Robot Arena > Discussion

OFFICIAL: RA3 Feedback Thread

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kill343gs:
This is the official place to discuss feedback regarding RA3 during the course of its early access development.

Anything bug related should be reported in the following thread: https://gametechmods.com/forums/index.php?topic=19008.0

There are a lot of issues with RA3 as of its initial release. However, the dev team has shown that they are committed to listening to feedback from the community to improve the game. We ask that you keep all discussion in here both CIVIL and CONSTRUCTIVE. It is also important that we tell the developers what we like about the game so far to ensure that these features remain in the game and can also be improved upon going forward.

Please try to follow the following format, provided by LiNcK:
Feedback area: (Chassis making, item placement, online, etc.)
Game Version: (Steam > Properties > Local Files > Current Content BuildID)
Reported On: (Date)
Feedback description:
Recommended fix:
Priority:

This thread will be heavily monitored to ensure that its usefulness is upheld, to promote the improvement of Robot Arena 3 as a game.

The following are feedback posts that were made before this official thread was made, and as such do not follow the suggested format. I've spoilered them to avoid clutter, but feel as though the authors of these opinions have a right for them to be heard.


--- Quote from: Mouldy on May 26, 2016, 02:06:50 PM ---My list of reasons why this game is bad.

UI is old and looks outdated.
No weight classes.
Scale of size is terrible.
You can only move at one speed.
You have to very precisely move components into place as there is no snap to grid function.
You can not edit a bot once you've uploaded it to the Steam workshop.
Components can go outside the chassis.
Components can be overlapped with ease.
You don't need a control board to wire up a robot.
The online functionality is broken. The host always wins.
You can move before the game starts when in online play.
Servos and burst motors stay in the air when moving the start/finish and therefore cannot be judged easily.
Parts can go through the robot during gameplay. (I was able to break the burst motor basically)
You can't make a two wheel robot properly.
The chassis can be distorted to be put through itself.
"Havok" explosions have happened on multiplayer.
Camera constantly moves down in the bot editor at times.
Camera angles have to be changed via mouse.
The skinning system is terrible and needs to be reworked.
Train runs robots over, does no damage.

I'm going to consistently update this list when I remember more reasons. I'll also add a reason if someone says it to me.

--- End quote ---


--- Quote from: Naryar on May 26, 2016, 02:18:55 PM ---i was going to analyze something playable but RA3 isn't as it is now

-it tried to traduce the game in french and failed
-no 2 layers option only for bots, which would simply
-building a 2D layer in 3D is very confusing
-building a chassis is confusing in general.

building:

-clunky. there is no collision mesh at all, when i put some zteks on my baseplate they were put halfway through the chassis and i had to raise them for them to be properly placed, and when i raised them, since it didn't raised by increments one ended up higher than the others
-when i rotated a motor, first i couldn't rotate it before placing it (so it ended being badly placed) but then when i rotated it it wasn't by increments either, so i had to try several times to have a motor that was rotated 180° from the other and then i'm not even sure i could put it properly

here. then i asked for a refund.

don't buy it right now. maybe they can fix it but as it is now it is unplayable.

--- End quote ---


--- Quote from: Badger on May 26, 2016, 02:28:54 PM ---OK, so with my limited playtime here are the main things I've come up with:


Pros:
Being able to move, rotate components after we've added them is pretty sweet
As above with chassis points, I actually think the chassis layer stuff is very well done, after I had some trouble with it initially.
Deleting 1 component deletes all the components attached to that component
I played 1 online match and as the host it worked well, except player 2 not loading in properly. But I assume that'll be fixed.
The bot exchange is pretty dope
The actual battling physics is better than RA2 I think


Neutral:
Floating components. It should probably be a big con but I enjoy the freedom it gives, especially considering you're locked to a grid


Cons:
No rotation lock, so it's hard to get components to line up properly
Same as above for vertical height adjustment
All component placement is locked to a grid until after placement
UI is very poor all around, but especially in the botlab. Consider even copying RA2's UI scheme, the current has very little info, and as such it's impossible to know how many batteries you need, for example
Motors in general are too weak
Drive motors impart too much torque on the chassis, and for some reason it feels like components don't affect this, so it's really easy to make a bot that cant move anywhere because it just backflips
Can't move any motors in the botlab
The AI is abysmal, most of the time they immobilize themselves
The damage points in battle are too large and don't mean much, overall there's hardly any destructive feeling in battles, there needs to be more feedback to the player
There's a ton more but I can't be arsed to remember it all right now, may or may not update this list of cons.

