Feedback on Avorion

[Avorionpulse]

Hey Fellas,

 

I, too, got Avorion about two weeks ago and felt like sharing my feedback to anyone interested. I do User Experience Design which shares a lot with Gamedesign, I feel, and I love nerding about that stuff.

 

I am also a Space, SciFi and Dirty-Labours-fan. The latter kind of stands for mining, refining, trading and manufacturing. I dont know, really, what Im getting from these things, but the most fun I ever had with Space Engineers was before even Welders and Grinders had been introduced: Me and my Group of Friends would just sit together in a big Junkyard on an Asteroid, grinding out valuable parts from pirated ships and tossing the emptied hulls into the sun.

 

Of course I love the sight of Torpedoes and Lasers Slicing through enemy Ships just about as much, though.

 

About Avorion I thoug it was funny how it felt to me like an altered "X"-game, without much of X's own buggyness and sometimes clunky feel. Avorion is much simpler in design and allows a more easy play - with its own limitations of course. Most notable the quite barebones AI, the very basic way ships find and attack you wherever you are and the way Zones unload when you leave.

 

 

But still, the game is fun and I often had my thougts about the game mechanics that I felt I would like to share just for the sake of sharing. I know the Devs got their own processes and plans and they seem to be not of the worst. Especially when building I found some mechanics and details that showed that they really looked into things, how they are used and what people would expect. Maybe one single, tiny advice to start right there: Dont care too much about your release date compared to the quality of your game! If its not done yet but you got the resources to elevate the major parts of your game to a level you are confident with - do it.

 

 

Like I said, I dont take myself too serious about this. Every now and then when I feel like it I will post another headline in green (Good things!) or red (Boo! Thats as bad as Broccoli!) and add something to it. Sometimes I might have an Idea (Blue!) Everyone is welcome to share their thougts on mine. Lets try a bit of everything to start off:

 

 

 

Simplistic gridbased building!

 

Ever since Minecraft got big we knew of games more simplistic in style, but in turn offering much more in gameplay. You can see that quite often: When a game is based on more complex technologies, like photorealistic models, its ever more difficult to add new things that would influence all the rest of the game. Avorions Ship building is a good example: Do you think you would be able to build new, awesome designs as easily if the game had polygonbased Models like - I dont know - Eve? Avorions Build-etior would have to be as complex as at least the most basic CAD-software, making things so hard for everyone only a couple of people would contribute to the workshop.

 

But its not just that. The simpler building is, the quicker I can stomp out some at least basic-level-awesome ships. When I was a bit more of a Kid than I am now I liked to build weird shapes out of only a hand full of legos I found in some corner and pretend they were spaceships, breaking apart in fierce battles that only happened in my head. Just how I imagined the ships flight-decks, bridge and crew.

 

Space Engineers kind of went in that direction but kind of managed to fall in-between, combining the bad parts of both ends: Building is not as easy and quick as it would have been if you had to combine ready made pieces like you do in Subnautica or KSP - but its also not as free-flowing as Avorion is, when you work on the really big pots. Space Engineers would have shined with the really big capitals colliding like in the earliest videos - but thats also where the engine starts to fail. Damages also are more of a "Ho!" or "No" ... rooms are either gone completely or fully intact. Kind of boring, sadly.

 

 

 

Healthbar vs. destructible Blocks

 

Conversely thats also where Avorion fails, funnily. I see not a single reason why ships have health-bars, when single blocks can be damaged and destroyed. "Health Bars" are kind of dead themselves. They are remnants of archaic days, when games couldnt be complex enough to emulate individual Damages to Entities. Characters were either present, fully functioning, or dead right the moment they accumulated enough "damage".

 

Today you can find shooters where shooting someones leg makes them limp. Destryoing an Engine slows the opponent. Avorion has individual Blocks and destroying parts changes how the ship works or breaks - I had a huge Battleship explode once, because i rammed an aster... i mean "Giga Cannon" - I saw it coming, expected heavy damage on my bow as I turned my ship to face that metaphorical Iceberg with armor but never expected to die outright.

 

There is no incentive for me to place Armor, device clever spaced Armorplating or other intelligent placement if damage can go by all of it, by just accumulating in an ominous health-pool.

 

 

 

Surface-based Editing

 

Maybe not the cleverest of Names. This one came up when looking at windows: I am probably not the first noting how big of a part building ships is. People are so captivated by it, the place rows of fake windows out of glowing blocks along recessed hulls - and they even shine some light on the model. It often enough reminds me of the Homeworld-ships. Relic certainly liked their warm glowing Bentusi ships and the brightly shining Bays on Hiigaran Carriers.

 

Avorions own texture-based windows often get in the way with things though. They are often much bigger and/or clip on the edges. What if users could paint them, or generate them on blocks themselves, saving on Polygons a lot in the process, too?

 

I could imagine more uses for this: Visible Energylines or miniscule "roads" with tiny moving lights, indicating traffic of crews working on maintenance or moving spares.

