TL;DR: Good Job :)
Really enjoying the update so far. I'm on day 37.
My only other experience with VOTV was I think update 8.2 (and even then, I only made it to around day 7 or so. This was about a year ago I think? Maybe a little less?)
----------- Main Game Loop -----------
I like it! I don't remember the old game loop too well, but I'm finding this one to be very intuitive by comparison.
-Coordinates:
Finding coordinates is straight forward and easy to grasp. Ping all the signals, move the screen over to one, make a triangle around it with the three dishes and press enter. Easy, straight forward, good. The loooong cooldown of the ping/dish setup was annoying, but it incentivized me to upgrade the cooldown speed which I did, and found myself with much more time on my hands to do other things now that I wasn't spending so much time at the coordinates station.
-Downloads:
Good stuff. I don't remember it being much different from the old version, but again it is straight forward and easy to grasp. I never bought the upgrade that automatically syncs the polarity (right,left,linear) for the download table as finding the correct one only takes about 4 seconds to do it manually. Why waste the points to save 3 seconds?
I don't think it's explained very well how the satellite's integrity values affect the download speed, but I gathered that by running sd.calall every now and again made downloading faster.
-Playing:
Mostly straightforward and easy to grasp, but I wonder if its full of red herrings or am I just unlucky?
I have NO IDEA what the spectrogram/visualizer is used for from a practical standpoint. I understand that it visually displays audio waves, but I never found that to matter in any meaningful way. Maybe I just was never lucky enough to find an event/anomaly that would make it useful, but after 30 or 40 drives, tweaking the SARV knobs every which way for every drive and seeing nothing interesting or meaningful, I wonder what the point of it is? Other than that, it was simple to use for the main gameplay loop.
-Calculation Station:
Again, straight forward and easy to use. Plop in the drive, move it to the buffer, press start.
I bought the upgrade to automatically begin calculations again from level 0 to 3 to save time, and it was a worthy investment.
I'm not sure what maintenance exactly is required to keep calculation speeds high, but I just made it a point to keep as many servers active in the base (which I think are what's used for calculation speed) as I could, sd.calall often, and never let more than 3/4 satellites stay down at a time.
-Upgrades:
I recall in the older version, it was really difficult to understand what upgrades would do before you bought them.
It's much easier to understand what upgrades will do before purchasing thanks to the categorical tabs, but I think they could be renamed/explained even further as some things are a bit vague/ambiguous.
(What does Ping_Speed do? I understand Ping_Cooldown reduced the cooldown between pings, but making the pings faster? Aren't pings instantaneous as soon as you press enter/shift? Is this instead referring to the rate at which lines are drawn to form a triangle? I have no idea.)
(Detector_Strength vs Detector_Quality? I understand the quality upgrade makes the image sharper and leads to praise from the people I'm sending data to for 'clear images', but what does Strength do? Is it ALSO upgrading the quality in some way? Is it just making the download of the image faster like with Detector_update_frequency? I'm not sure, it's a little vague.)
(Radar History... I'm not sure what the usefulness of this is? You can see how long ago that events/anomalies were hanging around the map? What use is this if they're gone now? Why do I need to know more/less entities were here from 5 minutes ago?)
-Tape Logs:
Easy point income is welcome. Especially in the early game when nothing is upgraded, so there's always at least SOME points coming in that will keep you alive if nothing else.
-Server Maintenance/Minigames:
Hey! New minigames! Wow!
I loved the addition of more minigames. Doing the same basic math quiz over and over was boring and repetitive. Having many more is a welcome change.
My favorite minigame is the Password Guesser, though my biggest gripe is that there is much more "junk noise" characters than words, making visually scanning the entire thing a bit tiresome.
(Also the first time I saw the maze minigame, I fully expected a jumpscare like that one viral youtube video lol.)
Having a Chance_To_Fail rate on the sv.request action attached to the satellites that are not upgraded was a good incentive to make me want to upgrade them; on top of the bonus that upgraded satellites don't break down as often. Good change!
-CR towers and fuses:
Wow... Ok, this was a struggle. I had no idea why I couldn't use the coordinates table any longer. I made sure all servers were at 100%, all power breakers on - didn't realize there were three towers you had to maintain via a minigame. I don't think this information was communicated very well that the player needs to check the CR towers, what they do, and where they are. They're not marked on the map like the satellites and transformer stations, which I assumed displayed all the critical gameplay loop locations. I had to actually go and look up on the internet why I couldn't use the coordinates any more, and only then found out the existence of CR towers. Fuses also feel very expensive to craft in my opinion. I'm happy for what they do as I don't enjoy the CR minigame (I'm dumb and can't do those kinds of puzzles lol), but it took me a long time to discover I could make copper wire myself instead of buying it from the store, and its very resource expensive if you're crafting fuses. Buying fuses for 80c does not feel worth it at all.
