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Warhammer Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

Trithne

Erudite
Joined
Dec 3, 2008
Messages
1,200
The problems with Unity goes beyond them trying to make more money.

Yep.

Will the new monetization system affect previous OwlCat games? Because I have installed PF:KM alone about 8 times, in my desktop, notebook and so on. If the fee was by game SALE, not install, that would't be as bad.
The impact on Owlcat will be pretty small. I'm not sure if sales count as revenue for the purposes of it, but basically it's aimed at trying to take a cut of games with lots of microtransactions in them. It could hit Owlcat if they've made over 200k in sales this year and you install it next year, but you aren't going to bankrupt them with it.
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
21,309
The problems with Unity goes beyond them trying to make more money.

Yep.

Will the new monetization system affect previous OwlCat games? Because I have installed PF:KM alone about 8 times, in my desktop, notebook and so on. If the fee was by game SALE, not install, that would't be as bad.
The impact on Owlcat will be pretty small. I'm not sure if sales count as revenue for the purposes of it, but basically it's aimed at trying to take a cut of games with lots of microtransactions in them. It could hit Owlcat if they've made over 200k in sales this year and you install it next year, but you aren't going to bankrupt them with it.
I do not see how this change survives in courts. Original TOS was used to produce games, Unity cannot just one sided change it and expect it to work on things done with old TOS. I hope Unity gets sued for this.
 

Cryomancer

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
17,040
Location
Frostfell
Original TOS was used to produce games, Unity cannot just one sided change it and expect it to work on things done with old TOS. I hope Unity gets sued for this.

There is also the question of privacy. If each new installation is sending data to Unity, that is a huge security breach.

Anyway, things are really hard for owlcat. First kgb dwarf invasion, then this...
 

ArchAngel

Arcane
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
21,309
Original TOS was used to produce games, Unity cannot just one sided change it and expect it to work on things done with old TOS. I hope Unity gets sued for this.

There is also the question of privacy. If each new installation is sending data to Unity, that is a huge security breach.

Anyway, things are really hard for owlcat. First kgb dwarf invasion, then this...
Maybe they should just switch to favorite engine of Russian devs - Fallout 1/2 :D
 

Cryomancer

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
17,040
Location
Frostfell
Owlcat is probably having emergency meetings about unity and bot only them, but they are the company which I care the most.
 

Irxy

Arcane
Joined
Nov 13, 2007
Messages
2,054
Location
Schism
Project: Eternity
The problems with Unity goes beyond them trying to make more money.

Yep.

Will the new monetization system affect previous OwlCat games? Because I have installed PF:KM alone about 8 times, in my desktop, notebook and so on. If the fee was by game SALE, not install, that would't be as bad.
The impact on Owlcat will be pretty small. I'm not sure if sales count as revenue for the purposes of it, but basically it's aimed at trying to take a cut of games with lots of microtransactions in them. It could hit Owlcat if they've made over 200k in sales this year and you install it next year, but you aren't going to bankrupt them with it.
This system sounds kind of ridiculous, or am I not getting something?
Say I buy a game today & am going to reinstall it every year for the next 20 years. Does this mean the devs are going to pay for such backlog catalog reinstalls forever or something?
The system seams completely detached from the actual profit the companies are making.
 

Cryomancer

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Jul 11, 2019
Messages
17,040
Location
Frostfell
Say I buy a game today & am going to reinstall it every year for the next 20 years. Does this mean the devs are going to pay for such backlog catalog reinstalls forever or something?

Yes, to play with mods and similar things, I probably installed PF:KM about 20 times. In my desktop, in my notebook, after formating my pc, re installed with wine in linux to run a mod which I could't install in the Linux version, then re installed cuz I botched the instalation, tried to mod the game but gave up and also reinstalled a couple of times trying to do it... Under this system, a very passionate player who plays their game a lot will end up being a unprofitable costumer.

Not mentioning that games are extremely cheap in some markets like Argentina, Russia and Turkey. A single very passionate Argentine fan of PF:KM which buys it on sale can end up costing for OwlCat dozens+ of times times more than the sale after steam cut and currency conversion. Companies will blacklist entire countries and piracy would unironically not be a bad thing for them.

And this not mentioning freemium games. Their business model is about having a huge playerbase and small "whale" playerbase.

If Unity asked for many dollars per direct sale, that would't be as bad. And this not counting abuse. Someone who really hates OwlCat with QEmu and Bash could easily make a script to keep resintalling a game forever.
 

Riddler

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 5, 2009
Messages
2,390
Bubbles In Memoria
Will the new monetization system affect previous OwlCat games?

No, the old ToS will apply if the game is released before 2024, which is likely why they rushed forward with this release date.

The impact on Owlcat will be pretty small. I'm not sure if sales count as revenue for the purposes of it, but basically it's aimed at trying to take a cut of games with lots of microtransactions in them

And games that aren't really monetised at all and work mostly as advertising for the studio, which then switches to another engine when they manage to land a publisher.
 

scytheavatar

Scholar
Joined
Sep 22, 2016
Messages
688
I am seeing that Owlcat has been hiring programmers with Unreal experience, which suggests they do have plans to move away from Unity anyway.
 

Dishonoredbr

Erudite
Joined
Jun 13, 2019
Messages
2,432
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2186680/view/6345064719882626363

Feedback from the Koronus Expanse 2: Beta survey results

Greetings, Lord Captains!

Months ago, during alpha testing, we posted an article about changes brought to the game based on your feedback in the big alpha survey.

Time flies by quickly, and today we are back with the second article of the series, this time to show you how your feedback shaped the game after the beta!

Disclaimer:
Same as in the last article, we will not be going over every question in the survey, but will highlight only the most interesting facts. Enjoy the read and watch out for spoilers below!

