This Game's Map Sucks, And its Mechanics Are Lazy and Uninspired

[Tyrael Raven]

So I just mean this as developer feedback - I gather this is somehow considered a finished game instead of early access, despite numerous super simple and basic quality of life features (most notably a remotely useful map) but you need to SERIOUSLY change your development to make an expansion worth my money.

For the most part, it seems like half the features in the game just seem to be designed to artificially make the game longer through just making it a pain in the ass involving repetitive searching, vs an ACTUAL challenge.

The biggest problem is that the map doesn't actually show any POI you haven't clicked on (which would be fine but that interface is UTTER GARBAGE, it's damn near impossiblle to select something on your screen without being at a super specific perfect angle. Again, for no reason whatsoever than you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lazy. Plenty of games do this right and do it just fine with ZERO problerm. The map shows no resources at all, etc. It's next to worthless, about all you can do is to try explore areas you think are unexplored, but it's absolutely impossible to tell for sure because there's no actual "cleared" fog of war when you explore someplace,and oftentimes locations and located in weird spots where unless you mouse over it at a SUPER specific angle you'll never, EVER find what you need. It's not challenging, it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ designed point and click game.

This isn't a challenge, this isn't a puzzle, this isn't remotely clever - it's just a pain in the ass that adds no fun to the game, just time. your philosophy seems to be "If you can't make a game to fill as much time as you want, make it cheap, use repetitive mechanics, and just pad it out with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥"

If you can't handle making a reasonably fleshed out game for the price you're asking you absolutely deserve to go out of business, and if it doesn't fix the major deficiencies I'm listing I hope Airborne Kingdom is your last game. The fact you launched a new game with the original appearing unfinished and unpolished is VERY telling.. This is fun at times but mostly a completely unacceptable pile of randomized map you get to "explore" every game with minor challenge elements tacked on.

Your'e making good money off this IP, do your damn job and deliver actual content please.

I'm not buying your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that should have been a DLC that you instead turned into a second "game". ♥♥♥♥ YOU DEV. You're trash on par with Unity.

[Tyrael Raven]

Prime Example: I'm currently trying to finish out a game on hard, be done with this crap, and I'm hopefully looking forward to never having to deal with some stupid brain dead utter ♥♥♥♥ ever again.

That said, I've now been searching for about 1.5 hours in the Shallows for the last Golden Sphere so I can unlock total map vision before knocking out the tundra. There's no reason nor incentive to search the tundra without being fully equipped, and like last game I jsut ran with what I had and was fine.

On hard I might need to make a return trip for supplies midway through, but that's predictable (I haven't even had to do it yet) and will basically be a piece of cake.

And this is my whole point - if I take my time, pay attention, and just do what's asked of me I'll completely 100% complete most of the objectives with literally zero difificult, there's no ACTUAL challenge whatsoever. Literallly the only thing this game does is hide random requited items for progression behind random blocks, and until you unlock those everything is random.

There's nothing but chance; skill is irrelevant. It's literally just an "I Spy" game with WAY more extra steps. "Winning" just involves clicking on the right place, that's it, literally nothing more or nothing less.

[Wlerin]

It's an exploration game, not a "your map tells you where everything is" game. It's really not that hard to select things as long as you are close enough, nor to see them from far off once you know what you're looking for. Showing the resources themselves on the map would be useless clutter as most of them regrow and they are everywhere.

[l33tness08]

Hahahahah

[Revenant]

I have to agree with the OP. I'm glad I bought the game half-off, because in NO way is this remotely worth $25.

The setting is interesting. I like the music. But there's no gameplay here. You basically wander around for 6-7 hours doing trivially easy tasks, then get a vague ending. I can't recommend the game in its current state.

[MartyrSaint]

Prime example of how Capital-G Gamers react when a videogame doesn't have a big glowing arrow telling you exactly where to go and what to do.

[Tyrael Raven]

Originally posted by MartyrSaint:

Prime example of how Capital-G Gamers react when a videogame doesn't have a big glowing arrow telling you exactly where to go and what to do.

I mean it's not a "difficulty" curve or anything here, so I'm not sure what you're at implying I'm just dumb or something? It literally does have a building that highlights white when you mouse over it. The problem is that at that point the game reduces down to consisting of literally nothing but that - just scanning your mouse around looking for a highlight, occasionally grabbing supplies (which are trivial and not actually a challenge at that point) - which is what happens if you miss something and have to go back to complete the game.

However, there's literally zero direction, reason, or anything concrete to point towards where it is, whatever one or two buildings you have left leave you have to do a full systematic sweep of the region you need to look in. It's just luck.

That consists of slowly flying up and down in rows, sweeping your mouse back and forth slowly, eagle eyeing for something to light up.

Doing that for a few hours is extremely unsatisfying gameplay.

If y'all find that entertaining great, that's fine, but I find it kind of disappointing that that's what a substantial chunk of the "playtime" of the game amounted to for me.

Though, absolutely for the record, giving me a set destination to fly to and some kind of real challenge to deal with to get there (which the northern area expansion kinda did, to its credit) would absolutely be better gameplay than what this game turns into in the late game when you just need to wrap up exploration.

You're not working on a puzzle, you're not reading clues, you're not making any real decisions, in the late game you just fly around sweeping your mouse back and forth. That's not fun.

Looking back since this dude resurrected this, if the hill all of you want to die on is that "sweeping your mouse back and forth until something highlights and you click on it (and if you miss it you get to spend 45 minutes to 2 hours doing it again) is fun and compelling gameplay" then honestly, I don't feel bad saying I don't really care what your taste is.

Not sure why you guys are even paying money for games, at that point can't you just go watch paint dry or grass grow? The grass is even dynamic and sways in the wind! Sounds very exciting when I try looking at from your perspective!

[Wlerin]

Originally posted by Tyrael Raven:

However, there's literally zero direction, reason, or anything concrete to point towards where it is, whatever one or two buildings you have left leave you have to do a full systematic sweep of the region you need to look in. It's just luck.

It's been ages since I played but from what I recall the placement of special structures is actually fairly predictable--not their exact locations but where on each island you need to look, or even on what kinds of islands. It's nonsensical hyperbole to claim you need to do a "full systematic sweep" of the region when most of each region is visibly empty. Hell, often you can narrow it down to just a few possible locations just by looking at the outlines of islands and the empty gaps where there should have been something of interest Nor do you need to "sweep"...

Originally posted by Tyrael Raven:

You're not working on a puzzle, you're not reading clues, you're not making any real decisions, in the late game you just fly around sweeping your mouse back and forth. That's not fun.

Looking back since this dude resurrected this, if the hill all of you want to die on is that "sweeping your mouse back and forth until something highlights and you click on it (and if you miss it you get to spend 45 minutes to 2 hours doing it again) is fun and compelling gameplay" then honestly, I don't feel bad saying I don't really care what your taste is.

None of the special buildings are particularly hard to recognise from a distance, from the air, without 'sweeping your mouse back and forth'. Use your eyeballs. (At worst you might need to turn down some of the cloud effects.)

Originally posted by Tyrael Raven:

Not sure why you guys are even paying money for games, at that point can't you just go watch paint dry or grass grow? The grass is even dynamic and sways in the wind! Sounds very exciting when I try looking at from your perspective!

I might ask you the same question, what's the point of an exploration game if the game does all the exploring for you?