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Heh, I've won the jackpot 2 days in a row. Shame it's not as exciting as in NGU Idle (where I don't think I ever actually won it), but hey, 40k free AP.
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Apr 8, 2021 17:02
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not gonna lie i've got just about 0 motivation to work on the game now seeing as how all my ideas on how i thought it would feel have kinda fallen off a cliff. like, nothing short of " gut entire game, do over" will fix all the core issues i see that it has
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Apr 8, 2021 17:06
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The biggest bummer for me is compared to something like Factorio or Anno with similar (but less abstracted) loops there's nothing to 'watch'. I like Factorio because when I finally have my optimal setup complete I can stand back and watch everything work like a well oiled machine and there's just none of that same sense of satisfaction here. Especially when I know I'm going to have to tear it down again to make the next thing I need as soon as I'm done with this thing. Factorio and Anno are games I love because you're building on what you have to get to the end goal, whatever it is. Sure you often have to remove stuff to make it better in Factorio, but you're not clearing out your whole factory to start over again. By the end of a long Factorio run I've made so many improvements to my factory that the starting point is barely recognizable anymore but you can go there and remember when you were picking at those rocks manually howevermany hours ago. Obviously this is an idle game and not a Factory game so expectations should be different, but I think this is trying to do the same thing just without retaining the parts of those games that actually keep me invested in the same thing for so many hours.
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Apr 8, 2021 17:06
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Arzaac posted:For that matter we could probably use an all purpose stats breakdown page like what NGU had. there is one, completion album
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Apr 8, 2021 17:24
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something posted:not gonna lie i've got just about 0 motivation to work on the game now seeing as how all my ideas on how i thought it would feel have kinda fallen off a cliff. Now I'm making a cool 2 pink flesh juice a minute to put BDSM in the ISOPOD. Like a game in this style isn't as universally approachable as NGU because it's different. It's good though! Take heart though! It's the first slam into the public view and there's always going to be pushback and negative criticism. Seriously though this is good poo poo it's just real rough right now.
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Apr 8, 2021 17:33
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something posted:not gonna lie i've got just about 0 motivation to work on the game now seeing as how all my ideas on how i thought it would feel have kinda fallen off a cliff. That blows  I like the game as it is but I can see how the problems people are bringing up are really difficult from a design perspective at this point.I think this game tries to push the envelope a bit in that it has an idle game's "Numbers get monstrously huge" aspect but also has a physical representation of those numbers (buildings on the map) that you're using to constantly making decisions and trade-offs with, whereas most other idle games are just "Press button to make number go up" forever. Edit: and Echoing that I still think the game is good and is definitely worth the  I put in for the starter pack as-is.
Manyorcas fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Apr 8, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 17:38
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I haven't played NGU:I yet but couldn't you steal most of the ideas from ethereal farm? It does object placement well https://lodev.org/etherealfarm/ Maybe keep separate screens for different things and try to keep it to 5-6 things tops per screen? Probably some way to even transport materials between them and have multipliers but ultimately you would solve each problem on each screen independent so you feel like you retain progress.
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Apr 8, 2021 17:45
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Literally unplayable
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Apr 8, 2021 18:13
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something posted:not gonna lie i've got just about 0 motivation to work on the game now seeing as how all my ideas on how i thought it would feel have kinda fallen off a cliff. You're sitting at "Overwhelmingly Positive" with over 600 reviews right now. It's definitely a great start, if flawed. Don't stop just because some of us in this thread don't like it.
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Apr 8, 2021 18:15
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you should remove the net positive/negative UI options, since the red text is clearly causing people anxiety. the lesson that can be learned from other factory games like factorio or DSP is that it's somehow more satisfying for the first indication of production failure being a crucial material running out due to bad planning and causing the entire factory to grind to a screeching halt. like, that's actually what factory game players (myself included) want. when i can see the exact production and consumption with no effort, that just pushes me toward making annoying finnicky little changes, instead of the panicked sweeping overhauls that really give this genre its play value
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Apr 8, 2021 18:24
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Manyorcas posted:I'm a weirdo that really likes replacing bits of the factory piecemeal between upgrades, and I like the overall progression mechanics, but I agree that a little more QoL could make it much, much easier to do. I would love a condensed version of this that's just something like shift-clicking a resource and seeing each tile's credits and debits that make up the total gain/loss number, but I don't know if that's feasible given how small the tiles are.
