Actionable Feedback on the Demo

[Gatebase]

Roughly in order of importance:

• Bug: The first missions don't have a factory panel (top left), but the area is still dead (can't click on units, can't start a box select). I thought the game was unresponsive or I had misclicked.
  
• Bad Design: As you progress through the tutorial new towers get unlocked which leads to hotkeys changing as the build menu is dynamically populated. This is a big no-no for me. First I learn that F2>3 is the hotkey for the nullifier, then the next level puts it on F2>6. This is frustrating.
  
• UI Confusion: Ammo packets are red but the ammo gauge on the towers is yellow. I got confused several times wondering why my towers weren't shooting despite their red gauge being full.
  
• UI Confusion: The ores are named completely differently than the resources made from them. On the last level I saw that totems suddenly needed a different resource and I had no clue how to get it. I didn't know that sending Redium to the factory just created it. Is it really necessary to keep 2 different names for all resources? Just call it "raw" or "unrefined" or something.
  
• Lack of Information: The build menu needs informative tool-tips that at least contain the name of the building if not its basic function. It's nice to know that the drill-rig looking thing costs 25 energy, but what is it and what does it do? Clearly only an issue while learning the game, but I felt frustrated at the lack of information.
  
• Lack of Information: The same goes for many clickable objects on the map. So this is a "Totem", but what does it do? Is it only for objectives? Is that blue circle a shield? Do they always do that? Can the shield break down or is it permanent? Nothing about that is ever explained.
  
• Lack of Information: After clicking on them energy-producing buildings should show in their side-panel the amount they produce. For instance I want to know how important a single tower is or whether I can safely switch a miner from energy to ore without going negative on energy gen. Ore production should probably also be shown.
  
• Lack of Information: Repositioning missile towers you see coverage from other towers. Building a new missile tower there is no such overlay, but it would be handy.
  
• Lack of Information: The creeper tracker in the lower left is in dire need of tool-tips or a bit of an explanation. It looks interesting and powerful, but I don't understand half of what's going on there.
  
• Feature Request: You can toggle shield visuals. "On" is way too occlusive and distracting, but "off" lacks information. Is there any way to reduce shields to a small rim around the perimeter so you can still see which area they cover? I might only think this is viable because I only play top-down mode.
  
• Feature Request: Another problem fairly unique to top-down mode: Is there any way to improve spore paths? I was completely baffled by spores flying directly over missile towers without being engaged. I guess they fly above the tower range but that fact is literally invisible in top-down mode. Maybe the trajectory can change color when it comes low enough or intersects with a missile tower range so you can see at launch whether the spores will be caught?
  
• Feature Request: Finally, vertical movement is invisible in top-down mode. Several times I asked myself why my floating towers just stopped dead in their tracks, but they were lifting in place. Is there a way to make it more clear that a unit is still moving or maybe change the pathing so they take the diagonal and lift while moving forward?
  
• Feature Request: I might have missed it (and it's very low priority), but I liked the color customization for creeper and AC in CW3 and I didn't see that in CW4.

And finally a little general feedback. The settings are awesome! I love the amount of customization that is available. The new way the story is told is nice and the writing looks promising. Personally I can't really warm up to the new 3D. It's clunky in handling and not very pretty. The screen is too busy and the really important information gets lost for me. Top-down mode solves most of these problems for me and I'm glad it is included. It honestly saved the game for me.
In terms of changes: I don't mind the new air defense model. That lifting off doesn't automatically save your buildings like it did in CW3 will take a lot of getting used to for me. It makes sense that when the creeper wave is big enough, the towers are still in the liquid while lifting off until they get high enough, but it's not a very fun mechanic. It takes away player agency to prevent losses. Since the lift speed is hard to gauge relative to the creeper height I think it will be really rough to optimize.
I hope there will be more buildings than the 6 slots shown in the demo. I don't quite see the new miner as an adequate replacement for CW3's reactor. I played a lot of Tormented Space and getting backed into a tiny corner, then clawing your way out with the very expensive but space-efficient reactors was a lot of fun. I'm also a bit worried that the upgrade mechanic will lack depth compared to CW3's forge (also a part of how you could start on the back-foot and get more powerful over time, just by barely holding on), but that's obviously only based on videos.

