Feedback on SC: Origins - First 20 hours

I finally decided to dive into the game a bit. I was feeling really lethargic on Saturday and wanted something familiar that didn't require any brainpower. Usually that's Civ 5, but that night it was jumping into SC:O. After gaming through the entire night (haven't done that in a while), I came up with a list of things I wanted changed or improved. Also, I wasn't impressed with the progress I made for the time given...aka there are a lot of inefficiencies with the game mechanics.

1) I want my lander to not pinwheel across craggy landscapes. Really this was extremely annoying. I thought I was playing Mass Effect 1 again with the dysfunctional Mako. Given that I'm cruising across so many planets constantly, this is honestly a huge issue to enjoying the planet explorations. The lander should never be able to flip or pinwheel at all and should probably be confined to no more than 45 degrees of movement. I really want to largely cruise around unimpeded. There are hundreds of planets, don't make me spend 15 min on each one please. Screw physics, I want fun. Speeding over a landscape and then suddenly finding yourself hitting some small ledge or landing weird causing you to either immediately stop or go pinwheeling seriously sucks. There are some planets where you are constantly falling into crevices and it makes everything an absolute chore. This thing hovers right?? HOVER HIGHER

2) I want my lander to either automatically hover over or straight bull rush through trees. In real life, I love trees. In SC:O, they are my goddamn nemesis. Another instance of screw reality, I want fun.

3) I want a bio scanner for my lander automatically installed. Hunting for biological stuff is frankly annoying when paired with the issues above

4) I want to be able to click on a solar system and see exactly what I left behind. Was there a super toxic planet I couldn't handle with lots of resources and perhaps even a structure/item to explore? I want to be able to look that up without writing it down in a notebook, 80's style. Similar to this feature, I want to easily be able to identify stars I've already visited. Sometimes I go back to places I went to before because I forgot, which is annoying and a waste of time

5) I bought everything from the Melnorme guy (sorry I forgot his new name in this game, I'll just call him beholder in a jar) and my ship still cruised like slow molasses through a system. I could turn like a beast, but raw speed was disappointing. This also ate up a lot of time as I cruised from planet to planet. I think the engine was the 65% one...it was the guy near the callback to my favorite crustaceans from SC 2. Either way, it's insufficient and inefficient.

6) This is probably something that can't change but.........the galaxy is TOO alive. In SC 2 when you saw a speedy black dot chasing you in hyper space, it was almost always a probe eagerly looking to break you down into resources, but not much else. Finding life actually took some effort and it was not nearby. It gave a sense of the vastness of the universe and why we haven't found life yet. It also made exploring more exciting. Having so many so close is a little off putting. It also seems like a lot of random systems have random aliens. It just feels like the universe is bursting with life and it breaks the immersion a little for me.

7) The actual space battles have one critical flaw.....it's always confined to a ring of asteroids and a death cloud. I brought this up as an issue during fleet battles and got the sense it would be one type of arena, but it wasn't the only type. I am honestly shocked that I am forced to resolve my space battles in such an unrealistic, immersion breaking way. Every battle in empty space is filled with rocks and death clouds? That's news to me. I enjoy the tactical battles of trying to understand what your enemy is capable of and then figuring out how to beat them. I don't mind the power ups, those are fun. The random gravity wells and wormholes are a tad off putting though. If I fight in hyper space, there is no gravity well. I'm just literally in the middle of nowhere. I got used to this, but it really made me dislike going into combat. Kept asking myself, when is my timer up and then it's bye-bye. I think it's fine to give people this option, but to make it the default I think is a big mistake IMO

8) This is more of a technical thing, but whenever I'm doing a planet mission and scoot right by a storm such that the rotational cloud is in my vision (fully zoomed out) the FPS takes a huge dive. Now, I'm not trying to knock the game, but these aren't bleeding edge graphics and my PC is bleeding edge tech. There is no reason it should be slowing down at all. I'm guessing there's some optimization issue at play here.

9) Landing zones aren't always proper landing zones. What do I mean by this? My lander will hit the ground and it's not even ground, it's some cracked, broken garbage fest. Kind of goes contrary to what I would think is a proper landing zone. It doesn't happen often, but when it happens, there's usually some other danger on the planet that I want to be able to react to. Not a great experience when that happens.

10) My main ship has the worst nuclear missiles. In SC2, those missiles were deadly if you knew how to use them right. In SC:O, their guidance systems are broken. Even the most advanced, expensive ones barely "seek" anything. It sucks. I used to enjoy the opportunity to pull out the big ship and blast away for resources and fun. Now I leave it to the random fleet of random ships that I am magically able to put back into service after being embedded 75% into the planet's crust.

11) Speaking of my magically repairable ships, I can't re-crew them all. Some of my favorite ones are not renewable. In SC2, you only got ships from allies/friends and could crew them ALL up at home. There was no species specific set of crew you had to go find or whatever to repopulate the ship. If you're going to make this a requirement to re-crew a ship, then you need to go all-in on this feature. You have to tell me who the species is at a minimum and they have to be someone I can come to an agreement on to send crew to Earth. Otherwise just scrap that idea entirely and just let them all get crewed up at Earth. Right now it's stuck in some bizarre in-between and it's annoying.