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Apr 8, 2021 18:25
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Venuz Patrol posted:you should remove the net positive/negative UI options, since the red text is clearly causing people anxiety. the lesson that can be learned from other factory games like factorio or DSP is that it's somehow more satisfying for the first indication of production failure being a crucial material running out due to bad planning and causing the entire factory to grind to a screeching halt. like, that's actually what factory game players (myself included) want. when i can see the exact production and consumption with no effort, that just pushes me toward making annoying finnicky little changes, instead of the panicked sweeping overhauls that really give this genre its play value I know I keep talking about Anno but I'm going to do it again goddamnit. They did one weird Anno (2205?) where they totally changed the supply mechanic to be basically exactly what it is in NGUI and I see a lot of parallels to it in this post. Instead of seeing the number of goods produced it abstracted it into a +/- and it's kind of the same vibe here. When it's laid out like that for the player to see all you're doing is plopping down the buildings until the - turns into a + and working your way down the chain to make sure everything is in the positive. I didn't hate it because it still had the same stuff going for it that draws me to those games but it definitely drove people away from that title and that one is now kind of the black sheep in the series for that reason. It's not necessarily bad but it did kind of cheapen the experience.
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Apr 8, 2021 18:29
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Merrill Grinch posted:You're sitting at "Overwhelmingly Positive" with over 600 reviews right now. It's definitely a great start, if flawed. Don't stop just because some of us in this thread don't like it. that's just the wave of initials fans of NGU IDLE(as appreciated as it is!) inflating the reviews. the negative reviews are all very detailed and basically saying the same thing: " the fundamental mechanics do not elicit entertainment or joy. That's not a thing you can fix by just tweaking the gameplay a bit. And I don't much want to remove all the mechanics i've spent a year on-and-off designing with the intent TO be fun (but aren't) something fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Apr 8, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 18:30
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I'm actively enjoying my time with NGU-I but there are definitely a few early game bumps that I think can be assuaged? Tutorial island's cost to unlock additional tiles seems very high for certain sections, which since it's a tutorial, seems needless. Having to completely revamp my entire island to generate 8k hard drives just to unlock one extra square so that it's .05% easier to make rockets is not a great feeling trade. I also really wish that combat unit generation was somehow divorced from the map, space is already at enough of a premium and the units are expensive enough that it seems like not having them built from the map, but rather in a separate barracks queue would be preferrable, so you can continue to progress your offense/defense while still pushing for actual materials and research. Isopod isn't a huge source of materials in the early game as far as I can see, but making it easier to progress offense/defense levels without impacting the general flow of the map could take some of the pressure off tier 4 progression? It's still fun, I played NGU for years from the start and this new game is pressing some of the same buttons, but there's definitely a lack of "I am getting better at this in real time and that's making me want to keep chasing upgrades" feeling.
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Apr 8, 2021 19:18
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Buildings having placement cost might stop players from constantly fiddling with their setup, but that does make trying out things annoying. Fix for that would be having somekind of planning mode, which would show results of that setup, but that sounds both tad confusing and miserable to code. Edit: Paying to increase the cap of the building type might be half-way workable solution. Each planet being limited to producing their own resources could be neat. Perhaps more advanced planets' buildings would consume end resources of earlier planets. Stuff like meat mines consuming rockets or something. Then that small production of next planet would unlock research from earlier planets, boosting them, making this feedback loop system. But... both of these would require so much remaking that even I, the idea guy, got exhausted just thinking of rework required to implement these.  On positive note, I really like how your art has progressed.
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Apr 8, 2021 19:20
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i think an easy improvement right now would be reworking all the recipes so there are less overall materials even on the first map through tech 4 - as it stands there are just so many different things you need to keep track of that the map becomes full really easily and having to make 5 different components for a lot of recipes takes a lot more effort
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Apr 8, 2021 19:39
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something posted:that's just the wave of initials fans of NGU IDLE(as appreciated as it is!) inflating the reviews. the negative reviews are all very detailed and basically saying the same thing: " the fundamental mechanics do not elicit entertainment or joy. That's not a thing you can fix by just tweaking the gameplay a bit. And I don't much want to remove all the mechanics i've spent a year on-and-off designing with the intent TO be fun (but aren't) I don't want to speak for anyone else but I think two changes could make a world of difference to the problems I have: 1) Get rid of levels for each tech. Or at least severely reduce them. Like literally combine anything with 20 levels or less into a single tech, and anything above that in 2-5 levels. Make it so each new tech level is "build up tons of resources then make an entire map of tech resource production until you can earn a couple techs which make the difference to creating a balanced layout if you so choose." That would solve making each tech level feel kind of meh and sometimes hard to determine the real effect, while also making it so each upgrade takes effort to get and thus I don't feel bad about having to rebuild the map. 2) Make beacons stronger but limited per map. If I can only place one of each beacon per map and each one is worth what 5 (or whatever) are worth right now, I'll care more about how I can use them without feeling like it's a chore. Of course doing those two things may screw up the balance in other ways, but it'd solve what makes the current loop feel really unsatisfying to me right now.
