Am I the only one who's dissapointed?

Started by TrashMan, February 26, 2020, 04:01:08 AM

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Valdr

Quote from: Ser Kitteh on February 26, 2020, 05:05:37 AM
1000+ mods made by 1000+ people should not be the litmus test for whether Ludeon should consider a DLC. That's ridiculous. Ludeon is a small team who worked on Royalty for 16 months.

You might as well asked why Rimworld doesn't have infinite resources and infinite manpower.

It never ceases to amaze me how people will still live and die by the "But they're a small development team!" excuse even after the devs in question have become multi-millionaires who could easily bring on any extra help they need.

Jibbles

Nah, you're not the only one disappointed by it.

Quote from: TrashMan on February 26, 2020, 04:01:08 AM
But it feels like this update and DLC messed so many mods and playtroughs, without actually adding anything of actual worth (the perormance improvements being the only thing of interest).

Community will always get annoyed if an update breaks mods without adding some real content.  Re-balancing things and making minor adjustment is not adding content, no matter how big that list is.  Fixing bugs is appreciated of course but that too is not new content. Updating the game without throwing game-changing content at it to push out DLC, IF that is going to be the trend from here on out then expect angry voices to grow.  Expect to do damage control rather than crunching down on fixing things shortly after releasing.

Quote from: TrashMan on February 26, 2020, 04:01:08 AM
People complained that the game, despite is age, is never on sale or discount, and that this DLC is overpriced.

They can price it how they want, can't prevent people from criticizing it. That DLC costs more than most indie game out there (games that have also been in development 5+ years) and old AAA titles.

Quote from: TrashMan on February 26, 2020, 04:01:08 AM
I would have been 1000 times happier if Ty either copied or simply directly implemented content from some of the best mods.

I got mixed feelings about this.  Can't say I'm totally against it. I don't usually see developers copy several mods into their games. Ludeon is the first to do this in my experience.  While I don't think the amount of people saying he directly rip-off mods in the DLC is fair since he does take his own spin on things, I can't blame the accusations.  The amount of times I look at a feature worth acknowledging in a base-game update only to find it was a direct copy from a mod is alarming.

Quote from: TrashMan on February 26, 2020, 04:01:08 AM
People complained that the game is unfinished, and frankly..it kinda feels like it. There are so many holes in the game that I cannot imagine ever playing without 100+ mods, simply for all the QoL improvements and adding missing content.

People will have their opinions.  My opinion is same as yours as that there are lots of holes in base game. Caravanning, quests, mechs, events, QoL, the list goes on.  I got into modding quite early cause the game fell short.  I chalked it up to they need more time.  So it seems like in order to see the systems flesh out, I gotta pay up the DLC.  Tynan never made promises, but he did hinted that there would be lot more to see in this game, paraphrasing:"a book full ideas", "that idea will be neat to try out some  time", we'll see many features, it'll be a long time before game gets completed.  None of these things hinted at locking such content behind DLC so I bought it during EA. I'm not totally against DLC but IMO the game is not that phase yet. You got other minor problems as well, game will also be balanced around DLC in mind now.. It's not as simple as "don't buy the DLC, you won't affected by it."

Tynan

#17
RimWorld isn't like an FPS or RPG where it has a bounded story; it's a fully open simulation game. So it always has ways to expand.

Often, some of the best ways are fairly obvious and natural to everyone. When this happens, modders sometimes do things before us, because they have much shorter release cycles and release with sometimes lower quality and almost always much less testing. This has been happening for many years, back into 2014. The fact that a modder saw the same obvious opportunity as us doesn't mean we're copying from them; it means the opportunity was obvious and they could release faster because they're not bound to the same slow test and release cadence as us.

Just think of how impossible it would be to improve this game if we were barred from doing anything that had been done in any of RW's 6,000 mods.

