I don't like what Expressive Upgrade does, and here's why.

[WanderingKid]

I don't like the expressive upgrade.  It has a number of flaws that combine to a game that simply isn't anywhere near as fun as I've become accustomed to.

My particular dislike is based on the gameplay component of 'I can't do anything 1/4 of the time I play the game'.  I can prep for it.  I can hope it has enough water.  I can hope the outhouses have enough dirt.  But I can't do a danged thing for 1/4 of the game.  There is nothing the dupes will ever do over a few hundred cycles of gameplay that will ever make up for the venom I will instill in them for making me waste my time.

If I want to play the SIMS or Gratuitous Tank/Space Battles, I'll boot THAT game up.  I don't need to watch my meeples use the equipment.  I came to watch them build the base I designed.

From there, everything is secondary.  If this version of the game without serious adjustment is the target, I'll go enjoy summer and I'll see you guys sometime in fall.  There's that much 'NOPE' in watching someone else (in this case, dupes) play the game I was trying to play and now have to wait for them to let me back in repeatedly that I simply don't want this. 

Edit: I'm sure this will have a significant outcry, and your opinions are certainly valid.  I came to *play*, not wait.  Please, voice your opinions as loud as I have. I'm sure the devs will hear us, if for not other reason then to drown out my view.

[Kabrute]

Early game is wrecked, without control over the schedule its pointless to bring up free time.  Its the whole "socialism fails" argument, sure right out the gate 80% free time means your base drowns, by the time I get everything in place and am at say cycle 200+ I can afford to spend half the day doing nothing sometimes.  Leisure is a byproduct of excess, we start the game with "barely enough to scrape by" and it only gets worse from there unless you "know" ahead of time exactly how to arrange and prepare for problems that don't seem pressing until they are wrecking your setup....
For new players the game is so unintuitive as to be nonsensical. Plumbing and ventilation don't work "as expected", electrical was misleading up until today.  In addition the game is rife with equipment that, in theory would be greate, but in practice are so impractical as to be frustrating just attempting to employ them "as they appear to be intended to be used."  The only way to thrive is to "game" every single system from day 1 to your advantage, and not play on any harder difficulties, and have 500 hours experience.  I can play the cu on fata/mes but I can't play the eu standard without cringing up inside repeatedly and going wtf whu why? huh but you have gah reload.... why did you do that no no no are my priorities broken? bah back to cu, and that was my evening in a nut shell.

[Smuch]

No it's a fairly understandable opnion but here's the thing, it was implemented this way was to fix something ELSe we were all complaining about: namely the way dupes would completly abandon a work task, often mid way, drop objects, and make long treks if necessary, to eat or go tthe toile at any moment they felt like it. which also could be frustratng as hell.

I think  a lot of the break time problem can (/hopefully will be) fixed when the ability to set your own work/leisure timetable is implemented. Even better if it lets you do have diffent shifts assuring at least one or two duplicants are alway working.)

That said, even when it's done there is one change at least I'd ike to see implemented :  Dupilcants in sitaution of crisis should still be able to do some jobs that'll solve their immdiate situation even if it's break or sleep time. For exemple a starving duplcant should still be abe to harvest food from a plant if there is none directly disponible. And a stranded one in a pit sould stil be able to dig or build ladder untill thy ae able to access food and bed.

[WanderingKid]

1 minute ago, Smuch said:

For exemple a starving duplcant should still be abe to harvest food from a plant if there is none directly disponible. And a stranded one in a pit sould stil be able to dig or build ladder untill thy ae able to access food and bed.

This is partially implemented.  Red Alerts will get dupes stuck behind a CO2 wall to dig themselves out and what not.  However, the red alert priorities are not spelled out to be able to enforce all fixes of a bad situation.  For example, currently you can't red alert cleaning an outhouse.

[Smuch]

I meant duplicant having basic surival instinct without the need to trigger red alert (which affect the whole base) and the entire dupe crew  but fair enough.

