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The Tomorrow Children Open Beta : All your base are belong to us

T

TheSpoiler

Member
Okay, so now, I have a little bit of time to write out some tips.

The way I see it, this game has classes. You can mix and match items and stuff like that, but the real way to play is to specialize your shit. That's kind of why you should look at what you level up and plan accordingly. That doesn't mean you become unable to cut down trees if you are a miner or whatever, but it's good to feel out what interests you best with this game.

So far, I've seen:

Miners
Diggers
Builders
Security
"Runners"
Batteries/Gatherers
Lantern women


And that's off the top of my head. Miners mine stuff, primarily locating choice spots and equip themselves to pull out the materials and keep things running. Diggers are usually good for making steps and going through islands. Builders construct stuff, like ladders, buildings in general, or bridges for crossing the void.

Security takes care of the enemies and the spawning heart thingies so people can do work. Runners take items within the islands to the drop off points, or take stuff from the loading zone to the correct spots. Batteries generate power and fix stuff. Gatherers pick up the stuff (usually has bigger pockets to do so) and deliver it manually. And lantern women carry the light sources for miners and co. while also providing light sources in general.

All of that is obvious, right? But people are a little too focused on doing every single thing at once. You don't have to. That's the joy of this game. This morning, I didn't feel like doing anything stressful, so I mined a bit and had some runner dude take my shit as I dropped it below. I had like two lantern women with me as we cut through the face. Sadly, we died because we could take on all those flying things, but when I came back, people had already created a pathway and cleaned out a good portion.

So I switched over to a runner, and took stuff outside, since we had a mass of materials just laying around. Someone was dropping equipment for us the whole way, too.

We found another heart thing, and nobody had guns, but this time, I was prepared to fuck them up. I ran security, and they were able to get the materials and clean house.

What I'm getting at is, you can switch off between classes, and do things a little better than others depending on your stats. Working in tandem with others is key, and it's not hard to pay attention and thing about how you can contribute to the cause.

tl;dr - play your game, have fun, and stop trying to do everything because you won't have fun that way.
 
T

TheSpoiler

Member
FYI, there's an information center you can check out if you feeling confused about the way to play the game.

Z3M0G said:
Is this a $60 game? If so how are people feeling about it?
Click to expand...

We don't know yet, but probably.

For what it's worth, there's a hell of a lot of content in this game. If they sort out the minor sever issues that pop up, and give better explanations for certain things, it could have a decent base of people.
 
A

aly

Member
I've decided to make my role be the wandering thief who goes to other people's towns and jack their resources. Pretty good gig, with only loading screens to worry about.
 
C

Cobaiye

Member
Here's our beautifull town:

1465077596-recentral1-2016-06-04-23-59-26-63.png
Click to expand...
 
C

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Cobaiye said:
Get some wood.
Click to expand...
Fuck me our poor town. Lost two shops from one attack. ._. They're back now thanks to myself and others spawning saplings and chopping down trees just as they flourished but still.
TheSpoiler said:
Okay, so now, I have a little bit of time to write out some tips.

The way I see it, this game has classes. You can mix and match items and stuff like that, but the real way to play is to specialize your shit. That's kind of why you should look at what you level up and plan accordingly. That doesn't mean you become unable to cut down trees if you are a miner or whatever, but it's good to feel out what interests you best with this game.

So far, I've seen:

Miners
Diggers
Builders
Security
"Runners"
Batteries/Gatherers
Lantern women


And that's off the top of my head. Miners mine stuff, primarily locating choice spots and equip themselves to pull out the materials and keep things running. Diggers are usually good for making steps and going through islands. Builders construct stuff, like ladders, buildings in general, or bridges for crossing the void.

Security takes care of the enemies and the spawning heart thingies so people can do work. Runners take items within the islands to the drop off points, or take stuff from the loading zone to the correct spots. Batteries generate power and fix stuff. Gatherers pick up the stuff (usually has bigger pockets to do so) and deliver it manually. And lantern women carry the light sources for miners and co. while also providing light sources in general.

All of that is obvious, right? But people are a little too focused on doing every single thing at once. You don't have to. That's the joy of this game. This morning, I didn't feel like doing anything stressful, so I mined a bit and had some runner dude take my shit as I dropped it below. I had like two lantern women with me as we cut through the face. Sadly, we died because we could take on all those flying things, but when I came back, people had already created a pathway and cleaned out a good portion.

So I switched over to a runner, and took stuff outside, since we had a mass of materials just laying around. Someone was dropping equipment for us the whole way, too.

