Missing necessary UI / comfort features / management tools

[dada]

Hey guys,

as the development seems to reach it's end, at least in terms of the release, i am still missing some, in my perception, absolute necessary features to ease the players micromanaging and overview.
Features to improve the comfort, lessen frustrations and increasing the fun.

Some examples:

Highlighting entities

In my adventures in kenshi i' m often very occupied with trying to spot dangers to avoid or opportunies to pursue. Some.times it can be a game of vigilance and exploration. But most of the time it is no fun to me and distracts from the core gameplay. This spotting is, to me, unnecessarily hard to do for the player - due to zoomlevels, worldcolors, viewangels, gamespeed and more.
Here could be something likely easily implemented highlighting /outlining of NPCs and /or every interactive entity, like it is already present for items laying around by pressing the ALT-key.

Perception based scout reports / event notifications & auto-pause

Furthermore, if i don't keep vigilance, my squads will likely run right into threats without anything happening in the game to prevent them to do so. So without a proper AI there should be at least some recognisance for the game to inform the player, that there is something on the horizon, i think.
Here could be the "perception" abillity of use in terms of view-range (even displayed entities overall) like a report from scouts to the player. These reports trigger a popup message and pause or slow down the game, like set in the options. This seems to me a standard for this kind of game-interaction i was sure it will be implemented down the development-road. Even more there was a greyed out perception atribute years ago. Now its only crossbowish..

"Red flashing portraits" are not enough for me, and possibly not enough for many potential future players.

There are more issues, like communicating a selected chars destination /path /target, or an enemys "specific" target. I don´t think that missing tools /effort are a way to achieve a "rougelike".

What do you guys think? Do you know if there are unofficial plans regarding these issues? How likely is a modbased fix (although it should be part of a released game)? Are you even ok with these issues?

Extended Poll-Question:
Is there some sort of management help /tool for the player (egg. auto-pause; spotting help; visualization of destination /path /target;..) needed for the game-release? You also may want to comment which kind of help you would like or would not like to see.

[Sol Lignum]

Well, i don't think i understand the poll question completely, so i'll skip the answer alltogether.

I don't think highlighting is necessary, moreover, it would hurt the gameplay, as i see spotting as a part of "core gameplay". Maybe i'm just loving the game so much that i'm missing its flaws, but lack of potential enemies visibility doesn't makes me uncomfortable in a bad, non-immersive way.

Notification is already kind of a thing. Some characters, when certain enemies are around, will most definitely comment on what they see. Ruka, for instance, will always comment on spotted HN patrols. But, i like your idea of these comments to become more common, and probably perception based, it's a great idea. The implementation will probably require a lot of handwork though, at the least, various lines for various character types will be needed to be written.

[dada]

The lines are some kind of notification, IF you are watching the speaker, AND are not on fullspeed. And there are more situations demanding more player management tools in general, and these notification in specific.

I don't find it very immersive, if my squad runs zombie like into a beakthing nest because they rely all their perception on a allseeing god-player looking at camouflaged and cluttered terrain..

It's not only about my gusto. It's also about common player demand and success of the released game.
So, i think, if you're the fanboy, you might want to have at least the option.

[Ocram]

Honestly, spotting enemies would spoil and ruin the game for me, reminds me of when I keeped pressing V to spot foes at night with VATS to make it home safe in fo3 xd
You can argue about "no one foces you to use it" but let's be real, options are only options to a degree, I could avoid to use the many exploits the game offers, but I would be an idiot to give up on a chance just because I'm not supposed to take that chance.

That said, I'm not trying to support invisible enemies that come out of nowhere to wipe you in early stages, I think more squads can make use of lanterns, or if they are animals, they could "speak sounds" now and then.

I like the harsh world Kenshi promised, giving the player supersenses kinda defeats the whole concept.

[Neteman]

Thing is that the whole point of Kenshi is to be painful and non friendly to the player.

If you pass something interesting once, with some luck you will spot it next time you are around the place... or never. I have near 1500 hours in the game and last week I found 2 new things to me that were widely known for everyone but me:

- Stone Golem/Bugmaster plot.
- Certain place in the Deadlands that triggers a funny situation (kinda "fan phenomenon").

The fun comes when you discover more and more things related to plots or to specific places... in my opinion. But greatness of Kenshi is that I find funny something and you may find more entertaining the micro management and some other guys who have amazing work with basebuilding... it is a huge game.

I absolutely agree with Ocram and the VATS on FO3.

[Sol Lignum]

Since you've broght up VATS and Fallout-inspired games as a whole: i used it to detect mines in FO4, which annihilates the whole point of them being an invisible party-pooper.

[dada]

I see and understand your points. Although, i think, you might refering to something you obviously got used to, because something hooked you to the game in some way. And now you might be biased to changes, solidarize with the dev or want to stuck with the used to. Ok, i understand that.

Kenshi has become a interesting game (although mid-grade flaws are plenty), with very interesting feature composition on a big scope that, i would like to see build opon. In a post-release state, in a successor, inspired indi-devs or even success encouraged bigger studios. Because, i like simulated worlds. And kenshi could be much more. Lots of features would feel welcomed in this scope.
So, i want kenshi better not only for my entertainment, but for an interesting input into the vastly bored gaming landscape.

As i mentioned before, to look out for something can be entertaining. Question is, to which degree? How much time do an "average" (niche) player want to spend with secure their simple travels (yea, there is no "simple" travel in kenshi)? Indeed, on the art-design of kenshi, you might think it´s on purpose that hard to spot the simple bonedogs on the almost same colored ground. But then, the dev might want to appeal to less masochistic players with less time to spend on a "spot"-feature, no list indicates that playstyle. People will come for openworld, sandbox, rpg, squadbased, swords and others. But few ones will look for a searchpicture.

What i want to talk about is a solution, not my specific proposition, which just made use of an already running, player-life easing, and seemingly ok for you, halt alt-key mechanics for the items. And that was only one and the less pressing issue i propose.

I don´t know, how much others games you play. But you might heard of rimworld. Similar in "some" aspects - like micromanagement, although much more intense. Or other sandbox games, offering different playstyle OPTIONS, IRONMAN-MODES (so you´re not "forced to exploit") and AUTO-PAUSE. Because not everyone wants to play it like you or me would.
> But many will get turned off by the lack of standard features. <

More success to the game, for a better kenshi!

It can always gets better. And diverse.

[Neteman]

Adding an "option" in the "options menu" would be nice in that case. What I'm against is to have a "mechanic" like the VATS mentioned.

As a 90's gamer I remember those games in which you had to move the mouse throug every detail of the screen in order to see the pointer change... I think the Baldurs Gate series were like that and when I tried Neverwinter you had a button to highlight stuff and it was kind of a blow.

It also made my life easier, I have to say but... I don't know, God of Fun has it's own paths.

[dada]

Slighly edited the main post and poll question.

I know these old times very well.