Feedback from a new player

Game Discussion Miscellaneous
1

Big fan of space sims and flight combat. Played this game for the past 2 days. Got some feedback for the devs about the new player experience.

 

 

Great graphics. Fun level design.

Part of the reason I tried this game was because it didn’t look like the crap most other F2P games are trying to shovel down your throat.

 

Combat is very smooth, and fairly interesting. Although could use some more variety in modules to really make this game shine and set it apart from the simple point and gun flight sims.

Add at least 5 more active modules. Here are some examples:

  • turn off target’s main turrets
  • turn off target’s missiles
  • transfer shield to target
  • reduce main weapon range of target
  • reduce fire rate of target
  • increase targeting time of target
  • reduce shield recharge rate of target

 

Things that need improvement:

 

More content!!!

 

In my 2 days of play, all I had at my disposal was the same PvE map over and over and over and over again. It got to the point where I could be at the enemy’s spawn before they even appeared. It’s like having only one quest in a traditional MMO to kill 10 boars, and that’s the only thing you can do until you reach a certain level, at which point you move to a new area, and repeat a different ONE quest. Mind-numbingly boring!

 

Saw only 2-3 different PvP zones & game types. So not much variety there.

 

If I’m going to be running the same 5 maps over and over and over again, I’m going to get bored really quickly.

 

Consolidate some of the different exp/rep/rank/tier/loyalty/synergy

 

I’m sure it’s easier for people once they’re into the game, but as a newbie I don’t understand why there are so many different experience bars that I am trying to fill. Why is everything split into so many categories? Am I earning experience or rep per mission? Where does this rep go? Into my ship? Into my rank with a faction? What the heck are these loyalty points from contracts? Do I have to grind those too? Why do I have to grind those? Will it give me more ships?

 

If you do any mission, it should provide one reward (in addition to items/money): experience. If your pilot rank goes up with a mission, put experience there. If your reputation with a faction goes up, put THE SAME experience there. Put the same experience into the ship’s experience bar. If you want faction rep to grow faster than pilot rank, put a multiplier on the faction rep. This would do a lot to answer the question of “How do I earn so and so? Am I earning it now? How much am I earning?” Show each little slider animating after the mission at the very least so I know what the heck is happening.

 

I still don’t understand loyalty. Is it used simply to gain access to more contracts? Why are there 6 different contract paths when there are only 3 factions? What is the difference between them? Besides their logo and name, it seems to be the same objectives. Slight varience on weapon type. What if I like lasors but want to do contracts for Jericho? I’m out of luck? I don’t like this system.

 

Some small change requests

 

Why am I getting passive modules as rewards in tier 1 if I cannot use them until tier 2 (as far as I know)?

 

How does my performance affect the rewards I get at the end of a mission? My kills, assists, efficiency, all seem to just be numbers for my own amusement. If they truly affect the outcome of the rewards show a simple “1300 efficiency * 10 = 13,000 credits earned!” At the moment I feel like I could just keep this game running on my 2nd monitor and move my mouse every now and again to get the same rewards as someone who single-handedly beat the whole mission.

 

I’m sure this has been said before, but I would either speed up the initial gain of ships, or simply make more ships available at the start. It feels kind of lame flying the same ship for so long without any upgrades. You can buy the best weapon & modules for tier 1 after a couple of games, but you have to play 20-30 games to reach tier 2 and get a new fighter. And this is for only ONE faction! I feel like making the beginning jump from tier 1 to tier 2 be faster would be a great benefit. The new players will try all of the factions and wont feel like they NEED to stick to one if they want to see a reward in the first few days (which is how I feel now). I wish I could try out the other factions and their ships, but I really don’t want to play tier 1 for an entire week, which means that the amount of ship content available to me is cut to 1/3 in reality.

 

Conclusion

 

Fun combat, but not enough content to get me hooked. Should have kept it in closed beta testing for a few months longer before opening it up to the public. As it stands, you lose players like me that have tried the game and left because it’s not yet finished. It’s very hard to get someone to try a game again after they’ve left with a poor first impression.

 

The combat engine is probably the best I’ve seen for an arcade flight sim though. If I were the company holder, I would sell the engine to someone interested in making a single player flight sim. Case in point, look at Star Citizen with over $8 million in crowd funding. There is DEFINITELY demand for these types of games, but they have to be good, otherwise they wont even compete with something that came out 5 years ago. If X3: Terran Conflict had combat and graphics as smooth as this game, I would never play anything else.

 

Cheers, and good luck on making this a success!

2

In my 2 days of play, all I had at my disposal was the same PvE map over and over and over and over again. It got to the point where I could be at the enemy’s spawn before they even appeared. It’s like having only one quest in a traditional MMO to kill 10 boars, and that’s the only thing you can do until you reach a certain level, at which point you move to a new area, and repeat a different ONE quest. Mind-numbingly boring!

Saw only 2-3 different PvP zones & game types. So not much variety there.

At Rank 1-3, you have access to 1 PvE scenario (‘Blackwood’ Shipyard). At Rank 4, you gain access to two more scenarios (Dreadnaught Sabotage and Processing Rig Raid). I’m unsure if there are any other scenarios that become available as you rank up, but I know that each of the three scenarios has varying levels of difficulty and reward that scale with you.

You also unlock additional PvP maps as you rank up. For example, I just hit Tier III yesterday and played on a map inside a field of ice asteroids that I had never seen before.

Why this is the case, I couldn’t really tell you. I would agree that all maps and scenarios should be available at Rank 1. It’s not like the later scenarios are “too complicated” for rookies or anything.

