Devs, please give us a quality of life patch.
- Thread starter DivineBeastCervi
- Start date
Guys, as much as I am in favor of all your suggestions we can't treat this game like its still in alpha/beta. Frontier won't be doing huge QoL updates, we will get the seasonal content drops until DLC(?) or Planet Coaster 2 comes out.
Especially with how they dodged this thread with their response, how could you expect a big QoL update to even happen? Matter of fact QoL updates are probably the hardest to do from a dev standpoint and the least rewarding from a sales standpoint. Showing off a brand new coaster generates a lot more sales then saying you fixed ''the pathing system'' (after half a year) for example.
Personally I hope they stop the free content drops and provide us some expansive DLC packs with new systems/features etc so we can take the game further. And provide fixes in the meantime
Especially with how they dodged this thread with their response, how could you expect a big QoL update to even happen? Matter of fact QoL updates are probably the hardest to do from a dev standpoint and the least rewarding from a sales standpoint. Showing off a brand new coaster generates a lot more sales then saying you fixed ''the pathing system'' (after half a year) for example.
Personally I hope they stop the free content drops and provide us some expansive DLC packs with new systems/features etc so we can take the game further. And provide fixes in the meantime
No, sorry, you understood the whole process very wrong, I am a programmer, let me please explain a little bit.
Collision-detection (CDT) has nothing to do with moving object in the game by user / mouse. Therefore is no CDT needed.
You can move every object in a program or engine without having CDT.
CDT means that the object you move recognizes other objects, or that "peeps" recognize that there is a tree in front of them., that is CDT.
While in building-mode the snapping uses some kind of CDT, so if you place a lamp at a wall, the lamp recognizes the wall and rotates themself and fits to the wall, thats an underlaying function of CDT.
If you remove CDT in this case you could still replace and move the lamp, but it wont rotate correctly to the wall anymore by itself, and neither fits to it. It moves and rotates still and only the way the user does.
Also if you use "Auto-tunnel", the track recognizes the terrain (CDT) and removes it. That is basically "ok", but in PC the radius where it is removed is way to big.
Try to make a groove, put a log-flume-track in it and try to put the terrain close to the log-flume-track. You wont get it it, because of CDT, you even dont get close to it.
Thats the point where CDT is a failure. Lets put it of if user wants, so you can lower terrain manualy out of the track if it clips through it, but that way you can get it completely close to the track.
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I don't know exactly how long it took, but It wasn't easy and even now its only implemented half way there.
What you are describing would be awesome, but it isn't realistic to expect. Especially for a game like Planet Coaster where we can place as many objects as we want, wherever we want. And what do you mean with the fake water? I have seen some people want actual fluid dynamics to make rivers and waterfalls but honestly these suggestions are ridiculous. [tongue] RCTW and Cities Skylines have kind of dynamic water but it isn't really useful and does look extremely ugly (because to simulate 'real' water that looks good in real time will destroy the performance).
Interesting. The tools the game offers us are very advanced, but it is true they have a lot of arbitrary limitations put in place that limit the full potential of those tools (things like coaster restrictions or grid-sizes for instance). The tools also often miss certain more 'advanced' options that would really make everything work so much better (and easier!). For instance, trying to make an actual smooth coaster is just impossible now. For new/casual players, this gives the impression that they just aren't good enough to play this game, despite it being the game that limits the player, and for experienced players these limitations really get in the way of our creativity. For both groups this leads to frustration.
The game has so many amazing tools that are limited by the lack of more advanced options. Planet Coaster is a great game but it could be so much better if we had access to the advanced options.
Of course, PC is a great game, I dont wanna say anything else, they are great developers.
What I simply wanna tell is, that I dont see for what kind of group this game is meant to be, and this is important for its controls and features, and what I blame Frontier for.
For Kids the tools are mostly too complicated, Kids dont know about block-brakes, liftspeeds, or many other things. So I think this group mostly need the blueprints with less functions to change things. "Place and Play", only have fun with the game, thats OK.
But on the other hand there are those "RCT-Freaks", which want much much more. The actual tools are completely missing this group. So I am missing the decision what this game is ? Kiddie-Game, or some more advanced? For a kiddie-game also the path system is much too complicated, it still doesnt work for many "big"-Users (as me) without straits.
Thats where it comes to the base. The engine is not the right choice. Doing big parks with many "peeps" and good graphics cant be done with CPU only. But thats the first big miss that PC has, it cant use GPU and thats a no-go im my eyes.
