Personal Bug Report/Suggestions
Michael_Myers
SC Join Date: 2016-05-20 Member: 217129Members
SC Join Date: 2016-05-20 Member: 217129Members
Hello everyone, I'm Mike (Hexis Cibil on Xbox One). I was anticipating the release of this game, interested in the concept and am glad to have purchased it to play tester for it. I have played for a total of 27 hours so far since buying the preview game in the late evening of the 18th (May '16). I've not gone through all of the other threads to see what has already been reported, so if I list or suggest something that has been mentioned, I apologize. I have only played through Survival mode so far; my 15 minutes in Creative mode not worth counting. So what I bring up will only be in relevance to Survival.
Bugs found:
1 - The game crashes frequently, often with no real noticeable trigger.
2 - Due to a lack of Autosave functionality and the constant game crashes, the player must manually save regularly. The bug here is that the game does not always save properly.. I saved my game last night 3 times in a row to be absolutely sure my progress would be kept. I had built a Seamoth, docked it to a Cyclops, and had altered the colors and name of the Cyclops prior to these saves. When loading the game today, it loaded back to a point shortly before having built the Seamoth. This means that even manually saving the game is not fully reliable when keeping progress. Players be aware of this.
3 - Crash Powder never spawning; This is not a matter of bad luck. During my brief Creative mode test, I found Crash Powder in 4 of 5 nests whereas none has spawned in any of the 100+ nests I have attempted to loot in Survival. A friend who was playing Survival at the same time as me said he had found a total of 2 Crash Powder in his Survival game, but no more. I take this to mean that my current save is glitched, therefore will never (unless patched) get Crash Powder.
4 - Fragment Spawns are glitchy..
---a) Blueprint Fragments will sometimes not work properly. This meaning when you scan the fragment, it will either not count towards your progress at all or it will give you Titanium when you still have progress left to complete. This has been tested thoroughly. When you complete a blueprint, you receive Titanium instead for every fragment scanned after; this can also happen even before completing a blueprint, making it impossible to complete. Other times, you simply get nothing and the fragment remains there, unable to be scanned again.
---b) Fragments also have a small chance of just never showing up. When searching for Solar Panel fragments, I was able to find 1, but never the second. 3 hours of my first game was spent searching for a second fragment, but it never spawned to be scanned. (Yes, I was in the right area, I did my research). This file had not been manually saved because I was not aware that there was no autosave, so my search had to start over after a crash occurred. In my second game (now my current), I found both Panel fragments needed and several extras lying all around the area they spawn. Possible Fix: Reload a save outside the area they spawn and then reenter the area; again, only a 'possible' fix.
4 - Terrain alteration is broken. I have read that due to the Xbox Ones limitations, the Terraformer (though in the game, clearly) is not usable. One main reason why (from what I've gathered) is that the terrain does not maintain an altered state. When building a base, sometimes the ground will flatten or be moved back in order for your base to be situated without any clipping - a fantastic idea. However, when reentering a location where this has been done, the terrain may snap back to it's original state, meaning rock faces phased through entire rooms of a base. This can also make that base permanent if an attached window or object becomes buried as well as inaccessible if a hatch or corridor is buried.
5 - Terrain does not always load. If using the Seamoth or the Sea/PowerGlides, you can move pretty fast. If you move fast enough, the terrain has trouble rendering before you get to it. If you get there before it renders, you can get stuck underneath the floor of the map.
6 - Small fish have even smaller hit boxes. This is another limitation of the console in comparison to the PC. With a mouse, pointing and clicking is as easy as can be. With a controller, you have to first move the stick to look at the fish, then move your finger away to press the A button to grab. During that small window of time, the fish can often change direction or just go by too fast. Some fish can only be grabbed by their heads rather than by their full bodies, which is even worse. This issue is accompanied by...
