So I finished the game. Here is my feedback.

[Pwnyboy-Curtis]

This is basically intended for the devs. I don't want to bother e-mailing them with my feedback, and I doubt they care what I think anyways. So comment if you want, but I'm not really aiming to start a discussion. They can read it, or not.
This is going to be extremely long because I'm a bad writer and I don't want to edit this.
This includes spoilers. I won't be flagging anything as such.

So I finished the game. I took a risk on this one, I didn't know if I'd like it or not. I didn't play Age of Decadence since it didn't interest me narratively. I played on underdog. I played mostly blind. I did resort to looking up the stealth mechanics about 3/4 of the way through the game, and looked at a guide to figure out if there was a stealth trainer I missed somewhere because I was like 100xp from leveling, and kind of needed it for an encounter. It didn't amount to anything.
This is what it was like for me.

Character Creation

So character creation had me a little excited. I see a lot of choices in regards to both combat and non combat skills, and I'm thinking 'cool, a game that's going to make me excited to try different builds. This means future playthroughs with variety. I dig this. I make a character that I think leans in to what this game wants from me, but has direction.

I decide I'm going to be a fascist cop who's mission over everything. The opening choices really make it feel like supporting the protectors is objectively a bad thing to do, so I'm going to be a bad girl. I want to be more of an officer/squad leader type. I go all in on charisma, dexterity and perception. I dumpstat strength since I'm not doing melee. I dumpstat intelligence because I think it's funny especially for a fascist cop, and also because I don't intend to do a lot of the non combat skills, and more skill tags feels like it's more for rounding out a character who wants to do both combat and non combat things since that would spread you too thin. I leave con at 5, and I wavered over whether going to 6 or not, but it didn't seem to do much so I leave it. Gifted seemed like the highest punching feat, especially since I wanted to do some talky stuff on top of combat, so I take that and just consider it +3 cha, +persuasion tag. Also I forget to input a name, so I'm Claudia now.

I would come to regret these choices. Except Claudia, it really grew on me.




Early game

So as I'm going through tutorial island I'm coming to realise something. Skill checks are binary states, and the only way to get better at them is to pass them. As I'm exploring, especially once I get to mission control I'm realising that things seemed tuned to assume that you've simply done every other check. I don't know that it's true, but it feels like it. If you want to get better at stealing, you have to steal from everyone. You can't pick and choose. I'll steal from these guys but not those guys. You steal from everyone. There's no consequence, and you have to do it if you EVER want to do it. Stealing is an example, but basically all the non combat skills feel this way. I also can't find any party members. They're not hard to find, and I do eventually find them, but for the first 2 or 3 hours I was basically going through mission control and Hydroponics alone. I was dumbfounded that I couldn't recruit help at the literal manpower shop. I do think this is more of a me thing, but I also kind of feel like maybe you should pick up Evans immediately instead of having to wander into Abe's? Like I just didn't see a need to go to a general store for a shocking amount of time since I was pretty broke, so I didn't pick him of for way too long. Anyways, as the early game goes on my party assembles. Combat so far is... extremely tight. I can't say I was running into the walls I see some people describe, but it felt less like I could express a playstyle, and more like it was a puzzle that involved using my resources correctly. I had no gadgets at this point, consumables were prohibitively expensive. Between non combat skills basically requiring you to hit every check. Areas being almost totally linear, and any real exploration being locked behind said checks. Combat being extremely narrowly defined, with few paths through them. I started not having a very good time. I got the sense that future playthroughs were not going to be as varied as I hoped. By hour 8 I was starting to regret my purchase. The game wasn't too hard to beat, but it wasn't fun to do it.