I mean it is not that we cant get a fully realistic game, but there is still much QOL missing. A little bit more realistic water, dark buildings, better lightning, ...
The coaster-builder in PC is such a thing I am also wondering about it. I always see lots of coasters, that are way to rough, with too sharp corners, the cars would derail in reality. But you are still too much restricted in building, because your restricted the wrong way, and thats where I miss the QOL in this game. Smooth coaster could easier be possible if Frontier had taken a look at RCTW (yes, in this part is RCTW better, because they use a spline-based-system where you mostly get smooth tracks) and Themepark-Studio, this has an excellent coaster-builder, including options for individal supports. Sam puts so much effort onto realistic coasters, but the tools didnt get the work done in that quality they should, so ... realistic game or not ?
So there is again the point: For many people this unsmooth coasters are good enough, they dont know and dont see the difference (realistic <-> unrealistic) and all those little tweeks that make it unrealistic.
The performance-problems could half solved if they make all management-things optional disable. As I see there are two groups playing this game. Those who wanna do a park based on real management (but for that you need correct scaled prices) and those who only wanna build park without money-management. Last users suck up all CPU, because of big parks, many details, ... but half-CPU is used for calculating how much hamburgers have been sold last month. Again a thing I dont understand, making a sandbox-park doesnt need money-management od money att all. Disable it and you have more power for calculating important things.
I asked this a developer many weeks ago if it would make sense doing that, but as ever no "communication".
I could write so much more, but thats not part of this QOL- topic here.
And for all hardcore-fans here again: I am not a PC-Hater but I see things more critical and ask more questions ... and I still have some about PC [yesnod]
What I simply wanna tell is, that I dont see for what kind of group this game is meant to be, and this is important for its controls and features, and what I blame Frontier for.
For Kids the tools are mostly too complicated, Kids dont know about block-brakes, liftspeeds, or many other things. So I think this group mostly need the blueprints with less functions to change things. "Place and Play", only have fun with the game, thats OK.
But on the other hand there are those "RCT-Freaks", which want much much more. The actual tools are completely missing this group. So I am missing the decision what this game is ? Kiddie-Game, or some more advanced? For a kiddie-game also the path system is much too complicated, it still doesnt work for many "big"-Users (as me) without straits.
Thats where it comes to the base. The engine is not the right choice. Doing big parks with many "peeps" and good graphics cant be done with CPU only. But thats the first big miss that PC has, it cant use GPU and thats a no-go im my eyes.
I mean it is not that we cant get a fully realistic game, but there is still much QOL missing. A little bit more realistic water, dark buildings, better lightning, ...
The coaster-builder in PC is such a thing I am also wondering about it. I always see lots of coasters, that are way to rough, with too sharp corners, the cars would derail in reality. But you are still too much restricted in building, because your restricted the wrong way, and thats where I miss the QOL in this game. Smooth coaster could easier be possible if Frontier had taken a look at RCTW (yes, in this part is RCTW better, because they use a spline-based-system where you mostly get smooth tracks) and Themepark-Studio, this has an excellent coaster-builder, including options for individal supports. Sam puts so much effort onto realistic coasters, but the tools didnt get the work done in that quality they should, so ... realistic game or not ?
So there is again the point: For many people this unsmooth coasters are good enough, they dont know and dont see the difference (realistic <-> unrealistic) and all those little tweeks that make it unrealistic.
The performance-problems could half solved if they make all management-things optional disable. As I see there are two groups playing this game. Those who wanna do a park based on real management (but for that you need correct scaled prices) and those who only wanna build park without money-management. Last users suck up all CPU, because of big parks, many details, ... but half-CPU is used for calculating how much hamburgers have been sold last month. Again a thing I dont understand, making a sandbox-park doesnt need money-management od money att all. Disable it and you have more power for calculating important things.
I asked this a developer many weeks ago if it would make sense doing that, but as ever no "communication".
I could write so much more, but thats not part of this QOL- topic here.
And for all hardcore-fans here again: I am not a PC-Hater but I see things more critical and ask more questions ... and I still have some about PC [yesnod]
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I would agree with heartily with a QoL patch, as well as more communication. I knew there were issues with a lot of things at launch, but I also knew it would take them some time to address the major ones. But now it's been 6 months. It's no longer too early to ask for more clarification about what they will be able to do going forward. Absent that, I think we should consider it "done." :/
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This exactly! The game currently is neither fish nor fowl. The gameplay and challenge are too shallow and robotic to make it a proper game, and the building tools are too limited to call it a proper sandbox or design toy.
