If I had to give my take on the game as a whole I’d say:
It’s real fucking fun, personally I’m not motivated to play in the same way I was like 8 months ago because I’m getting burned out but besides that I’m concerned at 2 things that I perceive as big issues for the game (Have in mind that they are mostly from the focus of a rinemain):
Feels kinda incomplete
This issue shows up in a ton of places. Some examples are:
- Play any kind of engineering role and you’ll feel the crippling lack of content. I was speaking with thwomp on a feedback thread and I said something that I can more or less copy and paste here: “[…] and with the BRUTE the frontline “breaching” engineer experience finally feels complete”. The colony infrastructure is barely functional, which makes the entire place feel like a colourful collection of props; Construction is barely functional for anything that is NOT a cadeline (talk to your neighbourhood MT to have him yap for hours on how barebones engineering is); The comtech experience is either: Build shit (engineering) or break shit (breaching).
Breaching is finally complete with the BRUTE but the engineering playstyle is on a tough spot, it can be insanely demanding in both skill and time and to top it off: It’s important work, whoever the effort can go to waste if the round ends fast. The inconsistancy of this leads to shitty FOBs that crumble like wet cardboard, maginot-line-like FOBs that collect dust at a roundend that arrives at the 40’ mark or at worst it ends in FOBless rounds that are absolute slop. This is planned to be solved with the FOB rework which basically murders the building/engineering comtech… Which in the practice works as shadow content removal on an already agonizing playstyle.
Don’t get me wrong, that’s a fat oversimplification that focuses on a shitty side of a big rework that tries to spare an entire faction from WW2 Normandy RP. But the effects on the engineering playstyle are real nontheless. - If you have seen the rise bald comtechs then congrats, you’ve properly identified the evidence of poor player retention on a vital role. And now I can tell you the following: Medical also experiences the same issue.
Debilitating injuries that require treatment are the side-product of any fight. The doctors get to actually handle them if patients get to the Almayer and that itself is a process that gets hideously slowed down by an array of things related to logistics and attrition (if not straight up discarded as an option by marines that know that they’ll miss a ton of the round by trying to get medical treatment)
The end result is a lack of stuff to do for most doctors unless there is a mass cas, which leads to boredom, which leads to player retention issues. Then, to make this worse we can stack antiparasitary stims, bonemending stims, organmending stims, QC or improved autodocs, which graciously reward medsci by letting them play the game less… Do I really have to explain the issue here? - I don’t gotta explain how req is just emotionally lobotomizing on the long term. BM can make it more tolerable but the thing is: If the QM is unexperienced then the punishment is the CMB ERT; well, if they are skilled then they get rewarded by avoiding the punishment of the funny space police ERT right? lmao no, the MPs will eventually find out and they will get pissed off.
So in practice, the black market, which is the only thing that could make req work be exiting (if you even get a hacked tuner at all lmao) is not really an option because the game is designed to punish you in one way or another… Which sounds dumb, right?
wow, a literal illegal market handling contraband going punished, who would’ve tought about it?
Well yeah it’s dumb that I’m speaking about it, but I gotta because that’s the only remarkable thing about req, the department is depressing atm.
A big chunk of this stuff is planned to get fixed on the long term by Thwomp (daily reminder to check out [CC] The Big Picture ) but on the meantime we’ll have to cope I guess.
Feels kinda confused
No, I’m serious. have you really thought about what the fuck CM is supposed to be from a game design standpoint?
It’s an asymmetric game where the marines are supposed to be the weakest faction, and yet they are the offensive faction.
The xenos are the predatory and opressive faction, it’s their identity, and yet their main strength gameplay-wise is just their vision and their high resistance to attrition when compared to marines; with marines being the offensive faction the xenos have to get defensive features implemented that degrade their identity as predatory creatures.
Also it’s SS13 so RP gotta be jammed into this mix btw… but remember that there are xenos which are in theory a hivemind. Oh also don’t forget that people perma-die after 5 minutes of being at room temperature so the stakes for prioritizing gameplay over RP are real. We’re an MRP server though.
In case you are not getting the point I’m trying to make: What I mean is that the game is full deeply-rooted of design contradictions, anomalies and poorly defined core elements. Which makes designing (emphasis on DESIGNING, I’m not talking about coding, writing or mapping) the game a nightmare.
This is why I don’t envy Thwomp’s position (yes, he gets a just a teeny tiny bit of empathy from me just because he hasn’t nerfed survs for the last 7 days)