Asteroid backer week-end and patch 0.5.0.0 - FEEDBACK

Patch notes are now available here:

Remember that we’re hosting two community events this Saturday and Sunday around 19:00 UTC. Schedule:

https://forums.inovaestudios.com/t/i-novae-community-events/6523/79


If you do not have an account yet, you’ll have to create one using the same e-mail you used to pledge during the Kickstarter campaign. More instructions in this thread:

https://forums.inovaestudios.com/t/i-novae-community-events/6523/79


Hey everybody, thanks for playing during this play-test week-end for all Infinity Battlescape backers. Please post any feedback you have about this patch, or the game in general if it’s your first experience. We’re particularly interesting in the following feedback:

  • What you think works well, if you’re having fun
  • What does not work, what frustrates you, what makes you feel confused, what you think the game needs to focus on for its Early access launch in 2 months
  • What visually looks impressive, or looks poor / amateur-ish
  • What bugs / issues you’ve encountered

Note that in general, there are a number of points we’re very well aware of and that we’ll be focusing on the next 2 months:

  1. UI / menus: star map is still lacking, other tabs need refinements, and we need to implement in-game settings, options and key bindings

  2. Lack of content: we have a number of ship upgrades / weapons lined up, but the current “static” default configurations are all over-busy. The ship upgrade menu is one of the highest priorities and will affect gameplay a lot

  3. Shields: we have a lot of ideas for shields ( visually, but also in terms of gameplay ) but little time left - it’s possible that feature will be de-prioritized until after September.

  4. Learning curve and streamlining the game: making it as intuitive as possible to new players. Improving the HUD, the controls ( especially capital ship’s ), the help menus, maybe a tutorial / training mode etc…

  5. The persistent progression system: ladder rankings, battle statistics, unlocking new content ( ship upgrades, cosmetic skins, etc… ) as you level up

3 Likes

Nice patch there Flavien.

Some early feedback so far…

Pros:

  • the projectile effects/hits look really good
  • same with the sun glow
  • the lighting from explosions is :star_struck:
  • the warp visuals on the ship and inside the cockpit look nice :heart_eyes:

Cons:

  • the warp tunnel effect is way to much visible, imho. It takes your complete vision away while warping. :cry: I would tone it down quite hard in space and maybe let it get higher while warping on planets. There the warp could “disturb” the atmosphere which makes it more visible.

  • the new tab menu feels disconnecting to me. A slight transparency on the background, so you could still see the game would work quite well in that regard. In it’s current state it feels like you paused the game, which clearly isn’t the case. :wink:

  • the star background looks too bright (which is not the right way to say it, you can simply see to much stars with a low magnitude), and it feels kinda static since it’s not responding to HDR anymore.

Keep up the good work,
DreamKeys

3 Likes

Just a quick note before I run into town.

I second the warp tunnel effect. No offense, but the tunnel effect is a little on the cliche side to begin with. Now, I do think it’s a good looking tunnel effect, just not the right one. Having a clear view around you when in warp is really cool, and I miss it this patch. It can already be hard to get one’s bearings at times, and having the tunnel in the way doesn’t help the situation.

Might I suggest an entirely different affect to begin with:
image

Having some sort of along the lines of irl wing vortices could solve the problem. After all, I think what you’re trying to do is to have an obvious visual indication that you are in warp. I think a bold blue streak on either side, starting just ahead of the nose of the ship should do the trick. That way, you’d just have to pitch a little if you want to see something that is directly one side or the other, and the rest of the view is clear.

I’ve only had a brief play in the patch so far, and somehow yet again I am busy during both community events! Literally not joined a single one for about a year because I always seem to be out… even though I’m not actually very sociable!

Anyway, just wanted to say that I like pretty much every single thing on those Patch Notes. :smile: I could give feedback on individual points, but it would be a waste of time because I like all of it, especially the lighting and combat fog effects.

Only one reservation, and it’s the same one mentioned by others: the warp tunnel. I will edit this once I have actually tried it, but I don’t think it’s necessary. I was fine with the variable “space dust” streaks we had before, which achieves the same kind of thing if it’s turned up?


Edit: I don’t like the warp tunnel (I have tried it now). It takes away from the beauty of the scenery as you’re warping. However, could some sort of lensing effect work?