The building system is the same thing. It is way too complicated to build simple buildings, especially with all the unpolished glitches that seem to fight against you (shift key that is getting stuck, gizmo unpredictable, incorrect hitboxes for selection, grid setting not remembering your setting, etc). Yet, real advanced builders don't have the tools to correctly align, mirror or distribute objects, let alone a proper set of neutral art assets to begin with. The included assets are too shiny, too bulky and stamped with a watermark for some bizarre reason. The props and animatronics look really nice, but they are too specific and overly detailed, meaning that you can only use it in very specific situations and everybody's scenes will look the same. There is not a single thing to customize them or make it yours, not even a little accent color. Hey, even that infamous Mr. Bones statue from RCT1 had a recolorable band on his tophat!
Well said. I agree with your general message but you do have some misconceptions.
The engine is the right choice. The game runs pretty good if you consider what it actually does. And it doesn't only use the CPU, where did you get this information? The lighting engine is also really good. It would be a cool feature if items blocked all the light, but it is understandable that this is not possible due to performance reasons. The water could look better, agreed, but some people want actual fluid dynamics to create rivers and waterfalls... [wacky]
The coaster builder really doesn't do the amazing coaster assets justice. I don't think it's bad, however. It almost has the perfect balance between 'advanced' and 'easy to use'. It just missing some tiny advanced options to make smooth coasters, which should easily be able to be implemented if Frontier uses a decent spline system.
Most CPU power is used for the guest path-finding if i am not mistaken here. Disabling more management features would not really impact this.
The general idea is that the game just lacks the options to give us total freedom. And as a sandbox builder it really should have as many options as possible. It doesn't matter if some of these options are very advanced, since you don't need to use them.
I mean why not build in the options for maximum shadow and then let give us the choice to use it or not?
Yeah so we should motivate kids these days to actually learn about these things. Back then I had to google/ or alltavista search or even ask my dad who knew nothing about games what it would do. Those were the times. You'd actually learn something
Haha yeah, I remember my mother translating quest logs in Runescape for me. [big grin] Difficulty is a good thing. If you cannot learn and improve in a game because everything is dumbed down so people with an IQ of 70 can play there is nothing exciting left anymore..
I don't really understand what you're talking about. What was complex about RCT1?
PC's building tools are surely a bit more complex and take some time to learn.
On-topic:
Yes, I would also prefer a QoL update next instead of just more rides/scenery content.
I believe the difficulties with PC's tools have nothing to do with age/ IQ/ willingness to learn from its audience. The difficulty doesn't lie in the complexity, in fact the building tool is (way too) limited and simplistic, hardly evolved since 2002's RCT2. It's the quirks and weird, buggy behavior that make it hard to work with.
Same goes for the coaster editor. The tool itself is okay-ish and intuitive enough for this kind of game, some might even argue that it is not going far enough. But again, the challenge is learning to work with the bugs, the unpredictable results of the auto smoother and arbitrary limitations on track length, banking and collision detection. Sure, when playing often you'll learn about workarounds, things you should avoid, glitches that happen so often you start to anticipate them.
But that is not a learning curve and has nothing to do with mastering the game! It is not the players responsibility to cope with the game's design flaws and glitches, It's the developers responsibility to tackle them. And that brings us back to where this thread is all about.
Same goes for the coaster editor. The tool itself is okay-ish and intuitive enough for this kind of game, some might even argue that it is not going far enough. But again, the challenge is learning to work with the bugs, the unpredictable results of the auto smoother and arbitrary limitations on track length, banking and collision detection. Sure, when playing often you'll learn about workarounds, things you should avoid, glitches that happen so often you start to anticipate them.
But that is not a learning curve and has nothing to do with mastering the game! It is not the players responsibility to cope with the game's design flaws and glitches, It's the developers responsibility to tackle them. And that brings us back to where this thread is all about.
I had mainly the timeline from rct3 in mind when writing that but that was from another thread
This, a million times this! Currently we have to resort to 'tricks' to make things work better, and even glitches in some cases. Since these 'tricks' aren't even intended to be there, they often are incredibly tedious, frustrating and unpredictable.
And all this wouldn't be a problem if we were talking about small things, but currently the three most important aspects of the game are affected by this; the coaster builder (arbitrary limitations, lack of options and control over the track resulting unsmooth coasters), path system (path-terrain interaction doesn't work at all, have to use glitch to get smooth path connections) and the building (3D gizmo is still buggy and frustrating to use).
Because the game is of a very high quality, these problems are very noticeable.
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