So what improvements would benefit Underrail 2?

[Ravager]

A number of good points have been raised, some twice.

Yes, there definitely needs to be warnings for touching gear. Right now, there's too much setting-the-whole-town against you for accidentally touching a table.

There are characters like the guard at the SGS caves gate, where you try to click them but accidentally hit the door/fence they are behind, which triggers hostility. I know a warning dialog may have been added since the initial release, but benign conversations are positioned right next to 'untouchable' tables and gear even in SGS, Camp Hathor, etc...

In a pixel-based game, this is very frustrating, and has led me to have to restore saved games more than once. There needs to be more escalation, and a less binary approach towards touching stuff that is right beside a store NPC.

In real life, your character wouldn't be stupid enough to accidentally touch a 'forbidden' table or gate when trying to address a salesman or guard, I would think.

The firearms system could have suppressors applied to all calibres, although it would reduce damage and range, and probably increase wear significantly.

It would be interesting to see caltrops and bear traps made from other metals, although not really necessary.


Good points, Olnarrosh . I often found myself in the middle of one of those giant, time-consuming quests (like the Foundry quests), and forgetting what I was supposed to be doing. Who wanted the murder investigation done? Where was I supposed to look / deliver evidence?

And it would be better to be able to generate your own face somehow. Even a 3D program resulting in a 2D image would be fine. Or a "Mr. Potato Head" type system.



Lots of people have gripes about the commerce system. I find that Underrail takes a 'half-measures' approach, in that there is a more realistic system [vendors only want certain things and sell certain things at any given time], but there are none of the in-universe systems that would naturally spring up in response.

Why isn't there a system where you can consult your PDA and find out what is being sold in Core City, while you are in Camp Hathor? Is there no rudimentary intranet/BBS system in Underrail? No special service offered by people like Blaine or Oculus monitoring what's in stores?

Why can't you contact stores and reserve items? Why isn't there a courier service, as others have mentioned?

And inventory sorting-by-weight/value/etc... would greatly help with management.

Speaking of your PDA / UI, it would be nice to have a database of creatures, as mentioned. Other games have it too, it could have entries added either when you first encounter a creature, or hear about it from someone, with more datapoints being added from subsequent conversations and encounters. But if that's too much work, a straight-up database with information about strengths/weaknesses from basically the Wiki would be okay.


Regarding resolution, I have a 1920x1200 monitor, but I play the game on 1680x1050. It works okay, although it might be even better on a slightly-lower resolution (I'd have to hack my card to enable it).

I think pixel-doubling / tripling / quadrupling might be handy, given the growing prevalence of HIDPI resolutions, especially for laptops.

Zoom might work with the existing setup, I don't know.

If the game engine were 3D, from an isometric perspective, then it would be easy to deal with the resolution issue, character models, and having clothing show up on players. But that would require a brand new engine.

[Maliel]

I wonder if the game could be something else besides isometric, can you imagine this game as a low poly FPS like doom or quake?  cuz i would play that every day forever

[newageofpower]

low poly FPS like doom or quake

pls no

[Riggs]

can you imagine this game as a low poly FPS like doom or quake?

[Zzealot]

A little cruelty would be nice, you know, exploding heads, severed limbs, molten bodies (:

[joejoefine]

Actually that is one thing that made Fallout 1 & 2 so good; they had good death animations. It doesn't take too much effort but it adds a lot to the game, if on a critical hit something spectacular happens to the enemy. It gives the game a bit more of a post-apocalyptic feel. Maybe they could even add some voice acting? It would have to be good though...Fallout 2 good.

A bunch of other suggestions:

Maintenance of weapons and gear serves more as an irritation than it does a joy. To the extent that people might argue its realistic, you could point out that there are many 'realistic' things that are not part of the game, like needing to sleep on a regular basis, go to the washroom, or eat food and drink water. No one enjoys this level of hyper-maintenance, which is why it is removed in most games. I don't really see any point to including it in this one. Repairing weapons isn't something that is difficult or hard to do, it just requires carrying around a few repair kits and buying/crafting them from time to time.

The same should go for lockpicks and hacking tools. It makes sense that they would require energy, and its not too much of a hassle to recharge so I don't really mind it as much. But I'm not sure what the benefit is gameplay wise.

On the economy: I don't think there is much point in making it overly difficult to sell items. For one thing, it doesn't really resolve the issue of players getting rich and hoarding hundreds of guns to sell at a later point. I found in my playthrough I would still end up with 20,000+ coins and a barrel filled with guns and high-quality armors ready to be sold on a periodic basis (on hard mode). The only place to sink that many coins in is A) Useless home decorations and B) Jet skis.

I actually think that, perhaps it would be better to simply allow players to buy and sell more goods in general to existing merchants (especially general traders), but to have each merchant sell a unique item that costs a small fortune. The remaining items that are sold shouldn't break the game if the player buys them; i.e. you can buy decent armor and weapons, but at a certain point the quality is limited so there is no point purchasing it. The exception could be for elite traders - but you can scale the cost of their items so that only those with the mercantile skill can really buy at their shops regularly. This makes the mercantile skill more useful, and its less irritating for players who may have a ton of great armors and weapons, but the weapons and armor merchant is only interested in buying one gun, a helmet and a pair of boots (which is weirdly specific and somewhat arbitrary).

