Posted August 21, 2016
So.. a bit of a weird release. Built for PC originally, then structured strictly towards a Ps4 release in the last 6 months. And on launch, the ps4 and PC versions are pretty much the same. From the forced (full-screen, per pixel) instagram filter that effectively doubles the graphics card requirement. To scheduling/threading problems that cause slow-downs on even the highest specced rig. To auto-pilot functions that no sane person could possibly have suggested. Along with blatant gameplay functionality shown in demos as close to release as April having been cut out (type: creature AI interference, planetary movement). And all the way back to genuine oversights that simple playtesting should have spotted easily.
Fortunately, the scheduling problems have been fixed in the patches a week after release (together with adding compatibility with processors that don't have SSE3, but otherwise are more than powerful to run the game). The instagram-filter can be removed with an unofficial mod (essentially doubling the framerate). And I have at least some hopes that the autopilots and flight-assists will be "toned down" (read: turned off) in future patches on the PC. And that we might see at least some of the disappearing functions in future releases - if nowhere else, then in an experimental branch.
(Or if that's not possible, through unofficial mods through semi-official mod tools - I respect that Sony is involved in this, but if HG wants to protect their own customer base, they will branch the PC version from the PS4 version either officially or unofficially. And then come prepared with their next game with proper legal agreements that prevent the same issues from emerging again, while being flatly open with how this disaster of a release happened - this is the only way I will buy another HG game in the future).
Outside of that, I'll suggest that feedback on the game should maybe be grouped into four categories:
1. Performance related issues.
(in the shape of "here are my specs", then general descriptions about the area the slowdowns happen, if they're possible to reproduce - does it consistently happen if you look towards a specific section of a building, do storms and weather effects have something to do with it, etc. Example: "flare effect when hitting a knowledge stone tends to consistently drop the framerate severely". "Floors on platforms spawned inside geometry shows graphics distortion when viewed at straight angles".)
2. Issues affecting gameplay, game-play function consistency.
(in the shape of "this is what happens". Vs. "this is what I expect should happen". I.e., "laser beam cooldown mods clearly affect the speed of the cooldown after overheat, while the normal cooldown is always zero. Expected behaviour: cooling mods affecting rate of cooldown during normal cooldown as well as when overheat happens". I know this is edgy already - cutting out the cooldown is clearly pathed in on purpose, but there are other examples that are less obviously intended. Other examples could be: "Additional sentinels spawn very close when alerted by other sentinels, or when pilfering rare resources, even in caves. Expected: alerted sentinels spawn nearby, but not as close as to obviously have been spawned out of thin air. Sentinels should not spawn next to you inside a cave, only to then lose track of you, etc").
3. Issues not directly affecting gameplay or immediate control.
(things like: "animals stroll over rocks by warping up high and then dumping down on the other side, if legs are long enough". Or "frequency of waypoints remaining on the map is very large if you forget to hit the location the waypoint is "visited"").
4. Feature requests.
(this is probably the largest category. And imo, should be the place where people group their thoughts about what should be in the game, small or large, implementable or not. Example: "faction interplay seems very rare and very random, with no way to genuinely support or oppose each faction, as you're limited to essentially helping or not helping the race that inhabits/owns the current system. In the end making it very difficult to fall in disfavor with either of the races for any reason, except very early in the game. Should be possible to assist factions and fall in disfavor with the other, as well as having general dominance indicators perhaps affecting which race holds nearby systems in the galaxy. So that you might launch missions to unfriendly systems to raid. Or assist a specific race in a neutral system, before jumping by light guidance to a system your allies control".)
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1. Performance things:
(i7u/mobile dual core+ht, nvidia 840m optimus)
-framerate drops connected to the forced full-screen filters. Seems affected by the number of complex surfaces visible in the viewport, not by density or number of objects. Allow filters in various parts of the rendering engine to be turned on or off based on preference. Note: very serious if intermittent performance problems on graphics cards that need to schedule context-shifts internally on the graphics cards, such as practically all nvidia cards, come from this extra filter-path.
-fps-blips/threading locks when disconnecting from online services.
-the "eventually you get 5fps" problem. Does not cause hangs, and can disappear randomly. Also seen on higher specced systems. Possibly a background task/thread problem?
-detail-mapping slows down in certain situations - possible optimisation route to prioritize surface tiles rather than underground caves or surface buildings? Seems possibly related to when large numbers of alien structures are nearby - is not present when graphics threads are optimally busy (from gpu-traffic graphs).
2.Gameplay-things:
-sentinels spawning too close. Expected: spawns nearby, called from elsewhere.
-difficult to judge when sentinels lose sight of the explorer (entering "cave" is a catch-all, turns sight on/off by, say, blowing a hole in the ground and sitting down. Until then, homing lock until indeterminable distance). Expected: running away and breaking los makes sentinels search.
-sentinels inspecting: there will often be another sentinel turning up immediately after the first one is destroyed, no matter how low the sentinel frequency is. Suspect foul play.
