Hi,
I am going to share my 2 cents about the current state of the game, and why I believe there is a gap between the implementations of the core mechanics, and what the player actually experience.
My first impression is that this game is designed around systems first, and players' experience second. By that I mean systems are not designed around the player flow, but the other way around, where systems are implemented first, and the player flow tailored around what we have.
Here is one example of what I mean, and what a hypothetical design solving this could be. The very first thing you will expect your average player to do in a game like this is to head out, shoot, and kill stuff. In a game like MO2, this could mean ensuring that there is a well-thought-out player experience designed around playing a hunter, roaming around town, maybe even playing a sort of survivalist. It's a common archetype in this kind of game that the player can transition out of when its character gets more specialized. In a game where you always respawn naked, it is a great way for a new player to get back on its feet by crafting the basics in the wild. Here is where it gets odd, though. Even though all the systems are seemingly in place, the hunting experience is subpar. No way to build a camp, or to craft stuff on your own outside city walls. This means that there is no such thing as playing a lone hunter to kick-start your character. As for the hunt itself, killing animals right now just feel completely off. The static spawns kill off any sensation that you're hunting a creature, and instead feel like you're gathering another static resource. Some spawns are also just poor, one herd spawns right on top of a bandit camp, yet the map is empty for miles around the camp. The movement and behavior of the animals is probably the biggest turn off. The movement is erratic, and it feels like animals are just spinning around being dragged by an invisible pole. There is no tell in what direction the animal will lead next, nor does it feel like it is escaping effectively. In some scenarios, the animal would just get stuck in a loop between the same few coordinates. The kill also does not feel satisfying. I would expect the lowliest animals to die in just a few arrows, rather than having to engage in a goofy chase with a springbok running around with 10 arrows in its heart. Last, the actual collect & skin part of the game is not even satisfying. The animal just vanishes into a loot bag, not only making the corpse extremely hard to spot but also somewhat damping the satisfaction of skinning your prey. The looting, collecting, butchering & overall inventory management of this process scream like a "loot & inventory" system was put in place, and the experience of the player was designed around the limitations of this system, rather than designing the system around a good, minimal friction, player flow. The plant gathering mechanic is also guilty of this, as right now, I feel like I am looting a container while gathering herbs. All those cool features, but no visual or smooth interaction for gathering materials. That's odd, no?
Now, maybe I am just ranting, but my point is that all those issues stern from the fact that the hunting experience was not designed to be cohesive from the get-go. It just is that layering "systems" on top of each other gave us a semblance of hunting experience, instead of building the systems to accommodate the desired end goal for hunting. Here's some ideas: Players don't need to visit a crafting station, or a city for the basics, bonus point if there is some survivalist skill that allows this. Herds are a thing, but don't just have the spawners 10 springbok on the same spot and call it a day. Springboks should be harder to find, hard to land a first shot, and easy to finish off. As for the movement, whatever logic is driving this, it's not working. I can feel the pathfinding system having a stroke when animals are fleeing. I would much rather have a springbok run smoothly, with a limited local avoidance algorithm, at the risk of the animal getting stuck easily on the terrain, rather than have this current movement logic where it is painfully obvious that the animal is calculating a rigid path many times over, this does not look natural, and this is not a good representation of how those creatures think and behave afaik. Let me skin/pick up the corpse. Why is that lootbag a thing for NPCs? Don't force me through an inventory grid, a keyboard hotkey, plus another pop-up window, to skin and butcher my animal, please.
The "hunter path" was the first example to come to my mind, but to me it's obvious most of the "career paths" in the game are not very well thought out in terms of UX, and that just stacking more systems will not always be the solution. In my hunter example, I really feel like I am just interacting with systems, rather than just letting the flow guide me into an immersive experience. Sure, maybe the team knows about it, maybe everyone is aware of those minor changes that could make the experience better and it's planned somewhere. But to me, the fact that we are this close to the release and the world still being this empty is alarming. This is a huge tell that engineering is driving the design, and not the other way around. A basic, satisfying hunting/gathering loop should have been completed long ago for those features to be considered "done", and the wilderness spawns should have been placed, with each test refining the balance of the placement for each town. If this basic loop is fun, your players are gonna be hooked. Now try to do the same for all the "starter paths" that you can think of, eg: trader, adventurer, farmer/tamer. Refining those flows should be the priority.