Lastly, just a reminder here that in the 0.4.7.0 feedback we had started a discussion about improving the radial menus. I’m sure there’s more ideas out there, so post them here now I guess!

Great work I-Novae, it’s looking fantastic.

  • I don’t like the warp effect either, too visible and a bit cliché. I would prefer higher frequency noise on the texture and a colorless background warping effect (like hot air does) rather than this overlay.
  • On the destroyer, the locking reticle for torpedoes is fixed forwards whereas torps fire upwards, so shots must rely on the torpedo guiding system only.
1 Like

The visuals, WOW! the look of sparks coming off a ship you get close to as you hammer it with kinetics… the look of the clouds and explosions… i dont think you need to worry about the space battle visuals for a good while.

The reflections of the purple warp cone on the cockpit geometry bring it to life, it looks fantastic. Despite that, the inty cockpit could use some touching up. The flat metallic panels that are closest to bottom center view are well, flat, literally and aesthetically, but center-view is where you want some good detail. Some more geometry there would be nice. Planet surfaces could use some more geometry too (trees, rocks, etc)

The damage buzzing sound fx at around 70% hull sound too loud and too frequent. its more like a wasp in my ear than a sparking sound fx with the fast onset and volume.

combat gameplay stuff:

The hitbox update has made the biggest difference on gameplay this patch by far. Because the size of the target is so important to evasion, the change has increased the survivability of the inty, bomber and even corvette(against capital) significantly. Basically in an inty now i feel immortal and against players im feeling a lot of stalemating happening. Also, corvette and capital turrets are significantly less effective against everything smaller, allowing smaller ships to more reliably kite them down.

I mentioned awhile ago that when hitboxes were updated, the lack of weapon convergence would become a more obvious as a problem due to the weapon positioning on the inty. It definitely feels like it now, It has massively changed the importance of which direction you shoot at an interceptor from, basically the importance of “hunting the pancake” (hit the top or bottom) has increased threefold. Shooting from the side or front will often have your guns just fly past the ship above and below. I find myself aiming with my left or right gun instead of both at the same time, wishing i could have both of the kinetics on the same wing wing so i could get a singular weapon alignment. So the focus now is on third partying (shooting while they are distracted) or getting around people in a 1v1.

That can be a good focus to have, but the issue is that it feels a bit too much like kiting and gambling hits is the better strategy right now, as pushing the other player to get around them doesnt feel as viable. I think a number of tuning items could help here. For the convergence, converging the weapons based on predicted or current enemy range, or moving the inties guns center-line so they dont have to worry about convergence at all would help, i dont really think the crossing projectiles looks too silly as long as there is a reasonable minimum convergence range, it just makes sense. Another measure that might help shorten the now long inty v inty fights is increased angular acceleration to make target aquisition faster. Because now the inty and bomber are again stronger against caps due to the better evasion, it may be worth experimenting with reducing inty weapon projectile velocity to get fights closer to reduce the effect of the smaller hitboxes, but im not so sure this would have good effects all around. It might make escaping from a fight too much easier.

Despite feeling very strong in evasion inties are feeling somewhat sluggish in terms of how they move around other inties right now. Marginally shorter ranges/reduced projectile velocity might help with that but im not sure really.

misc:

One thing not on the “working on soon” list is the lack of space station subsystem targeting… people have no idea where to shoot or that they CAN shoot at each turret, segment, reactor etc just starting out. Also it can be tricky lining up shots while moving against stationary turrets and whatnot. It would be a big play ability boon to have targetting for this and make it way more obvious to new players what they should be doing against stations, and in the future the turrets and subsystems on capital ships.

I think credit rewards for killing mines, if you use a missile are still broken.

There’s also still the very confusing issue that in warp you can hold W and accelerate much slower than if you just let go. That one will seriously confuse new players as they hold w and get bored as they try to slowboat between planets.