We found another heart thing, and nobody had guns, but this time, I was prepared to fuck them up. I ran security, and they were able to get the materials and clean house.

What I'm getting at is, you can switch off between classes, and do things a little better than others depending on your stats. Working in tandem with others is key, and it's not hard to pay attention and thing about how you can contribute to the cause.

tl;dr - play your game, have fun, and stop trying to do everything because you won't have fun that way.
Click to expand...
Again this is a lot easier said than done because the game doesn't allow us to see players all the time. Which is pretty crucial for coordination and would make such coordination WAY easier for all involved.
 
E

Eyemus Lutt

Member
I love the look of the game, but there had better be a better tutorial in the final game as I still have no idea what is going on. After the tutorial ended I was plopped into a town with no idea what to do or what stuff did.
 
E

El Jaffe

Member
Biggest problem I find right now is the pseudo Dark Souls multi-player. As others have said, the best way to run the town is with everybody cooperating and working specific roles, but when your not sure what everyone else is doing, it makes it a lot harder. I hope the full release will have player characters on screen the whole time.

Edit: I also noticed the thermal power station has an opening similar to the town hall, should we bring resources to it? Id imagine all it would do is increase our electricity, which ishould almost always at maximum
 
H

HaRyu

Unconfirmed Member
If anyone wants a relatively quiet abandoned town that you want to build up, I'm over at Vonke, its pretty bare bones. There's like 2 people here (most of the time 1, just me). Not sure why this place was abandoned, its like they hardly touched this place.

We can call it GAFTown (insert version number here)

PSN: Harlan_Ryudo
 
C

Cobaiye

Member
El Jaffe said:
Edit: I also noticed the thermal power station has an opening similar to the town hall, should we bring resources to it? Id imagine all it would do is increase our electricity, which ishould almost always at maximum
Click to expand...

It will consume anything you bring to it (weapons, tools, ressources, even buildings).
 
N

Number45

Member
Played for an hour earlier. Not a fucking clue what I'm supposed to do. :s

FantasticMrFoxdie said:
so I'm pretty done with the beta. don't want to get too burnt out for the full game


Question: How do you unlock the bonuses for being part of the beta?
Click to expand...
It tells you when you first launch the fame. Just complete the tutorial and take the bus to town.
 
D

dripdripsplash

Member
Okay this game is really nice. Love the music and love the new designs of the islands every time.

There was a blue pig with apples in its mouth just a couple of minutes before.

And before that a rain of sushi!

I do get disconnected everytime I try to cooperate with someone and I originally thought that it was an error that I couldn't see people beside me, since they were leaving and entering my world all the time.

THat sucks, I hope they reverse that decision, makes it so hard to coordinate.
 
A

andylsun

Member
Bus stuck in Mikhzhek? It's parked at a weird angle. Looks like someone pushed it with a speeder once it stopped.

Edit: just destroyed monster and it warped out of city when it died
 
P

PedroLumpy

Member
Sooo, my apologies for coming in here and being a bit negative, but I'm curious if I'm missing something. Nothing I've done in the game is fun. Rode the bus to gather stuff, fought some creatures, delivered some resources.... is there something else to do that I'm missing? The gameplay feels a little too close to the Communist propaganda theme they're going for. Just slave away for the state.
 
IbizaPocholo

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
How you can access to the licenses?I want to drive a car and the game tells me i need the license lv1 but i don't know how to gain it.

And the other licenses?

The game is awesome.
 
P

Pepboy

Member
PedroLumpy said:
Sooo, my apologies for coming in here and being a bit negative, but I'm curious if I'm missing something. Nothing I've done in the game is fun. Rode the bus to gather stuff, fought some creatures, delivered some resources.... is there something else to do that I'm missing? The gameplay feels a little too close to the Communist propaganda theme they're going for. Just slave away for the state.
Click to expand...

You are not alone. I started in a big city and realized quickly I need to start in a new town. So I helped build a deserted town up from scratch -- quickly became #1 "toller". Slowly inched my way to the 20 civilians needed for a town hall so I could establish residence, until monsters attacked (again) and somehow the population dropped from 20 down to 10 (I believe the monsters killed domiciles). I decided to take a break. When I tried again later, the population had gone way up but the town was filled. I played for another hour, but it quickly became monotonous.

When I saw this game over a year ago, I thought "This seems great. Really innovative, I can't wait to see what they do in the next year." I love the void aesthetic, the papercraft people, the communist overtones.

