Is Alpha 6 actually enjoyable?

[longbyte1]

(Poll: http://strawpoll.me/2358724)

I think that releases are being focused too much on addition to the point that it's getting hard to play the game correctly. I think we should have more updates like Alpha 3, where it's an update just for fixing bugs, balancing the game, and improving the framework of the game.

Production needs to slow down a bit, make everything stable and playable and re-playable. Not just play once, fix any problems, add something new, and play once more. New stuff is always good, but the more new features are added, the more bugs are introduced as they conflict in operation with one another (example: walls overlapping trees).

If Alpha 6 is not enjoyable (it's not for me), I think we need to have a stabilization update for Alpha 7. Sure, new stuff is good. But Alpha 7 should not have factories or multiplayer or anything groundbreaking like that. It should just be fixing. Currently, there are 66 bugs assigned, and many more still to be found or named.

My gripe with Alpha 6 are the centipedes and mechanoids, and the storyteller. Centipedes and mechanoids are too OP, and the storyteller should generate a sort of sine wave, not a sawtooth wave, in terms of the welfare of the colony. For me, the storyteller either goes too easy or too hard on me. (Example: Phoebe Friendly, set to "Casual" difficulty. One incident, they send 2 raiders against me; the next incident, it's an AI core along with a centipede equipped with a minigun.) Plus, the mortar launchers do not consume shells, nor do their accuracy correlate with a colonist's shooting skill, nor do they increase a colonist's shooting skill.

Sorry for the rant, I'm probably going to get flamed, but what are your experiences with Alpha 6? Is it "stable" in your opinion?

[Billy Rueben]

Alpha is alpha.

It's going to be buggy, and the developers (developer in this game) are (is) going to focus on feature additions, because the game your playing now isn't meant to be played "correctly", as it isn't complete yet.

[Jotun]

Works fine for me, more fun than previous builds. Certainly it's challenging but the difficulty options provide plenty of tuning to suit your tastes.

[ZestyLemons]

I completely disagree with this post, a lot of people I know are hesitant to buy RimWorld because it doesn't look like it has enough content.

Literally, every single person I've seen interested in this game asks the same question: "Is it worth it?"

I believe that Tynan needs to continue on work on features. The damage models in alpha 6 are damn impressive.

[Bog]

I really like Alpha 6. As far as balance is concerned, I have the feeling that Tynan is looking at that pretty hard right now. The new health system has changed gun balance quite a lot. My brother and I have been working on a Rimworld Weapons Balancer tool (first version is already released over in the mods/tools section) which seems to have caught his interest.

I think a lot of the frustration that people are getting from Alpha 6 stems out of the health system. It's something that (so far as I can tell) about 70% of people really like, and 30% of people really dislike. I've made a suggestion for advanced game set-up options so people can easily change a few things to be more to their liking. (that thread is here, if you'd like to add anything to it.)

[Lost Cause]

Considering I just had a wave of Centipede that outnumbered my colonists roughly 5 to 1 and during that raid one of my colonists in full power armour and equipped with a mini gun was revealed to be a member of the an enemy faction, and the death of the last centipede is immediately followed by pirates dropping into my base directly..... Yeah... next update focusing on balance and bugs could be a good thing.
The total wealth of my base INCREASED by 50% just due to the loot dropped on the ground immediately after the battle X.x
My base has a total pop of 10 + 1 traitor and the robots had 16 mini guns in their wave... more miniguns than I had colonists. I get an FPS of 0 and I am playing on the rough difficulty which is 60% of the 'normal' wave size.... good gods what kind of machine do you need to play this game?
And now the fractured remnants of that base just got hit with a wave of tribes people and just as that wave reaches their front door... MORE PIRATES! at which point my computer crashed...
I don't mind my base falling to unrealistically massive waves of certain death... but it isn't my base that is being attacked... it's my computer and that's no fun X.x

[Gu1l7y5p4rk]

Maybe more types of traders and more trading options. Let me sell my stone blocks, and let me make a little profit on the side arbitrage trading.

For instance, it's not really feasible to think you can trade in one good from one trader to the next and be able to come out with something extra for the time and effort, ie investment.

I haven't really looked into the lore of rimworld, but I will say this. With all those different types of traders passing by, they have to get hungry, or need some fuel for their uranium reactors or something.

I mean, just make their prices random for all I care. If I had to think of a game that has very simple mechanics that work in the way I'm trying to convey, I would suggest looking at the Drug Wars/Dope Wars type of games.

And OP, the game is A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. despite what I wrote above...

[BetaSpectre]

Most people are thinking that 30 bucks for the Alpha is too much. Just way too much.

That said people are buying the game so its fine. Also Tynan replies really fast and cares about the game so more stuff is added all the time. And update every month is 12 times faster than most games and 100 times faster than some interesting ones.

The DF (Not Dwarf Fortress BTW) team has 12 people working and it took them 6 months to reply with a plain generic message.

[UrbanBourbon]

Hypothesis: Players playing with small colonies, while exercising care with which pawns to convert to their cause, are more upset about this update due to the fact that a colonist can get permanently impaired by a single hit. The event is rare but pawns receive a number of hits that guarantees permanent impairment sooner rather than later, with no cure. Players playing with large colonies suffer little from a loss of a colonist, much less permanent disability.

