future steering improvements Thread - CoreBreach

hello everyone

thanks to everyone who has contributed feedback for the game! it seems the most common serious complaint about the game is about the steering of the playership. we'd like to improve in this area to make everyone happy, but in order to do that we need to get some idea what actually needs to be done to satisfy everyone. it seems players seem to fall in these categories:

1.) players that are satisfied with the current steering implementation. yes those seem to exist ;-)
=> if we implement "improvements" to the steering its important no to make it worse for those users that aren't currently having any issues.

2.) players that would like a more "realistic" steering with some "anti-gravity feeling" similar to commercial anti-gravity racing games on the PS3. a swinging ship when quickly steering left and right. air-brakes could also be connected to this more advanced steering.
=> we could implement such an improved steering system, but this could possibly be a bad idea since it would make the users in the other 2 categories less happy. in this case it would be a bad idea for an improvement and not worth the considerable effort.

3.) players who think the game is too hard and are hitting the walls all the time, or falling down when there are no walls.
=> we are a bit puzzled here, since we can't imagine a simpler steering than this - you are currently flying like "on rails" - it can't get "easier" than this, can it? the thing is, implementing a more realistic steering will make these users even more unhappy, since a more realistic system will be much harder. we suspect that the cause for some of this might actually be bad performance of the game on some systems (slow GPU, bad drivers, bugs, etc) - the steering is much harder to control as the frames-per-seconds fall, but most people never notice the performance decrease, only the difficulty to control the ship. we'd recommend everyone having this issue to go to the video preferences, lower all options and try again ;-) also, practicing more than 2 minutes really makes a lot of difference since it takes some getting-used-to that there is no brake in CoreBreach and you actually need to get off the gas before (some) corners. choosing slower ships until you have more experience is a good idea too. also this should be less of an issue in the full version of the game since you are gradually learning it with slow ships and tracks, while the demo version has only one semi-speedy track with all ships available. btw. version 1.1.5 soon to be released will have a new lower difficulty setting AND should improve the framerate so it should help here

so, it would be great if you could voice some ideas what could be changes to make everyone happy with the steering in the game. we currently aren't sure if the steering should be made "easier" for the people in category 3 (how could that be done anyway?) or more complicated for people in category 2. there is certainly little motivation to put serious effort into some improvements if it doesn't increase overall "happyness" with the game.

thanks for your feedback and interest in CoreBreach,
julian

Edited by: corecode

As a big fan of wipeout I stand in the second category.
At first I have to say that I only played the demo version (yet). My first impression with the first ship (slower, best steering) was bad. Steering too fast, always hitting the walls. But like all the racing games of our childhood, you have to pick up the faster vehicle to have real fun and to win the game. I found it's also applicable to CoreBreach. After some races with the faster ship, and becoming used to the geometry of the track I had pleasure to play this game.

I clearly miss swinging ship and air-brakes, even if objectively it had very little effect on the steering. But it was fun to use, and intuitive (thanks to the Playstation controller) So maybe Air-brakes could be a bonus in the hardest mode of the game, to spice it up and add something new to masteries when the player reach that level.
I understand your fears about the third category of players. But a game like that isn't targeted to casual gamers. And you have to practice to get result and fun. I think i'ts really hard to have the right feeling for such a game (Wipeout 1 was okay, Wipeout 2097 was awesome) But if you have the right balance you can content a large panel of players.

A way to please the 3rd category is to have a progressive difficulty. Start with easy league, with slow speeds, and then harder and faster. But as I said earlier, the slowest ship with the better steering capability was the hardest for me to pilot. So maybe there is something to investigate here.

edit : Wall scraping!

Edited by: 1ko

Just to add some opinions on the "easier steering" argument, I think the steering is just too much responsive.

With steering speed being fixed, the player needs to adapt to it and train to get some results.
I quickly got results and won the game but the feeling has not been good and despite winning easy just letting the ship bump into walls, I had a hard time gettin a grip of the corners and never made a full clean run on a track. This means to me the control system is just not good.

Maybe some tweaking parameters to let the player choose how fast the ship turns, maybe a progressive turn (well, just a little bit), or an upgrade system that includes ship setup and not just "more performance".

my 0.02 of course

PS: I bought the game and liked it overall, steering is important to improve, but what's the point if there is no network multiplay?

the speed of the steering is *very* much depended on the ship.
so i wonder if you are feeling this issue (turning too fast) only exists with fast-turning ships like the "Nova Ray", or too with ships like the Carnage/Flavor, which in my opinion turn really slowly...?

also, is this a keyboard issue only? if people feel like the problem doesn't exist on (analog) gamepads and steering wheels, we'll probably just need a better keyboard-steering support and not a completely new movement system...

I'd prefer sliding and momentum to the current steering system. You could always have a customizable "friction coefficient", and perhaps even have different track materials that alter it if the user wants sliding.

I'd also like mouse control, so you can have analog steering without a wheel or joystick. If you can control the sensitivity then picking up the mouse need not be too regular an occurrence. If you also put weapons and speed control on the mouse you might not even need a keyboard.

One totally wishful thinking idea - allow me to steer with my wacom tablet stylus