2025 ONI wishlist

[Charletrom]

I'd love to see a return to the development style of 2023, maybe without some of the larger content patches such as Song of the Moo. With the recent DLC releases we have plenty of new toys to play with, but I think ~4 significant QoL patches could go a long way. My top 3 wishes:

1. Renewed focus on QoL, gameplay, and performance improvements.

2. New hazards or even a hardcore gameplay mode

3. Monetization of skins to ensure sustainable development without needing more DLC

The last one is a bit controversial I'm sure, but the key would be value. Maybe 1000 filament per $1 or something would be ok. 

[Fistleaf]

I think Klei earns more with these DLCs. Or there might be some regulatory issue with monetizing blueprints.

[kikia]

I really hope they can further optimize the AI of the dupes

[axxel]

Still waiting for something to remove a solitary 33g PO2 block in your base without pumping or destroying it with tiles.

[NeoDeusMachina]

9 minutes ago, axxel said:

Still waiting for something to remove a solitary 33g PO2 block in your base without pumping or destroying it with tiles.

A sweepy/fly-do hybrid? Floats around, pumps in selected gases in range, delivers to a storage/recharge thingie.

[Pproy]

On 1/13/2025 at 9:17 AM, Charletrom said:

New hazards or even a hardcore gameplay mode

I really want them to expand the disease aspect of the game. AKA add new disease, up the letality of current one and, in compensation, add and rework disinfectant method to help us fight said disease.

Its really sad that the current solution if your dupe get infected with slimelung or zombie spore is just to wait it out.

[CrutchPunk]

33 minutes ago, Pproy said:

I really want them to expand the disease aspect of the game. AKA add new disease, up the letality of current one and, in compensation, add and rework disinfectant method to help us fight said disease.

Its really sad that the current solution if your dupe get infected with slimelung or zombie spore is just to wait it out.

Absolutely agree! The current germ system is barely even a minor nuisance, now.
GRANTED, the nerf DID allow me to regularly get past 100 cycles for the first time in the early days. xD 

[Gurgel]

No specific wishers here. So far I have not been disappointed. I would even take a pack of challenge maps and be fine with that. That said, I guess most people would find that not enough, hence I think this may not happen or only happen as a goodie on something larger. 

[axxel]

11 hours ago, NeoDeusMachina said:

A sweepy/fly-do hybrid? Floats around, pumps in selected gases in range, delivers to a storage/recharge thingie.

I would like it. 

[Pproy]

13 hours ago, Gurgel said:

No specific wishers here. So far I have not been disappointed. I would even take a pack of challenge maps and be fine with that. That said, I guess most people would find that not enough, hence I think this may not happen or only happen as a goodie on something larger. 

It would be nice if more test lab map would get released once in a while. Could even add some new experimental building/mechanic just to see if they would be good addition to the game or not.

[Carib94]

On 2/10/2025 at 2:33 PM, Pproy said:

I really want them to expand the disease aspect of the game. AKA add new disease, up the letality of current one and, in compensation, add and rework disinfectant method to help us fight said disease.

Its really sad that the current solution if your dupe get infected with slimelung or zombie spore is just to wait it out.

Yes Im all for this I want diseases to have some impact again. With the Introduction to boops its safe to say that we may need more hazards and diseases that can affect them. New diseases that dont involve germs like when we had heat stroke and hypothermia, maybe they can make critters have diseases/poison that can harm dupes when dupes attack the critters, making it so that you cant just simply attack and kill critters without consequences. 

 

There are possibilities

[goboking]

I just hope they don't crunch too hard to maintain a two DLC a year pace.  I want them to take as much time as needed to ensure each DLC is fully baked and well polished.  And fire.  I also want fire.

[Gurgel]

On 2/12/2025 at 5:27 AM, goboking said:

I just hope they don't crunch too hard to maintain a two DLC a year pace. 

My impression (may be wrong) is they do not crunch at all, because they understand it does not work.

Crunch is stupid because it decreases overall (i.e. per week) productivity as it causes more bugs, bad design, bad decision, reduced creativity, lower motivation, health problems, loss of the best workers and probably other things. The only exception is that you can increase productivity for about a week with it and then you need to give people the next week half off to recover productivity back to normal levels. I learned that in Software Engineering at university, interestingly.

This has been known reliably for a long, long time. Essentially Henry Ford already found 100 years ago that for manual laborers 40h/week is optimal (!) and for mental workers 30h/week is optimal (!) (can push that up to 40h/week with some low-concentration work 2h per day, but not higher or you lose money). He also found that if he pays his workers better, they are better rested, make fewer errors, are healthier and are more loyal, essentially giving him a profit for the better wages. 

