Palworld, the game that has been popularized as ‘Pokemon with guns,’ quickly catapulted to the top of the Steam charts and smashed numerous records within a few weeks of launch. Despite being just an early-access game, Palworld quickly became one of my personal favorites and, more importantly, flawless in most aspects. However, do note that the operative words are ‘most aspects.’
After investing over a couple of weeks full of catching the 110+ Pals, building multiple bases (not so Pal-friendly), and defeating the tower bosses, I have noticed things that still seem far off for a game that has had my heart. These are some of the things I believe Palworld needs to improve quickly to keep the players engaged and coming back. What are they? Well, let’s talk about them below.
1. Refined Pal Capture Mechanics
If you have been roaming around and fighting Pals to capture them, you might have already gotten used to the mechanics. The game introduces us to multi-Pal Sphere launchers, upgrading capture chances through Lifmunk effigies, and more.
However, you might have noticed that Palworld places too high of an emphasis on randomness. A good example is how my friends kept making some Ultra Pal Spheres for the Alpha Pal bosses, and I was able to capture them using just a green Mega Sphere. Why work to craft the more high-level Pal Spheres, right?
Palworld can tackle this issue by making sure the randomness has a limit. If the Pal level and required Pal Sphere are bound, it will be more streamlined. This should also make the lazy players among you work harder to craft better Pal Spheres.
I wouldn’t mind if the chance of catching a Pal during their sleep or while they are stunned is also increased compared to what it is right now. Overall, this small change can make our capture efforts more fun and strategic than being stuck in an RNG pool.
2. Upgrade the Breeding System
As expected with a Pokemon-like game, you will end up breeding Pals to get different creatures. It is also an important mechanism of the game as several hard-to-capture Pals like Astegon, Jormuntide Ignis, and others can easily be bred using the breeding farm. However, when it comes to the actual system, it sadly still feels like a far cry from what it should be.
One of the biggest problems with Palworld right now is that breeding lacks depth in strategy and visual references. Even a player who spent more than weeks on a survival game should have a visual idea when they select Pals for breeding. This should be implemented in a breeding combination screen on the breeding farm.
Alongside visual references, the Pal breeding combinations should be more complex and strategic, as well as dependent on the parents. It should take their elements into account when the breeding is completed. This could make the breeding combinations more exciting and non-linear.
Palworld should also increase the passive inheritance chance when breeding pals with two different passive. This sort of unnecessary limitation makes breeding pointless if a player wants a Pal with better passive skills from the breeding farm. So, to get a proper breeding system in order, the above two changes will help.
3. Fix Pal AI and Boss Level Scaling
While the breeding could be improved, the Pals aren’t much better themselves. I personally found these creatures slacking off a lot. Yes, this includes all Pals in Palworld, not the ones with the slacker passive. But why is this happening?
The NPC AI that powers them seems to not work as intended in many situations. You might have already noticed your Pals getting stuck in a tree or river or just simply chilling outside your base while doing nothing. Well, nothing was still fine, but they literally would start crying about being hungry and depressed, even without doing anything!
As far as making the game better goes, I would love to see PocketPair fix the Pal AI before they introduce more Pals or Pal evolution concepts in the game. I would rather have ten sane Pals than a hundred running around confused about their existence.
Moreover, I hope to see some of my party Pals be more aggressive and take initiative in fights when I command them to be aggressive. I don’t just want them to stare at the opponent till I shoot them or just call them back.
This brings to light another issue that needs to be addressed regarding the Pal AI. Apart from base or party Pal behavior, a lot of times, the enemy alpha Pals or the tower bosses just casually die by your hands. They don’t pose enough of a challenge at times.
I mean, look, I do not mind killing AFK bosses while blasting some phonk music myself. However, I would love a challenge sometimes! In such a case, Palworld should equalize the level of other Pals in the world depending on how high a player’s level is. If this level scaling is there, I can go back and capture ten Lamballs at the 49 level to level up faster.
4. Improve and Add New Ways to Build
While we talk about all the Pals, boss levels, and breeding mechanics, let us not forget that Palworld is a survival game where building has an important role. Although the building mechanics are okay, they still don’t match up with other games such as Valheim or LEGO Fortnite in the same genre. The first limitation everyone will face in Palworld is the lack of materials.
Now, I know there will be more content coming in the future that might include new buildings and materials. However, this is something that should have been there from the start. In comparison, LEGO Fortnite is just a game mode and still has more building features, which is bonkers.
I would love it if there were a pre-build feature that would help players build some buildings from a template. This could make it easier for a lot of beginners.
The biggest problem, however, comes when you start building. Most buildings will limit you to build only if you have a foundation built beforehand. I am not saying let me build in the air like Minecraft. What I suggest is that at least have the ground, stones, trees, or any environmental objects act as a foundation or support.
This can solve the problem of awkward-looking foundations that we build in random places just to place some walls. In my case, I will be able to finally build a staircase without continuously thinking about putting a foundation for each stair. Is that really too much to ask for?
5. Quality of Life Improvements
The above changes will address some of the major qualms I have had with Palworld. However, there are a lot of other things that need to be touched up. These include UI changes, customizations, and some multiplayer issues. Thankfully, Palworld is constantly working on all the bugs and errors like EOS or other server issues.
However, even after frequent updates, the game crashes during boss fights and suffers through FPS drops more often than not. These are issues that frustrated me quite a lot and made me want to quit from time to time.
On top of the performance issues, the keybind customization is a huge problem in Palworld. The only way to find out about many secondary useful buttons, such as lifting pals to assign jobs to Pals or multi-building, do not appear in the keyboard settings.
There should also be a keybind customization option, which is something very basic actually. It will enable players to take better control of their adventure, pal assignments, fights, and more.
Finally, if I’m a part of a guild with a bunch of friends, we all should be allowed to see a universal map and Palbox with a ping system. We should be able to share not only the resources we gather but also the locations or fast travel points we unlock. Furthermore, this should include all the places and Pals unlocked by the guild members.
This will make the experience a lot better when playing together with friends on a Palworld server. Moreover, I would request the developers to make it such that each guild member can use a travel point already unlocked by someone else. While all these changes seem minor, they quickly rack up when you think about it.
These are some of the things I feel Palworld needs to improve right now. Of course, Palworld’s early access roadmap has told us that more quests and end-game content will come in the future. These will also include new biomes and islands in the game. So, these fixes and refinements will make the game more enjoyable, and fewer people will move on too quickly.
With the game losing more than 1.3 million players over the last week, it is time some changes are made to make Palworld feel a little fresh again. Do you agree with these ideas? Do you feel there are even more things you’ve noticed that need to be changed? Be sure to let us know in the comments down below!
