Quick feedback

[Pepisolo]

Just finished my first session with the game. I'll run through some of my experiences quick. This is pretty raw first impressions feedback. More specific bugs
will go onto Mantis.

Upon firing up the game the title screen is a little plain. The music is interesting, and I like the whole vocal tune for title screen ethos that Arcen seem to be employing which is something a bit different -- I don't recall too many other devs that do this. The song itself didn't really grab me. I think a more electronic arrangement would suit the melody better, it's a bit piano heavy for me. The audio also seems  to go a bit crackly when it gets to the quiet section

I notice there aren't any sound effects for the settings menu clicks etc. Still to do?

Starting a new game. Character portraits are not great, but ok. Robot portraits are much better and pretty cool. Stuck with the default setup for now.  I  wasn't expecting a narrated briefing -- nice, seemed a bit luxurious. The main game screen is pretty impressive, although I have no clue what it all means yet. The assault, siege etc texts on the icons could be a bit more readable. Maybe a slight size increase?

Assault exo description "Well-rounded all around..." The "all around" seems a bit redundant. You could probably just say "well-rounded with + 50%".

WASD to move..... it's telling me that you hold shift to ground fire, but I don't know what that means. (Yes, later on I found out.. ground fire... fire the ground...). Actually, can't I just point wherever I want and fire so that you can get rid of the ground fire toggle? (Maybe the overlay pop-up is useful, though..)

This is strange, using my mouse wheel to zoom in/out is seeming to move the camera position sideways...? I did drop my mouse earlier though, so I'm really hoping this is a bug. -- edit, this is fine I was just misunderstanding the zoom mechanism.

The robot voices seem cool. Yeah, pretty amusing actually. I just hope there are a lot of variations or they might get stale pretty quick. Just an idea, but how about a voice for trying to right-click attack yourself? "That wouldn't be smart" or "does not compute" or something considerably more funny.

Camera definitely seems erratic for me. Seems to go off to the side when I walk. I'm just running around blasting stuff for the moment. Not really sure what I'm doing, but it's pretty fun -- I'm blowing stuff up and that's good enough for me for now.

Not sure how to grab the computer parts. I just stepped on the extraction point instead, hopefully that grabbed the loot at the same time. Are you supposed to do something to physically grab the parts first?

That's all for now as it's getting late where I am. Overall impressions, pretty interesting so far. Overall presentation seems a notch up on SC and SH.

Extra: the melody of the main theme has grown on me as I listen while I type this, but I still think the arrangement is pretty lacklustre.

Edit: I might be out of the loop on a few things as I haven't been reading the forum much and don't intend to for a few days at least, until I've played a lot more of the game.

[Pepisolo]

Maybe a stupid question, but am I supposed to be able to click on any of the yellow missions? If so, what does "Axis has the ability to undertake missions two away" mean? Two away from what? Also, "Axis has the ability to see 4 missions" but I can see lots of yellow missions. It's a bit confusing.

Edit: Seems my game was bugged (maybe old bug?). Started a new game and the missions are visible only 2 squares away as expected. Still not sure what "Axis has the ability to see 4 missions" means, though.

[Aeson]

"If so, what does "Axis has the ability to undertake missions two away" mean? Two away from what?"
When you start a game, you have a Headquarters in a random location on the map. Each mission is some distance away from the HQ - 1 link, 2, links, 3 links, etc. For most characters, you can only play missions which are adjacent to completed mission or the HQ (1 mission out). These characters can also 'see' all missions which are adjacent to a mission which is adjacent to a playable mission or the HQ (all missions within three missions of completed missions or the HQ). With Axis, you can play any mission which is adjacent to a mission which is adjacent to a completed mission or the HQ, and you can see any mission which is adjacent to a mission adjacent to a playable mission (i.e., you can play 2 missions out from the HQ or anywhere you've completed, and see 4 missions out).

Any mission you can play is displayed in yellow; any mission you cannot currently play is in red and should have the word 'Locked' displayed underneath it.

