Source
r/ICARUS•
Barbosa003

More of the same - Repetitiveness

As of today I have 564 hours into the game (including Beta Weekends). I reached level 99 three or four weeks ago. And I have had quite a bit of fun doing so. But I have finally come to the conclusion that every mission is basically the same; go forth and bring back something to the space station. Add to that you always need to start over. Yeah, you can speed run some missions, do without the Fabricator in some missions or go through the massive grind for electronics to achieve your end game. However, I think I'm done for some time now. I will now wait for more content to the missions other than wait for content in the Workshop or Tech Tree/ Talent tree.

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It would be interesting to hear from others who feel somewhat the same way.

Posted Jan 23, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

2241
pecosWilliam3rd•

500 hrs for $30, math checks out. Glad you got some fun out of it, I think in 6-9months the polish will be in and hopefully more content will be ongoing.

30
Barbosa003OP•

I hoping this as well.

4
pecosWilliam3rd•

Im near 300hrs and getting close to taking a pause also. My buddies (12 rotating cast members averaging about 6 per drop) are still playing and we have started to go off script on the hardcore missions to keep it fresh. Since hellion died there hasn’t been much in the way of sci-fi survival that has caught my interest. Wish that game had held up, i loved how skill based the gameplay was

2
Barbosa003OP•

What do you mean “offscript” in hardcore missions?

1
pecosWilliam3rd•

The mission goal is secondary, we rush to t4 and scan and locate exotics. We have a semi standard mobile base pattern and strip out all the resources in an area to get all the tech built and then move to the first deposit location and start extraction. Then the people with speed builds hit the mission goals with full tech/armor/t4foods. Can cross a full map in short order when your speed is near 470-500 and your stamina never gets tapped out. After the mission is complete the first exotics vein is close to dry. Everyone grabs the base and moves it to the second and/or possibly third location.

Get the 3-600 space bucks, 200 exotics and 2-600 additional exotics.

The speed and coordination requirements add the fun back. Usually we burn down our temp base and try to make it look cool or something, had a really good skull base that went up super neat, also spent some time testing mechanics and breaking stuff just to see how it works. Just fyi, launching doesn’t damage people and structures like landing does, so you can make it look like a cannon or something more childish lol

Edit Oh and if the mission is too much of a pain we wont complete it, just grab exotics and leave.

2
fdruid•

I think its plain to see that the game is grindy and repetitive without having to play 500 hours of it.

You didn't expect it to be that way in your first 20, 100 hours? I'm curious.

12
pegabear•

Hindsight is 20/20 lol.

I'm like 30hrs in and keep staring at all the prospects dreading grinding the same shit over and over again.

8
fdruid•

It gets so much worse. But you know? I'll play it within my own goals, as long as it's fun. I honestly don't understand those reviewers who show a thousand hours playtime for a game and tell you it sucks.

6
TacoBellIsParadise•

Hydrate

2
Barbosa003OP•

Well, the beta weekends to me were simply test weekends. When the game dropped live, it didn’t take long to figure it out. Perhaps I played so many hours waiting for some sort of content that would take us away from the grind in every mission? After all, Rocketwerks were dropping patches and on a weekly basis. I’m not sure. But I did have fun playing until this past week when I said “Enough is enough”.

1
doeraymefa•

Some people chose to enjoy the grind instead of complaining

1
fdruid•

Exactly my point. Me, for example. The game is great, and it is what it is. I don't naively expect it to have more depth, not some weeks after release.

1
GatorWrestler303•

I like it don't love the game but I've more than got my money from it.

7
Barbosa003OP•

I must admit that for $28.00 I too got my money out of it. But now I’m just simply bored with it due to the repetitive nature of it.

1
Osix9•

I wish i could had fun for so long.. i had enough after 70h for the exact same reason. Almost finished all missions.. i only played 2 missions twice for exotics. They need a mission. A really big one. 90 days and if we play let say 2h a day it takes 40 days to complete. But the mission has to be more interesting. If u ask me they could make it that if you die once you lose. Just to make it harder/engaging. if someone wants to leave early he can start the evacuation mission or something like that for the ones that don't want such a mission.

6
Trictrik•

Do you want to tell you have been playing 9h a day sence release? And 12h a day on each beta weekend.

Or you full of shit stories?

5
el_Rando•

The trick is leaving it idling over night to boost up them numbers

7
SleepyGamer420•

Yeah, just leave your pc on while you sleep

2
Trictrik•

So this is what I mean he is full of shit

1
Barbosa003OP•

I’m retired. I have the time.

