Feedback after putting approx 30 hours into survival

Hi team!

I've had a decent go at the SE2 survival update as well as watching many playthroughs and here are my thoughts and feedback about the direction so far. I considered making individual topics for feedback items/suggestions but I don't want to spam the forum so I'll just list it out.

The tutorial is really good. Clear, concise and well paced. SE1 could benefit greatly from an intro campaign like this to learn the ropes.

I really like the backpack building system, it lets you build the basics quite quickly and get into playing the game while still locking down the more advanced/larger systems to industry and infrastructure. I'd personally like it if when you are in 'ore mode', it only uses ore and doesn't use the components in your inventory and when you are in 'component mode' vis versa. That way I can have better control over what I'm using. But I imagine I'm in the minority there.

Though it seems to be divisive, I also like that this enables the stone refining system to be completely discarded. Stone in SE1 made getting resources way too trivial and set you up for the rest of the game. I like that this makes you travel more to seek out deposits.

Having said that, now that certain ore types have a clearer definitive 'tiered' rating, it seems like removing stone refining for basic ores is solving the problem that tiered advanced ores and tech also solves and so I think bringing it back tied to an industrial block based refining system wouldn't be a bad thing.

As I mentioned, I really like that you have to travel to find ores, it's quite fun to hunt around. However the iron ore veins need to be bigger. It's simply too necessary for it to be quite as scarce as it is. I would also love if you could find rare extremely large ore deposits so mining bases can be established at rich ore locations. That way if you want to play the infrastructure route, you can or if you'd rather play the nomad life, you can, but neither is META.

The bones in place for missions are really good and a great scaffold for a future system. Again, reasons to travel. A reason to have a transport/utility ship flying around fulfilling contracts. Easy to see how this could be expanded in future for more specialised ship types. Mining, fighting, exploring, mapping, transporting, repairing, salvaging etc etc. I think we need a notification to pop up and tell you exactly what new blocks you unlocked with the mission when handing in because it isn't always clear and I'd like to know where I'm at with progress and what I can now build.

The flight model... I honestly just hate it. It feels arcade-ey and disconnected from the physics of the game. The super dampeners make it really hard to predict what your ship is going to do and make it feel unpredictable and make you not trust your ship. It might sound silly but putting all this time in to building a ship, I start to see it not just as a ship but a location. A mobile home and safe place for you in a harsh and unforgiving environment. Then you get in and start flying and it behaves erratically and unpredictably, I kind of lose trust in it and it breaks that feeling of safety and connection, I feel a bit betrayed by it and feel less inclined to keep playing. That feeling is what kept me in SE1 for 5000 hours.

The flight in gravity is similarly so frustrating and odd. You cant thrust down without thrusters facing that direction even though you're in the pull of gravity. In fact, gravity doesn't seem to have much affect on acceleration at all and it's just uncomfortable.

We all live in this world and consciously or subconsciously, we absorb how physical laws work and feel. There is so much complex incredible work done by the human brain to catch a ball, do that little jump across a puddle or stream, put just the right amount of force and pressure into a step to walk past the wall instead of into it. We all know how gravity feels and how physical laws work. So when you break those rules it feels wrong. There is so much emphasis on the new player experience and making it more accessible. Breaking the rules of physics will not do that, new players already get physics, why make us learn new rules? Isn't that an extra barrier, not the removal of one?

I know the focus of SE2 is a bit different and I get that, but though engineering has been demoted to a tool to use in the game rather than the entire game, the choices you make engineering your craft should still matter. It's deliberate. But then you get in your ship and find "oh, actually I have no control over how this behaves". It doesn't feel good.

Creative mode is also a very useful tool to design and play with ideas. I build with spectator mode 95% of the time in creative for ease with travel speed and clipping but also because in SE1, the 'headlight' is much brighter. The spectator 'headlight' in SE2 is far too weak and needs a boost IMO.

