[Below Zero] Feedback from the previous game, suggestion for improvement
Sam_Starfall
Join Date: 2017-05-21 Member: 230665Members
Join Date: 2017-05-21 Member: 230665Members
The first game was pretty damn good and I backed Bellow Zero as soon as it went out.
Here is a set of Feedback suggestion for improvement:
FLASHLIGHT
- make the flashlight keep pointing forward when you run
FOOD & WATER
- It was fun at first but repetitive later, especially since we could "farm" inside the Cyclop anyway.
- My hope for the next game:
Have a craftable ENDGAME food that last longer so we can store those for expedition,
WRECKS:
- Your gameplay-gate didn't work well, it's frustrating to bypass the need for special tools and arrive in a room you already visited when you do use them.
- I suggest putting WRITTEN NAME on them so players can name their Beacons like that
BEACONS
- give us a way to rename them from the PDA and change their icons
- The 2nd big problem is that they clutter the screen and yet are too useful for navigation to hide.
Suggestion:
make the furthest ones away fade when you aren't in a vehicle capable of reaching them,
give a player button in the PDA to Show/Hide them all at once
BATTERIES
- Have every vehicles/tools made without batteries, I ended up with tons of extra for nothing
Seaglide
- I never used it's hologram and often want it off, I only needed the light.
- The range with 1 battery is way too short late game, please let us improve it late game.
SONAR
- Make the 3D mesh persistent when we aren't moving,
- It was extremely frustrating when you just needed the mesh to stay visible and yet had to use 20 pulses to plan your ways
FAUNA
- I couldn't tell if the various fish had behavior, you should look into that and make it so the player can use it peacefully.
PLAYER EQUIPMENT
- it could be nice to have a suit made for "stealth" that sacrifice protection for that.
DRONE & SCANNER ROOM
- Don't make drones spawn with the building, they duplicate when you remove/rebuild the structure
- Please let us craft self-powered antenna that increase the control range of both Drone & Scanner, it was painful to have to move the entire building around.
- Let the Drone Scan Animals, to offset the cost you can let them be targeted by FAUNA when you do the scan.
- Please give use a way other than random luck of "guessing" where are important locations.
SEAMOTH
- I ended up never using the torpedoes and they were too hard to aim with anyway, what their point in a non-violent game anyway?
- Rework the sound gameplay, make it possible to escape predator by not moving / firing a decoy far away.
- It need more module slot because at some point you are never going to use it without the Depth improvement and the Sonar.
PRAWN SUIT
- Have the lights follow the direction the player is watching
- Allow the ability to crouch even if you can't move (it would have helped me when I got stuck)
CYCLOPS Submarine
- Change the control interface so we can look down in front of use without using the camera and loosing most functionality
- Fix the light, sometime exterior-light make it harder to see outside even with interior light-off
- Make exterior-light point in more direction including up,
- Rework the "sound gameplay", use the Klaxon to drive off small carnivore, the Sonar IS sound.
As a trade off : consider making "silent mode" not produce oxygen anymore. So one way to escape Leviathan is to literally hold your breath.
- Make the beacon propel further away and keep the Leviathan attention away.
- Remove overheat at full speed (why punish player who need to cross long distance at the surface?)
- Make overheat happen if you keep the shield powered for too long.
If you want player to accept loosing a submarine instead of restoring a save game I suggest making it into a near-dead state that can be salvaged.
SEABASE
- Make the bulkhead and armor more useful.
If you don't want animal attack : make rare Earthquake (screen shacking) that reduce the Seabase resistance for a short time, so you have to better protect it or have to repair it.
If you want animal attack : Make a screen that allow deactivating seabase light and system, if the base is too loud/showy it will trigger attack
- Don't make energy storage into the generator,
If you push it into the Energy Cell, then you can balance the generator based on the power they generate per minutes.
SEABASE AQUARIUM
- I remember reading you had problems and this feature ended up underused
- I suggest making "balanced aquarium ecosystem" a requirement to farm some plants.
