A Plethora of Desired Game Improvements (organised)
I want all of these changes to the game and believe that they all will improve both experience and ratings of this game.
Sorry for any inconsistency and some rambling.
Each item HAS A CATEGORY, [A] reference number, begins with a single sentence, and the rest is detail of desired change or current situation in italics for comparison and justification.
MODEL CHANGE
[1][i]Option to place vision module on opposite side of gun.
For Magnus a vision module blocks the target reticule and centre of the screen.
[ii] or simply flip the model just for the Magnus.
[iii] or put the vision module on the opposite side for all guns.
MODEL CHANGE
[2]Remove the constant sparking from static environmental robot corpses.
You can sometimes see these sparks glistening from a 500 away which is misleading and annoying when you’re hunting the faint white lights of runners (whose models don’t pop in) until 200-500 meters depending on what optic you’re using.
INTERFACE CHANGE
[3]When you’re done (spam-)looting a category in a “loot crate” of any kind (tapping E), including despawnable corpses, and Plundra, it is the same key to instantly drop your top in-use item.
(For example, your extremely rare 5 Crown weapon which is subsequently instantly automatically selected when the “loot crate” is emptied is now selected, and dropped with the E key)
I don’t need to explain why this is terrible and must be fixed.
Note that these keys cannot be rebound, you can change “interact” key but E, R, and Esc are fixed inside interaction menus.
Similarly there is high accidental-discard-danger when intending to drop junk of any category - guns, extra ammo, gratuitous building materials (e.g. kilos of plastic). Overburdened players are likely to be discarding a hundred kilos of junk per hour of play, there are far too many opportunities to make a dramatic mistake. Only the use of the R key automatically closes the loot interface when target is emptied. If you violently lose access to the loot/inventory interface, you may lose access to your dropped loot.
All of this is made far worse by unreliability of the interface – scroll bars failing to be clickable, lists of items (in crate or backpack) sometimes being completely unselectable even to drag-and-drop. The worst exacerbation of this issue is the constantly-randomly re-ordering item lists, although I expect this will be resolved soon.
The reliability for a game that is heavily about loot and item management still needs to be improved.
See also “[31] favourites - feature addition”.
INTERFACE CHANGE
[4]Bobbypin and Adrenaline should be exempt from “store all in category” function
Unless a superior system such as item favouriting can effectively solve the issue of having to constantly pull them back out of storage after using the “store all in category” function
INTERFACE CHANGE
[5]Binoculars-attached Vision Modules should not get auto stored when using “store all in category”.
Obviously, constantly rectifying this is annoying.
INTERFACE CHANGE
[6]Clearer weapon, ammo, and attachment information/stats.
We want numbers, specific damage multipliers, sound range changes - not incredibly casually written descriptions and difficult-to-judge bars (testers have also claimed these bars are inaccurate).
INTERFACE CHANGE
[7]Provide “effective range” info for weapons.
Bullet damage significantly reduces over relatively short distances in this game, and bullets drop dramatically over fair short distances too. It would be nice to know without testing how long damage is lost at medium range for specific guns.
INTERFACE CHANGE
[8]Change inventory menu so you can see your characters view while using it, or make this a settings option. (Helps you notice an enemy suddenly rushing you, perhaps you’re in a desperate fight and need to switch weapons.)
Simultaneously please do no remove the existance of the opaque inventory menu as it has been invaluable in producing clear and consistent screenshots of items, for the wiki for example. Therefore in addition to transparent menu, make the Plundra interaction menu opaque like the current inventory menu.
INTERFACE CHANGE
[9]Show the “attached” icon beside weapon attachments when they are in Plundra storage.
Currently it’s extremely easy to unknowingly detach your attachments from stored weapons.
INTERFACE CHANGE
[10]Hide text chat while other menus are open (map is OK).
Seeing text written randomly all over your inventory in infuriating.
SAVEFILE? CHANGE
[11]Fix that the specialization that you unlocked last chronologically is always the automatically enabled when you load the game.
This leads to you needing to change your specialization every time you load into the game rather than your preferred prepared specialization simply being remembered and kept.
