The Overworld needs more focus

[Ps2nic]

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Go to Twitch, navigate to Paradox Interactive's channel. Head to the channel page by clicking on the channel name.

If you see something like THIS, you are in the right place

Navigate to the 20th anniversary stream lasting 6 hours 10 minutes, then move the slider to the Timestamp 04:07:49

That part is the update announcement and preview for StA.

It's also the 20th anniversary for the game Europa Universalis, so that is their focus for today, but they did have to stop that for this announcement.

 

[Inkidu]

Having looked at it, while quests seem nice, I don't see it actually making the overworld any more fun to engage with. I know I'm sounding very hard to please, but I don't really think the issue with the overworld is exactly how much there is to do, it's what there is to do. To put it in perspective I saw the trailer splash up "BIGGER OVERWORLD!" and my first reaction was, "Please no..."

I know that sounds weird but honestly I didn't see anything that I'd call a big change to the overworld. Quests are a band-aid. There's going to be like sixteen of them and once they're done you seem to be stuck back with the same old boring overworld you had pre-update 11. I mean, I might be wrong, but I don't think I am. I think it's a mistake for sure to make it bigger. I think the focus should be on actually making it smaller but denser.

I don't want to sound mean or anything, but look what you've got in the overworld at its core. A bunch of samey tiles that exist purely to eat up movement points. Movement points for resources, movements points for quests, for what it is it pulls too much focus off of the better part of the game which is the colony management. Because it's still just going halfway across the world to look for pills or coats or whatever only to hick them on back to the nearest outpost, and you can do it even faster with vehicles.

Feel free to ignore me because I know I'm giving off an impossible-to-make-happy vibe. But I think I'm just dead right on the fact that this is just a case of more being less. In fact though I haven't played it, I think part of the problem is that you've put so much focus on taming your starting colony area that it makes the overworld even more boring. I think I'd be happier with more CIties Skylines style adjacent regions that could be tamed (even coming at the cost of a smaller initial play space than I would be with entirety of the overworld map right now.

 

[Ps2nic]

You should still give it a shot when the update launches. You might not be pleased with the update, but you could find bugs and call them in. This update looks to be very interesting to me, more so as I am the kinda guy who works to clear the Fog of War. Pays off after a time.

 

[Inkidu]

Having looked at it, while quests seem nice, I don't see it actually making the overworld any more fun to engage with. I know I'm sounding very hard to please, but I don't really think the issue with the overworld is exactly how much there is to do, it's what there is to do. To put it in perspective I saw the trailer splash up "BIGGER OVERWORLD!" and my first reaction was, "Please no..."

I know that sounds weird but honestly I didn't see anything that I'd call a big change to the overworld. Quests are a band-aid. There's going to be like sixteen of them and once they're done you seem to be stuck back with the same old boring overworld you had pre-update 11. I mean, I might be wrong, but I don't think I am. I think it's a mistake for sure to make it bigger. I think the focus should be on actually making it smaller but denser.

I don't want to sound mean or anything, but look what you've got in the overworld at its core. A bunch of samey tiles that exist purely to eat up movement points. Movement points for resources, movements points for quests, for what it is it pulls too much focus off of the better part of the game which is the colony management. Because it's still just going halfway across the world to look for pills or coats or whatever only to hick them on back to the nearest outpost, and you can do it even faster with vehicles.

Feel free to ignore me because I know I'm giving off an impossible-to-make-happy vibe. But I think I'm just dead right on the fact that this is just a case of more being less.

You should still give it a shot when the update launches. You might not be pleased with the update, but you could find bugs and call them in. This update looks to be very interesting to me, more so as I am the kinda guy who works to clear the Fog of War. Pays off after a time.

I mean, I guess I intend to give it a shot, but I'm pretty sure it won't revitalize the tedium of the Overworld map for me. I'm not a very good bug catcher unfortunately. I've never caught a bug that hadn't already been caught by ten or so others. I just don't hold out a lot of hope that the Overworld is ever going to get that bones-deep work it needs. There's only two more big roadmap milestones left I think and I'm not unrealistic enough to expect they'll postpone the release to fix a chunk of their game they clearly aren't as hung-up about as I am.