Good game, still some work to do, but I'm looking very much forward to it!

[Arkhne]

Got tired reading the Wall af text at "Lack of Information". Every single one of your "lack of informations" are right there, in conversation *and* hover text during the missions to introduce them. So no, this isn't a "lack of information", it's a lack of player paying attention. Most other points you raised before that were similar issues, which is *why* I got tired of reading your wall of text.

[Gatebase]

Don't worry, it wasn't written for you I'm surprised you even took the time to write a comment if it was all so tiresome for you. Truth be told, I'm fairly sure some if not most of these tool-tip requests would be included before relase anyway.
But you raise a good point. The floating text that appears and disappears without notice somewhere on the map isn't exactly the best vehicle to convey information either. And the way it broke up sentences (on a freely rotatable map) also felt odd. But I can't think of an easy way to make it better.

[Arkhne]

Originally posted by Gatebase:

The floating text that appears and disappears without notice

But it doesn't disappear without notice. It stays, in a most obnoxious way, until you actually perform the actions. Seriously, go back and play the game again, and this time, try to pay attention.

EDIT: Oh, and if you want to reach the dev, and not the community, you're in the wrong place. Try the GitHub or the Discord.

[Gatebase]

I think we're not really talking about the same subject. The fact that there are (often deliberately cryptic) ingame messages is nice a good. I payed attention. I still want tool-tips *in addition* and with good reason imo. "The info is there somewhere in the game, pay attention" is not a solution to my problem of "I want the information to be clear, comprehensive, concise and in an appropriate location". Maybe heed your own words and pay attention to more than the underlined text "lack of information" - I know that some of the information is there, it's just presented horribly.

And no, thank you. I'm not going to chase down a dev to tell them helpful information. I'll rather give the feedback I want to give in the most convenient way for me, which happens to be the official discussion board for the game on Steam. I think the topic makes it clear enough that I'm not looking for help from the community. But thank you for attempting to read the post, I guess.

[75Karsten]

A lot of observations! :) Some are perhaps due to the way you choose to play, vs the way the game was designed to be played. Others are perhaps still "in progress and will be back-filled as the game progress from "Demo" to "release". Others are simply "the nature of the beast and to make changes might be too much work for the perceived benefit.

I will say that one of the major parts of the game that hopefully will be worked on between now and release is in the area of information and help support.

That being said, let me address some of your issues since I talked these over with the developer.

Originally posted by Gatebase:

Bad Design: As you progress through the tutorial new towers get unlocked which leads to hotkeys changing as the build menu is dynamically populated. This is a big no-no for me. First I learn that F2>3 is the hotkey for the nullifier, then the next level puts it on F2>6. This is frustrating.

The menus are dynamic, map makers can add or remove units (as you observed) there can even be more than what will fit so the list can be scrolled. That makes it counter-intuitive to assigned a fixed key to a meu position that may or may not be there or a unit that may or may not be the same from one map to the other.

UI Confusion: Ammo packets are red but the ammo gauge on the towers is yellow. I got confused several times wondering why my towers weren't shooting despite their red gauge being full.

This is literally the first time since Creeper World 1 that we have heard this complaint. I suspect that after 5 minutes of playing, this "confusion might clear up permanently. Also, changing the color of energy packets may have issues with visibility.

However, we are going to experiment with different colored energy packets. And we probably will have to put up with a lot of complaints if the color does change - do you mind if I refer all those folks to you then? :D

UI Confusion: The ores are named completely differently than the resources made from them. On the last level I saw that totems suddenly needed a different resource and I had no clue how to get it. I didn't know that sending Redium to the factory just created it. Is it really necessary to keep 2 different names for all resources? Just call it "raw" or "unrefined" or something.

The base ores/minerals are named after their color - REDon, GREENar, BLUEite. Lack of space and other constraints then made us choose made-up names for the processed ores (Arg, Liftic, Anti-Creeper). I guess this is also one where in no time at all you will adapt to knowing how they fit together or you can always hover over the factory tor that information.