SAVEFILE? CHANGE
[12][i]Automatically unlock all clothing items which are available as starting outfits, instantly upon making a second character. Currently you can simply create one character wearing each outfit (plus some of the opposite gender for certain gloves and earrings) to unlock dozens of clothing pieces, which is free but tedious. It would be better to just automatically add all of them to everyone’s save file upon first character creation.
[ii]Also as far as I can tell, the mohawk hair does not drop in containers until after you unlock it by making a character using it but I cannot confirm.
SAVEFILE? CHANGE
[13]Organise all clothing.
So that clothing lists are grouped by source {Container drop, Enemy drop, DLC drop, Cosmetics-only DLC, DLC Challenge, Basegame Challenge, Mission Reward}, and all re-colour variants are consistent between players/platforms {Black, Grey, White, Browns, Rainbow, Other}
Instead of purely and chaotically in order of first acquisition of a variant.
MECHANICS CHANGE
[14]Shooting fuel cells on the ground doesn’t do damage to players but gas cannister does.
I figure this is something to do with preventing self-damage when killing runners? But it’s silly.
MECHANICS CHANGE
[15]Allow Apparel modifications to be moveable to any-compatible clothing, not only fixed onto exclusively the piece they were crafted to.
This increases consistency with the attachments systems seen on weapons. It will also increase people’s freedom to express themselves possibly even driving sales of cosmetics-DLC. Removes the tedious restriction of forcing people to carefully choose which items they wish to be modified and being forced to use it forever due to the high cost of changing their mind.
MECHANICS CHANGE
[16]Scale Relay Beacon guard robots according to region level, or other rework.
I’ve noticed that after 300 relay beacons destroyed they have begun to spawn Prototype Tanks, perhaps it is coded that their grade will change to Military at 1000 destroys but if that is true, the scaling is way off being realistically relevant. Enemies spawned at Relay Beacons should have 50% chance to be upgraded (Military, FNIX, Apocalypse) for each 25 Beacons you have destroyed. Enemies spawned at Relay Beacons should increase in size according to region level (Always at least 1 “Harvester” at level 15 and at least 1 “Tank” at level 20).
LOOT CHANGE
[17]Prevent repeat drops of schematics. (Only occurs in multiplayer.)
LOOT CHANGE
[18]Force (or greatly bias the likelihood for) blue schematics to drop only from military rivals, purple only from FNIX rivals, gold only from apocalypse rivals.
This would allow people to hunt them in a more targeted way.
INVENTORY CHANGE
[19]Allow all players to pick up and carry DLC-locked-weapons indefinitely, allowing them to trade them away in cases where they are acquired through (erroneous) world/corpse looting, only prevent the player from assigning the weapon to usable slot.
The current solution also means that if you were to accidentally disable US-DLC (when experimenting, or playing on a secondary computer, or through a library sharing method) or suffer a software-error (note: there have been reports of DLC being temporarily missing) all of your US weapons will be deleted permanently from your inventory.
(When in a game-session hosted by someone who has the DLC - I as a none-owner can generate US-Weapon loot on slain enemies and take it into inventory but it will despawn after moving 10 meters (tested, consistent). This currently gives me the freedom to drop the item on the floor for another happy user who does have the DLC. The issue is NOT item trading / subversion of DLC authentication measures)
“Known Issues … If another player who does not own the U.S. Weapons Pack DLC picks up one of the weapons dropped by someone who owns the DLC, the weapon will disappear for both players” Unfortunately this quote implies only partial recognition of the situation which I have explained above, therefore I felt it entirely necessary to make this point.
(Full disclosure, I don’t own US weapons DLC purely because: I don’t want the additional inventory clutter, and I already have weapons using ammo of those calibres and filling those purpose. As I say I have happily “given-away” multiple US weapons including 5 Crown quality. I am however somewhat interested in Russian weapons DLC.)
INVENTORY CHANGE
[20]Attached ammo should not be automatically stored when storing a weapon.
This leads to the infuriating situation where you favourite weapon loses its assigned ammo just because you stored a loot weapon.
