Postby Pang_Tong » Fri Aug 26, 2016 6:57 pm
Just got done with the Toybox here's my feedback, in no particular order. I realize a lot of this may already plan to be addressed. I hope you read it!
- The idle animations while in dialogue with NPCs seemed a little inconsistent. Often they would play several times in a row consecutively with no ordinary "standing around" animation which looked a little odd.
- It looks weird how there's no idle animation for standing still while in "roll form". Laylee kind of just freezes in place which looks strange.
- At first I thought that rolling allowing you to move on slopes was because of the momentum, but when I found that you can stand still on slopes just by being in roll-mode I thought that was a little weird. It didn't make sense the way Talon Trot did in BK. It felt like I should start slipping. This isn't a big deal though and may have to stay the same anyway for gameplay reasons.
- Rolling around on the ground felt good but it was somewhat annoying trying to climb the tower with the blue slopes because even if you stop dead, you're still subject to the wide turning circle once you start moving again. It was easy to jump over to the next slope but then accidentally roll off the side because yooka turned too wide, when all you wanted to do was change directions. Again this may be necessary for a gameplay difficulty/balance thing since otherwise rolling would always be superior. (Addendum: I found that you have greater control of turning while rolling if you move slower, but it feels off because you can only turn while moving and not while still. So if you to full speed from a standstill you won't get any extra control at all, you have to deliberately move slow)
- The slopes on which Yooka could stand and which ones he would slip on were inconsistent. I suspect this will be addressed visually in-game somehow, like how all the slip-slopes were blue in the toybox. But it looked weird how sometimes a very shallow slope would cause me to slip while other times I could stand on a very steep slope.
- The teetering/pivoting platforms that change angle depending where you stand on them felt kind of pointless, because no matter how much you angle them, yooka doesn't fall off. If he started slipping at a steep enough angle, or the platforms could rotate all the way around so he just gets dumped off, that would make more sense.
- Not being able to jump while sliding down a slope feels bad, but perhaps that would make sliding gameplay too easy. In BK I recall you could try running up a steep slope for a time, but you'd quickly slow down and eventually lose momentum and slip, but in the Toybox you start slipping pretty much immediately which looks a bit weird and isn't very fun.
- The swimming controls are fine fundamentally (i.e. X for descent, A for ascent), but they lack responsiveness. Yooka takes too long to start swimming when you press the button, and keeps swimming for too long after you let go of the button. It feels "mushy". He's also really slow underwater which is a little frustrating.
- If I was rubbing/pushing against the side a big environmental object like the stone arches, the flappy/gliding extra jump move would refuse to activate in some areas, and would cancel if I was already doing it and then collided with the object. This doesn't happen with the regular level geometry though. It's annoying when it happens because it can mess up your jump.
- Sometimes when I jumped out of the water, the camera would jerk around A LOT and very abruptly. It also looks like there was a problem with the animation and Yooka was teleporting upwards a bit before falling back in. The issue seemed to fix itself and I couldn't replicate it on my own so I dunno what happened.
- If you do a spin attack while running off the edge of a platform, you don't lose any height while the attack is going, you basically just hover in the air. You can also then exit the attack with a regular jump and double jump combo, allowing you to get a LOT of extra distance on your jumps (but only if you start the jump before Yooka starts falling). I have no idea if this is intentional, but it feels kind of overpowered. It seems like you should lose height when falling off a platform while attacking, and you probably shouldn't then be able to do a full jump like you would off the ground.
- I liked the enemy designs and sounds, but the way they "morphed" in size and shape depending on their animation looks really weird. In particular, they get quite visibly "squished" when they are cowering in fear which looks super strange. It looked like some sort of error with the model but I suspect it was intentional.
- When I was hitting enemies I would sometimes get a slightly different animation or visual effect. It looked like I was doing some kind of extra or different attack. I kept pressing the attack button to try and figure out what I did but but I couldn't replicate it. Is it just a random effect when hitting enemies? I think attack visuals should be consistent so that people know what they are able to do. If there is a different effect or animation they should be able to figure out how to replicate it.
