Ill start by saying well done CCP on a great test, solstice was great fun and a good preview of where vanguard is going and the great fun it is going to be, you have done well with the game so far and I cant wait to see where it goes in the future. This post will be the feedback points I took note of while playing this test and the things I enjoyed and would like to see changes and improvements on.
NEW MAP: The solstice map was great fun and I highly enjoyed it. The different areas of the map having different features was nice but still flowed together well and the verticality and lack of a single focal point made running around the map very fun and enjoyable. the addition of plants and different terrains made the map feel more alive and the different themes of different areas really made moving around the map feel like you where actually traveling into different areas and this gives good feeling of movement instead passing dirt hill number 375
Some feedback for future maps, i feel like the stages of the map could be more triggered by players completing contracts/events rather then a flat time clock making the map and the reinforcement waves feel more responsive to the players actions and makes highly active maps progress faster where less active instances or maps with mid instance joins still have time to do something without joining game to immediately be met with stage3/4 and knowing you don’t really have the time go go on adventure or do longer tasks such as golden chest hunting, the spawn locations need not a designated area but be positioned in a way that doesn’t allow 7 round fights constantly as beating a group in a fight should be an accomplishment not a great I just killed someone now to be ready when they get back in 30 seconds as this isn’t as fun and if a smaller squad engages a larger squad this can mean such as a trio constantly running back making a single engagement an endurance event of who runs out of clones first and really strips the sense of a win when you manage to pick of one or two members of a squad (especially when solo) when by time you clear the group their first death is back on scene. More selective spawn areas should also lack extreme proximity to contention/pvp hotspots as it really isnt great fun to spawn in the centre of three npcs and have the reaction test of trying to get safely to cover instantly to then try and recover and fight the npcs as even the lower tier npcs at point blank can shred through shields and armor at a rapid rate and that is great punishment for over pushing them but not right on spawn as its like being punished for doing nothing wrong. The secured salvage site reinforcements and the mining drill open contract having overhead ships to drop these things in was a nice touch and again made the world feel more lively, the actual ship flying overhead i think would feel more at home if was a more recogniseable eve ship rather then looking like a ship I’ve seen in elite dangerous and player spawn/respawns and reinforcement wave I feel could use similar effects to help tie the function of the world together. the environmental effects are great so far but i would like to see more effect of the environment effecting things as the cold isn’t really that harmful of a negative where effects such as touching the cold and slowly wearing off once leaving the could effecting movement speed, gun handling, ability to jump would make you think more about pathing through the cold were ill just ran through it like it wasn’t there not considering its effect. the caustic acid effect is in a very nice place and I enjoyed it being a boundary effect but would also like to see more of it like in the previous map. The boundary I feel need environmental and terrain blocks rather then the 4 second kill timer (especially with gold chest out there) as that would map the map feel limitless while still having limits.
LOOT: The loot cycle to vanguard does feel progressive and rewarding while remaining understandable in the current version but i do feel it is a little to generalised and could use further refinement. While i understand vanguard is a 3 man squad orientated game i do believe the loot (and other gameplay aspects) pushing towards being in a squad via loot duplication effects is unfairly punishing duo or solo squads basically giving less rewards for same level (if not harder) gameplay and due to this i feel like automatically banked credits should be split between the party not multiplied so a mining open contract would reward each member of the three man squad 25k while rewarding a solo player the full 75k alone as this would add rewards to solo players getting higher payments for taking the risk of getting overwhelmed by larger group while making it fair rewards to work ratio rather then randomly grouping with other players for numbers advantage AND making bank out of it. In this split loot system chipsets would have to drop via a box in game for members of a squad to then take as there is no real easy way to automatically split chipset loot as easily as dividing money. Loot drop sources themselves i feel could use more tiered and specialisation effects to them to further refine the loot system as a few boxes on the beach having potential of tier on through to tier three mods and all loot items makes them a far superior loot method rather then others such as the 4 pin salvage plates, to this i would suggest loot boxes having items like credit nanites and powercells while items like interface components and electronic parts become exclusive to the salvage plates and all loot sources having a more tiered approach such a free loot boxes having tier one mods while nanite/powercell locked boxes and clone pods having tier two and open mining contract secured salvage and golden chest being exclusive source of their three. Loot boxes on map as well as player/npc loot caches are very take all or take none like looting system and i would like to see a better way to take specific loot from something or be able to navigate what I’m taking as after a few days playing and having better chipsets I don’t want to have loot another seven visor chipsets that I’m only gunna trash for no gain just to get to nanites etc in a loot box, as well as player loot caches I’ve had to several times hold the E key to take everything when wanting a specific iten as the tap E loot method takes top to bottom left to right format and if the first item is nanites that I am already maxed on there is no way to take a specific other loot item without holding E and taking everything available