INVENTORY CHANGE
[21]Ammo should not be auto-assigned to weapons when you first pick-up a weapon.
This leads to picking up a mid-value weapon whose ammo type matches your equipped weapon(s) and then accidentally storing all of your needed ammo when storing the mid-value weapon.
This flaw also causes those auto-equipped ammo types to be exempt from “store all in category” feature meaning you have to store weapons, then store spare ammo, then retrieve your in-use ammo but only in the case where you had pick up spare weapons of particular ammo type. It’s as tedious as it sounds.
INVENTORY CHANGE
[22]Unify 9mm “Parabellum” ammo (make SMG + handgun = same ammo).
With the addition of 9x39mm for the upcoming AT-WAD weapon ammo seen in the Russian Weapons DLC, and likely other ammo (RPG, perhaps more for later weapons) there is too much ammo in the game. This is one small and logical improvement that can clean up our inventories.
FEATURE ADDITION
[23]Clothing sets.
Allow us to save full outfits to load-able slots (at least 5, prefer 8). The current system of scrolling vertically through hundreds of apparel items and scrolling horizontally through 1 – 17 item-recolours is insanely, unnecessarily, tedious – if all you wanted was to switch from fire-resistance to bullet-resistance and still be wearing a matching hat… Moreover inside of all of this it’s possible to forget/lose where your +5% fire resistance shirt was hidden under heap of other items. For this latter point, I already suggested an item favouriting system.
FEATURE ADDITION
[24]Specialization management.
Allow us to doubleclick an unlocked specialization to set it as our default enabled-specialization for whenever we load into the game. Currently your last-unlocked specialization is enabled when you load game, which in many cases is undesirable.
FEATURE ADDITION
[25]Automatically pick-up Schematics and Apparel/cosmetics when within lootable range of any lootable bodies containing one, or at least when actually opening the containing corpse.
It is too easy currently to miss a corpses that may have contained these sometimes-exceptionally-desirable-and-rare, weightless items. Remember, these have no weight and there are hundreds, some extremely rare, too easy to miss. Individually clicking on every corpses when there is no-other loot that you desire is tedious, and the fastest way to make this interaction is spam “loot all” while holding “interact (loot)” however you will then be inundated with junk ammo and crafting materials.
FEATURE ADDITION
[26]Allow switching characters without having to close the game-session.
Sometimes you wanna switch to another set of perks but you are host and don’t wanna reload the whole map deleting all your field radios and kicking everyone out of your game-session.
FEATURE ADDITION
[27]Change character appearance utility (station?).
At the cost of x amount of specific resources or items or some very expensive craftable.
Or a character modification station somewhere on the map or built at our upcoming custom-base which could costs a lot of resources to use, and includes skills resetting (already discussed as by many as desirable), even gender-switch for completeness.
FEATURE ADDITION
[28]Option to make Jacket apparel item invisible so we can show off our t-shirts.
It would be better than having them no-clip through some jacket models. Though I realise shirts might not-actually be currently fully modeled behind the scenes.
FEATURE ADDITION
[29]Dirtbikes. 
Very loud, not extremely fast, works on any surface and at extreme inclines, loses power from EMP for a few seconds, hit points similar to a Runner. (I wanted to keep this short, stopping right here as it’s a meme at this point, but I realised something ironic.) Although members of the dev team have expressed the sentiment that vehicles would shrink the size of the world and its environmental storytelling, they completely undermine their argument by also mentioning “you have fast travel”. Addition of a single significantly-limited but all-terrain vehicle would increase the amount of time players spend in-game travelling and discovering the world, not reduce it, while greatly increasing the chance of the kinds of encounters that are memorable and considered fun. Whether this is best being a post-story-chain unlocked or a means to minimise fast travel as early as possible - you decide.
FEATURE ADDITION
[30]Additions to multiplayer functions and options.
[i] Only-friends-can-freely-join option for multiplayer sessions.
