» Sun Feb 14, 2016 11:54 am Over the past 3 days I played 90 game days of Fallout Shelter by periodically moving my system clock ahead, and here are my thoughts on the UI, end game, and satisfaction.
I quickly found that I needed something to speed up the progress of this game because I just couldn't deal with the the turtle pace it creeps along at, so I figured my phone's system clock would do the trick and thankfully I was right.
I will say up front that personally, I would not have continued playing the game beyond the first day i had it if I could not play it turn-based in essence, where I do what needs to be done then advance time some hours. Usually the time advancement was how long it should take for my wanderer to run out of med kits, and I'd then bring them back and advance time to their return. The intended speed is just not my thing and as is, the game to me is not at all worth the attention that is needed now that I see the end game you're left with after all that time sunk into it. I am fully aware that if i played the game out in three months real time, Bethesda probably would have added more to game possibly leaving open a different sort of end game than what I can see here, but I can only base opinions on what I experience first hand.
My game right now is sitting at somewhere around 500k caps, a bunch of level 50's, a smooth operating facility, and 100 dwellers. Sadly I really have no desire to log back in until there's another couple big content patches (I hope?) because I have run out of things to do and care about. I've got more money than I can spend, all rooms are unlocked, I can take out a pack of Deathclaws in 2 rooms, so there's nothing more currently to strive for.
With that said, onwards with the critique and suggestions
UI Issues:
I'll start by critiquing what absolutely needs to be tweaked in the UI. This game is all about moving around the screen and clicking things to interact, so that process needs to be as smooth and user friendly as possible. Right now it feels like the UI is in an alpha state when you take into account the large list of issues I ran into that really took away from my enjoyment. It's a list that I feel would have been things that should have been noticed early in development by playtester, or at least not designed as is to begin with, because so much seems unintuitive.
In no particular order:
Rosters need to be available for training rooms
We need to see where the dwellers are currently located when clicking a spot to assign them to via the room clipboard (Roster as I call it). If I'm looking for someone to fill a slot for the Garden for example, I want someone with high Agility, but I want to make sure the person i assign isn't already assigned to another room because they are also maxed out in another skill. It's impossible to keep a mental note of all this once you start raising stats on many dwellers and you have a lot of them.
Grabbing of dwellers needs to be disabled when dragging. Often you happen to click on a dweller when you just want to scroll, but there seems to be a lag that happens unless you are super fast with how long it takes you to start scrolling after putting your finger on the glass. This is obviously aggravating beyond belief.
Rooms absolutely need a small numerical label that can appear in the corner of it to show how many workers or students are assigned (red icon can mean its maxed). I probably spent hours alone just zooming into a room to count how many dwellers were assigned to it before I tried placing another into it. It's one of the worst things in this game when you assign a dweller to a room not noticing it's full and you see a worker come running out of the room; you have to hurry up and try to click them and drag them back before thy run to the elevator.
We need a permanent icon above a dwellers head when they have reached max level inside a training room so you can see at a glance they need to be moved. When they gain a point, the labels are green, a max level can be another color. I absolutely loathe zooming into the training rooms to scan for anyone that maxed out their level. I need to see this at a glance from any distance.
We should be able to take a max level dweller from one training room and place it into another training room, and by default in doing so, it will switch places with a dweller within that room whose stat is maxed for that particular room, but not for the stat in the room where the original dweller is transferring from.
So for example, there's someone maxed in the Strength room and they have low Agility. In the Agility room, someone is maxed, but has low Str. Well I should be able to drag either of them to the other room and they swap with one another.
This is, for example, and assuming a full training room, instead of what you currently need to do:
1: Move the max Str dweller into another room temporarily
2: Drag the max Agi dweller into the Str room
3: Drag the max Str dweller into the Agi room.
4: Cry.
