How can I make my game, "payload," more interesting?

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Hey all, I’ve been working on my solo passion project payload , an open-world action/racing game focused on car driving, co-op missions, and vehicle customization. It’s been public for a couple months now, but has failed to gain any traction and I’m struggling to get feedback on why.

Here’s a brief gameplay overview:

Missions

Missions are semi-randomized levels which can be played co-op with up to 4 people. Missions can either be completed in “Stealth” or “Loud” mode, with each pathway having unique sets of objectives. Objectives can involve puzzles, parkour, combat, etc.

There are currently 5 missions which are unlocked as you level up:

  • Common Trust Bank
  • Museum of Marino Vera
  • VMA Corporate
  • Vantage Building, Penthouse 1A
  • Armed Forces Distribution Center
Vehicles

Vehicles are the main currency sink in the game. All vehicles use a custom arcade driving chassis meant to give each vehicle unique driving characteristics and skill curves. Vehicle customization is a major gameplay element, as car customization in payload plays a MUCH larger role in determining vehicle performance and appearance than in most other games. The goal for this emphasis on customization was to try and make vehicles more interesting than a one-time purchase.

There are currently 11 vehicles in the game with a total of 722 configuration options. Cars can be used to compete in races against other players and against time benchmarks, although honestly I’ve spent a lot of time just drifting in freeroam.

Weapons

New guns, just like missions, are unlocked as you level up. There are currently 11 unique weapons. The weapons use a third-person camera by default, but can be switched to a first-person camera in the settings or by pressing V.

I ran a brief ad campaign when the game first went public, and ended up with an average playtime of 7 minutes, D1 retention of 16%, and D7 retention of 0%. Originally, I was hoping that having quests and a progression system would be enough to drive gameplay, but it seems like this isn’t the case. So, what part of the game do you think could be improved? Are there issues with the core concept, gameplay, visuals, or something else entirely?

All feedback is deeply appreciated! If you want to check out the game yourself, you can play it here:

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You need to change your thumbnails asap, rn you only had 500 visits wich won’t give you that detailed analytics on what to improve, you need to bring the ctr up in order to have better “test sponsors”

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And in terms of gameplay I can tell you without playing the game that you might have chosen a game too complex for roblox, Single player games and quest driven games in general won’t do all that well honestly. So if you wanna keep improving the project and try to turn it around all good but perhaps it might even be a good idea to take the gun systems / vehicle systems etc and put it into a new multiplayer project that is pvp with other players kind of like base battles or something and it could do much better

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Thanks so much for this feedback, the complexity is honestly exactly what I was worried about for the core gameplay loop. I’m not sure at this stage I’m willing to fundamentally change the game concept, so I’ll probably continue working on it as a solo passion project rather than an advertised game. I really appreciate your feedback!

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Game’s pretty good i’d say it needs to be more lively in the city with some ai cars/pedestrians that you can run over for fun.
Driving feels nice, needs some time to get used to (which MIGHT be the reason people dont want to play) but its good, i like the suspension. If you want to improve it i’d say make drifting more forgiving and less slippery and cars accelerate quicker (ik customization exists but still).

The weapons feel very nice, only nitpick i have is after stopping ADS’ing with the BN100 your camera kinda snaps for a moment.
I most enjoy using my current combo of the sniper rifle and DB shotgun.

Enemy ai is okay - it’s what i expected it to be although there was a moment where an enemy was kind of peeking at me from a corner constantly and shooting. It looked like a bug but it was cool and would be more cool if its intentional.

I dont know if you’ll add any kinds of grenades or if you even care much about the shooting part of the game but if you will then that would be good against camping players. Perhaps you could also add some riot shields for them that you could perhaps pick up after killing them.

If you’re going to implement higher difficulties it would be nice to randomize their stealth path and make them actively look around the area if you’re in loud instead of standing still if they lost sight of you for a long time.

bugs:
-glass doors arent breakable

-fix spamming A and D while idle in vehicle doing screeching tire sound

-for some reason after doing a race/mission or two, the money and exp i earned didnt get updated and i had to rejoin to see my current cash/exp

suggestions:
-add flinch animations for enemies when hit or near miss

-in the 1st heist it would be better to utilize crouching as a stealth mechanic, instead of the keycard being in an isolated room it would be nice if it would spawn at the front desk in front of the guard that stays still. You would crawl behind the desk to not get seen and take the keycard

-on loud you could make the intensity go up the longer you stay by spawning more enemies/different enemies/from different places (rappeling from ceiling etc.)

-make enemies come from the road by cars

-add a list of things you have in your “cart” in the auto garage cuz i got confused on it and a way to quickly remove items from your cart without having to manually go through all the options/re-entering the shop

-some places like ATM’s you can rob in freeroam, with enemies coming if you’re too slow. Maybe enemy convoys which carry money that you have to then take somewhere to cashout.

-add difficulty settings for heists (raise dmg,lower hp regen,make enemies faster and faster to react)

-add ai cars/pedestrians

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Fast travel and open-world don’t go together, in my opinion. I think it’d be more interesting if there were less loading screens, and instead more driving, exploring, and detail in the city. There’s not much reason to drive if you can teleport, and not much reason to admire and appreciate the environment you crafted if you can teleport. Aside from that, I think the UI would benefit with contrasting CTA buttons. Equip, buy, etc. buttons are not distinguished from item-selecting buttons, so it makes it inconvenient for the player to have to search the screen with every interface (and there are a lot of interfaces!).