On that note I think it might be helpful to let players know that a higher mercantile skill will actually expand trader inventory (it was in the dev logs, but its not stated when creating a new character in the skills menu); otherwise many might assume it only gets you a better price. If you don't realize this and build a character who excels at crafting but not mercantile, you will basically be screwed as you can't buy high quality components without a good mercantile skill. This actually happened to me lol. Thankfully I could use a trainer to move points around without feeling like I broke the game.

Compared to others I do not want a party-based mechanic. I think there is something a little more personal and in depth about being a single operative who can defeat significant enemies or crowds by him/herself, and who takes sole responsibility for certain actions. Squad-based combat can be fun if done properly (Fallout Tactics) but it also makes the game less personal.

Other than that, I like the atmospheric music, the locations, the artwork, and especially the story so far. I would love to see how it continues. Hopefully a brief sojourn to the surface is possible, as I am very curious what actually destroyed the surface and why it is uninhabitable. The characters are also fascinating. The many locations to explore makes it feel like a true open-world RPG.

[Zzealot]

Actually that is one thing that made Fallout 1 & 2 so good; they had good death animations. It doesn't take too much effort but it adds a lot to the game, if on a critical hit something spectacular happens to the enemy. It gives the game a bit more of a post-apocalyptic feel. Maybe they could even add some voice acting? It would have to be good though...Fallout 2 good.

Yea, many underestimate this aspect. Death animations and beautiful music/background sounds makes me absolutely addicted to that game. Beautiful music in Underrail already exist

[Maliel]

Now that you mention it, more meaningful interactions with npcs sounds nice, since out of the hundreds of npcs in the game i care about maybe 4 of them, why does everyone in this game is an unlikable asshole?

[harperfan7]

Now that you mention it, more meaningful interactions with npcs sounds nice, since out of the hundreds of npcs in the game i care about maybe 4 of them, why does everyone in this game is an unlikable asshole?

You're just remembering the bad ones.  I can think of more nice/polite/friendly ones than not.

[Blackmill138]

3. Shields

Styg has repeatedly said he wants to alter shield mechanics. Right now, there's not much of a tradeoff. Shields protect you, so it's better to have them on. But I get that he's maybe thinking of a more Dune dynamic [he's halfway there already, with slow weapons penetrating more easily], where maybe it amplifies certain types of weapons against you while blocking others. Or maybe affects your perception/aim, or your own weapons' effectiveness.

It will be tricky to retrofit such changes into Underrail 1, so maybe most of it should be saved for the sequel. A clean slate makes it much easier to rework shield mechanics.

Where was this said? I was recently thinking that shields, when active, should impose a precision penalty that increases with shield capacity. I'm not sure it's possible to make Underrail challenging without significantly reworking shields. And frankly, that was true before specializations and the new level cap. So I really hope this gets done.

[Maliel]

I can't believe i just remembered this, more ways to solve quests, let's put those non combat skills to use when it comes to quest solving

[Cmdr. DuctTape]

Lots of great suggestions here, but personally the only thing that I'd love to have is the ability to customize your playermodel, not just your portrait. I know it would take a hell of a lot of time due to the way how animations work in the game, but it would still be a nice feature to have.

I can't believe i just remembered this, more ways to solve quests, let's put those non combat skills to use when it comes to quest solving

+1 to that!

[Riggs]

This is something I'm quite puzzled by and I searched the forums and didn't come up with anything so here goes:

Muzzleflashes? Where are they? For a game with such an enormous amount of gunplay I would think they would be included in some capacity. I know Styg has said it was never his intention to go for realism in UR and I respect that, but it breaks my immersion when engaged in a large scale firefight to never see any muzzleflashes whatsoever. I'm not expecting things to look like a John Wick movie, but witnessing (tens of) thousands of total rounds fired over my playthrough(s) without a single flash occurring is just sorta weird. I'd love to see them included in the sequel. Aesthetics matter a lot in role playing games, at least to me. Thoughts?

[Styg]

This is something I'm quite puzzled by and I searched the forums and didn't come up with anything so here goes:

Muzzleflashes? Where are they? For a game with such an enormous amount of gunplay I would think they would be included in some capacity. I know Styg has said it was never his intention to go for realism in UR and I respect that, but it breaks my immersion when engaged in a large scale firefight to never see any muzzleflashes whatsoever. I'm not expecting things to look like a John Wick movie, but witnessing (tens of) thousands of total rounds fired over my playthrough(s) without a single flash occurring is just sorta weird. I'd love to see them included in the sequel. Aesthetics matter a lot in role playing games, at least to me. Thoughts?

You might get this sooner than you think.

[Zzealot]

Yea, muzzle flashes would be good, and besides what looks cool, it can affect many aspects of the gameplay as a light source.

Pistols or knives / machetes in each hand. With additional feats for these styles, with the feat to wield SMG with one hand and shield / SMG in the second. May be the main feature of the future addon, if it is planned.