-Transformers:
Good choice of minigames for the transformers! You only need to do ALL the minigames if a transformer goes down completely, so that's good incentive to visit them regularly and keep them topped off instead of letting them hit zero. Minigames themselves are easy to grasp and don't take too much time. They're also on the map/poster so you can plan your route when doing dailies that much more efficiently.
----Complaints----
Just to bullet point some complaints, some of which I've previously stated.
*Spectogram/Visualizer seems useless. I can't seem to find a reason to use it.
*CR tower importance does not feel well explained. I don't recall it being in the tutorial or having a note to notify me how crucial CR towers are, or where they are.
*Fuses seem too credit/resource expensive.
*Naming Errors! There are outdated notes that call objects by the wrong name! The note that mentions "Accumulators" needs to be changed to "Rechargeable Batteries" or vice versa.
--------------- Spoilers Warning Ahead -------------
-Events:
I've noticed a decrease in events from 8.2 that I would label as "Uncharacteristically Wacky", such as the car that spawns on you with the cognit hazard license plate, the walking cognit hazard man, the Sun That Melts Your Skin Off, etc.
I don't know if this was a decision to remove these events or if I just have been extremely lucky in avoiding them, but I consider this a good change! In their place, I've encountered more events that play on my imagination/interpretation which has lead me to spooking myself more than the game does, making me wonder about the mysteries, intrigue, story, and possibilities of what's going on. This is a much more enjoyable experience than "LOOK OUT A CAR!".
The Cognito hazard Man was pretty scary from what I remember, but maybe a bit too scary as I did not want to continue playing the game much more after that lol.
I really enjoy the big events with lots of polish and animation. Pyramid Guy and the group of giant spider robot things were fun to discover for the first time.
---
I enjoyed the tree house near Victor site. I like that I was able to venture in and even loot some useful gear and even the posters on the wall which now decorate my garage. I tried to open the crate outside, of course. It shocked me, so I decided to hook it up to the ATV and drive it home. When I tried though, an invisible person attacked me and took their crate back... And also their knife from the treehouse that I tried to stab them with lol. I also liked that the treehouse was locked out afterwards, making me feel like my actions had a tangible impact and now these nice campers were pissed off at Dr. Kel, the tinfoil hat wearing, breaking and entering thief who stole their super soaker water guns and posters.
The events in this update are very enjoyable! Most of them are scary/spooky, some are more of a tame 'let your imagination wonder', some even beneficial (surprisingly), and some are just kinda funny. Thank you, ATV washer bro o7.
I found myself not really wanting to explore the radar blips too often in the early game as I was far more focused on gathering enough money that I could upgrade things so I wouldn't spend ALL DAY just doing the game loop/Feeding myself. As I upgraded, I had more free time, and explored more. Though oftentimes exploring radar blips was a waste of time, as when I got there, the blip had disappeared/moved/simply wasn't visible to the naked eye. I'm only up to one video camera, and it hasn't been all that useful in catching things I wouldn't have otherwise normally seen. Video cameras are expensive, and I only vaguely know some hotspots the blips have been congregating.
-Random Notes: (Still Spoilers)
TURNING OFF SHADOWS LET ME PLAY THIS GAME!!! With shadows on, I get like 19 FPS in the base. Shadows off, I get 60. I wish this information was presented to the player in a much more 'in your face' kind of way, as it seems many people have this issue.
Took me way too long to find the hiking boots. At a glance, they just look like rubber trash, wasn't until day 17 or so that I moused over it and realized they were hiking boots. 17 days too late are better than never I suppose! I'm just glad that a 2 foot drop doesn't kill me any more.
One Cigarette causes permanent coughing? That seems way too punishing for wanting to smoke the one cigarette you find in the TR station. Yea, I fixed it with heavy meds (thanks google), but that's a steep point cost for smoking a single cig.
The Weeping Angel Mannequin was spooky at first, but now he's just annoying. I'm not scared anymore by the sound of a door opening behind me and the scrape of wood on concrete. I know exactly what made that sound, and I'm going to beat him to splinters for the 40th time again. This seems like an event that should end after the 3rd or 4th time, escalate into something worse, or removed entirely. It stopped being scary a long time ago, he's just an annoyance now.
