Hi everyone, i’ve been playing for a few days now and would just like to share my experiences and add a few suggestions. I have Alpha and Beta tested many games, including Black Prophecy (which is dead right now, due to lack of listening to CB testers and changing everything on the day the game went open beta, no new content, updates etc - and of course Reakktor dispersing)
Gameplay: The gameplay itself is very fun when you get down to it. Ships handle right and i personally love exclusively using the ‘turret mode’ which allows for more in depth movement when you get the hang of it.
I would like to see the stations repair your hull when you get near to it, (same range as capturing them) seems like a natural course of action to me, not an instant repair as that would cause balance issues, but at a reasonable rate which makes it worth falling back to defend the stations which i rarely see. (see balance for further reasoning)
Leveling up factions takes far too long! Its a horrendous grind fest, and you are effectively only able to take on 2 contracts for your faction at a time. Boosting the rate of XP or reducing the required amount to reach the next faction level is a must i think, as ive come across many people complaining that they are spending too much time in this game without any feeling of progression or reward for their efforts.
Balance : The overall balance of the game isn’t bad, i do see many people complain that Lasers are Overpowered, (probably due to lack of needing to lead targets) Personally i don’t think they are hugely imbalanced, its more of an ‘ease of use’ compared to their versatility issue. Tweak the damage(?) numbers to promote players to choose Railguns and Plasma more.
Pretty much Everyone agrees that the Empires Frigates outclass the Federation ones due to their Long range sniping abilities. Those frigates are the bane of my existence as a person who mainly uses interceptors. Its TOO easy to sit there and camp from outside of sensor/visual range and snipe across the map at fast moving interceptors. I see this in nearly every game im in. Yes you can fly behind cover, (and you’d have to be brain-dead not to) but honestly its just ridiculous that i have to jump behind every asteroid/object for cover all the way back to my side, and still probably end up dead when i pop out to retreat behind the next one. This needs to change, i think a simple way without ‘gimping’ the sniper badly would be to add a slight aiming input delay, so that super fast moving ships at a very long distance can’t be destroyed with such ease. The input delay shouldn’t hinder a snipers long range ability on slower to medium speed targets however. Just a suggestion, there are probably other ways of solving this issue but that was the first ‘simple’ one i came up with.
If you make it back to one of the stations miraculously not being killed by the snipers, all the more reason for the station to repair your hull at a steady rate, as you are probably in bad shape, right?
Technical** :** Not too much to say here, the game has been reasonably stable for me. I have however encountered the ‘black screen’ issue, which can be fixed if you change a graphics setting (but you’ll probably be killed in that time). I’m not 100% sure but i think this occurs when flying really close to or around objects. (asteroid or piece of wreckage etc)
Visual: Not really important, but i would like to see more visual customisation of the game. I mean this in a few ways, one of which is the ability to ‘paint’ your ship(s) ofcourse, but also i find the lack of different ship designs annoying. for example Federation ships all have those large V shaped ‘Flaps’ at the end of their wings, personally i hate those, i get the design, but would rather like to have the option to… not have them there? :unsure: they also have a tendency to get caught on objects as im flying really fast trying to escape. Perhaps allow for a few design options for your ship, as cash shop items? things like different wing or cockpit designs come to mind. (i wonder what Jericho ships will look like *poke *poke *hint! :p)
Other: A few important things which i picked up on that i’d like to point out. The game could really do with explaining which Faction gets what tech. What items you can and cannot use and Why, the small icons in the top left showing ‘X’ skill required to unlock ‘X’ weapon for example do help in this aspect, but its not explained. I am not able to know how or what some of my skill tree choices lead to. As an example i chose a ‘jump’ ability in the Energy tree, but i don’t see any modules or way to use this ability, perhaps its only available on a Frigate, or a Fighter? < that sort of issue crops up a lot here. Also you are not able to see the Stats and abilities of ships which you buy in the shop. You have a few choices of apparently similar models but no way of knowing what the differences are until you actually buy the ship Blindly and check it out in your Hangar. I propose a small screen pops up when clicking a ship, detailing it’s stats and showing a picture of it. Its also not explained that upon leveling up your faction you can unlock higher tier ‘Tech’ levels. It took me a while to figure that out, as i thought i had to level up my ship or something to gain the new tech.
Well, thats all i could remember to write down at the moment. Feel free to comment, and i hope that this post reaches someone in the right place who can do something about these things, or takes a serious note of it at the least. Thanks for the Great game guys and girls! Keep up the good work, and see you out there! :fighter:
If there are some more questions feel free to ask