Overall Score

What could be better than to begin the article with the overall rating you guys gave us?

A total of 5000+ players have taken the survey, and they rated Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
4.3
out of
5
!

This is almost the same result as the last time (alpha was rated
4.35
). But considering this time the amount of people taking the survey has increased tenfold, a large number of them way less familiar with the universe, it looks like we’re still going in the right direction. Thank you for the recognition! Of course, this result is not a reason to sit idle, and we’ll discuss why below.

Reactivity and Convictions

One of the most frequent complaints in the survey was the insufficient reactivity of NPCs and companions to the Rogue Trader’s biography, doctrines, and convictions. There were also concerns about the conviction tags often feeling off or missing altogether. Well, that makes sense - a significant chunk of these reactions were not in the game yet! We’re already busy adding these reactions as this article is being written. Same goes for convictions - the tag placement was a draft done shortly before the beta launch, and we’re carefully working on all dialogues to tag them correctly.

We’ve also paid additional attention to scenes where a lot of you wished to see specific reactions. For example, quite a few people really wanted to be able to interrupt some of Idira’s heretical speeches in front of outsiders, and we’ll let you do this now!

Tutorials and Lore Glossary

Over 50% of you found our newly introduced tutorials useful, and the only negative criticism about them was, well, that there’s not enough of them! We are happy that they seem to be working well and will add more tutorials for various aspects of the game as we continue development. Some of them will even receive short explanatory videos.

The lore glossary appears to be quite helpful as well: almost 90% respondents told us they were actively using it! A curious note: these numbers appear the same even for the respondents who claimed to be deeply familiar with the universe. Checking our knowledge of the Lore, are you? :D

Difficulty Curve

There’s a lot of curious data here depending on the choice of difficulty. Overall, it seems that we’re on the right track, although some players on normal difficulty reported that there could be a bit more challenge. We will be carefully tuning the encounters with that in mind, especially in the later acts of the game, where player power may currently grow a bit too quickly.

Doctrines

Among the doctrines available, Marksman was an undisputed leader in all aspects. So much that we are considering lowering its potential a bit. Don’t panic though, we’re not removing the already iconic
Shoot on the Run
!

Adept, on the other hand, appears to be the least popular, with the most common complaints being lack of visible impact and difficulty in understanding its mechanics. In the beta this doctrine also suffered from a whole spectrum of bugs, which made the abilities even more confusing. We will be fixing these, tweaking some abilities, and reviewing the confusing and unclear descriptions.

UI

The UI seems to overall be well-received both visually and mechanically, with three exceptions:

  1. Levelling UI. We’ve received a lot of feedback that the window was too small, there were way too many options in a single list, no way to compare the skills, and it lacked any sort of recommendation system, which led to massive timesinks every time you needed to level. Lack of respec options was often mentioned too. We will be addressing all of these issues! Here’s a glimpse on one of the menus we are currently working on:


    ecd63b3563d8e437f07b79d955b74e91e0535593.png



    1482db81a44d83ffdff2f53baa6d185a2a96a72a.png



    f6278614f8e75dd877d0d207e622881b9e453d36.png


  2. Cargo/Loot UI. In the feedback, we’ve seen an overwhelming demand for proper drag&drop, scrolling, sorting, searching, and categorization. We haven’t been sitting idle and this UI is receiving a significant update. You can have a sneak peek of the changes yourself:


    185f3a045572a15ccfd31a1990ad39fb4254c69e.png



    d45122fb8cf835100c55e94045cc49374e5c7b41.png



    84f2aa851e5d0aab4bfc27f03fdd4f2c33ce1eb2.png


  3. Targeting UI and ability formulas. Crit chance, cover benefits, visibility of the target, and buffs/debuffs were not always obvious. Formulas in ability descriptions and combat logs were confusing, and damage numbers were often way off the expected values. We have fixed these incorrect values, made the formulas shown as values by default, and increased visibility of icons and lines of sight.

    When selecting targets for a ranged attack or ability, you can now also press TAB and hover your mouse over the hit chance or buff/debuff icons to get detailed information about them:


    ade33e47fc6010780d53cbec72692fab8113dfc2.png



    3841cc41853b7fc94b35d6fc8897d17cf5c0e808.png



Reputation and Profit Factor

We’ve seen a fair share of confusion on profit factor, vendor trade, and reputation systems. A lot of people didn’t figure it out at all throughout their playthrough, and others were confused about how the profit factor value was calculated.

Not only will we be implementing a number of tutorials to help you figure out these systems, but we’ve also put a lot of work into making the UI more clear and self-explanatory. Profit factor will also now be visible in the colony screen:


462ed18d99558d157f908f69bab176291000e9e0.png




a85853d7a5192720665a42d226880b84b57b2ba3.png




64760ab0a51dfc76f0a46752a0dfe7bec5f49a06.png




98afe897ae142f84bd48412854afc661292cf150.png



Cutscenes

Looks like you guys generally enjoy our approach to cutscenes! There were only two significant points of feedback that attracted our attention:

  1. Desynchronized or incomplete/weird-looking animations. All of these problems are being worked on and should be solved by release.
  2. Impossibility to skip cutscenes, which was especially painful when a cutscene would happen just before a difficult fight. We don’t want to make you suffer yet, so we’re adding an option to skip cutscenes!


Ground Combat

Ground combat has received a solid
4.2
out of
5
in the beta, which is up from
3.94
in the alpha. This demonstrates steady progress, and there are only a few things we still would like to look at, such as the frequency of encounters in some zones and certain battles that tend to drag on too much or don’t feel original enough.

