Thoughts on latest update

[LazyGamer]

So i know this is/has been very much discussed here and elsewhere and that many if not all points i raise have probably been brought up before but i feel i would like to share my own thoughts on the current state of the game following the recent patch in order to provide some feedback and hopefully food for thought for the dev's. 

 

First off i absolutely love the game concept as originally advertised and have been thoroughly enjoying the past 3 months of game time despite some rocky patches and server performance, it is a game i want to succeed and thrive. It is a beta if a paid beta at that and so it will not have all features in, requires multiple content and rebalancing patches some of which are going to cause a certain amount of anger and frustration within the community. It seems clear that this is one of those!

 

Personally i am of the view that taken in isolation each of the major changes that have been made in this patch are taking the game in the right direction for the most part, the problems however are that each of these elements needs to be balanced as they will never be correct on the first pass, example being the schematics. These are a great idea but need further optimization before they are anything close to being complete, if it was me i would say that they need 1) Price corrections, 2) Better ceding across the markets ie all T1/2 available at every market, 3) Some of the core Schemes should not be required so that players can at least make ore and steel as an example, the market is still in it's early days and needs the players to be able to kickstart it plus players do require some basic ability to build and experience that side of the game.

 

When you then throw on top of that the damage system that has been added which again is needed along with further refinement on top of what is now a poorly seeded and over priced market all at the same time it becomes a very daunting prospect, there is no escaping the fact that DU is a complicated game in many respects and requires trial and error to learn how to build a ship as well as understanding it's limitations. With the schematics in place the way they are people need to travel and obtain those, they need to take newly produced goods to markets and that means flying around in ships that thanks to a large amount of structures and objects around these markets, can mean a great deal of accidents some of which are not reasonably laid at the players feet yet now they are expected to replace cores that are themselves harder and more expensive to obtain all whilst trying to stimulate the economy which is the point of this patch unless i've missed the point! So first off don't add a second new mechanic at the same time as one that is already game changing and in need of balancing, bring it in separately so players have time to adapt. Secondly make the damage/repair system more scalable so that it doesn't hamstring a new players experience, have it so that xs cores and parts can be fully repaired an unlimited number of times, s cores and parts maybe 10 times, m cores 5 and so on. Let people test their new designs with some degree of safety or you will only hurt the new players and stifle creativity.

 

Removing mega nodes or at least a large number of them from what i can gather is yet another kick in the balls whilst players are getting to grips with these other major changes, i'm sure many people would happily spend time mining the ores that are needed to get production up and running again if they were able to confidently return to previously scanned nodes and mine for a time. There is certainly a large part of the player base that doesn't want to spend vast amounts of time scanning and mining for very little gain, it is such a time consuming element of the game that there comes a point at which it is a job and not a means to an end, please don't forget this is a game after all and whilst there does need to be a grind, sometimes that grind can be far too excessive.

 

There are of course other minor changes that have been made which also have an impact but they are easily put aside and accepted in my opinion but the above 3 main changes are a problem, not individually but when deployed all at the same time. All 3 have a very intimate relationship with each other and deploying all at once not only makes the game that bit more daunting for the players but so much harder for the developers to balance each change as a change to one effects the others. Surely the sensible approach would have been to bring in the industry change first then spend some weeks altering it until it worked well then deploying the damage/repair patch and again spending time to make changes to it along with the other game elements it interacts with and so on.

 

One additional point i would like to add is that with the addition of new skills to use the industry elements it would be nice to have had the ability to add them straight to the top of the talent training tree, having to drag them up one by one or removing all other queued  talents is yet another time sink and only serves to add to the tedium of the recent changes. Some UI refinement would have been very much appreciated in this regard and i'm sure pretty easy to implement.

 

Now please do not alienate your solo players, whilst big orgs are hurt by these changes the solo player is all but devastated by it. Sure you want civilisation to re-build everything by coming together but that civilisation is made up of individuals too, look at small business, the high street retailer with just one store, these guys breath life in to a community so don't shut down their opportunity because you want your players to only form massive orgs and vi for control. Leave a little space for those of us who want to carve out our own path. This is meant to be a sandbox where people enjoy a certain freedom but by placing such daunting limitations and barriers in the way you only undermine those freedoms. A solo player should not be able to compete with a massive org on the same scale but they should be able to offer creative alternatives in specialised areas, this helps the economy of the game along with creative thinking. MMO does not mean everyone has to be sociable and work together, there is room and reason for the individual to stand apart.