1
i_like_fish_decks•

There are two very simple changes they could make that would make the game a lot more enjoyable for me. Make Gold/Copper smelt at 1:1 ratio from ore, and reduce electronics from 3 copper bar to 2 copper bar.

That would go a helluva long way to making the tech grind not absolutely brutal and should be very straightforward and easy to implement. This has a secondary benefit of making the carpenter bench more useful, as currently it is just not feasible to waste copper on on nails if you're actually needing to tech up to t4.

Long term I would love for them to do a good pass on the entire tech tree as it could use some tweaks.

A very nitpicky thing, but one of steel or platinum needs to go. For me, it feels like platinum could just be removed entirely, bump steel up to be T3 (give it platinum stats) and then replace all platinum ore nodes with titanium nodes. Plus right now, the platinum pickaxe is only a whopping 3% more efficient than steel. Its barely even an upgrade already.

The machine bench you need to make platinum tools doesn't require anything you cannot mine with an iron pickaxe, so you could just make steel tools crafted on it as well. Then we have a much cleaner path of progression for tools.

The big plus side here is that we get twice as much titanium in caves since we can replace platinum ore nodes with titanium, so crafting titanium tools doesn't feel as bad and making your rifle is easier as well.

4
Barbosa003OP•

These are good suggestions!

2
Close-and-Reopen•

I have about 128 hrs in the game. I am getting tried of the grind. You said it correctly, too much repetitive grinding. Going to move on soon

3
Theslash1•

180 hours in. 3 guys, had fundetermining the ultimate talent build. Can do 40 levels in 1 day now. I enjoy building sweet bases. Gotta find what you like. THey just patched in nice backpacks and new top tier worshop items. I can mine entire caves and not even be 1/2 capacity now! love it

3
fridge_water_filter•

How do you power level so fast?

1
Theslash1•

I Start in spirit walk explore. Its close to the arctic biome. My guy has the 5 piece workshop armor, 2 speed modules, knife and axe and the new speed backpack. I instantly make a bow, and stone arrows, kill a few wolves until I can start making bone arrows. All I do is hunt until I get bedding material, make a quick 1x1 house outside the arctic area, put a craft bench, make a long bow, run to nearest cave for a bunch of iron, make iron arrows, then I sit in the arctic killing wolves and skinning non stop. I just remade yesterday again as I discovered the perfect talents for me, hes almost 50 today but I've made a huge 2 story stone house 5x4 stone foundation and Im full tier 4 minus composits. Busy day =) Oh, after I get up there, I run Beer, Pumpkin bread, and pickled carrots. 35% xp boost.

1
JoOngle•

All my friends have left Icarus for the same reason - too much grind, and these are people who spend a few thousands of hours in ARK.

But it's not an horribly expensive game, and if you got 100 hours of it, you got nearly double the value most games gave you.

But we love the game, this is why we want it to be so much more.

- Developers need to reduce the grind, since you re-play the same levels over and over again so much, especially for the high tier points.

- Resources must be more (cave resources).

- Items must be balanced more according to real life logic, for example it's just silly to spend 20 bars of metal for a bottle, and 1 bar for an arrow each time, that's just nuts.

- Talent points should NOT stop at Level 40.

- Items should not be locked when a character has been used up in points on certain talents, items should always remain free to blueprint when you level up.

Bugs like these should be post haste priority:

- Expensive items such as a platinum knife falling through the ground when thrown, this happens a LOT.

- Respawn for animals should be more random, not fixed respawn areas.

- Crashes when doing speedruns.

Other than that, the game is quite pleasing, and I enjoy starting from scratch, this is one of the things I enjoyed most from Ark since every restart would be a somewhat different experience. This had me accept the "grind" of Icarus much more than it did in ARK.

And please be kind towards those that complain after 100 hours of grind (I did leave a nice positive review, but def. understand the pain of the others), because most people in survival games don't expect the game to be over in 50 hours like in regular mission AAA games.

Survival games are strategic long-term play games, and 100 hours is amateur hour, people put 500-10K hours in games like these for a reason, they were made for that.

2
Barbosa003OP•

“ Survival games are strategic long-term play games, and 100 hours is amateur hour, people put 500-10K hours in games like these for a reason, they were made for that.”

This is what I was hoping the game would be like. I’m retired and have the time to devote to games. But until the repetitiveness is lowered or other things change, I don’t want to devote the time any more. I will say I like the game and it’s premise. It has promise and potential. I have done perhaps two thirds to three quarter of the missions so far. I’m not a speed runner. I want to enjoy the game. But every mission feels the same now. Go here, do this and then come back; only to do it over again. I don’t understand the logic behind starting over after you’ve done the second mission.