I'm not going to address the "lack of Information" topics, as I said, that we know is still lacking and we hope to improve by release of the game.

Lack of Information: Repositioning missile towers you see coverage from other towers. Building a new missile tower there is no such overlay, but it would be handy.

It gets very cluttered and we still need to look at how best to represent this information in a meaningful way. I doubt that the current system of showing the grey outlines is sufficiently informative to be extended.

Lack of Information: The creeper tracker in the lower left is in dire need of tool-tips or a bit of an explanation. It looks interesting and powerful, but I don't understand half of what's going on there.

Perhaps take a minute or so to study it. Tooltips are not always the answer to all of life's conundrums :) If you have specific questions, I'll try to answer them in another thread.

Feature Request: You can toggle shield visuals. "On" is way too occlusive and distracting, but "off" lacks information. Is there any way to reduce shields to a small rim around the perimeter so you can still see which area they cover? I might only think this is viable because I only play top-down mode.

This is already in the works.

Regarding the issues with playing in top-down mode, they're hard to solve and not generally useful for players that don't play in this manner. As such, the single developer-s time and effort will most likely not be in this area. After all, he wanted to create a 3d game and not a top-down game.

Feature Request: I might have missed it (and it's very low priority), but I liked the color customization for creeper and AC in CW3 and I didn't see that in CW4.

this too is a to-do item.


Thank you for the detailed feedback.

[Gatebase]

Originally posted by 75Karsten:

Originally posted by Gatebase:

Bad Design: As you progress through the tutorial new towers get unlocked which leads to hotkeys changing as the build menu is dynamically populated. This is a big no-no for me. First I learn that F2>3 is the hotkey for the nullifier, then the next level puts it on F2>6. This is frustrating.

The menus are dynamic, map makers can add or remove units (as you observed) there can even be more than what will fit so the list can be scrolled. That makes it counter-intuitive to assigned a fixed key to a meu position that may or may not be there or a unit that may or may not be the same from one map to the other.

I understand the concern with modability, but I still think dynamic hotkeys are awful and make the very concept of hotkeys (which are supposed to speed up the game and make controls more intuitive) borderline useless. I know this issue well from another tower defense game (which has hotkeys that move around as you unlock additional towers) and it's the only game I use mouse constantly because I don't want to relearn hotkeys dozens of times. At least for basic towers I think unused hotkeys should be skipped. I can only speak for the demo, but appending modded towers or putting them into a fourth tab seems preferrable to me. Just a suggestion from someone who has played dozens of hours with dynamic hotkeys and hated it.

Originally posted by 75Karsten:

Originally posted by Gatebase:

UI Confusion: Ammo packets are red but the ammo gauge on the towers is yellow. I got confused several times wondering why my towers weren't shooting despite their red gauge being full.

This is literally the first time since Creeper World 1 that we have heard this complaint. I suspect that after 5 minutes of playing, this "confusion might clear up permanently. Also, changing the color of energy packets may have issues with visibility.
However, we are going to experiment with different colored energy packets. And we probably will have to put up with a lot of complaints if the color does change - do you mind if I refer all those folks to you then? :D

Well, no wonder you haven't heard this one, since the colours were freshly changed around. In CW3 the ammo bar on the turrets was red. As were the ammo packets. I think you're already going to get the complaints

Originally posted by 75Karsten:

Originally posted by Gatebase:

UI Confusion: The ores are named completely differently than the resources made from them. On the last level I saw that totems suddenly needed a different resource and I had no clue how to get it. I didn't know that sending Redium to the factory just created it. Is it really necessary to keep 2 different names for all resources? Just call it "raw" or "unrefined" or something.

The base ores/minerals are named after their color - REDon, GREENar, BLUEite. Lack of space and other constraints then made us choose made-up names for the processed ores (Arg, Liftic, Anti-Creeper). I guess this is also one where in no time at all you will adapt to knowing how they fit together or you can always hover over the factory tor that information.