But it turns out the game is less like Minecraft or survival simulators and more like Animal Crossing. I think the "islands" will get boring quickly -- about half of them seem to be just assorted blobs in the sky. Progress is so slow -- you need 10 levels to increase your carrying bag by 1 slot -- which seems to be about 10 hours of game time.

My guess for this game is they are going to go free to play with it, but charge you real money for the "freeman" dollars. The Freeman equipment makes the game almost bearable, and they have been generous with it during the beta. Otherwise, everything takes too long.

I might be in the mood for a sort of co-operative game, but requirements for cooperation are too high. The poster above mentions a need for "Lantern holders", which is just ridiculous, but I also found it necessary because you carry so little. The "Oh it's too dark" mechanic is not fun. It's not interesting. It's just a hassle. Even if you make a bunch of lanterns making the island well lit, the island collapses and you lose all the resources you poured into it.

Resources also decay quickly so you also need to have dedicated runners, rather than just being able to mine a bunch, then run a bunch. But how do you coordinate or communicate this? Its the sort of problem that makes for a fun Kotaku article, but then ultimately kills the game. It might be easier to coordinate if you actually saw the other players, a la Journey, but you don't.

So in the end it's an exercise in frustration for me. It plays like a treadmill game where you absolutely NEED other players to help you power the treadmill, and they all need to be working in a coordinated manner... and even then you're liable to end up wasting an hour of progress when a monster attacks the town. I'm sure that some small fraction of players will form very strong, lasting communities, but if they charge anything for this game on release I'm probably going to avoid it.

A pretty disappointment but thank goodness for the beta.
 
P

Pepboy

Member
IbizaPocholo said:
How you can access to the licenses?I want to drive a car and the game tells me i need the license lv1 but i don't know how to gain it.

And the other licenses?

The game is awesome.
Click to expand...

You get licenses by talking to (certain) police/military officers enough times. They cost 500 freeman dollars each. You can get a military license to shoot weapons, a vehicle license to drive cars, and a tool license to use things like jackhammers.

A quick guide
  • This is a resource collection + defend the town game.
  • There are five main building resources:
    [*]Food -- can be gotten by picking up apples from apple trees. Shake apple trees to gather apples.​
    [*]Wood -- can be gotten by cutting down trees. To build trees you must plant "saplings" from the "workbench" (which costs food to produce). Once you plant a sapling, it takes about 3 minutes before it becomes full grown. Sometimes you will find trees in the mines.​
    [*]Black Stone -- can be gotten by mining black rocks in the mines.​
    [*]Gold Stone -- can be gotten by mining gold rocks in the mines.​
    [*]Green Stone -- can be gotten by killing enemies.​
  • There is a sixth "resource" -- little russian dolls that contain NPC players. The NPCs have basically no personalities, but a few of them have certain roles or will give you quests. Most of them stand around doing nothing, but a few will water trees. I'm not sure if that actually helps trees grow.
  • You basically have three options of things to do in the game. First, you can take a bus to an "island" (aka mine) and mine the black and gold stones or get dolls. Second, you can cart stuff the miners brought around -- either to the loading zone (near the mine) or from the loading zone into the goods categories. This is important because if no one does this, the goods will actually decay and miners will not be making any progress. Third, you can defend the town (or more likely antagonize monsters that results in buildings getting destroyed). I suppose a fourth action is to play mini games regarding town upkeep or expansion, e.g. you can run on a literal treadmill to generate power or play a different mini game in the 1% chance your town has enough resources to build a new building worth building.
  • In order to grow your town you must:
    [*]Build domiciles to let you turn Russian dolls into NPCs.​
    [*]Build a rejuvenator to turn Russian dolls into NPCs.​
    [*]Build a Town Hall to allow you to become a Resident.​
    [*]Be unbelievably lucky in your timing so you can actually become a Resident, as every town I've visited has full residence, so you need to be there RIGHT when the town hall is built or expands.​


Tips and Hints
  • Never use your jetpack continuously to get across the "void". It's not really faster than walking and it's wasteful. Instead, let yourself sink up to about your neck, then hit the gas. When your feet are above the void, it resets the "timer", so you can keep walking again.
  • If you want to mine quickly, just equip a rocket launcher and shoot a missle into the island. You will destroy the resources, but will get access much faster to the "tunnels" where most resources are held.
  • The russian dolls break when dropped from a large distance, but otherwise as a miner you should throw resources down to the floor to let runners take it back and forth.
  • Dropping resources in the "loading zone" will cause them to be loaded onto the bus automatically. But when they arrive at town they won't actually go to the stockpiles automatically (and will actually decay).
  • If you don't shoot at the monsters they often won't attack. But it doesn't matter because someone else in your town probably will. There are four basic monster types I've seen so far. Annoying mosquitos -- often a shotgun or a few swipes of a chainsaw is enough to kill. Bomb butterflies -- probably want to use a turret or rocket launcher. Spiders -- these are really destructive as they latch on to buildings and self-destruct. Giant "gorillas" -- these take a lot of hits. If you are the only one defending, don't bother wasting ammo at it. By my estimate, it takes over 300 hits to take them down. I believe there are several variants of these gorillas as your town levels up.