The other thing is - no matter how much one adds to RimWorld, you'll never reach a point where nobody can think of anything else to do. It's just impossible. So I don't think a reasonable to say there are 'holes in the base game' just because you can think of things to add, or because modders are capable of adding value. It's not a useful standard.

The reason is because you're setting a standard that is categorically impossible to fulfill. By this standard, any game in this genre will always have 'holes'. We've worked on RW for 7 years now and one can still note that it could be added to. In fact my list of desired improvements only gets longer over time. The bigger the game gets, the bigger it can get.

So where is the finish line? What is enough? Dwarf Fortress has been in development for 12+ years IIRC, and it's clearly still got tons of things you could add. And it seems pretty obvious I or Toady could keep going on our respective games for another 10 years and not be near 'done' by this standard. Every thing you add just creates more opportunities to add other things.

The standard has to be something one can reasonably expect a human being to fulfil. This is why RW was complete in 2018 after 5.5 years of work. Like I said at the time, "It won't be perfect, of course. Nothing ever is. And I won't even be finished with it. But - it'll be finished." And it was. That doesn't mean it's impossible to add anything, and the fact that modders made useful mods, and we made an expansion, doesn't mean 1.0 isn't complete, because if it did then the standard is simply impossible to fulfill no matter how long we work. One must ask, if 7 years isn't enough, how many is?
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

Grubfist

#18
Quote from: TrashMan on February 26, 2020, 04:01:08 AM
I hear a lot of complains. Some with merit, others without.
But it feels like this update and DLC messed so many mods and playtroughs, without actually adding anything of actual worth (the perormance improvements being the only thing of interest).
New animals are fun, they are not simply new flavors of animals, they have their own unique niches. On top of that, there is Recon Armor, which is a tremendously useful armor set to be added.
Quote
People complained that the game, despite is age, is never on sale or discount, and that this DLC is overpriced. I feel they are somewhat right.
Tynan doesn't do sales. He determined the price for his work is $30. He doesn't give it an inflated price, then give sales to get to its "actual" price, he doesn't buy in to that. What's it's worth is what it's worth, and that amount is $30. Given how well RimWorld sells, I'd say he priced it pretty well. The DLC is a full-blown expansion, and for what it's added, it feels worth the price. It's difficult to see, as there is a large amount of content I can't immediately see, but everything I've seen so far is great and I'm continually surprised by how much more there is than I expected. But regardless, this is all largely opinion-based, and as Royalty is selling very damn well, I'd say Tynan once again did well on the price-setting.
Quote
People complained that the game is unfinished, and frankly..it kinda feels like it. There are so many holes in the game that I cannot imagine ever playing without 100+ mods, simply for all the QoL improvements and adding missing content. What is missing, you may ask?
How is it missing if it never existed? There is literally always more that can be added to any game, but Rimworld is a complete experience as is, it is a finished game, and a good one. Could it grow more? Sure. But $30 does not shackle a dev to your service for life, so it must finish somewhere. With more content comes more pay for the developer, hence an expansion pack. And possibly more in the future (I hope, anyways).
QuoteThe tech advancement seems to skip and jump all over the place. The early game lacks content. You go from tribal to industrial. So much more research could be added, more stages and research could be better gated (you much have X number of medieval tech researched before you can unlock industrial) Something like royalty would have been good for medieval content, instead we get psychic space emperors content that feels off.
I'll agree that the research can feel a little jumpy. But the research has expanded very greatly since the game's beginning. There is plenty of content and plenty of techs, even if their ordering can feel a little odd sometimes. (personally I think the main thing lacking here is a real reason for the intellectual skill once everything is researched). But as stated before, the game is a full package that stands well on its own. Personally, I've hardly touched mods. Over 90% of my 2000ish hour play-time was spent with no mods whatsoever, and the few times I used them were to try out one or two that seemed creative. I understand Rimworld works well with mods, it is very mod-friendly and has many creative modders who create quality mods. But it is absolutely more than capable of standing on its own as well.
The royalty content actually fits the original fiction primer well. I'm glad to see more of the Rimworld setting, personally.