GOLDEN CHEST EASTER EGG: The golden crate was a nice side progression and i enjoy puzzles like these kind of things so the first few days of solving the riddle (before youtube was plastered with all the answers) was very fun and enjoyable and i do like the idea of a nice reward for that kind of work. The rule of one crate per instance and only lootable once creates a race against the other players to get the code and location first or miss out and for higher tier chipset rewards this was fun. One of these chests being outside the boundary while a great challenge to beat I don’t think is a fair way to gate reward chest and I would rather see other ways of difficulty added to the chest rather then a boundary violation. various ways difficulty/specialty could be added to this system would be datalogs containing chest location information but being more indirect then a map grid red dot such as a text datalog like the lore based ones but telling the story perspective of a person needing pass med bay to get to loot room (in case of a shipwreck map and medbay map location) making a more logical way of decoding location rather then just following a dot and make more attention paid to these datalogs as reading required to determine lore from chest datalogs, while in tandem with location coming from this kind of datalog system the code then not being on datalogs part part codes coming from elite (higher ‘ranked’ npcs in general) having pieces of the code to then piece together to then get the reward of the chest and the chest itself being more hidden and sneaky then some of the current locations. More hidden in the sense the pipelines one was or like the deposit box in the wreckage in the cave.
ADAPTIVE WEAPONRY SYSTEM: I know this is only the first wave of the gun modding system and its only one weapon tested right now and will likely need to be further modified when future weapon arch types come into play but it does feel like a nice system and the ability to adapt a gun to your personal style did feel really nice rather then being at a disadvantage if your a sniper like player and only gun is a machine gun style and I’m sure future weapon arch types will further allow personalisation of weapons.
My feedback on the adaptive weapon system, Firstly ill start with what I know is a hot topic and that is the stacking of trigger mods, while I do understand why that was intended and allowed feature in this test I do feel this needs to be restricted in future iterations to a fire mode specific slot like the sights were as this caused all sorts of issues within the modding system as to what fire mode a gun actually was as I tested semi and burst on same gun and sometimes was semi other times was burst and even sometimes the info display said semi but was still bursting two rounds on a single fire click as well as the main reason behind why I believe many people stacked these mods is the power inconsistancy effects, while semi adding damage and burst adding stability this gives automatic no innate stat and various stacking of these adding unfair stat changes on guns compared to other chipsets such as why can three tier three semi fire mods be stacked each with a plus forty to damage (despite a diminishing return) and no negative while the power mod (the one designed to add damage) peaks at a plus twenty five with comparatively drastic negatives. The visor mod I originally also felt needed its own slot as both trigger and visor mods take away from overall potential of a weapon just to add comparatively small functional changes but after further play testing I feel the function of a visor mod costing a mod slot is fair with the slight adjustment that sight chipsets have the highlighting effects within their visual field but the visor mod then adding this effect outside the visual field of the sight. The gun while stock I feel is very unruly and harsh compared to modded and restrictive if not personally favoured gunplay type and while stock gun should be worse then modded I feel basic shipsets should be available to the user or buyable with credits like basic trigger mods or damage like the tier one blue plus five no negative of each chipset type should be available to allow players either just starting or after losing loadout to still have gun function to their needs without buying way to powerful weapons as this gives more enjoyment to gun style and would remove need for the default applied chipsets outside specialty slots such as sight and fire mode. The loss of chipsets on final clones loss is a fair consequence to losing all clones but functionally replacing these lost mods on death feels almost as punishing as the nightmare of making sure to extract equipped weapons chipsets on successful extraction and to this I would suggest that successful extractions the chipsets on a gun automatically extract with you AND stay on gun not return to inventory as half inventory just being the currently equipped mods is also highly restrictive and inventory could use extension if equipped mods need to go via the stash rather then straight back on the weapon on each extract as this almost completely removes ability to have backup loadouts in the event of a final clone loss, and if this outcome isn’t chosen then I would suggest the hanger to stash screen have an icon or marker to show which mods came from equipped weapons to making finding these chipsets again much easier.
