my impression about the game

[eleanor.e.d]

First of all, the game I played for a while (deepworld) was closed in August.
I've been looking for a similar game since then.
I downloaded it because cryofall is the closest similar game.
Yes it is very similar. but there is also disappointment.
1.  have 3-4 pve servers at game. and their names are asia america europe...
why is that? I live in Turkey, not well but I can speak english. I joined the European pve. 
all the players speak german french ....
and I'm sure everyone speaks chinese or something at asia pve. Why did you divide the continents?
(or I don't know if this is true. very few players right now)
2. The night times are very long and gloomy. boring ... at least it could be shorter than the day,
or daytime could be even longer.
3. could have been something more cute.  for example decorations.
a rare item  that is randomly found while wandering in the forest. or a rare item can be  found at ruins
4. waiting for female character A24 update
5. player communication.
yet there is nothing in the game that encourages conversation.
I encounter a player in the game. we just look at each other and run again.
No emoji, no characters interaction.
6. It would be nice to  be able to see the bases of the players location on the map.
7. I think every biome can have 1 or 2 subway stations. (or anything, train, teleporter, air balloon....) (represent - teleporting)
. each may have names for biomes. or original fun names.
and players need to explore one by one to use the subway stations.
metro stations may seem to have just discovered.
The player can travel to the metro stops he discovered. others gray options (waiting to be discovered)
and metro stops. players discover metro stops at  the technology tab.
build on their bases. you can see the list of players with stops At the subway stations .
so you don't have to run like road runner to go to the trade centers;)
(after checking the A24 update notification. EDIT:  you have added (hoverboards). I think this requires high technology. and something produced with pragmium. for pro players. Beginner players have to run like road runner again )

problem1: server wipes. I know it's an early access game,
but I don't think players will like it (this may only be an opportunity for new players),
if it continues it's a trouble for current players.
problem2: land claim is not permanent. sometimes a player may not play for 10 days.
Or she could go on vacation for 20 days ... or get bored and come back after a while.
  rebuild everything!
This is very repulsive! There is already no level system. or no permanent inventory system.
a player asks for a constant progress. Do not constantly start again. especially in such games they want a permanent base.
and they want to show it with pride.
There must be a way to be permanent.  otherwise this game will not be very attractive
could have been a limit. for prevent tangling of land. 3  or 4 land claim limit.  It could be more costly to build the next ones.  there could be waiting period 10 days for first construction and 20 days for the other after the limit.
maybe 1 month to add the next one ....
if servers are to be constantly deleted or if something is removed when I don't enter 20days ,
why are we playing!
What exactly is the aim of this game? run, run, mining, build it,  craft it, build it.. 
  wipes/decay remove ( servers, land claim) and  again !  run . craft . run run build it. .....run... run....
wipes/decay   again. again.  :///

I wrote this the day I opened my forum membership.
there had been a problem and I couldn't share it.
but yesterday I learned that in the game there was something more disappointing than all this:
When the server is deleted, we lose what we have built. not only this.
all lp, experience, our ability is also reset. We start the game again. sorry.
but I've played an early access game before, but nobody was losing anything.
if that's true, it's annoying. you said there will be no wipes in new updates.
even so
Now, I'm waiting for new update.
Is it still a grind or a really playable game!

respects

[ai_enabled]

Hello, Eleanor!

Welcome to the Forums. Sorry for a late reply, your post appeared right before the weekend and the team is busy with A24 Update release (scheduled now for November 25) preparations. Plus it took a while to provide a comprehensive response.

1. In order to provide the best connection quality for players from different continents, we're providing multiple official PvP and PvE servers. Ping and connection stability is a major concern for us. Plus there is an issue with bad international routing between certain continents and countries. The current number of the official servers is reasonable as it delivering great experience to the most players. Plus we need some extra capacity in case the game will get attention again thanks to an update release, launch of the demo version (which is planned for A24), or simply a decent discount in Steam.

2. The night is an important part of the game loop, suggesting players get back to their bases and sort out the gathered items, craft new items, etc. The game is providing multiple buildings to establish cozy lighting there which certainly adds to the mood of the game. Plus it's much easier to become an unlucky prey during the night time to dangerous creatures unless you bring a flashlight (or craft an artificial retina implant!). Plus, in the future updates, we might consider adding some nighttime-only creatures and maybe some nighttime-only events.
So, cutting the night duration is not considered now as we believe it's currently fine.

3. We're planning to continue expanding the game with more content, including house decorations.

4. I hope you will enjoy the female player character model in A24. But it's only a step in this direction for us, we're considering further improvements and more ways to customize the character.

5. We're considering implementing a quick-communication system to communicate with strangers ΓÇö imagine holding a spacebar and selecting one of the preset phrases (like "Hello" and "Friendly") which will appear over your character (and even better, these messages could be already translated to other languages so any player will understand them instantly).
For the characters' interactions, we're looking for community suggestions.
That being said, most players are playing in groups while using a voice chat (usually, Discord). It's useful to coordinate in PvP, but it's also a lot of fun in PvE.

6. Seeing all other players' bases in PvP would be a bad idea (as it invites raiders). In the case of a PvE server, we've tried it and it makes the map absolutely unreadable for any popular game server (as there are often hundreds of land claims).
We're planning to implement support for user marks so every player can mark interesting spots on their map. Plus we're working on a Factions system which may provide a way to view bases of other faction's members on the world map.