12) I want to be able to sell individual units of resources instead of having to sell them all. Given that this game seems to want me to keep the rarest resources for random events/missions, I find myself stuck hoarding them all when I could be selling some of them and improving my ship. I never had this issue in SC2 where I got all these cool res and IMMEDIATELY sold them and made use of them. This kind of slows the pace of the game as it makes me want to hoard resources just in case. If I knew where more of those resources were because I had passed them up before due to toxic/heat, then I'd feel a little more inclined to part with them.

I think those are all the issues I had that I can recall now. Moving from issues to more of what I like:

1) Art style works for the ships and aliens and the graphics/FX around their weapons in combat are really nice. The sounds are good too. I still feel like there are sounds that are missing for some secondary abilities. Particularly the Drenkend. Where's my ORZ like "GO GO GO"?? They need something, it's almost silent when they launch a ship. I love the diversity in ships and abilities, really nice and creative touches.

2) The interactions with aliens is enjoyable and I have fun with all of them so far. Except the Kzanti. I don't know if it's purposeful hypocrisy or a bug, but they will happily attack me for virtually no reason and when I do the same to them, they get very upset. Huh? Really? Again, not sure if it's a bug with the game or a bug with their morale code

3) I ran out of gas in hyper space after finding my Melnorme friend when I miscalculated the round trip distance to Fwiffo and back. I thought after all those hours and clearing that treasure world of turrets would be wasted, but nope, got rescued! I am really glad this feature exists.

4) Related to gas, I'm glad that friendly colonies will gas you up for free. This was a smart feature to keep the game moving

5) I enjoy the various planet types and hazards, though the biological life is a bit boring. The space ants are the best part though. Nothing makes me happier than squashing space ants!

6) I like the mini starbases, this was a smart replacement for quasi-space. The Arilou around the first one were a bunch of weirdos though. I couldn't really fathom their personalities from that conversation. When I first met them in SC2, I felt like they were this mysterious, but benevolent race. In SC:O, I am honestly not sure what to classify them as. Weirdos is it I guess. Their ship looked weird too. Haven't met them again, but hopefully further encounters will make them come to life a bit more

7) Despite the immersion breaking and ridiculous nature of the "arena", I love the space battles themselves between the ships. I just hate jumping into that arena...

Honestly I spent a large portion of my time grinding for resources through exploration. Not that this was a bad thing, I enjoy exploring the universe and finding little gems or quests here and there. That's what makes it worth it. As I actually make progress on the story (I've only met Mu'kay, Tywom, Drenkend and Scryve), I'll probably have more feedback, but so far it's fun. As I'm sitting here typing this, I am realizing that when I met aliens they didn't have distinctive theme songs. Maybe they did? It may be saying something that I don't recall them if they do. I distinctly remember facing the Ur-Quan for the first time and thinking "Oh crap. Not only do these guys have bad ass ships, but they are freaking tentacle monsters with an outright terrifying theme song that makes me think that they are coming to kill us all". You may need more of that. Like cow bell.

I'll be back again later once I've had a chance to get through more of the game. Thanks for bringing us another chapter in the Star Control universe!

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MindlessMe

Join Date 12/2011

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Thank you for taking the time to give us some in depth feedback on the game. The suggestions you included have been passed to the team to review. We're continuing to make QoL updates so stay tuned!

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Alright, after a little less than another 20 hours, I completed the game. There may be some spoilers here, so don't read if you haven't finished the game. Had a few more thoughts:

