Feedback After a Bunch of Games

from Offworld Forums

First - Great game. For early access I think you guys did a great job in putting out a product that is fairly polished for EA.

Where I am coming from: I played a lot of games (30? 40?) almost entirely single player. MP doesn't appeal as much as I like pausing the game quite a bit - though I'm sure I will eventually get into it. I played almost exclusively Expansionist and Scavenger. I haven't gone above Manager level (for the concern listed below). I'm a huge Tabletop gamer by the way.

Quick fixes (you already have planned probably):

  • The game needs tooltips (the more detailed the better) and a proper help docs. 4 tutorials seem overkill - I'd rather just have one that is more detailed. I had to learn a lot of the important stuff from the forums. Tooltips tooltips tooltips!!!
  • Campaign needs more instructions and explanations about what I'm doing. It is cool - once I figured it out! :D I'd suggest making the campaign go on another challenge or two. Include more challenges in the Campaign than just the common 1vs1. More 3-4 player large games.
  • There needs to be an explanation on how the start of the game works (exploring).
  • {bug} If you get two of the same perks/rewards from two different campaign scenarios they do not show properly on the campaign screen (but they do work correctly in the actual game).
  • UI needs work. I'm sure you are tweaking this though and there are already a lot of good posts on the forum about it.

Main Concerns:

  • I think debt should have a more negative effect - especially when it gets very large (50-100k+). Right now unless it's an unusual circumstance I really don't care what my debt is as long as I'm using the gains from that debt to increase my stock price in other ways (growing). MP might make me change my tune but right now I doubt it. The game seems to be focused on "how fast can I grow" rather than examining the market and determining if it is even wise to incur the debt to grow. It's a no-brainer I'm going to expand as fast as possible all the time (within reason). I've seen solutions on the forum like the ability to buy others debt - something like that would make the game more interesting. A simple fix might be to have a variable interest rate that is adjusted as more debt is acquired both by other players and yourself. Right now the implementation of debt is the biggest flaw in the game so far IMHO.
  • In Single Player when I increase the difficulty the AI doesn't really seem to play much better - it's just much more likely they will target me for everything black market-wise (even if, on the surface, I'm not the biggest threat). This is kinda lame... I don't want to be picked on cause I'm human!!
  • Underground Nuke - this is either really bad or really good depending on the map. in a low/rare resource map it's completely devastating. It doesn't scale well. I'm not a fan :(. If you keep it I would suggest another BM operation to add a resource level to a claim (though I would make the starting price much higher than the normal BM Op).
  • As a general rule the Claim is way under-priced in the market. It's a no-brainer to usually get that first if you can. I'm not sure how to fix that but it does seem weird from a balance perspective.

Suggestions:

  • I'd love a "liquidate all" button with a click through confirmation which would liquidate (either slowly or all at once) everything I have to the local market. Ideally this button would have a $ amount to tell me what I'm going to get out of this. This would be especially handy at the end of the game when I'm trying to figure out if I can buy out the last player. It's just straight up math at that point. It could also be used to devastate the local market depending on your stockpiles.
  • By and sell claims. It would be great to be able to advertise a fixed price fee to sell a claim (and maybe the building with it). Just a little notification that pops in the corner that says something like "Player X is selling a 2water water-pump claim for $15k" with a hyperlink to the location. Or make a market for Claims that is entirely player-driven (i.e. only the claims players decide to sell go to the market).
  • Off-World Trading Company is a reasonable way to finish the end game - however it would be great if there were alternates. Something else you could build to either generate tons of cash or win other ways.
  • The end game can often drag out with enough players even though it's obvious who is going to win. I think there should be point in which the game starts a timer and awards a winner based on value of stock+liquidated commodities.
  • Someone suggested an option to put in "pauses" in the game for players to review where they stand. I like this - I'd be more open to MP if I knew I would get a breather at some point - especially in the mid-late game. 
  • Put in a button next to the buy stock button to buy out the entire company (all shares) with a dollar amount in Single Player.
  • MP Campaigns. :D

 

30,024 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Offworld Forums Top

I do agree with your point on Underground Nukes.  They're either devastating to use (and awful to get hit with), or kind of worthless.  Tough to balance this I imagine.