It's just when I look at it. It's so half-baked. Even little stuff like the fact when I play on 100% difficulty and my tile looks like a blasted hellscape and is literally surrounded by green on all sides it makes me wonder why the specialists honed in on this spot. If there weren't an overworld then you'd say, "Oh well that's the best of the worst options."

I'm just struck by how poorly it ties into the colony-building aspect of the game. I mean medicine is useful and not required to actually treat, and I'm not saying the first few tiles aren't handy in the start when you're not producing, but the only darn thing you absolutely need from the overworld is research. This is where my reasoning that drawing down the size of the overworld to about ten highly, highly dense tiles make more sense. It makes it feel like the local region (your Mojave Wasteland, California Coast kind of thing) instead of this blanket of quilt tiles that you basically interact with once and that's it.

 

[Ps2nic]

You have a lot of negativity. Not to sound like a fool, but is there anything about the game that positively stands out to you?

As for bug catching, it's easier than it sounds, but hard to master. For example, one bug I have found has to do with the woman with the riddles encounters, the ones where you are presented with a riddle. Solve it correctly, and you get some random meds. A bug I found is the listed rewards and the ones the text say you get do not always match up, like it says you get Antibiotics, but you actually get Iodine pills.

The point is to look for features that are not working correctly, call it in via the blue cockroach or the forums, and continue on with your game, dealing with the bug to the best of your ability. Might get fixed in the next patch, and given you are not fond of the World Map, least you can do is help with the feedback.

If I sound like a fool for saying all this, it's on me. But StA is in Early Access, so I am trying to help out where I can. No point in being angry if there are elements you wish were implemented. Besides, you could make mods. There is a small modding community you could check out here: https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/games/surviving_aftermath?orderBy=desc&sortBy=best

Maybe you could become a modder and make improvements to the overworld yourself?

 

[Inkidu]

You have a lot of negativity. Not to sound like a fool, but is there anything about the game that positively stands out to you?

As for bug catching, it's easier than it sounds, but hard to master. For example, one bug I have found has to do with the woman with the riddles encounters, the ones where you are presented with a riddle. Solve it correctly, and you get some random meds. A bug I found is the listed rewards and the ones the text say you get do not always match up, like it says you get Antibiotics, but you actually get Iodine pills.

The point is to look for features that are not working correctly, call it in via the blue cockroach or the forums, and continue on with your game, dealing with the bug to the best of your ability. Might get fixed in the next patch, and given you are not fond of the World Map, least you can do is help with the feedback.

If I sound like a fool for saying all this, it's on me. But StA is in Early Access, so I am trying to help out where I can. No point in being angry if there are elements you wish were implemented. Besides, you could make mods. There is a small modding community you could check out here: https://mods.paradoxplaza.com/games/surviving_aftermath?orderBy=desc&sortBy=best

Maybe you could become a modder and make improvements to the overworld yourself?

Okay, well first of all, I like plenty about this game, but this thread is about a part I just can't stand that I find so half-baked it drags down the experience of the good part of the game that I enjoy more. So yes, I would naturally be voicing a lot of criticism about it. And you're right the game is in early access, but bug squashing is only one aspect of game design, and the other is analyzing the bits that just don't work and criticizing them. I know it sounds like I'm impossible to please where the overworld is concerned, but it's just because I don't think the fixes I've seen are really fixes to core game design problems. The point behind early access is to find stuff that doesn't work, and honestly when I play the overworld it's night and day. Here you have this exploratory city builder that asks you to make a lot of tough choices, and then every once in a while you have to zoom out away from it and make some not so tough really brain-dead choices.

When I think about the overworld I always ask myself a few key questions:

Is what I'm doing allowing me to make interesting choices?
Am I enjoying what I'm doing?
Would I rather be doing something else than playing this section?