I am going to share my 2 cents about the current state of the game, and why I believe there is a gap between the implementations of the core mechanics, and what the player actually experience.
My first impression is that this game is designed around systems first, and players' experience second. By that I mean systems are not designed around the player flow, but the other way around, where systems are implemented first, and the player flow tailored around what we have.
Here is one example of what I mean, and what a hypothetical design solving this could be. The very first thing you will expect your average player to do in a game like this is to head out, shoot, and kill stuff. In a game like MO2, this could mean ensuring that there is a well-thought-out player experience designed around playing a hunter, roaming around town, maybe even playing a sort of survivalist. It's a common archetype in this kind of game that the player can transition out of when its character gets more specialized. In a game where you always respawn naked, it is a great way for a new player to get back on its feet by crafting the basics in the wild. Here is where it gets odd, though. Even though all the systems are seemingly in place, the hunting experience is subpar. No way to build a camp, or to craft stuff on your own outside city walls. This means that there is no such thing as playing a lone hunter to kick-start your character. As for the hunt itself, killing animals right now just feel completely off. The static spawns kill off any sensation that you're hunting a creature, and instead feel like you're gathering another static resource. Some spawns are also just poor, one herd spawns right on top of a bandit camp, yet the map is empty for miles around the camp. The movement and behavior of the animals is probably the biggest turn off. The movement is erratic, and it feels like animals are just spinning around being dragged by an invisible pole. There is no tell in what direction the animal will lead next, nor does it feel like it is escaping effectively. In some scenarios, the animal would just get stuck in a loop between the same few coordinates. The kill also does not feel satisfying. I would expect the lowliest animals to die in just a few arrows, rather than having to engage in a goofy chase with a springbok running around with 10 arrows in its heart. Last, the actual collect & skin part of the game is not even satisfying. The animal just vanishes into a loot bag, not only making the corpse extremely hard to spot but also somewhat damping the satisfaction of skinning your prey. The looting, collecting, butchering & overall inventory management of this process scream like a "loot & inventory" system was put in place, and the experience of the player was designed around the limitations of this system, rather than designing the system around a good, minimal friction, player flow. The plant gathering mechanic is also guilty of this, as right now, I feel like I am looting a container while gathering herbs. All those cool features, but no visual or smooth interaction for gathering materials. That's odd, no?
Now, maybe I am just ranting, but my point is that all those issues stern from the fact that the hunting experience was not designed to be cohesive from the get-go. It just is that layering "systems" on top of each other gave us a semblance of hunting experience, instead of building the systems to accommodate the desired end goal for hunting. Here's some ideas: Players don't need to visit a crafting station, or a city for the basics, bonus point if there is some survivalist skill that allows this. Herds are a thing, but don't just have the spawners 10 springbok on the same spot and call it a day. Springboks should be harder to find, hard to land a first shot, and easy to finish off. As for the movement, whatever logic is driving this, it's not working. I can feel the pathfinding system having a stroke when animals are fleeing. I would much rather have a springbok run smoothly, with a limited local avoidance algorithm, at the risk of the animal getting stuck easily on the terrain, rather than have this current movement logic where it is painfully obvious that the animal is calculating a rigid path many times over, this does not look natural, and this is not a good representation of how those creatures think and behave afaik. Let me skin/pick up the corpse. Why is that lootbag a thing for NPCs? Don't force me through an inventory grid, a keyboard hotkey, plus another pop-up window, to skin and butcher my animal, please.
The "hunter path" was the first example to come to my mind, but to me it's obvious most of the "career paths" in the game are not very well thought out in terms of UX, and that just stacking more systems will not always be the solution. In my hunter example, I really feel like I am just interacting with systems, rather than just letting the flow guide me into an immersive experience. Sure, maybe the team knows about it, maybe everyone is aware of those minor changes that could make the experience better and it's planned somewhere. But to me, the fact that we are this close to the release and the world still being this empty is alarming. This is a huge tell that engineering is driving the design, and not the other way around. A basic, satisfying hunting/gathering loop should have been completed long ago for those features to be considered "done", and the wilderness spawns should have been placed, with each test refining the balance of the placement for each town. If this basic loop is fun, your players are gonna be hooked. Now try to do the same for all the "starter paths" that you can think of, eg: trader, adventurer, farmer/tamer. Refining those flows should be the priority.