Space

For
space combat
, we are at
3.7
out of
5
, up from
3.4
in the alpha. Progress is visible, but there is still a lot to do. A lot of people were frustrated by the lack of tutorials, so of course we’ll be putting that in! We will also fully implement officer post management, which was turned off for the beta, squash some bugs, and put in some additional effort to improve the variety of encounters.

Space exploration
was rated
4.1
, up from
3.9
in the alpha. It is a good result, and after a bit more polishing, it looks like we’ll be in the right spot. An interesting observation is that an overwhelming amount of players explore everything in the game, no exceptions.

Colony management
is at only
3.4
at this point, which is far less than we would like to see. We will be putting in tutorials, improving the UI, tweaking numbers, offering more interesting rewards and adding reactivity to colony events and decisions. We will also remove the necessity to personally visit the colony to claim a reward - it was a quite popular demand.

The
global map
is at
3.93
, which is decent, but it could be a bit better. We will be adding tutorials, upgrading a few visuals, adding more text-based warp encounters (many of you found them repetitive), and tuning the number and frequency of combat warp encounters.

Locations

Overall, it looks like we completely got rid of the ‘not enough grim darkness’ problem reported back in the alpha. It appears that the amount of weariness and despair added to the locations turned out to be just right, and such feedback is almost fully absent in the new survey. In fact, “just the right amount of grim darkness” is a very popular answer in the open feedback section!

The most popular locations (remarkable
4.42
and
4.41
out of
5
, accordingly) were the Prologue:


5c88ff4f32f17460b672cdd8468c00bfb265c5a5.png



and the Electrodynamic Cenobium:


694b2c37e19d82c26d9a076141608a048bf137c6.png



Other popular locations included Eurac-V:


8265a52008783c6a6f6f6dcd4c515401fbf9546c.png



Inquisition Shipwreck

:


bc847442546e05e8fb15b186aafecbfac75f4871.png



and the Adeptus Administratum Palace:


3378badf8ef9bcdf883859dc45f83b9b9f9af210.jpg



Locations from the dark city of Commorragh were less popular, hovering around the score of
4
. To an extent, it’s to be expected - they were still largely a WIP in the beta. In addition, in the first few days of the beta, there was a bug that allowed you to skip most of Act III by taking the wrong portal, which left many players confused. We will continue polishing and improving those locations as we prepare for release.

Companions and Narrative

Just like the last time, Argenta raked in all the praise, nominations, and awards! Who would have doubted that it would happen?


e9a003907d6e2661ceda06a993c4953fb8b1032b.png



Unfortunately, same as the last time, the least popular companions are Jae and Idira, although the gap isn’t as big this time. We are already implementing a number of further tweaks and improvements which will make them more interesting and unique both mechanically and narratively.

We’ve also received a lot of feedback about a certain

taking place in Act III, players pointing out that it was unjustified or unexplained.

Partially, it was caused by the fact that some content and reactivity that would make it clearer wasn’t yet in the beta. However, we see a clear urge for a better explanation, so besides adding the missing content, our narrative team is giving that event some additional attention.

Conclusion

And this marks the end of the article! We hope you enjoyed this little insight into the development of the game.

Once again, we thank you kindly for participating in the survey and helping us to shape this game so it can become even more fun, entertaining, and lore-accurate. It is an honor to have such an engaged and passionate community!

And as a final parting gift, here are some interesting stats from the survey:
 
Last edited by a moderator:

processdaemon

Scholar
Patron
Joined
Jul 14, 2023
Messages
617
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2186680/view/6345064719882626363

Feedback from the Koronus Expanse 2: Beta survey results

Greetings, Lord Captains!

Months ago, during alpha testing, we posted an article about changes brought to the game based on your feedback in the big alpha survey.

Time flies by quickly, and today we are back with the second article of the series, this time to show you how your feedback shaped the game after the beta!

Disclaimer:
Same as in the last article, we will not be going over every question in the survey, but will highlight only the most interesting facts. Enjoy the read and watch out for spoilers below!

Overall Score

What could be better than to begin the article with the overall rating you guys gave us?

A total of 5000+ players have taken the survey, and they rated Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
4.3
out of
5
!

This is almost the same result as the last time (alpha was rated
4.35
). But considering this time the amount of people taking the survey has increased tenfold, a large number of them way less familiar with the universe, it looks like we’re still going in the right direction. Thank you for the recognition! Of course, this result is not a reason to sit idle, and we’ll discuss why below.

Reactivity and Convictions

One of the most frequent complaints in the survey was the insufficient reactivity of NPCs and companions to the Rogue Trader’s biography, doctrines, and convictions. There were also concerns about the conviction tags often feeling off or missing altogether. Well, that makes sense - a significant chunk of these reactions were not in the game yet! We’re already busy adding these reactions as this article is being written. Same goes for convictions - the tag placement was a draft done shortly before the beta launch, and we’re carefully working on all dialogues to tag them correctly.

We’ve also paid additional attention to scenes where a lot of you wished to see specific reactions. For example, quite a few people really wanted to be able to interrupt some of Idira’s heretical speeches in front of outsiders, and we’ll let you do this now!

Tutorials and Lore Glossary

Over 50% of you found our newly introduced tutorials useful, and the only negative criticism about them was, well, that there’s not enough of them! We are happy that they seem to be working well and will add more tutorials for various aspects of the game as we continue development. Some of them will even receive short explanatory videos.

The lore glossary appears to be quite helpful as well: almost 90% respondents told us they were actively using it! A curious note: these numbers appear the same even for the respondents who claimed to be deeply familiar with the universe. Checking our knowledge of the Lore, are you? :D

Difficulty Curve

There’s a lot of curious data here depending on the choice of difficulty. Overall, it seems that we’re on the right track, although some players on normal difficulty reported that there could be a bit more challenge. We will be carefully tuning the encounters with that in mind, especially in the later acts of the game, where player power may currently grow a bit too quickly.