Bozobub

#19
Personally, while I'm not tempted by the Royalty DLC, I'm also not "disappointed" in any meaningful way, beyond a sort of shrug and "Oh, well."  In fact, I'm more pleased than not, because 1.1 adds a lot of super-cool new stuff.  I'm especially looking forward to what it will likely mean to the mod community, from what I've seen mentioned.

It's just DLC.  If you think it's worth the money, it is.  If not, it isn't.  Either way, DLC sales mean more money to Ludeon, which means continuing development.  Even if you don't like THIS DLC, after all, who's to say about the next?  Or what changes will be added to the vanilla game?
Thanks, belgord!

TrashMan

Quote from: Jibbles on February 26, 2020, 01:46:19 PM
I got mixed feelings about this.  Can't say I'm totally against it. I don't usually see developers copy several mods into their games. Ludeon is the first to do this in my experience.  While I don't think the amount of people saying he directly rip-off mods in the DLC is fair since he does take his own spin on things, I can't blame the accusations.  The amount of times I look at a feature worth acknowledging in a base-game update only to find it was a direct copy from a mod is alarming.

People will ALWAYS complain. It's a "damned if you do, damn if you don't scenario", so you might as well do it.
It is downright retarded to think a developer cannot implement a feature into his game because some guy made a mod with that feature first.
What a developer can and should do is focus on making his game the best he can, complainers be damned.

What dissapoints me the most is that people have been askign for specfiic tihngs and specific fixes for AGES - and many of those would be simple to implement - instead Ty adds things no one really asked for. Off the top of my head I can think off quite a few things that were never fixed, despite preetty much no one liking it.
Metals burn, surgery is still terribly handeled, buildable smoothed walls for aesthetics, armor still doesn't cover hands and feet, devices consume power even when not used, etc, etc.

I'll give credit where credit is due, Ty seems like a good programer, he made a good framework. But I question his ability as an actual game designer, because which mechanics he chooses to implement and how he goes about it totally backwards. His seems intent to make any approach he doesn't like as annyoing as possible and seems to think artificial and nonsensical limitations are "fun".
Take for exmaple the who pawns being incapable mechanic? Terrible, TERRIBLE idea. Makes no damn senve whatsoever. The Pawns are Capable mods is basically mandatory and fixes the devs terrible decision. You can force a pawn to do a job he hates in emergencies, but for a hefy mood penalty that gets progressively worse.

Or how he works agaisnt turtling and mountain bases. Infestation? OK, could be even deadlier IMHO. But constantly nerfting turrets and buffing enemies? Then the mechanoid swarms and their turrets (which are INFINITELY superior to yours). Again, terrible.

There are so many better, more sensible ways he could have balanced mountain bases. For example:
- tool requirements - you can't dig solid stone with bare hands. You need to make a pickaxe to mine. Slows down the entire mining process and limits hte amount of pawns that can dig based on equipment. Heck, you can apply it to cutting down trees - make an axe requirement. A stone chunk and some wood and you have a stone axe. (but how can you get wood if you can't cut trees without axe? Simple, you can gather wood without axes by breaking branches. That would yield only a tiny amount of wood, take a long time, the tree would stay and it's growing would be re-set)
- slow down mining. Simple. Mining should take time even with good tools. Because it's stone.
- have raiders attack farming plots and reduce farming yield, requiring bigger farms that would have to be on the outside, making it harder to turtle and protect. Also, makes sense. A tiny farm isn't going to feed an entire colony so easly. Mgiht also require some nutritional value balancing.

All of these are just from the top of my head, and none are gimicky or unfair.

Rant over I guess.

***

ADDENDUM

Some mentioned CK2 and Sims4. True, I played CK2 and Sims3 (not 4, it's a downgrade), but I did with 4-5 mods tops. Pretty much any game I can think off I NEVER used more than a dozen mods.
Meanwhile, I have 150+ mods for Rimworld and that's considered lightweight. Most people I know play with 200+ mods. Something ain't right if you need THAT many mods.