5 Likes

(from what I put in discord, hope you find it useful)

the new visuals + sound look beautiful

the battlefield smoke/debris/dust looks very nice in various environments. In atmosphere the daylight gives it its own sort of look too. Very fun, believable, and adds a lot of much-needed depth to the gameplay

my biggest concern is that gameplay gets more polish and some significant issues that need to be addressed still

noticing that hitreg seems pretty pretty poor and inconsistent this patch- i think someone else mentioned experiencing this too just now. Can be literally right on the pip but only a few if any shots seem to register while playing just now (I was close enough that I could clearly see the target ship. I am aware the hitbox of interceptors has been reduced, maybe that’s why? Or maybe it’s because the target still had shields too high for my projectiles to get through- if this is what’s going on, there should ideally be some kind of visual or sound indicator so it doesn’t just look like a glitch)

I think the interceptor speed and accelerations could be increased quite a bit. Maybe it’s just I haven’t played in a while, but to me it feels extremely slow and sluggish for a light fighter

the high rate of power consumption feels way too restricting to really take advantage of any boosting, energy weapons, etc. Could the rate that it decreases be made more generous, perhaps?

To be totally honest, I stopped playing after less than 20 minutes this patch because of how slow and unresponsive the interceptor felt, along with the power drainage being so sensitive…it felt like I was fighting the controls too much to be able to actually go and have some fun shooting down opponents like in previous patches. (I’m not sure if any of these got changed as it has been a couple months since I last played, but I at least have a fresh perspective on it) This was a major turn-off for me, I hope the fighter gameplay can be made faster in pace soon.

Looking and sounding more and more refined! Nice work u guys

6 Likes

Yes and amen to this brother! I have been preaching for a more agile snappy interceptor since basically forever. It is still the only somewhat twitch - based first person shooting ship in the game, and it way too sluggish for that. Bomber is not even a twitch based ship. Let alone all the capitals + corvette.

3 Likes

Could you two maybe elaborate what makes the interceptor feel slugisch? Compared to enemy interceptor fire? Hit probability? Compared to interception time? Firing range? Zipping around capital ships? Size of the battle?

There are other ways to increase the percieved nimbleness of the interceptor besides boosting it’s engine stats. Quite a while ago several different settings were adjusted to try to make stations, captials and battles feel larger as well make fights between interceptors more visible and close, which was successfull while almost not changing the feel of interceptor combat by twerking other stats.

Since then the engine stats of the interceptor were boosted again already.
As boosting the interceptor nimbleness would further intensify the other problems like reduced hit probability from interceptors and capitals it would be rather beneficial to adjust projectile speed and range depending on what exactly you feel like the interceptor is not nimble enough compared to.

Looking forward to try out the new version myself once I am back home. Looks sweet already from videos.

1 Like

There has been no change to the interceptor mobility for a while. If anything, it was increased back a few patches ago to avoid being slowed down at high velocities. I’m hesitant on making the interceptor more agile, because it would mean dodging fire would be even easier ( / harder to hit an enemy ) than what it is now. In fact, if the goal is to make things easier to hit, its mobility should be reduced, not increased. Just saying’ :smile:

3 Likes

Small things:

  • I had difficulty dumbfiring missiles at a station's floating turrets. They seem to spawn a way off to the top of the bomber, meaning it was impossible to aim them (especially given that we can't target subsystems yet). Could they spawn in front, like torpedoes?
    EDIT: I have now noticed the little targeting circles that appear for missiles, which does help. But I’m still a bit dubious about how far out the bomber throws the missiles before they fire.

  • I had the station targeted at one point, and the chat function wouldn’t let me say “Engaging target” for the station. It works with ships. Does it not work with stations?

This patch really changed the whole look of the game. The battles look absolutely amazing. The ship textures are awesome too and the new station looks fantastic with the added effects.
The music really fits well and sounds great. Usually I turn music off in games but I think it will let it play in battlescape.
The new explosions, especially the ones with the shockwaves are awesome, the debris after the explosion looks really cool, but I think it would look better without the red debris, in some situations the cloud of debris looks a bit like confetti with those red dots inside.
The mission system is a nice addition, being able to select destinations makes finding the way really easier.
The only thing on this patch I really dislike is the experimental change to cap ship controls.
It liked the old way better, what would even be better if we could zoom out more. The old cap ship controls were damn near perfect IMO.
Another suggestion is that I wish that the ai commander would constantly spawn carriers at mission related sites, so that the pacing of the gameplay would not be as interrupted by respawning and traveling longer distances. I think for newbs it is very frustrating to find a battle only to die moments later and end up at the other side of the system.

2 Likes

I think i have a decent idea of why the inty feels slower right now. Awhile back the engine overcharge (or was it afterburner?) multiplier got changed from 2.0 to 1.5 i think? that was a significant factor, do feel like it hampered the amount of burst acceleration available a bit too much. But that was awhile ago, and now, the game can “feel” slow even if things are moving fast, if the pace of what the player is actually doing feels slow. The earlier changes i mentioned in that earlier postnaught like potentially bringing inty vs inty combat slightly closer might help this, but cant be sure, needs experimenting.

