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Allow me to complain my grievances with the UI. Because, for a game that mechanically speaking is simply about moving and clicking some cards/events/token on screen, and that’s it, it’s pretty drat mediocre. The UI is full of small (and big) flaws. Some examples: -You can combine item A with item B in slot X, but the game doesn’t recognize combining item B with item A (in the same slot). I discovered this trying to translate a Latin book. -The game has a function to highlight what cards are valid for a slot. Cool, otherwise the truth is, the game would be pretty drat bothersome, trying blindly what cards can go every time a new slot appears. Except you have to click the slot instead of just hovering the slot, the tooltip doesn’t disappear when you move over to another thing, and even more importantly, it fails sometimes because it only checks the main ‘filter’ for that slot, the primary type of card, while in reality some slots have two or three conditions that has to be fulfilled to activate the slot. it’s confusing because the player at first learns the highlight signals what cards are valid for a slot… and then discover that sometimes the highlight lies. It will let you drag the card to a slot (unlike the ‘invalid’ cards for the slot) but the action can’t be activated. -There is a fair bit of trial and error. Some actions don’t produce any result, even if intuitively I think they should. If I choose to talk with a detective, it’s because I was trying to prove I’m a ‘normal’ innocent person, trying to look inconspicuous. If I talk with a believer about a sacred grail item, I was trying to make then investigate them, but that doesn’t seem to be possible. This ties up with the previous point, because the game UI lets you do this actions, even if there is already a mechanism that allow some actions and disallows the ‘invalid ones’. -A small detail, but the game spawn some new events almost outside of what the player sees in a given moment, just in the screen edges, despite having free space available, obligating the player to scroll. -The game hints also can be deceiving. It will say you can combine two glimmerings to gain a passion, for example, but that only works I believe for the first passion point. It should deactivate messages like that once they are not valid for you. -While I like the the idea of having freedom to place the cards and items on the table as you choose, it also would have been a good idea to have more options like: 1. auto sort. 2. snap to grid. 3. fixed categories (people, places, items, feelings, attributes, etc, so the cards go to the appropriate place. In the end I organized my own table like that, but I have to move manually every new cards that spawns to the right ‘categories’. A pain in the rear end. Believe me, after a few hours, you can have a mess of three dozen cards on screen. -There is a small legibility issue with the text that appear on top of the screen, if you move the floating window up and down, you will notice the top of the screen has some kind of darker shade or layer. Moody, I guess, but depending of your eyesight, light on your room, screen size, etc, you will have to move the dialog window to a lower position to read it more clearly. -When a card disappears, it should show in a text log in a corner (or in any other way) what card was. There is nothing more aggravating than noticing something disappeared from the screen (because there is an animation) but not knowing what exactly disappeared. -It's a game about putting cards in a table... but somehow it doesn't allow the most natural way to sort/categorize cards in a table, by half-stacking them together (in a way that you can see part of every card). Something like this:  -There should be an option to pause the game when a verb finishes or an event appears.
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Jun 4, 2018 07:55
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So these last three days I've been playing a lot, reading in forums about the game, writing some opinions etc. That's a good signal, you could say, I have a real interest on the game. I find the concept and the theme fascinating, it's original, and I dig the writing (Alex's skills are perfectly suited for this type of micro-fiction) and even some of the more obscure gameplay concepts. That said I can only think it seems to me an ultimately flawed game. First, you have all the UI problems I mentioned before, it's pretty messy and unwieldy. But also importantly, it isn't that replayable, in reality. This is the type of game where the best experience is the first run, when you don't know what to expect, where every time you receive a card or an event you have a new nifty line to read, when every time you discover something it's something new and exciting. Ohh I'm traveling to the Mansus in my dreams, ohh you can paint nightmares and lucid dreams and be famous, ohh I summoned something out of this world. The game is great in that journey of discovery, when the game possibilities seem bigger than they truly are. But of course, in the second run the mystery is over, you stop bothering reading the micro-fiction in the cards because you have read it all before, and you see the limitations of the possible actions, there are x possible ways to win money, y ways to get this card, you upgrade lore this way, etc. You see the mechanics bare for what they are and the cool aura of awe and mystery is over. And this happens pretty soon, you don't needs lots of games played. Not only that, it's also not very replayable because there isn't a lot of variation gameplay wise. For example, the cult themselves… are actually all the same? They are ‘cult of x’, without the x part to matter. It can be Lantern, or Knock, or Edge or Forge, it barely matters in the game (it affects what do you need to upgrade a follower and which ones can be upgraded to the highest tier). For a game about creating a cult, it’s a pretty important oversight. I feel as each cult should have some kind of advantage & disadvantage, or a small unique mechanic, something. Then it truly would give you reasons to replay the game several times, as RPGs does with classes. Right now each magical aspect gives you an unique ability to each follower, but it isn’t related to the cult. Narrative-wise, each character has its own cool intro part (I also like how they tie into the previous game!), but after that the game is the same. But I still feel as if there is something missing. There isn't a lot of writing, in reality. I think there is missing something else. They would have done small side quests (like the companion quests in a Bioware game) for the named followers, or put a few more chained events about your own character after their introductory section (ideas: what if your family discover your new inclinations? what if you are incarcerated by form a cult in prison? etc). And finally, they still are doing the kind of game as always: after a while you discover the game can be pretty grindy. In a way the rote mechanical grind works against the atmosphere of the game, for me it's puzzling they always go in this direction. Something I would love it’s if they make the game moddable, so people can just plug-in new items, events, characters, jobs, etc. It would really expand it. Right now, in fact, I'm going to stop playing it, I don't want to burn myself from the game, and come back in a few months, when the game has recieved some updates. TLDR: Cultist Simulator 2: Electric Bogaloo can be pretty great if they build upon this base! Turin Turambar fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Jun 4, 2018 |