Now, Henry Ford is under no suspicion to be a humanist. He just wanted maximum efficiency and profit, just long-term and rationally. Turns out, doing things like crunch costs you money even when the overtime is unpaid. Also turns out that making sure your workers stay healthy and motivated and are treated well, that is good for your profits. Anybody advocating or ordering crunch for more of a week or so is simply incompetent and has no idea how to optimize worker output. Instead these people do damage to their enterprise.

Another area where bosses are incompetent is all these stupid "back to the office" things. All that does is reduce productivity and cause the smart workers, those you need for ideas and longer-term progress, to leave and find a better place to work. And that is disastrous. I recently talked to somebody from a company doing industrial process automation that was founded during the pandemic. They are all-remote except for a small office with a meeting room and a receptionist there (as some customers want that) and they have no plans to ever change that because it works really well and is a massive cost saving. One big additional advantage is that if they need some specialist, they can hire almost world-wide. 

[Pproy]

Another thing I would love to see would be a renewable source of rust. I know we can harvest some in space, but a critter, plant or even a resource vein where we would need to use a drill to extract said ressource would be cool.

It always annoys me that all my oxygen problem end with building a SPOM. I feel it would be interesting if later on in the game, even though the SPOM would stay the best way to mass produce oxygen, that we could trasition to other mean of producing oxygen in order to get other side product (iron ore and chlorine in this case).  Even if not for the oxygen, it would be cool to mass produce rust, melt it in a rust melter to scale up steel production.

[CrutchPunk]

On 2/11/2025 at 8:12 PM, Carib94 said:

With the Introduction to boops its safe to say that we may need more hazards and diseases that can affect them

I toyed around with a Bionic Bug concept for a bionic-specific disease mod (Bionics were mainly carriers, but it did speed up their "rusting", and if it infected Standard dupes it slowly converted them to Bionic), but it never got past the concept phase. Also.. Boops?! is that what we're officially we're calling them? Because I love it.

Honestly, the Bionic Booster DLC fulfilled one of my previous wishlist items.. More Duplicant Types. So, I'm pretty content, for now.
That said... xD Now that we've got Standard and Bionic Dupes. what's next?! Mutated Dupes?! Hybrids?! So many possibilities (and additional diseases! hah).

A long-time wishlist item for me, though.. is Settled Asteroids. Whether that's an expanded Gravitas POI presence of abandoned colony remnants (maybe through Story Traits?), or active colonies with Duplicants (maybe of a new/different type) already surviving there, potentially in need of help or expanding on their own. Contact with them could lead to unlocking a research branch with exclusive/advanced tech related to their colony type. (similar to Bionics unlocking research on generation) Imagine landing on an asteroid to discover a colony of Bionic Duplicants already established or partly established in need of help. Opening a Cryotank 3000 to find a new type of dupe... Or a settled asteroid with active Supply Teleporters you could exchange materials with. etc.

I'd say that 2nd one is going to remain on my wishlist for quite a while, though. lol

[Magheat2009]

Diseases for sure. They have been number one on my wish list for so long.

[LaShomb]

I think a space station start would be fun. More restricted starting space and resources that require early exploration to planetoids. The space station is in a 100 cycle orbit through the space map and your ability to navigate between planetoids is limited to where you currently are in the orbit. Perhaps using a version of the teleporters. You have to keep a certain amount of crew on board and you need to collect resources from surface to keep things running. New space POI that are other parts of the space station and you can send dupes to repair and initiate reattachment to expand the area of your main station.

It's more of a Spaced Out expansion, but maybe there is a way to make the concept work for only the base game as well.

[arvenil]

Dear Klei, so what will we get in dlc4? It's almost March and we didn't hear any 2025 plans.

[Henlikuoth]

21 hours ago, arvenil said:

Dear Klei, so what will we get in dlc4? It's almost March and we didn't hear any 2025 plans.

If Klei follows a 2-DLCs-per-year plan, then I assume we will hear about it around every six months.

So, I guess we will have information by June. 

[cyberwarlord]

On 2/9/2025 at 6:20 PM, kikia said:

I really hope they can further optimize the AI of the dupes

Putting priorities on x 

 

On 2/10/2025 at 1:33 PM, Pproy said:

I really want them to expand the disease aspect of the game. AKA add new disease, up the letality of current one and, in compensation, add and rework disinfectant method to help us fight said disease.

Its really sad that the current solution if your dupe get infected with slimelung or zombie spore is just to wait it out.

Simple fix would be add stages and just remove self healing.

[Philii]

More QOL AND BUG FIX.