-hostiles pursuing through space. Need an indicator of approximately how far you need to run to escape. Breaking from orbit to a planet usually breaks pursuit from pirates outright. Mechanics should maybe allow half the tail to pursue through orbit.
-boost during space-flight - very difficult to judge speed between "nearby freighter", "inhibited from pulse-jump", and so on. Same effect and same speed on the dials, but not actually the same travel-speed. Expected: boost draws you faster than normal thrusters (optionally: tooltips could be more clear about the upgrades for pulse-drive?)
-mining beam niggles. Cooling mods should have a purpose. Should maybe be connected to different mining mechanics (i.e., draw higher amounts of resources with better upgrades - against adjusting the actual resources needed for basic upgrades. It seems like a "critical resource", heridium, is collected at incredibly high rates, and that this has been specially put in to ease the early game. Other resources are not adjusted for mining rates, and certain costs for mid-game upgrades seem extremely tedious to obtain in comparison).
-auto-pilots in space. Flight-path adjustment in space while engaging pirates. Very difficult to see when or why it turns up, often simply straightens out the flight-path or prevents you from turning at a specific angle. Triggers during the phase where you gain target-aquisition on the photon cannon. Seems less frequent when using the beam. Difficult to reproduce. Expected: proximity alert to large ships on hud (like subtle ouchies on the screen under or on the side, no flight assist).
-auto-pilots on planet. An auto-pilot physically prevents you from flying near the ground. Why? Expected/suggestion: enable automatic height-adjustment during boost. Disable it when flying without boost. Have the ship hover slightly above ground when traveling at low speeds, searching for a landing site, preventing you from burying your nose in the rock. If you genuinely believe that allowing this significantly hampers the "enjoyment" of the game for one of your target groups, make it possible to enable or disable the babying with a switch.
3. non-gameplay things.
-typos in tooltips. Jetpack booster Tau description: "ascent to higher locations". Toxin suppressor theta reads "Tau" in the description, same as the other "Tau", except for the resource requirements. Has correct description in exosuit view.
-if entering a "battle" area, ships eventually disengage and, presumably by random/closest exit spot, tries to return to the space-station, they get stuck in the entrance. Possibly only an issue if you are nearby the space-station when it happens?
-constructing a sigma rebreather, deconstructing it, and then reconstructing it in a different slot seems to duplicate the rebreather icons (three icons when the systems are being drained). Building a second rebreather makes the correct number of hud-icons turn up. Couldn't duplicate it later.
-progress on the Atlas quest. Accepting help from Atlas at the beginning of the game will prevent "space anomalies" from showing up until you visit an Atlas sanctuary and refuse assistance there. Visiting the monolith leading to this segment cannot be denied, and it's possible to be left with an Atlas marker several systems back, with no easy access to upgraded warp-reactors, etc.
Fortunately, the scheduling problems have been fixed in the patches a week after release (together with adding compatibility with processors that don't have SSE3, but otherwise are more than powerful to run the game). The instagram-filter can be removed with an unofficial mod (essentially doubling the framerate). And I have at least some hopes that the autopilots and flight-assists will be "toned down" (read: turned off) in future patches on the PC. And that we might see at least some of the disappearing functions in future releases - if nowhere else, then in an experimental branch.
(Or if that's not possible, through unofficial mods through semi-official mod tools - I respect that Sony is involved in this, but if HG wants to protect their own customer base, they will branch the PC version from the PS4 version either officially or unofficially. And then come prepared with their next game with proper legal agreements that prevent the same issues from emerging again, while being flatly open with how this disaster of a release happened - this is the only way I will buy another HG game in the future).
Outside of that, I'll suggest that feedback on the game should maybe be grouped into four categories:
1. Performance related issues.
(in the shape of "here are my specs", then general descriptions about the area the slowdowns happen, if they're possible to reproduce - does it consistently happen if you look towards a specific section of a building, do storms and weather effects have something to do with it, etc. Example: "flare effect when hitting a knowledge stone tends to consistently drop the framerate severely". "Floors on platforms spawned inside geometry shows graphics distortion when viewed at straight angles".)
2. Issues affecting gameplay, game-play function consistency.
(in the shape of "this is what happens". Vs. "this is what I expect should happen". I.e., "laser beam cooldown mods clearly affect the speed of the cooldown after overheat, while the normal cooldown is always zero. Expected behaviour: cooling mods affecting rate of cooldown during normal cooldown as well as when overheat happens". I know this is edgy already - cutting out the cooldown is clearly pathed in on purpose, but there are other examples that are less obviously intended. Other examples could be: "Additional sentinels spawn very close when alerted by other sentinels, or when pilfering rare resources, even in caves. Expected: alerted sentinels spawn nearby, but not as close as to obviously have been spawned out of thin air. Sentinels should not spawn next to you inside a cave, only to then lose track of you, etc").
3. Issues not directly affecting gameplay or immediate control.
(things like: "animals stroll over rocks by warping up high and then dumping down on the other side, if legs are long enough". Or "frequency of waypoints remaining on the map is very large if you forget to hit the location the waypoint is "visited"").