[ii] Addition of host ping/distance filter
(if it’s possible to read ping then it’s possible to filter for ping)
[iii] Ban-for-this-session (because kick-user only kicks but people can rejoin immediately and is NOT a solution to trolls)
(not perma-ban this user, unless you explicitly block them on steam)
[iv] Avoid-this-session option (self-ban from rejoining this session when disconnecting and find-new-session)(help you avoid open-session-trolls)
[v] “Within 10 levels of host” filters option
[vi] “No multiplayer session found, try changing filter settings”
I am well aware that this has been discussed extensively, however I maintain that this is probably the highest priority quality-of-life feature for the game, to ignore it has already ruined the experience and confidence in this game for thousands of players. Also, what I’ve listed are some fresh ideas.
FEATURE ADDITION
[31]Item favouriting.
I’ve posted about this elsewhere but to summarise: favourite weapons become undroppable. Favourited ammo (AP 7.62 etc.) and items (Advanced First Aid Kit etc.) become auto-looted when interacting with lootables (not Plundra). Only half of total-held favourite stackable items can be dropped. Adrenaline, Bobbypin, Schematics, Clothing are all automatically favourite loot. Favourite items show at the top of their category in inventory regardless of sorting/filters.
FEATURE ADDITION
[32]Make the “Healer” skill show the current HP of friendly players if you are holding a First Aid Kit.
Without knowing the HP other players are on the ability to heal them is worthless in combat.
FEATURE ADDITION
[33]Change enemy optics-light colours based on more statuses.
[i] Add: Blue for confused via “Remote Hacking” skill.
[ii] Green for friendly via “Hacker” specialization.
[iii] No light / very slowly pulsing orange / sparking: for dead (currently red (misleading))
Currently they are: white for basic patrolling, yellow for alarmed, and red for in combat.
MAJOR GAMEPLAY ADDITION
[34]Enemy convoy ambush.
Utilise the practically empty Marshlands and barren North Coast. Have convoys of enemies patrol in large circles on roads. Implement relevant minor missions or give us relatively-major “assignments” to eliminate them.
With this we can finally have an end-game use for guerilla tactics and the dozens of stealth and ambush tools and skills which we’re given. The groundwork is all there, we just need objectives and grouped enemies moving together on set paths.
Simple requests to people responding (note: I can’t control you; do what you like):
“I don’t understand point x”
Please do not post simply to question meaning - message me privately and I will subsequently improve/update/expand clarity based on your message or give data/references.
“There is a factual error”
As above please message me privately so I can fix the error.
”I think that will be in the next patch”
That’s fine.
"I disagree"
(If you’re here please read this whole paragraph not just part of it.) I would prefer for the thread to not be flooded with disagreements, mostly because these lead to tangential reasoning which quickly and verbosely go off top, making the thread unpleasant to participate in. Please do come yell at me on discord endlessly. I totally understand that you may disagree with something, but don’t worry – there is no danger that the developers will suddenly implement my suggestion. If one of my suggestions is physically impossible or unfeasible - this is at the discretion of the developers who don’t need us to decide / declare that for them.
"I agree"
That’s great, maybe we can inspire some desirable change. You can use the heart symbol if you simply mostly agree, or you can reference or quote (not recommended because quoting gets thicc real quick) my specific points and expand if you want.
Discussion
Please note I have discussed all of these points with people on discord and some steam acquantences, and searched for possible repeat topics on this forum. In a minority of cases I have heard significant un-desire and extreme approval from some individuals. I have considered that feedback for each topic, these are the points which I believe remain are appropriate to suggest.
Timing
Most of you are likely aware of upcoming major changes and DLC which may or may not have significant effects on many of my statements here, perhaps even making some of this redundant. I have considered this and already chosen to share suggestions and information which I believe matter now and will matter going-forward - even if the upcoming patch supposedly addresses my suggestions. I also do not believe that these points should be ignored just because of upcoming DLC; I in-fact believe that now is exactly the time to talk about these issues - as soon the forum will be almost exclusively dedicated to discussion of the new features (and their issues).
Sources
I have media evidence and testing to back-up my description, but you don’t wanna see all that. My play-time is uncertain but high.
Thanks for reading! Enjoy.
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