Best Of

We've already changed it. I'm a bit scared of the leading zeroes you're using in your subjects - you don't plan on reporting more than 100 issues, are you (Edvard Munch's scream emoji)?
To be fair, all of the reports you have made are absolutely valid, but as I already pointed out, we're so much further in development already compared to the version you're playing (which is from 6 months ago). So I think you're wasting a bit of time here with these detailed, nicely done reports. Like we point out in the prototype's title screen, it's way too early to report bugs or give feedback because we're aware of many problems and have already changed so much. So I think it makes more sense to wait for the Alpha.

@ROCKFISH_Andi Well I'm glad you said so now rather than after I reached issue [999]! 😂😋 I knew the prototype was out of date but I figured it'd be best to get my thoughts in as early in development as possible and let you guys decide whether it's relevant rather than me just guessing which features you fixed already or not. The truth is I don't want to post any issues (they take effort/time!), but I want this game to succeed and you guys to succeed so you can keep making awesome games and so I felt it a worthy investment. But if you think it's better to wait, that makes my life easier. ^_^

If it's all the same to you then, I'll just post one more thread with all the notes I've written so far, not very fleshed out but there might be some useful ideas in there and I'll just leave it at that until Alpha. 🙂

Concordant with @ROCKFISH_Andi's suggestion to wait before spending a lot of effort in posting suggestions before the next release of the game for Alpha backers, I'm just posting an unfleshed out version of my remaining suggestions in a single post for the team (@ROCKFISH_HCK @ROCKFISH_Michael @ROCKFISH_Uwe @ROCKFISH_Sven). Many of these may have already been fixed or changed but there might still be something useful that can be addressed before the Alpha. I put an exclamation mark next to ones I think are particularly critical.

I hope some of these are helpful. I'm excited to see what you guys can show us moving forward! I really appreciate you guys taking the time to consider our suggestions.

Looks like due to post size constraints I'll have to post it in two parts. Here's Part 2.

Interface

In-game / Flying / Combat

Target selection and mouseover improvements

1. (❗) Need sound when targetting
   
2. (❗) Should easily be able to deselect targets
   Whether by hitting selecting the same target again or hitting the select key over empty space perhaps
   
3. Mouseover border that appears when hovering over aircraft, not sure is needed.
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   Is a tooltip (perhaps with line to target) not enough?
   
   
4. Maybe add a settings option to configure healthbar display settings?
   
   Some people will want them shown at all times for all spacecraft and others will only want to show them for the spacecraft they have selected. Personally, I would remove the health bar display for all except the selected spacecraft, and put health bar information for aircraft that are moused-over into their tooltip. I would also consider keeping tooltips for only mouseover and not target selection (i.e. hide the tooltip for the currently selected aircraft when you aren't mousing over it.)
   
5. When holding things like an Escape Pod, you can no longer mouseover things. Is this intended?
   
6. More salient reward indicators?
   When someone gives you something as a reward for helping them (as did the guy who gave me wine for helping get his escape pod back to a port), it should be much clearer what is being given and where. Instead of silently adding another object to the edge of the player's HUD, make the item itself sparkle or glow in some way, and if the user isn't looking in the direction of the item then an icon on the HUD must be added (and make the HUD icon also sparkle in a clear way that indicates the item is a new item that was shared with the player).
   

Inventory

• There's a lot here but it appears you have changed the inventory UI since prototype so I'll skip these.
  

Docking / Port UI

1. "Refill" should be "Restock". Docked at a port, the "Refill" option appears to be a means with which you restock your weapon supplies such as missiles. "Restock" is a more appropriate word in English when talking about objects of a fixed size. "Refill" is more appropriate when talking about liquids. Refill the gas, restock the missles.
   
2. Refill/Repair Menu should have ALL keybindings displayed. Some are displayed, some are missing for example the Up/Down and left/right controls. On controller there are several joysticks and the D-pad to use, so help the user know which to press so we don't have to guess.
   
3. (❗) Refill/Repair menus could use clearer "selected item" indicators
   Right now it's just a thin 1-2px border and I think the indicator would benefit from being much more salient. Can you extend the border to wrap around the entire row and add a background color change? I think that would help a lot.
   
   
   
4. (❗) Refill/Repair Menu stack count should be kept consistent.
   Currently in the Refill/Repair menus, the stack count shown for items ("10/15" in the image below) is the current stock count:
   
   
   Firstly, if the player has not changed any values (or specifically, if the amount current equipped equals the amount shown in the UI, the yellow/orange colored 10 above should just be white to make it clear that is the starting amount (you can also glean that information from the fact that the total cost is 0 for a non-zero cost part, but having a few places to find the same information is helpful and in fact encouraged). The bigger thing and the central focus of this specific issue is that when you increase the quantity that you want to buy, the quantity shown on the icon also increases which is misleading, because what was once "current stock count" is now "projected/future item stock count". This is confusing! If you absolutely insist on displaying the projected stock count there, show a white "10" and a green +X number next to the 10 (or possibly larger and centered on the icon) referring to the stock increase that might occur, but I recommend against that because it could get a bit noisy from a UX perspective.
   
