Quality of Life Suggestions
Posted by Jayde on June 8, 2024Hi there. Loving the game so far. I'd like to make a few quality of life suggestions that I hope can be implemented. I'll start by saying that I know the developer's working hard, and that it takes awhile, so I'll be patient. There's a whole, whole lot this game does right. But let's begin.
1. Contracts. Please, please randomize them a little more. At this point, every single cooking contract I've ever gotten has been for baked bream, and that's repetitive as heck. Most of my fishing contracts are for salmon or (shudder) anchovies. Farming contracts usually require corn or strawberries. Not only do I feel this should be a lot more random, but I also believe that you should be allowed (and even encouraged) to have multiple contracts open at once (perhaps one per level of the associated skill?). What's happening at this point is that I'm either forced to slowly watch corn or strawberries grow, or if I want to cook a bunch, I'm forced to grow rice repeatedly so I have enough for baked bream. A little love would go a long, long way. I also wouldn't mind if farming contracts were mixed. i.e., grow 5 jalapeno peppers, 5 potatoes, 3 onions and 3 lemons. Is there a reason you can't use or see cooking contracts from inside the kitchen?
2. Sound interrupt. Mobs like Chika and Kaze summon others to help them fight. These sounds persist even after I click "continue", which means I tend to miss level-up notifications and such. In a lot of areas of the game, sound cuts off when you click the next button. I would like the ability to either turn off battle sounds entirely, or at least make them cut off when I click the next link.
3. Fodder pets. I know the point is to give players easy stuff to pound on at low levels, but given the expense and time it takes to unlock these, I feel like they should have some sort of perk. Maybe good stat growth, or a second ability that unlocks when they hit a certain level. I'm not sure. But I definitely feel like I wasted my shadow resin on Zomb Eye, and in virtually every other way, this game has been very generous with loot.
4. Popouts, like quest info or system messages, won't go away once clicked. I have to reload the page to get rid of them. I wish that clicking on them a second time would make them close, but so far I haven't noticed this.
Absolutely none of this should be taken as dissatisfaction. I'm really enjoying this one, and I like the laid-back vibe. But even a few of these QoL improvements would go a long way toward making things interesting. The contracts stuff, especially. Thanks for reading.
Replies
Sorry, one other thing.
Could we please have the ability to pay via Paypal? I would dearly love to get a premium voucher to speed up experience and give me more eggs, but for whatever reason, Stripe is playing funny and won't accept any of my means of payment, even when I attempt to verify. And the issue is not on my end, so I'm not sure what's going on. But hey, I just figured for five bucks or so, a month's worth of premium is an absolute steal, and since said five bucks or so isn't working too hard right this second, I wanted to simultaneously give a little back, and get a little boost at the same time.
Also, since I wasn't entirely clear on this, it would be nice to either suppress battlecries, suppress attack sounds, or both, so that if you just want to play the game with raw text, you can. Now, I happen to like some of the cries, but I find some of them annoying (also, the discovery sound for mythic pets is kind of loud). This game's accessibility is excellent, but being able to mute or adjust these audio elements will probably go a long way toward further tailoring of customization for those whose preferences or needs differ.
I keep coming back here when I find or think of stuff.
It is not especially easy to see fishing level and fishing experience. Can that be addressed? I'm kind of getting tired of the cycle of making baked bream to get bait pouches to fish to (hopefull) get another level. Also, finally got a sardine contract, so that's cool, but now I can't help but notice that two of the three contract styles use only worms. I...this is beginning to feel like a choke point, and not the fun kind of choke point. Please at the very least allow concurrent contracts maybe related to skill level, or a combination of skill level and overall level.
That reminds me. How do we know how much it takes to get to the next overall level? I just sorta get bonuses when the game says I do, and I'd like to have more info on what gains trainer exp the fastest.
I'm able to have the system messages and quest log always show near the top of my screen. I play using the browser version on my laptop and when I first open the game the system messages are shown at the bottom of the page but after a few seconds it goes away. The first time I press system messages the messages are on at the top of the screen which I like. When I press system messages again it goes away and once more the information is at the bottom of the page for a few seconds every time I do something new. I don't know why this wouldn't work for you. There are times when I look at a pet's information and when I get out of that information I have to refresh my screen because it freezes up.
Yeah. Both this and quest info, if I click them up near the top, then they appear there, which is fine and all if you want to peek at your quests or at any system notifications you got, but if I want that to go away, clicking on it doesn't work. Using Jaws on a two-year-old laptop that's more than capable of playing the game, and I use Chrome, if that helps.
malero on June 11, 2024
Thanks for taking the time to write all of this out.
1. There definitely needs to be more contracts. Allowing people to take more than one contract of the same type at the same time would allow people to pick the contract they want by accepting all of the contracts and then just doing the same one over and over again. The next update will have a new location you can go to, the tavern, and it will have some new quests.
2. It's supposed to skip all of the sounds after you hit a new button. There are a few bugs with that whole system. I'll have to see if I can fix them.
3. The fodder pets weren't supposed to be pets you could have, but a few people asked me to add them to the pet shop, so I did. I'll have to revisit them at some point and make them a little more unique. Maybe even give them evolutions at some point.
4. I haven't experienced this issue. I'll have to try to mess around with it with a screen reader and see if I can figure it out.
5. I signed up for a business PayPal account and plan on adding it as a payment option. I'm going to wait to add it until after Update 8, though. I'd really like to get it out as soon as possible.
6. I added a label to the farm and docks experience bars for screen readers, it must not be working. Mine has this aria-label: Farming Level 9. 35% to next level, 4,378 more farming experience needed.
The next update will have quite a few UI changes. There will be a command box where you can type in anything you can say to Alexa and it will process it. So you will be able to type "fishing level" and it will tell you what level in fishing you are and how much experience you need for the next level. I will probably add speech to text to it as well so you don't have to type them out. I have no idea how well that will work, but I would like to try it.
Hi there. I'm very happy to see this, and I don't mind writing out my thoughts. I hope it doesn't come across as if I'm unhappy or dissatisfied with the game overall. The few issues I've had did not negatively impact me to a great enough extent that I wanted to give up.
The issue about lagging sounds and whatnot tends to happen when pets do multiple things on a turn, and it can be gotten around. It's mildly annoying, at worst, but sometimes, yeah, sounds do carry over just a little.
As far as contracts go, I just figure if I've got six farming plots, and I want to have a contract open for corn, one for strawberries and one for garlic, that should be possible. Ditto fishing and cooking. Given that the actual contents of a contract aren't known till you activate it, there's still plenty of randomness to it. But for example, I have a salmon contract open right now, and I'm ignoring it, because I get more exp and lockboxes by spending all my worms and moths down at depth 90 than I would by trying to fish at depth 30 trying to catch salmon. That seems like something that might could be addressed in future updates.
Tavern, eh? I will definitely keep my ears peeled for this one. I like that there is more stuff coming, and appreciate the work you're putting in here.
This game gets it right way, way more often than it doesn't, so thanks for your reply.