7 - Frame Rate issues. When at the water surface, out in the deeper parts of the sea, not much is rendered and the frame rate can be as high as 50-60fps, which sounds great. But when you are in more shallow areas or just closer to the ocean floor, maybe with a base or just a lot of fish swimming around, the frames can be as low as 10-20fps. I find myself based in a fairly busy area in terms of objects and entities moving around and my frames seem to max out around 35fps here with some luck, the average being a steady 25fps. This problem goes hand in hand with catching fish because when the frames skip even slightly, a fish you would have caught gets away.
8 - Game freezes without making it obvious that it did... This has only happened twice, but that's enough to make it worth mentioning. At one point, swimming as usual, my HUD became static. The Oxygen did not count down or up, but I could still drown. My Hunger and Hydration percents did not budge, but I got the notification voice telling me I was dehydrated. The small screen on the Scanner was either a flat grey or blue and did not scan things anymore. These are signs that your game has basically crashed again. When in this state, pausing will likely dashboard you as it did for me both times.
9 - AI is wonky. From fish popping into your base through solid walls and just hanging out in thin air to the larger creatures dry humping the open waters or ocean floor, the AI is not without flaws. Some things like Stalkers getting salvage stuck in their face seems to be more a lack of animation - I feel they are collecting the salvage like greedy fish, but without any animation and the salvage sometimes spinning wildly in their mouths, I could be wrong. Other creatures like the Reefback and the Gasopods can sometimes get too low or too close to walls and then they proceed to get very Adult Programmy with their movements, gyrating like an old school cartoon alarm clock.
10 - Bonus - Cyclops Lock 01-05 don't have any purpose right now... They open and close, that's all. Not sure if the PC version has something implemented for them, but they are currently just interior flaps for the Xbox.
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Suggestions:
1 - Improve hit box for catching fish.
2 - Fix bugs (of course).
3 - Add an autosave feature that will create up to 3 files, overwriting the oldest of the 3 each time (Ex: Fallout autosaves) with player set intervals.
4 - Alter Quick Slot to function better. Several buttons seem to be totally unused and the frame rate drops between switching. Having Quick Slots be mapped to individual buttons rather than only Left and Right d-pad would help greatly when speed is important on the switch.
Yes, this is a preview game. This list is purely to help expose flaws to the devs and to offer suggestions to improve the game for the players. I also would have added more, but I'm out of time to type anything else and I honestly forgot a couple things.. If you experience other issues or have other suggestions that are not totally outlandish, feel free to add to this thread.
Thank you, and goodbye!
Bugs found:
1 - The game crashes frequently, often with no real noticeable trigger.
2 - Due to a lack of Autosave functionality and the constant game crashes, the player must manually save regularly. The bug here is that the game does not always save properly.. I saved my game last night 3 times in a row to be absolutely sure my progress would be kept. I had built a Seamoth, docked it to a Cyclops, and had altered the colors and name of the Cyclops prior to these saves. When loading the game today, it loaded back to a point shortly before having built the Seamoth. This means that even manually saving the game is not fully reliable when keeping progress. Players be aware of this.
3 - Crash Powder never spawning; This is not a matter of bad luck. During my brief Creative mode test, I found Crash Powder in 4 of 5 nests whereas none has spawned in any of the 100+ nests I have attempted to loot in Survival. A friend who was playing Survival at the same time as me said he had found a total of 2 Crash Powder in his Survival game, but no more. I take this to mean that my current save is glitched, therefore will never (unless patched) get Crash Powder.
4 - Fragment Spawns are glitchy..
---a) Blueprint Fragments will sometimes not work properly. This meaning when you scan the fragment, it will either not count towards your progress at all or it will give you Titanium when you still have progress left to complete. This has been tested thoroughly. When you complete a blueprint, you receive Titanium instead for every fragment scanned after; this can also happen even before completing a blueprint, making it impossible to complete. Other times, you simply get nothing and the fragment remains there, unable to be scanned again.
