Grounded 2 Feedback

[apoisonedgift]

Posted this on the steam forums because I couldn't find a good official place... so reposting it here  A collection of feedback and bugs I've noticed in my time playing G2 so far (just short of 19 hours)...

 

First off - I am having a great time. Grounded 1 was easily the best survival game ever made (in its 1.0+ state at least) IMO, so I am going to be a lot harsher on Grounded 2 than I would otherwise. But I do want to say that this is a great foundation to build upon. The combat tweaks are great mostly, the story seems pretty interesting so far, there's a lot of the QoL features from G1 that carried over, which is great, the music is incredibly, the overall atmosphere in the game is brilliant (I love how dark nights are for instance), buggies are really fun, and in general its a wonderful early access release. That said I have a lot of issues that I want to voice. But I do want it made clear that overall I think this is a great start.

So the issues/feedback in the current state... This is gonna be a long list in no particular order lol...

Some more technical stuff first...

- Performance. Personally I've had okayish performance. I can get 50+ fps on high settings, with only a jump of a few extra frames if i drop to medium. In some locations it does go up over 100fps, but generally it sits between 50 and 80. That's fine, but I also have a pretty beefy rig with a 9800X3D CPU, 6800XT GPU and 64GB of DDR5 6000 RAM. I know that optimisation is likely to be an ongoing thing throughout development, but I would like to see this get a lot better than it is currently, and its pretty clear from the rest of the steam forums that this is a common issue for other people too.
- In line with performance, we absolutely NEED more controls over graphics options. A simple quality dropdown is not enough. I'm sure this is planned to be added, but if not please do consider it.
- Input kind of feels laggy. Its kind of weird to explain, and I imagine its not particularly noticeable on a controller, but with mouse and keyboard, jumping between G1 and G2 you can notice that G1 is muuuuch more responsive. Its not terrible, and you do get used to it, but I would like to see the character be a bit more responsive to input as it does detract from the experience, especially on a first impression.
- Similarly, the UI is a little iffy. Again, I don't think this would be particularly noticeable on a controller, but often actions such as moving items from your inventory to a chest and such have a slight lag to them which feels very bad IMO. Its not a deal breaker but compared to the UI in G1, its quite a big step backwards. The overall redesign is more or less fine. Though I think showing your hotbar on the inventory screen, adding SCA.B skins, etc. would be a good thing to bring back. But the responsiveness of the UI could do with some work for sure.
- The overall lighting of the game is a bit of a step back in my opinion. I'm not a big fan of lumen, and a lot of its issues are on display here, with visual artifacts, slow-to-update reflections, and so on. But all that aside, the general yellowish tone on everything makes it all feel a bit washed out and dull when compared with Grounded 1. I would love an option to apply different colour gradings or LUTs to the game with one bringing it back to the more striking colours from Grounded 1 or something along those lines. I know removing Lumen isn't likely at this point, so I doubt we are going to fix the issues Lumen has without Epic doing some work on that (and I'm not convinced they can fix those at this point)... but giving us an option to bring back the vibrance of the first game would be a massive win for me at least!

Some annoyances for me that I feel like could be pretty easily addressed...
- The voice lines at the moment are irritating as hell. The quality and writing of the lines themselves is fine, but they repeat WAY too often. I'm sick of willow comparing riding the ant to capitalism and such. We either need a LOT more variety, or they frequency of the lines needs to be turned down to like 10% as common. This one is incredibly annoying to the point where I don't know how this made it through QA tbh.
- There are too many bugs in the world. I know this might sound weird, and this may actually be a result of using the buggy to traverse, not sure, but its basically impossible to go from one landmark to another without being "in combat" for like 80% of that time. I don't want it to be a cakewalk, but it would be nice if there were sort of highways that you could utilize to get between locations with relative ease, only running into a small handful of bugs, but then when you got to locations that's where the bugs were. This was much more well designed, IMO, in Grounded 1. I love the music in Grounded 2, but I'm constantly just hearing the few battle themes because of this. Again - this might be because we are moving over more terrain more quickly with the buggy, but something needs to change IMO. Even the starting area around the first ranger station has a very small area of safety before you are constantly pulling aggro which seems weird to me.
- A lot of bugs, including the buggy, are constantly under the map or inside rocks. The amount of times I hear an orb weaver and battle music, and can't find it only to then see a leg sticking out of the world and the spider unable to attack me is far too common. This was common in Grounded 1 too, but not to the same extent by any degree. It happens constantly in the current build of Grounded 2.
- Audio design needs some work. I am specifically thinking of the noises that play on impacts. When you are cutting down grass, breaking a rock, etc. it feels very uneventful. Its not like it should be a fireworks show or anything, but the volume of these sounds needs to come up so it makes it feel a bit better imo. For an action you do thousands of times, it feels incredibly lacklustre.

