I spent a good 8-10 hours exploring the world solo, and another 5 or so hours playing with a friend. I found the first warboard, but didn’t go much past that quest. For the most part, I had a great time. I feel that I barely scratched the surface, and want more. Some massively memorable and positive experiences.
Enough of a good time that I’m sorely tempted to buy. But I’m not sure that I’ll play it much beyond this weekend. Because the game seems to really struggle with understanding what it is. So much of the game feels like a co-op battle royale - which is cool, but it’s persistent, so it’s neither a royale or a roguelike. It’s a horror survival game, which is cool, but I spend SO MUCH TIME just searching for resources and managing my inventory that there’s too many breaks in the tension and the pacing is shot. It’s a co-op story based shooter, except that … no wait, this part is great. It could be better by making sure that both players understand what to do, how to progress, and that they both know what progression happened. But really, the co-op shooter part is golden.
So if there were just two things I’d want changed it’s this:
Ammo is overly complex
Look, I get it, some ammo is better against armor, some is better against weak spots, and shotguns are wacky what with slugs, buckshot and trash. But I’m just not sure that the benefit of complexity in ammo is worth the cost. Invenotory cost, accessibility cost, explaining why 9mm SMG ammo is somehow different than 9mm Pistol ammo, It’s just too complex for its own good.
SO: If doing more damage to armor vs critical targets is an essential gameplay component (and I’ll suggest that it isn’t) then there are a myriad of ways to solve it The simplest would to just tie it to a skill or weapon attachment.
But simply: Make ammo simpler. I’d suggest even stripping it WAY back to pistol / smg / AR / marksman / special. Then adding complexity to that if it’s necessary. I’ll bet that it’s not.
Loot burnout
Looting every little nook and cranny the first few hours feels great. It really heightens the isolation and strengthens the feeling of having to scrounge to survive.
Looting every little nook and cranny at hour 5, 10, or 40 and beyond doesn’t provide the same feeling / benefit. The moment a player loots a box and DOESN’T take all is the first time that this system stumbles.
What if the tech tree (or even just raw level, or a story step) unlocked ammo crafting - or even just an ammo repository? Or what if the player unlocked an ability to loot a single item (mailbox or refrigerator or…?) that just provided the house’s total loot in one location? Or I’m sure there are other options.
Simply: looting every little thing isn’t as awesome after a while. What if player / story progression made it so that not every little box needed to be looted to yield the same rewards.
The game feels like all of the gameplay decisions are rooted in PvP Battle Royale games, and making the best of what that system entails. What I feel it needs is to take steps backward and focusing on what makes this what it is. For me, it’s a co-op survival shooter in a unique, compelling world, with a lovely story to explore. But what do I know. Because the game is live, there’s a ton of data available for how others are interacting with it. Not just surveys, but actual data.
Also speaking of surveys, for the record, my least favorite part of the game wasn’t ON the survey. It’s the inventory micromanagement. In just a dozen hours I’ve grown to hate it. And it’s actually keeping me from wanting to jump back in and exploring more.