Beta Poll Part A: First Impressions

[Justin]

I going to be asking a number of questions to you guys. Please only answer if you're in the beta and please only answer once.


This first question is about your first experience with interacting with the game and learning from the tutorial. This question refers to knowledge needed to play the game rather than details like unlocking ships or beating the boss. Keep in mind that we really WANTED you to learn through the act of playing rather than have every mechanic be laid out to you from the start.


Bonus points - What was something you wish you knew when you first started playing? (I'm looking for knowledge about how to play the game, but you're free to say whatever)

Thanks!

[tom90deg]

Personally, I think some piece of the tutorial that focuses on juggling power and pausing more often may be useful, as that's a big part of the game. Also, something that shows how the beam weapons work, as those are different from normal guns. A quick teleporter walkthrough may be useful as well, but that's just an idea.

[angelocire]

I agree about adding in the power-balancing and pausing bit to the tutorial.

I also think the tutorial could benefit by having either tips or dedicated sections on 3 or 4 of the most common strategies (i.e. anti-ship laser/missile weapons vs. anti-personnel [fire, bio] weapons vs. anti-ship drones vs. boarding vs. beams etc.).

Perhaps 3 different jump nodes from the initial node, each offering a different aspect of combat.

Bonus answer: I wish I knew about the teleporter's effectiveness, and also about volleying my weapons.

[reverend]

There's a tutorial?

The UI is so intuitive that I didn't feel it was needed after starting the game for the first time. (Always launch a game without looking at the manual, best way to judge UI design and usability - then read manual or view tutorials)

[Luringen]

After watching all the pre-beta gameplay videos about 20 times each, I pretty much knew how to play the game before the beta arrived and I could even play the tutorial. The rest I learned through doing (effectively repelling boarders, knowing what weapons to use, the awesomeness of teleporters...)

[gunnar_z]

I 'found' the tutorial after having played for a few rounds. I did clear up a lot of things I agree about the power distribution and pausing part, though.

[Gomisan]

I'll add a vote for pausing and also how weapons use power/distribution probbaly needs a bit. Maybe buying and selling and weapon order re-organisation.

[SVD997]

I would recommend a section about the Teleporter. Yes, it's a simple thing, once you figure it out, but it took a lot of playing around with just to figure out how it worked. Once I figured out how to send my guys over, I lost a ton of red shirts trying to figure out how to get them back. Maybe I'm just not very bright (which is a good possibility), but I would love to see something in the tutorial about the teleporter since it's a different type of system from the rest.

[mench]

I admit to not doing the tutorial recently, but I had no idea the crew and cargo/equip tabs were in the ship menu until a few plays in after I noticed I was getting weapons I couldn't fit... Be nice if these things were pointed to at least in the tutorial.

[timaeus]

I played through the tutorial in the Alpha at the beginning of the Kickstarter campaign, but really you learn everything you need pretty quickly through playing.

There are some tips that will show up in the start game screen that would probably be good to include in the tutorial though, since they're really not that obvious. Like how each shield bubble blocks a single point of beam damage. When I saw that tip come up after my 50th playthrough (or something on that order, anyway), my jaw dropped. Totally had not realized that from any of my playthroughs, had largely been ignoring beam weapons entirely because I thought they were completely useless with shields.