Explained another way:
See the links on the city map between each mission? Each of those is 1 'distance unit'. Axis can play 2 distance units away from any completed mission or the HQ, and can see up to 4 distance units away from completed missions or the HQ. Other characters can only play 1 distance unit out from completed missions or the HQ, and can only see 3 distance units from the same area.

Thus, Axis has the bonus of being able to choose between ~4 times as many different missions at any given time as any of the other characters (this is a very, very conservative estimate unless you're only playing missions which are adjacent to already completed missions or the HQ), and can scout the map for important missions (e.g. Bahamut devices) far more rapidly than the other characters, especially if you're willing to hop over missions or bypass difficult or poor reward missions. I would estimate that within about 10 turns of game start Axis can have at least 90% of the city map revealed, which is something the other characters cannot hope to achieve until much later in the game.

[Pepisolo]

Some more loose feedback. More specific points are on Mantis.

Firstly, enemies can shoot through walls....huh? What's that about. Not the most intuitive revelation that. edit: I see there's a lot of discussion about this, I'll read up on it.

The customisation screen could do with a lot of work. It's functional, but it's not very nice at all. A drag and drop interface would be much much nicer although I can appreciate that there are technical reasons why this would be difficult -- still won't stop me hoping somehow for it though (to clarify, I know this really ain't happening, so this is the last I'll mention it). Love the concept of exo customisation. It's very reminiscent of the Ship Fitting in Eve Online, which was one of the most fun parts of that game for me.

Permadeath/Ironman mode is a must although I see on Mantis that that is pretty much already on the cards.

Hostage rescue -- confused by the counter and description a little. Thought the number represented the amount of Cryopods saved, whereas it is number of enemies to be killed. I'll have a look at the wording of the objective and see if I can suggest an alternative on Mantis.

Had to erase a bit of my feedback as it was the result of a bugged world creation which presumably was because I didn't start a new world after the last patch or something. I don't think the bug is present in the current build.

So far looks like a really nice game. Potentially the best game from Arcen that I've played. I much prefer rogue-likes to strategy games, though, so this is going to be more up my street. If all aspects of polish can be nailed then it's going to do very well I think. Good work.


Cheers Aeson for the detailed explanation. A lot of the confusion was caused by a bugged map that would display yellow missions spread right across the map rather than one or two moves away (depending on character), although you did help me understand the 4 moves sight thing. Thanks!

[Misery]

Enemies arent supposed to be shooting through walls now;  a proper line-of-sight system was implemented, so if they are shooting through walls, that'd be a bug.  I havent actually seen it happen myself yet.

[Winge]

Hostage rescue -- confused by the counter and description a little. Thought the number represented the amount of Cryopods saved, whereas it is number of enemies to be killed. I'll have a look at the wording of the objective and see if I can suggest an alternative on Mantis.

I've been thinking it should show the number of remaining cryopods in parenthesis (or brackets, or something like that).  Thoughts?

[Pepisolo]

Enemies arent supposed to be shooting through walls now;  a proper line-of-sight system was implemented, so if they are shooting through walls, that'd be a bug.  I havent actually seen it happen myself yet.

Yeah, I haven't noticed it since. Definitely did happen in one of those boss areas (VERY HARD), so probably a bug unless my brain and eyes were playing tricks on me. Never kept the save, although I'll look out for it in future playthroughs.

I've been thinking it should show the number of remaining cryopods in parenthesis (or brackets, or something like that).  Thoughts?

Yeah, sounds like a decent solution. So, the number of enemies would be displayed and the kill count.

[Winge]

Do you mean number of enemies and cryopods remaining?  I'm confuzzled.

[Pepisolo]

Do you mean number of enemies and cryopods remaining?  I'm confuzzled.

LOL, yeah. That's what I meant, doh! Don't know what I was thinking there. Might have something to do with it being 4AM here and I'm struggling to stay awake to watch the boxing.