Doctrines

Among the doctrines available, Marksman was an undisputed leader in all aspects. So much that we are considering lowering its potential a bit. Don’t panic though, we’re not removing the already iconic
Shoot on the Run
!

Adept, on the other hand, appears to be the least popular, with the most common complaints being lack of visible impact and difficulty in understanding its mechanics. In the beta this doctrine also suffered from a whole spectrum of bugs, which made the abilities even more confusing. We will be fixing these, tweaking some abilities, and reviewing the confusing and unclear descriptions.

UI

The UI seems to overall be well-received both visually and mechanically, with three exceptions:

  1. Levelling UI. We’ve received a lot of feedback that the window was too small, there were way too many options in a single list, no way to compare the skills, and it lacked any sort of recommendation system, which led to massive timesinks every time you needed to level. Lack of respec options was often mentioned too. We will be addressing all of these issues! Here’s a glimpse on one of the menus we are currently working on:


    ecd63b3563d8e437f07b79d955b74e91e0535593.png



    1482db81a44d83ffdff2f53baa6d185a2a96a72a.png



    f6278614f8e75dd877d0d207e622881b9e453d36.png


  2. Cargo/Loot UI. In the feedback, we’ve seen an overwhelming demand for proper drag&drop, scrolling, sorting, searching, and categorization. We haven’t been sitting idle and this UI is receiving a significant update. You can have a sneak peek of the changes yourself:


    185f3a045572a15ccfd31a1990ad39fb4254c69e.png



    d45122fb8cf835100c55e94045cc49374e5c7b41.png



    84f2aa851e5d0aab4bfc27f03fdd4f2c33ce1eb2.png


  3. Targeting UI and ability formulas. Crit chance, cover benefits, visibility of the target, and buffs/debuffs were not always obvious. Formulas in ability descriptions and combat logs were confusing, and damage numbers were often way off the expected values. We have fixed these incorrect values, made the formulas shown as values by default, and increased visibility of icons and lines of sight.

    When selecting targets for a ranged attack or ability, you can now also press TAB and hover your mouse over the hit chance or buff/debuff icons to get detailed information about them:


    ade33e47fc6010780d53cbec72692fab8113dfc2.png



    3841cc41853b7fc94b35d6fc8897d17cf5c0e808.png


Reputation and Profit Factor

We’ve seen a fair share of confusion on profit factor, vendor trade, and reputation systems. A lot of people didn’t figure it out at all throughout their playthrough, and others were confused about how the profit factor value was calculated.

Not only will we be implementing a number of tutorials to help you figure out these systems, but we’ve also put a lot of work into making the UI more clear and self-explanatory. Profit factor will also now be visible in the colony screen:


462ed18d99558d157f908f69bab176291000e9e0.png




a85853d7a5192720665a42d226880b84b57b2ba3.png




64760ab0a51dfc76f0a46752a0dfe7bec5f49a06.png




98afe897ae142f84bd48412854afc661292cf150.png



Cutscenes

Looks like you guys generally enjoy our approach to cutscenes! There were only two significant points of feedback that attracted our attention:

  1. Desynchronized or incomplete/weird-looking animations. All of these problems are being worked on and should be solved by release.
  2. Impossibility to skip cutscenes, which was especially painful when a cutscene would happen just before a difficult fight. We don’t want to make you suffer yet, so we’re adding an option to skip cutscenes!


Ground Combat

Ground combat has received a solid
4.2
out of
5
in the beta, which is up from
3.94
in the alpha. This demonstrates steady progress, and there are only a few things we still would like to look at, such as the frequency of encounters in some zones and certain battles that tend to drag on too much or don’t feel original enough.

Space

For
space combat
, we are at
3.7
out of
5
, up from
3.4
in the alpha. Progress is visible, but there is still a lot to do. A lot of people were frustrated by the lack of tutorials, so of course we’ll be putting that in! We will also fully implement officer post management, which was turned off for the beta, squash some bugs, and put in some additional effort to improve the variety of encounters.

Space exploration
was rated
4.1
, up from
3.9
in the alpha. It is a good result, and after a bit more polishing, it looks like we’ll be in the right spot. An interesting observation is that an overwhelming amount of players explore everything in the game, no exceptions.

Colony management
is at only
3.4
at this point, which is far less than we would like to see. We will be putting in tutorials, improving the UI, tweaking numbers, offering more interesting rewards and adding reactivity to colony events and decisions. We will also remove the necessity to personally visit the colony to claim a reward - it was a quite popular demand.

The
global map
is at
3.93
, which is decent, but it could be a bit better. We will be adding tutorials, upgrading a few visuals, adding more text-based warp encounters (many of you found them repetitive), and tuning the number and frequency of combat warp encounters.

Locations

Overall, it looks like we completely got rid of the ‘not enough grim darkness’ problem reported back in the alpha. It appears that the amount of weariness and despair added to the locations turned out to be just right, and such feedback is almost fully absent in the new survey. In fact, “just the right amount of grim darkness” is a very popular answer in the open feedback section!

The most popular locations (remarkable
4.42
and
4.41
out of
5
, accordingly) were the Prologue:


5c88ff4f32f17460b672cdd8468c00bfb265c5a5.png



and the Electrodynamic Cenobium:


694b2c37e19d82c26d9a076141608a048bf137c6.png



Other popular locations included Eurac-V:


8265a52008783c6a6f6f6dcd4c515401fbf9546c.png



Inquisition Shipwreck

:


bc847442546e05e8fb15b186aafecbfac75f4871.png



and the Adeptus Administratum Palace:


3378badf8ef9bcdf883859dc45f83b9b9f9af210.jpg



Locations from the dark city of Commorragh were less popular, hovering around the score of
4
. To an extent, it’s to be expected - they were still largely a WIP in the beta. In addition, in the first few days of the beta, there was a bug that allowed you to skip most of Act III by taking the wrong portal, which left many players confused. We will continue polishing and improving those locations as we prepare for release.