It would be nice if once you found a Maelnari trader, they would all update with the items of the other traders so you don't have to visit a specific one for a specific item
- It would also be helpful if they mentioned that they tend to hang out near large main stars (like in SC2) and how many of them have not been found yet so you can figure out if you "got them all"
- I really do miss the "biological money" from SC2 that was your sole currency for buying the best upgrades in SC2. It gives you a reason to waste time blasting animals and makes them more meaningful
I didn't realize I could mark stars and put little notes for each one indefinitely. You may want to have a little more of a tutorial that points this out to players as it would have really helped me a lot early on
More hints on where some crashed ships with strong items on them may be - I feel like I bought a lot of great items and then found them later which was a bit of a bummer. Also, I think it would be really cool to have a couple unique items that you can only find on crashed ships
I really would like more information on the weapons that we have for the ship. I have no clue how much damage they do, energy they take, rate of fire, range of the weapon...nothing. It's really just trial and error to find the best weapon load outs and you may end up shooting yourself in the foot later
- I think it would also be nice to encourage players to try out new weapon combinations at the training facility in Sol. I never used it once, but I suspect you could use it in this manner
BUG: You can open the Origin without having gotten the code from the Phamysht, which is not only confusing, but breaks the Tywom Trial quest for obvious reasons I won't spoil here
The Menkmack will tell you that they are pulling a fast one on the Mu'Kay, but it's not clear how you stop that practice. The recent patch notes suggest you can
I didn't like the random aliens that didn't talk to you at all, but had these ridiculously strong ships. At first I thought they were thralls of the Scryve, but then found out they were the player contest ships. I would prefer them to not be in the game and just exist in fleet battles, but I don't know what you promised was the reward for that. It kind of breaks the immersion as they are clearly powerful, but have no role in the story. It's bizarre
I also generally didn't like the minor random races. They didn't really add any value other than random quest givers or random quest rewards or just generic "I'm here to make this place feel like it's alive". These minor races should really have a defined purpose in the overall plot and value. I feel like as a result, the primary races in the game don't have enough content around them to give them the level of depth you want/need. I remember the Ur-Quan telling me about their entire history and philosophy, making me realize they weren't these horrible evil beings. It makes you as the player conflicted now about what they are doing and how you feel about it. I won't even talk about the Yehat/Shofixti plot as that was amazing. I never felt strongly about any of the races in SC: Origins like I did for many of the ones in SC2. I feel like we need some RPG-like levels of depth and story to these races where we have pages and pages of dialogue to flesh them out. I also don't feel like the races have any sorts of grudges/backstory between each other asides from Scryve vs everyone else and Tywom vs almost everyone else. Some examples where we could have more:
- Trandals - clearly there could have been much more here as they have parallels to both the Ur-Quan and Mycon. Yet we have no option to make their freedom a reality. Just some token freedom quests and the plot line dies. Clearly feels like a loose thread leftover for DLC to deal with or Origins 2
- Mowlings - There should definitely be an option here for accidental genocide
- Menkmack - They fold easily and despite having a reputation for being tricksters, don't do much tricking. It would be nice if they were genuinely devious and were a little more difficult to win over generally speaking. I distinctly recall the Umgah screwing with the Ilwrath and it was hilarious. I can't remember if you can mess with them once you have the caster, but it was epic
- Drenden - Similar to the Thraddash, I would have liked to persuade them to go attack someone, anyone, to add more depth to them. I was surprised when I didn't get this option despite it being hinted at
- Xraki - Homeworld talked about, but no one provided the coordinates for you to go visit and get some cool backstory. Kind of like the Androsynth homeworlds where you checked it out before the Orz appeared. Gave you that hint that the Orz were bad news. Maybe this would have some unique Xraki weapon you can outfit onto your ship along with giving backstory on who they were before becoming what they are
- Measured - Hints of possible sub-quests for them, but I never found any other than the homeworld of the Trandals. Kind of disappointing. I feel like they could have been a very interesting source of information for a lot of unique/bonus/cool content that the player would otherwise miss unless they got lucky during exploration
- Ruins that hint of other races - it would be cool if we got a little more back story on these races and where they fit in the overall universe/story. I recall several instances in SC2 where you found the ruins of an old civilization and it would give you a great backstory about them. It even comes in handy later when you need an invention from the rock people
I felt like a lot of the random ships you'd find on planets were unbalanced or weird. What's the point of having a transport in your fleet if it has no practical value like adding more storage? I can't sell it and it's a garbage heap for fighting aliens other than to freak out their AI. They also don't have any clear racial affiliation, which makes them even stranger to find. It would have been really nice for them to have a stronger correlation to existing races that had a meaningful contribution to the overall plot. One cool thing you could have done with this, would be to find parts and pieces of an ancient ship that allowed you to replicate the blue print. Perhaps you could then create a new "mother ship" as a result with better performance/more slots, whatever. 9/10 the stuff I found on planets were just fodder to throw into battle. The Lexite plot line is an example of how to do this correctly
I did not know you could push the Scryve back by destroying their ships in the systems they occupied. This is never told to the player or hinted at. It would be nice if this was done. Additionally, are there other systems where you could do that to them? For the Drenken threat against the Mu'Kay, can you similarly blow them away to halt/delay that threat? That would provide an interesting tool to give you more time to figure out that quest
It would be nice if someone told us that 3 was the max # of human colonies you can establish. It leaves you wondering if you should be holding on to the extra drives you have or not. At some point shouldn't they be able to figure out how to do this without us handing them drives??
Major races should offer you unique technologies for use in your ships. Often times it's weird one-off items. Why can't I buy the Tywom bolt blaster thing or the Inkblot? I have to find it on some random ship instead. Would also be great if they would hint at where you can potentially find better lander technologies or other things
There was some content where they had no obvious purpose/value. The giant biological creature in one system that was happy if you gave it the egg, but otherwise had to fight it. Had absolutely no plot value or even value to kill. It was the weirdest thing. I also got some random crystal from somewhere, that had no value. The Angels quest had no clear value/purpose. I found a giant plant creature on one planet (Beta Lynx) and it didn't seem to have any value beyond sell my eyeball for money. All of these things could have been integrated into the plot/game more to add value to their existence.

I think that's all I can pull from my memory of thoughts that I had. I enjoyed the game, but it can definitely be better! Hopefully this feedback will help you when considering future development efforts. Thanks.

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