I understand that you have made this by yourself, and I am most impressed given how advanced and neat the game is. Perhaps you should focus your attention on the exploration aspect of the game by adding more random events in the city, NPCs, decor, cars, whatever. Remove fast travel. Make missions something that you build up to, rather than the main time allocation. I think this will make the game more interesting as it’ll make cars more useful, players more social, and the city more lively, while also building natural hype and suspense for missions when they do occur.

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This feedback is fantastic and exactly what I need, thank you so much for playing! I’m especially glad that the driving mechanics worked out in the end.. balancing the cars to handle uniquely and be somewhat controllable took a lot of time lol

As for additional combat items like grenades, I am open to the idea (although, you are correct that PvP isn’t really a priority for me.. I wanted to make a more casual game). Originally, there were going to be three weapons categories in the weapons shop: Primary, Secondary, and Gear, with the last category being an assortment of unique items such as placeable turrets, grenades etc.. I ended up cutting that feature simply because of the time investment, but it might make a return in a future update.

Difficulty is something that will probably be added at some point, as soon as I determine the best way to implement it. I need to consider whether difficulty just changes enemy attributes, or whether it involves map changes as well. For example, I loved your idea about using crouching as a stealth mechanic on the first mission, but I feel that should be reserved for higher stealth difficulties.

I am working on the next major update now, which will focus on a revamped introduction sequence and UIs. I added a shopping cart GUI for the garage to my list of features, so that will be implemented. I’m currently in a phase where I’m deciding where to go with the project, so all suggestions, even if I didn’t specifically mention them, I am considering for future updates.

Thank you again for the rest of the feedback, it means a lot! It’s really neat to see the game being played, and players noticing things that I didn’t initially think would be noticed.

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Thank you for playing and for the feedback! Your comments were super interesting, since they definitely look at the game from a different perspective than I do.

Starting with the open-world aspect, I entirely understand your point. I admit that the open-world aspect could be made a lot more lively. In fact, the map could be a lot more varied and interesting, so at some point in the future I’ll likely revamp the entire map. For the initial release, I wanted to focus specifically on the core gameplay elements, like the missions and cars, so some other elements are definitely overdue for some attention.

Taking away fast travel was also an interesting suggestion to me! I decided to include fast travel because I wanted to be able to hop into the game, spawn a car, and get right into the action, without spending too much time. I think that this would definitely be something to consider once the open-world part of the game is more developed and interesting.

As for the UIs, I’m currently reworking them for the next update (which will definitely take a hot minute). Differentiating the buttons is a great suggestion that I hadn’t thought of, so that is definitely something that I’ll have to work on.

Thank you again for playing and for leaving feedback! It’s super important to me in this stage, and plays a huge role in where I decide to take the project next.

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when equipping a gun, my mouse sensitivity decreases heavily (for some reason???). i assume it’s because you designed the guns off of the Endorsed Roblox-made gun models from the Toolbox.
the stealth system is kind of wack… if the enemies fill up their vision bars, they immediately pull out a gun and start firing, not even giving the player the chance to rectify their mistake. (also every enemy looks the exact same). also despite firing a gun, stealth doesn’t break completely?
there’s this door called a guard entrance which is supposed to be a spawn point (i assume) but it has a prompt on it, which gave me the impression that i was supposed to enter it (i was not). also it doesn’t tell you how to drop bags, i assume i was supposed to go to my car, but entering it flinged me through the floor and killed me instantly.
driving doesn’t really feel… that fun? despite being called a driving game, and the thumbnails giving the impression of driving luxury cars, you’re forced to start off with a car that can’t accelerate up a mild incline.
the drag races are just holding W until you win. i feel like it would be more entertaining if you had to manually switch gears yourself, because pressing a button until you win, is in fact, pretty boring.
the other races aren’t really that better, cause there’s not really much at stake. you aren’t punished for taking turns too fast, or too slow, cause your car just automatically has grip no matter what.
the songs that play during them are pretty bland too.
also there’s not much benefit to it being called an open-world if you aren’t utilizing it properly. half of the buildings are just textures on a brick (including some of the main missions!) and the other half are just for cosmetics. i can’t enter or affect these buildings in any way. also despite being such a large city, there’s nobody in it..?
i apologize if i’m being too harsh in this post.

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I would just abandon this and start a new simple project, game’s way too complex, big and with really bad game design choices like being able to start the bank robbery with no weapons… or the teleport feature, thankfully you didn’t waste any money on advertising

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No worries! I made this post to get constructive criticism, which is exactly what you provided, so thank you.

I’ll be sure to make the objectives in the first mission less confusing. I included a prompt on the guard door intending to identify what it was, but as you pointed out that implies that it can/should be interacted with when it shouldn’t.

As for the driving, thank you for giving it enough time to try it in a few races. I was actually scared that the driving system was too punishing most of the time, so the initial cars are meant to have a bit more traction. That being said, I don’t want them to feel slow or boring, so I’ll have to give some thought to rebalancing them.

Again, thanks for playing, I’m happy to get any constructive feedback I can :slight_smile:

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