Honest VS 2 experience
Honest feedback and opinion on Vertical Slice 2
TLDR: I spent 1000 hours in Space Engineers 1, Space Engineers 2 is both better and meh in both ways, especially the early game.
Let’s start with good parts:
-The progression set up for the newcomers is way smoother and less of a brick wall to hit. You don’t need to start at planet, mine stone (with drill attached to a rover or by hand).
-Backpack building makes Space Suit only start actually possible.
-Projection building is really nice.
-Swappable batteries are fantastic.
-There is actually a story there (some aspects are better than others, but not debating it here)
-Suit using battery for flying and hydrogen for boost == GREAT.
-Game looks great.
Bad parts:
-The optimization, memory leaks
-Ore veins are really bloody small. I get that we shouldn’t have massive ore deposits everywhere. But it feels like you have to fly from asteroid to asteroid mining them all to get what you need.
-At least one quest is buggy – doesn’t show you need both wire AND heavy duty plates.
-Backpack building completely trivialises the point of early game and right now makes Smelter look a bit pointless. Maybe I am not seeing it yet, but I see no reason to build a smelter, if backpack building accomplishes the same thing, except for the later components, which require it.
-The progression is broken, completely. At least the early game. In the first hour of the game we find multiple atmospheric capable ships. Missions that have got resources next to the objective. And the worst of offender, almost finished hydrogen ship.
-Because of the speed limit increase, all planets seem way smaller. Not something that can be easily fixed and lowering speed limit is terrible idea anyway. However, perhaps it would be better if gravity lasted longer?
-Free hydrogen and power are nice for a first time player, but making it so the station does it all the time for free is too good to be true.
Suggestions:
-Make backpack building 30% efficient. Smelter 70% efficient. And refinery 100% efficient.
-Revert weight capacity to volume capacity again. Ore should take a lot of volume, but refined ingots should not. However, they would weight a lot.
-Bring back ingots.
-Make backpack only capable of building: Smelter, Solar Panels/Wind turbine and that’s it. Nothing else. So, you can make smelter on your own and go from there, but not replace it completely. It also allows for minor repairs, giving backpack building a purpose.
-Make reaching space for the first time feel like an actual accomplishment, not a road bump that you can easily clear. For example you find a half finished hydrogen ship, but need smelter + assembler to actually finish it. Something like this.
-To go with the above. We should get an abandoned outpost, not a base in space, which we could refurbish.
-Instead of the Engineer having to craft all they need, it would be better if some components needed to be scavenged, like in the Frostpunk scenario.
-Instead of getting into space, we should get our first quests on the planet and use atmospheric ships / Rover (later when they are introduced).
I like this feedback
On the memory leak issue, I noticed that even when the game is supposed to be unloading a world, it will hang in that unloading screen, the memory use will drop, and then climb back up again, and seems to repeat forever.
Agree that refining ore should reduce volume a lot (don't know if it does because volume is weirdly irrelevant) and also reduce mass. (I noticed it doesn't) The very purpose of refining is to remove impurities - mass should go down.
Our suits get ion thrusters that work on planets, but our ships don't? I know it's for ease for new players, but I think that may be a step too far. Perhaps if we started in space, that would be a way to ease them in. Or, if you want to stick with the ground start, don't have the jetpack available from the beginning. Make people walk so they'll appreciate the jetpack more. Just increase the jump height a bit.
The hydrogen boost doesn't seem to make a noticeable difference. Acceleration rate appears the same. The only change I saw was overriding the speed limit silently imposed by the dampeners, which led to a LOT of confusion for me.
The reason I see to build a smelter is that the refinery cannot do basic tasks. I don't like this change from SE1.
Once I realized how much progression was locked behind the colonization, my reaction was to immediately speedrun . . . well, everything. I was about to say Verdure, but I wanted to speedrun Kemik, too. If you want people to stay and enjoy the sights a while, I think more things need to unlock from the start. At LEAST batteries.
On the memory leak issue, I noticed that even when the game is supposed to be unloading a world, it will hang in that unloading screen, the memory use will drop, and then climb back up again, and seems to repeat forever.
Agree that refining ore should reduce volume a lot (don't know if it does because volume is weirdly irrelevant) and also reduce mass. (I noticed it doesn't) The very purpose of refining is to remove impurities - mass should go down.
Our suits get ion thrusters that work on planets, but our ships don't? I know it's for ease for new players, but I think that may be a step too far. Perhaps if we started in space, that would be a way to ease them in. Or, if you want to stick with the ground start, don't have the jetpack available from the beginning. Make people walk so they'll appreciate the jetpack more. Just increase the jump height a bit.
The hydrogen boost doesn't seem to make a noticeable difference. Acceleration rate appears the same. The only change I saw was overriding the speed limit silently imposed by the dampeners, which led to a LOT of confusion for me.