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Jun 4, 2018 09:50
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Wilko posted:I made a small mod over the weekend which snaps everything to a grid if you want to check it out. It's not perfect, but it's helpful to keep everything organized quicker. That works pretty well! It should be included in the OP
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Jun 4, 2018 10:02
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Ataxerxes posted:How do you get different doors to Mensus than just the Wood? You dream the Way to the Wood + a magical lore. My experiments say that with knock, lantern and winter there is at least a chance of getting the second door, the White Door. The next door is a bit harder, there is a cryptic enigma you have to solve. Turin Turambar fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Jun 4, 2018 |
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Jun 4, 2018 11:57
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Infinity Gaia posted:So has anyone here actually tried to cast the The End Is Beautiful ritual? It seems like a game over so I'm rather scared of attempting it, but also insanely curious. This is the thing that has made me feel the most like a cultist, so good job Cultist Sim. Is that the one who kills someone? It killed one disciple of mine, that's it.
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Jun 5, 2018 07:33
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lets hang out posted:You can use summons as trappings, that's how I got my skintwisters. Doesn't even destroy them. I imagine the cultists joining hands and parying in the rite around the weird being you have summoned from beyond.
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Jun 5, 2018 13:27
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Cantorsdust posted:All of Kennedy's games share the same concept of content-gating through a timer or some other grindy game mechanic. In Fallen London it was actions per hour in the browser game, with one piece of content revealed per action. In Sunless Sea it was one "action" per port visit with travels between ports as the limiter. In CS it's direct timers. Yes, it's like the game design is still based on the 'browser game' idea, although shown in a different way.
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Jun 20, 2018 09:19
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Sinteres posted:On the live stream Alexis just talked about advanced and grand victories. Advanced is new game+ with the Apostle Legacy where you start with the remnant of your cult and a rival, and the end goal is something like the fusion of spirit and flesh or the great machine. Then grand victory is going to be building on that with a third layer in which you work to become a Name. He also briefly discussed a fourth layer in which you play as a Name, but said he wasn't confirming it because he didn't want to get too ambitious. The last part sounds cool as hell... but imo it should be reserved for Cultist Simulator 2.
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Oct 18, 2018 18:23
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This game has the weird dichotomy that is as great, weird and magical when I didn't know how it worked, and mundane, mechanical, without a glint of magic and slightly dull once I learned how it really works. Trying to fix that... I don't think it can be done in a patch.
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Oct 19, 2018 20:34
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dead comedy forums posted:It's just that imho, he (Kennedy) doesn't fundamentally get the combination of narrative and gameplay, as if the medium of gaming is basically merely a vessel for the stories he wants to tell. That would explain why he doesn't get the complaints about grind, difficulty and failure: many good stories have lots of adversity, struggle and incomprehension of the whole, but in an interactive medium, the story you want to tell can only carry itself until a certain point. You need game, and game demands time and effort from the people playing it. Not only that, but the grind goes against the narrative, because I don't know about the rest of people but once the grind starts in the game, I stop reading the lore tidbits, even if maybe I still haven't read all of them. Which is a waste given that most people agrees that's what he is good at.
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Jan 25, 2019 10:05
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Reading about the lore of the game is so much more fun than the game itself 
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Feb 6, 2019 10:18
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How the game has been being updated? Is Alex delivering on the roadmap? http://weatherfactory.biz/cultist-simulator-2018-update-roadmap/ From what I know, he released the 'Christopher Build' on January, but searching on the news, there is only mention of thew new game+ and what it brings with that. But looking at the initial roadmap, the update was supposed to bring other features. Apart from that well, obviously it was released later than it was planned. I guess the next update (MY LORD FRANKLIN BANCROFT’S BUILD ) will be released in three months or so?
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Feb 12, 2019 13:05
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Amuys posted:After playing this for a while, this seems more like a heist and crew simulator than a ritual and cult simulator. That's not very far away from the truth. The mystique is in the first hours when you don't know poo poo of how anything works. After that, yeah, heist/crew simulator.
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Mar 28, 2020 22:24
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