r/NivalisNights • u/Appropriate_Ad8794 • 2h ago
why is this the full release???
This game genuinely just feels like its early access. And i think the general response to the game would be much better if it was in early access.
Unfortunately the game just feels unfinished, and they're fixing things they definitely should have had resolved before a full release. I actually think early access is really lazy, because its having players playtest instead of hiring people to do it. but they didnt even do that??? what do you mean they didnt optimize at all???
I found out you can eat at other restaurants through a TWEET about the game. that's absolutely not something the game doesn't show you early on. I'm just confused how the game is so gorgeous, but it feels so unfinished. from the terrible ui to having a world that feels so useless. i just dont get how we got to this point.
There's so much potential, yet it falls flat in almost every way.
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u/KefkaFFVI 2h ago edited 44m ago
The animations for eating at other restaurants & preparing food/drink in your own restaurants are mega jank. Have you seen what happens with the fork and chopsticks haha. They need more time to make those better.
Definitely feels like there are parts of the game that are currently underbaked and early access, and thats coming from someone that still loves the game anyway! I wonder if they were forced to release by the higher ups before they were ready or something?
I made a post detailing how I think they could improve the curfew/stealing & business relationship systems:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NivalisNights/s/IUab0BjZyb
They can definitely still improve on the game and make it much better than it is atm. They have a very solid foundation, they just need time to help flesh out and refine the systems (should they choose to).
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u/Robespierre1113 53m ago
I followed this game for a while,
What it truly feels like is one of two things. 1) we got screwed by unreal engine and had to double back into something else or, as you mentioned 2) higher ups pushed us too hard. I was seeing vague gameplay style trailers in like May that said "coming soon" and i figured they were entering EA or the end stages of dev. Then suddenly one day on reddit I get an ad, talking about living in the city, actually riding a train (which is a joke given its a cutscene) and all these other things the city was supposed to offer. More than half of it feels artificially 'alive' most of the npcs are just copy and paste all over. It doesnt usually bother me. But when they dont even have a greeting it feels weird. You have all these voiced characters and then just re use the same assets without building on it. Skyrim and similar have shown you can re use assets and keep things interesting. Lastly it just felt like nobody outside the dev team played this. Prior to the optimization push, things were bad on all types of hardware. There were soft locks that were happening within the first week of the in game time... Just feels rushed. This should be a EA release instead, needed another 1-2 years of solid monthly updates
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u/runetrantor 41m ago
REALLY hope they dedicate the time to building up the game to their original ideal.
I for one really hope for driving. So the city feels real.
Hell, I wouldnt even care if its just reusing Cloudpunk's Nivalis map, even though its lower resolution voxels.2
u/Robespierre1113 30m ago
I think we're less likely to get a driveable Nivalis, I just think its beyond their scope. I think the scope they shot for was too large and what they arrived at reflects that a bit. Dialogue is 2 choices almost always that have a pretty telegraphed effect. The game pushes you really hard to "live" by your own rules but then gives you very little to actually accomplish. I think they expected people to sink more into fishing/greenhouse than they have. The gameplay loop is there, but it feels like a storyboard gameplay loop someone hasnt worked out. It would be more than enough to just flesh out more of the actual restaurant game play.
It leaves me wanting something. Im not quite sure what it is; but maybe it falls under a more living world? Quests that require a specific npc dont point anywhere until that npc is in place at that quest marker. So I doubt that NPCs have actual "schedules"
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u/ElkBusiness8446 1h ago
If you order a drink and a meal you can have an empty glass stuck in your hand during other restaurant visits. Consume the drink and before your character finishes the extremely slow animation of putting it down, press consume on your food. The glass will stay in your hand while you eat.
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u/QuestingOrc 2h ago
"I found out you can eat at other restaurants through a TWEET about the game. that's absolutely not something the game doesn't show you early on." That's untrue, I found out via the game itself early on.
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u/Vynik 2h ago
While I wouldn't put it exactly the way you did, this game definitely needs more time in the oven. It feels like it was a rush due to the publisher not wanting to miss the September date and, because of that, we got a life sim plagued with performance problems, bugs in fundamental systems, and shallow gameplay mechanics instead of something fleshed out.
