[Occupational Upgrade] A way to kill ONI

[SamLogan]

Hello,

Yes, I know there's billion post about the new update, but I need to post mine because ONI is living a critical update that could kill the game.

From an addictive game to a non-fun game

Before, Occupational Upgrade, I was totally addict to ONI, I played since the first version and I use to discover a new game at each content patch. But this patch is a critical error.

It contains a lot of good ideas, Jobs are cool but in contrariness the ancient system that still remain without levels. By the way, I missed really the leveling system wich gave us a feeling of progress. Ok it could be ajusted to fit with the jobs but don't delete it.

I don't understand why all Dups can dig. If you want add real job, let the exclusive task to that job.

Now, the game is so slow, it takes so long to do tasks and set up. Duplicants are so slow that two of my base die from Starvation even if I've had a lot of food.

Jobs don't work, when I assign a Dup for the farming I want that he stay in the room and do his job as a scientist without I've to forced him.

Germs and other nerfs are really too hard, I'm a confirmed player and I really think the game become too hard too fast in the early game.

Even if the Factorio machines are fun, it doesn't fit with the spirit of the game. We play with Duplicants, not with robots. With the system, you can do a base with only 1 Duplicant, where's the fun?

And globaly, the patch really kill the overall fun of the game by missing some balancing, too much nerfs, and a job system really need to be improve.

Many of my friends who play of lot, just stop the game with this patch.

 

Proposals

- Keep the job system but with a leveling system with attributes caps.

- Make generals attributes share with all Duplicants like Athletics.

- If you don't want keep the leveling system, add more brain or allow us to craft them to improve our Dups.

- Enlarge the starting zone and make the early game more smooth.

- Add more recipes, more food sources like renewable meat.

- Varied the map generation : have always Slime and chlorine on the border of the starting zone is boring.

- Really need to improve the Priority system.

 

Give us more way to survive, cause I feel more the game progress, less the base model possibility is reduced, espacially with the architectural bonus which forced us to respect it.

I love ONI, but trust me, you're going on the wrong way with this patch.

[Ichikai]

First off, it's only preview, no reason to start yelling "I quit" yet.

Secondly, have you tried playing since last update? It sounds like they have made improvements to the slow-down of things. But, super-duplicants from before are gone.

[BT_20]

@SamLogan I don’t think that this update is all that bad at least not as bad as the outbreak “upgrade”.I think the jobs system has promise and the other features being added are good but you are correct this upgrade dose take away from the experience in the grand scheme of things.

I hope that the devs can get the jobs system corrected so that it is actually fun and not just make this go down as another outbreak upgrade.

[Kabrute]

I would accept the massive time drag if our creative freedoms weren't hard coded out of existence then patched over with a succession of failed bandaids.....

[Saturnus]

22 minutes ago, Ichikai said:

First off, it's only preview, no reason to start yelling "I quit" yet.

Secondly, have you tried playing since last update? It sounds like they have made improvements to the slow-down of things. But, super-duplicants from before are gone.

He's frustrated that he feels the game development is not going in a direction he sees as desirable and have every right to speak up if he so chooses.

I happen to agree to a large extent. I've voiced some of my frustration on discord and here as well but really, I've gritted my teeth to try and get a positive spin on things because this preview is really a disaster in my opinion.

Leaving the whole job and priority system aside for a moment, and it's shoe horning of players into one way of playing the game... the Klei way whatever that is. Lets also remember that this update has a conveyor system that right now one week from release is riddled with very serious bugs and in desperate need of a general rethink. There's also a steam turbine which looks like it's no where near a completed working state yet. Hell, it doesn't even look like it's fully out of the concept stage yet.

And then there's the hats. The hats might have seemed like a fun idea on a coffee induced Monday morning brain storming session but it's an artistic disaster. You take one of the most defining features and a key graphical element on the dupes, the hair do, and mostly obscures it with ugly hats. I get the metaphorical implication of wearing hats because it's your job but you could have done that with uniforms. They at least wouldn't have obscured the identity of a dupe like the hats do. It's practically impossible to tell who is Nails, Frankie or Hassan in a dupe line up with hats on for example. Especially zoomed out just a bit.

[KittenIsAGeek]

I've run into the starvation problem several times.  Mushbars by cycle 3 is the only way I've kept my base alive long enough to get some plants going, but it'll eat up your water before you know it.  Which leads into the second problem.. the game progression is slow enough now that you'll run out of oxygen if you don't start electrolyzing from those initial pools.  It definitely takes some new strategies to survive.

In my opinion, mealwood could stand to have their production rates improved slightly.  They're the only real food source in the beginning of the game, and now it requires 5 plants per dupe to provide enough food.  That's in a greenhouse with a farmer.  I had 8 dupes by turn 25 and between the tending with dirt and harvesting, the 40 plants kept a fair share of the dupe work allotment.

Yes, you can improve the production rate by making meal bars, but that ties up another dupe.  Half of each cycle was spent just taking care of food, making base development slow down even more.  Sure, previously mealwood was a bit broken, but I think the fact that they now require dirt AND dupes incur a stress penalty towards it as they improve their skills is incentive enough to work towards other food sources as the game progresses.

