Post by kynalvarus on Feb 27, 2014 14:35:04 GMT -5
I've been bashing around the NBZ for a few weeks since I bought Elite, trying to figure out how to make a Knight who doesn't get turned into road pizza daily. (You Brutal players...yikes!) I'm pretty patient when I like the theme and style of a game, and I certainly do like this one! However, I can see why this game is self-reported by the Trese Bros. as having a low retention rate. Here are some observations of oddities and some of my suggestions, in no particular order. I'm sure some have been reported before.
1a) It's weird to get a package delivery job from Vinny the Rat over the Matrix phone line and have a SecPak appear in my inventory. I think this would make more sense if phone connectors followed what appears to be the V2 rule, where a package delivery may require you to pick up at location X then deliver to location Y.
1b) So far, whenever I do get a package job from a connector who does the above, the destination is always the same as the connector. I suppose that if a phone connector was going to offer a package job, they'd have to tell you both the pickup and the drop-off point in advance so you could decide if you wanted to do it.
2) I really like the V2 Connector idea in general, it's what motivated me to buy the game after picking it up for the 2nd time. IMHO there needs to be a way to note which connectors do what, in-game. It would be cool if you had to visit them to unlock that information, but once unlocked, how about a note on their icon or name in the navigation map? Information overload is already a problem with this game, trying to keep track of what is where, and so anything that reduces that seems good to me.
3) IMHO the PDA feature is under-utilized, and could serve as a reminder system for all sorts of interactions. What if it noted significant events, not just MnB story points? I.e. "I took a job X at location Y to do Z", "I succeeded/failed job X and earned/lost Y reputation, Z heat and Q yen," "I bought/sold X to shopkeeper/backroom/v-chip contact Y at location Z." Obviously this would eventually generate a fair bit of log for older characters, so down the road some search/filter capability would be nice. For starters, just having such an activity log would IMHO help new players stay oriented as to what they've been doing and what the consequences were.
4a) Survivability in combat strongly depends on understanding that you get an extra action in a combat round if you saved 3AP or more, but not 1-2AP. This needs a bigger spotlight put on it for newbies. It appears that some AI enemies understand this and some don't.
4b) Likewise, the ability to stall by burning 1AP not moving is very useful and IMHO should be highlighted. Why charge the enemy guns when you can wait and have them burn their AP charging you? Winning initiative is not a good thing when you and your foes are mutually out of range.
5) If you begin combat near a wall, it is possible for your party and your enemies to start scattered on both sides of it. I once had this happen to me right before I delivered an escort mission to Fairlight Medical Warehouse(?) and wound up on the Blue Ox side of the wall. I was never able to make it back through six zones to get back there, and eventually restarted with a new character in frustration.
6a) It's easy to lose track of which team member is selected when you're in a dialog. I've gotten burned a couple of times buying an implant for a runner when I wanted it for my knight. How about some sort of note on that screen as to which character is active?
6b) The shortage of different face portraits for runners makes 6a worse. I've wound up with a team of three identical mohawked thugs, one a Gunslinger runner, one a Cybersword runner, and one a Cybersword mercenary. It was a repeated PITA to figure out which was which. I know that art takes time or costs money, but maybe a little note under the portraits with name & class would help?
7) It seems that it's possible to get so exhausted that Crammers won't work, but there's no way to tell that except to waste a Cram shot trying. Bug, or feature? ;-)
8) Contacts, particularly random V-chips, that don't do anything. I'm guessing these might be reputation- or story-driven? IMHO it's disapointing to get a cool-sounding V-chip, like "The Alchemist," only to have no possible interactions when you call.
9) Data courier jobs and the amount of secure headware memory required seem to count computer memory sometimes and not at other times. It seems like it settled down by the third job on my current hacker char, but on the first it said I had over 100MP available when I only had a 40MP implant.