Anyways, if anyone reading this is curious, I'd recommend giving the game a try to satisfy your curiosity. Once it becomes clear how monotonous and one note the game is, you'll likely save yourself some money when the game is released.
 
J

jellies_two

Member
After playing for a few hours I had some pretty intense game related dreams which is unusual. It certainly has a strong cohesive mood.
But the monotonous sound of weapons firing endlessly and the confusing phasing in and out of players (why can't we see what everyone is doing within a certain radius at least to a decent maximum radius) made it somewhat lonely and made progress feel rather too dull.
There didn't seem much difference between night and day, I lost track of which residence was mine almost immediately after placing it and burned through the freeman dollars so fast it will be very annoying not to have much access to them in the final game I mean you need 200 just to buy one little bridge building gem. Then when you do build something a Godzilla walks through it and destroys it.
I did enjoy using the freeman jack hammer to build a huge path high in the sky, from the top of a thing, but then couldn't work out how to build the long way down to the town below. It was also easy to just fall off it and die.
 
IbizaPocholo

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
Pepboy said:
You get licenses by talking to (certain) police/military officers enough times. They cost 500 freeman dollars each. You can get a military license to shoot weapons, a vehicle license to drive cars, and a tool license to use things like jackhammers.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the tips!

And how is the way to improve the town hall to increase the human residents(house)?Is the building i have to put a lot of gold inside with a countdown of resources you need to reach the goal?
 
G-Bus

G-Bus

Banned
I find myself playing for a few hours, get bored and do something else only to come back a few hours later.

Part of me is saying this game isn't for you. Not enough to it and yet I keep coming back. Strangely addicting.

Very curious to see how much this beta represents the final game. Quite a few design choices I don't understand. Price point is another factor.

Hopefully we get some more details soonish.
 
F

FantasticMrFoxdie

Mumber
there's no lateen holder class.

there's actually a bunch of different equipment or clothes you can use that allows you to mine in the dark


I'm using the most expensive clothes u can buy from the apparel store and it seems like the bonus for wearing it allows you to be immune to darkness


edit: fucking lol. nvm. I'm not immune it's just not showing me my health bar
 
T

TheSpoiler

Member
Edit: By "class" I mean it as an example of the types of jobs a person can have. Having that perk mitigates it for you, but not for others, so it's nice to have someone bringing in lanterns and putting them in the right places.

I do hope communication gets better, because it'll definitely help dole that shit out and get people to understand the game better.

According to the developers, and if I remember this correctly, this is like a portion of the game. Supposedly, you work towards a goal and developing your town isn't the end all be all.

When you search towns, there's a list that says "events", so I'm guessing some shit is going to happen to mix things up.

Something has to happen for bigger towns, because eventually it'll just be a stacked town and no issues. Maybe riots? Or human like enemies? Ruining other people's towns by stealing a small portion of resources (only if they are a certain size or something)?
 
P

Pepboy

Member
IbizaPocholo said:
Thank you for the tips!

And how is the way to improve the town hall to increase the human residents(house)?Is the building i have to put a lot of gold inside with a countdown of resources you need to reach the goal?
Click to expand...

I'm not sure about improving the town hall -- I thought it was that you need to get more dolls ("population") to expand the hall, not residents. You need to expand the hall in order to unlock more resident locations, but you need NPCs to upgrade the hall. At least that was my impression.

Regarding the building you put gold inside, I believe you might be putting gold into a thermal generator. It's an alternate way to generate power instead of running on a treadmill... but I may be mistaken. I have only played on low and mid level towns so maybe your town has unlocked additional tech.
 
C

Cobaiye

Member
Seaking of upgrading the town hall, I think that's the main objective: upgraded town hall = more residents = more mandate = more buildings = the town grows.
 
J

jellies_two

Member
I didn't have to get any licenses to use the pile driver or shoot weapons etc is that something you don't need if you use freeman dollars?
 
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