@Stacy555 - gonna just spitball a little here. Not disagreeing... just pondering...
I'm not a designer, but I know how incredible the graphics of new games can be, and I know there's a very lucrative & well-researched science that helps designers use graphics to pull players in and keep them there.
I totally agree with you - Fractured is NOT making best use of that research & maybe they should use some more! There's no 'halo flash' when I finish a tutorial goal to make me feel special. There's no 'twinkly' to tell me a plant is just what I'm looking for. It does feel dead when a person is used to getting so much stimulus & reinforcement from games.
I wonder whether that's purposeful? Going for an old-school feel, or a certain counter-industry-standard aesthetic? Impossible to say. I do know the devs are purposeful about making sure that Fractured is playable on pretty much any old potato, so maybe the low environmental stim is a function of keeping access as broad as poss? Just a hypothesis.
If that's the case, it's still not working bc my pc struggles with the game sometimes as it is - and I have no way of knowing whether that's my graphix card or a bandwidth issue, so....
tl:dr: I'm open to more twinkles & graphical joy if I can still get in the game.