Ex: you can't grow Kelp unless you have an aquarium with some fish from the Kelp-biome creatures, show the list of the creatures/plants missing in the planting interface if you scanned it.
OVERALL QUALITY OF LIFE
- Don't make Seeds take so much space in the inventory, have the bigger icon displayed when you pass over it.
- Please make a storage upgrade for the Seabase and the Cyclops, accessible from outside/inside. It will save a LOT of time during mining operation.
- Please give a way to unload/load the content of the Prawn storage into a Cyclops storage or a Seabase storage without having to do it by the players inventory.
Here is a set of Feedback suggestion for improvement:
FLASHLIGHT
- make the flashlight keep pointing forward when you run
FOOD & WATER
- It was fun at first but repetitive later, especially since we could "farm" inside the Cyclop anyway.
- My hope for the next game:
Have a craftable ENDGAME food that last longer so we can store those for expedition,
WRECKS:
- Your gameplay-gate didn't work well, it's frustrating to bypass the need for special tools and arrive in a room you already visited when you do use them.
- I suggest putting WRITTEN NAME on them so players can name their Beacons like that
BEACONS
- give us a way to rename them from the PDA and change their icons
- The 2nd big problem is that they clutter the screen and yet are too useful for navigation to hide.
Suggestion:
make the furthest ones away fade when you aren't in a vehicle capable of reaching them,
give a player button in the PDA to Show/Hide them all at once
BATTERIES
- Have every vehicles/tools made without batteries, I ended up with tons of extra for nothing
Seaglide
- I never used it's hologram and often want it off, I only needed the light.
- The range with 1 battery is way too short late game, please let us improve it late game.
SONAR
- Make the 3D mesh persistent when we aren't moving,
- It was extremely frustrating when you just needed the mesh to stay visible and yet had to use 20 pulses to plan your ways
FAUNA
- I couldn't tell if the various fish had behavior, you should look into that and make it so the player can use it peacefully.
PLAYER EQUIPMENT
- it could be nice to have a suit made for "stealth" that sacrifice protection for that.
DRONE & SCANNER ROOM
- Don't make drones spawn with the building, they duplicate when you remove/rebuild the structure
- Please let us craft self-powered antenna that increase the control range of both Drone & Scanner, it was painful to have to move the entire building around.
- Let the Drone Scan Animals, to offset the cost you can let them be targeted by FAUNA when you do the scan.
- Please give use a way other than random luck of "guessing" where are important locations.
SEAMOTH
- I ended up never using the torpedoes and they were too hard to aim with anyway, what their point in a non-violent game anyway?
- Rework the sound gameplay, make it possible to escape predator by not moving / firing a decoy far away.
- It need more module slot because at some point you are never going to use it without the Depth improvement and the Sonar.
PRAWN SUIT
- Have the lights follow the direction the player is watching
- Allow the ability to crouch even if you can't move (it would have helped me when I got stuck)
CYCLOPS Submarine
- Change the control interface so we can look down in front of use without using the camera and loosing most functionality
- Fix the light, sometime exterior-light make it harder to see outside even with interior light-off
- Make exterior-light point in more direction including up,
- Rework the "sound gameplay", use the Klaxon to drive off small carnivore, the Sonar IS sound.
As a trade off : consider making "silent mode" not produce oxygen anymore. So one way to escape Leviathan is to literally hold your breath.
- Make the beacon propel further away and keep the Leviathan attention away.
- Remove overheat at full speed (why punish player who need to cross long distance at the surface?)
- Make overheat happen if you keep the shield powered for too long.
If you want player to accept loosing a submarine instead of restoring a save game I suggest making it into a near-dead state that can be salvaged.
SEABASE
- Make the bulkhead and armor more useful.
If you don't want animal attack : make rare Earthquake (screen shacking) that reduce the Seabase resistance for a short time, so you have to better protect it or have to repair it.
If you want animal attack : Make a screen that allow deactivating seabase light and system, if the base is too loud/showy it will trigger attack
- Don't make energy storage into the generator,
If you push it into the Energy Cell, then you can balance the generator based on the power they generate per minutes.