1
Alisnumeria•

and if you got 100 hours of it, you got nearly double the value most games gave you.

I put in over 900 hours into "Realm Grinder"
I hated every minute of it.
I spent $0 on it.

I did not get value out of it. Wasted hours of my life I'll never get back.

Why did I play it then? Because progression for curiosity sake is addictive. purely addictive. I'm doing it only because of the pain and fear of what it feels like when I stop doing it -- NOT because I enjoy it or it brings anything positive to my life.

Icarus is the same. Addictive mechanic of making you work hard for a progression tree until one day you finally have to ask yourself: "But is it fun" -- the answer will be different for different folks.

TL;DR Value from a game is not based on number of hours due to addiction psychology; Hours played is an illusion that gets brought up in Steam comments for negative reviews too often and this is a fallacy. Let people have their negative reviews - it's all we have left after being harmed by these games.

1
bubbs72•

If I could play with my husband on multiplayer, it would be a blast. Sadly, we can only ask the other to watch our game. :( Was it because mine was a new player? *sigh*

1
Krudark•

I can’t believe yall are still playing this game. Gamepass for PC is on sale for 1$ and you can play R6: Extraction among other things with it.

1
Barbosa003OP•

Well, honestly, I’d like to wait for a while to see what becomes of the game.

1
Nikkolios•

I can only imagine how after 564 hours, that game mechanic of literally starting with nothing at every turn is really trying. I'm not sure I'll be able to put 600ish hours into this game. We'll see. I am very new, and already the concept is really getting to me.

1
Barbosa003OP•

It’s not bad the first few missions. But it started to wear about three weeks into the game after it went live. I don’t count the beta weekends (probably illogical to do this) because I figured it was just a testing ground. However, after thinking about this for the last couple days and reading others replies in this thread, I really think I’m done with this game until something changes. AND I’m glad I didn’t pay the full price for all the DLCs if nothing changes at all.

I think what really irritates me the most is when you finish a mission and you’ve made gear and then blast off with it in your inventory, you can’t come back down in the next mission with that gear. I mean really, where does your gear go when you get back to the station? Out an airlock? This idea makes no sense to me at all.

2
Nikkolios•

I completely agree with you on all of this. There are people that argue for the "storms wiped out all of the things you built on the surface," and say that it makes sense. "It's just how it's supposed to be in this game." How do you explain that literally all of the vegetation and rocks are put back where they were in the beginning as well? It's just completely nonsensical. Things in the inventory, as well. It's just nonsensical and lazy to try to explain it away as "storms wiped it all out!"

I'll go through this game to the end because I bought it, but yeah. I am definitely also glad I didn't pay for some extra DLC.

2
Samatic•

The need to always start over. This is done by three things.

  1. You have no idea what level you need to be in order to complete the mission
  2. You do not have the correct talents for the mission
  3. you forget to hit F to save your spawn point once you place a bedroll.

The 3rd one is the most frustrating to me and I have told the devs to make it so when a bedroll is placed it automatically means that this is where you want to spawn.

0†
dtrickk•

IMO the auto respawn point for placing a bedroll is a bad idea. There are many missions where I setup my main base in the center of playable area or near the objective (which is usually far from the drop ship). On resource trips, I take a bed to bypass the night, but do not want to set it as a spawn point. When you set a bed down, set as spawn point and pick it up, you lose your main spawn point. This could cause you to die and have to spawn at the drop ship.

IF the devs change it so you can pick respawn points from multiple beds, than I would be fine with automatically set spawn point.

10
TexMech4570•

You just don't set the spawn point to a new bed. Leave one bed roll at your main base with spawn point if you want and bring second bed with you on resource trips. Then you always spawn at your main base where you can get any tools or weapons to get your gear back.

2
dtrickk•

That is what I do. My point is that an auto spawn point for placing a bed down is a bad idea.

4
TexMech4570•

I've never had icarus force a new spawn point when I lay down a new bed. Is this what happens? But I also don't die real often so haven't tested it. I always see the hold F to set spawn on bed rolls I lay down.

1
i_like_fish_decks•

The 3rd one is the most frustrating to me and I have told the devs to make it so when a bedroll is placed it automatically means that this is where you want to spawn.

No. I like being able to choose my spawn. I use beds in other locations just to make it daytime, but that doesn't mean I want to change my spawn location.

And at the end of the day, you place a bed roll and then hold a button for half a second and your spawn is set. Its really not that complex...

3