The game should auto select the dweller with the least health when clicking on a group of dwellers in combat. So many times my dwellers die because they are clumped on one another and I cannot for the life of me select the one needing healing. The game should also never ever choose to select Mr. Handy. over one of your dwellers in combat. There would practically never be a reason to click him. Some players in the early game might argue that they would want to move Mr. Handy out of danger, but it's just not worth it in the grand scope later on. You need to be selecting your dwellers.
When dragging a dweller, the map should zoom out faster or not zoom at all, whichever is less processor intensive. Currently, dragging a dweller overall is way too slow, especially if you're deep down and want to drag one up top to the wasteland.
Zooming in on a training room should fit the room to the screen so you don't have to scroll left and right to see if anyone is maxed, although this would be a moot point if the above idea about the max level icon is implemented.
There needs to be a "Take maximum" button for med kits when sending a dweller off to wasteland so you don't have to hit the + key 25 times.
When you have the dwellers list open by clicking the vault door icon in the upper left, clicking a category in that menu screen other than SPECIAL should toggle sorting by ascending/descending.
Clicking a dweller's name in that screen should sort by health amount firstly, and first name alphabetically second once all of the dwellers with less than 100% health are listed.
Long pressing a dwellers portrait either on the above menu screen or the portrait that pops up when you click on them in the vault should auto grab and center on them. Currently it just centers on the dweller while zoomed out at max. Most of the time the reason for clicking the portrait to quickly find a dweller is because you're going to grab them and do something with them, so it makes no sense to put your view after clicking on the portrait at the one that offers the least ease in clicking on them to grab them. Just let us do it automatically from long pressing the portrait.
During an attack, dwellers should auto follow the attackers into the next room the attackers run to if that room is not full.
Needs to be a sell all junk button on collect screen which will mark for sale all non rare/legendary items. No more spending a full minute sliding the inventory bar and tapping away like a crazy person on the items you don't want. that adds up over time. It's a quality of life issue that needs to be addressed.
You should be able to send dwellers into the wasteland by giving the wasteland its own roster button instead of needing to drag them. Also, there should be a "Send to wasteland" button next tot he character name right in the Dweller menu (Icon in the upper left).
I'd like to sort outfits by stat type instead of just a long scrolling window by name.
Other thoughts:
This game needs to go MMO for longevity purposes mainly, and the rate of advancement does need to be sped up a lot.
I want to be able to attack/befriend/form alliances with other shelters and have the option to even play as a raider faction to wage war. This is what will bring and keep the players. This game has probably made obscene amounts of money since release so Bethesda obviously has the capital now to really delve into refining this game and making into more of a real big thing instead of maybe a little flash in the pan side project as perhaps was originally intended.
There really needs to be more things to do with the money. Current end game is basically needing to just feel satisfied with the fact you have reached at least 100 dwellers and unlocked the last room, the Nuka Cola plant, and I guess finding enough gear to be able to kill Deathclaws in as few rooms as possible. After that there's no point in sending out wasteland wanderers since the stuff they are bringing back serves no purpose anymore as you can already safely defend your base from the worst of the worst threats.
If everything is running smooth and your base is near impenetrable, then you've basically won FOS. This is where the MMO aspect will see to the game's longevity as players no longer have only to conquer the game's caps, but winning against other players/factions.
I envision things like another science room to genetically engineer Deathclaws once you capture them (research/breed) to send out on your enemies. Base defense like turrets or traps. Fast paced team based deathmatches where you climb the ladders for caps and prizes. Etc etc., I'm sure we can all think of additions.
I feel the dwellers bring back way too little good gear for how long they are out in the wasteland. In all of the time my dwellers were out, I didn't find one legendary drop and I found only one set of power armor.
I feel the turtle like pace of progression won't be good enough to hold the average player past a week. Regardless of what the game could turn into in a few months, good luck getting people to come back after they decide it's not for them as is right now. I really feel like Bethesda should just double everything beneficial right now and cut in half anything negative as a start. Even with those numbers it would still take me a month and a half to get to where my game is at now, which is still an ungodly long time to expect to retain customers for.
