedback :)

Multiplayer

Absolutely, 100% agreed, I love the idea of being a vegetable, cranking some tunes, and playing some slow paced strategy/sim. I know multiplayer has it's own layer of complexity, on a priority list, this would be at the bottom, no doubt.

Multiple Starting Points

The game was kind enough to let me know that once it became severely overpopulated, to create a new region for new starters. I just didn't like that option on my second play through so I tried to avoid it, by the sounds of it, there's no other way around it at the moment.

I think I do see your point though, focus less on rushing, and allow the first couple of subscribers to actually level up.

Tell you what, I'm going to give it another crack. I do also take note that they made some updates today. Going to check it all out now :) Be back soon.

[yxxxx]

Will be good to hear your further impressions

[Pope Patrick]

After 1 hour? I'd be slapping you silly even if you gave it a positive review. Ive gotten 20 hours so far, and i'd say it takes at least 3-4 before you get through most of the content and just let your mind go wild with customization.

[Pope Patrick]

You seem super harsh on how the game plays, but its early access no? Don't play early access if you have some pre conceived notion of how far a long a game should be.

[CASTEL]

Originally posted by Pepe Le Frog:

You seem super harsh on how the game plays, but its early access no? Don't play early access if you have some pre conceived notion of how far a long a game should be.

Just because it's early access doesn't mean you can't criticize a game though. Hell, I would say it's even more important now because it's still in full development - which is not always the case when a game fully releases.

Yes, I personally would have gotten a few more hours in before posting my thoughts, but I don't really think Bossqunt was being harsh?

[Pope Patrick]

Originally posted by Captain:

Originally posted by Pepe Le Frog:

You seem super harsh on how the game plays, but its early access no? Don't play early access if you have some pre conceived notion of how far a long a game should be.

Just because it's early access doesn't mean you can't criticize a game though. Hell, I would say it's even more important now because it's still in full development - which is not always the case when a game fully releases.

Yes, I personally would have gotten a few more hours in before posting my thoughts, but I don't really think Bossqunt was being harsh?

Constructive criticism is nice. But how can you say anything constructive when you picked up the game for only an hour?

[Pope Patrick]

Originally posted by Pepe Le Frog:

Originally posted by Captain:

Just because it's early access doesn't mean you can't criticize a game though. Hell, I would say it's even more important now because it's still in full development - which is not always the case when a game fully releases.

Yes, I personally would have gotten a few more hours in before posting my thoughts, but I don't really think Bossqunt was being harsh?

Constructive criticism is nice. But how can you say anything constructive when you picked up the game for only an hour?

[Pope Patrick]

Originally posted by Pepe Le Frog:

Originally posted by Pepe Le Frog:

Constructive criticism is nice. But how can you say anything constructive when you picked up the game for only an hour?

[VectorStorm]

Hey, Bossqunt, thanks for all the feedback! This is all foing to be really useful for focusing development efforts going forward! Am going to be taking notes on this for a little bit.

[Bossclown]

I love all the ideas!

[Bosscunt]

Originally posted by Pepe Le Frog:

You seem super harsh on how the game plays, but its early access no? Don't play early access if you have some pre conceived notion of how far a long a game should be.

Well, there's two perspectives here..

One is that I am being super harsh and overly critical on an EA game.

The other...

Is that I am sharing my opinion on where I think there could be some improvement, I work in the development space for a living and I know exactly how much developers love hearing where things can and should be improved. Quite often developers are wired a very different way to most 'normal' people and miss being able to take themselves out of their own mind into the seat of your core player/user base.. That's where I come in. I think the amount of time I've invested sharing my thoughts makes up for the lack of time spent playing. Usually if a game can't keep me engaged for more than an hour, then you know...... .. .. . there might be something wrong? Take a look at my game history, a game can keep me entertained for years with the right features.

In one hour, I've shared more than what most people have shared in 20 hours, I don't need to justify myself anymore than that :)

“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

[Zero1]

if your having trouble with area population! make a new starter zone! i made up to 3 starter zones in dif areas in the map and slowly working my way the middle! also u can change the color of mobs or make new ones to make it seem like dif zone all together!

would like a faction idea or a class starter zone idea in the future