Are we getting Moonquay-ed ?

[ADM]

I'm just having deja vu... some beta I genuinely liked on release... the content looks fun while everybody acknowledges it needed thoughtful tweaks and further touches with the newly added features to be excellent... and on the first hotfix(es) the whole content gets tuned down so much and wrongly it turns out to be purely sad... and after the beta, nothin' done toward it, moving on.

Yeah that's how I recall the Moon Quay update to be received, we're only a few days away from the release (Thursday 15th - 22th ?) -

- and a bunch of things in this update just got worse right away, and I don't see anything being attempted yet outside of the always so welcome bug fixes. Surely weekends got in the way, much need ones right ? But now with so little time left for polishing Terror Below... I've got doubts on how the update could get as good as it could have gotten with the generally great community feedback (like the Moon Quay used to have) which is what I usually count on to confirm my general thoughts on a beta, it's great but only needs THAT little more cooking betas should be here for to not feel raw. Until then I'm only waiting to be proved wrong and have a blast with this update. Klei, do your thing.

[Dextops]

This is exactly what I was thinking and I’m hoping things can be improved after release/ in the third update so we don’t get a repeat of moon quay

[Yuuko]

I feel like due to Kleifest I'm willing to overlook how rushed this patch is.  Obviously they want to have a release + skins on that date.  But I'm also very eh... anxious about it.  I also don't like when things could be re-thought to be more interesting, but instead just get nerfed and put aside like monkey raids.

[Theukon-dos]

Klei really, and I mean really needs to figure out how to stretch the updates back out once we get this last one. Because they clearly don't have enough time to properly flesh these things out with their current schedual. Back when they could alternate between big updates and character refreshes, sure. It worked well enough. But now though? Yeah, not so much. 

 

Maybe we can get a rift refresh update in a few month. As sad as that is to say outloud.

[Pomato]

I think the biggest problem of monkey raids is that they pop up at a random direction, and they row to you WAY too fast. If you are using a cannon like they expect you to, you wouldn't know which direction you should aim at, and by then their boat would be already in your face.

Also even if you have practiced enough to aim at the correct direction, the range of the cannon is laughably short, so even if you strike a hit, the momentum of the pirate's boat would still crash on to you, so good luck trying to patch that hole and waiting it to be popped off again by the shadow hands at night.

[Popian]

Pirate Raids could have had overtuned spawn rates for beta so players could readily test out the content. Also makes the change easier to accept when you think you could have had it worse. The current rate is good for letting you do whatever ocean activities you were planning while still having to be cautious.

This doesn't exactly apply to the boulders, probably because they didn't translate well into a multiplayer setting with the responsibility involved.

[Pomato]

1 hour ago, Shosuko said:

Obviously they want to have a release + skins on that date.

I don't quite understand. Can they not just release the skins only and keep refining on the update?

I mean I think a lot of people buy skins not because a new content just dropped, but because they look cool. I'm one of those "people".

[Yuuko]

18 minutes ago, The Box said:

I don't quite understand. Can they not just release the skins only and keep refining on the update?

I mean I think a lot of people buy skins not because a new content just dropped, but because they look cool. I'm one of those "people".

idk, but I'm gonna go with no.  Its probably a marketing thing.  New content + items = good, new items for cash $$ and no new content = money grubbing tencent sellouts.

Anyway as I said - they allege they have plans for these updates beyond what we've seen, and as long as they actually re-consider some of these going forward, the state they are in now is fine enough.  Its certainly not good, but its not destructive and they can tune and dial and re-work as they go.  IF they just leave it as is and patch in w/e next well... this arc is shaping up to be trash sry Klei :\ 

[-Variant]

I'm kind of intimidated right now. There's till some pretty major issues I'd rather have fixed or cleaned up now instead of during or after release.

I'm namely looking at Charlie's art, I feel like this is a pretty major and important plot point they should try and nail since this is their one opening chance, her sort of proper in-game debut. I haven't really seen a lot of praise for her current iteration.

There's also the plentiful of issues with the scrapbook's misleading or awkward entries. It's understandable, since it's mostly automated but again, I enjoy the polish.

Oh, and Boulder Rain/Acid tuning... mmrrm.
Augh. I'm antsy!

[WhackE]

I'm looking forward towards this update too, it genuinely has some good ideas, like acid affecting the environment and challenging the player, the new mobs have fun and cool attack patterns, I would say they're heading in the right direction again because they tried adding more survival elements, I hope the complaints don't stop them from doing it again in the future. A lot of polish and feedback was needed, and I want to continue to see Klei doing things I like in the future.

[xhyom]

I'm telling myself that these portal updates were already planned and sort of on the trigger, you know, that's why they came out so soon, because there's no reason in the world that makes me understand why Klei would refuse to take a little more time in development. They even said they were going to improve it, but it remained the same, it was like only two weeks outside the usual monthly pattern, I don't know if that makes such a significant difference.

