FIRST THOUGHTS FOR MAPS: One Hour, Two Hours, Three Hours

[TheArgonaut]

Hello one and all,

I've tried to put my feedback into the first three hours of gameplay, all done today and all in one hit :)

First Hour

Initially in the first hour the maps look awesome and impressive - better than I was first expecting considering it is in beta, it is a good spaceship environment with some nice little features and artistic designs. the random map creation seems to work quite well with different areas fitting together quite cleverly. the lighting, and atmosphere is good and there appears to be no clipping or stupid map bugs that sometimes really make my blood boil - there's nothing worse than getting stuck behind something stupid like a small crate for ages, jumping around like a fool at a kids trampoline party trying to get free.

Second Hour

After the initial wow factor had worn off, the maps still seemed quite good. Although there are little side room and odd corridors you can run down if you like there is one thing very clear; The route through from A to B is very linear and the gameplay is "on the rails." Now let me make something clear - I don't want Skyrim-like freedom to go charging off into the wilderness just because I feel like it but having some kind of secondary goal(secret goal?) or bonus mission on each map would be good - you could split your team up, or do one first then the main mission, or just do the main mission. Some variety would be definitely the way forwards....

I'm not even going to mention a "boss fight".

suggestions for bonus missions are;-

-When you have to capture someone, make a side mission to caputre their assistant, or get their research from their lab as well as capturing them.

-When you have to assassinate someone, make a side mission where there is a body double, or special team of bodyguards.

-When you have to rescue someone, have the main hostage as the main mission, with optional side missions to rescue other people too.

Third Hour

Now my brain is beginning to turn to custard because there's something strangely and unintentionally sadistic about the random map generation once you've been playing for a while. You try to remember them. when you revisit a mission it is natural to try and compare what you did before to what you did now. It is pre-programmed in a human brain to attempt to remember the route somewhere and when the route looks very similar, but is different, it can be a little frustrating. So the choice now becomes to actively not pay attention to the maps - there's no need anyway as they'll only be different next time. I'm not sure getting people to pay less attention to the game is a good thing although it's a very wierd sensation.

I've already read several posts bemoaning the lack of differing environments so I won't go into that too much, but maybe some simple things such as differing colours for a new ship - Maybe one mission has the metallic-blue style maps we're used to, maybe one has a metallic green or low light or something so when the map loads, and if it is really random, then you get a differing lighting scheme. In the fullness of time a complete range of actual environments would be awesome - Ice Caves, Jungle,Desert catacombs and super different spaceships.

TL:DR Suggestions

-Initial impressions are very good, but the gameplay soon becomes lacklustre as the missions are too linear. Make a secondary/bonus mission for each map and attempt to try and change the ambiance of the map to increase the feeling of variety until more varied environments are built.

[Psyren]

They are already working on it from what I heard :).