Companions and Narrative

Just like the last time, Argenta raked in all the praise, nominations, and awards! Who would have doubted that it would happen?


e9a003907d6e2661ceda06a993c4953fb8b1032b.png



Unfortunately, same as the last time, the least popular companions are Jae and Idira, although the gap isn’t as big this time. We are already implementing a number of further tweaks and improvements which will make them more interesting and unique both mechanically and narratively.

We’ve also received a lot of feedback about a certain

taking place in Act III, players pointing out that it was unjustified or unexplained.

Partially, it was caused by the fact that some content and reactivity that would make it clearer wasn’t yet in the beta. However, we see a clear urge for a better explanation, so besides adding the missing content, our narrative team is giving that event some additional attention.

Conclusion

And this marks the end of the article! We hope you enjoyed this little insight into the development of the game.

Once again, we thank you kindly for participating in the survey and helping us to shape this game so it can become even more fun, entertaining, and lore-accurate. It is an honor to have such an engaged and passionate community!

And as a final parting gift, here are some interesting stats from the survey:
Interesting article but I wish they gave more detail, I knew Argenta would top the companions list but I want to know where my boy Pasqal ended up. Although I actually like all the companions in this game so it doesn't matter too much, even Jae after I took her to Commorragh and learned a bit more about her.
 

Shaki

Arbiter
Joined
Dec 22, 2018
Messages
1,710
Location
Hyperborea
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2186680/view/6345064719882626363

Feedback from the Koronus Expanse 2: Beta survey results

Greetings, Lord Captains!

Months ago, during alpha testing, we posted an article about changes brought to the game based on your feedback in the big alpha survey.

Time flies by quickly, and today we are back with the second article of the series, this time to show you how your feedback shaped the game after the beta!

Disclaimer:
Same as in the last article, we will not be going over every question in the survey, but will highlight only the most interesting facts. Enjoy the read and watch out for spoilers below!

Overall Score

What could be better than to begin the article with the overall rating you guys gave us?

A total of 5000+ players have taken the survey, and they rated Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
4.3
out of
5
!

This is almost the same result as the last time (alpha was rated
4.35
). But considering this time the amount of people taking the survey has increased tenfold, a large number of them way less familiar with the universe, it looks like we’re still going in the right direction. Thank you for the recognition! Of course, this result is not a reason to sit idle, and we’ll discuss why below.

Reactivity and Convictions

One of the most frequent complaints in the survey was the insufficient reactivity of NPCs and companions to the Rogue Trader’s biography, doctrines, and convictions. There were also concerns about the conviction tags often feeling off or missing altogether. Well, that makes sense - a significant chunk of these reactions were not in the game yet! We’re already busy adding these reactions as this article is being written. Same goes for convictions - the tag placement was a draft done shortly before the beta launch, and we’re carefully working on all dialogues to tag them correctly.

We’ve also paid additional attention to scenes where a lot of you wished to see specific reactions. For example, quite a few people really wanted to be able to interrupt some of Idira’s heretical speeches in front of outsiders, and we’ll let you do this now!

Tutorials and Lore Glossary

Over 50% of you found our newly introduced tutorials useful, and the only negative criticism about them was, well, that there’s not enough of them! We are happy that they seem to be working well and will add more tutorials for various aspects of the game as we continue development. Some of them will even receive short explanatory videos.

The lore glossary appears to be quite helpful as well: almost 90% respondents told us they were actively using it! A curious note: these numbers appear the same even for the respondents who claimed to be deeply familiar with the universe. Checking our knowledge of the Lore, are you? :D

Difficulty Curve

There’s a lot of curious data here depending on the choice of difficulty. Overall, it seems that we’re on the right track, although some players on normal difficulty reported that there could be a bit more challenge. We will be carefully tuning the encounters with that in mind, especially in the later acts of the game, where player power may currently grow a bit too quickly.

Doctrines

Among the doctrines available, Marksman was an undisputed leader in all aspects. So much that we are considering lowering its potential a bit. Don’t panic though, we’re not removing the already iconic
Shoot on the Run
!

Adept, on the other hand, appears to be the least popular, with the most common complaints being lack of visible impact and difficulty in understanding its mechanics. In the beta this doctrine also suffered from a whole spectrum of bugs, which made the abilities even more confusing. We will be fixing these, tweaking some abilities, and reviewing the confusing and unclear descriptions.

UI

The UI seems to overall be well-received both visually and mechanically, with three exceptions:

  1. Levelling UI. We’ve received a lot of feedback that the window was too small, there were way too many options in a single list, no way to compare the skills, and it lacked any sort of recommendation system, which led to massive timesinks every time you needed to level. Lack of respec options was often mentioned too. We will be addressing all of these issues! Here’s a glimpse on one of the menus we are currently working on:


    ecd63b3563d8e437f07b79d955b74e91e0535593.png



    1482db81a44d83ffdff2f53baa6d185a2a96a72a.png



    f6278614f8e75dd877d0d207e622881b9e453d36.png


  2. Cargo/Loot UI. In the feedback, we’ve seen an overwhelming demand for proper drag&drop, scrolling, sorting, searching, and categorization. We haven’t been sitting idle and this UI is receiving a significant update. You can have a sneak peek of the changes yourself:


    185f3a045572a15ccfd31a1990ad39fb4254c69e.png



    d45122fb8cf835100c55e94045cc49374e5c7b41.png



    84f2aa851e5d0aab4bfc27f03fdd4f2c33ce1eb2.png


  3. Targeting UI and ability formulas. Crit chance, cover benefits, visibility of the target, and buffs/debuffs were not always obvious. Formulas in ability descriptions and combat logs were confusing, and damage numbers were often way off the expected values. We have fixed these incorrect values, made the formulas shown as values by default, and increased visibility of icons and lines of sight.