10) I see from other posts here that the hacking system is planned for a revamp. Where is it now, for me? After reading some of the guides here, I finally came up with an early-career hacking strategy that kinda works. Before that, I was bashing my head into the digital wall and couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.
a) Clearly, until you get your hacking skill and active MP improved, it's much lower difficulty to physically go to a zone and hack its local net from the data terminal there. Cruising the NBZ Exchange at will is for more experienced hackers. However, when you first hack a local terminal, the default network is always DT&T. If you're not clear as to what you're doing yet, this is a big waste of your time, as the difficulty levels there are high. The second network link is nearly always useless apparently-not-yet-implemented stuff like E!Net, STAR-Net, or GRID-LINK. It's not until the third option that you actually hit something your young hacker with H=4 can actually hope to succeed at with any frequency, which is raiding whatever the local net is for the local faction's paydata. Finally, the most fully implemented part of the Matrix net is for some reason the fourth option, the NBZ exchange. IMHO this would be easier for newbie hackers to get started if the easier local targets were always first up, and the more advanced targets later in that first connection list.
b) If you come up against a firewall you can't crack, you can't disconnect from it, you just have to hope it force-crashes you loose before your time expires. Bug, or feature?
c) It doesn't make sense to me that you can get a full time bar back at the same dataport you just hacked. IMHO this should work more like hotels and heat - you should have to change data terminals regularly, or your benefits go down and your risks go up.
11) It really hurts when you lose a well-equipped runner in battle but win the fight, and all their gear is forever gone. Implants, sure, those can't be transferred. I'd hope that a battle victory would let you at least salvage their weapons.
12) I wonder if there are any plans for a surrender option? I mean, if you get clearly overmatched, maybe you should get one chance to throw down your weapons and beg them to call off the drones/dogs/thugs? IMHO it shouldn't be available if you'd already killed some of them, had a really bad reputation with them, or were an assassination target. However, in cases where it's all a big mistake, maybe you get a roll of the virtual dice to see if you can get them to stop short of killing you all and instead just take some of your stuff & creds? Maybe spare your lives, but beat you out of all MP then leave you in the gutter? If they've got no personal reasons to want you dead, then giving you a pull on the "Oh, Crap" lever might make the game a bit less unforgiving.
I think that's enough for now... ;-) I don't want to come off too negative, as I don't normally write essays of this length about games I don't really like! Keep up the good work, and I hope CK can grow into a real hit!
1a) It's weird to get a package delivery job from Vinny the Rat over the Matrix phone line and have a SecPak appear in my inventory. I think this would make more sense if phone connectors followed what appears to be the V2 rule, where a package delivery may require you to pick up at location X then deliver to location Y.
1b) So far, whenever I do get a package job from a connector who does the above, the destination is always the same as the connector. I suppose that if a phone connector was going to offer a package job, they'd have to tell you both the pickup and the drop-off point in advance so you could decide if you wanted to do it.
2) I really like the V2 Connector idea in general, it's what motivated me to buy the game after picking it up for the 2nd time. IMHO there needs to be a way to note which connectors do what, in-game. It would be cool if you had to visit them to unlock that information, but once unlocked, how about a note on their icon or name in the navigation map? Information overload is already a problem with this game, trying to keep track of what is where, and so anything that reduces that seems good to me.
3) IMHO the PDA feature is under-utilized, and could serve as a reminder system for all sorts of interactions. What if it noted significant events, not just MnB story points? I.e. "I took a job X at location Y to do Z", "I succeeded/failed job X and earned/lost Y reputation, Z heat and Q yen," "I bought/sold X to shopkeeper/backroom/v-chip contact Y at location Z." Obviously this would eventually generate a fair bit of log for older characters, so down the road some search/filter capability would be nice. For starters, just having such an activity log would IMHO help new players stay oriented as to what they've been doing and what the consequences were.
4a) Survivability in combat strongly depends on understanding that you get an extra action in a combat round if you saved 3AP or more, but not 1-2AP. This needs a bigger spotlight put on it for newbies. It appears that some AI enemies understand this and some don't.