NPCs / ENEMIES: enemies in the game are great addition for maps with lower player base and prevent uncontested areas being to easy/simple and I appreciate the different tiered enemies such ad the white/grey npcs being really weak and shoot like storm troopers while the red power suit elites having more defense and gun skill to them. Going forward i would like to see more looks difference between the npc as the workers space suits works well (please keep the yellow) but majority of the workers have the space suits which is fitting but ‘soldier’ also has the space suit and I feel they should have more like the power suit of the elites but thats a refinement point for later in development but visual distinction to know what enemy visually at range to tell which are more combatty focused and which aren’t. I do like how the elites will get aggressive and push you more then all hiding like workers do defensively and this difference in npc tactics is great but one thing I would like to see implemented is a group mentality to some the squads as i’ve had several npcs where i’ve killed their friends (yes it was at range) literally right in front their eyes and they stay in their walk around patrol mode rather then going into fight mode and just feels off that watching two your mates shot in front of you warrants no tactical response to them. I would like the see the stage 2, 3, 4 additional waves also spawn in via droppod like the secured salvage site enemies to as i feel this both fits into living world more then just appearing and also helps players tell where enemies are rather then randomly being shot from behind from an npc that had just spawned in. In relation to the gun turrent placements I feel these could use a boost to their tracking AI and to their damage as I have had several shoot at me even though I’m behind walls and never line of sight peeked them but cos I’m straight line from them they still shoot at the wall which just doesn’t feel how a turrent should function as well as their tracking keeping up to player movement slightly better (I’m not saying beam me in the head every shot) as after two days going past these turrents it became faster to just run past them knowing they wont hit me then to take the time to shoot them which makes them very little threat even though thematically they are to make a certain point more hostile or make a player cautious of the area and when they do hit me I can take many hits without feeling the need to take cover and when I can run straight at a turrent and melee it they really aren’t filling the need of creating caution in the player in that area.
MISC/ EXTRA STUFF: Here’s just some smaller points I wanted to add some feedback on but didn’t feel needed a whole post about…
-Audio: a volume slider for different types of audio (ambience, weapon sounds, environmental sounds) i think would be a nice addition as if I’m shooting or mining etc its near impossible to hear footsteps or other sounds like enemy reloading, movement, interaction with boxes all stuff that is vital for combat and survival… also I was in split wreckage and couldn’t hear enemy player footsteps in the other half of the split wreckage but when they mined one the salvage plates it was so loud it sounded louder then if I was mining myself
-In game menus: when interacting with the ingame menu and getting shot getting out the menu for a speedy response to avoid death can be annoying needing to hit escape so many times and risking over pressing it getting the pause style menu… I would prefer is escape immediately closed the command centre interface and second push opened pause menu while hitting the category specific key within the menu being the one that back tracks a single step
-Loading screen: the finding vanguard loading screen effect can be very headache inducing or disorientating, I don’t mind the idea of the effect but maybe something little less fuzzy
-Melee attacks: Melee attacks cooldown in this playtest felt punishing long and to slow for true combat feel, I know this was done to counter some the melee play before hand but I think would be in a better spot is less cooldown then solstice but not spammable either and had less damage to level out the faster punching
-Crafting: resources are taken at the time of a recipe crafting starting meaning you can queue up more crafts then having resources for, I have done this with ammo before knowing ill be getting the materials by time that craft comes up but it would be nice to have an icon even in queue to show how far you have the resources to craft as well as this error icon having different variations to show if item cant craft due to missing materials or lack of inventory space
-Extraction Beacon: the wording for the beacons timer being ‘time to deployment’ I feel should be ‘time until extraction’
-Ammunition change: I feel an ammo type change should be a reload animation as this would practically be how you change to a magazine of different ammo type
Possible additions:
-Personal stats screen/break down in the home menu of the game to see various stats and how your gameplay has been going
-Ability to save a loadout as we save fits in eve to be able to reuse fits in future if if just a recipe breakdown of the fit(doesn’t need to actually add mods to gun)
-Player skills to effect less minor effects as to be able to improve quality of life without being a time played equals skill gap, some things skills could effect would be; faster item crafting, deployable lifetime (separate skills for different deployable types), slight but not overly drastic raster warmup on mining laser spool up
All this stuff aside i dont believe it all should or would be done just personal opinion and feeling on some things, and dont mean any of thins to be seen as the game isnt good as the solstice playtest was really fun and i enjoyed it all the way to the end and can see the potential of vanguard to be and become a really great game and be enjoyable and worthy lore extention of eve itself while being its own game at the same time, Love you CCP and keep up the great work