Make this game great! PvP based suggestions

[Kitrick]

So far I have spent a decent amount of hours in game, although some of the things I would suggest changing do not take very long to notice.  Overall the game has a great feel, the survival aspect is engaging enough to where you watch your food and water and need to cook, but it doesn't feel like you are fighting against the game mechanics which is nice.

However, the food is severely lacking in worthwhile buffs and benefits.  Some of the food items can be completely ignored, or become irrelevant late game.  Now, the reason this becomes important, is because late game pvp right now is very simple.  There are only a few things that you need to be on equal footing with someone else, but once you get those things you pretty much don't have to play the game as hard as other people.  If you put a buff cap on characters, and have a multitude of different buffs provided by different foods, people can make choices and create different playstyles, leading to better and more meaningful pvp.

The gun play needs to be fixed.  There is no reason that sprinting full speed with buffs or riding a hoverboard should let you shoot with the same accuracy as someone who is standing still.  I know it's not a game that is going for realism, but from a balance point of view, having your accuracy reduced when you are sprinting or riding a vehicle would increase the skill ceiling just enough that you cant just run people down full auto spray going.  Right now it feels like you have slim to no chance to win a fight if you are lower tier than your opponent, if you are both on equal footing as far as gaming skill and aim.   And I think that's the key, because there will always be exceptions, people will always be better or worse than you at the game, but balance needs to be thought about around players that are on equal footing.

Stimpacks and peredozin seem to dictate the outcome of the fight too much.  It makes all the other medical and healing items seem worthless once you get to that level of medicine.  Maybe it would be a good idea to revamp meds in the same way that a revamp would be needed for cooking.  Add more useful buffs: move speed, hunger and thirst reduction, damage reduction, noise reduction, damage increase etc, but have a limit to how many types you can have, so that way people have to choose.  Do I want to be almost undetectable at night?  Or do I want slightly more damage?

There seems to be no benefit to defending a base from an attack other than if you die you can re-equip and the other person cannot (usually).  This might not be something that can be added right away, but adding a tower that you can build behind your walls where you can climb up and be able to shoot out and be shot at would make sieges more interactive.  Why am I waiting and watching them plant bombs?  Also why would I risk going outside and dying to them and losing my equipment when I can just wait until they funnel in?  It seems like instead of making it a long and fun engagement, it forces the make or break moment to be right when that wall is breached and it's all or nothing.  The game is supposed to be about skirmishes, finding open world pvp, etc.  Not only is online raiding almost non existent, but if it does happen?  It's super lame sitting there waiting for the moment when the wall comes down and praying that you don't die because that means they most likely won.  Seems silly that so much would rest on that one moment.

The timer on land claims seems excessive.  Jumping from 1 hour destruction timer to 30+ seems strange.  If you go and raid a lithium or oil seep, with the intent on taking it over permanently, it's pretty much impossible.  The owners will more than likely see what you are doing and come repair the damage and rebuild when you are not there somewhere in the next 30 hours.  I understand this is probably a good thing for home bases, but for resource claims it's probably not the best idea.  It promotes a rich get richer scenario, and that also kills games really fast.  New players will be discouraged when they find out this information, and older players will get extremely bored not having to defend their territories.

Mechs may be a little too weak armor / hp wise, but honestly I don't have enough experience with them in battle yet.  I really like the idea, and I think more mechs should be added eventually, especially if more weapons are going to be added as well.  Something I think might be good though is that you should be able to build a mining drill and a chainsaw attachment to the mech in the place of a weapon, and use them for resource gathering.  I don't think it should be way more efficient than hand tools, but at the very least it should be 1.5x as fast.  No extra yield, just an increase in speed, and not a crazy amount.

