My honest opinions on this game

[Gsam]

I am gonna preface this message and state that I understand some of what I have to say here is not going to be popular.  I have debated writing this because generally when you are dealing with people who pay a premium for alpha you have a rabid following of a game and its tough to give criticism, warranted or not without it turning into an echo chamber of people reassuring themselves that everything is fine and the OP doesn't know what they are talking about.  That being said, I am gonna do my best to keep it constructive and go from there.

 

What it comes down to for me is this game is not fun. At all.  I have more hours than I care to admit in UG:CW and Gettysburg and as soon as I saw this game was in the works I Had to have it.  I loved the concept, I loved the ideas and I love this time period.  I came into this excited because based on previous encounters with these dev's I found that they made quality games and I found them to be quite engaging.  Not so with this one. I will try to explain why I am so down on things on a point by point basis. Some may agree, many may not, but at the end of the day I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't at least try to give feedback to a studio I respect to keep them from falling into pitfalls. Based upon my experience it only takes one dud of a game to lose many people that you worked so hard to build a following with.

That being said, here we go.

 

1) Linear and forced path:

I came into this game hoping like crazy that we would have more of an open world experience and less of a scripted arbitrary timeline that we had to follow. To say I am disappointed is an understatement.  I absolutely hate the artificially imposed timelines that we have on when we do what activities. Why did you go down this road?  A recurring theme you will hear me preach throughout this review is to let the players play how they want to play.  I cannot for the life of me understand why I have a limited number of time advances. Let me play through the content at my pace. Let me go do all the side missions. I am a completionist and I hate leaving things undone.  The way the game is currently structured I don't have enough ships or time to do what I want to do. 

The excuse I have heard when I have brought this up previously is "balance" or you will become too strong if they didn't force you to move forward...   So what?  I get in UG:CW why they had to keep you going at a certain pace. That made sense. This game does not. 

 

2) Sailing / Ship Battles are annoying

I Will preface this before people jump all over me and say I understand why the wind has to play a factor. It historically accurate, and generally the single biggest deciding factor of RL naval engagements of the era.  That being said, whats realistic doesn't always translate to "Fun" and that after all, is what we are trying to achieve, right?  Some I am sure, find the wind to be fun, but I personally think its implemented wrong. IT also causes a bunch of issues that make no sense to me. I don't understand why with the wind at my back, my cannons lose range. (see attached picture) I am sure there is some reason for it, but I can't figure it out. Doesn't make sense to me how I can shoot into the wind and have my shot go further than with the wind at my back. 

 

3) Micromanagement:

This sort of piggybacks on the previous but I absolutely hate how much micro has to be done to play this game effectively. I enjoyed how with UG:CW we could set our troops, and check on them  here in there but could focus on other things and keep the overall strategy in play without having to click like a competitive starcraft player in order to be effective. I don't want to control a massive fleet because every additional ship you give me to control creates that much more micro to do and the AI from my experience is horrid at controlling my ships.

 

4) Surrender - I appreciate that on land battles I can kill my prisoners.  I hate on sea battles how I am in situations where a ship surrenders, I don't have enough sailors to crew both ships effectively so I basically have to leave a ship sitting next to the surrendered ship or they will magically rally and rejoin the battle.  If a ship strikes its colors on a sea battle, they should be out for the entirety of the battle unless an enemy ships comes along and boards it or sinks it. Almost every fight I feel like I am outgunned, I certainly dont have time to leave ships babysitting other ships so they wont rally and stab me in the back.

 

5) Land Battles - Right now I don't enjoy them either. I cant quite put my finger on it either. Cannons feel OP so far from what I can tell.  Charge damage doesn't take them out fast enough and rifle volleys don't rattle them and cause them to waiver. The rifle damage seems very underwhelming so far in this game. The AI also seems far more intelligent from my experience and loves to participate in guerilla warfare. 

 

6) National Flavor - Would have been fun if the ships had a bit more distinct flavor based upon the historical values of the ships. If you read 6 frigates you would know that the american frigates were built like brick shithouses and were far superior to the enemy frigates but they could not contend with the ship of the line.  British obviously had a more experienced officer corp so it would make sense to have them get a national XP bonus to officers and troop training.

7) Upscaling -  In my experience the AI always gets better ships / more ships than you. If I bring a 6th rate, they bring a 5th rate. Again, just my experience. I understand that there are some loop holes and you can capture a few ships early on that will give you a huge advantage, but its very annoying to feel by in large that no matter how well you play, that the AI is always going to be better than you. I get it, the canned excuse, its needed for balance,  I don't agree however. Some battles you should be stronger, some you should be worse,  The battles should be the battles without the AI shuffling ships to ensure that your at a constant disadvantage.

 

I understand that much of this is personal opinion and many of you will not agree with me. I hope the devs have some time to consider feedback and give options to us as players to customize the game on how we want to play it rather than how you think we should play it.  My fear is the game in its current form is going to be so niche that its going to only appeal to a small section of people and even those like myself, some are going to say "Yuck, not for me."   If I had the ability to I would refund this game.  I personally buy my games almost exclusively based on feedback ratings from players on steam.  Anyhow, apologies in advance for any offense to anyone, its not my intention. 

