Not sure if this belongs here or in the Ody Discussion sub forum, but here goes:
Biggest Positives:
Biggest Negatives:
Install Experience:
Initial on Foot Impressions:
Biggest Positives:
- Smooth launch.
- Stability looks great especially in VR compared to VR in Horizon/Beyond.
- The VR QoL improvements are appreciated. It would be nice to be able to set separate VR graphics vs flat screen graphical settings that are loaded independently depending on if the game is launched into an HMD mode or normal flat screen.
- The Graphical changes look nice in general.
- The new on foot tutorial worked well enough. Despite the pilot's voice not being paired with mouth animations.It was nice getting to see the inside of a cobra mk 4.
- The new gui element are generally very intuitive with a few notable exceptions.
- The game still seems to work well in linux virtually out of the box. Only Dot net 4.5.2 needed to be installed (seems to be a steam launcher requirement, and not for the stand alone with seems to still work with older versions of dot net) for proton to work, and the game helpfully mentioned the exact version of dot net needed.
Biggest Negatives:
- The handling of suit mechanic feels like an attempt to simply sell way more skins. It is like requiring a mining python, a combat python, and exploration python to each need their own entirely separate skins. Having skins that apply to an armour type such as light, medium, or heavy armour regardless of how each suit was equipped. It would have served a similar purpose, but been far less blatant. If cosmetics are going to drive game design at least do it in a less obvious manner. Plausible deniability is a good thing.
- Engineering effects need to be visibly listed on modules in storage not just the stats. Is this a phasing pulse laser or a scramble spectrum pulse laser? As is you do not know until the modules get transferred in.
- Performance is not quite in an ideal place. It is serviceable with an GTX 1070.
- The Yellow used in Outfitting is terrible. Having text or the solid block behind the text is fine yellow, but having the entire left 1/3 of the screen that color is too much to my mind. Orange module graphics on a gray background more like how guardian modules are displayed could work.
- The gui has been buggy when the ship is down where outfitting gets done (in the hanger) with the entire gui just completely disappearing. The new Gui needs a bit more polish.
- The initial steam install had 92 corrupted files that caused a black screen on launch. You could probably avoid some tech support issues if the steam launcher/ game recognized a first game launch post install, and popped up a progress bar while the file integrity is verified.
Install Experience:
- Standalone launcher was fine, steam had corrupt files. Being able to preload was nice.
- Possibly the smoothest major launch yet. Which is amazing all things considered.
- Not having to manually install a new version of the launcher is very much appreciated. The install was very smooth.
Initial on Foot Impressions:
- It is easy to get lost in buildings. Navigating around settlements could be easier. The upper right corner of the screen could be a more zoomed out minimap showing building relative locations, and a interior lay out in buildings. Being able to set one waypoint pointer at a time from a terminal is not enough and too clunky. Using the terminal to identify target locations and identifying potentially valuable stuff to steal etc is still a good idea.
- Having laser weapons become more inaccurate as 'the barrel heats up' near identically to slug throwers does not feel great. An alternative would be to have non-linear heat ramping, and reduced damage at high heat to achieve the same effective reduction in effective dps. An over heating error state/ malfunction when firing at high heat for too long that took a few seconds to clear as the weapon cools would work also. Laser rifles should be tack drivers if used effectively.
- Point defense emplacements should be on towers rather a bit taller than the buildings. Having them located between to 2 story tall building severely limited there effectiveness.
- Having primary anti-ship defenses tied to the main reactor in an all or nothing manner is a good idea. Point defense towers should need to be disabled/fixed on a tower by tower basis. A command center or terminal hack option to momentarily (a few seconds, perhaps 10 seconds or vulnerability) confuse point defense targeting settlement wide could still work to allow surgical ship based strikes to get though the defenses.
- In the new shipyard menus the selected ships should spin slowly on their own, and the player should be able to spin them in 3D to look at all parts of the ship exterior if they wish. If 2/3 of screen is going to be devoted to showing the ship model make the most of it. The ship models in the ship yard were slow to load. Speeding this model loading up would make using the new shipyard a lot nicer.
- The new mission gui is quite nice. Highlighting the button to hand in missions with a pulsing effect or similar would be nice when missions are ready to be completed. Having the mission giver images centered above the available missions would be nice. Having a clear filter option (or a few to clear specific types of filters) located next to the photos of the mission givers might be nice. The current click to select and then again to deselect is not going to be clear to everyone. View all mission givers or clear filter buttons with popup as needed would be clearer.
- The new local galnet in station menu is nice if a bit hard to read in vr.