And a list of other things that are probably a bit harder to resolve...
- The omni tool. So I don't like the omni tool that much, but I understand the desire to free up inventory space and I can totally see why that decision was made. I prefer bespoke tools but that aside, the main issue I have here is the 'hold e to <do thing>' approach. I can't speak for first person, because I primarily play in third person, but the amount of times that I'm holding e to cut down grass, only to have my buggy walk over and break the line trace (or whatever you are doing) to stop the interaction is... ridiculous. It can literally happen two or three times while cutting down a single husky weed. Similarly, if I go to pick up a rock next to a blade of grass, its a dice roll as to what action happens, or pick up some plant fibre where a grub is also underground. This is a bad change, imo. I would much rather have the omni tool be a tool we swap to and "use" like we did with axes, shovels, etc. and return that agency to the player. The current version also makes it less fun because you can't be super efficient, being smart in your swing placement to cut own multiple blades at once, etc. I am fine to keep the omni tool over bespoke tools, its grown on me in th at regard and as I said, I definitely understand the decision, but it would be wonderful, even if it was an option, to be able to use it as a dedicated tool, not an interaction prompt. Oh this would also make the omni tool skins a lot more valuable because atm I can't even tell that I've customised mine lol. Its only out for such a brief moment that its just not visible enough. If my player was holding it while I was directing the swings, it would let me see it much more.
- Building is much less enjoyable than it was in Grounded 1. Placing buildings and stations is much more finnicky and its much harder to get the location you want to work. Grounded 1 had its quirks, but the building was easily among the best out there. Building here feels like a bit of a step backwards, not a massive one, but it would be nice to have some attention placed on getting it to be more in line with how freeing the building in 1 was IMO. Additionally, I know coziness is coming back in an update - but I do miss it a lot right now as it added a lot of meaning to building. I'm glad it will be coming back but did want to mention it here.
- The current map design feels a bit... boring. That's too harsh a word but I don't have a better one. It feels a bit like a procedural level a lot of the time. I miss the feeling of "okay this is the area in which <bug type> lives" and such. Right now everything is very flat, there's a lot of similar style grassy area, and the bugs just feel sort of placed everywhere. Its absolutely possible this is just a result of the map being much bigger and this only being a third of the total world, but I do think some more meaningful landmarks and a bit of work on grouping bugs a bit better would go a long way.
- I feel like the character movement has been reduced a bit too much. This might be because of buggies, but whenever I am not using my buggy it feels very slow. I have unlocked natural explorer and that helps a bit, but I think if you increased the player movement speed a little that would be a good change.
- There are a LOT of spaces where the different segments of the world join together and you can see holes between them. So like the dirt on one side of a seam will be higher than the other and there's just a hole there. I haven't tried to see if you can fall in them, but the more you move away from the starting area the more common it becomes. Similarly, the further from the starting area, the more you find things like floating grass and such. I've also seen water droplets spawning out of bounds where there is no grass and th ey are just hovering haha.

 

[luigimariotime]

From what I played on grounded 2 the game was great and enjoyable. However, the Multiplayer system needs to DEFINITELY be fixed. A friend and I created a shared world and it was fine the first day. But the next day however, it crashed and said my friend no longer had access to the world that HE created, but only I did. Then the next day it crashed again and said I no longer had access to the world, and we had to copy the save and play on that world, and it once again crashed. The game is great but PLEASE obsidian fix the multiplayer issues, we lost about 9 hours of progress on that world that we can no longer access because it crashed. I should also mention that the first crash happened after the update, which is what caused him to lose access to his own world. Other than that I haven't had any issues besides the bugs, and only multiplayer has had problems so far.

[LunArtemis]

The game has been great to play and I love the new bugs and the return of the old ones. I only crashed once (probably because I was a tad impatient and tried to do several actions at once). 

What I do find quite annoying is the fact that grass, weeds... just grows through the floors and such of my entire base.  I do hope that this will change in the future. I have only tried multiplayer once with my wife and apart from some starting difficulties it went great, even on cross play (me on PC with Steam and my wife on the Xbox with the game pass). We're looking forward to more exciting new content and (side) story lines!

[j3nova]

- buggies should be gated and have  specific purpose ,  like ants  to collect and travel the grasslands and anthills(which need to be bigger and more elaborate  underground system) that are ment for the ants  rather then just a quick way to cover to much ground  .... if they are able to chop down and  collect materials there should be upgrades to  them in some form of progression that feel right  so that they can  harvest weed stems and and burs  and maby even rocks and  clay ..... this bring up  conflicts  with  the omi-tool .... i feel like you get buggies to soon  in terms of game progression  ..... having them fight things is also conflicting in the games nature ,  as they aren't strong enough half the time  and takes away from the games  focused combat  ...  they need to  be reworked in my opinion and have more thought  put into how they interreact with the world and there use ....  the spider web bridges should be only be accessible   via spider  and some more thought put into  how that fit into game progression  like having  places you can only  access  with the spider  to get to certain areas  and that would be all you use them for .... after the game is grounded not insect riders...  dont get me wrong  i enjoy them  but they have alot of conflicting issues within the games nature .  