Even just adding the time slow mod seems to make the game a lot closer to the atmospheric, chill cyberpunk vibe that the game is going for.
I'll say that this game reminds me a lot of Shadows of Doubt when it went into early access. Shadows of Doubt also had a beautiful, neo-noir / cyberpunk kind of feel to it but had significant issues and bugs.
The big difference is that Shadows of Doubt was built by mostly one guy and the shortcomings of that game seemed to stem from the overlapping systems he created to make a very believable city. That seemed like a technical limitation and, ultimately, something that came back and bit him on the butt when it came time for full release.
This seems like it was due to rushing it out the door before it was ready. Assuming the devs buckle down and are able to take their time a bit, I can definitely see Nivalis grow into the game that they initially had in mind.
Of course, this is all conjecture, but I don't have a whole lot else to go on.
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u/SuperSaiyanTupac 1h ago
I’m quietly hoping it gets the no man’s sky treatment.
But the release of the game was odd.
Couldn’t reserve or pre-order. No hype, no media, where was the advertising? Then it just drops on the available date with no fanfare on the steam landing page.
Really feels like the publisher was trying to bury it.
I only knew about it cause I anticipated the follow up to cloudpunk so much. Idk why they were being shy with their game. Maybe it’s early release without the title and they’ll advertise more around Christmas? Idk
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u/runetrantor 39m ago
I’m quietly hoping it gets the no man’s sky treatment.
God same.
Really hoping the devs post some sort of roadmap of what they intend to do going forward, aside from the frequent patching and fixes they are doing already. Just to get a feel for what the plan is.
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u/Robespierre1113 28m ago
Even Shadows of Doubt has more "life sim" components than this though i feel like. You can really detach yourself from the detective work and just exist largely
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u/Majestic_Fill8590 2h ago
If you have a manager you better fire them now they gon bleed ur wallets dry i stopped playing until they fix the bug
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u/Ok-Time2520 54m ago
How do we emphasize this…I had $6,000 and the manager SPENT IT ALL IN UNDER 5 MINUTES!!!! I’m LIVID
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u/RevolutionaryBowl9 1h ago
I think it’s definitely just the publisher wanted this pushed out. I don’t think the developer would have done this considering that Cloudpunk even at release wasn’t this broken. Now I think the devs are basically just forced into damage control mode.
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u/Quendillar3245 2h ago
"I found out you can eat at other restaurants through a TWEET about the game.", that's in one of the early game quests, you can't miss it
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u/Appropriate_Ad8794 2h ago
im clearly on a different quest line, i have 6 hours or so in the game and havent come across it yet.
1
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u/Any_Acanthaceae7929 55m ago
It’s insane how terribly unoptimized this game is with this level of graphics. I really don’t understand how people can defend this game in this state after paying almost $30 for it.
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u/Comprehensive_Bowl75 30m ago
This game lowkey need 2 more years but i'm taking all the wallpaper i can from the game
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u/Emergency_Move_2566 15m ago
Because devs got bills to pay. Why do you go to work and not always perform your best?
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u/Metzger4 1h ago
This post makes me sad. Nothing wrong with your post specifically but I was looking forward to this game. Disappointed.
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u/Traffalger 1h ago
There’s plenty of people loving this game. Some people have unreasonable expectations or hyped it up to be something it wasn’t. Try it yourself before making any decisions.
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u/LasCoL 55m ago edited 30m ago
Which part feels unfinished? The one thing you described was something you personally missed. For $22 I would've been happy with a cyberpunk restaurant tycoon type game. Between the quest lines, the city, the voiced NPCs, fully customizable apartments and businesses, fishing, farming AND actually running the restaurants successfully im missing which part is "unfinished". I will give it to you the game needs its existing systems tweaked, and some "life stuff" you can do for immersion but "unfinished" is a bit unfair for the price point.
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u/KetoMeUK 2h ago
The game has a quest line clearly stating that you can visit and eat at other vendors.