The reason I see to build a smelter is that the refinery cannot do basic tasks. I don't like this change from SE1.
Once I realized how much progression was locked behind the colonization, my reaction was to immediately speedrun . . . well, everything. I was about to say Verdure, but I wanted to speedrun Kemik, too. If you want people to stay and enjoy the sights a while, I think more things need to unlock from the start. At LEAST batteries.
I agree with this except for "perhaps it would be better if gravity lasted longer?"
I can't be the only one that feels like holding W and toggling Z over and over to reach space and 'orbit' the planet to complete missions is not even the slightest bit fun? It would be less tedious with rudimentary automations for this (at least a way to continue flying in a direction while efficiently using fuel etc). But to suggest that this babysitting step of entering and existing a planet should be increased by making the gravity well bigger ... that'd be awful. I think making planet entry/exit a touch more dramatic would help, it shouldn't feel like 'nothing'. The volumetric clouds helped.
Other than that, some form of all your suggestions makes sense to me. It's too trivial to build ships. I like the mindset of abundance that is in the current state of vs2, but you should get that abundance via a progression which unlocks it. I really love the backpack building, but it does seem a bit OP. Perhaps it can remain OP until there is a way to queue up craftable items like in SE1.
I agree with this except for "perhaps it would be better if gravity lasted longer?"
I can't be the only one that feels like holding W and toggling Z over and over to reach space and 'orbit' the planet to complete missions is not even the slightest bit fun? It would be less tedious with rudimentary automations for this (at least a way to continue flying in a direction while efficiently using fuel etc). But to suggest that this babysitting step of entering and existing a planet should be increased by making the gravity well bigger ... that'd be awful. I think making planet entry/exit a touch more dramatic would help, it shouldn't feel like 'nothing'. The volumetric clouds helped.
Other than that, some form of all your suggestions makes sense to me. It's too trivial to build ships. I like the mindset of abundance that is in the current state of vs2, but you should get that abundance via a progression which unlocks it. I really love the backpack building, but it does seem a bit OP. Perhaps it can remain OP until there is a way to queue up craftable items like in SE1.
Agreed on the points. To me, the whole first-time-magic of SE1 was resourcing and getting enough materials so i could painfully build a ship on mars that would get me to reach space. It took hours, and did it all in survival. But the reward for reaching space was amazing and had me fall in love with the game so much.
let's not try to give the player everything he needs to get to space, just 5 minutes into the game...
Agreed on the points. To me, the whole first-time-magic of SE1 was resourcing and getting enough materials so i could painfully build a ship on mars that would get me to reach space. It took hours, and did it all in survival. But the reward for reaching space was amazing and had me fall in love with the game so much.
let's not try to give the player everything he needs to get to space, just 5 minutes into the game...
Don't forget about the fast travel feature, which makes traveling long distances too easy and boring. I can understand if it was a stub during the development of the jump engine, but it seems to me that they are going to leave it forever...
Don't forget about the fast travel feature, which makes traveling long distances too easy and boring. I can understand if it was a stub during the development of the jump engine, but it seems to me that they are going to leave it forever...
Few of my observations.
- Autosave on death, overwriting main save. Lost the Sledge on a collision. Game saves on top of main save right upon death, who thought this is a good idea?
Have a separate autosave file. Better yet multiple autosaves, maybe 3 that overwrite in turn, so you can roll back. 30 minutes 1hour and 90 minutes. This can make or brake a game, and accessible saves are very important for testing. You shouldn't need to "save as" every 30 minutes to be safe. Later people can have iron man modes with 1 save when the game is released.
- I strongly agree with OP that the starting resources are pitiful. You are better of grinding away random junk than actually learning the production tree through mining.
- Menu lag. Every menu takes forever to open, no matter if it's a container, the building selection or straight up the ESC menu.
- The starting FOV is too cramped. Ithink it started on 70? 80 is better. It looked really weird on standard widescreen at the start.
Few of my observations.
- Autosave on death, overwriting main save. Lost the Sledge on a collision. Game saves on top of main save right upon death, who thought this is a good idea?
Have a separate autosave file. Better yet multiple autosaves, maybe 3 that overwrite in turn, so you can roll back. 30 minutes 1hour and 90 minutes. This can make or brake a game, and accessible saves are very important for testing. You shouldn't need to "save as" every 30 minutes to be safe. Later people can have iron man modes with 1 save when the game is released.
- I strongly agree with OP that the starting resources are pitiful. You are better of grinding away random junk than actually learning the production tree through mining.
- Menu lag. Every menu takes forever to open, no matter if it's a container, the building selection or straight up the ESC menu.
- The starting FOV is too cramped. Ithink it started on 70? 80 is better. It looked really weird on standard widescreen at the start.
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