coten's feedback / suggestions.

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coten's feedback / suggestions.

Postby coten » Sun Dec 20, 2015 11:51 pm

alright! work's been keeping me busy lately but I've been having a good time at the ranch when I get the chance.
my machine:

AMD 8320 3.5GHz
8 GB RAM
Radeon R9 270 GPU
Running Windows 8.1

here's some initial feedback:

- very, very cute and silly. learning how to ranch efficiently via trial-and-error is actually quite enjoyable knowing that, if everything goes wrong, the resources you need to get started again are pretty much right in your backyard. also the little lessons you learn along the way, like "don't put your chicken coop right next to your pink slime corral unless you want to see just how high slimes can stack to get some succulent bird."

- the music I've heard so far is great! could listen to the "nondescript area" music (plays in front of the slimegate, out in the sea, etc.) all day - very relaxing. I also love the little sound effects of slimes popping up out of nowhere and of tabby slimes being jerks. shoutouts to harry.

- the jetpack is super fun to use! I greatly appreciate the ability to just walk on the canyon walls and skip gates as if it was no big deal. I also made a little trip out to the mysterious, giant black rings in the middle of the sea once I had a few upgrades, and made my way to the top and looked back out to where I came from - to be honest that's one of the most memorable moments I've had so far. personally, I hope to see a bunch more useless crap in the world to fly around to and explore.

- loot crates are always nice, but the nubuck rewards seem to have a long delay before actually landing in your account. there's also no sound effect to indicate that you've earned money from them, like the plort exchange. the slimes that come out of these crates always seem a bit... pedestrian? maybe some of the more exotic types could have a small chance of popping up from these. (except maybe boom and rad slimes. that'd be mean.)

- the applications of vac'd water weren't really clear to me when I first found a spout, mainly because I couldn't ever seem to get the Tarr's slimepedia entry until the second build. maybe that was bad luck on my end. trying to get water from spouts was also pretty tricky, as holding the vac button and approaching the spout doesn't seem to work that well... I'll have to try that again.

- I love the idea of the range exchange, but right now it's kinda weird. firstly, the trades seem to reset at noon, not midnight as Thora told me in her mail. fair enough, though; I think that works better than midnight, myself.

second, sometimes the stuff you get in return is a bit... excessive. once, about 3 or 4 days into a game, I had a trade with Ogden - a handful of three types of fruits and veg, in exchange for 24 rock slimes and 49 pink slimes. in my opinion 49 of any slime is far too many for one corral, let alone at a point in the game where you can't even fit that many in your tank! nonetheless I went ahead and completed that trade.
upon firing the last veggie into the port the crate popped out, the game stuttered for a moment, and then my ranch was completely overwhelmed with pink and blue slimes everywhere, including a few that had landed in my coop (which was opposite of the exchange machine). it took me a couple of minutes to clean up the mess, and I concluded the slimes I had gotten were ultimately more of a loss for my ranch than a gain. most of them were sent to the sea.

if trades that involve receiving that many slimes, chickens, or other items are intended to happen, I would rather have the items arrive seperately contained - perhaps in something similar to a loot crate, marked with the type of item - so that I could crack open the goods at a time and place I'm more comfortable with. or just toss the crates I don't care for into the sea, as it were.
besides that, I think that received items should pop out one at a time, continuously, so as to reduce the load on the computer and to make them easy to vac up as they exit. besides, a fountain of slimes or chickens pouring out of a crate / machine would be very funny to watch!
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coten
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Re: coten's feedback / suggestions.

Postby coten » Sun Dec 27, 2015 12:21 am

i've been playing a file that's at 21 days now, as well as trying to speedrun from the spawn to the second (unfinished) gate at the end of the Moss Blanket.
some more thoughts and a buncha suggestions:

- the Overgrowth expansion is waaaaayyy too nice to have available, compared to the Grotto! lots of pogofruit/carrots and hella chickens - unlimited pink food! - in a slime-free environment is easily worth the cost of entrance. a cave with a few plots of land inside, not so much... especially since right now neither expansion seems to save the status of what's inside its building plots correctly, save for Gardens. but I think the Grotto could use a couple veggie patches around the edges, and the chicken spawning in the Overgrowth should be toned way down (I've scooped up 25 in one pass before, yikes. maybe the spawns aren't working properly there?)

- i do not like the Solar Shade upgrade, at all. not only does it easily solve the problem that is the Grotto's main reason for existing right now, but it also darkens the view of anything inside, which is very Not Cute. especially when it can't be removed without demolishing the corral, at the moment. having this at least on a toggle would be better, so that corrals with solar shades can have a clear view of what's inside if/when Phosphors are no longer desired.

- other people have been saying this as well, but the Auto-Feeder is pretty bad at its job, and I usually just take to dumping a ton of food into a corral all at once. it's effective and i've never seen any fruits or veggies go bad while they're in a corral. I think it would be nice if very hungry / angry slimes could approach the feeder on their own and then have the feeder deposit something for that slime, since that would fill a nice niche - feeding any slimes that a big volley of food might have missed, and / or taking care of the slimes that are most likely to become feisty and try to break out.

- the vac-pack pulse wave certainly needs another look. so far I have never encountered a situation where my first thought was "my pulse feature would be a good option here", the only time I've been using it is when I'm going out of my way to try it out. it's remarkably weak, at that. slimes that were one or two metres away from me barely even got nudged. i suppose the fact that it's a defensive feature in a game that contains few "enemies" is why I don't use it.

- i miss having the Slime Filter from the first build available, and I would like to see it again, but perhaps a) as a purchasable upgrade that shows up after a few days, so that it becomes a sort of luxury, and b) with the option to use it as a push-and-hold function instead of a toggle, so that filtered suction can always be deliberate.

- i'm very curious to see what other kinds of vac-pack upgrades might be available further down in development / further into the game. more mobility game-changers like the Jetpack would be nice!

gonna try to keep speedrunning now since I think I've done everything I wanted to in my main file. End of Moss Blanket + 1 Key is gonna be my next challenge there...
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Re: coten's feedback / suggestions.

Postby coten » Sun Dec 27, 2015 12:37 am

and here's a collection of gifs to round that last post out. this feature is incredible, btw.

Image
gold slime movement and physics seem a bit... off. Nick, did you steal the Gorgo AI for these little buggers or something?


Image
so I guess what's happening here is that the Tabby behaviour makes it want to swipe food from slimes who are trying to eat it, but since all three of these largos are also pink, they all want to eat it while swiping it away from each other. the result is a cute lil' three-way tug-of-war.


Image
I suppose the Solar Shade *does* give the impression of a "face-on-glass" effect, which is hilarious. (these slimes are staring at honey plorts in the adjacent corral.)


Image
what is up with gardens, anyways? especially with the mineral soil upgrade, which promises the maximum harvest every time...


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lastly: I completed another Ogden trade. 11 carrots, 10 beets. I think the man just wants to destroy my ranch honestly. (at least he sent phosphors this time...)
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