- I think you should be able to attack while jumping, but I suspect there will be such a move in the final game.
- I also think there should be some sort of underwater attack for when you're swimming.
- When hitting the chests to open them, I feel like they open a bit too quickly and smoothly. I think opening chests should feel good, it should have a satisfying "THUNK" sound when you hit them and maybe make the chest rock around a bit from the hit while opening.
- Similar for enemies, hitting them didn't feel satisfying. There should be a nice, meaty bashing sound when you hit them. Also, I think they should actually hit the ground with a nice "boff" sound before they disappear in a cloud of particle effects, instead of vanishing as soon as they touch it.
- When I was coming out of the room in the area with the enemies, the newly respawned enemies in the area would start moving and attacking before I regained control of Yooka. This doesn't seem right.
- I think it would be nice if NPCs reacted when you hit them with an attack. I was a little disappointed when I hit Inept and nothing happened.
- I dunno if this is a bug or intentional, but when going in and out of the room with the particle effects, the music would revert to the normal stage music while loading the area, then change back to the "altered" form once you had control. Seems like it should have just kept playing the version it was already playing.
- Based on the Toybox and trailers, the environmental lighting in the game looks a little "flat". I think some ambient occlusion would go a long way, if it's possible.
- I think it would be fun if there was a "tiptoe" animation for when you walk really slowly.
Camera stuff:
- The camera was not always cooperative. I think that it might place too much emphasis on keeping Yooka in-view, since when you are around low-walls (like in the ball-pushing area), the camera tends to zoom in and out rapidly as the camera is adjusted to be above or below the wall. This feels kind of annoying, and it can also cause the camera to zoom in too much, and you can't get a good look at your surroundings.
- Additionally, it felt like I didn't really have control of the zoom level of the camera. Sometimes it would come in too close and the only way to make it go out again was to fiddle with the angle, which felt kind of janky and imprecise. It would be nicer if there were zoom controls.
- Sometimes the camera would "stick" to walls, staying still as Yooka continued to run off into the distance. Eventually it would snap back to being behind Yooka, but the "sticking" didn't make much sense. It would usually happen if there was a wall behind and to the side of Yooka, and I moved the camera in the direction of the wall (so that the wall would be between Yooka and the camera). This would cause the camera to stick.
- Sometimes the camera didn't respond at all. This was mostly when I was at the very top of the level, overlooking the rest. In certain positions, the camera would just be angled directly down and no amount of adjusting could get it to look upward. I couldn't get a nice smooth pan across the landscape like I wanted.
- Of the camera angles offered in the "box-pushing" area, I liked the second one the most, the one that was mostly overhead. I thought it was well done how the controls stayed relative to the camera which made it easy to navigate.
- I think there should be something that lets you view in first-person, just for looking around while standing still.
Edit: Couple other things I've read in the thread that I want to corroborate.
- It would be nice if you slid across the ground a little when entering a crouch while running, like you could in BK. This lets you move into a crouch-jump more easily.
- The ability to grab ledges (and possibly move along them while doing so) would be useful. I think Banjo could do this in BK.
- Like the guy above mentioned, I think pressing/holding a button should make dialogue just progress faster instead of skipping directly to the end of the box.
- An animation for pushing boxes or other objects would be nice. This could also be done when running against a wall. I'm reminded of how in Conker's Bad Fur Day, Conker would put his hands up against a wall if you walked into one.
- It would feel good if you could enter the flappy/glide extra jump out of a rolling jump. Hopefully that wouldn't be overpowered in the actual game.
- Like someone mentioned, it would be nice if there was a stumbling/tumbling animation when running with the wind, and if you run/roll into the wind (instead of just having the run animation sped up), it should look like you're going against it at full speed instead of the animation being slowed down.
- I do wish there was a celebratory animation when you pick up the pagie!
Not feedback, but I can't believe people really prefer the Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie swimming to this! That stuff where you had to pivot yourself in the direction you wanted to go? That was crap! The controls in the YL Toybox are much more intuitive, they just need to be more responsive.