Looking forward to possible engine loadout upgrades on the inty really. Wondering if it makes a difference. Also, down the line it’d be handy to be able to spin up a local match or modded server with edited ship stat files, that would basically allow people to test a wide variety of stat and flight tunings within a single patch, with minimal iterative effort once it’s set up. Could then suggest more specific tunings or fixes and dial in which issues are caused by what, flight wise.

some other stuff i noticed: Flak doesnt seem to be doing any significant damage against inties or bombers, not sure why

quite a bit of network stutter today. not sure what that isbeing caused by but it certainly needs a look.

1 Like

Both were nerfed, but I don’t the overcharge would be an issue, as most people wouldn’t use it all the time since it prevents energy from recharging, so you only use it in specific situations.

Boost was nerfed in the forward/back direction to be more effective on the sides, that might be the change you’re referring to. The idea was to make it more useful at changing course, rather than accelerating in the same direction on your current course ( it was causing a lot of accidental overshooting from new players ).

2 Likes

One of the issues right now is that in big battles, it can be very hard to even lock/select a specific player you want to attack. Particularly if all texts overlap at range, like seen here:

A part of the issue is that when you select someone or something in the blob, you do not actually see what you have locked/selected. Because it is still hidden within all the other texts. It would be a simple but very helpful change to have basic info (Name, Ship type) of anything you lock on to displayed on another part of the HUD, away from the clutter. So then while travelling to a far away fight, you would have time to blind cycle/target through blobs till you have something interesting. Might also want to introduce a “Lock Players first” - bias if multiple targets are within, say, 3 pixels diameter.

The option to select a station / battle from the menue is super useful, but it would be even faster with an option to rightclick -> set target (and on friendly stations rightclick -> set spawn). As that functionality is ingame now, it would be SUPER useful if you could do the same on the player list for all friendlies and all currently scanned/known enemies. Would make it a LOT easier to form up into fleets and also to find the battle again where you just died to a specific group of enemies.

As far as Inties go, i do not want to repost everything for the millionst time - look into my post history and a lot of stuff/complaints will still be valid. Short version: Agility for me is the ability to do tight, fast and precise direction change manouvers. I test that ability on Stations and Ground bases zooming around obstacles. Snappyness for me is to do fast and precise aiming in all combat situations. Both have been worse in some patches, but also a lot better in previous versions. Along with speed caps, very fast hitting of energy limits, heat limits and on top of all that losing subsystem functionality essentially randomly, it can severely limit your ability to perform the most basic elements of FPS/Cockpit view/aimwithyourwholeship - combat: manouvering, aiming and shooting.

As always, talking about direct control mode. I know that that was never a priority and most devs&players do not use it. But it is the only way for me to play inty&bomber. It is the only part of the game that for me is consistently fun when it works/is not overnerfed.

On a more positive note, Bombers are much more viable since tracking torpedos actually hit capitals. Still think dumbfire should be buffed against moving capships, not just stationary structures. E.g. faster reload / refire when in dumbfire mode.

3 Likes

Agreed. Weapon convergence for the interceptor please! Either auto-adjusting to target distance, or preset choice by the player (similar to War Thunder).

Personally, if it had to be preset, I would set it at about 1.5km. That would have the added benefit of making inty pilots keep at an optimum range, while giving enough convergence that you can still hit when closer.

2 Likes

Cloud effects look really good- the way the explosions light them up is amazing. Can you make each bullet from weapons fire a source of light so they also light up the clouds? Not sure if that’s possible with your current implementation of ‘faking’ the volumetrics.

The ‘confetti’ from capital explosions are a nice touch, I agree with a previous reply that the red particles could be toned down or removed.

Saw in the live stream (which Hutch also mentioned) that the AI keeps slamming into cap ships making them uncontrollable.

3 Likes

Feedback related to community events: Scoria should get some love. I played for an hour and we played uncoordinated with a silent chat. Some community management would be appreciated on this side.

3 Likes

Yup. I had a really hard time in a destroyer yesterday - kept getting rammed!

Maybe the AI is having a hard time with the control scheme change as well :wink:

4 Likes