--- End quote ---

Naryar:
Feedback area : Main menus, botlab (chassis placing and components)
Game Version : initial release
Reported on : 26/05/2016

good things :

-music is neat
-able to move components after putting them
-able to move component chains
-able to change the chassis after components are made
-new, interesting components
-complex chassis building

bad things :

-UI is badly designed in general. it looks like a console game when it's a PC mouse-and-keyboard game.
-tried to traduce the game in french for some reason. ended up being a very bad traduction. much prefer my games to be in english rather than in google translate english-to-french traduction
-chassis building is honestly a pain. no option for a topplate and a baseplate only, it's either 3 or 5 which is unnecessary in general.
-difficult to change general height of the robot.
-difficult to work within the baseplate/midplate/topplates because it's in 3D and they're asking us to modify a 2D plate in 3D. something the game doesn't just do what you want it to do in that case
-a simple wedge chassis takes quite a bit of trial and error when in ra2 it took 5-10 seconds to build.
-component placing is a pain in general. rotation of components isn't done anymore by increments, which is real bad when you have to rotate a motor 180 degrees. same with raising and lowering components.
-no real baseplate. whenever i attached a ztek it put the ztek straight through the chassis, right within the baseplate plane and not ON TOP of it.
-components can be put anywhere.
-when I reset the chassis, some components (a battery) were left in place and I had to remove them manually.

Tygron:
Ok i'm gonna give my take on what I just played.

So I have pretty much everyone else's complaints about the bot lab, but I didn't spend too much time in it. I like a lot of what's going on with it it just needs tweaked.

My main complaints are with the combat. I didn't play too much, but I got a quick enough feel that I didn't need to play too long.
- Robots with skid (tank style) steering are slow. It just feels really really bad. And it doesn't feel like i'm driving anything. It feels like i'm playing the code "This button to apply 'forward' force, this to 'turn'" and stuff like that.
- People have mentioned the collision detection so I won't go too far into that, but it is a problem.
- Car steering, I see why it was used a lot in the trailers and stuff. It's fast, it's easy to put into a robot. But WHY DOES CAR STEERING FEEL MORE FLUID AND FUN THAN SKID STEERING?
- Damage is hard to gauge. I won by kinda pushing the enemy around and turning slightly to drag spikes against the other robot.
- Pits don't eliminate robots
- Falling off the flextop arena doesn't eliminate robots (I do like what they did to it though. Cheap way to remove the crowd from it but it looks good so it's forgiven lol)
- Flextop doesn't seem to actually tilt but I didn't spend much time on top after realizing the match wasn't going to end after my opponent drove down the hole in the middle.
- What the HELL is up with the camera? And why can't I figure out how to change my angle manually?

That's all I can think of at the moment. Sorry to say but I put a request for a refund in. I know it's $15 bucks but i'm gonna try to buy a GTX 1080 tonight and I need every bit of extra cash I can get to make sure I get to my next paycheck.

My take on this is, you had a baseline to reach. Robot Arena 2. And this game feels more Robot Arena 1 like with a more updated RA2 building style. And in a lot of ways the combat feels more akin to the old Robot Wars games and a video I just watched on the BattleBots game from 2002 that never got released. The one thing the BattleBots game seemed to get right is the force of weapon impacts thowing bots around. The rest of the physics looked kinda bad. The Robot Wars games had awful physics.

I don't wanna make the devs feel bad. I want them to improve the game. But right now i'm not happy at all. I was expecting it to kinda suck, that's just how this game is. This is a bit worse than i was expecting.

I'll also put this in the bugfixes thread when I get a chance. I'm about to leave to meet up with some friends.

EDIT: Ok it got moved here before I had the chance. Didn't see that thread when I started typing but I didn't really look either. My apologies.

