#Detailed and actionable feedback from a Test Chambers player with ~20 hours of gameplay.

100 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

vale sundial
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Hey all, wanted to drop in and say that I have been recently enthralled by SCP: 5K and as a fan of the SCP foundation I appreciate the hell out of the work that everyone has done to bring this world to life. Game development is one of the most challenging things any person or team can set out to so and regardless of that challenge everyone at Affray Interactive has knocked it out of the park in all aspects, bravo and encore to the whole team. With all that being said, and I hope that this does not make my praise seem disingenuous, I have some feedback I would like to share. This feedback falls into one of three categories: not enough of it, not hard enough and autistic quibbles. I am aware that all of the things I am going to suggest represent significant fiscal and labor investments so I will do my best to be as considerate as possible of the cost benefit of each.
I am going to address the autistic quibbles first.

  1. Ammo in the chamber is not counted correctly
    Tactical reloads still work as intended, but you have a mag in your pouch with one in it and no extra bullet in the current one. This really throws me off, I have seen other games track it by having a "gun" and "mag" counter, but I'm not a dev and I have no idea how difficult it would be to implement. If it were I would probably shriek and jump up and down.
  2. Gun inaccuracies.
    There just are a few that I noticed, I'm certain I have missed a couple and I am doubly certain that others have noticed more and I am sure they will be respectful when they point them out underneath this post. I don't know if they are there for the sake of balance or if they're just oversights. Nevertheless I will bring them up here because the weapons are modeled so well elsewhere.
    2.1. The 1911's magazine holds 8 rounds in game, this is only possible IRL by having one round in the chamber. The magazine of a 1911 holds 7 rounds of .45 ACP.
    2.2 The box mag of the M23A3 holds 5 rounds of .338 Lapua Magnum, not 7.
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I ran out of characters so I am continuing here. I really hope this post is read by the devs, getting a reply from one would really tickle me pink.

2.3 The P320 is in game and represented as a reliable firearm. People have been dying from uncommanded discharges which is a fancy way of saying that it goes off in its holster blowing a hole in the wielder's femoral artery. Sig, in response, has whined and bitched that people are being unfair to them and that they're losing business as a result of their own incompetence instead of designing a gun that doesn't go off at random. I have since developed a burning hatred for Sig-Sauer and everything they make. I think it would be cool if there was a feature where it would randomly go off every ~240 hours or so to simulate its IRL failure rate and if it's holstered it would hit you.

vale sundial
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Now for the most impactful feedback IMO. More and Not Hard enough. I can see how much effort has gone into each map and I can tell that attempting to "Just make more." would be goddamn Herculean I would be excited to see it, but I would never even dare to ask for it. All 10 of the maps have been crafted with love and care and it shows. One idea I had to address both was a "New Game+ and New Game-"

New Game+ as I envision it would be a higher geared version of the game unlocked by beating stage 10 of Test Chambers. Better wall gear, same maps, randomized orders, new objectives, harder side objectives, all enemy types to start, randomized enemy spawns, lower point and credit rewards for challenges and side objectives. The idea with these changes would be to force they players to prioritize survival over perfection from round to round. I have the most fun in 5k when I finish a fight feeling like I just barely survived by the skin of my teeth. These changes, to me, would amp that feeling up by a lot. without the need for significant resources or edging out the people that enjoy Test Chambers as it is. I would make suggestions for new map challenges but I don't have access to the design docs and y'all know significantly better than I do what you're going for when you make a level. You've cooked so far and I trust you to continue to do so but please know that introducing more than one challenge per map would add a great deal of replay value.

New Game- is all that but with worse gear on the wall to start and unlocked by beating New Game+. No M23A3 to crutch on, very fine is guaranteed to succeed, but now costs 30 points and will only succeed on Team Level 4 to prevent an early game snowball. Also, let 173 in the test chamber as a side objective or challenge. Proper penis mashing levels of challenge, if you think it would suck please add it. I want this to be borderline impossible solo and hard even to seasoned teams.

merry mortar
vale sundial
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People have died.

misty hinge
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thats bad, but unrelated to SCP 5k

vale sundial
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Damn.

merry mortar
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And people just wouldn't use the P320, then why would a 3d artist try?

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I understand you, others have also promoted this idea, but look at the game from the point of view of the game

misty hinge
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also, the P320's failure rate is NOT high, it is VERY high compared to other handguns, but it's extremely unlikely for a player to experience a p320 failure in gameplay as they only get a handful of hours with it

vale sundial
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Spend three hours writing heartfelt feedback just to get dragged down by people on the least gameplay oriented feedback.

merry mortar
misty hinge
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if you have, say, 200k p320s, and you get a failure a month, carrying for 8 hrs a day, thats an average of 240 hours to experience a failure.

Now these are example values, but the point is that the chance of a player experiencing a P320 failure is low in reality, just because it's happening on a large population doesnt mean it's suddenly realistic for your P320 to start murdering you often in a video game 😉

vale sundial
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Right right, I should be more receptive when giving feedback, you get what you give and all that. Thanks for reading the post.

merry mortar
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Interesting to read

misty hinge
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  1. Yup this bugs me too and should be corrected, it's not terribly hard to program from scratch (ammo chamber counting)
  2. this ALSO bugs me (improper reload mechanics)
  3. your understanding of failure rates is skewed by a population sample set, in reality this would not be experienced more than single digit times by the entire population of players in 5k and therefore should not realistically be added. Sure sig sucks (i was going to buy a p320 before evidence came out for their engineering failure, im with you on this one fundamentally, but the NUMBERS dont work out for realism here) (P320 suggestion)
vale sundial
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2.3 ammended.

misty hinge
# vale sundial 2.3 ammended.