Consolidate some of the different exp/rep/rank/tier/loyalty/synergy

I’m sure it’s easier for people once they’re into the game, but as a newbie I don’t understand why there are so many different experience bars that I am trying to fill. Why is everything split into so many categories? Am I earning experience or rep per mission? Where does this rep go? Into my ship? Into my rank with a faction? What the heck are these loyalty points from contracts? Do I have to grind those too? Why do I have to grind those? Will it give me more ships?

For completing matches, you gain XP, Credits and Faction Rep. XP is used to level up your ships (Synergy), Credits are obviously used to buy new ships and equipment, and Faction Rep increases your Rank with whichever Faction you’re currently contracted to, which unlocks new ship tiers.

You also gain Loyalty for completing Contracts, which increases your Sub-Faction Rank.

Honestly, I really don’t see how everything could be consolidated without the whole thing becoming awfully mundane and even more grindy than it currently is. A great way to mitigate the feeling of grinding through levels is to have multiple experience bars. That way, there’s almost always something that you’re right on the verge of leveling up, which helps to motivate the player into launching “just one more mission”.

I still don’t understand loyalty. Is it used simply to gain access to more contracts? Why are there 6 different contract paths when there are only 3 factions? What is the difference between them? Besides their logo and name, it seems to be the same objectives. Slight varience on weapon type. What if I like lasors but want to do contracts for Jericho? I’m out of luck? I don’t like this system.

As I said, Loyalty increases your rank in your chosen sub-faction. Higher ranks in your sub-faction unlock the ability to buy powerful blue-quality Mk III items in the shop, which are on par with the Premium gold items only purchasable with Gold Standards. The differences between the sub-factions are which items get unlocked. You can tell which faction unlocks what at which rank by mousing over the faction icon on the selected item in the shop. The rule is that Ranks 1-3 are for Tier I items, Ranks 4-6 are for Tier II items, Ranks 7-9 are for Tier III items and Ranks 10-12 are for Tier IV items.

If you “like” lasers, there’s nothing stopping you from taking contracts for a Jericho faction. You might be asked to complete a contract that requires you to kill 3 enemies with a railgun depending on which sub-faction you choose, in which case you either skip that contract (it’s only worth 300 Loyalty anyway) or you simply buy a railgun and equip it for one match before going right back to your lasers. You’re not locked out of anything.

Besides, try some variety. You might find you actually like different weapons on different ships.

Why am I getting passive modules as rewards in tier 1 if I cannot use them until tier 2 (as far as I know)?

Why do you sometimes find a weapon at Lvl 52 in World of Warcraft that you can’t use until Lvl 58?

Generally, when running PvE scenarios at least, the purple “guaranteed green+” loot spot will only reward an item of the same tier as the scenario you’re running, so if you found a Tier II item there, it’s because you were running the Tier II scenario. The other random loot spots can seemingly reward any item from any tier. I’ve found several Tier III items while running Tier II scenarios. I just put them into storage if I think I’ll make use of them once I reach Tier III or I sell them for a nice credits bonus if I don’t, the same way I would save or sell an item in WoW that was beyond my current level.

EDIT: You actually can use passive modules in Tier I, but only on the Rank 3 “Mk II” ships. They have, I believe, one passive module slot but I’m not able to hop in game and check at the moment.

How does my performance affect the rewards I get at the end of a mission? My kills, assists, efficiency, all seem to just be numbers for my own amusement. If they truly affect the outcome of the rewards show a simple “1300 efficiency * 10 = 13,000 credits earned!” At the moment I feel like I could just keep this game running on my 2nd monitor and move my mouse every now and again to get the same rewards as someone who single-handedly beat the whole mission.

I agree with you on this one. Efficiency (Score) doesn’t seem to have any real impact on reward, or at least not a drastic difference. I get roughly the same reward running a PvE scenario with a score of 300 as I do running the same scenario with a score of 3000. There could stand to be some added transparency in what your score is affecting and to what degree.

I’m sure this has been said before, but I would either speed up the initial gain of ships, or simply make more ships available at the start. It feels kind of lame flying the same ship for so long without any upgrades. You can buy the best weapon & modules for tier 1 after a couple of games, but you have to play 20-30 games to reach tier 2 and get a new fighter. And this is for only ONE faction! I feel like making the beginning jump from tier 1 to tier 2 be faster would be a great benefit. The new players will try all of the factions and wont feel like they NEED to stick to one if they want to see a reward in the first few days (which is how I feel now). I wish I could try out the other factions and their ships, but I really don’t want to play tier 1 for an entire week, which means that the amount of ship content available to me is cut to 1/3 in reality.

It’s not just about unlocking new ships (and I would argue that the inter-rank ships are just as “new” as anything else, as they all have differing stats, bonuses and paint jobs). It’s about unlocking new modules and module slots, and easing the player into how best to outfit and use them.

You start at Rank 1 Tier I with 3 unique ships available to you (the starting ship for each Faction). Within a handful of games, you’ll go up to Rank 2 Tier I of your chosen Faction and gain access to 2 more unique ships (Interceptor and Frigate). By the time you’ve gotten those ships to max Synergy, you should be close to Rank 3 Tier I, which opens potentially 6 more “Mk II” reskinned versions of your existing ships with additional module slots and types to outfit and tweak. At least for me, well before I was finished maxing the Synergy on those ships, I had opened up Rank 4 Tier II ships.

In fact, generally speaking, I don’t think I reached a point where there wasn’t something to buy or level up while I gained Rank until I hit Rank 7 Tier III.

Keep in mind that you gain far more Faction Rep playing PvP than PvE, so if you’re doing PvE exclusively that might be why it seems to drag for you. Generally, I get about ~1250 Faction Rep running a PvP match and only about ~500 Faction Rep running PvE, the difference of course being that you get way more credits with less potential for upkeep cutting into your profits in PvE.