And for me, where the overworld is concerned, it's a resounding no on all three questions. I'm not making interesting choices. I'm not enjoying or even engaged in what I'm doing, and I'd rather be playing the city-building than be forced to engage with the overworld, but you've at the bare minimum look for science so that's just not an option.

I do not think, and this is not to disparage anyone's work, that a handful of quests are really going to make something so fundamentally undercooked enjoyable for me. Seriously, it's not a hard question to ask: What will you be doing the second you've seen every overworld quest? The answer is what you were doing one update before.

Look, I get it, I'm a wet blanket, I'm poo-pooing a part of a really fun game, but it's only because I sincerely think that nothing but a ground-up rework could make it interesting. Right now it reminds me a lot of those free-to-play strategy games where you had to invade like one tile at a time, and they were all cookie-cutter and samey. I'm not saying it was low-effort, but it sure LOOKS really low effort and doesn't jell with city-building aspect very well, especially how deep the city-building aspect has gotten. The overworld feels like it is something out of an entirely different game.

Also, I can't mod, and it would take me months if not years to learn how to mod this game with the skill and understanding of the mechanics to pull out this overworld and give it the ground-up change it needs. That's sort of why I'm beseeching the developers. I mean I can tell when I pipe is wrong, but it takes a lot of skill to actually fix the pipe that's why people call professional plumbers.

 

[Joanna_ifs]

Heya!

Really good discussion on this topic and while we do appreciate the bug reports, it is of course not necessary for people to report them at all or to only report actual bugs. Any and all feedback is always appreciated, read and brought into discussion with the rest of the team. This feedback can be about a specific part of the game, the overall balance or bugs or whatever you feel strongly about, we want to hear it all!

This update, as seen in the stream, will bring some changes to the World Map but please do not think that we are done with it just because of these changes. After all, how many times did we change the trade system or the tech tree?

The feedback we get from you players is incredibly valuable as this helps us reiterate features again and again when necessary. I completely understand your opinion on the World Map and these changes here are the beginning to ensuring it doesn't feel like a chore but instead feels like something you want to play!

So please keep the discussion going and bring your own opinions forward - while we won't be able to please everyone, hopefully we can at least make the game so that there isn't anything in it dragging the entire experience down!

Oh and most importantly, thanks for playing!

 

[lasse_ifs]

As Joanna said, the world map as a whole will get more development time during the next months since so far it is the part of the game that has received least love so to speak. The changes in this update were just small steps toward the final thing, and there is more that has happened behind the scenes on technical side. These changes makes creating new features and new content into the world map easier in the future.

And thank you for being active and bringing up those parts of the game that you feel are lacking the most. It is also nice to be able to say that we are working on those very things! This is also a good point where everyone can bring up what they would like to do and see in the world map. We naturally have our own plans in place, but now is a perfect time to bring other ideas onto the table and we'll see how those could be used in the development.

 

[Ps2nic]

Not often I get two devs chiming in on a debate. Thanks guys. Here's hoping the update is smooth.

 

[agathorn]

The world map is the least interesting part for me personally. I see it as a chore, something I have to do but is annoying to do. A large part of that comes not from the game play in the world map, but the mechanics of how the world map works. Everything from the opaque and confusing nature of partial automation of specialists to the fact that even with it they still need hand holding regularly. While the quests add flavor, the majority of the world map is the tedium of "you go get this, you go get that" which just feels so much to me like "make-work". Why can't I just set each specialist on a sort of "auto" mode where they seek out things relevant to their specialty. Scouts automatically roam the map scouting new regions, scavengers roam the maps scavenging sights, scientists roam the map collecting science, and fighters clearing out dangers for the others. Then, if I want to do something different, or prioritize something, or do quests, I can manually take control.

 

[Inkidu]

The world map is the least interesting part for me personally. I see it as a chore, something I have to do but is annoying to do. A large part of that comes not from the game play in the world map, but the mechanics of how the world map works. Everything from the opaque and confusing nature of partial automation of specialists to the fact that even with it they still need hand holding regularly. While the quests add flavor, the majority of the world map is the tedium of "you go get this, you go get that" which just feels so much to me like "make-work". Why can't I just set each specialist on a sort of "auto" mode where they seek out things relevant to their specialty. Scouts automatically roam the map scouting new regions, scavengers roam the maps scavenging sights, scientists roam the map collecting science, and fighters clearing out dangers for the others. Then, if I want to do something different, or prioritize something, or do quests, I can manually take control.