- the map design  is cool  but  is hindered  by lack of level  change ,  progression issues and gated level  changes achieved through progression  and  thoughtful exploration .... you can  pretty much  go anywhere you want  right off the hop , this feels bad .... i feel  like  the lack of anything meaning full to find or get  is also another issues .. the mollars are put in the easiest places  with  again no thought to how one progresses  through the game and where along  the way  they  would go hmmm i wonder whats there .....  which im confused about becasue that wasnt an issue in the first one ......  overall the map  should be somewhat gated to progression .... like the gass in the first one or the upper yard assent ... yeah sure you could just build up there  of the butt but you would be hard pressed to do anything  or make use of anything   and had to be supper cheeky on how to  find a way to do so ...  like imo the map we were given upon launch should not have been  do able in 25 to 30  hours considering  its size ...  i feel like there need to be more motivation to do  some areas  before other that given via progression ....   id like to see  more elaborate  dungeons so to speak with more reward  or necessary for materials to progress  that also  follow a more in-depth story narrative  ... 

- equipment should also be given to you in forms of gated progress  as most of the armor  and weapons are redundant  and not very usable  or applicable ,   the bonus on some set are entirely not  useful  or  lead to soft archetype build as they implied ,  again  i feel like this problem fall back to map and material gateing  through progression  and use  on  meaning full interaction  that requires the use of  or  benefits  the player in some  meaning ful way  so that it has some  use for some period of time before its obsolete .... 

- combat system  is ok ,  but i feel like the soft archetypes is to soft  and id rather  a more complex mutation stacking system or gear driven or both  but in a more meaningful way with more of an  impact on gameplay again controlled with a proper gating and progression  ....   the doge funtion is straight up  ****e , and for one reason , no lock on .... and lock  dosent fit in the game so  i feel  the dodge function  feels jenk and doesn't work  well  within the mechanics... 

- MY BIGGEST PROBLEM WITH THIS  GAME  is the building and  and it is by far the number one problem  ....   the unregistered surfaces for foundations and scaffolding  that u can make even or flat , and the  the stupid frustrateing dirt clump that get in the way of  building is entirely infuriating ,   the acorn stair not letting you walk up them smoothly  and how much more the clunky and uneven the surface are  ... soo entirely infuriating ...   ...  base building  was a supper cool  part of the first game  and it feel like all it absolutely redundant ,  bring  back  ziplines  levels change and high places .... also the bugs dont really destroy your base soooo the majority of the point of base building and is redundant .. if you dont fix the problem  you may aswell not put any more  feature in and take out a few ...

- lastly  the script  and story is super bland .. far left field , doesn't make a lot of sense  and isnt fooling anyone .. better writing ,  some  npcs   and  maby and rpg aspect  of  which side  u want to help  with meaningful impact  of your choices would be  cool  ... but thats  maby to much and my own  personal  want ..   hope this helps someone  

[TheAngryEngi]

When 0.1.1.3 released, it deleted my save. How would i get it back on Xbox?

[BRobbo]

Hello! 

I have been more excited for this game than christmas. Honestly, I love it so much and have little complaints so far. 

OMNI-TOOL:

I do disagree with above comments regarding the Omni-Tool, I like it and hope you don't remove it. I do however agree that it can be pot-luck pressing "E" as you may be trying to pick something up but then end up cutting grass. 

BUGGIES:

Just unlocked my first buggy (thank you so much for not letting them permenantly die), think he's cool, but  it would also be great if we can upgrade them. (Again, only just unlocked it, so not sure if that's an option already). 

I would ask if possible if we were able to keep "fighting" and "speed walking" whilst the "hold E for vaccum" stays active, instead of having to turn it back on after battle or running.

IN-GAME BUGS:

I've attached a couple of images of bugs that I've come across. When I built my base, it was great. I then logged back in the next day to find 50% of the walls i'd placed were now diagonal.

I've also noticed that water droplets sometime don't recognise that they have "fallen" or that the blade of grass is no longer there, so they just float until you shoot them down. 

I agree with the above comments regarding bugs getting trapped in logs and stones, you can hear them, but you can't see them and they can't attack (worked to my advantage so far tbh lol).

LIKES & LOVES:

I honestly just love G1 and G2 so much. I know G2 is still in development, but thank you so much for having such a good turn around for the sequel. I know things are expected to change via feedback, and honestly, I think you've all done great with this. THANK YOU!

DISLIKES:

I AM SO MAD AT YOU FOR PUTTING THE O.R.C WEAVER IN THE ANT CAVE.  I SWEAR I WENT INTO CARDIAC ARREST. 

THAT WAS STUFF OF NIGHTMARES.

P.S:

Did I just read that ziplines are no longer a thing? Please bring them back if not, they were part of the fun