Everything was just going through the motions. Paint the pit one of three colours, but the game's going to feel exactly the same. I was also starting to understand the game mechanics a little better. A lot of it was still pretty confusing even leaving chapter 1. I had no idea implants were tied to constitution because after character creation there's no way to get that information beyond comparing different characters (which is how I eventually worked it out). It was also around this time I realized that my character was not going to be able to use any kind of auto because my strength was a problem. On top of that, most of the combat reloads I'd get were because my main character was squishy, all the enemies would focus me and I'd go down immediately. Combat doesn't give you enough space to actually set up or do anything. You start surrounded and with almost no cover to work with the majority of the time. Low con + low str is a recipe for having a 4 turn timer to win any fight. The death timers in general were a huge feels bad. I figured if I lost 1 max HP every time someone went down I'd need new NPC's soon or this ♥♥♥♥ was going to me impossible. I rolled with it anyways, and discovered that it really stops lowering your max HP pretty quickly, and it's just not that big a deal. And extended death timer is way better than +1 hp anyways. So thumbs up on that system devs. I liked it. What I didn't like was the actual death timers themselves. I really strongly feel, even after finishing the game, that you should be able to stablize people. It should require biotech, maybe higher biotech the lower their con is. It should cost a regen stim. And it should cost like 10AP. But if you're willing to make that sacrifice you should be able to do it. Hell, make it cost a feat to be able to do it. The way it is just turns every combat into a straight DPS race. I think it's no coincidence that common advice is 'defence sucks, kill everything before it can kill you'. If this is the intended design, I think it blows personally. Anyways, I didn't run into a single encounter in the early game that was a brick wall. Anything I couldn't beat (like the chapter finale fight) I was able to come back to later with better gear and finish later. I did wish I could do more fascist cop stuff. It felt kind of unfortunate that you HAVE to be from the pit. I couldn't be someone devoted to the protectors, a lot of the dialogue errs in sympathy toward them, but not outright support. But it's fine I guess. And the lawyer sidequest let me put the jackbooted heel of justice on people's necks so that's fine I guess. I guess I wish I could have picked a background. Like been someone FROM the habitat who now lives in the pit for some reason, but that's a lot of work. I mean Cyberpunk basically failed to deliver on backgrounds, and they had a lot more time and a bigger budget.

Mid game

So somewhere during or after the factory things started to click. My crew was coming online with feats. I had gadgets to work with. Consumables were now reasonable purchases. Quests seemed to have a lot of variation. I had figured out the value of the various debuffs, and how to stack them to my advantage. Some fights still took a couple reloads, but it was cruising. This tempo kept up for... the majority of the game really. There were some fights like old bub that were totally beyond my ability, but that's actually really cool. The idea that I could come back in a future play with a more tightly designed team and handle those couple of instances was good. Especially since the narrative consequences of not handling these optional sides was relatively minimal. Mostly boiling down to 'I'm a little less badass than I would have been'. I'd define the mid game experience for me as the bulk of the game. And I really clicked with everything. I certainly still regretted tanking my int and con. Con especially could have also turned to strength through a spinal implant and let me actually burst things. Both Evan and I were riflemen, and he was outputting a lot more damage than me at this point. But my character didn't feel.. like objectively bad. I had enough persuasion to manipulate every situation. I could reliably apply the debuffs my team needed. And I had the captain feat which was amplifying everyone else. I still died way too often though, and was definitely the weak link in regards to forcing reloads. Combat encounters still mostly felt claustrophobic. I also came to realize that there just weren't enough NPC's in the game to be willing to let someone die to get through an encounter. I couldn't hire someone to replace them. Any death was a reload, and I kind of wished that weren't so.

The problems of exploration being skill gated really solidified here. Every future playthrough that wasn't some meme solo run was going to have at least computers, lockpick, biotech, and electronics on your party since they don't require feats to function. Unlike the social skills, they also don't come at the cost of combat skills, so there's no choice involved. This is the trap these games almost always fall into, but it's made worse by the increase by doing system of progression. If I had to choose between combat or non combat gains on level up, there would be variety. I wish there was more gated behind higher skill requirements at least. And really interesting stuff too, rewarding focused builds. Exploration a lot of the time still felt like going through the motions, clicking the higlighted things, picking up the junk. I want there to be parts of the ship I didn't get to see because I didn't have the party for it. I also want there to be things that I felt that I only GOT to see because of how I built my party. This is absolutely not the case, and is kind of a bummer. To be clear, this is almost never the case in any game. This is a state of this game failing to rise to what I hoped it was, not a failure to meet a standard. I think the lander was the only really cool exploration payoff I can think of? And it was cool.

I was also getting extremely annoyed with the inventory at this point. Especially armour. Armour was something I didn't feel like I could just sell if I wasn't using it, since any future piece could mean an armour handling rebalance on a character which might demand me to have pieces to rebalance on other slots. This meant my inventory started to get clogged with a sea of various armour pieces, all of which sold for just little enough to not really be worth selling. It was just so much clutter. I resolved at some point to just keep 2 of everything, but some things like the trenchcoats came in colours which I still had to manually sell. Just let me pick my clothing colour from the inventory screen and have that ♥♥♥♥ stack. Also the inability to compare new gear in a merchant to what anyone but the party lead has equipped suuuucked. Like really badly. This probably only cost me like 3-5 minutes of extra menus over the course of the entire game, but man did that 3-5 minutes disproportionally piss me off. It goes as follows:
See potential upgrade in shop, leave the shop screen, open inventory, swap to a character, unequip their weapon, leave inventory, talk to merchant, select dialogue for trade, then hunt the weapon down in my inventory and manually swap back and forth between the old and potential new gear to compare a list of incredibly similiar numbers to determine if one was an upgrade, determine ♥♥♥♥'s a sidegrade, leave the trade screen, open inventory, select other party member, re-equip weapon, leave inventory, talk to merchant, select trade dialogue, resume trading.
Seriously ♥♥♥♥ that.

