Hello, I would like to make a suggestion regarding the current state of lockable inventory slots. I also have some other misc. suggestions and thoughts about the game. I probably don't know what I'm talking about, just throwing out my perspective.
I'm glad this feature was implemented, and it is certainly better then it was before. However; it is a little bit awkward when compared to other implementations of the system. Furthermore, there is no visual indication as to what slots are locked. Additionally, you have to organize your items from the top left. This is fine, and not a major issue, but many players likely prefer putting there items in various locations in the inventory. I'm not sure if it would be difficult to implement since I don't know how it works from the coding/programming side. I know there's many challenges developing voxel based games, so I hope it's possible.
I would like to suggest making the system more traditional. As opposed to selecting an amount starting from the top left, lockable inventory slots would be a toggle through a lock icon or button, either on the item images in the inventory, or under the same area as the repair and modify ui. When an item is locked, have a simple lock graphic appear in the corner of the item in your inventory. This could be copied from the lockpicking symbol/icon in the skill tree.
--Other suggestions
-I personally would prefer if the blood splatters and newspaper clippings were removed altogether from roads. On my settings, they look very low-res compared to the very nice looking animal corpse piles. I know its a long process, updating textures and such, but with how often we look at roads, it's my (personal) first pick for an update or complete removal of (the decals). I also think the clean(er) look of roads without the decals would really match the overall polish of many of the A21 poi's and locations.
-I believe the water drinking (from lakes & other sources) should have a journal entry dedicated to it (instead of being built into the water entry). The current entry mentions that you can drink, but does not tell you that you have to remain still and looking at the water for a few seconds. Since you have to be staring at it for a few seconds barehanded before the prompt appears, when A21 EXP first released, I genuinely thought it wasn't working/bugged out for weeks, since I expected the prompt to appear instantly when barehanded while hovering over water. I had to watch some youtube videos to find out how to actually do it! (I'm probably just an idiot, but eh)
-Locked (open) doors are kind of strange to me. I know why they exist as they are, but I think it would be both more fun, and immersive, for after you get the key rack, the door simply becomes unlocked. It is kind of weird that they magically open, and then you can no longer interact with them, at least to me. Overall, I don't think any potential balance they create is offset by how I feel sort of confused whenever I see one. I'd also like switches for garage doors to be toggleable. Would be really neat, since if I take over a poi, I might like to close the garage door.
-I'd like it if destroyed dew collectors remain after looting, It'd be neat if they were sort of like appliances in the way that you can salvage them for a chance at a purifier, and its weird seeing such a large thing disappear after looting. (I think that in a patch note they mentioned giving dew collectors a chance to yield water filters when destroyed, which is great!) Though I wish it also applied to the destroyed ones when salvaged w/ a wrench. I've played a lot of A21, and I'm not sure if I'm just unlucky, but I've never found a water purifier in a destroyed collector, so salvaging them with a wrench for a second chance would be really cool, and give a nice option to spec into salvage operations for a better chance at a water purifier to help with earlygame thirst. (I think that's pretty cool). I've never really found myself needing a dew collector too much, so having this option to try to get the components more easily might encourage me to try it
-You know the loud noise that you hear when hitting an object in a trader area? I'd personally prefer if it was quieter/silent. I understand why it's ingame, to communicate to the player that the structure is indestructable, but I really hate the noise (once again, that's just me though).
-I'd like it if wood yield was slightly increased from trees. I find it kind of weird that wood spikes take 20 wood to make as well, both given how fast they break, and how much other structures (like doors), cost half as much. (Also the wood stacks give way more wood than trees. That's probably realistic, but it still feels a bit weird imo)
-A quality selector for creative mode items/weapons/armor would be really nice. I know I could just unlock all crafting books via the dev item, then give myself what I need to craft said item, but since the selection feature is already ingame, I'd really like it if it was added to the creative menu.
-Biome edge blending would be something I'd really like. This is a bit of a more big and long term suggestion, but right now the boundaries between biomes are a sort of straight line, and I think that could be greatly improved, and it would really look nice if it did. It'd be really neat if they re added the plains biome to function as a biome border? Maybe?
-Wasteland trees need some love. They look kind of outdated to me, espescially at longer distances where they don't fully render. The super cool new A21 art assets make the older textures stand out a lot more to me during gameplay. (espescially some of the 2-D looking blocks, like some of the barbed wire/fencing that turns invisible at certain angles.)
-This is purely personal preference, so it's not even a suggestion but I preferred the model of the old spider zombie. We have this predator looking thing now, and while it looks cool graphically, I prefer the old one imo. Old model kind of reminded me of some of the enemies from the game Cry of Fear & some Silent Hill vibes for some reason, I thought it was really fitting.
-It'd be nice if you could track more then one item/have the tracker open while I have a quest open. Very happy a tracker was implemented though! It helps a lot. I assume its like that since its built off of the quest system? I don't know, I'm probably wrong.