[GenomeSquirrel]

The acid rain revision made me somewhat happy they are adding a speck of utility to very basic armor remakes; but like the planar mechanics, it’s just jumping through hoops to stay in place. At least moon  quay is accessible and has unique items, it failed in execution, but still has potential. This feels like they are rewarding beating fuelweaver with an umbrella skin, looks pretty, but I’ve already spent enough time holding one and it doesn’t do much else.

[Antynomity]

I'm tired of the frequent updates due to this, like wow, cool ideas, rushed execution. I have already gotten bored of lunar rifts and it's not that I play the game a lot anyways, there's just nothing, NOTHING to them. And whatever the shadow rifts had (except boulders, those sucked and still suck so whatever) aka acid rain got turned into a flavor mechanic that gives you free nitre and buffs batilisks only for some reason.

[-Variant]

28 minutes ago, yourAnty said:

batilisks only for some reason

They are the Batman to my Joker.
Those bats... they're... they're mocking me...
Why are they the only mob interaction acid rain has... what's special about them... what's... not special about other mobs?

 Why the bats? Why is it only a random stat buff and hue colored eyes? What does it mean!?

[BB Marioni]

never really understood why some people are so much against moon quay. Banana bushes and Docks were the best additions I've had in this game. The only real negative feedback I would have is that there is no reliable way of pinpointing where the island is, unlike lunar. 

[Yuuko]

17 minutes ago, BB Marioni said:

never really understood why some people are so much against moon quay. Banana bushes and Docks were the best additions I've had in this game. The only real negative feedback I would have is that there is no reliable way of pinpointing where the island is, unlike lunar. 

If you only look at the rewards sure, but if you look at the experience of dealing with monkey raids (especially pre-nerf), finding moon quay, etc it really falls flat.  It adds some nifty crafts you can use, but all of the actual content that makes up the Moon Quay arc aside from those few crafts is pretty meh.

I mean the main complain is the pattern of adding content that is not really challenging, rather it is punishing.  Its not about choices, just something that smashes into you, wrecks your investment, and the best answer to it is to actually just never interact with it in the first place.  And rather than changing the content after it receives negative feedback for being poorly designed, Klei just sweeps it under the rug - ie monkey raids are extremely rare, acid rain does barely any melting to previous waterproof gear, etc.

[Cassielu]

12 minutes ago, BB Marioni said:

Banana bushes and Docks were the best additions I've had in this game

What about Farming, Sailing, Mob ecological behavior, Ocean fishing and Biome mechanism? These are better, more interesting, deeper contents of the game, some of which have been around since the beginning of this game until moon quay ripped ugly scars in them.

Leaving aside the destruction of the original content, moon quay itself has many problems. Maybe some fast food players will think that the power item reward = good, but in the end we all know that we are not there for any cyber item reward, but for the enjoyment of playing the game itself. And moon quay did particularly badly at this point, even being less than 900  tiles away from it is a terrible torment in itself. In this case, these reward only make it worse, like "dangerous and perverted game for a big prize" movie scenario stuff.

[Gashzer]

Im annoyed cause the rift is post-killing ancient fuelweaver content. If you can kill him you are a great dst player. The acid rain and boulders should be difficult as you dont just happen across it. Its something you unlock by proving you are good at the game.

Then they nerf acid rain so much??? Why? Whyyyyy klei? Good players dont need it nerfed and only good players will see this content naturally without modifying their game. 

This could of been an chance for veteran players to get an actually somewhat annoying and challenging survival challenge. Now its just a mild inconvenience... like every other weather challenge.

I want tedious survival challenges that make me want to do some work. They made it optional to activate... is it that hard to make an item to blow up the atrium gate to turn off the rift?

[Captain_Rage]

7 hours ago, Shosuko said:

I feel like due to Kleifest I'm willing to overlook how rushed this patch is.  Obviously they want to have a release + skins on that date.  But I'm also very eh... anxious about it.  I also don't like when things could be re-thought to be more interesting, but instead just get nerfed and put aside like monkey raids.

It will be the second update in an arc of more to come, where future updates are intended to integrate the new content. I believe and hope that the Terror Below update will add new fun things on its own but I also realize that it most, most, likely won't feel entirely complete.

[ADM]

1 hour ago, BB Marioni said:

never really understood why some people are so much against moon quay. Banana bushes and Docks were the best additions I've had in this game. The only real negative feedback I would have is that there is no reliable way of pinpointing where the island is, unlike lunar. 