Rant: Tynan & co. are visibly taking the game into Dwarf Fortress's direction. This, in a way and in my opinion, goes against the original mission of RimWorld. The vibe from Tynan has always been that he wanted his players to go with small colonies, in which every character is important. On the other hand, while I myself always play with small colonies, I have supported the idea of having support for the management of large colonies, so does that diminish my right to criticize this direction? On the other hand, Tynan attributed Dwarf Fortress as its influence since day 1, but to me it was always a marketing gimmick, and not to be taken seriously. But then Tynan seriously went dwarffortress with RimWorld. Therein lies the contradiction - were we expected to play with small colonies or is this Dwarf Fortress in space. Incidentally, I play DF with small crews as well. And I avoid combat like plague. I utilize traps, defenses and suicidal engineering. But I know for a fact that some (the majority of?) players have dozens, hundreds of dorfs in their fortresses.

The questions: How do we, as players of RimWorld, are divided with our playstyle? What portion of us plays with small (less than 12) colonists, in which case permanent impairment is a major setback, and what portion of us collects colonists like pokemon, with the 'gotta catch them all' approach, in which case they are shielded against the effects of occasional dismemberment? I have a hunch that the divide over Alpha 6 correlates with each one's playstyle in this regard.

Further rant: Another difference with RimWorld and DF is that DF is heavily melee-oriented, while RimWorld is for gunslingers. There's a massive difference between melee and ranged, and you can't just make ranged combat as brutal in RimWorld as melee is in DF, and expect proper level of brutality as a result. No, the road to balanced brutality is different and you have to be more careful. Guns are dangerous.

[James009]

Alpha 6 actually brought me back to Rimworld. The previous Alpha's just didn't have enough content to keep me entertained. I'm loving the new traits and medical system and the game is really starting to take some shape. I hope they keep up the development as they are.

[Fernbhoy]

Prison Arc got up to Alpha 22 before they made a release focusing on bugs

Plenty of time to wait, plus it's no use bug fixing at this stage as every bug 3 more will pop up when you add a new feature.

[null]

(Poll: http://strawpoll.me/2358724)

Totally unrelated to your question, but the forum actually includes a poll system. There's a "new poll" button right beside the "new topic" button.

[Sergei]

Alpha 6 actually brought me back to Rimworld. The previous Alpha's just didn't have enough content to keep me entertained. I'm loving the new traits and medical system and the game is really starting to take some shape. I hope they keep up the development as they are.

This is the same for me.  The more features are added, the better the game will be.

[HatesYourFace]

I think the results of your own poll are pretty telling. http://strawpoll.me/2358724/r

41 total votes.

37 enjoy Alpha 6. (90%)
4 enjoy it, but only for awhile. (10%)
0 don't enjoy it. (0%)

[artemas]

Hypothesis: Players playing with small colonies, while exercising care with which pawns to convert to their cause, are more upset about this update due to the fact that a colonist can get permanently impaired by a single hit. The event is rare but pawns receive a number of hits that guarantees permanent impairment sooner rather than later, with no cure. Players playing with large colonies suffer little from a loss of a colonist, much less permanent disability.

Rant: Tynan & co. are visibly taking the game into Dwarf Fortress's direction. This, in a way and in my opinion, goes against the original mission of RimWorld. The vibe from Tynan has always been that he wanted his players to go with small colonies, in which every character is important. On the other hand, while I myself always play with small colonies, I have supported the idea of having support for the management of large colonies, so does that diminish my right to criticize this direction? On the other hand, Tynan attributed Dwarf Fortress as its influence since day 1, but to me it was always a marketing gimmick, and not to be taken seriously. But then Tynan seriously went dwarffortress with RimWorld. Therein lies the contradiction - were we expected to play with small colonies or is this Dwarf Fortress in space. Incidentally, I play DF with small crews as well. And I avoid combat like plague. I utilize traps, defenses and suicidal engineering. But I know for a fact that some (the majority of?) players have dozens, hundreds of dorfs in their fortresses.

The questions: How do we, as players of RimWorld, are divided with our playstyle? What portion of us plays with small (less than 12) colonists, in which case permanent impairment is a major setback, and what portion of us collects colonists like pokemon, with the 'gotta catch them all' approach, in which case they are shielded against the effects of occasional dismemberment? I have a hunch that the divide over Alpha 6 correlates with each one's playstyle in this regard.

Further rant: Another difference with RimWorld and DF is that DF is heavily melee-oriented, while RimWorld is for gunslingers. There's a massive difference between melee and ranged, and you can't just make ranged combat as brutal in RimWorld as melee is in DF, and expect proper level of brutality as a result. No, the road to balanced brutality is different and you have to be more careful. Guns are dangerous.

I suspect that there might be a further divide, largely over whether or not players treat rimworld as a city builder or not. Given the major interest that some have portrayed for phoebe friendly, and the whole name change to specifically reference building, it seems that there is a minority of people who are interested in the base building aspect, and not the often violent, ai storytelling that forms the core of the game. As such, an update that focuses on violence would probably upset the balance for these people.

Another issue, is that the core gameplay has remained unchanged for long enough that some people may have ended up lulled into a sense of complacency, wherein they believe that what the current game is, embodies what the finished product will be.

A third issue, is that when a game offers substantial abstraction, it often sidesteps criticisms of realism, etc that a more simulationist approach cannot avoid. Few people complained about colonists soaking up a couple dozen bullets at a time  before alpha 6, but all of a sudden once detailed wounds and medical systems are added, people are pointing out the problems of getting shot by a half dozen bullets, and then healing up fine. Whether or not this is a problem is not the issue, but that more detailed simulation almost always invites criticism, largely because there is actually something specific to target.

All that said, as others have stated, I think this has been one of the best updates thus far.