i mentioned to you that those were example numbers, 240 hours on average is not the actual average, but one that is veeeery ballpack in showing the timescale we are working with realistically. It could be 200 hours, it could be 1000, id have to get more data.

merry mortar
misty hinge
merry mortar
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Ah, okay

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nevermind

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Hahahah

misty hinge
merry mortar
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I just realised

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Yep yep yep

misty hinge
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a bug can be a developer just putting the wrong number in

merry mortar
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I mean

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8 would be too

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But you need to have one bullet in pistol

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And reload another mag

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so you have 8 bullets in pistol

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Yep

misty hinge
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yup, which would mean you go from 1->8, but you go from 0->8

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which is wrong

merry mortar
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bug in reloads mechanics

misty hinge
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ya

merry mortar
misty hinge
merry mortar
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Agreed

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What did you mean?

vale sundial
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Nun dw about it.

merry mortar
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Okay

misty hinge
# vale sundial 2.3 ammended.

about 6 uncommanded discharges with the P320 reported in the past 3 months, with 4 million pistols in circulation.

Im going to assume

  1. the pistols only go off after being recently handled (which is fair enough, especially as the discharges have to be reported)
  2. the pistols are handled (holstered, used, etc.) while loaded for 8 hours a day on average

With these rather reasonable assumptions, you end up with an individual 480,000,000 hours of P320 handling on average before a discharge occurs. The reason we have multiple in the news atm is because there are 4 million of these pistols in circulation

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so your suggestion, if realistic, should request that the game roll a random chance, say, one time a second with the p320, with a (see below) chance for your p320 to discharge randomly, note that not all of these discharges will strike the holder if holstered, it depends on the holster setup and angle etc.

image.png
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i believe this to a an unreasonable request as it realistically wouldnt occur to like.. anyone.. playing the game, and would take processing power (which is why i said 1/s instead of 1/frame)

vale sundial
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I understand your dedication to the numbers but for the point that I am making they are wholly irrelevant and this discussion is taking away from the other things that would be significantly more productive to discuss.

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The point I am making is "SIG bad"

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Thank you.

misty hinge
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but the point you are making is that the p320 has a critical flaw, therefore we should represent that flaw, if you wish to represent that flaw i gave you the value you should request. Otherwise you are asking for spiteful revenge against one company by another (you are asking 5k to effectively trash talk sig for no reason 😆 )

vale sundial
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This discussion is going nowhere and I would ask you to move on unless you have something else to comment on.

merry mortar
vale sundial
misty hinge
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makes post about improving the game
asks the developers to make a "realism" mechanic about a weapon
gets upset when it is pointed out that your desired mechanic doesn't make sense
attempts to shut down discussion instead of exploring why or why not that'd be a good thing to add to the game

interesting..

misty hinge
vale sundial
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Okay beat feet man.

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Scram

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You are adding nothing and being obstanant

misty hinge
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"attempts to shut down discussion" ^

vale sundial
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Go away

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You are a bad person and I don't want to talk to you..

misty hinge
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im discussing gameplay mechanics you want to add, i disagree with one and brought numbers to back it up, there's no need to get aggressive.

vale sundial
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Shoo shoo

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SIG fanboy begone.

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The power of christ compells you.

misty hinge
# vale sundial SIG fanboy begone.

do you have arguments or insults? i informed you that SIG was not a company i liked, they lost me as a customer due to their P320 shenanigans. It is only more important to stick to the actual figures when trashing them as otherwise you make a strawman that people who defend their actions can easily tear down.

vale sundial
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Shoo shoo

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Go away I don't want to talk to you.

misty hinge
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you dont have to, thats the wonderful part

misty hinge
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things like the guard AI, which got improvements but are still far from baked. The OP's weapon critiques in regard to ammunition management is another thing that I find important, as this game is very much focused on the guns

merry mortar
lilac leaf
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I do not believe the need for a misfire is needed in the game. Jamming could be a niche thing but ultimately, there are some mechanics, that while add realism, detract from an enjoyable experience when playing a FPS. Even if it's supposed to be "Tactical".

analog crest
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on the other points:

New game+: Thing is that every map basically already spawns every single enemy already, so I don't see what randomised spawns would really give, and sounds like rng could fuck over a run by spawning in 5 large instances of 610, while yes this could be mitigated by lowering the chances of a big guy to spawn this does mean it could either not spawn at all or still spawn a few too many instances, and the idea of only having better starting gear does sound like a fuckover too and not worth the tradeoff for lower points, credits and overall harder maps and challenges.

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New game -: idk about you but having to deal with 173 sounds like an annoying pain in the ass rather than an actual threat, i know its meant to be a deliberate assfuck of a challenge its just peanut doesnt exactly fit that

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also i take the stance that other improvements are needed such as guard AI, which feels like it was microwaved rather than baked and i think effort should be focused on improving the foundations of the game (pun intended)

lilac creek
analog crest
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i mean i did say such as

lilac creek
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The dummies have a new system

analog crest
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dummies still feel a little weird

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i mean its better

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but still iffy

lilac creek
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That's because they don't attempt to use cover in part

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That's just how the enemy is supposed to work

analog crest
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another thing is the weird single file swarming they do

lilac creek
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They path directly to the player

analog crest
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i mean i feel like they could spread out a little bit

lilac creek
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The dummies aren't supposed to be smart

analog crest
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true that

finite wave
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Why is no1 mentioning that there's .22 ammo box but no .22 gun

Or was it a fever dream ? I'm pretty sure l saw red .22 box

analog crest
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Because that level of detail is insignificant

finite wave
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🙁

misty hinge
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we already have the goofy snubnose revolver, nobody's gonna bring peepaws squirrel rifle down to fight SCPs 🤣

finite wave
cyan turtle