[Lutzkhie]

well jobs really do drag progression, i kinda hate that "requires an artist, seasoned farmer, etc"

[KittenIsAGeek]

1 minute ago, Lutzkhie said:

well jobs really do drag progression, i kinda hate that "requires an artist, seasoned farmer, etc"

I kinda like it, but I think job allocation needs a bit more work.  Right now, my cook tries to research, my researcher tries to gofer, my gofer tries to mine, my miner tries to cook...   Certainly some of them are capable of doing the job, but when my researcher is anemic and trying to run things around...

[Kabrute]

after a couple run throughs I still don't need mushbars and don't electro the starting water, am on cycle 100 and still haven't quite used it all but I have tailored my play style to min-maxing and thats the Only reason i don't have to resort to dirt bars on dupes.  Its a close call though pushing diggers to target buried objects in the hopes of a few more muck roots till those first harvests hit

[KittenIsAGeek]

...and they really gotta fix the "Learning 5, loves to research, yokel" thing...

[The Plum Gate]

The thread belongs in the suggestions and feedback section.

[Ichikai]

@Saturnus

I'm by no means disagreeing that there are issues. Was just saying that from what I've been seeing the issues have been solved to an extent and that it might no longer be as bad, and that it certainly could improve, since after all it's still just the preview.

I mean, I get the intent.
But, I do not like that the only way dupes improve is by wearing magical hats. No matter how much of a thing they may do (e.g. dig).

There are several ways I'd be more than ok with.

• Hard cap at lvl 5-10, not counting starting attribute points, leveling normally as before (maybe slower)
• All jobs giving athletics to a lesser extent than logistical jobs
• Tenure from jobs retaining a job's attribute points after learning it, or a slightly lesser amount
• Training equipment/room to get bonus attribute points
• Anything but current preview (I.E. One dimensional magic hats)  ( @The Plum Gate )

Plus, also disagree with putting something as basic as pipes for solids behind an artificial figurative wall that doesn't make sense, if anything, mechatronics would gate the mechanical arm lol.

[The Plum Gate]

3 minutes ago, Ichikai said:

Anything but current

We are definitely on the same page, but this bullet point I don't get. Current stable or current preview? It sounds like you want the current - just changed. Anything but current stable is a fluid system - so it will change.

[goboking]

8 minutes ago, Kabrute said:

I would accept the massive time drag if our creative freedoms weren't hard coded out of existence then patched over with a succession of failed bandaids.....

This is sort of how I feel.  If the developers want to slow the game down by limiting stat growth (particularly move speed) I can live with that.  It may be inconvenient when I want to get things done quickly, but i can see the argument for slowing the pace at which we build and expand.  The means of control being taken away from us, though, I don't get.  I just don't see how fewer priorities or more restrictive jobs makes the game better.

[Grimgaw]

I don't like the argument people throw around that this is 'just a preview'.

The way the updates rolled out so far, it's one week until we're stuck with what we have for another 6 weeks while devs work on next update.

If we want some fixes they need to happen in this one week, or they'll come out of next updates developement time.

[donutman07]

you guys likely have some valid complaints about the job system and conveyors, I don't have much to say about that.

One thing I'm seeing a lot this patch that concerns me is complaints about difficulty.  To me this game has always been too easy even on the hardest difficulty. I think maybe to address the issues some players are having without killing the fun for advanced players is to have the difficulty scaling modify more than just stress and immune system.  For example: crop yields, starting stats of dupes could be more or less positive, variable mass of useful resources in the map (in particular in the starting area) etc

If I were designing it, I would shoot for normal to cause people to lose one or two bases before getting the hang of it.  Easy most likely you succeed on first or second try.  Hard and very hard would require some fine tuning of your build order to survive.

[Saturnus]

2 minutes ago, donutman07 said:

For example: crop yields, starting stats of dupes could be more or less positive, variable mass of useful resources in the map (in particular in the starting area) etc

Reduce mass of abyssalite ore in the veins 100 times, and you suddenly have a challenging game for example.

[uraharakisuke]

2 minutes ago, donutman07 said:

you guys likely have some valid complaints about the job system and conveyors, I don't have much to say about that.

One thing I'm seeing a lot this patch that concerns me is complaints about difficulty.  To me this game has always been too easy even on the hardest difficulty. I think maybe to address the issues some players are having without killing the fun for advanced players is to have the difficulty scaling modify more than just stress and immune system.  For example: crop yields, starting stats of dupes could be more or less positive, variable mass of useful resources in the map (in particular in the starting area) etc

If I were designing it, I would shoot for normal to cause people to lose one or two based before getting the hang of it.  Easy most likely you succeed on first or second try.  Hard and very hard would require some fine tuning of your build order to survive.

I'd say it's difficult in the sense that nobody does what their job is and people take forever to get to the edge without exosuits. 

like e.g in real life if your chauffeur did you cooking and your cook was driving you around without a license on top of all of them being 80 year old, would definitely make things difficult. 

