Messages

316

General / Re: Sound oddity

« on: January 17, 2016, 11:24:54 pm »

Odd, but I guess it makes me feel a little old as well.

Mine is not that good either, don't worry.

317

General / Re: Big Improvements List for Underrail

« on: January 17, 2016, 11:21:50 pm »

Oh God no.
This is supposed to be a classic cRPG, where you are actually need to think and figure out how to solve a quest by yourself. Handholding and quest markers would take all the satisfaction and difficulty away. I think the quest log and NPCs give more than enough clues.

On the other hand, quest info should be dynamically updated when new information is given.
Usually, quest info gives enough information to get quest started, but often any new received information regarding quest, especially directions to the locations, are only given in dialogue and never written in the log.

This is really bad, since if player stop playing for a couple of days and returns to the game, he will forget those directions, since they are not written anywhere.

I can agree with that, I wouldn't mind if the quest log would be updated with new information you acquired/after every major step as a reminder.

But markers and an explanation how to do everything step by step? Too much. One of the most fun quests are those given by Jack Quicksilver, where you really need to figure everything out yourself and it takes some thinking.

318

General / Re: Sound oddity

« on: January 17, 2016, 10:30:32 pm »

Probably taken from the same stock sound effects source. I noticed that as well, makes me feel odd.

319

General / Re: Big Improvements List for Underrail

« on: January 17, 2016, 10:10:44 pm »

- Make better starting video in steam
You need to show buyers that exactly is game, not just random ingame video. Now it does not explains anything. Should add appearing text to video like "huge world to exlore", "different enemies", "many various tactics and skills to defeat your enemies", "complex crafting system", "many interesting quests" etc etc etc. Buyer should get idea that game is about.

I think it's fine. Video shows the gameplay as it should, while the description tells everything you need to know. Things like "huge world to explore" or "different enemies" sound like poor attempt at marketing you often find on the boxed copies of games.

- Make better tutorial
You lose a lot of players in the start of game because of bad tutorial.
Recommendations: make tutorial simple, explaining and linear, teach one thing at a time. Remove tons of redundant stupid text. Remove red stealable objects.
Tutorial proposed example: move character, use objects, equip armor, use firearms, use melee, use psyonics, stealth/lockpicking, throw grenade, use cosumable, craft something, some follow-up quests after tutorial.

I agree, it's pretty bare bones right now. It teaches you some of the the basic stuff, but not all of it.

- Enlarge and replace font
Font is too small and too badly readable, and discourages player to read or even play the game. Significantly enlarge it from start by default, replace it with better reading tech-looking analogue.

You can already enlarge it in the options.

- Quest management
Quests guidance for players is horrible. Should add arrow guide in ui for current quest. Add separate ui to list available quests, explaining exactly what to do in each step and how to report.

Oh God no.
This is supposed to be a classic cRPG, where you are actually need to think and figure out how to solve a quest by yourself. Handholding and quest markers would take all the satisfaction and difficulty away. I think the quest log and NPCs give more than enough clues.

- World map
Add world map to game. Or Without it game is stripped out of strategic level. Add fast travel via world map -- no need really to travel manually like 5 minutes to fight like 30 seconds.

How exactly does the lack of map strips the game of strategic elements?

The map is there, you just need to discover everything by yourself. Hell you can even draw your own map if you want to. I can't even think how boring would it be to explore caves with a map, half of the fun is getting lost in them and emerging in different palces, it creates a lot of unique scenarios.

You already have means of fast travel in the form of trains and boats. You don't need to backtrack through empty areas all that much.

- Character present
Add dozen pre-build characters presets for new character. For each present show "nickname", portrait, recommended starting stats and skills, explaning what this preset character is good for. When character level up, suggest that to put points into, based on starting preset.

It's not a bad idea, I think it would help new players in understanding the game mechanics a little better.

OTHER SUGGESTIONS:
- rename difficulties from easy/normal/hard to normal/hard/insane
- make game much less punishing for misclick stealing/threspasing, maybe make prison instead
- explaing better to player what world of underrail is about
- optimize loading time between locations
- reduce redundant texts from npc, which does not explains anything and does not gives any insights about the world
- give hint to player about difficulty of current locations and enemies
- find ways to reduce annoying instant death of player in very first turn
- add some companions to player, game is too 1-vs-many
- make locked lockers always contains something average/good
- improve crafting ui, see how it is made in other games
- improve economics: player is too low on cash in start, and is totally flooded in middle of game, add some more expensive items and money sinks
- add more items types and slots for equipment
- make locations more linear via looping: it is not ok to go back from quest via all visited emptied locations
- add more animations and sounds for ui
- add some random encouners in game, like in fallout

Renaming the difficulties sounds like something entirely redundant. Doesn't matter how it's called, if it's the easiest difficulty setting then why not call it easy? Same with normal and hard.

