Ok, I’ll make this a straightforward feedback and opinion post...
Played now for 40+ hours between the demo and this pre-release. I’m a veteran of larger survival games, so my views are based on that experience.
This game has so much potential, but it seems even in it’s early state, there are core design decisions that lend itself to a entry level (easy) survival game and that’s all.
- There isn’t much here. The story literally takes you 15 minutes to complete if you follow the queues. Then you do dailies to waste your time on building components that shouldn’t require this much effort to get. You don’t get grass floors by default? Cmon... Even as early access, I would have expected at least a full quest line that takes you through the Initial story, at least 10 hours of content for the $30 price tag. You don’t need community feedback from early access to tell the story YOU want to tell.
- Where is the threat? Playing on Whoa difficulty, the only pressing thing is the annoying eat/drink cycle. You can outrun or dodge most insects, and spiders path the same routes if you watch them from high up, easily avoided if farming resources. Tunnels and caves? What do I need there to enhance my base or self after one visit? And even if I make my own dangers...I can just Load a prior Save and be fine again....what? (Covered more below)
- Bases have zero risk if you place them anywhere above the ground. It doesn’t even need to be high up, a root of the oak tree or on the soda cans is good enough to avoid all danger. What’s the point of the game past the story if your bases have no threat? Why build re-enforced walls? The game has no longevity if it’s not about protecting your base and your possessions.
- Retrieving your dead body backpack is far too easy. If you even die In the hardest difficulty, I would expect your backpack to be guarded or even looted by territorial insects. Why did they care to confront or kill you in the first place if they didn’t find you a threat to their territory? And wouldn’t they be interested in your stuff? Food, drink, components for their own nests/homes...all in your backpack.
- A survival game with a manual save system? Again...where is the danger or consequences of your survival decisions if you can just load up a past save? The Save option in the menu should be removed and Auto- Save should trigger internally off system events, including death. That way you can’t go back to avoid a bad result or decision. Save and Load = no threat or consequences for your actions.
- The enemies. How is it that with all the great AI you have for these insects, all I have to do to avoid their attack is jump on a rock and watch them leave or spear them to death at the right angles? And how is it that I can kill a Spider by spearing them through my partially completed grass wall and yet the spider doesn’t damage the wall at all? Simply build a small hut, 2x2 and leave some of the walls partially done. Then spear through the translucent blue parts...dead spider. Again, I thought these insects were supposed to pose a threat to your base? If there is no threat in a survival game, there is no longevity and it turns into a creative base building lego game.
- Dev, please play with a controller and tell me what the purpose of the hotbar is at the bottom of the screen? You can’t quick swap or interact with any of the slots on the fly. The action bar should be removed imo. Also, control flow in the menus and crafting is just off. I spent a lot of time remapping most my controller buttons through the options to try and get to something close to other survival crafting game interfaces that do it correctly. Managing inventory by moving single items(No stack move or pull), no split stacks, armor that stays in your backpack even when its equipped, tools mixed in with weapons in crafting, crafting station that has no storage of it’s own or that can pull from a chest connected to it, etc etc.
- Great looking game, nice visuals...until you look into the distance...well, i guess it’s distant. Why is the house and any structure over 20yds away fuzzy and blurry on console? Are we saying we can’t render these assets on Xbox One X? Find that hard to believe given there are plenty of larger survival games on the Unreal Engine render far more.
- The HUD needs options to turn off elements. Too much clutter with constant ‘hand popups’ on every environment item. But I already posted A full detail on that In a separate thread.
Harsh post somewhat, sure. But all too often game preview or ‘early access’ often becomes an excuse to deliver subpar, inferior games and still charge a significant price for a game that isn’t worth in it’s current state. Early access seems to somehow give a ‘pass’ for developers to deliver no story, broken systems, and bad design....all with the excuse of ‘it’s still early access’.
I wouldn’t say Grounded falls in most these categories, but first impressions mean alot. We play early access games, and most the time we play the game through the early access development cycle, become bored or frustrated and never come back to the actual release of the game because of the bad taste the game left us during early access. Just hope a MS 1st party, AAA dev like Obsidian doesn’t end up with the same result.