Feedback about my experience as a new player

[Valériane]

Hello, my name is Valériane, I found the game recently and I wanted to share my feelings and possible ideas and feedbacks about the game so far, I am in no mean in position to understand how complex some of those ideas could be to implement into the game or to know if those things have been discussed in developement posteriorly, all I wanna share is my genuine impression of the game as a younger audience that plays maybe too many videogames.

I really like the game and playing it, the movements feels good, shooting feels good as well, the lack of aiming isn't even felt after some time, the maps looks good and fun to walk around on the little wallcrawling aliens. I could more than definetly see myself play that game with friends.

Here starts my possible ideas and why I came with them in the first place :

• I think speaking in chat can be important in a team game, and having the ingame infos such as kills or the medkit not being available can cluster the chat, I could definetly see it appear on screen for longer, or even just separate the chat from the ingame infos, to make reading said chat easier for slow readers.

• As much as I like the movements in this game, I feel like walking backwards isn't much of a punishement, or at least not enough as what it should be, the human being as of now in our capacities isn't able to walk backwards as fast as forward, and this isn't (in my personal opinion) really transcribed in the game, I actually kinda feel rewarded for walking backward while shooting at enemies, where walking backward should slower me and make it a "run or shoot" situation.

• Staying on the whole movement field, crouching, as much as I love crouching, I don't know what it does, sure some maps have little crawlspace areas for humans to go in, but on some other it's just kinda useless (I do not know how to put this in any other way), I lose all my velocity, sure that makes sense, but I'm not rewarded in my aiming, as I don't really have recoil while standing, nor gaining any zoom while crouched, which makes it kind of just a worse standing position.

• As much as I love walking around, sometimes the turrets gets clustered and are hard to walk around, some doorways gets smaller when there's multiple people going through the same, now I personally do not know how this is possible in the game code, but I feel like being stuck in my teammates hitbox is kind of annoying sometimes, for example when I'm walking back to get heals, or just running away from an enemy at low health and being stuck in a doorway by one of my (against their will) teammate who didn't know I was trying to run. The only solution my brain was able to come up with was making the collision box smaller than the damage box, making it possible to walk around entities while still shooting at them with a bigger wiggle room than currently

That is all I could come up with, I completely understand if everything gets denied, I'm actually really interested in seeing where the game will go in the future because I love the ideas in it, you are free to send an invite to my Discord DMs to discuss further if wanted, and I'm really curious to read peoples opinion on what I tried to bring up.

Cordially, Valériane.

[XReaperX]

Hi, thanks for writing out detailed feedback, it's really appreciated.

I think speaking in chat can be important in a team game, and having the ingame infos such as kills or the medkit not being available can cluster the chat, I could definetly see it appear on screen for longer, or even just separate the chat from the ingame infos, to make reading said chat easier for slow readers.

The idea of having the chat separate has been brought up before (I believe there's an issue for that somewhere on the issue tracker as well). All of the players I've talked to about it have been in support of that idea, someone just needs to find the time to implement this.

Also, you can turn off death information being displayed in options -> player -> turn off "show obituaries".

As much as I like the movements in this game, I feel like walking backwards isn't much of a punishement, or at least not enough as what it should be, the human being as of now in our capacities isn't able to walk backwards as fast as forward, and this isn't (in my personal opinion) really transcribed in the game, I actually kinda feel rewarded for walking backward while shooting at enemies, where walking backward should slower me and make it a "run or shoot" situation.

You are 20% slower when moving backwards (aliens are not affected). It might not feel like much, but it can make a difference if you're trying to get away from an alien (especially since armor is weaker on the back, so you trade off survivability for speed). There is also the element of dodging by moving backwards/side to side when fighting aliens in close quarters, so any changes to movement speed should be carefully balanced.

Staying on the whole movement field, crouching, as much as I love crouching, I don't know what it does, sure some maps have little crawlspace areas for humans to go in, but on some other it's just kinda useless (I do not know how to put this in any other way), I lose all my velocity, sure that makes sense, but I'm not rewarded in my aiming, as I don't really have recoil while standing, nor gaining any zoom while crouched, which makes it kind of just a worse standing position.

You do actually lose the recoil on the chaingun when either crouching or wearing a battlesuit, though it's the only weapon that does that. You can also sometimes dodge an attack by crouching at the right moment. Another thing you can do with crouching is help a teammate get to an out-of-reach place, although most of that is made obsolete by wall climbing. Other than that, yeah... not useful all that often.

As much as I love walking around, sometimes the turrets gets clustered and are hard to walk around, some doorways gets smaller when there's multiple people going through the same, now I personally do not know how this is possible in the game code, but I feel like being stuck in my teammates hitbox is kind of annoying sometimes, for example when I'm walking back to get heals, or just running away from an enemy at low health and being stuck in a doorway by one of my (against their will) teammate who didn't know I was trying to run. The only solution my brain was able to come up with was making the collision box smaller than the damage box, making it possible to walk around entities while still shooting at them with a bigger wiggle room than currently

Would be interesting to see this in action, though it might be best to only do it for players/bots and not buildings - they are often used to block enemy players from getting through/to reach further away or higher places. There've been some experiments on various servers to deal with this, like allowing aliens to walk through a barricade without requiring them to jump, allowing bigger aliens to walk over dretches, or for bigger aliens/bsuits to be able to punt dretches). It's also a good idea to keep it to allies only as you should still be able to bodyblock an enemy.

Hitboxes are a pain point in general, you'll encounter many more issues with them as you keep playing.

[Valériane]

That's actually really interesting to read, thanks for the reply !

Also, you can turn off death information being displayed in options -> player -> turn off "show obituaries".

I'll proceed with turning off that setting in the future in matches with people, good to know it was there all along (oopsies)

You are 20% slower when moving backwards... ...so any changes to movement should be carefully balanced.

Okay, that's interesting, I guess i'm use to higher slow downs, that's good to know, and I ocmpletely understand the whole balancing issue, that sounds really truly fair actually.

Would be interesting to see this in action, though it might be best to only do it for players/bots and not buildings - they are often used to block enemy players from getting through/to reach further away or higher places. There've been some experiments on various servers to deal with this, like allowing aliens to walk through a barricade without requiring them to jump, allowing bigger aliens to walk over dretches, or for bigger aliens/bsuits to be able to punt dretches). It's also a good idea to keep it to allies only as you should still be able to bodyblock an enemy.

I suppose I worded it weirdly, but yeah I meant only applying it to allies, to make home-quarters easier to walk around (and everything I brought up in my original message), but it's truly interesting to read what was brought up in the past about the subject.

Thanks again for replying to my little message, have a good day !