5. Refill/Repair Menu could be clearer when adding and subtracting stock.
   It might be easier to understand for people if you made the restock bar green when adding more stock. If it's possible in the future versions of the game to sell portions of stocked items, I would also make the resulting deficit bar (the amount being sold) as red.
   
6. Refill/Repair Menu may benefit from showing finer stock count information
   Although not critical, I think it would be helpful to show additional information under the bar instead of only the projected stock count (the orange 10 in the image above). You might also consider adding 0 for the beginning of the bar, a number at the end of the bar for the maximum, along with the current stock and the target/future stock count for when you are adding stock.
   
7. (❗) Refill/Repair Menu should probably not use red for the cost unless it's a bad thing.
   
   Especially "red triple down angle bracket" which means "bad bad bad" to most people I think... This repair action I'm about to take is actually a good thing (fixing my ship), so if anything it should be colored green...
   

This is a continuation from Part 1 of my collected thoughts and suggestions for the prototype.

Game Design

Space physics

1. (❗❗❗) Add speed ramp-up to all movement types
   Currently there are several "modes of movement" (normal speed, boost speed, cruise drive) when going about an area and with all of them one reaches top speed almost immediately. I believe the movement system would immediately become much richer by adding a ramp-up time to all types of movement, in addition to it being more realistic. With the current design, there is only a binary decision "am I boosting or am I not?" or "Am I cruise drive or am I not?" By adding a ramp-up with a continuum of different speeds in between, you can then have players learn to master different speeds for various activities of the game, whether combat or exploration or future racing or whatnot. You'll probably need a speed indicator to be added somewhere though.
   
2. (❗❗❗) Add abilty to toggle inertial dampeners
   This is actually one part of Everspace 1 which bothered me -- there didn't appear to be a way to turn off the inertial dampeners. Accelerating in space and turning off your engines and effectively remaining at that speed in the same vector of travel is a fundamental aspect of space travel which was missing from Everspace 1 and really ought to make it into Everspace 2. Not only is it kind of strange to not have this fundamental aspect of physics in the game, but more importantly, by adding it you would greatly increase the richness of player movement capabilities and combat strategy. All there needs to be is an easy way to toggle inertial dampeners and immediately you have added a way for players to more cleverly use movement to both navigate the map and engage in combat. It opens up new possibilities for strafing (shooting in any direction while moving in any direction) and energy conservation (using inertia instead of energy to move). However, you would see greater benefit from it if you increased the ramp up time to reach the max speed (both boost and non-boost, see Add Speed Ramp-up).
   

Exploration

1. (❗❗❗) Add distance numbers of HUD edge icons
   HUD icons appear on an circle around your HUD to indicate an item of interest. As of now, players have to mouse over each one one at a time to find out their distance because they can map the best route in their head to go to all of them. This is definitely not an enjoyable part of the game, so make it simpler and just show the distances below the icons in small text so players can more quickly jump into what a level has to offer.
   
   
2. Add Area Map? ("nice to have" feature)
   I was surprised to see no area map in Everspace 1 and now that Everspace 2 is more of an RPG, I'm even more surprised to see it missing. I think adding a map would make the game much more enjoyable and allow users to better plan their routes without having to look around themselves trying to piece together a map in their minds based off distances. Let people be efficient if they want! The map should likely be entirely obscured outside one's sensor range other than showing large objects which are easily visible at great distances from the cockpit. It should probably also have "fog of war" in areas outside your sensor range after you explore an area. This could allow some additional interesting features in the game such as the ability to deploy sensor drones (whether at your existing location or to a distant area to "explore"/reveal it and keep it revealed during the life of the probe.
   
   If you cannot add an area map due to resource/time constraints, it is in my opinion especially imperative then that you add distances to icons which are displayed on your HUD. Without either a map or distances, players have to mouse over everything and form a mental map in their mind in terms of a path to take, which while not necessarily difficult is tedious and not particularly fun. Every time I get to a new area I don't want to have to spend 5 minutes trying to determine the best path to take, and so often in Everspace 1 I just skipped trying to figure out things and just flew off in any random direction of interest, planning to get to everything eventually anyways. But then I would spend extra time traveling back and forth between spots because I didn't fly an optimal path... Can we just let players focus on the fun stuff and make it easy to determine a path to all the fun stuff in the game? 😊
   

That's all for now from me! 😜