A Question on the direction of the game

[The_Flats]

I got this game just a bit ago. Love the concept of it and how easy it is to jump right in and build things. But now we have a new building tool which is not easy to use. There is a new mining system which is not easy to use (matter of fact its just down right difficult and NOT fun at all.)

So heres my question.

When developing the game and saying "oh this would be cool and that would be great, do you ever stop and ask… “will this be fun for people who are not computer geeks to play?”

Im not a computer geek and this game which I bought has in a very very… very short time gone from “oh this is really fun and lets me play” to " this is a project just to learn anything… its not fun anymore"

The build tool allows me to build rather easily with some creative thinking I can build wonderous things. The new tool it rather complicated, I have to use to many things to attempt to do minimal building. Yes it has some very nice features but again… If I wanted a intregated building system, I would have gotten a complicated building game. Not a cartoony looking one that just looks FUN to play.

The Mining system which was very easy to jump into and start mining and making D&D type dungeons for adventure or whatever I liked now is difficult to place tunnels, the shift alt mouseing goes against the natural use of a mouse. Its just complicated and difficult and makes a user not want to mine, which you need to to get your ores.

The weather. I dont know whats up with the weather if its just me or the game, but I spend 90% of the time in rain… atleast it seems that way. Which makes it gloomy and depressing.

So all in all… The game has gone from a fun easy to play happy game to… a depressing, chore to get anything done. Plus I personally feel that I need a class just to learn how to use the different tools now. Which goes against fun gaming.

So I ask…

Do you ever stop and ask “Will this be FUN to play?”

[Eldaas]

Do you ever stop and ask, “Why am I playing the unstable branch of an early access game when I can’t handle a few work-in-progress game systems?”

Not trying to flame you, but this is really what you should be asking yourself. There’s a stable branch. The stable branch is currently (to my knowledge) the game you’ve loved playing up to this point. It doesn’t contain the new weather systems, it doesn’t contain the new mining or building tools. Go play that.

For what it’s worth, there are players who are enjoying the new game systems. I think the weather system is going to be awesome when it has a tangible effect on the game world. It’s work-in-progress and very early in development, so it may not be completely smooth or 100% fun yet. It will be though. The new builder (as I’ve said to you on another post) is awesome. It’s going to take time for the developers to get working as they have envisaged. I know one of the developers especially has put a heck of a lot of hard work and effort into it, so I’m sure they’d be a little disheartened to hear you dismissing it so unfairly. Same with the mining tool.

Give the game time. If you don’t like the bleeding edge work-in-progress features, bugs and imbalances, go back and play the stable branch. It’s there for the very reason that you’re whinging on the forums now. Most early access games don’t give you both branches to choose from, so you really should be applauding these guys for the fact that they have.

[Fornjotr]

Hi @The_Flats

Welcome to the discourse! Your feedback seems really one sided? Is there nothing positive to say about the new systems?
It is totally fair that your opinion is that they challenge you to better yourself and that such a challenge is not what you are looking for?

but try to stop a minute, then ask yourself if that is how you think most other people, especially creators (in this case the developers) are aproaching the reality around them?

If you by chance just got frustrated over the challenge and needed to vent out the excess steam, by making this thread, then give it another go?
Try to make a critic thread, where you show the things you like aswell?
The things you dont like, should be presented together with a description and/or ideas on how you think they could be made better? (not just, dont change anything, i cant handle change!)

I do hope you find the spirit to take up the challenge again, because when you learn the new systems, you find out how powerfull tool we have been given in them, to make almost anything!

Thank you and may the wind guide you

[coasterspaul]

It is a one sided critique, but I feel the response is… patronizing at best, plain rude at worst? Stop setting more people against the Discourse, Cid knows we’ve got enough already

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I’d argue the old building tool was more complicated, once you account for everything you had to remember. It had a bunch of silly limitations there was no visible reason for, and after playing with it for… I guess it’s been fourteen alphas since the last major UI overhaul?.. I’m more terrified of it than I was in Alpha 10. Or Alpha 6/7, for that matter, when freely placed blocks were the cool new thing but didn’t like to finish themselves, and multi-story buildings weren’t really possible straight out of the editor, and…

Sure, the new one sometimes feels ridiculously unlimited. But I find having a working undo has stopped me from getting into too much of a mess. And there’s still a ton of room for improvement on the little annoyances.

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The new mining tool is amazing and has allowed me to finally start digging out this dream castle without it being a total pain:

Not that it isn’t super messy to look at still:

But while this project is less of a pain, I’ll agree the new mining tool can be pretty painful, and there’s definitely a lot of cases where I still wish the old tunnel one was still available (mining a single block works about the same now, it’s just annoying to change the size.) I want nothing more than for the old building tool to be gotten rid of, but perhaps there’s something to be said for keeping the old mining tool. And making the new one more better, of course.

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Weather’s all over the place right now. I’ve gotten at least three sandstorms in a row so far. I’m hoping that if they get to seasons they’ll touch up the weather a bit. Right now, I think the fancy weathers are probably overdone because they’re new and cool, and the game might get a bit calmer going forward.

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@The_Flats

a depressing, chore to get anything done

That’s probably how I would’ve described the old building editor once I got burned out by it. And I’d mostly started getting used to it and ignoring the problems - which I and a lot of other people are probably already doing some with the new stuff. So we need new people to point out problems. But “it’s all bad, go back” isn’t going to happen - not with all the problems the old game had - so being more specific on what you feel isn’t working and needs to be changed/fixed/replaced/improved would be great.