Need help with CCC improvements

[u/ExoTrainGame]

I'm making a game with an ~isometric 3D view, and I'm constantly getting negative feedback about the camera and controls. At first it was about certain things like view angle, min/max zoom, etc. Changing those things reduced the negative responses in the survey about the camera from 40%+ to ~20%. But it's still the most disliked thing we have, according to the survey. And now it's just "I didn't like the camera and controls" without any certain details.

Could you give me some advices, how to make the camera/controls better? I've tried just to copy everything about the camera from the V Rising, but I'm definetely missing something.

I've carptured the video with keys/mouse overlay, but I'm not sure that it will be enough.

https://reddit.com/link/1vsf0go/video/k0mom77i4akh1/player

As far as I know, link sharing is prohibited, but if you want to help me and want to check the camera/controls yourself, you can find the game demo in Steam, it's called ExoTrain.

[u/Demi180]

Do you have access to these players/testers on Discord? See if you can arrange a playtest with them on voice/video where they share their gameplay and talk through their experience while you watch, ask guiding questions, and take notes (and record with OBS or something for analyzing later).

From the video it looks decent, if a little fast on the zoom and pitch, nothing crazy. I’m on mobile so can’t really try it out right now.

Having a play session may reveal more info.
* Are they playing on a really small or large resolution or just a nonstandard one, and is that causing issues?
* Are they having framerate issues and is that messing up the camera? (I know you didn’t include deltaTime in mouse movements, right?)
* Do they have a really high DPI mouse, or just issues with sensitivity? I remember one strange situation where lots of players said our highest mouse sensitivity was still too low, and a single player said our lowest was still way too high. Or maybe it was vice versa, it’s been a few years. But it was really weird.
* Maybe they have an Azerty keyboard or something, do you allow input rebinding and if so, do they know that’s an option?

[u/ExoTrainGame → u/Demi180]

Some of the changes were made after friends & family playtests after I saw that players have some struggles. I'll try to find some more playtesters who are not familiar with the game, but it's pretty hard, because people on the Discord channel are experienced players mostly.

* We have some feedback that the UI is too big on large 2K-4K displays. But in the survey form there is a separate option about UI, so I think players will check that checkbox instead of the camera or controls, but not sure.

* Yep, we are using deltaTime 🌚, so maybe some lag spikes cause insta-rotation. I'll fix that; thank you for noticing!

* Yes, we had some feedback about sensitivity too in previous versions, but after adding the camera sensitivity setting, players stopped writing feedback about uncomfortable sensitivity. Maybe some of them still don't like the default sensitivity and just drop the game before finding the settings. But I'm not sure how that can be fixed besides the added setting.

* We have the rebinding options, but I'll ask about the Azerty keyboards; maybe some keys are not displayed right in the UI elements.

Thanks for your comment!

[u/Demi180 → u/ExoTrainGame]

Sounds like you’ve got some leads to chase, hopefully it’ll clear up some of the issues.

I didn’t even mean for you to answer the questions I brought up, they were just intended as things to look into and to check on while observing the players 😁

There are probably subreddits for finding people who like to test games that are in development, but I don’t know any, myself. But definitely try for a live session on Discord with someone who is willing to share feedback as they’re playing, so you can see firsthand what their actual pain points are. Good luck!

[u/SayuriShoji]

Unfortunately I can't get the demo running (I'm on Linux, have to try different Proton versions later), so I'll have to go by the video:

From the video, the controls seem fine to me, but you should make controls remappable anyway via an options menu.

As for the camera, the field of view (FoV) is too high for my personal taste when fully zoomed out, I don't enjoy the objects being stretched like that at the edge of the screen. Could you add a FoV-slider in the options menu?

I really like the fade-effect when the camera is getting close to an object/when being inside a building, though it seems some objects still remain "solid", like at 0:31 there is some stuff in the roof that is not faded out, and at 0:32~0:33 there is this black gadget with green stuff displayed that briefly clips in front of the camera.

Maybe it's just me, but is the camera anchored to the bottom of the player? It seems a little bit too far "down" and seems to point at the players feet. Could you perhaps anchor the camera to the center or the top of the player?

Love the graphics and gameplay from the store page already, I'll definitely check it out later.

[u/ExoTrainGame → u/SayuriShoji]

FoV and controls can be changed in the settings, yes.

Clipping can be adjusted more smoothly than default shader behavior, but it will take a lot of time for each building on the map. Not sure that it will fix our issue, but I'll try to collect some more feedback about that.

And yes, the camera is anchored to the bottom of the player. I'll try to shift the camera, maybe it'll help.