Oh I'm sure I'll adapt, the question was just - why even make it complicated in the first place? Is there a game mechanic where you need to know the colour of the ore from the name, so it's convenient to name them this way? From my limited perspective from the demo it seemed their only purpose was to get refined, so if my goal is "I need AC", why do I have to go looking for "Blueite"? It seemed needlessly confusing.

Originally posted by 75Karsten:

Originally posted by Gatebase:

Lack of Information: The creeper tracker in the lower left is in dire need of tool-tips or a bit of an explanation. It looks interesting and powerful, but I don't understand half of what's going on there.

Perhaps take a minute or so to study it. Tooltips are not always the answer to all of life's conundrums :) If you have specific questions, I'll try to answer them in another thread.

Cryptic UI isn't the answer either ;-). The whole right bar seemed indiscerible. EMT? Off? Some kind of median indicator? What do I do with any of this? How does it help me? The chart was nice, I just don't get the addon to the right.

I'm sure the dev will make the best of it. Like he said on stream - he'll be supporting the game for months and years, so I'm sure it'll get constantly better even if some features aren't in at release.

[Gra̶bz]

Originally posted by Gatebase:

Bad Design: As you progress through the tutorial new towers get unlocked which leads to hotkeys changing as the build menu is dynamically populated. This is a big no-no for me. First I learn that F2>3 is the hotkey for the nullifier, then the next level puts it on F2>6. This is frustrating.

So I went to take a look at it and I can't find where this problem occurs. In the first five story missions, units are unlocked in sequence. In the last four maps, units you don't have access to are locked, which keeps the order of the units uniform. In custom maps, players will be able to mix and match units and also put their own... that's something that can't really be worked around.

Originally posted by Gatebase:

Lack of Information: The creeper tracker in the lower left is in dire need of tool-tips or a bit of an explanation. It looks interesting and powerful, but I don't understand half of what's going on there.

I agree, some hover tooltips for things explaining what they do would be really nice for players.

Originally posted by Gatebase:

I hope there will be more buildings than the 6 slots shown in the demo.

Each category has slots for 9 units, as indicated by the amount of unit selection keys in keybind options.

Originally posted by Gatebase:

I don't quite see the new miner as an adequate replacement for CW3's reactor. I played a lot of Tormented Space and getting backed into a tiny corner, then clawing your way out with the very expensive but space-efficient reactors was a lot of fun.

Well then you'll just have to get backed in a tiny corner with some resource ground present in order to do the same thing :P

[Arkhne]

Originally posted by Gatebase:

And no, thank you. I'm not going to chase down a dev to tell them helpful information. I'll rather give the feedback I want to give in the most convenient way for me, which happens to be the official discussion board for the game on Steam. I think the topic makes it clear enough that I'm not looking for help from the community. But thank you for attempting to read the post, I guess.

Then you can't really expect the Dev, who's already spending their time making things for you, to chase YOU down then, can you? What makes you think somebody else should make effort that you aren't willing to?

[Gatebase]

Originally posted by Gra̴bz:

Originally posted by Gatebase:

First I learn that F2>3 is the hotkey for the nullifier, then the next level puts it on F2>6. This is frustrating.

So I went to take a look at it and I can't find where this problem occurs.

I noticed it with exactly the example I mentioned (nullifiers), but from videos I can tell it's a general thing. Which then was confirmed by Karsten above. I don't know the specifics with modding obviously, I just hope there's a better solution out there that doesn't rebind your major hotkeys every few levels. If it stays like the latter demo levels with locked spaces and consistent hotkeys that's perfect. If that is just for the demo and in the actual game new towers will unlock gradually and bump some older towers to other hotkeys I'll be annoyed. I'm sure they can work out a smart solution one way or another.

Originally posted by Warchild:

Then you can't really expect the Dev, who's already spending their time making things for you, to chase YOU down then, can you? What makes you think somebody else should make effort that you aren't willing to?