The prison idea is not bad, it definitely sounds better than the whole town trying to kill you because you stole an empty buttle from a shelf.

I think the world should be explained in a natural way, as in by NPCs and by simple exploring, rather than flooding you with exposition.

Loading times are not that bad if you turn autosaves off.

I don't think reducing the NPCs dialogue to exposition/quest information only is a good idea. It's an RPG, I don't want NPCs to be merely quest/exposition dispensers, they should feel like real people with personalities.

There is a lot of hints in the game about how dangerous specific locations are. You can't have too much of that though, it would take away any difficulty or danger if you knew exactly what to expect.

There is a lot of ways to avoid dying so quickly. It all depends entirely on your build and you can't blame the dev that your 3 CON, no stealth, low initiative build dies a lot, that's the whole point of different builds, all of them have their strong and weak points. Not to mention you can do exactly the same to your enemies.

Game having no companions is a design choice as far as I know.

Locked containers always containing good loot would be boring. I like to think someone already took everything and locked it for the sole purpose of making me mad, or left a single lockpick inside as a mockery.

Crafting UI is functional, I don't really have any problems with it.

There are 2 huge money sinks in the game right now, but I do agree there should be another one for players who don't care about super steel or (almost) useless housing.

Adding more equipment/item slots would be pretty expensive, both money and time wise. While I would like to see shotguns for example, I understand that it's not easy to introduce just like that and there are more important things to do, mainly bug fixing.

The in-game world is pretty looped. I agree that bactracking is not fun though.

Animations/sounds are, again, expensive and take time. It's just low on the priority list, you can't have everything.

I like the idea of random encounters. The game world is pretty static, I would like something unexpected to happen from time to time, like a train kidnapping/pirates attack during fast travel etc.

320

General / Re: Do some merchant buy any of the following...

« on: January 17, 2016, 09:19:14 pm »

The best item for trade are weapons. I trade only them. Anything else does not worth the time.

Wrong.

Electronic/psi headgear parts are the best. You can get up to like 12,000 value for 0,5 weight, or even 3000 for 0,05.

321

General / Re: Unique weapons

« on: January 17, 2016, 09:16:25 pm »

There IS a unique chemical pistol from a quest in the institute of Tchort; the questgiver gives you the pistol for testing and afaik as long as you dont turn the quest in you can keep the pistol.  However, the pistol does sometimes backfire on you so beware of that if you do decide to keep it.

It's not that bad if you use CAU armor.

322

General / Re: Anyone compiled list of items that can be only obtained by crafting?

« on: January 17, 2016, 04:46:14 pm »

Maybe, I've seen that most of them have either a laser sight or an extended magazine, but then again I'm not paying that much attention. Even if it's possible, it's pretty uncommon.

323

General / Re: Gun Nut

« on: January 17, 2016, 03:46:33 pm »

I agree, most of the crafting feats are pretty underwhelming.

Armor slopping is good if you want to use metal armor/riot shield and keep your armor penalty low I guess, but there are also feats that actually benfit from high armor penalty. It's one of the more useful ones nevertheless.

Ballistic is pretty good very early in the game, but later on that 3 DT and 9 against fireamrs is pretty much a wasted feat.

Clothier/Skinner is not that bad as the 20% more quality is universally useful, but I don't think 7 INT is really worth it.

Disassemble is good for convenience (who wants to look for another rapid reloader/super string/scopes each time they find a marginally better frame?) but the 10% quality loss makes it a pain for items that use more than one quality-based component, like smart modules. I  think it would be worth 7 INT if there was no quality loss, but right now it's arguable.

Gun Nut is just terrible, not only 15% more max damage is a very low increase in DPS, it's practically worthless for people who focus on minimal damage instead. It should be 20% to minimal/all damage instead. It's only worth it if you have 7 INT for other feats, and only on builds that are not too feat-hungry.

Mad Chemist is pretty good if one wants to use chemical pistols.

Neurology is just underwhelming, the bonus is too low.

Power Management is in my opinion the best crafting perk there is if you have electronics, since it works with energy shields. It's basically 35% more HP and you can get up to 2000+ capacity with it, who doesn't want that?

Practical Physicist is pretty good if you want to see crazy number with amplfied plasma pistol.

Weaponsmith is nice, but I don't know if 5% crit chance is really worth 7 INT.

324

General / Re: Unique weapons

« on: January 17, 2016, 03:30:28 pm »

N16 is in the protectorate warehouse in Core City, inside a case in one of the garages. Gorsky sends you there to steal the shield emmiter.
TT3000 is in the Free Drones base, carried by Melvin Junior.
I think that Black Arrow is the only unique weapon I never found.