 

 

[pandakraut]

1 hour ago, Gsam said:

I cannot for the life of me understand why I have a limited number of time advances. Let me play through the content at my pace. Let me go do all the side missions. I am a completionist and I hate leaving things undone.

The campaign is split into several stages. In each stage there are multiple battles and points of interest. The points of interest resolve when you complete the stage. Once you've completed all the content in the stage, the battles are done and ships assigned to the PoI, then you move onto the next stage. It should be possible to complete all content in each stage. 

The UI for some of this is not the most intuitive currently. Is there an aspect of this you missed, or am I misunderstanding in some way? Or is this tied to the primary issue where you wish this was a more open world game where time progresses?

I also don't understand how this system made sense in UGCW but not in AoS? They are both relatively linear campaigns where you play through a series of battles at specific dates?

1 hour ago, Gsam said:

I don't understand why with the wind at my back, my cannons lose range.

The wind blowing against the sails causes the ship to roll as one side is pushed down towards the water. This causes the cannons on that side of ship to aim downward and reduces the range.

1 hour ago, Gsam said:

3) Micromanagement:

As a primarily land game focused player as well, the micromanagement of ships does seem quite high. A few are fine, more get oppressive. It seems like the people coming from naval games aren't having as many issues? Might just be getting used to it since UGCW also requires quite a bit of micro but controlling considerably more land units doesn't give me any trouble these days.

1 hour ago, Gsam said:

I appreciate that on land battles I can kill my prisoners.

There is a scuttle ship option that can permanently solve this problem. I do agree that it is very annoying when you can't get crew onto a ship in time and new men spring out of nowhere to crew it. If the player sails off and leaves the ship alone I wouldn't mind it, need to have some trade offs to slow the player from capturing every single ship in the campaign. But if your own ships remain nearby they shouldn't be able to unsurrender.

1 hour ago, Gsam said:

Charge damage doesn't take them out fast enough and rifle volleys don't rattle them and cause them to waiver.

Flanking fire seems necessary to get units to waiver, and quite effective at doing so. From what I've found once you start making sure you have 2-3 units firing at their 1 they rout fairly quickly and then you have to wait for them to come back and do it again. Charging seemed ok the last time I played, but I think it got changed again in the last patch.

Overall, while it still doesn't feel quite as smooth as UGCW it's definitely been improving over time and is starting to feel close to good in my opinion. 

1 hour ago, Gsam said:

6) National Flavor

The devs have mentioned that different sides have different upgrades for flavor. Not sure what the mechanics look like behind the scenes in terms of weaponry and officer xp.

1 hour ago, Gsam said:

7) Upscaling

This has been in flux the last few patches and definitely needs more adjustment. Apologies if I overlooked it, but it sounds like you are playing on normal? Common feedback at the moment seems to be that scaling is too harsh on normal, very difficult on hard. Haven't seen much feedback on easy, but from some tests I did the other day it seems like it will allow you to outpace the AI in ship size.

You definitely aren't alone in some of your complaints. The game has still been changing fairly rapidly in some ways, so hopefully some of the issues will end up being addressed and improve the game overall.

[WilliamTheIII]

Although we discussed this on discord, I appreciate that you decided to put it on the forum and I will share my feedback as well:

2 hours ago, Gsam said:

I came into this game hoping like crazy that we would have more of an open world experience and less of a scripted arbitrary timeline that we had to follow. To say I am disappointed is an understatement.  I absolutely hate the artificially imposed timelines that we have on when we do what activities. Why did you go down this road?

In the very beginning, this was a big selling point that the game wouldn't be nearly as linear as UGCW. Unfortunately, from what I have heard/witnessed, the devs did not have the time nor the resources to amply design a non-linear, open world system. In my opinion, the best way to do this would have there be "random encounters" where you essentially places parts of your fleet in different areas of the map and the ai reacts to you and vice versa. I could expand further but not the time nor place.

1 hour ago, pandakraut said:

I also don't understand how this system made sense in UGCW but not in AoS? They are both relatively linear campaigns where you play through a series of battles at specific dates?

I think this is referring to the idea that UGCW roughly followed the Civil War and the major battles where AOS is loosely based on historical battles and are a lot more like random encounters.

2 hours ago, Gsam said:

I don't understand why with the wind at my back, my cannons lose range. (see attached picture) I am sure there is some reason for it, but I can't figure it out. Doesn't make sense to me how I can shoot into the wind and have my shot go further than with the wind at my back. 

As we discussed in discord and panda stated here, the role of wind is pushing the ship to one side or another changing the overall angle of the projectile motion curve and thus the time it takes to hit water which affects the distance.

2 hours ago, Gsam said:

 Micromanagement:

There is a lot of micro, hopefully several qol features could be added such as match speed that will help alleviate the problem.

2 hours ago, Gsam said:

Surrender

I always thought some sort of "prisoner ship" would be cool. The idea would be that you would lose a slot for an additional ship but would never have to worry about surrendered ships unsurrendering unless boarded.