Come on, this is getting very silly.
1) I never said I expected anything from the dev and I actually don't. Testing is hard for small developers because after a while you turn blind to faults because you're so used to them. I think it would be beneficial to consider some of my feedback, but I don't expect them to do anything.
2) The main QA tester already read and responded to my feedback. The point is moot, I have successfully reached the dev team.
3) By your ridiculous logic I would have to code my own game so the effort matches the dev's?
I really don't get what you're doing here. You're injecting yourself into a discussion in a very non-constructive way. Why? Did you have a bad day? Your posts seem pointlessly antagonistic. I hope you get better and find yourself happier and more balanced tomorrow.

[Gra̶bz]

Originally posted by Gatebase:

I noticed it with exactly the example I mentioned (nullifiers), but from videos I can tell it's a general thing. Which then was confirmed by Karsten above. Which then was confirmed by Karsten above. I don't know the specifics with modding obviously, I just hope there's a better solution out there that doesn't rebind your major hotkeys every few levels.

OK yeah you're right, in story mission 3, 4 and 5 the nullifier is on 3rd slot, and it's only going to slowly get pushed all the way down to 6th over time. Judging by your concern about this, I use a similar hotkey setup you do, I just hadn't noticed because I hadn't replayed the story missions much.

In that case I definitely see where you're coming from. I am now starting to reconsider whether I want to go down the path of using hotkeys for every unit slot (which I have all set up), or if it'll be better to use no unit hotkeys at all and get used to TAB and having to move the mouse over each unit in the UI at least once to place the first one.

There just isn't a good solution to this, mapmakers can move where the nullifier is in the unit drawer, or they can remove it entirely. Mapmakers can remove every in-game unit from a unit drawer and populate it with their own units. So there just isn't a way to make sure a nullifier is always on a certain hotkey, unless the hotkey is hardcoded to only respond to the base game nullifier.

[Gatebase]

Originally posted by Gra̴bz:

get used to TAB and having to move the mouse over each unit in the UI at least once to place the first one.

That's a smart idea. I disregarded Tab as only a tool to clone settings, but you're right - for many scenarios it might be a fast and fairly reliable workflow. I should give it more consideration. Maybe not for nullifiers as they're generally not near each other though? Worth giving a try.

[Sanger Zonvolt]

Originally posted by Warchild:

Then you can't really expect the Dev, who's already spending their time making things for you, to chase YOU down then, can you? What makes you think somebody else should make effort that you aren't willing to?

Ignoring wether or not I agree or disagree with anything that was complained about, this comment is just strange. The dev isn´t making stuff for us as a service. He develops a game, we pay for it if we want it. To sell the most stuff he will want a better game and more people testing means it´s better for the dev. Reporting bugs is a win-win for both sides when they get solved.

Your comment would only make sense if the dev developed in his time for free, like for example with Dwarf Fortress. Creeper World is a commerical product.

[Arkhne]

Originally posted by Sanger Zonvolt:

Originally posted by Warchild:

Then you can't really expect the Dev, who's already spending their time making things for you, to chase YOU down then, can you? What makes you think somebody else should make effort that you aren't willing to?

Ignoring wether or not I agree or disagree with anything that was complained about, this comment is just strange. The dev isn´t making stuff for us as a service. He develops a game, we pay for it if we want it. To sell the most stuff he will want a better game and more people testing means it´s better for the dev. Reporting bugs is a win-win for both sides when they get solved.

Your comment would only make sense if the dev developed in his time for free, like for example with Dwarf Fortress. Creeper World is a commerical product.

It's ONE guy.

Would you rather he spend his time working on the game, or chasing down every little scrap of feedback out there?

If he had a PR team, YOUR comment would make sense.

It's just ONE guy.

[75Karsten]

This thread is a hair's breath away from being locked, It is legit to provide feedback on the game, it is legit to discuss that feedback.

We're not expecting ever poster to know all the circumstances involved in developing the game. When the attacks turn personal, it detracts from all of us enjoying firstly the game and secondly interacting with the community.

[75Karsten]

On second thoughts. Feedback has been given and responded to. The majority of the rest of this thread adds heat but no light. - locking it.