Season Deep Abyss Feedback Thread

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Put your Feedback for Season Deep Abyss HERE!

[King V]

Deep Abyss fixed a lot of problems from Assassin's Pledge, bringing it into an acceptable quality range for a season. Things that improved were:

Room Descriptions/Map - Much more comprehensive room descriptions made the map a lot more detailed, and gave players a lot more to interact with compared to the 1-liners from Assassin's Pledge. The map was fairly large, giving players a lot more options and different places to explore or unlock. The map layout was also fairly complex, so more options for murderers as well.

Items - More than 5 items the players can pick up at the start, huge improvement from AP. Although I felt there was a lack of actual weapons to kill people with, despite having a lot of small, low-weight items lying around.

Mystery - There was a mystery for Deep Abyss. I had some problems with how this part was done, but it was definitely there. A big bonus for people who want to solve the plot of the game and win that way.

Murder/Trials - These were done decently enough, but the low activity of the playerbase really hit this part of the game hard, and most murders were simply a matter of there not being enough suspects for the murder to actually be a challenge. 3 people having to discover the body already rules out 2 people, and in a game where there are only 4 active players, this hurts. I saw no technical problems with murdering, and there seemed to be enough evidence for trials to get going, so no issues there. I would say this is a definite improvement from AP where a lot of murders had broken technical issues where people were warping or simply killed all the witnesses.

But, this season also raised a lot of new issues that need improvement.

Hosting Times - The hosting times were bad and caused quite a few players to have to drop out. I won't comment too much on this, since it's unavoidable. Perhaps if hosting times are really terrible, you should concentrate on making a season with a lot of afk mechanics?

Mystery - Although the mystery component was definitely there, it just felt too easy. Most of the important plot information was simply thrown at the players in the form of Intercom Announcements, along with everything the player needed to do in order to achieve a mystery win. It just left so little for the players to actually explore and deduce in order to win, just follow the directions of the man on the speaker and you're good to go.

Examinations - This ties in a bit with the mystery component. There was no real need to examine anything in the game. All of the important plot information was essentially handed to the players, notes lying around basically said the same thing, "this is an underwater research facility". There was maybe 1 important plot point the players actually had to examine and piece things together to figure out, but it didn't actually matter to the mystery at all, since, as I mentioned before, the plot was basically following instructions sent over the intercom. As such, all of the detailed room descriptions basically amounted to nothing. All of those diagrams of underwater vehicles, aquariums filled with aquatic test subjects etc, had no relevance to the plot, and examining them was a waste of time.

The Creature (Unique Mechanic) - This felt kind of pointless. The concept is good, sure, but all the creature that's stalking the players amounts to is a punishing mechanic that wastes the players' time with no real benefit. If there was some way to calm the creature in order to examine it for some kind of additional plot benefit, or find a way to fight against it, I feel this mechanic could be made much better.

Overall, this season feels like it tried to implement a lot of new things that improved mechanics from Assassin's Pledge, but didn't put much substance behind them. This combined with bad hosting times made the season really difficult to enjoy. I'd say the season is playable, but needs more actual content to become good.

[Ryo Asuka]

I feel like Sea pretty much said it all, so I guess I won't go into depth. The gimmick was completely pointless now that I think about it. And the plot was quite obvious. I basically gave it to you guys. I'm going to try to fix a system of AFK hosting before my next season to fix the hosting time issue.