I know as mean as it is to say, if the Overworld was gone and I just sent specialists out on repeatable missions to try and find stuff and never saw the overworld map again it would be a MUCH better game. The overworld is just still so boring. It's characterless, it's bland. It feels like it's their to tick a box. You could literally do everything on the overworld by pop-up menu and it would be much more expedient and wouldn't take me out of the experience.

I think it's helped me devise a good litmus test for strategy, 4X and city builders. If you're playing such a game, and you cannot exert influence over the territory presented then get rid of it. And I think this is the overworld's big problem. It's their to fill space that doesn't need to be filled. I'm never getting more than one colony, I have no way to exert my will or control over the outside world. It's not a 4X game.

If I can't strive to control the territory I'm presented with, I don't want to bother with it because it bears to impact on the game.

 

[agathorn]

I know as mean as it is to say, if the Overworld was gone and I just sent specialists out on repeatable missions to try and find stuff and never saw the overworld map again it would be a MUCH better game. The overworld is just still so boring. It's characterless, it's bland. It feels like it's their to tick a box. You could literally do everything on the overworld by pop-up menu and it would be much more expedient and wouldn't take me out of the experience.

I think it's helped me devise a good litmus test for strategy, 4X and city builders. If you're playing such a game, and you cannot exert influence over the territory presented then get rid of it. And I think this is the overworld's big problem. It's their to fill space that doesn't need to be filled. I'm never getting more than one colony, I have no way to exert my will or control over the outside world. It's not a 4X game.

If I can't strive to control the territory I'm presented with, I don't want to bother with it because it bears to impact on the game.

Honestly it really feels to me as if the feature is there just to say the game has something different than a normal city builder. I agree that if it was removed and replaced with a menu that let me send specialists out it would feel like I have the same functionality with less boring gameplay.

 

[Alias_RM13]

I do like the fact we have a world to interact with, it just abit dead and stale at times.
I'd like my actions on the world scene to have an impact in my colony beyond just supplies.
If I clear out a bandit camp near my colony, I want reduced chances of attacks. If I take out bandits near other societies I want to see a reputation increase, I've made quite a detailed list of mad ramblings with what I think could help

 

[Kalmnir]

Because right now it's this thing that I don't really like to engage with. It's boring, it's rote, it takes time away from what I really want to be doing. Mostly though it's just boring and uninteresting. Wait a time, move your pieces. Wait a time, move your pieces. There's nothing there I want to really be doing.

I think one big problem too is that you HAVE to keep going back to the map and moving everyone every single time. If I set my specialists a specific location and task to complete in the overworld, why don't they just keep automatically moving towards it as soon as they can move again? what's the point in selecting something that is 13 moves away if EVERY single turn I have to come back and set them to same location AGAIN.

The overworld now seems as though it was set there with the idea that toher players or colonies would also be moving around at the same time on the map, but they aren't. and when it comes to late game, the map is literally only there for the ocasional quest, as everything has already been looted and the bandits have been killed. at that point, you never leave the colony screen anyway, if you need something and you don't have a facility built for it, you just use the trade menu.

 

[RegalGiant]

4 things that I think would help the world map :

Totally agreed and summe dup many of the 'issues' of either the relevancy or longevity of the 'world map'

For myself I have now cleared the map in my playthrough so besides the odd quest that pops up or clicking a new trade I have no need to go to the world map now, which can come under the'End game' patch on the road map, but a change to this is highly reccomended.

For instance I never made a depot and never felt I needed to either, I never traded for a vehicle as I could pick plenty up and had an excess, I cleard the map in a decent amount of time and just had to do the long tedious no danger but takes ages scavenging ones to do.