---b) Fragments also have a small chance of just never showing up. When searching for Solar Panel fragments, I was able to find 1, but never the second. 3 hours of my first game was spent searching for a second fragment, but it never spawned to be scanned. (Yes, I was in the right area, I did my research). This file had not been manually saved because I was not aware that there was no autosave, so my search had to start over after a crash occurred. In my second game (now my current), I found both Panel fragments needed and several extras lying all around the area they spawn. Possible Fix: Reload a save outside the area they spawn and then reenter the area; again, only a 'possible' fix.
4 - Terrain alteration is broken. I have read that due to the Xbox Ones limitations, the Terraformer (though in the game, clearly) is not usable. One main reason why (from what I've gathered) is that the terrain does not maintain an altered state. When building a base, sometimes the ground will flatten or be moved back in order for your base to be situated without any clipping - a fantastic idea. However, when reentering a location where this has been done, the terrain may snap back to it's original state, meaning rock faces phased through entire rooms of a base. This can also make that base permanent if an attached window or object becomes buried as well as inaccessible if a hatch or corridor is buried.
5 - Terrain does not always load. If using the Seamoth or the Sea/PowerGlides, you can move pretty fast. If you move fast enough, the terrain has trouble rendering before you get to it. If you get there before it renders, you can get stuck underneath the floor of the map.
6 - Small fish have even smaller hit boxes. This is another limitation of the console in comparison to the PC. With a mouse, pointing and clicking is as easy as can be. With a controller, you have to first move the stick to look at the fish, then move your finger away to press the A button to grab. During that small window of time, the fish can often change direction or just go by too fast. Some fish can only be grabbed by their heads rather than by their full bodies, which is even worse. This issue is accompanied by...
7 - Frame Rate issues. When at the water surface, out in the deeper parts of the sea, not much is rendered and the frame rate can be as high as 50-60fps, which sounds great. But when you are in more shallow areas or just closer to the ocean floor, maybe with a base or just a lot of fish swimming around, the frames can be as low as 10-20fps. I find myself based in a fairly busy area in terms of objects and entities moving around and my frames seem to max out around 35fps here with some luck, the average being a steady 25fps. This problem goes hand in hand with catching fish because when the frames skip even slightly, a fish you would have caught gets away.
8 - Game freezes without making it obvious that it did... This has only happened twice, but that's enough to make it worth mentioning. At one point, swimming as usual, my HUD became static. The Oxygen did not count down or up, but I could still drown. My Hunger and Hydration percents did not budge, but I got the notification voice telling me I was dehydrated. The small screen on the Scanner was either a flat grey or blue and did not scan things anymore. These are signs that your game has basically crashed again. When in this state, pausing will likely dashboard you as it did for me both times.
9 - AI is wonky. From fish popping into your base through solid walls and just hanging out in thin air to the larger creatures dry humping the open waters or ocean floor, the AI is not without flaws. Some things like Stalkers getting salvage stuck in their face seems to be more a lack of animation - I feel they are collecting the salvage like greedy fish, but without any animation and the salvage sometimes spinning wildly in their mouths, I could be wrong. Other creatures like the Reefback and the Gasopods can sometimes get too low or too close to walls and then they proceed to get very Adult Programmy with their movements, gyrating like an old school cartoon alarm clock.
10 - Bonus - Cyclops Lock 01-05 don't have any purpose right now... They open and close, that's all. Not sure if the PC version has something implemented for them, but they are currently just interior flaps for the Xbox.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Suggestions:
1 - Improve hit box for catching fish.
2 - Fix bugs (of course).
3 - Add an autosave feature that will create up to 3 files, overwriting the oldest of the 3 each time (Ex: Fallout autosaves) with player set intervals.
4 - Alter Quick Slot to function better. Several buttons seem to be totally unused and the frame rate drops between switching. Having Quick Slots be mapped to individual buttons rather than only Left and Right d-pad would help greatly when speed is important on the switch.
Yes, this is a preview game. This list is purely to help expose flaws to the devs and to offer suggestions to improve the game for the players. I also would have added more, but I'm out of time to type anything else and I honestly forgot a couple things.. If you experience other issues or have other suggestions that are not totally outlandish, feel free to add to this thread.
Thank you, and goodbye!