The map needs to be larger, and maybe have multiple of the same biomes in different areas.  Maybe a desert on each opposite corner, two swamps, two boreal forests etc.  I know that a lot of people say they want the map smaller to force pvp encounters, but a smaller map will not do that.  All a small map will do is decrease the player base after they realize the map is so small that everyone can just roam around for a few minutes and kill everything they see and then get bored.  Casual pvpers will quit because they have no space to roam, hardcore pvpers will quit because there is nothing to kill.  The map needs to be larger, in order to cultivate an environment where the pvp is not forced as much, but that you need to go actively searching for it.  A larger map will also let casual pvp players seek out a hidden out of the way place to set up their base, and build up to the point where they can also go hunting for pvp.  I know this might be unpopular, but in reality, not every pvper is the same.  Some people want nonstop blood bath, and just want to hit that respawn and gear up and keep going, some people want more meaningful engagements that require tactics, some people want just the thrill of knowing they are being hunted and could die at any moment.  You need ALL THREE in order to keep a game alive that is based around pvp, you cannot balance only for one group, it is a delicate ecosystem of "wolves".


These are just a few of the more glaring issues I have noticed in my time playing, and I think the game has a lot of potential.

Quality of life changes I would suggest:

The click sound of an empty gun should be heard by everyone in the area, not just the player holding the gun.

An option to turn on auto use on your hotkeys, instead of having to select the item then left clicking.  Alt click is nice, but it could be better.  This isn't really super annoying but in an isometric shooter, the less time you have to spend with your eyes away from the fight, the better.

I know rotating structures is probably something people want, and I know that would probably be difficult, but it might be nice for certain items.  Maybe not furnaces or refineries, but things like beds and storage crates and simple cooking tables, things that have the same footprint, would be nice.

The ability to plant bombs on a surface instead of on the floor.  I know a lot of people design their base around the idea that if you put walls in certain patterns it makes it more expensive to get through it, this is not something that is intuitive to newer players.  It's not really that much of an advantage, but it limits the design of your base.  You have to follow the meta or you are sub optimal.  Any system where a clear meta is oppressive to other playstyles is what kills any game.  And that applies to card games, video games, board games, everything.

I'm continuing to play so I will always try to keep notes and share my thoughts on how to improve the game, and I value any open discussion about such things.

[ai_enabled]

Hello!

Thank you for the detailed feedback. Our game designer (@Lurler) will read it soon and consider improvements.

We're already aware of most of the mentioned problems with the game. Some of them have well-thought reasoning, some are just in a temporary state until we provide further improvements. For example, we're considering to completely rebalance the game to make online-raiding viable but only after we implement offline raiding protection (http://forums.atomictorch.com/index.php?topic=1449.0) (as you have already read).
The destroy timer for the land claims is essentially long enough to ensure players cannot lose their bases altogether due to an offline raid.
Regarding the oil/Li depositsΓÇöas you cannot wait so long for the land claim to destroy, the mechanic to capture them is differentΓÇöyou need to destroy the deposit (or extractor built on it) with bombs. A new deposit will spawn in another place soon (within 60 minutes).

Regarding the placement of the bomb on surfacesΓÇöwe're considering this mechanic. Meanwhile, with A26 update you will be able to use grenade launchers that could target any surface and could be used in tight space of the bases. So we want to see how it works firstΓÇöthe A26 experimental version is already live with players testing it and providing their feedback.

@Lurler will reply later if he has anything to add or discuss.

Regards!

[Lurler]

There's a lot of good points in this post for sure. I'm sorry if I can't reply to each one, but I pretty much agree with 90% of the mentioned.

I specifically want to reply regarding the combat. There are a lot of changes planned in the future specifically to make combat less dependent on gear and more dependent on skill and tactics.

Some of the changes planned:
- auto turrets to protect your base (which also means we can make walls weaker and allow for more interesting raids)
- tactical tools such as smoke, flashbang, molotov, etc.
- new land claim mechanics (and possibly offline protection as ai_enabled mentioned above)
- clan system to allow people to join together in large clans, but not like before where large clans were dominating the server, but quite the opposite, it would allow solo players to join in clans AGAINST large zergs
- and many other such changes which should completely change how the combat feels

There are a lot of things planned!