I do love the world map and I certainly disagree with op that it needs to go, to me its a nice break from staring at the resource counter waiting for me to have enough to make my next building, its a great feature imo so completely opposite of the OP's thoughts on it.

I would say a repeatable way to get basic materials would be nice, I constantly felt starved for planks and concrete, just time gated for plastic and metal, but planks and concrete were kinda annoying specially planks, starting again would prolly make 3 times as many lumber yards x)

 

[Inkidu]

Totally agreed and summe dup many of the 'issues' of either the relevancy or longevity of the 'world map'

For myself I have now cleared the map in my playthrough so besides the odd quest that pops up or clicking a new trade I have no need to go to the world map now, which can come under the'End game' patch on the road map, but a change to this is highly reccomended.

For instance I never made a depot and never felt I needed to either, I never traded for a vehicle as I could pick plenty up and had an excess, I cleard the map in a decent amount of time and just had to do the long tedious no danger but takes ages scavenging ones to do.

I do love the world map and I certainly disagree with op that it needs to go, to me its a nice break from staring at the resource counter waiting for me to have enough to make my next building, its a great feature imo so completely opposite of the OP's thoughts on it.

I would say a repeatable way to get basic materials would be nice, I constantly felt starved for planks and concrete, just time gated for plastic and metal, but planks and concrete were kinda annoying specially planks, starting again would prolly make 3 times as many lumber yards x)

I'm all for a ground-up rework of it, but my point is to illustrate that its removal would really lose the player nothing that couldn't be done via pop up windows and would cost less in time and resources than a ground-up rework. Also, while for you it might break up the tedium, for me it is the tedium.

It's a core feature, but it is one that has not kept up with the rest of the game and it is dragging the rest of the game down as a result. This is a problem with early access. As the bulk of the game nears completion this feels like that awkward hanger on from an earlier build that refuses to go away. That is to say while the world map was not as tedious to deal with when the game was younger, it has not kept pace.

 

[RegalGiant]

I just think it needs tweaking for longevity, I like the feeling of an overworld with it being different evry playthough and I enjoy the priocess of discovering other settlements, would like more variety though, little anvil and lushtown are rather common x)

What do you mean by a ground-up rework specifically?

 

[Inkidu]

I just think it needs tweaking for longevity, I like the feeling of an overworld with it being different evry playthough and I enjoy the priocess of discovering other settlements, would like more variety though, little anvil and lushtown are rather common x)

What do you mean by a ground-up rework specifically?

They have to pull it out and work on it from square one. It has some serious structural flaws that you can either pin up poorly with band-aid features or you can pull it out and do the bones-deep rework it needs. Quests are a band-aid feature. Once you're done with the sixteen quests or you've seen them all in multiple playthroughs, then you're right back at the same boring map. I don't really know what is specifically needed to fix it, but if you want longevity that isn't just tedious busywork, then they're going to have to redress the overworld on a fundamental level because it is just so far behind the city-builder. If it's one thing Skyrim did teach, just adding more mediocre quests to a world does not make them good. And this is not an RPG that can really benefit from that level of super-detailed really involved quest design anyway.

And while I'll be the first to say not all elements of a game need to have the same weight (I mean I get why they removed interceptors in XCOM 2 and all), it can't be so unequal in focus as to actually be a drag on the good parts, which it is.

 

[RegalGiant]

I simply cannot agree, it just needs tweaking, not ripped out and remade from the ground up.. But each to their own opinion.

 

[Inkidu]

I simply cannot agree, it just needs tweaking, not ripped out and remade from the ground up.. But each to their own opinion.

I think that any tweaks are just going to be band-aides on a system that has not kept pace with the rest of the game. I think that the fact that everything the overworld provides the player can be done through pop up windows is pretty damning evidence. The action of looking at or dealing with an overworld map feels perfunctory at this point, like it's something that was put in there because people expect it.

But I can honestly say if I'd picked this game up and it had no oveworld from the start I would have not minded in the least. I do no think it was ever a defining feature for my purchasing decision. I mean there's not a lot I can really do anymore, they've got my money already. I guess I'll just put Endozone on my Steam wishlist.