    When selecting targets for a ranged attack or ability, you can now also press TAB and hover your mouse over the hit chance or buff/debuff icons to get detailed information about them:


    ade33e47fc6010780d53cbec72692fab8113dfc2.png



    3841cc41853b7fc94b35d6fc8897d17cf5c0e808.png


Reputation and Profit Factor

We’ve seen a fair share of confusion on profit factor, vendor trade, and reputation systems. A lot of people didn’t figure it out at all throughout their playthrough, and others were confused about how the profit factor value was calculated.

Not only will we be implementing a number of tutorials to help you figure out these systems, but we’ve also put a lot of work into making the UI more clear and self-explanatory. Profit factor will also now be visible in the colony screen:


462ed18d99558d157f908f69bab176291000e9e0.png




a85853d7a5192720665a42d226880b84b57b2ba3.png




64760ab0a51dfc76f0a46752a0dfe7bec5f49a06.png




98afe897ae142f84bd48412854afc661292cf150.png



Cutscenes

Looks like you guys generally enjoy our approach to cutscenes! There were only two significant points of feedback that attracted our attention:

  1. Desynchronized or incomplete/weird-looking animations. All of these problems are being worked on and should be solved by release.
  2. Impossibility to skip cutscenes, which was especially painful when a cutscene would happen just before a difficult fight. We don’t want to make you suffer yet, so we’re adding an option to skip cutscenes!


Ground Combat

Ground combat has received a solid
4.2
out of
5
in the beta, which is up from
3.94
in the alpha. This demonstrates steady progress, and there are only a few things we still would like to look at, such as the frequency of encounters in some zones and certain battles that tend to drag on too much or don’t feel original enough.

Space

For
space combat
, we are at
3.7
out of
5
, up from
3.4
in the alpha. Progress is visible, but there is still a lot to do. A lot of people were frustrated by the lack of tutorials, so of course we’ll be putting that in! We will also fully implement officer post management, which was turned off for the beta, squash some bugs, and put in some additional effort to improve the variety of encounters.

Space exploration
was rated
4.1
, up from
3.9
in the alpha. It is a good result, and after a bit more polishing, it looks like we’ll be in the right spot. An interesting observation is that an overwhelming amount of players explore everything in the game, no exceptions.

Colony management
is at only
3.4
at this point, which is far less than we would like to see. We will be putting in tutorials, improving the UI, tweaking numbers, offering more interesting rewards and adding reactivity to colony events and decisions. We will also remove the necessity to personally visit the colony to claim a reward - it was a quite popular demand.

The
global map
is at
3.93
, which is decent, but it could be a bit better. We will be adding tutorials, upgrading a few visuals, adding more text-based warp encounters (many of you found them repetitive), and tuning the number and frequency of combat warp encounters.

Locations

Overall, it looks like we completely got rid of the ‘not enough grim darkness’ problem reported back in the alpha. It appears that the amount of weariness and despair added to the locations turned out to be just right, and such feedback is almost fully absent in the new survey. In fact, “just the right amount of grim darkness” is a very popular answer in the open feedback section!

The most popular locations (remarkable
4.42
and
4.41
out of
5
, accordingly) were the Prologue:


5c88ff4f32f17460b672cdd8468c00bfb265c5a5.png



and the Electrodynamic Cenobium:


694b2c37e19d82c26d9a076141608a048bf137c6.png



Other popular locations included Eurac-V:


8265a52008783c6a6f6f6dcd4c515401fbf9546c.png



Inquisition Shipwreck

:


bc847442546e05e8fb15b186aafecbfac75f4871.png



and the Adeptus Administratum Palace:


3378badf8ef9bcdf883859dc45f83b9b9f9af210.jpg



Locations from the dark city of Commorragh were less popular, hovering around the score of
4
. To an extent, it’s to be expected - they were still largely a WIP in the beta. In addition, in the first few days of the beta, there was a bug that allowed you to skip most of Act III by taking the wrong portal, which left many players confused. We will continue polishing and improving those locations as we prepare for release.

Companions and Narrative

Just like the last time, Argenta raked in all the praise, nominations, and awards! Who would have doubted that it would happen?


e9a003907d6e2661ceda06a993c4953fb8b1032b.png



Unfortunately, same as the last time, the least popular companions are Jae and Idira, although the gap isn’t as big this time. We are already implementing a number of further tweaks and improvements which will make them more interesting and unique both mechanically and narratively.

We’ve also received a lot of feedback about a certain

taking place in Act III, players pointing out that it was unjustified or unexplained.

Partially, it was caused by the fact that some content and reactivity that would make it clearer wasn’t yet in the beta. However, we see a clear urge for a better explanation, so besides adding the missing content, our narrative team is giving that event some additional attention.

Conclusion

And this marks the end of the article! We hope you enjoyed this little insight into the development of the game.

Once again, we thank you kindly for participating in the survey and helping us to shape this game so it can become even more fun, entertaining, and lore-accurate. It is an honor to have such an engaged and passionate community!

And as a final parting gift, here are some interesting stats from the survey:
Interesting article but I wish they gave more detail, I knew Argenta would top the companions list but I want to know where my boy Pasqal ended up. Although I actually like all the companions in this game so it doesn't matter too much, even Jae after I took her to Commorragh and learned a bit more about her.
They really shooting themselves in the foot, by making her non-romanceable. Sticking to their artistic vision is admirable, but there is a big influx of people to the genre, who are only familiar with BG3, and they will be pissed af when they realize they can't fuck her. This is seriously gonna hurt their chances of stealing GOTY from Swen.
 