[The Plum Gate]

No one seems too off-put by the fact that we start with fewer kcals of rations - I filed a bug about this because I didn't know if it's intended or not. Since they changed the kcal value-to weight ratio, this changed the starting kcals from 20K down to 16k, so it's no wonder people are having a hard time those first few cycles - getting food takes some digging around for muckroot, research and what not - setting up shop is slightly foreshortened by the need for food. With only three or four dupes - you loose 1 cycle's food to this weight to kcal ratio change.

[Kasuha]

12 hours ago, SamLogan said:

- Keep the job system but with a leveling system with attributes caps.

- Make generals attributes share with all Duplicants like Athletics.

- If you don't want keep the leveling system, add more brain or allow us to craft them to improve our Dups.

- Enlarge the starting zone and make the early game more smooth.

- Add more recipes, more food sources like renewable meat.

- Varied the map generation : have always Slime and chlorine on the border of the starting zone is boring.

- Really need to improve the Priority system.

After last build and when you remember you have to only hire high athletics duplicants, the game is decent again - on a level of "more challenging" rather than "slow and boring" in my opinion. The duplicant job/task preferences are about right and they can get to and from work in decent time even with some expansion beyond the starting biome.

I agree with some of what you propose, though. Some leveling of athletics instead of only hiring high athletics dupes would definitely help. Duplicants run around a lot and they need their speed to evolve along with the colony size. The tube system is great but takes a while (and some expansion) to build and can't fix everything. And/or give a duplicant half to third of stat bonus he got in the job training even after switching jobs.

I think the starting biome size is still about right. And after most recent build, I found no major problems with the priority system (except I'd really enjoy return of the old 1-9).

 

[Dujour]

I like the new update. It's challenging again. Before this patch it was way way too easy to take it all they way to end game with some very very simple mechanics and rules.

I agree about the hats though. It's not an "artistic disaster" but it does obscure the awesome hair

I think a better job selection visual feedback mechanism would be the tool they are visibly carrying around. Farmer carries a pitchfork around, keeps his hair do. Higher tier jobs have more advanced tools, or just touch them up to look it. Pitchfork with a huge nob on it that goes to 11. I dunno.

Miner carries around a pick ax, higher miners have a animated pick ax that pummels the rock like a pile driver. You can keep the visual cues without obscuring Lindseys golden locks.

[AileTheAlien]

On 2/1/2018 at 6:09 PM, Saturnus said:

The hats might have seemed like a fun idea on a coffee induced Monday morning brain storming session but it's an artistic disaster.

I posted the same sentiment in a "give us a toggle for hats" thread. The hats look ridiculous, and cover up the hair. Some of the hats are easily recognizable, like a hard-hat for mining, but most just look random.

However, my biggest grievance with the new jobs system is that it heavily limits player freedom, and limits their options. I'd agree that not every dupe should be an expert at everything, which is what I think the devs are trying to solve here, but I think the jobs were the wrong way to go about that. A system like Rimworld, where skills decay over time, would allow players to have jack-of-all-trades dupes, and specialized dupes, and not restrict the player and not clutter up the UI, and not have ugly hats. It would need to be balanced properly (and I think Rimworld is actually not balanced, as your master lvl 20 chef can quickly lose their skill), but would be a much better system.

[Lifegrow]

I love the update, I just think it's place in the roadmap is screwed. I think a lot of the people who are incredibly outspoken about how much they dislike the new update may well feel differently when the newly added tools have more applications in game.

I.e. At present there is VERY little use for a conveyor system, however it's obviously being introduced now for future planned content - and for the creases to be ironed out before this mysterious content arrives. Also, for the continued development of applications for conveyor-based builds, the devs need feedback from the community of features that they may find a use for - for example I really want a self-outputting compactor to feed my hatches in conjunction with the sweeper arm  

Personally, I like the jobs management, however I'm incredibly aware (as should everyone who plays ONI be) it's still early access, it's still going to change massively before finished retail product, and this is just another little hop towards a finished game. 

In short - and as ever - if you don't like the current release, it's just unlucky. Say your piece on the forums, get your head around the new kit so you know how it's used/what it does and whats changed, then simply wait for the next update and try again. Let's face it - updates are coming thick and fast...

We all have our plans for where this game should go, and can all be a little scorned when some content is released that doesn't match our vision of the game (lord knows I've been crying out for animal husbandry for around 8 months  ) however this is just a part of the new world that is "early access gaming". Get used to it.

[Lutzkhie]

they actually implemented what you said here

[Saturnus]

@Lifegrow Correct me if I'm wrong but you didn't actually play the preview until the current revision, right? You know the ones that only had priorities 1-5 and *1-*5, and no skill or stat increase at all, and strict job boundaries?

If so then your experience of the preview is naturally completely different because reverting to the old 1-9 priorities, giving a wide job task variation and having passive stat increase on top of job stat increases changes the game completely. From a frustrating mess where everything was slow as molasses and with awkward job boundaries, where miners would only dig, architects would only build etc meaning that everyone just stood around watching while the gofers and couriers where overworked like mad trying to keep up.