This marketing campaign (ie, giving all my favourite streamers access to the game before release) has absolutely captured me. It's also made me think that a few tweeks might be helpful at some undefined point in the future.
Applicants: I've noticed that nearly everyone is confused about how the system works. While UI is almost black magic when it comes to art, one 'easy' way of hotfixing it would be to remove the "Launch" button and replace it with the "Review" button. The UI as it stands can be figured out by playing around, but only if you get to see the end results. By forcing players to see that screen, you'd likely get them to understand what's going on a bit faster.
Drones: It's not clear that they'll reassign themselves if their controller leaves (go rocket go!) and some of the people I've watched have resorted to manually assigning them. Day9 looked through the hints and didn't see what was going on. Adding a line about them, "automatically seeking out a controller for new work." Might help one or two people.
Resource tiles: Let's face it, the bright hexagon icons are a bit.. Out of place. Perhaps it's that no one has tried to turn them off, but it would be a nice feature to have, or even a compromise where tiles that are being extracted have their icon become invisible. Now I think this might be a problem because there doesn't seem to be any indications on the ground for water, metals, or rare metals (but adding those might make the game prettier for people who'd only want to see the icons on the zoomed out strategic map.)
Concrete: Figuring out how to get the most out of a deposit is nearly impossible. An indication (just a different colour tile) for when you're placing the extractor which tells you what tiles it will be able to make use of and which it won't may help people figure out optimal placement for getting the most of this (usually so abundant it doesn't matter) resource. Mockup: https://i.imgur.com/W1zHDaH.png
Just in case this feels negative, I'm so looking forward to this game. It's beautiful and I can't wait to dive into the mechanics myself after watching so many people do it their way.
Applicants: I've noticed that nearly everyone is confused about how the system works. While UI is almost black magic when it comes to art, one 'easy' way of hotfixing it would be to remove the "Launch" button and replace it with the "Review" button. The UI as it stands can be figured out by playing around, but only if you get to see the end results. By forcing players to see that screen, you'd likely get them to understand what's going on a bit faster.
Drones: It's not clear that they'll reassign themselves if their controller leaves (go rocket go!) and some of the people I've watched have resorted to manually assigning them. Day9 looked through the hints and didn't see what was going on. Adding a line about them, "automatically seeking out a controller for new work." Might help one or two people.
Resource tiles: Let's face it, the bright hexagon icons are a bit.. Out of place. Perhaps it's that no one has tried to turn them off, but it would be a nice feature to have, or even a compromise where tiles that are being extracted have their icon become invisible. Now I think this might be a problem because there doesn't seem to be any indications on the ground for water, metals, or rare metals (but adding those might make the game prettier for people who'd only want to see the icons on the zoomed out strategic map.)
Concrete: Figuring out how to get the most out of a deposit is nearly impossible. An indication (just a different colour tile) for when you're placing the extractor which tells you what tiles it will be able to make use of and which it won't may help people figure out optimal placement for getting the most of this (usually so abundant it doesn't matter) resource. Mockup: https://i.imgur.com/W1zHDaH.png
Just in case this feels negative, I'm so looking forward to this game. It's beautiful and I can't wait to dive into the mechanics myself after watching so many people do it their way.