--Since it seems like all I'm doing is complaining, I'm also going to mention my favorite things from A21/A22 previews
-The new windows are great. I love them. It can be hard to hit the glass bits in the corners at times, but they look so much cleaner. They were also optimized to improve FPS, which is great. Along with entity throttling, I'm glad we're getting these features & systems rolled out!
-The animal animations appear to have been polished? I remember the bear running animations being super janky in particular in previous alphas, but now all of the animals have pretty solid animations that look very nice.
-So many of the new poi's looks super great visually. The collapsed tower poi really threw me for a loop, I couldn't even find my way through it since it was knocked over and upside down! Very cool!
-New water traversal and flow is definitely a lot better. It's not perfect, (see the a21 dev streams, when they demonstrated it, lol), but its a voxel game, and I'm decently happy with where it is right now, and any improvements would make it even better.
-Running over zombies is a lot smoother now
-The new art assets are really nice looking
-The new doors man, the doors, they look great!
-I really like the new main menu background
-The death penalty settings were a really great addition! I like new features and major changes like that being added into A21.X updates.
-Those ui concepts looked so good! If that makes it into a22, I'd be super happy. (though we haven't heard anything about it so I'm not getting my hopes too high) I think a new ui would really refresh the game, and make it so much cleaner and immersive.
-Zombies eating animal corpses is great. It's very cool to see. Makes me focus more on immediately harvesting the animal, or risking the loss of materials/food. It can even be used sort of tactically to lure zombies away from you.
-The new albedo zombie variants will definitely help with variety.
-I'm very happy that traders no longer teleport you away. I vididly remember killing a wolf near a trader at night, and the game kept teleporting me randomly away, and I was so confused, and couldn't harvest the resources since the corpse was too close to the trader
-Weak/critical armor indicators are really helpful.
--
Looking forward to A22, (a little scared about them actually wanting to implement the nerd armor though lmao) Honestly, a lack of bandits doesn't bother me, I just hope we get communication & transparency. I think things like characters, UI, and QOL, are much more in need of revision when compared to a wholly new feature like that.
I have hope that the A21.x updates themselves have some good medium/small changes, because alphas are so far apart. They've been good so far, so that seems likely the 21.x updates will continue to be good. I sort of hope if bandits do get added, they don't have the sort of tribal theme. Lots of people probably like it, but it looks a bit off to me. (Just my opinion, it's probably a wrong one)
Anyway, those are my thoughts/feedback, thanks for reading! I don't mean to come across rude or anything here, so if anything sounds like that, I'm sorry.
I'm glad this feature was implemented, and it is certainly better then it was before. However; it is a little bit awkward when compared to other implementations of the system. Furthermore, there is no visual indication as to what slots are locked. Additionally, you have to organize your items from the top left. This is fine, and not a major issue, but many players likely prefer putting there items in various locations in the inventory. I'm not sure if it would be difficult to implement since I don't know how it works from the coding/programming side. I know there's many challenges developing voxel based games, so I hope it's possible.
I would like to suggest making the system more traditional. As opposed to selecting an amount starting from the top left, lockable inventory slots would be a toggle through a lock icon or button, either on the item images in the inventory, or under the same area as the repair and modify ui. When an item is locked, have a simple lock graphic appear in the corner of the item in your inventory. This could be copied from the lockpicking symbol/icon in the skill tree.
--Other suggestions
-I personally would prefer if the blood splatters and newspaper clippings were removed altogether from roads. On my settings, they look very low-res compared to the very nice looking animal corpse piles. I know its a long process, updating textures and such, but with how often we look at roads, it's my (personal) first pick for an update or complete removal of (the decals). I also think the clean(er) look of roads without the decals would really match the overall polish of many of the A21 poi's and locations.
-I believe the water drinking (from lakes & other sources) should have a journal entry dedicated to it (instead of being built into the water entry). The current entry mentions that you can drink, but does not tell you that you have to remain still and looking at the water for a few seconds. Since you have to be staring at it for a few seconds barehanded before the prompt appears, when A21 EXP first released, I genuinely thought it wasn't working/bugged out for weeks, since I expected the prompt to appear instantly when barehanded while hovering over water. I had to watch some youtube videos to find out how to actually do it! (I'm probably just an idiot, but eh)
-Locked (open) doors are kind of strange to me. I know why they exist as they are, but I think it would be both more fun, and immersive, for after you get the key rack, the door simply becomes unlocked. It is kind of weird that they magically open, and then you can no longer interact with them, at least to me. Overall, I don't think any potential balance they create is offset by how I feel sort of confused whenever I see one. I'd also like switches for garage doors to be toggleable. Would be really neat, since if I take over a poi, I might like to close the garage door.