There are some nice features in all updates and that need to be said yes, personally my favorite bit of the Moon Quay is the whole remake of the tile defining which helps modder a ton to solve incompatibilities. But if not for those generally welcome additions and even some that directly affect the gameplay that aren't bad, legit, you got the core of it that lacks the improvements / rebalancing the player bases asked about and Klei did the full reverse on it. You've had players asking for the radius of the raid to be reduced, in compensation to have it be more frequent to trigger because at the current period you really need to be stuck at sea for it to happen or pure luck, I'm not joking saying I got raids to trigger normally for me only two times after the beta and it seemed so off by the distance the first time, and second was actually last week while doing a sea only challenge, shouldn't be normal... the other times I always forced it with Hostile Flares so I'm at least glad I have these to finally have the loot of this content. Outside of radius and frequency there's also indeed that locating of the island and their boat you doesn't help much, there's also the Banana Bush who grows in winter, I know it's controversial but it's clear it's a bug that just never got addressed only because the bush grows in a special manner so it feels only stupid they kept such an inconsistance of winter basics while being aware of it and have it being brought up many times, they also forgot to define birds in the new tiles added in the island I'm fairly sure because having Crows to spawn instead of Puffins on the sand turfs and the Docks is just bad ambient speaking. A lot of players also consider the Prime Mate attack speed is just purely awful and I would tend to agree it can be unfair to someone who wouldn't want to tank / use crazy items specifically for them, and lastly I dislike how bothering it is to get rid of all the Bandanas and rest of the loot we get from their sinking boats that stains the sea, at least we can burn the Cutless but I really wish their equipments would sink. Also I lied in my post now that I think of it... there was one thing done toward the Moon Quay update post the beta and it was to make old items stored within the stash despawn so you can just loose important stuff to win more Cutless out of it epic win.

I could go on, and I think compared to that Terror Below will be in a much better shape but it won't be really exiting either if the core doesn't receive the community improvements, and probably more that the devs themselves can think of, I do believe in them but we gotta help a bit.

[dois raios]

I dont see it as klei "moonquay-ing" again, I think activating the rift is like unlocking something that looks like a new season (although it is not).

Because it brings you an somewhat unavoidable threat (acid rain and boulders) and acid rain being the overheating/freezing mechanic but in the caves, and to prevent this threat, you have to use certain items.

Maybe I am over simplifying it, but thats it, the update has new mobs, new items, new "season" and new threats. Klei keep it simple and it worked.

Now, I have another thing to say about the update, the moon sends brightshades directly to you, what the shadow sends? I think the moment you active shadow rifts, we could have somethig to remember us that even if we not interact with the rift, it is there trying to draw your attention.

[_zwb]

1 hour ago, Gashzer said:

I want tedious survival challenges that make me want to do some work.

"I AM GOOD AT REPEATING TASKS" -- WX78

[Gashzer]

25 minutes ago, _zwb said:

"I AM GOOD AT REPEATING TASKS" -- WX78

The entire game is just repeating tasks.... atleast make some tasks harder than other tasks 

[Mysterious box]

33 minutes ago, dois raios said:

I dont see it as klei "moonquay-ing" again, I think activating the rift is like unlocking something that looks like a new season (although it is not).

Because it brings you an somewhat unavoidable threat (acid rain and boulders) and acid rain being the overheating/freezing mechanic but in the caves, and to prevent this threat, you have to use certain items.

Maybe I am over simplifying it, but thats it, the update has new mobs, new items, new "season" and new threats. Klei keep it simple and it worked.

Now, I have another thing to say about the update, the moon sends brightshades directly to you, what the shadow sends? I think the moment you active shadow rifts, we could have somethig to remember us that even if we not interact with the rift, it is there trying to draw your attention.

The problem is the 2 "seasonal" threats were nerfed so hard without any good alternatives making them feel like incomplete mechanics that is 100% what happened to moon quay they didn't fix anything they just made it more ignorable.

3 hours ago, BB Marioni said:

never really understood why some people are so much against moon quay. Banana bushes and Docks were the best additions I've had in this game. The only real negative feedback I would have is that there is no reliable way of pinpointing where the island is, unlike lunar. 

That's because your looking at it from the point of view of loot it and forget about it rather than being engaged in the content. I assume the idea in that line of thought is it doesn't matter how bad the content is so long as it doesn't inconvenience the play experience too much and gives new good things which is most of what the entire return of them arc was new loot to take and content you can completely ignore but at that point they may as well just leave the rewards and remove the unpolished fluff.  

41 minutes ago, _zwb said:

"I AM GOOD AT REPEATING TASKS" -- WX78

Is what video games are built on just most people don't actually think about it and some games are good at hiding it.

[_zwb]

1 hour ago, Mysterious box said:

Is what video games are built on just most people don't actually think about it and some games are good at hiding it.

People are already used to repeating their daily routine over and over again without complaints, I'd say whether the games hide it doesn't matter.