[Shizmoo]

I liked it, but AoD has a better story, characters, and endings. It also seemed completely stupid that the protectors wouldnt side with the monks when landing, it is their Mission they keep ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about. Also didnt see the point in the final speech checks with the top three, they all conform anyway. Its also an easier game, the grenades turn an impossible fight into a near cakewalk. The beliefs section seems to be worthless and the reputation has less than a handful checks

It definitely needs some tidying up, the inventory is awful and needs better sorting features, etc.. Its dumb to have multiples of something deciding to not organize right

[Wrath of Dagon]

Yes, grenades are the spawn of satan.

[Kasa]

@Pwnyboy-Curtis

An amazingly well written essay.
A lot of this was also pointed out during EA but shouted down by the die-hard fans (as they are now doing again to you) to the detriment of the game overall.
It's a good game but just like the previous game the Dev made it's lacking in a lot of areas to see any appeal outside the niche cult fan base.

[flushfire]

Originally posted by Kasa:

shouted down by the die-hard fans (as they are now doing again to you) to the detriment of the game overall.

Agreed. Made me avoid the discussions page for a while. It was really bad at launch that it turned me off from buying the game initially.

[Okamoto]

"the niche cult fan base"

Hate to break it to you, but cRPGs are a niche genre - probably the "nichest" there is.

Game is fine btw, and it's doing pretty well on reviews.

[Pwnyboy-Curtis]

I think the spirit of his comment was that this is niche within that niche. A loyal fanbase so small it cannot sustain the studio. Evidenced by the fact that they're struggling to stay in business. If you like their games, you need them to appeal to more players to continue to get these games.

I liked it overall. I think I agree with the statement that the game is 'fine' as ambiguous as that is. It's not 'great', and it's not 'bad'. It's fine. But I think on their next project, assuming they get to make another game, they should focus on some of the low hanging fruit that would make their game a little less awkward, as long as it doesn't come at the cost of their strengths. If they can elevate it from 'fine' to 'great' or better for more of their players it's a win for everyone. Does that make sense?

[Vince]

Easier said than done.

"It's not going to fly with a broader audience. This is no Pillars of Eternity 2. It's not even a Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous never mind a DOS2."

These games were made by very large teams with very large budgets. Colony Ship is the absolute best we could do in terms of polish and presentation and we won't be able to do better without expanding the team (more like doubling its size considering that the core team is 4 people plus a couple of contractors), which won't happen any time soon as we'll be lucky to survive as is.

[Kasa]

Originally posted by Vince:

Easier said than done.

"It's not going to fly with a broader audience. This is no Pillars of Eternity 2. It's not even a Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous never mind a DOS2."

These games were made by very large teams with very large budgets. Colony Ship is the absolute best we could do in terms of polish and presentation and we won't be able to do better without expanding the team (more like doubling its size considering that the core team is 4 people plus a couple of contractors), which won't happen any time soon as we'll be lucky to survive as is.

Then ape some of their ideas?

You don't have to come up with everything yourself from scratch.
Salt and Sanctuary is doing incredibly well and comes from a company with only a handfull of games by taking the best if castlevania and combing it with dark souls.

You were given a lot if feed back during EA but you subbornly refused to listen to any of it over the sweet words of your already dedicated fans.

And now all you have are these fans as most outsiders who might have been interested have moved on.

The game has so few bad reviews not bevause its such a perfect game but because anyone who was interested was chased away if they didn't share the same opinion as you and your fans.

[Vince]

Originally posted by Kasa:

You were given a lot if feed back during EA but you subbornly refused to listen to any of it over the sweet words of your already dedicated fans.

We listen to all feedback that falls within our design goals and the state of the game (compared to the first public build released in April 2021) is a testament to that. We changed and improved a lot of things, but changing the overall design was never an option.

Our games do have a limited appeal and we knew it back when we started, so there are no surprises there. If this is the end of the road for us, we'll accept it gracefully and thank everyone who supported us all these years.

[Wrath of Dagon]

The original post is way too long to read. Can someone summarize what exactly is wrong with the game?