-I'd like it if destroyed dew collectors remain after looting, It'd be neat if they were sort of like appliances in the way that you can salvage them for a chance at a purifier, and its weird seeing such a large thing disappear after looting. (I think that in a patch note they mentioned giving dew collectors a chance to yield water filters when destroyed, which is great!) Though I wish it also applied to the destroyed ones when salvaged w/ a wrench. I've played a lot of A21, and I'm not sure if I'm just unlucky, but I've never found a water purifier in a destroyed collector, so salvaging them with a wrench for a second chance would be really cool, and give a nice option to spec into salvage operations for a better chance at a water purifier to help with earlygame thirst. (I think that's pretty cool). I've never really found myself needing a dew collector too much, so having this option to try to get the components more easily might encourage me to try it
-You know the loud noise that you hear when hitting an object in a trader area? I'd personally prefer if it was quieter/silent. I understand why it's ingame, to communicate to the player that the structure is indestructable, but I really hate the noise (once again, that's just me though).
-I'd like it if wood yield was slightly increased from trees. I find it kind of weird that wood spikes take 20 wood to make as well, both given how fast they break, and how much other structures (like doors), cost half as much. (Also the wood stacks give way more wood than trees. That's probably realistic, but it still feels a bit weird imo)
-A quality selector for creative mode items/weapons/armor would be really nice. I know I could just unlock all crafting books via the dev item, then give myself what I need to craft said item, but since the selection feature is already ingame, I'd really like it if it was added to the creative menu.
-Biome edge blending would be something I'd really like. This is a bit of a more big and long term suggestion, but right now the boundaries between biomes are a sort of straight line, and I think that could be greatly improved, and it would really look nice if it did. It'd be really neat if they re added the plains biome to function as a biome border? Maybe?
-Wasteland trees need some love. They look kind of outdated to me, espescially at longer distances where they don't fully render. The super cool new A21 art assets make the older textures stand out a lot more to me during gameplay. (espescially some of the 2-D looking blocks, like some of the barbed wire/fencing that turns invisible at certain angles.)
-This is purely personal preference, so it's not even a suggestion but I preferred the model of the old spider zombie. We have this predator looking thing now, and while it looks cool graphically, I prefer the old one imo. Old model kind of reminded me of some of the enemies from the game Cry of Fear & some Silent Hill vibes for some reason, I thought it was really fitting.
-It'd be nice if you could track more then one item/have the tracker open while I have a quest open. Very happy a tracker was implemented though! It helps a lot. I assume its like that since its built off of the quest system? I don't know, I'm probably wrong.
--Since it seems like all I'm doing is complaining, I'm also going to mention my favorite things from A21/A22 previews
-The new windows are great. I love them. It can be hard to hit the glass bits in the corners at times, but they look so much cleaner. They were also optimized to improve FPS, which is great. Along with entity throttling, I'm glad we're getting these features & systems rolled out!
-The animal animations appear to have been polished? I remember the bear running animations being super janky in particular in previous alphas, but now all of the animals have pretty solid animations that look very nice.
-So many of the new poi's looks super great visually. The collapsed tower poi really threw me for a loop, I couldn't even find my way through it since it was knocked over and upside down! Very cool!
-New water traversal and flow is definitely a lot better. It's not perfect, (see the a21 dev streams, when they demonstrated it, lol), but its a voxel game, and I'm decently happy with where it is right now, and any improvements would make it even better.
-Running over zombies is a lot smoother now
-The new art assets are really nice looking
-The new doors man, the doors, they look great!
-I really like the new main menu background
-The death penalty settings were a really great addition! I like new features and major changes like that being added into A21.X updates.
-Those ui concepts looked so good! If that makes it into a22, I'd be super happy. (though we haven't heard anything about it so I'm not getting my hopes too high) I think a new ui would really refresh the game, and make it so much cleaner and immersive.
-Zombies eating animal corpses is great. It's very cool to see. Makes me focus more on immediately harvesting the animal, or risking the loss of materials/food. It can even be used sort of tactically to lure zombies away from you.
-The new albedo zombie variants will definitely help with variety.
-I'm very happy that traders no longer teleport you away. I vididly remember killing a wolf near a trader at night, and the game kept teleporting me randomly away, and I was so confused, and couldn't harvest the resources since the corpse was too close to the trader
-Weak/critical armor indicators are really helpful.
--
Looking forward to A22, (a little scared about them actually wanting to implement the nerd armor though lmao) Honestly, a lack of bandits doesn't bother me, I just hope we get communication & transparency. I think things like characters, UI, and QOL, are much more in need of revision when compared to a wholly new feature like that.
I have hope that the A21.x updates themselves have some good medium/small changes, because alphas are so far apart. They've been good so far, so that seems likely the 21.x updates will continue to be good. I sort of hope if bandits do get added, they don't have the sort of tribal theme. Lots of people probably like it, but it looks a bit off to me. (Just my opinion, it's probably a wrong one)
Anyway, those are my thoughts/feedback, thanks for reading! I don't mean to come across rude or anything here, so if anything sounds like that, I'm sorry.
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