Dishonoredbr

Erudite
Joined
Jun 13, 2019
Messages
2,432
They really shooting themselves in the foot, by making her non-romanceable. Sticking to their artistic vision is admirable, but there is a big influx of people to the genre, who are only familiar with BG3, and they will be pissed af when they realize they can't fuck her. This is seriously gonna hurt their chances of stealing GOTY from Swen.
Honestly, they're shooting themselves in the foot if they don't make everyone Playersexual if their objective is getting BG3's fans. For some reason a lot of people actually like companions being Bi/Pan sexual and most of them being polygamous
 
Last edited:

processdaemon

Scholar
Patron
Joined
Jul 14, 2023
Messages
617
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2186680/view/6345064719882626363

Feedback from the Koronus Expanse 2: Beta survey results

Greetings, Lord Captains!

Months ago, during alpha testing, we posted an article about changes brought to the game based on your feedback in the big alpha survey.

Time flies by quickly, and today we are back with the second article of the series, this time to show you how your feedback shaped the game after the beta!

Disclaimer:
Same as in the last article, we will not be going over every question in the survey, but will highlight only the most interesting facts. Enjoy the read and watch out for spoilers below!

Overall Score

What could be better than to begin the article with the overall rating you guys gave us?

A total of 5000+ players have taken the survey, and they rated Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
4.3
out of
5
!

This is almost the same result as the last time (alpha was rated
4.35
). But considering this time the amount of people taking the survey has increased tenfold, a large number of them way less familiar with the universe, it looks like we’re still going in the right direction. Thank you for the recognition! Of course, this result is not a reason to sit idle, and we’ll discuss why below.

Reactivity and Convictions

One of the most frequent complaints in the survey was the insufficient reactivity of NPCs and companions to the Rogue Trader’s biography, doctrines, and convictions. There were also concerns about the conviction tags often feeling off or missing altogether. Well, that makes sense - a significant chunk of these reactions were not in the game yet! We’re already busy adding these reactions as this article is being written. Same goes for convictions - the tag placement was a draft done shortly before the beta launch, and we’re carefully working on all dialogues to tag them correctly.

We’ve also paid additional attention to scenes where a lot of you wished to see specific reactions. For example, quite a few people really wanted to be able to interrupt some of Idira’s heretical speeches in front of outsiders, and we’ll let you do this now!

Tutorials and Lore Glossary

Over 50% of you found our newly introduced tutorials useful, and the only negative criticism about them was, well, that there’s not enough of them! We are happy that they seem to be working well and will add more tutorials for various aspects of the game as we continue development. Some of them will even receive short explanatory videos.

The lore glossary appears to be quite helpful as well: almost 90% respondents told us they were actively using it! A curious note: these numbers appear the same even for the respondents who claimed to be deeply familiar with the universe. Checking our knowledge of the Lore, are you? :D

Difficulty Curve

There’s a lot of curious data here depending on the choice of difficulty. Overall, it seems that we’re on the right track, although some players on normal difficulty reported that there could be a bit more challenge. We will be carefully tuning the encounters with that in mind, especially in the later acts of the game, where player power may currently grow a bit too quickly.

Doctrines

Among the doctrines available, Marksman was an undisputed leader in all aspects. So much that we are considering lowering its potential a bit. Don’t panic though, we’re not removing the already iconic
Shoot on the Run
!

Adept, on the other hand, appears to be the least popular, with the most common complaints being lack of visible impact and difficulty in understanding its mechanics. In the beta this doctrine also suffered from a whole spectrum of bugs, which made the abilities even more confusing. We will be fixing these, tweaking some abilities, and reviewing the confusing and unclear descriptions.

UI

The UI seems to overall be well-received both visually and mechanically, with three exceptions:

  1. Levelling UI. We’ve received a lot of feedback that the window was too small, there were way too many options in a single list, no way to compare the skills, and it lacked any sort of recommendation system, which led to massive timesinks every time you needed to level. Lack of respec options was often mentioned too. We will be addressing all of these issues! Here’s a glimpse on one of the menus we are currently working on:


    ecd63b3563d8e437f07b79d955b74e91e0535593.png



    1482db81a44d83ffdff2f53baa6d185a2a96a72a.png



    f6278614f8e75dd877d0d207e622881b9e453d36.png


  2. Cargo/Loot UI. In the feedback, we’ve seen an overwhelming demand for proper drag&drop, scrolling, sorting, searching, and categorization. We haven’t been sitting idle and this UI is receiving a significant update. You can have a sneak peek of the changes yourself:


    185f3a045572a15ccfd31a1990ad39fb4254c69e.png



    d45122fb8cf835100c55e94045cc49374e5c7b41.png



    84f2aa851e5d0aab4bfc27f03fdd4f2c33ce1eb2.png


  3. Targeting UI and ability formulas. Crit chance, cover benefits, visibility of the target, and buffs/debuffs were not always obvious. Formulas in ability descriptions and combat logs were confusing, and damage numbers were often way off the expected values. We have fixed these incorrect values, made the formulas shown as values by default, and increased visibility of icons and lines of sight.

    When selecting targets for a ranged attack or ability, you can now also press TAB and hover your mouse over the hit chance or buff/debuff icons to get detailed information about them:


    ade33e47fc6010780d53cbec72692fab8113dfc2.png



    3841cc41853b7fc94b35d6fc8897d17cf5c0e808.png


Reputation and Profit Factor

We’ve seen a fair share of confusion on profit factor, vendor trade, and reputation systems. A lot of people didn’t figure it out at all throughout their playthrough, and others were confused about how the profit factor value was calculated.

