Initial feedback

from Offworld Forums

After acquiring the game yesterday, I proceeded to play it from 5 pm to past midnight, completely forgetting to eat food. 

 

So the game is pretty fun and awesome as it is.  I played all the tutorials, a campaign, a few single players games, and today are started on a second campaign.  I have checked the multiplayer lobby many times, but it has always been empty. :(

 

So, good stuffs. very fun game.

 

Now there is some obvious feedback about the robo voices, and the slightly confusing sounds, and whatever.  I am sure they are place holder. Most of the patent names as well are... very silly?

 

Some more specific feedback.

 

The stock market is a bit funky. Firstly, I find it odd that you can not sell stock. I also dont really see a reason to buy stock until I can just buy out the whole thing, and buying out the whole thing sure seems to not really cost all that much. 

 

One thing I really find odd, is that if you buy out a company which owns stock in a third company, the stock they "owned" turns grey.  This caused a very strange situation.

I and 2 other companies each owned about 50% of eachother. I owned 50% of both of their companies, and they similarly each had 50% of mine, and eachother.  So. what happened, is, the second company brought out the third company, which immediately gave me enough money (since they payed me double for the stock I owned) to buy the last 50% of their company, which was now grey stock, easily winning me the game.   I could easily, easily for see a stalemate where 3 humans are in a similar position, and none of them can win, because in order to buy out a company, they essentially give the third guy the win.

I am not sure what to do about that.

 

 

I also have a few thoughts about the commodities market. First, I like that it seems to be fairly unbounded. prices can be almost anything. I think this is good.  But, it also doesnt seem to react like how I would expect a market to act. I mean, while when i buy things the prices go up, and when i sell things the prices go down... and it seems the prices will very slowly rise over time if no one buys or sells...  And while the prices here can vary extremely, the orbital prices, are static, or at least i have never noticed the orbital prices change.  

In other words, I want to see more of something a little more in depth, than a seemingly infinite pool of resources, where price just changes based upon the last action, with a bit of randomness thrown in.

What I kinda might want to see, is a finite stockpile in the market place, and instead players buy and sell from the stockpile, and the price is dependent on how large that stockpile is. There is also a sort of 'median price' to which goods will slowly flow into the market from outside the map if the price is high, or goods will slowly leave the market to outside the map if the price is low, both of which causing the price to slowly normalize to a specific price, and the more extreme the price the faster the normalization.

And even that is probably far too simplistic. Real life markets are very complicated, with speculators, and market derivatives, and what not.  Something which might be very nice would be buy and sell orders. 'buy resource if price goes below X' or 'sell resource if price goes above y'

One small conceptual thing though, is... shipping glass, or water, or whatever from mars to earth... really does not make a lot of sense... I get the idea that you need an end game, which is what the orbital launches is... first person to get 1 or 2 of these launching, is probably going to win.   The reason why asteroid mining has so much potential, is because of gravity wells. and while the gravity well of mars is a lot smaller than earths, I much more expect goods to come from the asteroid belt to mars, than the other way around.  I also the lack of the precious metals in the game. usually that is why people are all like 'lets mine space!' not steel, and glass. we have so much glass on earth, we are never going to need to mine space for glass. seriously.

There is also often a situation where you can buy resources in mass, and then just launch it in to space for much profits, which feels really wrong.

Orbital launches might also want to be rail guns ala 'the moon is a harsh mistress', instead of space ships. 

 

The adjacency bonuses. These are... very very very powerful. 2 factories gives you the output of 3, and 3 factories gives you the output of 6.  It even goes for mining and power as well. Maybe the idea here, with the limited claims, is to force players into specialization... but the market really doesn't allow for that.  At least in single player.  buy and sell orders would help with this, but if you end up specializing, all you really seem to end up doing is making things really cheap for your opponents. 

 

Will there eventually be custom and/or symmetrical maps? The initial 'find a spot on the planet! mini game is cool for single player, but i am worried it could be completely game deciding for multiplayer, in a 'well, that guy got by far the best spot, GG, next game' sort of way.

 

 

I hope this doesn't seem overly harsh. It is a lot of fun just as it is. 

 

 

bugs?

 

slant mining doesnt work on geothermal vents?

normal buildings cant be built on geothermal vents?

159 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Offworld Forums Top

There aren't too many players yet from what I can tell, and there's no good way to idle in a multiplayer lobby, but join the steam group: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/offworldtradingcompany

Multiplayer is way more fun. Theres several of us around that are usually willing to play multiplayer.

 

The resource pricing seems pretty good. If too much is being used, the market price goes up. If too much is being produced, the price will go down. If someone buys large blocks of resources, other players will sell their stockpile while the price is temporarily high.

As for the orbital selling (offworld market), the prices are fixed because the mars colonies are minor player and therefore a price taker. They are a small fish compared to the earth economy, so having no impact on the prices makes sense.  The devs stated on the old forums that the offworld market is intended to be a game ender. It does work in that fashion, but don't forget that it costs an awful lot of money to build the things. If everyone is producing resources at a faster rate than consuming, It would be difficult to end the game since there would be no resource sink, and everything would price towards zero. That said, in the current version, there are better options to end the game than the offworld market.

Adjancency bonuses. They are in transition somewhat as they've been changed recently. They are powerful, but grouping buildings subjects them to sabotage.

 

Good feedback though. The devs do appreciate it.

Reply #2 from Offworld Forums Top

Thanks for the feedback. Geotherms are supposed to work a little differently from the rest of the game. They aren't a "resource" per se, so Slant Drilling doesn't apply to them. Similarly, we tried to help new players not make a bad early move by disallowing any other type of building besides a Geothermal Power Plant.

We have been thinking of changing the Offworld Market to a rail gun system, actually, as recommended by a local scientist!

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Offworld Forums Top

Quoting Soren_Johnson, reply 2

Thanks for the feedback. Geotherms are supposed to work a little differently from the rest of the game. They aren't a "resource" per se, so Slant Drilling doesn't apply to them. Similarly, we tried to help new players not make a bad early move by disallowing any other type of building besides a Geothermal Power Plant.

We have been thinking of changing the Offworld Market to a rail gun system, actually, as recommended by a local scientist!
End of Soren_Johnson's quote

 

Any thought on changing that mindset? I know geothermal tiles are very good for, but it would be nice to at least have the option to build something else on the tile in the rare cases that something else would produce more value, such as after acquiring water power. It could also aid a strategy in preemptively claiming the tiles for later power use.

I support the change to a rail gun system!

Reply #4 from Offworld Forums Top

Thanks for the reply!, but I feel that limiting players because newbies might not know better is just odd. Now, if you had said, we want to make geothermal's power only, because otherwise someone will just claim ALL the geothermal tiles at the beginning, and then build other things there, and then revert to geothermal power later on. that might make more sense.