Wyatt, the old guy from Depot A has a unique .44 W&S revolver with 20% crit chance but only 100 crit damage and 25-45 base damage which kinda sucks.
The other unique .44 is the Black Hawk, found somewhere alone the quest line for the Institute of Tchort, but can't remember where. It's better than W&S because it has 30-60 base damage and whopping 150% crit damage.

It's Wasteland Hawk, and it's carried by one of the Lunatic leaders who stole the Tchortists figurine, I think Frost was her name.

It's not that good either. 30-60 damage and 150% crit damage is nice, but 35 AP cost with no mods kinda ruins it.

There is also .44 SMG, Tommy Gun. It's pretty fun with explosive ammo, basically a full auto grenade launcher.

Overall unqiues are usually better than anything you can loot/buy, but inferior to crafts (with a few exceptions, Steyr looks good even when compared to crafted ARs).

I also found pretty much everything except for the Black Arrow. I wonder if it's carried by an NPCs that no one decided to kill.

325

General / Re: Anyone compiled list of items that can be only obtained by crafting?

« on: January 17, 2016, 12:26:55 pm »

To add a few:

-any weapon with more than 1 mod installed
-any weapon using High Resolution Digital Scopes
-any weapon using Anatomically-Aware Scopes
-any weapon using Muzzle Brakes (not sure about that one as I never did a build with burst wepaons, but I never seen any in shops etc.)
-any weapon using silencers
-any weapon using rapid reloaders
-any weapon using smart modules

-crossbows using super strings

-electroshock pistols
-any energy pistol with mods

326

Bugs / Re: 1.0.0.7 Cannot ally with Faceless

« on: January 16, 2016, 11:24:44 am »

Definetly going to wait until it's fixed.

I don't want to sound rude or ungrateful because I know fixing bugs is not easy and time consuming, but I feel like recent hotfixes put too much emphasis on the "hot" part and not nearly enough on "fix".

Romans heart attack was "fixed" by making him disappear, Creeping Dread was "balanced" by making it possible to get rid of it entirely with an exploit, and now this. I would rather wait a little longer than get get more bugs with each hotfix.

327

General / Re: [Mild spoiler] How to shoot .44 pistol twice?

« on: January 16, 2016, 11:15:15 am »

Highest for hacking/lockpicking was 135 in Deep Caverns. It's definetly not worth to max, I put 3/3/4 points in hacking/lockpicking/traps now.

Crafting depends on how lucky you get in Deep Caverns, as you can find many 170+ quality parts and even with maxed crafting skill on level 25 and 7 INT I still couldn't craft with all parts being that high, so it's worth maxing. The highest requirement before DC was something around 130 I believe.

328

Bugs / Re: 1.0.0.7 Cannot ally with Faceless

« on: January 16, 2016, 01:20:12 am »

Uh, I don't think it works as it should.

I did everything to be friendly with them (persuaded the mindreader, helped the caged Faceless, helped the group near Foundry, never killed a single one), but speaking to Commander makes them hostile now.

329

Bugs / 1.0.0.8 Creeping Dread duration exploit

« on: January 16, 2016, 12:15:44 am »

While I appreciate you guys tried to balance it a bit by making it go away faster, the duration is too short now.

It's possible to get rid of all the debuff stacks by simply waiting until it has like 2-3 seconds of duration left, then initating combat and ending it. It will go away before it can stack again, so you will have only one stack again instead of getting more of them.

330

General / Re: [Mild spoiler] How to shoot .44 pistol twice?

« on: January 15, 2016, 08:55:20 pm »

On the paper .44 my not be that fancy but when you take damage threshold, critical hits (Steadfast Aim) and special ammo into account they can easily outdamage the other pistol variants.

.44 isn't all that much better against armor since it has a ridiculous damage spread. It can either punch through easily or deal almost no damage at all, while 9mm will reliably punch through.

Steadyfast Aim is terrible since it requires 6STR and penalizes the use of rapid reloader. It's basically weaker Recklessness but the requirement is not worth it, it would be better to pump PER and take Sharpshooter, if anything.

.44 explosive deals 15-30 heat and 15-30 mechanical which is 30-60 total. Compared to 10-20 acid 9mm it might seem like a lot more, but 9mm gets far more shots per turn, not 3 times more, but all in all the benefit is negligible, and mechanical/heat is usually easier to resist (except for mutants).

And if you want to tak everything into account, .44 is even worse as it benefits less from Expertise due to it's low amount of shots, and is far less AP efficent so it benefits less from adrenaline/Blitz.

It's just bad, and especially bad on pistol builds. Tommy gun is fun though, basically a grenade launcher if you load it with explosive ammo.