Frontiers - New Balance Update

Balance Changes

• Food & Water - Even the hardcore survivalists agreed these were punishing. So at normal difficulty you can now survive while drinking only once every three days & eating only once every week. Many new water sources have been placed in the game to make finding water easier, and you can now drink from lakes. The Civilization bonus you get from following paths and staying in populated areas is more potent so eating / drinking isn't a concern until you're in the Wild. (Note: In the future you'll be able to reverse these changes using custom difficulty settings.)
• Temperature - This system has been overhauled. Temperatures are milder in general and more consistent with climates. Structure interiors are always comfortably warm and cave temperatures are now suitable for shelter. Clothing can no longer cause you to overheat.
• Clothing- Shirts, pants, boots & gloves have been added to the game, and more varieties are incoming. You'll start the game with a basic set of clothing and you can craft more.
• Crafting - You no longer need to select blueprints before crafting. Several items have been reworked to be less expensive to craft (like the Canteen). You now start the game knowing how to refine metal and I've placed forges in the University area for public use. Charcoal is dropped by nearly all burnable items.
• Money - It's a lot more scarce. Purses contain considerably less money than before. Luminite no longer respawns indefinitely. Your cash is automatically converted to base currency when buying things.
• Animals - You're far more likely to find leather on dead animals. Many creatures are easier to kill in general. You can shear sheep for wool, pluck chickens for feathers and milk cows.
• Reputation - Damaging another person's goods will cause reputation loss. The rep system will play a bigger role now that money is more scarce.
• Paths - Several more arterial paths have been laid down in the South. More are coming.

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Major bugs I'm still working on:

Not really related to balance but I might as well give you an update.

• The post-prologue crash is still happening for some of you. I'm still seeing more success cases with every build, and your reports have helped me pinpoint the exact cause, so thank you for that. I'll keep at it.
• Darkness Issue - The game is unplayably dark on a handful of machines. I'm frankly mystified by this one. I've made no real progress in figuring out the root cause. Hopefully the new brightness settings will help in the meantime.
• Disappearing buildings - the cause is known so now it's a matter of fixing the problem without causing more bugs in the process. I'm still seeking / interviewing programmers who can focus solely on this issue while I handle everything else. (Feel free to email me at frontiers.game@gmail.com if you're interested.)
• That one bug you really hoped I'd fix in the next update because it's way more important than balancing hunger, and besides how hard can it be to fix anyway? Yeah, that one's still in there. But seriously: don't assume that time spent on balance means bug [x] is getting forgotten or ignored. I know it sounds weird but that's not really how it works. A lot of these bugs have to get fixed a little bit at a time so the fixing doesn't break everything else. It's a l̶i̶v̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶n̶i̶g̶h̶t̶m̶a̶r̶e̶ long and difficult process. (Just kidding it's not so bad.)

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JDR13 said:

I purchased it yesterday and spent a good portion of the night playing.

It's… interesting. I really like what I've seen of the setting and the main story so far, but the game is still very raw at this point. The game world is huge. The dev says it it's around the same size as Oblivion but it seems slightly larger than that to me.

Visually, it's not much to look at compared to most recent games, but I like it from an artistic standpoint. The music and ambient sound fit the setting well.

There aren't a ton of NPCs yet, and only around 1/2 of them have dialogue options right now. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of AI either. I saw a variety of wildlife during the time I explored, but didn't encounter any hostile creatures. I'm not sure how large of a role combat is going to play in the final game, but it's obviously not intended to be very combat focused.

It's a fantasy setting, but I have a feeling there's more than meets the eye.

There are magic skills in the game, but I haven't progressed far enough to learn any. There are also skills for subterfuge, crafting, survival, etc. Afaict, You can learn skills from both books and trainers.

There's also a strong survival aspect. You have to eat and drink, and temperature can affect you over time.

Like I said, it's very raw at this point, but I think the potential is huge. It's only $15 though, so I think it's worth checking out if you like open world RPGs. I'll probably wait a few updates before messing with it again, but I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

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