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Apr 8, 2021 19:48
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nessin posted:I don't want to speak for anyone else but I think two changes could make a world of difference to the problems I have: It definitely feels like there's a good core loop here and one or two changes would open it up for everyone. Reading the reviews here and on steam there are very few people who don't find the core of the gameplay fun, most people are complaining about having to re-do their base too often which seems like something fixable.
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Apr 8, 2021 20:02
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I dunno, I find the rejiggering of my base to be pretty fun and exciting, and I think just wiping everything and starting over every time there’s a slight upset of your balance is the exact wrong way to play this game. Your maps should be chaotic and meandering as you scramble to adjust your supply lines, the intent is clear given how all the usable space is spread out in chaotic patterns interrupted by seas and lakes. To that end the way to improve the QoL is to just make it less cumbersome to do the things the game wants you to do. Stuff like how building selection is organized, making it easier to determine the immediate effects of research, adding more keyboard shortcuts to perform necessary tasks without having to rely on constant clicking around the screen, etc.
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Apr 8, 2021 20:11
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I just found out today by complete accident that if you click and drag you can change every square on the map to what you're dragging, which makes bulldozing and rebuilding significantly less of a pain in the rear end, that should probably be pointed out in like the third step of the tutorial???
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Apr 8, 2021 20:19
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postmodifier posted:I just found out today by complete accident that if you click and drag you can change every square on the map to what you're dragging, which makes bulldozing and rebuilding significantly less of a pain in the rear end, that should probably be pointed out in like the third step of the tutorial??? I think it is
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Apr 8, 2021 20:20
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In NGU Idle how much faster is the rate of PP/QP in Sadistic? My stats are high enough to autokill Exile V4 and by the end of the weekend i'll have completed all of the Evil wishes. I was intending to research all of the evil ITOPOD and Beast Quirks but there's some crazy high perks like the hack one which is 4 million PP per level.
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Apr 8, 2021 20:24
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Super Jay Mann posted:I dunno, I find the rejiggering of my base to be pretty fun and exciting, and I think just wiping everything and starting over every time there’s a slight upset of your balance is the exact wrong way to play this game. Your maps should be chaotic and meandering as you scramble to adjust your supply lines, the intent is clear given how all the usable space is spread out in chaotic patterns interrupted by seas and lakes. To that end the way to improve the QoL is to just make it less cumbersome to do the things the game wants you to do. Stuff like how building selection is organized, making it easier to determine the immediate effects of research, adding more keyboard shortcuts to perform necessary tasks without having to rely on constant clicking around the screen, etc. I think I play the game in a similar way and I'm enjoying it. But each upgrade is a nudge to re-do your base and start from scratch, and that seems to be an obstacle getting in the way of the core gameplay, which, agreed, is fun.
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Apr 8, 2021 20:26
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Super Jay Mann posted:I dunno, I find the rejiggering of my base to be pretty fun and exciting, and I think just wiping everything and starting over every time there’s a slight upset of your balance is the exact wrong way to play this game. Your maps should be chaotic and meandering as you scramble to adjust your supply lines, the intent is clear given how all the usable space is spread out in chaotic patterns interrupted by seas and lakes. To that end the way to improve the QoL is to just make it less cumbersome to do the things the game wants you to do. Stuff like how building selection is organized, making it easier to determine the immediate effects of research, adding more keyboard shortcuts to perform necessary tasks without having to rely on constant clicking around the screen, etc. i can attest that this was my goal, (remaking your factory fairly often, or in waves) and that all the existing QOL functions are directed to making remaking your factory as painless as i can
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Apr 8, 2021 20:59
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Pondering this a bit, it might actually be true that the red number is what "forces" player to deal with it. That red number is very visible, it doesn't show the scale of lackness and it is usually easy, but somewhat tedious to fix. Comparing to something like Factorio and belts getting emptied before all of the machines are getting their fix: It is not easy to instantly spot, takes some effort to fix and is one of main gameplay loops in Factorio. But in NGU:I (or any other idle game, really), I quickly open the game to buy some technology (good) and then check and note that glue is running (bad) out because of something consuming more of it (bad) to produce more of something (good). I check what resource production can be sacrificed for glue production (tedious). If I don't quickly find one that can be sacrificed without that going on negative I need to cut down on research (bad). I increase glue production and now glue ore is running out (bad) and I do the same thing to that (bad). All that to go from +220% to +230% production of some thing, which speeds up buying next tile from 38 minutes to 37 minutes (which I don't even know without pulling out calculator). And all that every 30 minutes.