 

I disagree with your point on the AI, but Ive only ever gone up to Executive (my usual level for SP games).  They play very smartly, scrapping facilities well, turning off mines when power is expensive etc, also they play a much more reserved game as far as expansion goes, its slower but lets them get much earlier stock purchasing. They use the Black Market way more than human players which can be annoying since prices are often quite high, but as far as them singling out the human player goes I have to disagree with you, they tend to focus the top stock values.  If that happens to be you, yea youre gonna hit, but good luck having a high stock price early against that level of AI, not going to happen often :P

 

Campaign needs work but Soren just made a video about it acknowledging this and talking about future plans, so that Im not too worried about. 

 

Ive found Debt to be much more of a factor in MP games than SP.  This might be a bit due to how new the game is though, a lot of people in MP acrue insane amounts of debt getting stuff in auctions, without realizing how vulnerable it makes them  (I saw someone's stock hit $.98 the other day thanks to their insane debt from auctions!!).  People tend to also rush Upgrading their base, which can also make them vulnerable to rising prices in Life Support and Power, as well as over-inflate the price of glass, letting someone like me with a more controlled approach to expansion sell a bunch of highly priced goods and get more claims on the black market, making me much stronger in the long term. 

 

One thing I'd really like to start seeing more support for is MP team games.  Atm, there is no way to team chat, and setting up a lobby for this game type can also be troublesome.  For example, if I wanted to have my friend and I play against 2AI players, I still have to make the lobby for 4 players, and later there is no way to make the lobby private, so even if I have my friend, myself, and 2 AI players set up and ready to go, other people can still join my lobby as it doesn't count the AI players as part of the 4/4.

 

Anyway, hope to see you in some MP games sometime, its quite fun! :)

Reply #2 from Offworld Forums Top

Quoting popsursocks, reply 1

I do agree with your point on Underground Nukes.  They're either devastating to use (and awful to get hit with), or kind of worthless.  Tough to balance this I imagine.


I disagree with your point on the AI, but Ive only ever gone up to Executive (my usual level for SP games).  They play very smartly, scrapping facilities well, turning off mines when power is expensive etc, also they play a much more reserved game as far as expansion goes, its slower but lets them get much earlier stock purchasing. They use the Black Market way more than human players which can be annoying since prices are often quite high, but as far as them singling out the human player goes I have to disagree with you, they tend to focus the top stock values.  If that happens to be you, yea youre gonna hit, but good luck having a high stock price early against that level of AI, not going to happen often :P

 
I gotta disagree. I just played on Manager and my stock value was in the bottom half and I still got hit over and over again (6 times in a row) by Black Markets OPs. I'm not saying they don't play smartly - it's just that they seem to prioritize hitting humans over AI. I was probably hit at least by 50% of the total Black Market Ops in the game (out of 6 players) - and at no point did I have the highest stock price :P I was the second one bought out that game.

Maybe it's not because I'm human - maybe I'm doing something else to attract their attention... but I can't figure out what it is!

 

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Reply #3 from Offworld Forums Top

Thanks for your feedback!

    • The game needs tooltips (the more detailed the better) and a proper help docs. 4 tutorials seem overkill - I'd rather just have one that is more detailed. I had to learn a lot of the important stuff from the forums. Tooltips tooltips tooltips!!!

Where do you think the game needs more tooltips? I don't want the tooltips to get too big or people don't read them. (I'm certainly not suggesting the game is done, but I'd like to have more information on where you think it needs improvement.)

    • UI needs work. I'm sure you are tweaking this though and there are already a lot of good posts on the forum about it.

What other aspects of the UI need work? Again - not saying it's done, but what do you see as the biggest problem?

Thanks again!

-Scott-

Reply #4 from Offworld Forums Top

The situational awareness type information I'm seeking midgame that some UI improvements might help include (and maybe I'm just missing them?)

-Total number of / taken plots of each resource. Perhaps some place to mouse over the resource and get an idea that there's 8/12 Silicon plots on the map similarly to how you might see at the scanning phase

-Micro-historical stock prices, maybe mousing over the price for a resource gave you a little simple trending line or something to give you an idea in the last 2 minutes(?) where the price has been.

-What buildings your opponent has in terms of both incoming resources and *how many* offworld markets. The first could be better seen in the mouse over of a player in the upper right. I understand that this can be seen by scrolling around the map, but a summary would be nice. How many offworld (or other advanced buildings) could be updated with a little 2 or 3 next to it to give an idea. 

-I miss a minimap from an RTS :) But I think that could mostly be solved if I could quickly head to a certain player's HQ with a click near their name. Maybe a little icon or something I can double click to find their HQ. 