Not only will we be implementing a number of tutorials to help you figure out these systems, but we’ve also put a lot of work into making the UI more clear and self-explanatory. Profit factor will also now be visible in the colony screen:


462ed18d99558d157f908f69bab176291000e9e0.png




a85853d7a5192720665a42d226880b84b57b2ba3.png




64760ab0a51dfc76f0a46752a0dfe7bec5f49a06.png




98afe897ae142f84bd48412854afc661292cf150.png



Cutscenes

Looks like you guys generally enjoy our approach to cutscenes! There were only two significant points of feedback that attracted our attention:

  1. Desynchronized or incomplete/weird-looking animations. All of these problems are being worked on and should be solved by release.
  2. Impossibility to skip cutscenes, which was especially painful when a cutscene would happen just before a difficult fight. We don’t want to make you suffer yet, so we’re adding an option to skip cutscenes!


Ground Combat

Ground combat has received a solid
4.2
out of
5
in the beta, which is up from
3.94
in the alpha. This demonstrates steady progress, and there are only a few things we still would like to look at, such as the frequency of encounters in some zones and certain battles that tend to drag on too much or don’t feel original enough.

Space

For
space combat
, we are at
3.7
out of
5
, up from
3.4
in the alpha. Progress is visible, but there is still a lot to do. A lot of people were frustrated by the lack of tutorials, so of course we’ll be putting that in! We will also fully implement officer post management, which was turned off for the beta, squash some bugs, and put in some additional effort to improve the variety of encounters.

Space exploration
was rated
4.1
, up from
3.9
in the alpha. It is a good result, and after a bit more polishing, it looks like we’ll be in the right spot. An interesting observation is that an overwhelming amount of players explore everything in the game, no exceptions.

Colony management
is at only
3.4
at this point, which is far less than we would like to see. We will be putting in tutorials, improving the UI, tweaking numbers, offering more interesting rewards and adding reactivity to colony events and decisions. We will also remove the necessity to personally visit the colony to claim a reward - it was a quite popular demand.

The
global map
is at
3.93
, which is decent, but it could be a bit better. We will be adding tutorials, upgrading a few visuals, adding more text-based warp encounters (many of you found them repetitive), and tuning the number and frequency of combat warp encounters.

Locations

Overall, it looks like we completely got rid of the ‘not enough grim darkness’ problem reported back in the alpha. It appears that the amount of weariness and despair added to the locations turned out to be just right, and such feedback is almost fully absent in the new survey. In fact, “just the right amount of grim darkness” is a very popular answer in the open feedback section!

The most popular locations (remarkable
4.42
and
4.41
out of
5
, accordingly) were the Prologue:


5c88ff4f32f17460b672cdd8468c00bfb265c5a5.png



and the Electrodynamic Cenobium:


694b2c37e19d82c26d9a076141608a048bf137c6.png



Other popular locations included Eurac-V:


8265a52008783c6a6f6f6dcd4c515401fbf9546c.png



Inquisition Shipwreck

:


bc847442546e05e8fb15b186aafecbfac75f4871.png



and the Adeptus Administratum Palace:


3378badf8ef9bcdf883859dc45f83b9b9f9af210.jpg



Locations from the dark city of Commorragh were less popular, hovering around the score of
4
. To an extent, it’s to be expected - they were still largely a WIP in the beta. In addition, in the first few days of the beta, there was a bug that allowed you to skip most of Act III by taking the wrong portal, which left many players confused. We will continue polishing and improving those locations as we prepare for release.

Companions and Narrative

Just like the last time, Argenta raked in all the praise, nominations, and awards! Who would have doubted that it would happen?


e9a003907d6e2661ceda06a993c4953fb8b1032b.png



Unfortunately, same as the last time, the least popular companions are Jae and Idira, although the gap isn’t as big this time. We are already implementing a number of further tweaks and improvements which will make them more interesting and unique both mechanically and narratively.

We’ve also received a lot of feedback about a certain

taking place in Act III, players pointing out that it was unjustified or unexplained.

Partially, it was caused by the fact that some content and reactivity that would make it clearer wasn’t yet in the beta. However, we see a clear urge for a better explanation, so besides adding the missing content, our narrative team is giving that event some additional attention.

Conclusion

And this marks the end of the article! We hope you enjoyed this little insight into the development of the game.

Once again, we thank you kindly for participating in the survey and helping us to shape this game so it can become even more fun, entertaining, and lore-accurate. It is an honor to have such an engaged and passionate community!

And as a final parting gift, here are some interesting stats from the survey:
Interesting article but I wish they gave more detail, I knew Argenta would top the companions list but I want to know where my boy Pasqal ended up. Although I actually like all the companions in this game so it doesn't matter too much, even Jae after I took her to Commorragh and learned a bit more about her.
They really shooting themselves in the foot, by making her non-romanceable. Sticking to their artistic vision is admirable, but there is a big influx of people to the genre, who are only familiar with BG3, and they will be pissed af when they realize they can't fuck her. This is seriously gonna hurt their chances of stealing GOTY from Swen.
It's unfortunate that the romances are such a big deal to some people but I think you're probably right even if I wish you weren't, I've seen some comments to the effect of 'no SoB romance no buy' on other forums so it may well affect their bottom line. Hopefully most of them aren't paying attention to the prerelease info and buy it before they realise so Owlcat still gets most of the romancefag money
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,560
Min maxers everywhere!
You have to when a single stray shot can result in your guts spilling out. HP numbers in the pnp games are very small.
It's somewhat surprising that so far Owlcat is making this game minimally woke, compared to the Pathfinder games.
 

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