4. Feature requests.
(this is probably the largest category. And imo, should be the place where people group their thoughts about what should be in the game, small or large, implementable or not. Example: "faction interplay seems very rare and very random, with no way to genuinely support or oppose each faction, as you're limited to essentially helping or not helping the race that inhabits/owns the current system. In the end making it very difficult to fall in disfavor with either of the races for any reason, except very early in the game. Should be possible to assist factions and fall in disfavor with the other, as well as having general dominance indicators perhaps affecting which race holds nearby systems in the galaxy. So that you might launch missions to unfriendly systems to raid. Or assist a specific race in a neutral system, before jumping by light guidance to a system your allies control".)
-------
1. Performance things:
(i7u/mobile dual core+ht, nvidia 840m optimus)
-framerate drops connected to the forced full-screen filters. Seems affected by the number of complex surfaces visible in the viewport, not by density or number of objects. Allow filters in various parts of the rendering engine to be turned on or off based on preference. Note: very serious if intermittent performance problems on graphics cards that need to schedule context-shifts internally on the graphics cards, such as practically all nvidia cards, come from this extra filter-path.
-fps-blips/threading locks when disconnecting from online services.
-the "eventually you get 5fps" problem. Does not cause hangs, and can disappear randomly. Also seen on higher specced systems. Possibly a background task/thread problem?
-detail-mapping slows down in certain situations - possible optimisation route to prioritize surface tiles rather than underground caves or surface buildings? Seems possibly related to when large numbers of alien structures are nearby - is not present when graphics threads are optimally busy (from gpu-traffic graphs).
2.Gameplay-things:
-sentinels spawning too close. Expected: spawns nearby, called from elsewhere.
-difficult to judge when sentinels lose sight of the explorer (entering "cave" is a catch-all, turns sight on/off by, say, blowing a hole in the ground and sitting down. Until then, homing lock until indeterminable distance). Expected: running away and breaking los makes sentinels search.
-sentinels inspecting: there will often be another sentinel turning up immediately after the first one is destroyed, no matter how low the sentinel frequency is. Suspect foul play.
-hostiles pursuing through space. Need an indicator of approximately how far you need to run to escape. Breaking from orbit to a planet usually breaks pursuit from pirates outright. Mechanics should maybe allow half the tail to pursue through orbit.
-boost during space-flight - very difficult to judge speed between "nearby freighter", "inhibited from pulse-jump", and so on. Same effect and same speed on the dials, but not actually the same travel-speed. Expected: boost draws you faster than normal thrusters (optionally: tooltips could be more clear about the upgrades for pulse-drive?)
-mining beam niggles. Cooling mods should have a purpose. Should maybe be connected to different mining mechanics (i.e., draw higher amounts of resources with better upgrades - against adjusting the actual resources needed for basic upgrades. It seems like a "critical resource", heridium, is collected at incredibly high rates, and that this has been specially put in to ease the early game. Other resources are not adjusted for mining rates, and certain costs for mid-game upgrades seem extremely tedious to obtain in comparison).
-auto-pilots in space. Flight-path adjustment in space while engaging pirates. Very difficult to see when or why it turns up, often simply straightens out the flight-path or prevents you from turning at a specific angle. Triggers during the phase where you gain target-aquisition on the photon cannon. Seems less frequent when using the beam. Difficult to reproduce. Expected: proximity alert to large ships on hud (like subtle ouchies on the screen under or on the side, no flight assist).
-auto-pilots on planet. An auto-pilot physically prevents you from flying near the ground. Why? Expected/suggestion: enable automatic height-adjustment during boost. Disable it when flying without boost. Have the ship hover slightly above ground when traveling at low speeds, searching for a landing site, preventing you from burying your nose in the rock. If you genuinely believe that allowing this significantly hampers the "enjoyment" of the game for one of your target groups, make it possible to enable or disable the babying with a switch.
3. non-gameplay things.
-typos in tooltips. Jetpack booster Tau description: "ascent to higher locations". Toxin suppressor theta reads "Tau" in the description, same as the other "Tau", except for the resource requirements. Has correct description in exosuit view.
-if entering a "battle" area, ships eventually disengage and, presumably by random/closest exit spot, tries to return to the space-station, they get stuck in the entrance. Possibly only an issue if you are nearby the space-station when it happens?
-constructing a sigma rebreather, deconstructing it, and then reconstructing it in a different slot seems to duplicate the rebreather icons (three icons when the systems are being drained). Building a second rebreather makes the correct number of hud-icons turn up. Couldn't duplicate it later.
-progress on the Atlas quest. Accepting help from Atlas at the beginning of the game will prevent "space anomalies" from showing up until you visit an Atlas sanctuary and refuse assistance there. Visiting the monolith leading to this segment cannot be denied, and it's possible to be left with an Atlas marker several systems back, with no easy access to upgraded warp-reactors, etc.
Post edited August 21, 2016 by nipsen