-Color Blindness? I'm not color blind but a good friend is and I'm curious if anyone on the team has looked at the colors used and possibly come up with some alterations to work for people who are color blind. I know a few games have a menu option for this and with a game that has done such a good job of using colors for quick indicators I think this would be a great thing to explore as you polish. 

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Reply #5 from Offworld Forums Top

It kind of bothers me that you can be bought out when you own 50% of your stock. I  think that should be an offer that you can refuse. Hostile takeovers should require ownership of  more than 50% of the stock in a company.

Reply #6 from Offworld Forums Top

Quoting matthawke, reply 4

The situational awareness type information I'm seeking midgame that some UI improvements might help include (and maybe I'm just missing them?)

Addressing situational awareness issues is one of the big tasks that we need to address before the game fully releases. 

Quoting matthawke, reply 4

-Total number of / taken plots of each resource. Perhaps some place to mouse over the resource and get an idea that there's 8/12 Silicon plots on the map similarly to how you might see at the scanning phase

Good point.

Quoting matthawke, reply 4

-Micro-historical stock prices, maybe mousing over the price for a resource gave you a little simple trending line or something to give you an idea in the last 2 minutes(?) where the price has been.

Good idea.

Quoting matthawke, reply 4

-What buildings your opponent has in terms of both incoming resources and *how many* offworld markets. The first could be better seen in the mouse over of a player in the upper right. I understand that this can be seen by scrolling around the map, but a summary would be nice. How many offworld (or other advanced buildings) could be updated with a little 2 or 3 next to it to give an idea. 

I'll see about adding numbers next to the advanced buildings in the top left. As for another player's resource pipeline, that's not a quick fix, but is on our list.

Quoting matthawke, reply 4

-I miss a minimap from an RTS :) But I think that could mostly be solved if I could quickly head to a certain player's HQ with a click near their name. Maybe a little icon or something I can double click to find their HQ. 

You can click on a player's name to go to their HQ. Perhaps we make the hit box bigger?

Quoting matthawke, reply 4

-Color Blindness? I'm not color blind but a good friend is and I'm curious if anyone on the team has looked at the colors used and possibly come up with some alterations to work for people who are color blind. I know a few games have a menu option for this and with a game that has done such a good job of using colors for quick indicators I think this would be a great thing to explore as you polish. 

We're aware of this issue and we are probably going to speak with a local accessibility group about how we can support different types of colorblindness. My dad is colorblind and it has prevented me from playing a number of boardgames with him and if he wanted to play the game I'd want to make sure he could enjoy it.

Thanks for the excellent feedback!

-Scott-

Reply #7 from Offworld Forums Top

As far as tool tips - Super Ideally you'd have 3 options for tool tips. Verbose which are very detailed and will likely only keep on for the first couple games, basic - which would pop up a very small description and none. I'd love to learn the game with Verbose tool tips turned on. You could remove verbose if the basic tool tips linked back to a detailed help screen / glossary. The goal is to eventually turn them off or to basic after you got it mostly figured out.

As far as what kinds of information - well anything really. In the verbose stages any kind of button should have at least a sentence maybe two telling them what you are about to press will do (within reason). For example - Dry Ice Condenser - the verbose should tell you about the terrain requirement (dry ice) and that some maps won't even have that terrain. The other resources production buildings might tell you what the resource they produced are used to build - like Electronics are required for Off World Trading Company. When selecting a base/race maybe the verbose tell tip doesn't just tell you "x does y better" but gives you the formula. Black Market is the same way - it will try to give you more formulas to make better deciians. A lot of the Black Markets are like that - Dynamite tells you it destroys a building but they can repair it - well how hard it is to repair?? Stuff like that. 

As far as UI all the suggestions here have been good. I't would be a great option to have a more advanced/busy UI that would shrink the market down to show more of the map and that generally just require less clicks to get to the most common things (which would require more buttons). A really advanced player might not mind a super busy screen (I know I'd use it... even though I wouldn't want to learn on it). A lot of what is discussed is to give the player helpful information quickly. However do keep in mind your UI is not horrible right now. I'm not advocating for a major overhaul.

On suggestion - it would be great on laying down a far away building to know the average fuel usage for a building assuming it is running at full capacity. It's hard for me to figure out if I'm better off sticking with the two step resource very close to me or if I should go a lot farther and take the 3 step resource.