2 hours ago, Gsam said:

National Flavor

This would be cool and as Panda has mentioned this is true to some degree. Though, I always thought having some sort of national bonuses (like the british shoot faster) would be cool.

[Sturm561]

Gsam, I'm very sorry to hear that you want your money back already.  While I agree there are bugs/flaws in the game I must also remind you that this is a very early beta release and I, personally, have found that each and every time I do an update patch that the game runs smoother and that issues are addressed as soon as the dev team can.  Please don't get me wrong and think I am a minion and only see the sparkles of a game as I agree with a few of the items you mentioned, however this is what we need to expect with a beta release.  This is also what the forum is for...keep posting your thoughts here so the dev team can see what the players want/need/like.  I see the potential for this game as it is what I have been waiting for since UGCW and I plan on playing, posting and doing whatever I can to ensure this is a success AND getting in this early a person CAN be heard by the dev team and so has the potential to make and/or ask for changes that cannot be done so easily after release.  Please don't quit on the game yet.

[BuckleUpBones]

On 2/13/2020 at 2:45 PM, Gsam said:

1) Linear and forced path:

I came into this game hoping like crazy that we would have more of an open world experience and less of a scripted arbitrary timeline that we had to follow. To say I am disappointed is an understatement.  I absolutely hate the artificially imposed timelines that we have on when we do what activities

This is making me alittle hesitant to buy.

With UGCW you could playout the battles with your own personal strategy, with only a few battles with timed walked-throughs.  

But if this game is full of fixed/timed walked-throughs, then this game sounds really stale already. In 'my opinion' there nothing worst than linear campaigns and linear battles, e.g. go down this path do this then go down that path do that, in the end it's just repetition.

Edited February 20, 2020 by BuckleUpBones

[Gsam]

23 minutes ago, BuckleUpBones said:

This is making me alittle hesitant to buy.

With UGCW you could playout the battles with your own personal strategy, with only a few battles with timed walked-throughs.  

But if this game is full of fixed/timed walked-throughs, then this game sounds really stale already. In 'my opinion' there nothing worst than linear campaigns and linear battles, e.g. go down this path do this then go down that path do that, in the end it's just repetition.

To be fair to the game. Like UG:CW you have fixed encounters that you must do (grand battles).  What I was hoping for was more of a Sid Meiers: Pirates where I could sail around take advantage of favorable encounters and play on my terms as opposed to having fixed encounters that I have to select from my arsenal of ships and enter battle that way. 

I wanted a system where there are more overall objectives (sink X # of enemy ships) or capture 3 5th rates or higher.  That kind of stuff without having fixed battles that I must do.

[Gsam]

fixed in following post.

 

 

Edited February 20, 2020 by Gsam
replied to wrong poster.

[Gsam]

4 hours ago, Sturm561 said:

Gsam, I'm very sorry to hear that you want your money back already.  While I agree there are bugs/flaws in the game I must also remind you that this is a very early beta release and I, personally, have found that each and every time I do an update patch that the game runs smoother and that issues are addressed as soon as the dev team can.  Please don't get me wrong and think I am a minion and only see the sparkles of a game as I agree with a few of the items you mentioned, however this is what we need to expect with a beta release.  This is also what the forum is for...keep posting your thoughts here so the dev team can see what the players want/need/like.  I see the potential for this game as it is what I have been waiting for since UGCW and I plan on playing, posting and doing whatever I can to ensure this is a success AND getting in this early a person CAN be heard by the dev team and so has the potential to make and/or ask for changes that cannot be done so easily after release.  Please don't quit on the game yet.

I have not given up on the game.  I am however disappointed.  I try to back games that are works in progress if I like the concept. I am just greatly disappointed that its not going to be more open world and ended up falling into an entire script that I must follow with very little room for exploration and free play.

[Sturm561]

4 minutes ago, Gsam said:

I have not given up on the game.  I am however disappointed.  I try to back games that are works in progress if I like the concept. I am just greatly disappointed that its not going to be more open world and ended up falling into an entire script that I must follow with very little room for exploration and free play.

Fair enough.  It would be great to see the possible DLC's or a SteamWorkshop.

[BuckleUpBones]

18 minutes ago, Gsam said:

I wanted a system where there are more overall objectives (sink X # of enemy ships) or capture 3 5th rates or higher.  That kind of stuff without having fixed battles that I must do.

Yeah, something like 'open strategy', I believe this is a very important criteria for repeatable campaign gameplay, but it's sounds like GameLabs hasn't expanded AoS in this direction and fixed the player to a linear course of gameplay.

Edited February 20, 2020 by BuckleUpBones

[pandakraut]

7 hours ago, BuckleUpBones said:

Yeah, something like 'open strategy', I believe this is a very important criteria for repeatable campaign gameplay, but it's sounds like GameLabs hasn't expanded AoS in this direction and fixed the player to a linear course of gameplay.

It's a bit hard to tell if you're advocating for more of an open world game, which this isn't, or for more freedom within battles.

Within battles you have the same amount of freedom to choose your own path as in UGCW battles. The maps are open, you choose how you want to accomplish the objectives. Timers do still exist in some battles, but are generally less restrictive than in UGCW. In many battles you effectively have as much time as you want.