Cody Furlong:
Feedback area: Motors / Chassis Making / Chain Motor / Tank Treads

Game Version: 1189211

Reported On:6/27/2016

Feedback description: The issue with the motors, is that they do not sound like the powerful motors that they should be, instead they sound like wind up toys. The problem with the chassis making, is that you can't go back  an just move one or two of the cots before extrusion, if you want to make a small change, without having to completely rebuild the entire thing over. I could probably overlook the motor sounds, but  having to completely rebuild my chassis from scratch, when all I wanted to do was move some of the dots to make it wider, or narrower, almost makes it unplayable for me.

I spent several hours trying to make a bot, but eventually got frustrated and closed the game due to the fact I kept having to rebuild my entire chassis over and over again, trying to just get the dimensions right on how long, wide, or narrow I wanted it to be. Also why can't I right click to remove a dot once I've placed it? The issue with the chain motor, is that it's set at a fixed length, and comes with a set motor already attached to it. Also why isn't there one for drive applications? For the treads where are they? They seem to be fully missing from the game currently.

Recommended fix: For the motor sounds, the easiest fix would be to reuse the sounds from the previous game if possible, as most of those sounded about right. For the chassis part, make it so that when placing down the dots, I can right click to remove hem, and that if I should want to go back and, adjust the dot's placement to adjust the size of the bot, I can do so without having to completely replace all the dots from scratch. The chain motor should act more like an extender, where we can have different lengths to chose from. We should also be able to select what motor we want to use with it, so if we want to use a more powerful motor with it we can. Finally, we should have multiple attachment points available, for driving our bots with. As an example, using one motor to power two wheels on one side of the bot or chaining two motors together to power three wheels, ect.  AT the moment I'd  just take any form of treads being in the game, even if it were premade lengths and shapes to chose from. Though ideally we should be able to et the length, width, and shapes of the treads ourselves.

Priority: High

Herpaderp64:
This was from a post i made recently on steam asking people what needed to be done to the game here is what a user called F1Krazy said which is basically almost everything that needs to be done.


"I'm gonna throw down a comprehensive list of everything I'd like to see added to the game, though I don't hold out hope for most of them:

New Features:
*Flipper panels and lifting arms
*Various types of crushing/clamping weapons (claws like Razer, jaws like Diesector, pincers like Can-Opener)
*The ability to restart Career Mode after you finish every tournament
*An indicator to show each AI robot's weight class
*An armor thickness slider (thicker armor weighs more but provides more protection)
**Alternately, some kind of numerical indication of how strong each armor type actually is
*Default patterns for each armor (wood has a grain effect, etc)
*If possible, translucent/transparent armor like Killerhurtz' polycarbonate armor
*Tank tracks (heavy and slow but well-armoured)

Improvements:
*FIX. THE DAMN. MULTIPLAYER (not that I'll have many people left to play against...)
*Fix the glitch that makes your robot randomly blow up
*Fix the decal system
*Fix the win/loss counter so it actually works rather than perpetually saying "37 wins/6 losses"
*Fix the collision detection of certain components (I've seen AI robots literally hanging in thin air off the edge of the FlexTop arena, and discarded parts hovering off the ground)
*Prevent overweight robots from being entered into tournaments
*Add new AI robots to showcase additions and improvements (a robot with Gold Maces, a robot with googly eyes, and so on), and/or update some of the older robots
*Some parts' weight values need fixing (wheel casters, Snapper II Burst Motor)
*Change the power-to-weight ratios of the batteries (at the moment the biggest battery has the lowest power-to-weight ratio so there's no reason to use it whatsoever)
*Nerf ram plates
*Buff the Canine VI and other saw blades (they break off after 1-2 hits atm, so they're useless)
*Improve the AI for invertible robots (Tsuppari etc.) so they don't drive around backwards when they're upside-down
*Make it so that motors/pistons/etc. stop working after they break off (at the moment they keep working so wheels/discs/etc will fly across the arena)
*Reduce the torque on Hedgehog and a couple of other AI robots so they don't flip themselves over every time they brake
*Fix whatever it is that causes AI robots to start jittering on the spot every now and then

There's probably other things too but that's everything I can think of right now. I'd be amazed if even 1/3 of these made it into the game at this point but I've waited a lot longer than this before so let's just see what happens."

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