SEABASE AQUARIUM
- I remember reading you had problems and this feature ended up underused
- I suggest making "balanced aquarium ecosystem" a requirement to farm some plants.
Ex: you can't grow Kelp unless you have an aquarium with some fish from the Kelp-biome creatures, show the list of the creatures/plants missing in the planting interface if you scanned it.
OVERALL QUALITY OF LIFE
- Don't make Seeds take so much space in the inventory, have the bigger icon displayed when you pass over it.
- Please make a storage upgrade for the Seabase and the Cyclops, accessible from outside/inside. It will save a LOT of time during mining operation.
- Please give a way to unload/load the content of the Prawn storage into a Cyclops storage or a Seabase storage without having to do it by the players inventory.
Comments
A flashlight that works while running ... It's called a headlight or headlamp... which is why I requested the lamp to be integrated into your swim suit.
FOOD & WATER
I requested a machine that combines water filtration and bio reactor. I.e. it has an inventory for plants / fish and produces nutrient blocks and large filtered water in accordance to what you've put in the machine.
BEACONS
All markers should get smaller and more transparent the further away they are. If you scan for a resource or wreckage, you might end up with a dozen of markers and you have no way to tell how far away they are. This makes it nearly impossible to switch from one visited marker to another one close to your position.
For the beacons: It would be great if they would be visible on the 3D hologram just like the cameras are. I ended up using cameras instead of beacons to mark interesting positions and wished I could have named them just like I could name the beacons.
BATTERIES
The funny part about batteries is that empty batteries can still be used to fabricate tools. And this results in an easy 'battery recharger':
1x titan + 1x empty battery = 1 new scanner with a fully charged battery => just remove the battery and trash the scanner.
And as a sidenote: If you combine Seaglide + Swim Charge Fins, you're really fast and have unlimited battery power because the fins recharge the battery faster than the seaglide can consume it. Oh and btw: You can use the green minecraft cubes to fabricate Ion Batteries => this is your late game support.
SEAGLIDE
I used the hologram a lot but didn't really need the light. The cone of illumination was very bad. I ended up using a nearby seamoth, light stick or flare instead. The hologram on contrast offered me something the sonar couldn't => informations about anything not directly in line of sight (i.e. the direction in which a tunnel is heading). Put to extremes, I ended up building temporary scanner rooms every ~500m just for a better understanding of the map.
DRONE & SCANNER ROOM
There are too many things I'd change to post them here.
SEAMOTH
Well what other mods beside sonar and depth upgrade did you need? I didn't use solar recharge because it barely ever takes more than 1x inventory slot for a reserve energy cell. And armor was solely for collisions with fish and the seamoth could be repaired quite easily.
PRAWN SUIT
Here, I hated the modular concept the most...especially the exchangable arms. A double drill was faster than a single one but you couldn't collect small resource nodes. The grappling hook on contrast was only great for faster horizontal movement and leviathan kills.
Not to mention that I hated the fact that the Prawn Suit wouldn't use my personal inventory as well, which meant a lot of micromanagement.
And it would have been cool if the Prawn Suit would have just had two modes rather than a jump pack => a swim mode and a walking mode
(just like the StarCraft Vikings (the first one only available under water ofc)).
CYCLOPS
Well, what you call 'full speed' is actually 'emergency speed'... a short-term afterburner. But talking about the cyclops would require a thread on its own.
SEABASE
Hull integrity and energy consumption was displayed badly. That's why I wouldn't have wanted more stuff that focuses on this aspect. But it might work better in Below Zero with the new Control Room.
There could imagine many different things. From more leeches that 'eat away' hull integrity or energy. A temporary shield or energy fence against larger creatures ... or creatures that actually require something to eat and try to get past 'glass windows' ... or that there's an underwater weather with changing currents, floating particles creating an underwater sandstorm, and so on.
OVERALL QUALITY OF LIFE
Small note: The size of the seeds was used to indicate the number of full grown plants you can have per growbed.