The conveyers are excellent, a good selection of blocks. I love that they don't take up the full 5x5. However, you do find some situations when you just can't join up some conveyer lines because of mis-alignment due to ship design considerations. So I would suggest a few extra conveyer types. The 3x3x1 conveyer adaptor that takes large to small port would benefit from small ports on the sides as well like it's SE1 counterpart. A 3x3x3 conveyer node junction would help in some tricky locations. Two new 'offset port' large conveyers would complete the set. One of these blocks would be 3x3x4 with the large ports opposite each other on the longest sides but with the ports offset by 50cm. The second the same but 3x3x5 with the ports offset by 100cm. These would allow you to connect networks offset by small increments without large and usually impossible to fit switchbacks.

I'm a big fan of the new projection building system. in SE1 I would load up 100 steel plate then 40 of each int plate, construction comp., small steel tubes and girders. Restocking often and placing, grinding and replacing regularly. Sidestepping that stuffing around is a win in my books. Mirror mode in survival is also excellent and the projection system gives us that in a way that makes sense. There are a handful of blocks that don't mirror correctly and block placement has auto rotate on by default with no way to turn it off like in SE1 and that can be very frustrating. Copied sections of ships also don't always mirror correctly when more than one plane of mirroring is involved.

I know this has been mentioned often but mirroring with painting still isn't working. Also docked ships will recolour when changing an entire colour block, not sure if that's a bug or a feature.

I really miss the build planner but I'm sure it's on it's way. Alt right clicking to deposit inventory contents into cargo will transfer any upgraded tools as well as consumables (med kits etc) erroneously.

A few other odds and ends:

It would be nice to be able to double click with a tool to toggle it on like in SE1. Hand mining is starting to hurt my finger.

Space encounters occasionally spawn on the edge of the gravity well which sends them to their doom.

Right click to drop is a tricky one to get used to for me, I lost a stack of looted lead ingots by trying to split the stack by right clicking within range of a grav gen.

Both SE's could do with an inventory sort button.

Occasionally you can struggle to get a block as registering under the crosshairs to weld or grind. Inconsistent and hard to repeat reliably but happens fairly often.

The sledge in the first mission isn't locked down to the landing pad resulting in situations where you put the ice in the ship then potter off to loot or stare at the scenery while the ship burns through all the hydrogen. A new player would be pretty confused by this.

The gravity falloff feels way too severe to me, it's only 20 kms from the surface to the edge of the gravity well and it's just a bit too arcade-ey.

Really love the inventory highlight of same items, very nice little touch that makes a big difference.

Now I'm going to be a little critical but not in an angry petulant way but in a "I want the best for this game" kind of way. It is starting to feel a *little* simplistic like a kids game.

The team say they're hearing people saying that they're afraid of them dumbing the game down but they're misunderstanding what we're saying. This is a pretty common situation over the years, we get what we asked for but never quite in the way we asked for it. There seems to be a communication barrier the community and the developers have never *quite* been able to overcome.. I don't think it's being dumbed down, I think it's being smoothed out. If something is too smooth, it can't get it's hooks into you, it just slides out of your brain.

It feels like the team is so worried about the learning curve in SE1 that they want to completely iron out any learning curves in SE2 but I keep saying this because I truly believe it, the learning curve in SE1 is fine, the players are just never actually taught how to do anything in SE1. You don't need to make the game easier, you just need to do more stuff like the intro mission in SE2 to guide players learning. People will complain that they can't figure SE1 out but you send them to Splitsie and problem solved. Honestly I think Keen owes the current new player attrition rates to Splitsie and others like him, he's kept so many people in and enjoying the game.

I think the space engineers teams (one and two) should team up with someone like Splitsie to create tutorial scenarios. He and people like him have a better beat on what the community wants from these games because they interact with them constantly as their job while also playing the game.

I also think the SE2 story so far needs a rewrite but that is definitely a separate post.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk. Loving the games possibilities so far, there's a lot of potential in it and there's a lot of fun to be had already and I'm looking forward to the future updates.