FinalMantasyX
Banned
We were having this conversation in the hat shop thread but that was closed (and not because of this conversation), so here's a new thread to do it.
Personally, I feel that despite all the good fancy pretty fun parts, Planet Coaster as a whole feels incomplete and/or rushed. I feel like we're still beta testing the game and that it launched far too early and is missing far too many quality of life features. [sad] The game is rich and full of content and gorgeous and ambitious, but a lot of things just feel a bit lacking, and it seems that most reviewers lean towards agreement with that.
-The game launched without things like shop stock management, syncing shops, mass management of rides/guests/staff, no guest list, no scenario editor, and a few other basics from the genre including RCT3 which was entirely developed by Frontier
-They added a new aspect of management just a week ago, which must have been planned well in advance. It also doesn't work very well on top of that and is the victim of a lot of criticism (ride reputation)
-The game's management tools and gameplay are being regarded in essentially every review of the game as incomplete or lacking
-Major tools that had been criticized through the game's entire development launched without being changed (like the path tool which had additions but is still a mess to deal with, and also noted in many reviews as being a chore)
-Content was cut (Go-karts, security, picnic tables, guests getting lost, the scenario editor was planned at one point in some capacity, and I'm sure there's others I'm forgetting)
-The game's ride count is less than half that of RCT3's base game, and also the shop count
-Even new content feels incomplete, such as the shops we just got not having proper signage included. The arctic biome map was also 50% the size it should have been, which is a fair mistake to amke and was fixed within 24 hours, but it is still one of those "Nobody noticed?" situations where the player has to wonder how they could find something in 2 minutes that nobody on the dev team noticed at all
Which isa problem in game development in general, not specific to PC. Almost every developer misses obvious things the players find in minutes, not Frontier's fault I suppose.
-The water rides launched incomplete, log flume was updated in the winter patch with more controls and options
-Game balance in pretty much every way is not balanced. Guests massively over-prefer water rides, guests hate queues that are 3 minutes long, guests storm certain kinds of shops, you're rolling in cash at all times, there's little in the way of "conflict", staff training is hardly ever necessary and the benefits are not very noticable, so on
-The build and scenery systems are disjointed and follow different confusing rules, and AndyC has confirmed that they were developed as separate systems when the build mode wasn't entirely figured out yet, and they simply were never unified, which I would consider incomplete implementation
-There are a number of bugs with building that make it harder than it was in alphas (pieces don't attempt to auto-stack anymore, pieces drop to ground level when duplicated sometimes, pieces just in general move around in unexpected ways, stuff like that)
-Many build objects are missing between different build sets (Not every set has all the same pieces to make all the same things)
-Many build objects and even some rides can't be recolored when it seems like they should be recolorable
-At least two building pieces (castle minaret) are apparently placeholder models
-The game's scenarios were made before the map size was finalized and are thus forever stuck in small maps
I don't think enough of the game's features are complete enough to count as a complete game. I do feel like I'm playing an early access game. A really good one, but early access all the same.
I'm hoping it stops feeling like that soon enough, but for now, that's how it seems. The career mode/challenge mode are unplayable to me because the management just isn't there and what is there just isn't balanced. [cry] Every time I go to play the game I have to fight against balance issues and tools to do what I want to do. The game is absolutely complete in terms of art assets and whatnot (except for missing building pieces) but when it comes to game mechanics, it's not quite there yet. We did just get an entire new biome and scenery set/building set, which are beautiful (the gingerbread set is my favorite in the game), but art assets are a dime a dozen and arguably the easiest thing to add to and improve. What we really need serious improvements on are core game mechanics, which feel like they're still in a sort of testing and balancing phase.
Hopefully it continues to improve quickly in that regard. But I feel like we'd be having a better time of it if the game was still in beta, and not considered final release, or if the beta had been an appropriate length to gather feedback on all these aspects of play.
Personally, I feel that despite all the good fancy pretty fun parts, Planet Coaster as a whole feels incomplete and/or rushed. I feel like we're still beta testing the game and that it launched far too early and is missing far too many quality of life features. [sad] The game is rich and full of content and gorgeous and ambitious, but a lot of things just feel a bit lacking, and it seems that most reviewers lean towards agreement with that.
-The game launched without things like shop stock management, syncing shops, mass management of rides/guests/staff, no guest list, no scenario editor, and a few other basics from the genre including RCT3 which was entirely developed by Frontier
-They added a new aspect of management just a week ago, which must have been planned well in advance. It also doesn't work very well on top of that and is the victim of a lot of criticism (ride reputation)
-The game's management tools and gameplay are being regarded in essentially every review of the game as incomplete or lacking
-Major tools that had been criticized through the game's entire development launched without being changed (like the path tool which had additions but is still a mess to deal with, and also noted in many reviews as being a chore)
-Content was cut (Go-karts, security, picnic tables, guests getting lost, the scenario editor was planned at one point in some capacity, and I'm sure there's others I'm forgetting)
-The game's ride count is less than half that of RCT3's base game, and also the shop count
-Even new content feels incomplete, such as the shops we just got not having proper signage included. The arctic biome map was also 50% the size it should have been, which is a fair mistake to amke and was fixed within 24 hours, but it is still one of those "Nobody noticed?" situations where the player has to wonder how they could find something in 2 minutes that nobody on the dev team noticed at all
Which isa problem in game development in general, not specific to PC. Almost every developer misses obvious things the players find in minutes, not Frontier's fault I suppose. -The water rides launched incomplete, log flume was updated in the winter patch with more controls and options
-Game balance in pretty much every way is not balanced. Guests massively over-prefer water rides, guests hate queues that are 3 minutes long, guests storm certain kinds of shops, you're rolling in cash at all times, there's little in the way of "conflict", staff training is hardly ever necessary and the benefits are not very noticable, so on
-The build and scenery systems are disjointed and follow different confusing rules, and AndyC has confirmed that they were developed as separate systems when the build mode wasn't entirely figured out yet, and they simply were never unified, which I would consider incomplete implementation
-There are a number of bugs with building that make it harder than it was in alphas (pieces don't attempt to auto-stack anymore, pieces drop to ground level when duplicated sometimes, pieces just in general move around in unexpected ways, stuff like that)
-Many build objects are missing between different build sets (Not every set has all the same pieces to make all the same things)
-Many build objects and even some rides can't be recolored when it seems like they should be recolorable
-At least two building pieces (castle minaret) are apparently placeholder models
-The game's scenarios were made before the map size was finalized and are thus forever stuck in small maps
I don't think enough of the game's features are complete enough to count as a complete game. I do feel like I'm playing an early access game. A really good one, but early access all the same.
I'm hoping it stops feeling like that soon enough, but for now, that's how it seems. The career mode/challenge mode are unplayable to me because the management just isn't there and what is there just isn't balanced. [cry] Every time I go to play the game I have to fight against balance issues and tools to do what I want to do. The game is absolutely complete in terms of art assets and whatnot (except for missing building pieces) but when it comes to game mechanics, it's not quite there yet. We did just get an entire new biome and scenery set/building set, which are beautiful (the gingerbread set is my favorite in the game), but art assets are a dime a dozen and arguably the easiest thing to add to and improve. What we really need serious improvements on are core game mechanics, which feel like they're still in a sort of testing and balancing phase.
Hopefully it continues to improve quickly in that regard. But I feel like we'd be having a better time of it if the game was still in beta, and not considered final release, or if the beta had been an appropriate length to gather feedback on all these aspects of play.
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