Feedback on Spirits of the Rice Paddy

[KageKaze]

I posted some of my thoughts in the "About Spirits of the Rice Paddy" thread, but wanted to put an actual feedback thread so others could use it for suggestions. I'll quote what I put down below.

I have uploaded an alternate setup on the workshop [URL="http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=782275975"]HERE[/URL] with some possible changes.

Here's some of the things I did to make things more usable:

• Changed water, magic water, and rice trackers (currency) into the "chip" type so they can be stacked.
• Lowered the tilt on the Spirit Board to make it more usable (it probably could stand to be reduced further, but I had no easy way to really do it, so just did what I could with the time I had).
• Moved all of the resources to the center of the board so they can easily be reached by all players (they are just way to far away normally, but the setup did look nice)

My mod also automates the achievements by using a random zone, but it's probably something that could be easier done with scripting. Sadly, I just don't know anything about that to make it work right now. Here's my original post for anyone who missed it:

While I love the game itself (it's surprisingly compelling) I have major issues with the actual mod. I love the work the devs put into making the 3d rooms and making the table look interesting with the unique assets, this table feels like it was designed much more about aesthetics than it was for actual gameplay. The board used for putting your spirit cards on is pretty cool and it makes it easy to see spirits side by side, but it's so hard to actually use because it's FAR too steep. The assets you commonly use (walls, gates, weeds, fertilizer, etc) are too far away from any player to be useful without zooming in and out constantly, they should have been much more centralized. While I think it was this way in the physical game, the water tokens are really just too big to use without being far too fiddly on the game boards. In real life I imagine you could easily pick up the objects, but removing and adding water to a hex when you've got a plant, weeds, pests, etc is just a bit hard to do in a virtual space like TTS. If the water itself was only partial sized so you could just place it in the hex NEXT to everything, it might be more useful.

Other mods have some usability issues as well such as Scythe, but those are easily overcome by copying resources around the table with minor work. This one takes quite a bit of moving around to make it feel usable. Certainly I have some major issues with the mod, but the game itself was fun to play. Hopefully the TTS devs will take some of this to heart for either this or future DLC updates. In the meantime, I think I'm going to attempt to make my own changes and upload my own version to the workshop (which will still require the DLC of course).

Mod Preview:
782275975_preview_20161018183651_1.jpg

[KageKaze]

Okay I updated my mod because I realized a very important gameplay mechanic wasn't being met with the default DLC. There are only supposed to be 30 water tiles and some of them get removed if you have less than 4 players. I played a 3 player game (removing the 8 water tiles suggested) and itw as a VERY different experience. Going first wasn't always a good thing because there was no water in the supply (thus no water available after the rain).

I highly suggest making this default in the DLC (30 water, 7 magic water) as it greatly affects how going first and how some of the spirit cards work.

[Kimiko]

Thanks for the feedback. Here are the changes that were made in today's update:

• The Water Tokens custom bag is now a normal bag, not an Infinite one, and contains the correct limited number of Water Tokens for a legal game.
• Various pieces have been drawn from their bags to form piles beside the main board for the convenience of players when a game begins.
• Each player's starting Laborer, Gate, Wall and Rock Tokens have been added to their areas to reduce set-up time.
• The player-color-marked pieces set before each of the four Spirit-Card slopes at the back of the table have been moved forward to reduce interference with cards.
• The tray for the Rice Token-bags has been moved forward to be more convenient to reach.
• The bags for Laborer, Growth and Livestock Tokens, and for Achievement Tiles, have been moved forward to be more convenient to reach.
• The offering-bowl object containing the Water Tokens bag has been moved to the other side of the table for convenience.
• The reflective setting on the Round Marker piece has been altered slightly to make it appear more authentically wooden and less shiny.
• The scale of the Water Tokens has been reduced slightly to make them more manageable on the player-boards.