 

(Anyway Point I was trying to make is that I think the idea of the update is a step in the right dirrecton even if I agree that not fully implemented as it is, it fees more like a downgrade at the moment.)

 

[Oozinator]

The EU update is doing not much so far. Adding a room and some objects.
More impact. Rebellion - torture - sabotage - flames - destruction - hate - greed

[BlueLance]

2 hours ago, Kabrute said:

Leisure is a byproduct of excess, we start the game with "barely enough to scrape by" and it only gets worse from there unless you "know" ahead of time exactly how to arrange and prepare for problems that don't seem pressing until they are wrecking your setup....

I experience this when my plants start stiffling during their leisure time. My cook stops cooking, my dupes start starving and then even if I red alert I then need to make sure my dupes are BREATHING! I found I had to red alert a few times early game just to get my dupes to harvest food just to feed themselves the next cycle.

So for one third of my cycle dupes do nothing except sleep and stand still. I can understand a break time but I would rather have had the devs delay the pre-release until the scheduler was implemented because right now early game is a frustrating mess. I am now at cycle 200 and I still feel like I am at cycle 100 or so, without exo suits sending a dupe on any long journey is akin to suicide because the dupe will either miss a meal or miss a toilet break and from there they will just starve the entire day doing nothing or wet themselves and carry on. 

Dupes are more machine like now, as soon as break hits they pee, eat and play games. Instead of any sort of self awareness they are now more robotic IMO. At least the older dupes prioritised themselves, peeing when they needed, eating when they were hungry and running for air. Now they only pee and eat at a set time and if they miss that time they pretend they dont need to pee or eat. I am waiting for them to literally not chase an air pocket and just stand still in Co2 and die.

The devs either need to release the scheduler ASAP or overhaul the current expressions system, I love hard games, but being hard and having options is one thing, being hard and not being able to tell dupes when they can do what is just a total frustration. 

[Oozinator]

Just now, BlueLance said:

The devs either need to release the scheduler ASAP or overhaul the current expressions system, I love hard games, but being hard and having options is one thing, being hard and not being able to tell dupes when they can do what is just a total frustration. 

For me, it's completely ok, because most of my dupes are idle most times

 

[BlueLance]

5 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

For me, it's completely ok, because most of my dupes are idle most times

I wish my dupes were idle most of the time, sometimes there will be a period where they are but then they sit jumping in and out of exo suits instead of going to the recreation room

[Oozinator]

9 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

I wish my dupes were idle most of the time, sometimes there will be a period where they are but then they sit jumping in and out of exo suits instead of going to the recreation room

That exoswitching could cost some mat+energy..
Exos are for "the weak"..
Nice cold room to freeze their freetime ^^

[BlueLance]

My rooms contain chlorine, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and heavily polluted oxygen XD I think anyone would be weak agaunst that

[Oozinator]

6 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

My rooms contain chlorine, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and heavily polluted oxygen XD I think anyone would be weak agaunst that

I think we have not much of "different" starting conditions. ^^
They get only pickled meal so far..

[Yunru]

56 minutes ago, BlueLance said:

but I would rather have had the devs delay the pre-release until the scheduler was implemented because right now early game is a frustrating mess.

You lose the right to say that when you agreed to use the testing build. Of course it's unfinished, it's just been implemented.

The testing branch is to provide feedback on, not to ***** about.

[Oozinator]

Just now, Yunru said:

You lose the right to say that

WUT?

[Yunru]

5 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

WUT?

You heard me!

It's the equivalent of trying to live in a building under construction and then saying to the builders "You should of built this more."

[BlueLance]

13 minutes ago, Oozinator said:

I think we have not much of "different" starting conditions. ^^
They get only pickled meal so far..

Believe me, our bases are built completely differently XD Yours is very open etc

You also literally kept all of the plants up, i only keep ones up outside of the starting biome XD

[Oozinator]

2 minutes ago, Yunru said:

You heard me!

It's the equivalent of trying to live in a building under construction and then saying to the builders "You should of built this more."