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Apr 8, 2021 21:15
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I think part of the problem with running deficits is stuff will run as normal until your buffer runs out, then it becomes unclear what exactly will happen at that point. I saw mention upthread that all their something was going to one product over another, and there isn't any clarity about where limited resources will end up. It doesn't seem to be evenly distributed, and unlike Factorio, consumers will never stop consuming because there isn't an output belt/chest/train to fill up and stop the works, and you have no splitters/balancers to distribute resources in a controlled manner. I'd be a lot happier running e.g. 50% of my total demand for glue if I knew it meant everything would run at 50% efficiency, versus one thing I don't need running at 100% and something I do need not running at all. If there's a way to implement this without "tearing everything out and starting over" it seems worth considering.
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Apr 8, 2021 21:22
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nessin posted:I don't want to speak for anyone else but I think two changes could make a world of difference to the problems I have: I think for 1), just dividing everything by 5 would be a good solution. It would be easy-ish to convert old saves that way, since every tech that isn't just 1 level is divisible by 5, so a max level 30 tech would not be a max level 6 tech, with the same costs and benefits. Any tech levels between an increment of 5 would have to be refunded though during the transition. 2) also doesn't sound too bad, even though I love trying to squeeze every building I have by a relevant beacon, being forced to actively choose which buildings get boosted could make for interesting decisions. You could even have a cap for each beacon shape, turning the weird knight beacons from "This thing is wierd and I'm not going to bother theorycrafting around it" to "This thing is weird and I have to  or lose a big bonus".
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Apr 8, 2021 21:23
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Kin posted:In NGU Idle how much faster is the rate of PP/QP in Sadistic? I am in early Sad and the jump goes pretty fast after a few days, the sad NGUs add a good multiplier and you should be able to get some card level upgrades that also bump it. There are good wishes/perks for upping the QP rates on both idle and major quests, and with those and hacks you should be sitting pretty good. Make sure you do a bunch of challenges as soon as you go in, including Troll Challenge 2, which is the most important thing to do in early sad as for what it does to help bump your stats (others are basic, no augs, 100 lvl, no rebirth, no equip - you will probably beat some of them at autonuke so shut that off if you want to get some extra exp by using diggers.) You're also probably close enough to done with the major objects in the sellout shop that you can now buy muffins and mayo generators, which help a lot in boosting stats. Get the card/mayo recycling perk/quirk as it helps so much too with all the trash cards I am just at sniping It Hungers 2 and my PP is 38 PP/kill and QP active quest is 4435, and I think I am behind on hack days vs. the amount the people in chat seem to do
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Apr 8, 2021 21:32
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I'm frequently rebuilding my layout in NGUI- I think oh, what do I need, build to maximize output of that, and once I have it rebuild again. It doesn't take very long and most upgrades that necessitate a rework I can just find a resource that's going down and find a resource that's going up by more than a single item's worth and overwrite it. I like the loop.
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Apr 8, 2021 22:04
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Kin posted:In NGU Idle how much faster is the rate of PP/QP in Sadistic? It's not that big of a boost, mainly because you have to get the "real" Sadistic boost through wishes and quirks (and eventually the best set bonus I've seen so far, which gave +45%PP). That said, lock in your Exile AK with the 24 manual kills and then get into Sadistic as soon as you can for Chonkers, card recycling, and the Sad Troll 2 macguffin boost. And if you're worried about how you'll ever get up to the QP/PP heights required to buy stuff, it's meant to take longer even at the increased rates you can attain, but you'll definitely get up there. I just finished v1 of the second Sad Titan, and I'm at about 200PP/kill, making maybe 12-15M per day. Not totally sure since I tend to spend it in bits as it comes in.
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Apr 8, 2021 22:18
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i understand the feeling of being disappointed that there's so much people feel does or doesn't work with the game - although this may have been easier to mitigate if you had the early access period in the more early stages of development on the idea so the voices and feedback on the game were more varied about the experience rather than a smaller beta tester pool it's not like the game is unsalvageable - it just feels like i have to pay way more attention to the game than i should for a game about making stuff
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Apr 8, 2021 23:02
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Yo something, FWIW I like the game.