[Pwnyboy-Curtis]

Originally posted by Vince:

Colony Ship is the absolute best we could do in terms of polish and presentation and we won't be able to do better without expanding the team

Yeah Vince, that's totally fair, and what I suspected. If I didn't, I should have qualified my thoughts with a general 'it's up to you guys, and you know what your budget and limitations are'. I hope you guys get to keep going, because I think for the most part your effort paid off. I'm sure you guys had to make some tough choices regarding what you could afford to include or refine relative to what you really wished you could.

If you don't mind my asking, what were the most cost intensive elements of Colony Ship? Was there anything you guys would have done differently in hindsight? I'm not entitled to this, but I'm sincerely curious.

Originally posted by Wrath of Dagon:

The original post is way too long to read. Can someone summarize what exactly is wrong with the game?

It's a little bit janky in places, and there are a variety of little things which caused me some disproportionate discomfort or disappointment. I still liked it well enough, and I think it's like a 6-7 out of 10 for me. I can easily see how it's a 8 or 9 for the right person. I'm certainly interested in a sequel. I hope that they can iron out some of the rougher edges in the next game as they'll be more experienced both as a team and as individual professionals.

[LDiCesare]

If I was to summarize what resonates for me from the OP:
The inventory management, armor system in particular, is poor. Forces you to keep tons of junk just in case.
Lack of consequences to stealing.
Lack of explanation of a few important story elements, such as finding out companions
Feeling forced to do all the skill checks to level up, meaning you don't have a choice in which skill checks you do (stealing comes back to mind here): If you want to be able to do the late checks, you have to do them all.
Also some complaints about death timers.

Regarding not listening to the EA, well, death timers, along with difficulty levels, were added in the EA, so I think the devs listened to feedback.
Consequences for theft could have been added, providing more stealth checks with an effect if you did them (e.g. if you steal the stuff from one guy, he can't give you some quest later) but would have required a bunch of scripting, so I suppose with a larger budget/time, this could have been achieved.

However, what I think is most problematic/common is the complaint about having to do all the skill checks for X in order not to be blocked later in the game by skill check X.
Either you go with random rolls, which means RNG+reload (= tedium) gets you through the game, or you have to have a different XP system that allows someone to gain levels without rewarding "grinding". That would require a lot of opportunities to use the skills, which again requires a lot of scripting/resources.
The other option is to ditch learn-by-doing and allow allocating points where you want (a bit like in AoD or most level-based games). I think the game would have been worse for it.
I personnally don't like having to look for all opportunities to use a skill in order to pass a later skill check, but I think it's better than the alternative solution of decorrelating doing and learning.

[Vince]

Originally posted by Pwnyboy-Curtis:

I'm sure you guys had to make some tough choices regarding what you could afford to include or refine relative to what you really wished you could.

Yes and that's the hardest part, constantly settling for less because we didn't have the resources to do more. It's an endless battle that wears you down more than the work itself.

If you don't mind my asking, what were the most cost intensive elements of Colony Ship?

Since we don't have the budget to hire people, the main currency is time and the game took 7 years as it is, so taking a few more years wasn't an option.

Scripting takes the most, runs through everything, and affects design. If you wonder why something was designed a certain way, the answer is probably scripting. If you wonder why some design element is missing, the answer is probably scripting too.

Was there anything you guys would have done differently in hindsight?

No. Everything we wanted to (and could) change and expand was done in EA.

It doesn't mean that we think the game is absolutely perfect, but with the same team (size) and budget there wasn't much we could do differently, other than some cosmetic things.

[Wrath of Dagon]

Originally posted by LDiCesare:

If I was to summarize what resonates for me from the OP:
The inventory management, armor system in particular, is poor. Forces you to keep tons of junk just in case.

Why is it poor? If you keep stuff just in case, that's just typical pack rat behavior, it's not the game's fault. Agreed that sorting can still be improved, hopefully they're working on that.

Lack of consequences to stealing.

Stealing is just another skill check, there's no morality in the game, it's a design choice.

Feeling forced to do all the skill checks to level up, meaning you don't have a choice in which skill checks you do (stealing comes back to mind here): If you want to be able to do the late checks, you have to do them all.

Why not do them all?

I did make a suggestion of having one skill point per level you could invest in lower skills (like a hybrid of XP and learn by doing), but Vince never liked that. The curse of always being right is things usually not going your way.

[flushfire]

Originally posted by LDiCesare:

or you have to have a different XP system that allows someone to gain levels without rewarding "grinding"

Grinding was never an issue in the first place. It's only a problem if the game requires/encourages the player to grind by design. I don't think that's the reason why the learn by use system was adopted.