TrashMan

Quote from: Tynan on February 26, 2020, 07:38:04 PM
Often, some of the best ways are fairly obvious and natural to everyone. When this happens, modders sometimes do things before us, because they have much shorter release cycles and release with sometimes lower quality and almost always much less testing. This has been happening for many years, back into 2014. The fact that a modder saw the same obvious opportunity as us doesn't mean we're copying from them; it means the opportunity was obvious and they could release faster because they're not bound to the same slow test and release cadence as us.

Just think of how impossible it would be to improve this game if we were barred from doing anything that had been done in any of RW's 6,000 mods.

True. I agree.

Quote
So where is the finish line? What is enough?

When the core set of features feels complete. Mods can always add, but the core remains the core.
You can always have more guns, more apparel, more factions, things from other settings, etc... but those are irrelevant for the game at large.
In this case, since we are dealing with a colony simulator, focus on actual things that have to do with colony, caravans and broad faction interaction rather than pointless filler that can easily be added by any modder.
The question isn't "what can I add?", but "what feels like it's missing/incomplete?"

So things like vehicles (boats, blimps, trucks, shuttles. mods have done almost everything except for enemies using vehicles. You could probably implement it better rather than in some hack way as most mods do), hospitality(easily one of the best mods and makes a lot of sense), better psychology and pawn interaction (a simpler implementation of psychology mod? You don't really need that many attributes/sliders. In fact, this one could be tagged optional), faction diplomacy, animal handling, raids (preemptive strike) - the basics.
And fix the design issues people have been complaining since day 1.

Quote
One must ask, if 7 years isn't enough, how many is?

However long it takes I guess?
Hey, you chose something as broad as a colony simulator to make, not me, and you know how complex DF was and how everyone will compare your game to it.
Heck, fixing all the thing I mentioned could be done REALTIVELY easily now. Even easier if you were to just take the mods that already fix it.

I don't think I'm being unreasonable at all, since I'm talking about a dozen must-have mods whose content could be merged into the core (in some cases, simplified). I would expect a professional developer who works full time and knows the code inside out to be able to do a better job than modder who does it in his spare time, and faster too.

At least in my case, I am giving you a clear finish line that can be reached in a reasonable time frame.

NOTE: I'm not counting simple fixes and mini mods in to that dozen number. Things like vein miner and non-burnable metal are trivial.

TrashMan

Quote from: Grubfist on February 26, 2020, 10:16:25 PM
But $30 does not shackle a dev to your service for life, so it must finish somewhere. With more content comes more pay for the developer, hence an expansion pack. And possibly more in the future (I hope, anyways).

I'd happily part with more of my money, if the expansion actually addressed things people have been complaining and trying to fix with mods since forever.


MengDe

#23
"Some mentioned CK2 and Sims4. True, I played CK2 and Sims3 (not 4, it's a downgrade), but I did with 4-5 mods tops."
O-only 4 or 5.....
You see, my mod addiction didn't start with Rimworld, it only made it worse...
Sims 3 was a good game, but also very very breakable. Might be part of the reason why you only had a few mods there. I know I did too.
Sims 4 is a somewhat different beast.
In any case, imagine these games' communities went crazy every time these games released an Expansion pack (and these also break quite a few things when they do!)
I've seen people get salty, sure, but people didn't go barking around that Company broke their favourite mod or save willy nilly, or stole ideas. I'm so confused at Rimworld's playerbase reaction lol.

You know people that play with 200+ mods, and I'm one of those, but see, I've also seen people who play with nearly no mods and I don't know how they live either.
I think the "issue" here is that Rimworld has such a thriving mod community that one person can really make the game whatever they want.