Keycard bug! You probably know by now that the keycard is bugged. I used WinRar instead of 7zip so I don't know if that's the culprit, but I can not get into the secret base, nor do I have an old save to transfer a card via mailbox. I did peak inside in sandbox mode, would have been nice to open it the intended way, but I will not be building any helper robots this update. u.u
I googled where to find the note that explains how to build cooler frames. There wasn't much incentive for me to clear out the trash of the TR room other than to get the electronic scrap out. The note is also incorrect now, it says "Accumulators" instead of "Rechargeable Batteries" (Thanks google)
I've played enough now that I don't need to use the compass to find home base, but sv.target home/alpha/base do not work as implied via the note on the base's console stickynote.
I like the food fatigue mechanic! It makes sense Dr. Kel would get tired of eating the same 3 things for weeks and gives good reason to explore/search/buy some food. It's what made me bother to start farming potatoes. HOWEVER- It didn't incentivize me enough to give fishing a try. I found the fishing rod, but the amount of food/food variety I have is enough to make me not want to bother fishing. Fishing in video games is notoriously boring, while I don't know how fishing is handled in VOTV, I'm not really in any hurry to give it a try as MREs + potatoes and canned food are pretty sufficient. I'm sure there's an event/treasure related to fishing, but I don't feel that compelled to try it.
Sugar - the cookbook says 4 sugar cane makes a sugar bag. I've tried putting sugar cane on the workbench, on the cutting board, cutting with a knife, I can't seem to make sugar out of this sugar cane. The cookbook doesn't say what method to use, just that 4 sugar cane makes a bag of sugar. I don't know if this is a bug or if there's some mechanic I'm missing or what?...
Woodchipper - I thought the woodchipper would be a massive game changer. I could finally turn all these wood scraps into coal and fuel the ATV more reliably!... Unfortunately the hopper for the woodchipper is inconvenient/clunky, I wish it would act as an interactable inventory so I wouldn't have to feed it one piece at a time. And then I found the secret room that gave me 100 coal pieces, so I feel like I'm set for life now and the woodchipper was a waste of money.
The drone tower, after 37 days, has never had any issues. It's never gone down, the drone has come every day without fail, I've never climbed it to fix it as it's never broken down. I'm not sure if this is a bug? The health on the cw.check says 3, and its been at 3 for 37 days.
Speaking of the drone, I like that it acts as an alarm clock in the morning. It's a nice punishment for going to bed too late >:)
Insomnia demon dreams - Cool concept that solving the dream sequence will reward you with full stamina (and even full hunger?), but some of them seem too difficult/unsolvable. The dream where you just have to run around a room dodging shadowy figures is cool the first time, but the 2nd and 3rd you realize that it takes just as much time, if not longer, to dodge all the shadowy figures as it does to just wait out the sleep timer. It's kind of boring to run in a circle that long, so I'll just run into the figures and force me out of the dream so I can sleep normally.
The dream where the walls close in on you - I can't figure out how to solve it. I try interacting with all the interactables, knock the table over, clip out of bounds on accident by hugging a corner, I don't know if it can be solved or not.
Cleaning the base seems like a herculean task. After 37 days I've only cleaned the garage, the main lobby, and the hallway that connects the two. There's ALOT of junk, scrap, and trash all over the base. Alot of it is useful, but when you just want to clean for the sake of cleaning, you kind of have to pick between organizing all this VALUABLE AND USABLE CRAFTING MATERIAL, or chuck everything in the drone. I went with "Clean the garage and the windows in front of the main consoles, and everything else will remain dirty cause I can not spend valuable time sorting through all this junk into different storage containers that only sorts by 'most recent'". Also, I can't figure out how to efficiently remove the divider curtains that are in the base that you might see in a hospital. They can't be chopped up with a hacksaw, and they're too big to fit through the front door. I just stacked them against the wall (or thrown them into the garbage pile that is the cubicles in the main room of the base)
There are a couple of bugs to report, but I didn't use 7zip so I can't report bugs/know if WinRar is the issue... So I won't.
If you read this entire ramble, please enjoy a cookie.
EDIT: Just parroting something another forum post said: Most of my time has primarily been spent doing the main gameplay loop. I've had little time to go out and explore as doing so usually means not doing the main gameplay loop. Ie, not getting paid. You already make very little money in comparison to the cost of many things in the store, it's a very hard choice to make between making money or exploring the world, and you may not even find anything interesting while exploring! I spent a full day out of bounds scraping my face against the world border - I did eventually find the abandoned wooden walled village ruins, but I had 20 stamina by that point and had to hurry + fight off a living cheese wheel.