Decarabia feedback/bugs thread

[walpvrgis]

I took a little time to think about Decarabia with Roddy and kind of got us to the same ideas so .. it’s kind of a mish-mash of our thoughts. 
We love it, of course. If it gets in it’d be great and it’s very much an RP centered map. 
After a minute it kind of dawned that. As funny as it is. It’s almost too pretty. It doesn’t feel quite lived in, and in some respects is almost sanitized. That’s where we get the confusion as to what exactly /is/ the station. It feels mall-like, or even like a dollhouse but were unsure how intentional that is. At some points during the test, Rod mentions that it doesn’t quite feel like a Nanotrasen ship. There’s beauty but no mess and no signs of life almost. 


We just can’t  tell what the significant departure from current maps is. There’s water in oshan, acid in nadir, donut shaped maps, maps that are multiple ships… so what exactly Is Decarabia? 


We kind of hope there’s a lot of more testing since there are some odd map issues here and there that likely would’ve benefitted from more player testing earlier on. I mentioned security previously, but upon second reflection, i realize the feeling for it is that security is almost lopsided. A lot of it’s vital needs are west, there’s an an empty and spacious lobby with no clear use, and pods to the right. It feels almost constricted.
Slight oversights in medical is fine and fixable and the most issue Rod ever said in medical. 


I hope this doesn’t sound like it’s a bad map. It’s not! I love it already. I just had some thoughts that we hope are helpful.

I haven't replied to any posts here yet because I'm dealing with some health issues and busy with work around working on the playtest and implementing feedback etc, but this was an interesting post so I wanted to reply real quick!

So, yep you're right, Decarabia feels WEIRD. However... Decarabia IS meant to feel like a mall and it IS meant to feel uncannily clean and new. It is not meant to feel like a standard Nanotrasen station. It should be offputtingly different to the scungey stations that players are used to. There will be Lore about it, but because it's a WIP, I haven't finished all of the visual assets that push this, and I also haven't finished writing out any solid lore! What I can say is that it intentionally has hyper-commercialised, cyberpunk vibes. Navigation around the map is tricky because I have not finished assets that help with wayfinding and ease of travel, nor have I finished assets that tell the story I'm trying to tell.

Also as I mentioned at the start of the playtest and multiple times on discord; this map is incredibly unfinished. I wanted to run some playtests to get feedback on the playability of the layout and before getting other devs on board and investing time with helping me to finish the new mechanics. If you're wondering why there is no significant departure from other maps, it is because while planned (and started!), they are not finished enough to be implemented yet. In it's current state, Decarabia does not fully represent what The Dev Team want out of a new map, and I don't want people to get the idea that it does. Another aspect of this is that a lot of the "new" features are things that I slowly release into the general codebase currently, for example picked up the original Nuclear Reactor artwork and resprited it all in a weekend, because I wanted to use the engine for Decarabia. :P

Lastly, keep in mind that Decarabia is VERY self indulgent. Aesthetically and (in the future) mechanically. It's less that I'm trying to perfectly fit it within the setting of Goonstation, and more that I want to make something that is different visually and lore-wise. Because I find that the most fulfilling thing to work on with the time I have available for doing Goon dev work. >:3