 

 

That would all just be show, of course. But "show" matters. Theres a significant bit of roleplay in the experience of games like this - just like with the Ships we built with Legos. I know youve done it too - dont deny!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Possible Topics to follow:

 

- Multiplayer & Metagame

- Breaking the Game

- Competetive vs. Casual

- Why is Mining and Fabrication fun

- Roguelike Tidbits

- Shared Progress

- A sense of Size

- Breathing Space (Yes I like to sound ominous)

[Mortlath]

Healthbar vs. destructible Blocks

 

Conversely thats also where Avorion fails, funnily. I see not a single reason why ships have health-bars, when single blocks can be damaged and destroyed. "Health Bars" are kind of dead themselves. They are remnants of archaic days, when games couldnt be complex enough to emulate individual Damages to Entities. Characters were either present, fully functioning, or dead right the moment they accumulated enough "damage".

 

Today you can find shooters where shooting someones leg makes them limp. Destryoing an Engine slows the opponent. Avorion has individual Blocks and destroying parts changes how the ship works or breaks - I had a huge Battleship explode once, because i rammed an aster... i mean "Giga Cannon" - I saw it coming, expected heavy damage on my bow as I turned my ship to face that metaphorical Iceberg with armor but never expected to die outright.

 

There is no incentive for me to place Armor, device clever spaced Armorplating or other intelligent placement if damage can go by all of it, by just accumulating in an ominous health-pool.

 

I see it like this:  You get to disable specific systems, even breaking the whole sections off, but there's a point when enough hull has been breached that the life support is gone and everyone inside is dead.

 

In other games, the ships is still alive until the "core" block is gone, which is weird to have a single point of failure.

 

This game's damage system makes sense to me.

[Avorionpulse]

Makes sense to look at it that way. Every hit stresses your superstructure until you just break apart. What remains as a problem are asteroids killing you, even if they are as tiny as they could be.

 

Another one I have is that you can easily overlook the comparadly tiny healthbar at the bottom of your screen. Feedback like erupting fires - maybe even a faint "red alert" sound would be nice to have.

[SpaceMonkey]

Another one I have is that you can easily overlook the comparadly tiny healthbar at the bottom of your screen. Feedback like erupting fires - maybe even a faint "red alert" sound would be nice to have.

 

 

YES, THIS. I sometimes  get so caught up in the heat of battle I lose track of how bad off my ship is, especially when hit with shield-penetrating shots.

[Shrooblord]

I had a huge Battleship explode once, because i rammed an aster... i mean "Giga Cannon"

x'D

That's the spirit.

 

But yes. The as-- giga canons are admirable foes indeed, bane of many a Star Destroyer-sized vessel that can't reverse thrust in time. You'd think people would learn to invent shock dampeners by now...

 

Welcome to the forum! You raise some interesting tidbits. The view on healthbars being an archaic game element isn't something I've ever considered yet. I've grown up knowing healthbars and almost every game I know has them. But I must admit: whenever a game does health indication differently, whether that's the health"circles" of Blinx the Timesweeper, or by outright showing nothing in the form of UI but rather hint towards damage in the way the model is displayed and animated, that's always a breath of fresh air. But healthbars seems to be sticking around in the collective consciousness still: there's something valuable in a tangible "meter of progress" when it comes to things like damaging foes, or avoiding death yourself as the player.

 

As far as keeping track of the healthbar being an issue, maybe that's all personal preference. I'm an avid player of League of Legends, and am currently playing Divinity: Original Sin alongside Avorion. And what games like those tell you is to always keep an eye on that lower 1/8^th of the screen. I've gotten so used to it that I find myself focusing on the centre of the screen, but keeping alert with my peripheral vision to notice any changes happening down below that would worry the mind.

[Avorionpulse]

-Everybody- knows healthbars, thats why they are so persistent to survive even another decade. And while there are still cases where they are a good choice (The can work with only tiny amounts of screen space) - most times they are just out-dated. They are everything but immersive, they distract and make you look in places where the action where the action is not. Minimaps are a dying breed for that very reason - but healthbars resist to die.

 

A notable exception that comes to my mind - dead space with the Healthbar being a physical thing on the back/spine of your character. Halo 1 displayed the amount of Ammo on the rifle itself - heck, the needler showed what was left in it from those spikes on top.

 

Avorion is still missing particle effects and i would be a bit dissappointed if there wasnt at least any simple fire- or smoke-effects coming at some point. Those would suffice to at least make you check your health-meter. Add an alarmsound at maybe 10-15% health and you would not even need the healthbar at all.

 

That being said ... Hi! :)

[Ravien]

About the windows:

 

There are "blank hull" blocks that you can use for the outside of your ship that do not have any windows. You could cover the parts of your ship that need it in a very thin layer. I too love putting windows on the outside of ships, gives your ship a sense of epic scale and makes it seem like a lot of people actually LIVE on it.

 

I would love for more textures but I'm sure those things will come in time. The lack of textures is one of the few things I think the ship editor is lacking in.