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Apr 9, 2021 00:02
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postmodifier posted:I just found out today by complete accident that if you click and drag you can change every square on the map to what you're dragging, which makes bulldozing and rebuilding significantly less of a pain in the rear end, that should probably be pointed out in like the third step of the tutorial??? You found the bulldozer button, right? Also, Shift+Click on an empty space to fill all of the empty spaces, Shift+Click on an Item to replace all of the one clicked with the one you're holding.
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Apr 9, 2021 00:15
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After playing a few days I'm having fun generally and here are my impressions plus some QoL suggestions: - Definitely needs an eyedropper tool that selects what's under your cursor for placement, to help with swapping which I do a lot, between spaces with zero, one, or two beacon effects for example - Work orders dropdown needs to default to tiny. I didn't know what they were so I clicked start and ended up with a medium job that took forever to complete with no way to back out. Even allowing backout after 24 hours would probably be better. Also the sizing seems strange as my first tiny one (149M cardboard) will take longer than my second medium one (Meat & steel). Maybe I have misbalanced research on the different tiers from expected. - Research tooltip should show an 'effective production increase' to help understand price/performance payoff. Increasing 10% at level 9 (200/190 = 5.2% I think?) vs increasing a parallel unlock at 25% at level 3. There's no way to do that comparison in your head, when I'm already trying to maintain exchange rates on the various juice tiers. - Some info noting speed caps on buildings. Speed upgrades are very expensive relatively and turns out on some tiers have zero impact since they're already maxed by relics?! Banemaster posted:Pondering this a bit, it might actually be true that the red number is what "forces" player to deal with it. That red number is very visible, it doesn't show the scale of lackness and it is usually easy, but somewhat tedious to fix. This very closely describes how I feel when I'm playing. It doesn't bother me yet. For me the most fun is in discovering unexpected layouts. Like having the epiphany that spending 8 squares surrounding your most expensive top of-chain producer with efficiency modules would trade the 8 spaces against reducing all the buildings required to service its production by over two thirds. But only if the production inputs per craft are high enough that you hit the rounding breakpoints, and only if it takes dozens of buildings to make this expensive thing so that 2/3 of that is > 8, etc. The tedium is in placing some goal producer, say a new juice tier, building out the chain of buildings, then finding you're some estimated number of places short by the time you get to iron and copper, then going back and having to guess how much to adjust those original goal producers, redo the layout, and maybe guess wrong and have to do it again. At least until you lock blueprints for the latest map. Also blueprints need labels really badly. Anyways, stay positive and keep at it my dude.
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Apr 9, 2021 01:04
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i tend to undershoot my end production and honestly it feels kind of nice because it gives me wiggle room to get the ratios on how much of which juice i want. i think balancing your production of research based on the general ratios that it costs is the interesting meta-game part of it, and tailoring your research to make sure you don't have to completely redo your whole layout is kind of a fun meta-game in and of itself. that and when you do break it you end up with wonky af layouts that i find to be very hilarious i should probably be using beacons more, but i'm not unless i'm grinding up a weird piece of this or that to unlock a square or level a relic.
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Apr 9, 2021 01:13
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Fuzzy Mammal posted:
You'll want 'q' for that. It sets whatever building you have highlighted as your selected building. Also agreed on speed upgrades, I find myself ignoring them completely until their cost is trivial.
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Apr 9, 2021 01:17
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tbh overspeed should be like the extra resource bars system in idle
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Apr 9, 2021 01:18
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Early on, it's possible to fix your broken production chains. Later, when you are managing 8+ levels of tech tree across 3 maps with very literally 50+ beacons PER MAP, it becomes very impossible to fix without wiping and redoing it. Like, if you want to see how a bit how it works and you're on the 2nd map, take a minute and do the following:
This is where I got to. I didn't even have all 4 or 5 different types of beacon to make the uber ultra 100x+ square. I found myself repeatedly just buying massive amounts of normal T1 techs for hours just because that wouldn't break the tree and inevitably, they would be the thing that would eat up 30 production squares in the final map.
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Apr 9, 2021 01:29
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Toshimo posted:This is multiplicative with other beacons  learning that beacons are multiplicative wither other beacons certainly changes thingsAnd it took me until this post to realize that, yes, knights are better in the checkerboard formation, even if they have a smaller bonus since regular beacons can only ever hit 4 producers 
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Apr 9, 2021 01:42
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Manyorcas posted:
Big news: The bonuses for regular and knight beacons are different for speed and production. Knight speed are -5% and Knight Production are +5% compared to squares, iirc.
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Apr 9, 2021 01:46
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