 

[BlueLance]

10 minutes ago, Yunru said:

It's the equivalent of trying to live in a building under construction and then saying to the builders "You should of built this more."

I understand that it is a pre release, I have been participating in them since they started the closed ones, currently this build is more akin to telling a builder to build something without giving them any tools, he ain't Chuck Norris he can't just roundhouse kick a building into existance. Right now all we have is dupes being chaotic in a different way. i would rather have a partially done scheduler and test that along with the rest of the stuff so I can give feedback on it all and not just the random bubble blowing dupes I currently have

That would be like them releasing all the morphs of critters, stables etc and not giving us the Rancher job. Sure everything else is there but we have no way to test it

[Ambaire]

Is there a way to ignore users on this site? Because I feel like I could ignore Yunru, and not miss a thing.

1 hour ago, BlueLance said:

That would be like them releasing all the morphs of critters, stables etc and not giving us the Rancher job. Sure everything else is there but we have no way to test it

Exactly.

[BlueLance]

Not that i am aware of, I usually find I agree with Yunru on things iirc XD

Nothing wrong with him/her disagreeing or having their own opinion  I just feel strongly about this update

[Khullag]

lose right to say? are you out of your mind?  i opt-in to beta branch to help testing new stuff and report bugs but when i load the update there's nothing to test, ofc people are disappointed and want to express their opinion. 

[WanderingKid]

4 hours ago, BlueLance said:

I am now at cycle 200 and I still feel like I am at cycle 100 or so, without exo suits sending a dupe on any long journey is akin to suicide because the dupe will either miss a meal or miss a toilet break and from there they will just starve the entire day doing nothing or wet themselves and carry on. 

Oddly enough, I *feel* that way but it isn't true.  It just feels more frustrating.  I have a pretty common opening build for my 100 cycle base tests.  I have noticed that longer distance trips are actually somewhat more efficient with dupes not randomly abandoning work for other concerns.  But as an example, this is a base at 21 cycles in the Cosmic Update:

And this is a base at 21 cycles in the EU:

The second base is still waiting on the water to drain into my tower, as the CU base started with a lot less water (and Copper) than this one.  I've still got my excavations done, my water tower is built, farms are going, and I've even got the cesspool started and the beginnings of a waterlock for a nearby something in neutronium.

I've lost some of my early excavations and I haven't started the third tier for the eventual mushroom farm yet.  I had to start farming a lot faster than I normally would, too, as I can usually survive on excavations for about 12-14 cycles with two miners.  However, overall, my opening base hasn't changed that much.

I'm just bored waiting AGAIN for my dupes to DO SOMETHING.  It was cute in cycle 3.  It was kind of cool to see them hang out with music and a water cooler around Cycle 7.  Around cycle 14 when I needed someone to clean the bathroom, AGAIN, it started to get old.  Around cycle 21 I want to dunk them in the hatch killtank and find some new dupes that will go back to work.

[irOninfernO]

i understand that duplicants require time to relax and doze off. However setting a required time to "ONLY" do that does more harm than good. We already don't have time to the necessary things and now we have to deal with this? This is too much....

[Yunru]

5 hours ago, BlueLance said:

Not that i am aware of, I usually find I agree with Yunru on things iirc XD

Nothing wrong with him/her disagreeing or having their own opinion  I just feel strongly about this update

I may be a little testy today (is it still today even?)

[Zarquan]

I haven't had a significant problem in the early game except for a few bugs.  The only problem I have is that I have to red alert if someone is trapped during break time.  I personally kind of like how we have to have amenities to support more skilled duplicants.  It adds another city builder element to it, and I like city builders.

But the fact that we can't currently schedule break time is not pleasant   I hope they make the scheduler flexible.

I want to be able to have at least 2 shifts so that I can set it up such that about half my dupes have a morning break time and the other have have an evening break time and everyone works in the middle.  That would mean I would need fewer rec rooms and fewer latrines and I would have some group of people working at all times.