3 hours ago, Suxar said:The game has been on Steam for quite some time.
Yes, I know. It was gifted me by a friend on Steam. I played it for few hours and uninstalled it. Just struck me as impossible without friends also playing it with you and that particular friend was more into WoW at the time. Heard good things about A21 and decide to give it another try. I started and restarted the game, essentially due to the tedium and drudgery experience. Then I realized, "Hey. This is an alpha so test it like its an alpha" and have derived most of my own "fun" with the game doing just that: testing the vanilla experience with and without mods and, especially, testing community complaints about it trying to figure out what the big foofaraw is all about when it's a video game for heaven's sake, not a global crisis.
It gets fun for me personally when most of that tedium and drudgery are out of the way and I'm into the fun stuff, which just doesn't even show up until much later in the game. It's not at all surprising to me that everyone I've seen play it blitzes through those teir 1 odd jobs (I refuse to call them "quests") just to get their hands on the bicycle when it doesn't take long to unlock if you're just invested in the vehicle skill, for example. There are so many incrementally increasing skills in the trees, though, it makes no sense to spread your points out thinly enough to cover all that are required just to start having a little fun with the many toys. (And does anyone know why Master Chef is in the strength tree, btw?)
All those timers that can be sped up by spending points in the skill tree have eaten up too much of my own real and precious lifetime. 16 real life minutes to boil a few bottles of virtual tea? Really? Sure, you can do other things if you have the workbenches and skills to do them in the meantime, provided RNG is magically on your side, but early game has involved an awful lot of just drumming my fingers on the desk and rolling my eyes.
If TFP really want to appeal to a wider audience, they'll streamline those skill trees so overspecialization isn't a concern. Otherwise, mods, mods and more mods and/or don't play the game at all are the way to go, afic. There is no in between. I think there's a great, bare gameplay loop there, but that's about it thus far. Ergo, I can't and don't in good conscience recommend it to anyone else, though I honestly hope it succeeds beyond TFP's wildest expectations because there's an old school charm to it I find immensely appealing myself.