Greetings, Lord Captains! Some time ago, we conducted an extensive survey on the alpha version of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader that we used to gather your impressions and suggestions on how to make the game better. We are immensely grateful to everyone who participated in the survey and would like to share with you some interesting figures and conclusions, in addition to decisions we have made based on your feedback.
We will jump ahead a little and say that, judging by your reaction, it looks like we are on the right track. But that doesn't mean we are going to stop there — we still have a lot of work ahead of us to make the game truly great!
Important note: We won't be going over every question here, or else the contents of this article could have filled a whole book — these are just the highlights. With that said, enjoy the read!
Overall score
A total of 521 people took part in our survey and, on average, gave our game a score of 4.35 out of 5! That is quite an inspiring result for an Alpha, and here at Owlcat we want to express our sincerest thanks to every one of you for rating our team's work so highly even when many aspects of the game were far from completion.
Areas and atmosphere
The majority of the players (over 87%) enjoyed the game’s portrayal of Warhammer 40,000’s grimdark tone. Being fans of the Warhammer 40,000 universe ourselves, we were very happy to hear this, as we believe it crucial to get the atmosphere right.
But there's always room for improvement! Which is why we turned to your open-ended comments:
Some of the players, even those who rated the atmosphere positively, felt that many areas were too shiny and bright and lacked the grim darkness of Warhammer 40,000. We took these comments to heart, and our crew is now hard at work measuring just the right amount of hopelessness and despair to add to the game.
Some respondents also noted that certain areas lacked the overpopulation and crowdedness that the universe is known for. We realize how important this is, and while technical limitations do not allow us to have thousands of NPCs on the screen at once, our programmers are working on considerably increasing the maximum number of objects that can be present on a single screen when compared to our previous games. Here are some of the preliminary results:
Companions
All companions were rated on a scale of 1 to 5 based on overall impression, narrative, and usefulness in terms of gameplay. Almost all of them received a score higher than 4 out of 5, which we consider to be a rather commendable result.
The companions with the highest scores overall were Argenta (4.6) and Pasqal (4.3).
Only Idira (3.7) and Jae (3.6) fell short of the 4-point bar.
Although they are not all that far behind, this was an important cue that these companions required attention. We have already discussed what steps we can take: for instance, Jae was rather difficult to find on the sprawling port of Footfall, and her smuggler persona could not compete with the more iconic archetypes such as a sister of the Adepta Sororitas, a Tech-Priest, or an Interrogator. Finding Jae should now be easier, and she will receive many new reactions to the game's events, so that her personality can really shine.
As for Idira, being an unsanctioned psyker, her position aboard the ship is inherently more precarious. You will get to know her better during the game's prologue in the Beta and see just why Theodora saw Idira as an irreplaceable ally in spite of her... quirks. We are also working on the abilities and careers of both Jae and Idira to make them more mechanically useful as party members.
Naturally, Jae and Idira are not the only ones who will receive updates. We are significantly expanding upon build creation and variety as well as adding many new companion reactions to everything that happens in the game.
Narrative and dialogue
Originally, we had concerns that the abundance of terms, starting the game from the second chapter, and current lack of tutorials and gradual immersion might stop you from really getting into the spirit of Warhammer 40,000 that pervades our story and dialogue. Thankfully, over 80% of the respondents found that they had no difficulties in this regard. Still, we are already preparing a whole range of tutorials, key terms, and encyclopedia entries that will help those of you who are less familiar with the setting find their way around the intricacies of the Warhammer 40,000 world.
We also took some bold liberties with the dialogue UI and weren't quite sure how you would react to them. As it turned out, our worries were exaggerated, and the new UI was well received. Among the most frequently voiced feedback were requests to make the font bigger, improve text legibility, and fix scrolling. We are working on solutions and can already share some of the results with you now:
We thank those of you who pointed out typos, minor inaccuracies, and inconsistencies with the lore that you encountered in the dialogues. Many of these have already been fixed, and we can't wait to show you the improvements in the next version of the game.
Ground combat
Your feedback showed us that we struck a good overall balance between the frequency, pace, and difficulty of combat encounters, but there certainly are aspects that we can and will improve on.