7. The world is changed dramatically in A24 with the introduction of transport and roads, connecting all the biomes (except the volcano) together. Hoverboards are available in Tier 3, requiring some pragmium (which is more readily available in A24), but they're very well worth the effort! We're considering adding gasoline-driven Tier 2 motorbikes/choppers in the future updates (the problem is that they would require a lot of work to make them look and feel great; hoverboards were simpler to add so we decided to focus on them first, while also introducing the necessary game mechanics to build and maintain the vehicles).

Regarding the two problems you've mentioned (base decay and wipes)ΓÇöthey're both a part of the same problem. The game has a single large handcrafted world map. Decently large, but not infinite. During A20-A22 versions we heard multiple complaints (and even negative reviews from new players) that there was no free space to establish a base, especially closer to the starting area (the servers sustained over 100 online players for weeks gathering over 2000 active players population sometimes). To ensure the world is not overcrowded the game currently has a land claim numbers limit (not more than 3 per player) and the decay system so an abandoned base will start decay and eventually will be destroyed. In A22 bases were decaying in mere days if left abandoned. In A23 we've improved the system by making the high tiers of the land claims to last much longer. So right now, the higher tier of a land claim (which usually means "the more time player spent in the game"), the longer the base will last if abandoned. In the case of the official PvE servers, Tier 5 land claim will last over two weeks, but T1 only a few days (T3ΓÇöwell over a week (https://atomictorch.com/Files/Images/CryoFall_A23_LandClaimDecay_T3_PvE.jpg), and it's achievable within 6-12 hours of the gameplay by the most players). If there are multiple land claims composing a base, the game will use the decay time from the highest tier. Everything is explained in the "Decay info" in the land claim menu to manage the expectations.
We understand the decay mechanic might feel repulsive if you got used to pure MMO or mobile games which are keeping your personal space in the game permanent (usually by creating a shard or separate space which is connected to the main world via a portal or simply accessible only via a menu). Our game is different as all players on the server are sharing the same limited world space. So it obviously has certain drawbacks by design, but it also has a sense of shared spaceΓÇöwhen you know where somebody is living and can go and visit them (which is essential for PvP but also welcomed in PvE). The map was essentially made not extremely large to ensure everything is accessible while walking in a reasonable time (as you have noticed, it's already hardly comfortable), though now, with introduction of vehicles and roads, we may continue expanding it.

Server wipes (including PvE servers) with major game updates are also, unfortunately, the necessity. For example, in the upcoming A24 update we've reworked the world map dramaticallyΓÇöadding roads and changing terrain, expanding and/or simply reshaping biomes. As you can imagine, it would be a huge mess if A23 savegame data (with all the bases/buildings locations) would be loaded on the A24 world mapΓÇösome bases would be split with cliffs or get partially underwater, and many bases would be suddenly intersected with roads, making them unusable... (in A24 it's not possible to construct over/near the roads)

A similar problem applies to the player's technologies and other character data. The tech tree is changing with every major update (sometimes removing certain technologies, sometimes adding new ones). While it would be possible in the future to ensure the user data compatibility between the game versions, the game is still in very active development and not keeping the compatibility with the previous game versions allows us to move forward faster.
That being said, we cannot wipe your memories and your knowledge of the game. Experienced players usually enjoy starting the game from scratch after a major update, applying their knowledge to build a better base and also experiencing a better game with more content and features (which we hope is a fair deal for an Early Access game!).
Besides that, the game simply doesn't have that much content to keep PvE players entertained for over 100-200 hours as endgame getting reached, and we're not a large studio to have a content pipeline to keep players constantly supplied with the new worthy content (besides that, again, the world size is limited so a single server cannot provide gameplay for hundreds of players indefinitely while also gaining more and more active players). So making a fresh start might be a much better experience than keeping playing longer after reaching the endgame. While we will add soon (in A25) some PvE goodies to keep endgame players entertained (we're considering adding bosses which are really hard to deal with unless you gather a powerful party and/or bring a heavy mech), there is not much to do in the game which you've basically completedΓÇöusually you have a large base with full chests of each of the resources, all tech researched, all equipment crafted, etc...features like PvE "dungeon raids" and bosses would be a great addition but we need to rememberΓÇöthe game is not a full-fledged MMO with 100% persistent world, it has a different (much smaller) scope and offers very different gameplay (with players being much closer to each other, especially as the online number is getting closer to 100 for the server).
By the way, unlike full-fledged MMOs or mobile games, which can simply have official servers closed and the game is basically getting shut down, our game will have community servers running as long as the community wishes to host them (which is not hard and the hardware costs are fairly low now). CryoFall game server is completely free to host by anyone (server setup guide (http://wiki.atomictorch.com/CryoFall/Server/Setup)). Also, the game itself is open-source (https://github.com/AtomicTorchStudio/CryoFall) (except the engine part) so modders can mod it forever, delivering new content for the community.

Bottomline, we understand concerns regarding the wipes for PvE servers and we're still planning to provide long-lasting PvE servers in the future. Due to the necessary limitations set by the game's design and current technical capabilities, we have to keep it this way for now. Meanwhile, we encourage PvE players to try the updated version (when it will be released). While it's often frustrating to let go what you've spent hours on, we cannot erase your memories and experience, and you can apply your knowledge on the next playthrough, enjoying a better game with new content and features (and, hopefully, much improved balance). You can build a better base quicker, acquire the necessary resources faster, and optimize your technologies research order to focus on what's most interesting to you. And if you have already made friends in the game, it's a lot of fun to start together and work towards a common goal!

Regards!