• Something that i feel need a revision are the rewards of the Mystery Ylands
I think those ylands are a really cool concept and there is a lot of potential behind the idea, but kinda feel like a waste of time, i don't obtain something meaningful for the gameplay, don't make me progress inside the game, and a currency is required in order to enter (exploration points), so most of the time is better to sail the seas and hope to get lucky with a shipwreck
So in resume, the mystery ylands need better reward, because the reward don't match the requirement
• Another big thing that might need a balance is the difficulty of the game
The game is too easy, the AI is so exploitable, most of the enemies in the caves don't attack if you shoot them (may be a bug) just run around, if you have a gun + a propeller pack you are immortal and can kill everything. there is no multiplayer content or something you need to do/attack in groups, if you are in your ship you are just immortal, nothing can reach you, nothing will attack you.
Some things that could help in this regard are:
- Make that some enemies attack from distance (use guns, spells, throw rocks at you)
- Add fortress or fortified harbors in the shore of some ylands with canons and enemies, that you need to attack by land or by sea with your friends
- Add NPC pirate ships or/and cargo ships that will attack you or defend themselves if you attack them
- Stronger NPCs bosses
- Do some changes to the propeller pack
• Weapons
i like that some guns can seem very similar at first sight but have different reload time, different ammo capacity, different fire rate and looks like might have different aim cone, or at least different crosshair
Right now i feel that the melee weapons don't follow this path, looks like you only choose the weapon that does more damage and you are fine (some weapon type seem to attack a bit more faster than others, and a few have different animation, maybe could be nice to accentuate this difference so the weapons don't feel all the same), could be interesting to explore the idea of more situational approach for SOME weapons, for example all the frost weapons could apply a slow debuff that could help you or your friends to kill some very difficult bosses (can be a bit dangerous for pvp, depend on the application) or maybe the normal hit don't apply slow but the charged hit would (with no damage or very little damage so it's not so OP), or the charged hit could create a temporary ice area where you are slow if you step on it, or weapons with fire that leave a fire over time damage debuff and some mobs or bosses could have a damage type weak point (Slashing damage weak point, Piercing damage weak point) , stuff like that
• Crafting
I think we need an Arrastra or something similar to crush Sandstone into Sand, it take a lot of time and clicks to produce sand from sandstone, the same for Gravel, but i haven't found a use for it yet
Consider adding a cheap tailoring table in which you can make all the clothes with no armor properties
The resources needed for some building blocks need a rework, for example making a dock/pier is more cheaper if you use normal wooden blocks, if you use the Wooden Pier blocks you are wasting resources
Something that for sure need some love is the UI inside some crafting tables, for example:
In the blacksmith forge we can have more than 160 different items, can we have a collapsible category system? or something so we can have a better navigation • The Food topic
i feel that the food is too easy to find, there is a lot of food in each yland (fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, meat, you can fish everywhere)
All the food is kinda the same, you only need to eat a bit more units of some, apart from that there are no differences between raw food and cooked food
You don't need to stock up in food in order to prepare for an expedition or big exploration trip
There is no real reason to have a plantation (maybe only for cotton or similar at the start and of course trees for wood)
- My thoughts about it:
I kinda like the idea of the food to spoil over time, BUT i use food for decoration too, so maybe one option could be to add the tag FRESH for some time to the food (after preparation/hunt/gather), and after some time the food would loose the fresh tag (but dont spoil, just enter in a normal status). Then you don't penalize the people that eat old food, you just give a tiny buff to people that eat fresh food, maybe a bit more stamina or stamina regeneration, maybe a tiny benefit to accuracy with weapons or stuff like that, so some people can still eat old food or the same food over and over, if they want, without any punishment
Maybe you can add a refrigerator to extend the "fresh" status of the food
Other way to implement an optional method of food consumption could be the implementation of a Compost Bin, you put food in it and you can obtain compost overt time, the compost could be used to buff your plantations/crops (you obtain more fruits/vegetables per plant). This will require a bit of a farming overhaul, and for that to happen the food should be a bit harder to obtain or in less quantities, for example, not all the Corn Plant in the wild should have Corn, and if it have maybe you find only 1 corn per plant, if you want more corn per plant you should have a plantation at your base, and also you can make that the corn you obtain from your own plantation will stay fresh for more time, stuff like that
Other thing could be the implementation of Biofuel as an alternative fuel for engines. It will require some types of food in order to make biofuel
• Resources
I love the non destructive way to obtain some resources, for example rubber with the knife on the rubber tree, but it take a lot of time for only 1 unit of raw rubber, but if i chop the tree (it take more or less the same time) i obtain more raw rubber, and also obtain sub products like logs, sticks, wooden pieces and stuff like that, AND also i obtain like 3 seeds to plant more, so i think that need a balance
• World
I love that there are different biomes with different resources and with a distinctive look and feel. One thing I can say in this regard is that I often find myself sailing in a straight line with nothing to see/do and without the need to pay attention of my surrounding, also feel that the game have a really cool land vehicle system with a lot of potential that sadly is a bit wasted because the ylands are a bit small for a car and the topology (most of the time) is not very car friendly, also we cant carry vehicles on ships, so we only can use the cars in the yland where our base is.
- Something to explore here maybe could be that the desert could have bigger ylands or the ratio land/sea could be bigger (in favor of the land) than the other biomes, so maybe this biome has a bigger land exploration component in its design, and if we could carry vehicles on our ships would be the dream. Maybe this is hard to achieve and the physics can turn a bit crazy with the car on the ship, but you can explore with a new item, component or platform that you install in your ship and can attach the car temporally to the geometry of the ship, idk
Add some stuff that could make the navigation process a bit more engaging, because i think the sea navigation is underdeveloped in comparison with the land and underwater gameplay
For example:
- Loot floating around, that is not marked on the compass, maybe a box with some loot inside, or a bottle with a note inside with some hidden tips, so with this if you pay attention to the surrounding you can receive some tiny rewards for that, also can be a good idea to make you put lights on the ship
- Something else could be like a long distance land hint, maybe like a group of birds flying in a particular direction in which you can find an yland or something like that, that is not shown on the HUD
Also adding NPC ships could make the seas feel more alive