Beyond the more obvious QoL ones, though, how would you even choose which mods are essential? Realize mods are quite the personal thing.
For example, I no longer know what vanilla hair and faces look like because I just use a bunch of anime mods. Would you argue this means Rimworld should be animefied, because a lot of people use those too?
I also don't like playing without races, and those mods are definitely game breakers, but half of the races I use are copyrighted or don't even fit the Rimworld world design. Whose responsibility is it if these break with an update?
If Tynan for some reason implemented CE, which is also a big favourite, that would make me drop the game.

Hey, you said you only played CK2 with "a dozen" of mods.... meanwhile here I am using a metric ton of mods for my own fun, some of them complete overhauls... Oh, new expansion? Time for a prayer and to check what broke...

Again, I reiterate, I don't disagree with the idea the game could use improvements, and people can have their opinions about pricing and what the DLC is worth and so on, I just think there's much ado about nothing regarding mods.



Tynan

TrashMan, I'll just say:

- In my opinion as a game designer a lot of the things you think would improve the game would actually make it worse, at least for the majority of players whose tastes may differ from yours. A simple example is work type disables, which if removed by e.g. Pawns Are Capable create a long list of negative design consequences in terms of clarity, feedback, storytelling, and situation diversity.
- The things you think are easy to implement are much more difficult than you imagine. Think 10x more difficult.
- The desires you feel as obvious in yourself are not shared by the other million+ RW players who want different things. It's easy to design a game for one person; much harder to balance the diverse desires of all those diverse players.
- The relationship between the difficulty of making mods and making the game itself is the reverse of what you think; it's not easier to make things in core, it's harder because we have to hit a higher standard of performance, balance, and integration, and we have to do all the integration over time whereas mods can just add onto a functional system. Integration refactoring take ~40% of our time all in.
Tynan Sylvester - @TynanSylvester - Tynan's Blog

RicRider

Further to what Tynan just said, we can sit here all day long calling each others' ideas terrible and telling everyone else our ideas are perfect. See I think RimWorld should have more difficulty added to it. More mental breaks, more pawns that can't do stuff, more funny conditions that make it harder for them to survive, more mechanoids with bigger guns, more insects with bigger teeth... do you get it yet, TrashMan? Your playstyle to me sounds so weak and if RimWorld was anything like you wanted it I doubt I would still be playing it after 5 years.
##Coding Scrub##

chch88

#26
As someone who plays only with mods (haven't touched vanilla since A14) and lots of them (hundreds yes), i can say your post makes zero sense to me. Yes, vanilla rimworld to me basically the game engine, framework if you will, with which i build game tailored for my tastes. But no matter how many mods i run, i do still play RIMWORLD, i get to play it thanks to Tynan, who made this framework, and now it got an update, its wonderful.
I bought dlc 5 minutes after i got the news (and thanks Tynan for having proper blog and forum without steam dependency), its small enough price for supporting development of excellent game framework to me, and that's counting the fact that i don't get to play with it for next few months until most mods would get updates (need combat extended in muh games).

On second note, mentioned messed playthroughs and mods is purely your own fault (and steam crappy mod support). Nothing stops you from playing drm free version of rimworld with local mods, i always play like this and had 0 problems with any game or mods updates.
Install rim and mods, play until you want new version or new mods, install new ones, rinse and repeat. I can always unpack local copy of a game (archived all game and data folder) i played in 2017 (or 2016) on alpha14d build 1241 with all mods and settings, load save and continue playing it. And again, i praise Tynan for providing drm free version which allow you do things like that.

TheMeInTeam

There will always be nice-to-have things and such that modders can cover while devs just don't have the resources to keep up.  Which things like that make it into vanilla is a matter of priority.  I can give leeway on that.

The things in Rimworld that actually bother me are the internal inconsistencies in design/implementation.  There aren't a ton of these but when they turn up they're pretty glaring.

Bozobub

What bothers me most is the immediate pivot from "Why no updates?  Is RW dead/abandoned?" to "ZOMG Why did you update?!"

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Thanks, belgord!

lode

why can't i downvote? Ugh. What an entitled and myopic point of view. Hard pass.