40 hours in - My Suggestions (solo & 4 player)

[Da_Matteo]

List of Bugs identified (following recent patch)

• Dew Collector - Spawns water once but then never again.
• Insect Spawning inside Solid Objects - The longer I play, the more bugs I notice are 'stuck' inside objects, such as rocks, or tree branches, it's starting to become an issue.. A bug respawn upon sleeping would be good to resolve this?
• Insects Teleporting through Walls (Note: I have not noticed this since the Larvae spawning on base fix, but I suspect it is still an issue just now less frequent)
• Spiders and the Lab - Frequent for spiders to get stuck in the entrance to the lab, or just sit and wait outside the lab, making it impossible for newer players to get out. Think this should be made a safe zone somehow.
• Plant Fibre is Obtrusive - When I've been cutting grass, and there's a lot of plant fibre rolls on the floor, my character struggles to walk because they block your path and you find yourself fighting against them all.
• Plank Huck sometimes hurts the thrower - Not sure why this happens, but when you huck you sometimes take a lot of damage from it.
• (Base Building) Walls are... Unpredictable - I can spend almost an hour setting down blueprints, to then find where I wanted to put a wall is impossible, ruining my entire plan. Sometimes the walls can be 50% under the ground, which is good, other times, they can't be 1% under the ground - this is particularly noticeable on rocks.
• (Base Building) Wall Height - Sometimes my walls will look fine, then I'll come back to my base, and the wall behind my stair case has the jagged top, meaning it comes through the floor, blocking the path to get up.

 

UI Improvement Suggestions

• (Xbox Controller) 'Back' (change view) button does WAY too much - It takes way too long to scroll through all the menus just to get to my inventory, to then have to move through my items, and then enter the RT menu to do something with an item.
  • Allow option for left and right on d-pad to scroll through select items, rather than just being able to assign each button to 1 item.
  • Add a quick button for 'drop', for example Press X, inside the inventory screen, especially useful for multiplayer when sharing items quickly with friends.
  • Add a "hold button", for example Hold X, for destroy item inside the inventory screen (then a pop up asking to how many to destroy in the stack, or all).
  • Make it so that we need to Hold 'Back' button (change view button) to access the crafting screens, and just Tap 'Back' button (change view button) to open the inventory which is by far the most used.
• Save Menu Layout - Separate screen for auto saves, and ability to name manual saves.
• Equipped Gear - Please please please, make it so that equipped gear does not stay in inventory, and introduce the normal RPG gear screen!

 

Balance Improvements

• Multiplayer Balancing - On 4 player multiplayer, water is extremely difficult to manage - spawn rates should be balanced depending on number of players.
• Dehydration and Starvation isn't punishing enough - As a survival game, and these being the only 2 resources that need managing, I'd expect the game to punish you more for not maintaining them properly. A good example is Fallout 4 Survival mode, whereby, the more dehydrated or hungry you get, the more punishing the effects become. (I understand this would be bad to introduce as of now due to balancing issues and water spawning issues, but something for the future?)
• Sleeping (Hunger and Thirst Bars) - Hunger and Thirst when sleeping makes no sense, they always go to a fixed value and can even increase over night? The fall should be dependant on number of hours and starting levels of the hunger and thirst metres before bed. As of now, I find myself letting my characters bar just drop to zero because eating or drinking before bed is completely pointless.
• Sleeping Need - This should be introduced imo. As well as more sleeping furniture which reap better results, i.e. well rested.

 

Additional Content Suggestions

• A Weather System
  • Rain
    • Water easier to find on grass
    • Water collector fills up if unsheltered
    • Different insects appear (e.g. worms as they do irl)
    • Potential movement penalty inside puddles?
    • A clover leaf 'floating boat' to compensate for the increase height of water in areas of the garden? (and to avoid water insects from below).
    • Raindrops can hurt if gets very heavy - clover umbrella for protection?
  • Sun
    • Water need falls quicker
    • Water more scarce (Evaporation)
    • Different insects appear (or more frequently, i.e. bees, wasps, mosquitoes)
    • Damp areas of the map start to dry out somewhat
• Map Expansions
  • More dungeons to explore (like the hedge branch system and also underground), with puzzles and unique rewards at the centre (Not just raw science, it's a great idea and all, but it's not that exciting after a while).
  • Hidden entrances around the map with mysteries/clues inside (and more unique enemies).
• Quests
  • Not just 'collect this' or 'kill that', but something meaningful... e.g. we need to build this device, collect these parts so we can construct this or further out research etc. similar tasks but with more purpose and have it lead somewhere.
• BURGL Rewards
  • Selection is currently limited, feel like this could be fleshed out a lot more. As of now, Raw Science feels extremely pointless and I have very little motivation to try and find more.
  • Backpack Upgrades - A rare upgrade, potentially obtained via BURGL after a series of quests? (following research mentioned in my 'quests' section?) - Adding additional inventory slots.
• Level Up!
  • Some form of levelling system, even if just for combat... Rewards for higher levels such as for Archery, increased bow draw speed, or arrow recovery chance. And for Melee, less weapon degrading, critical hit chance, stun change, evasion chance or damage reduction chance. etc.  Would make it more worthwhile taking on more bugs in combat rather than purely for gathering purposes.

 

• (Base Building) Wall Height Options - Options to remove the jagged top from walls would be nice, it causes big problems as they tops come through floors a lot of the time when the bottom floor of a structure doesn't have the same skeleton as the floor above.  The same can also be said for doors - the top of which peeks through the floor above.
• (Base Building) Use Furniture - The ability to use chairs etc. in the future would be nice.
• (Base Building) Colour Options - The ability to use items from around the garden to dye walls etc. or add painted décor to them.

 

• New Insects (I know, obviously! - But here's my ideas)
  • Ant Queen (ant nest boss)
  • Flying Ants *Shudders*
  • Wasps
  • Worms
  • Water Skeeters
  • Diving Beetles

Edited August 12, 2020 by Da_Matteo