I just wanted to say that I've greatly enjoyed playing Ashore since I bought it, and it's probably given me the best value for gaming dollar spent in a long time. I know the game is still an Alpha, but I thought I'd bring up some critiques I have noted so far:
1) The bow, and arrow is seriously over-powered in that the rebel soldiers can't seem to detect you when you're lobbing arrows at them. And it's possible to stand off at long range, and just lob arrow after arrow at the rebel soldiers until you kill them all. Meanwhile, they don't seem to detect you, so you don't stand a risk of getting shot, and killed.
2) The way the stands right now, there really doesn't seem to be a use for short-range weapons like the pistol, submachine gun, and shotgun. The game map seems to favor long range weapons. I'm not sure how to address this, though. Maybe re-design the compounds, make them larger, so that short-range weapons can be useful? I dunno.
3) Respawn rates for resources (rocks, metals, trees) seems to be too high. There often isn't a need to really explore the map for resources; right now, you can just walk back, and forth along a stretch of land, and get all the resources you need.
4) It seems the only way to get the aluminum you need to craft the engine parts you need to get off the island is to raid the enemy compounds. However, each raid seems to only net about 50 units of aluminum. That's a lot of raids, given how much aluminum you need to craft all the engine components. I'm at this stage of the game right now, and at this point, it's getting a little bit repetitive, especially given how easily you can take out rebel soldiers with the bow, and arrow.
5) There doesn't seem to be much of a point in building a compound right now in the game. Maybe if there were enemy patrols that roamed the map, and attack you, thus requiring you to hole up in a compound of your own, and if predator animals were more numerous on the map, there'd be a need, but right now, in terms of gameplay, you don't really need much beyond somewhere to spawn, sleep, craft, and store stuff.
That's about it for now. For an Alpha, Ashore is really well along in terms of its development. I'm looking forward to seeing how the game evolves.
B