4b) Likewise, the ability to stall by burning 1AP not moving is very useful and IMHO should be highlighted. Why charge the enemy guns when you can wait and have them burn their AP charging you? Winning initiative is not a good thing when you and your foes are mutually out of range.
5) If you begin combat near a wall, it is possible for your party and your enemies to start scattered on both sides of it. I once had this happen to me right before I delivered an escort mission to Fairlight Medical Warehouse(?) and wound up on the Blue Ox side of the wall. I was never able to make it back through six zones to get back there, and eventually restarted with a new character in frustration.
6a) It's easy to lose track of which team member is selected when you're in a dialog. I've gotten burned a couple of times buying an implant for a runner when I wanted it for my knight. How about some sort of note on that screen as to which character is active?
6b) The shortage of different face portraits for runners makes 6a worse. I've wound up with a team of three identical mohawked thugs, one a Gunslinger runner, one a Cybersword runner, and one a Cybersword mercenary. It was a repeated PITA to figure out which was which. I know that art takes time or costs money, but maybe a little note under the portraits with name & class would help?
7) It seems that it's possible to get so exhausted that Crammers won't work, but there's no way to tell that except to waste a Cram shot trying. Bug, or feature? ;-)
8) Contacts, particularly random V-chips, that don't do anything. I'm guessing these might be reputation- or story-driven? IMHO it's disapointing to get a cool-sounding V-chip, like "The Alchemist," only to have no possible interactions when you call.
9) Data courier jobs and the amount of secure headware memory required seem to count computer memory sometimes and not at other times. It seems like it settled down by the third job on my current hacker char, but on the first it said I had over 100MP available when I only had a 40MP implant.
10) I see from other posts here that the hacking system is planned for a revamp. Where is it now, for me? After reading some of the guides here, I finally came up with an early-career hacking strategy that kinda works. Before that, I was bashing my head into the digital wall and couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.
a) Clearly, until you get your hacking skill and active MP improved, it's much lower difficulty to physically go to a zone and hack its local net from the data terminal there. Cruising the NBZ Exchange at will is for more experienced hackers. However, when you first hack a local terminal, the default network is always DT&T. If you're not clear as to what you're doing yet, this is a big waste of your time, as the difficulty levels there are high. The second network link is nearly always useless apparently-not-yet-implemented stuff like E!Net, STAR-Net, or GRID-LINK. It's not until the third option that you actually hit something your young hacker with H=4 can actually hope to succeed at with any frequency, which is raiding whatever the local net is for the local faction's paydata. Finally, the most fully implemented part of the Matrix net is for some reason the fourth option, the NBZ exchange. IMHO this would be easier for newbie hackers to get started if the easier local targets were always first up, and the more advanced targets later in that first connection list.
b) If you come up against a firewall you can't crack, you can't disconnect from it, you just have to hope it force-crashes you loose before your time expires. Bug, or feature?
c) It doesn't make sense to me that you can get a full time bar back at the same dataport you just hacked. IMHO this should work more like hotels and heat - you should have to change data terminals regularly, or your benefits go down and your risks go up.
11) It really hurts when you lose a well-equipped runner in battle but win the fight, and all their gear is forever gone. Implants, sure, those can't be transferred. I'd hope that a battle victory would let you at least salvage their weapons.
12) I wonder if there are any plans for a surrender option? I mean, if you get clearly overmatched, maybe you should get one chance to throw down your weapons and beg them to call off the drones/dogs/thugs? IMHO it shouldn't be available if you'd already killed some of them, had a really bad reputation with them, or were an assassination target. However, in cases where it's all a big mistake, maybe you get a roll of the virtual dice to see if you can get them to stop short of killing you all and instead just take some of your stuff & creds? Maybe spare your lives, but beat you out of all MP then leave you in the gutter? If they've got no personal reasons to want you dead, then giving you a pull on the "Oh, Crap" lever might make the game a bit less unforgiving.
I think that's enough for now... ;-) I don't want to come off too negative, as I don't normally write essays of this length about games I don't really like! Keep up the good work, and I hope CK can grow into a real hit!