Namely, we received a number of requests related to:
- Loot: Over 35% of the respondents wished that loot had been more interesting.
- Progression: Up to 40% of the respondents were dissatisfied one way or another with the speed and variety of character development.
- UI: Over a third of the players had difficulties reading interface icons and interpreting the contents of the combat log.
We will be improving all three of these areas.
Furthermore, many of you mentioned that you would like to see a pre-combat preparation phase that would allow you to place your characters as you see fit. We heard you loud and clear, so we're already on it! We will be able to tell you more about this system soon.
An interesting tidbit about enemy design: there was an undisputed leader for the title of the most memorable foe — the Daemon Engine, mentioned by nearly 1/3 of the respondents. This encounter was described as both challenging and exciting. Have you faced this monstrosity yet? What are your impressions?
When it comes to the warp, our leading encounter is the fight against Daemonettes of Slaanesh in the Rogue Trader's personal chambers (as noted by 36% of the respondents).
Talk about an arousing arousal. 😀
Space
Compared to other elements of the game, the alpha version of space was still very early in development, which, predictably, affected the score. Global map navigation and exploration were rated 4 out of 5, which isn't half bad given their unfinished state.
Space battles were not as well-received (3.4/5). There were concerns about the visual quality, the balance (for instance, encounters against Drukhari ended up being too difficult and not particularly fun in their alpha state), the slow pace, and the steep learning curve. And even though there were some positive sentiments (the space combat UI, despite being an early draft, was still praised for its simplicity and clarity), it is apparent that we have our work cut out for us here.
We took your comments seriously and focused on refining the space-related elements of the game. Global map navigation will be more intuitive. A complete overhaul of the system map UI and the space combat UI is on the way, and space combat overall will be better and faster. Additionally, the Craftworld Aeldari and Drukhari encounters will be improved, a ghost-like ship projection mechanic will be added that can be used to estimate firing ranges, and the learning curve will be fixed (e.g., there will be fewer overly challenging encounters at the early stages of the game). On top of this, our artists are grinding away to bring you some stunning space visuals in the style of Warhammer 40,000.
Sound and music
Both sound and music in the game were pretty much unanimously well received. We are so glad that you enjoyed the results of the hard work put in by our sound team and composers!
Careers
Thanks to your comments, we received tons of useful data for us to work with. For example, many of you noted that the Soldier career was clearly more powerful than the other careers, and that the Assassin was, shall we say, underperforming. Some players also encountered problems with the level-up UI.
We will be sure to consider all this feedback for future iterations: there will be no "empty" level-ups, you will have the option to read about the careers before choosing them, it will be clearer which stats can be selected, and the overall variety of choices will be significantly increased.
Cargo, reputation, and Profit Factor
In general, the cargo system received mostly positive reviews (over 60% said they enjoyed the system), but it still raised a number of questions. These are some of the issues survey participants identified with the system’s alpha iteration:
- Obscurity and the lack of tutorials
- Poor balancing and lack of variety in items offered by vendors
- Cumbersome UI: no option to sort, search, or stack items and no way to select them with a single click.
We have processed all of your feedback, and these issues will be addressed in the next version of the game. We are making the whole system more intuitive, adding more items, working on a more comfortable UI, along with more helpful changes. And yes, those Anver notes will finally stop clogging up your inventory — we know they were super annoying! 🙂
Colonies
Colonization is another part of the game that was present in the alpha version. The system is in its earliest stages of development, and as such it was difficult for many players to evaluate it properly (36% of the respondents didn't progress far enough into the Alpha to interact with it in the first place). The colonization system is going to be revamped, and therefore it wouldn't make much sense to cover it in detail here, but we would still like to thank you for providing valuable feedback that helped us to identify the system’s prevailing issues.
Conclusion
That is it for now! Once again, we are so grateful to you for participating in our survey — your feedback has been a huge help and will allow us to make the game even better and more faithful to the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Work on the Beta is well underway, and we can't wait to show you the progress we've made!
As a little parting gift, here are some extra fun facts and figures:
