Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Zelnik on December 23, 2013, 03:07:06 PM
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I don't know exactly what you were thinking when it came to combat readiness... but it should be re-considered as a part of the game.
I just spent a half hour trying to work my way up through the game (oh yeah, you can't actually trade *** yet, so you have to fight). Combat readiness is a cool concept but guess what, it sucks the fun out of the game.
If you EVER take control away from the player, it's no fun. If I have to sit and watch a ship fly in a straight line again because "all my crew are out sipping tea somewhere", while a much smaller ship proceeds to break me in half (seriously, couldn't even activate shields). You have failed at the goal of the game (fun).
If this were a retail version, I would never buy it, and I would tell all my friends to avoid it.
Also, the sudden (stupid) dip in combat readiness after each fight is totally stupid, as are the results of 'low combat readiness'. Sudden weapon flare outs? engine failures? What the hell is the ship doing in between combats? Do my engineers simply take apart every weapon on the ship, and dump all the fuel out the back for no good reason?
To be frank, this game currently sucks. Alien:Colonial Marines is a better experience compared to this. I would rather play Zork without a keyboard and any super nintendo game without a controller then play another minute of this game until this is addressed.
If you wanted to add in things like this, you should have finished the rest of the game first, before finding new ways to screw over your players... because guess what, that's what this does. It has no effect on the AI, it's just there to keep us from powering to the biggest battleships.
Try harder in the future.
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Oh, look, it's this thread again...
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I hate to say it, but if threads like this are appearing a lot... it's not a good sign. It means people are not happy with a design.
If you want to take control AWAY from a player, go make a quicktime event game instead.
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All it means really is that this update was obviously too advanced for the majority of people to mentally grasp, but i believe there is an "ez modez" mod around somewhere that removes combat readiness, supplies, fuel, crew, everything and all ships cost 1 credit. the game suddenly became a lot more interesting didn't it?
Get a feeling i'm becoming a very depressing person nowadays.
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It could be argued that the CR forces the player to do just that: take control of the situation.
Some people expect an arcade shooter. This is not it. A lot of players enjoy some form of micro-management. I know I do.
It is true though that this is not a finished product. You said so yourself. There is no trade yet or other things to make up or provide an alternative for the 'punishing' combat.
In the famous words of the postman (or the Beetles, if you prefer): "Stuff's getting better. Getting better all the time!" :)
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No, it means the game is alpha. If you find CR to be that much of a flaw, go play missions instead until trading has been implemented - many of us were here when missions were all there were, and I, personally, found the game well worth my $10 even in that state.
Or play one of the mods that implements trading.
Or play one of the mods that gives you a stronger starting point so you don't have to deal with the initial frigate issues.
Or play one of the mods that makes CR a non-issue.
Or learn how to deal with CR - yes, yes, it's a fairly nasty learning curve right now, we know, but it's quite doable; on my most recent playthrough I literally didn't notice or care what my CR was at, because I'd adjusted my playstyle enough that it simply never came up - when in a single frigate, return to port every fight, repair, sell loot - and I upgrade from there directly to an Apogee, which is quite capable of handling multiple successive battles; the only gotcha is if you try to upgrade too early and can't afford the initial chunk of supplies needed to get your Apogee crewed and up to max CR and back over to where all the pirates are.
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Yeah, right now, there is just combat really, and by god is that combat good, the AI will actually, for once, kick your ass if you don't know what you are doing (the harsh part i guess), But at the same time, when you start out, you are probably not very good at the game, this applied to all of us, but we had to spend time in the missions and simulator to hone our skills, until we set sails into the campaign, id suggest doing that for some time until you feel confident that you can own the AI in every single ship on every map at any given time. =)
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The game's in alpha, some things are bound to be rough around the edges.
I strongly disagree though. I have no issues with CR, and like the direction it's going in.
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I dislike CR. Even though I play and bear it, I prefer the game without it.
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The game is incomplete people. What you have now is little more than a demonstration of what can be done, rather than a fully fleshed out game. This is why we have mods to make it more playable.
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Alpha status is no excuse for us not to express our displeasure if the game gets worse as a result of poorly executed new features. Mods should not be required to fix fundamental problems with the game.
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Actually, when a game is in alpha, mods should and can be expected to fix fundamental problems with the game. Not sure why you have some sort of beef with the idea that you can, given some rudimentary knowledge and access to OpenOffice, edit CR entirely out of the game, or play a mod that grants the player a steady drip of resources and stuff to do (Exerelin)
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Because I pay money to play a game that is supposed to be made by pros. The game being an alpha means it has a chance to be fixed and polished up by said pros before release. It does not mean I will not write unfavorable things about the game if I find things I dislike. 0.6 is a mixed bag. It fixed a fatal memory leak bug that killed 0.54, and adds nice new features, such as hyperspace and invulnerable fighters. On the other hand, CR and boarding are terrible fun-killers as they are.
It is the same reason why people at tabletop forums invoke various fallacies. For example, just because the DM can fix the rules does not mean the game is not broken.
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The problem is that CR isn't meant to be just "fun". CR's a necessary mechanic that arguably came out earlier than it should because the alternative is to have a complete dearth of content while the devs work on hard-to-get-right mechanics that tie the campaign and combat layers together. The game sort of has mechanics right now that get a pass because we have faith in the idea that Alex has a plan for them to fit into a bigger picture down the road. In the meantime, treat it as a challenge, mod to your tastes, etc.
Personally I think CR is pretty fun because it lets me conserve supplies if I take down superior enemy forces with weak task forces, directly rewarding me with the freedom that spending less money on supplies affords. It also doesnt take a lot of imagination to figure out why CR could be awesome down the road, why cap ships will have a role and not just be supply sinks, etc etc etc
Rather than whining about CR, you should be peeved that it got developed before industry and procedural sector generation, faction politics, economy etc did :P because with that, and no CR, combat would be an utter faceroll
0.6 was necessary for the game, but it would never have been labelled a content update in anything but a public alpha.
Also, merry xmas, can't goddamn sleep because of the storm outside. :-\
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The problem is that CR isn't meant to be fun.
That is a problem. The point of a game is to be fun. The game was fine without CR. Fleets and combat in 0.54 were more fun for me than in 0.6, until the memory bug caught up and killed the game.
Since the game is in alpha, I will reserve final judgment until it is officially finished. Maybe CR will be less onerous in an update, but maybe not. Either way, I will write against CR, or other badly executed feature, if it kills fun for me.
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I apoligise in advance for what may be an incoherent half-rant.
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Fun come in all shapes and sizes. In my opinion, the fun of Starsector is in the challenge. Not all games are easy, and StarSector is in an odd place, for some being extremely difficult and for others posing very little challenge at all.
You can look at many successful and brilliant games and point out features that may not necessarily be called fun - for instance, almost game that involves expenditure. In the end, CR is a cost that may be paid for with supplies or credits. No one likes to pay.
CR is no different to a stamina bar, health bar or hunger bar. The only real difference is in how we feed it and how we look at it.
Hunger bar gets too low? You die.
Health bar gets too low? You die.
CR gets too low? You'll probably scrape through.
I believe that as it stands, CR provides at least temporarily a barrier to strive against. And striving to survive, is very much in the spirit of StarSector. This is dystopia, after all.
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And now I shall sleep, as perhaps I should have done before posting this.
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the implementation of CR has been controversial indeed....
I suppose I'm by far the minority here, but I think the current implementation of CR is way too easy for my liking
I do agree with this though:
If you wanted to add in things like this, you should have finished the rest of the game first
the CR currently is like adding survival elements when the only way to get food is raiding the lairs of sabretooth tigers. Maybe addition of trading and contracts to some extent before CR would've been a good idea
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I like the idea of CR, without it you could deploy your whole fleet for every engagement with no consequence. I feel having to gauge your opponent and pick the appropriate number of ships to deal with them adds to the game.
Of course, I wouldn't disagree with an option to either turn it off or adjust how much CR deployment costs as a difficulty setting.
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Although at first I disliked CR because it left me with little to no options. I had to constantly seek battle in order to provide supplies, which cost more supplies, leading to a circle of frustration. Finally I realized that my old play style of "get as many ships as possible with as many crew you can hold and do battle as often as possible" was just plain wrong. You need to slim down your forces to essentials, use tactics, and just plain think about your situation. In the end I found it to be a large improvement to the game to meet the goal of a tactical space combat game and less of a mindless romp around space in an overpowered fleet.
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You need to slim down your forces to essentials, use tactics, and just plain think about your situation. In the end I found it to be a large improvement to the game to meet the goal of a tactical space combat game and less of a mindless romp around space in an overpowered fleet.
This is exactly why I love CR. It rewards smart play and punishes steamrolling over everything. You can't just hit the deploy all button any more and I heartily approve of that.
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I feel that it's a question of adaptability. If you have adapted your playstyle to this content (which has been around for a while, now, to be frank) then you're good to go. I joined this community right after CR was implemented, and I sucked. REALLY sucked. I couldn't do anything, because I wasn't wise to the complexities of the game. I figured that campaign wasn't for me. So I tried missions and mods (all perfectly legitimate ways to play games - look at titles like LOL and DOTA. They evolved from mods of World of Warcraft, and missions are an integral part of the game) until I felt ready to dive back into vanilla. It was a step up from exerelin, now that I wasn't able to mine supplies and therefore forget about CR, but it wasn't as steep a learning curve, as I had already mastered (ha ha, yeah right) the combat and running away mechanics. People who complain about CR have a good point - that it's a very steep learning curve. However, there are perfectly legitimate ways to get around it and still have boatloads of fun. It's a challenge, but a surmountable one, and that will always give me more satisfaction than rolling round as a god of war (I'm looking at you, COD and BF4).
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I never played a version of this game without CR and possibly because of that I don't see what everyone's so unhappy about. It seems fine to me...
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Certainly not everyone is unhappy about CR: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=7194.0
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Problems I have with CR:
- Battleships (and some cruisers) are often impractical. They are slow, eat lots of Logistics, need a hideous amount of supplies to recover CR, and recover CR slowly without stations. Frigate or destroyer swarms are usually most effective. If enemy fleet is too powerful for AI to handle, send a ship one at a time and pilot each one yourself (and show why speed, range, and kiting are king in this game regardless of ship size).
- Player needs lots of ships to mitigate CR. After one or two battles, ships are too winded to continue, and player must either switch to another ship or run back to home for repairs. Replacement ships bigger than frigates requires Leadership/Fleet Logistics. Right now, a fleet is best used as extra flagship lives or pack mules, not as fellow comrades-in-arms in battle that are too dumb to live.
- Player needs freighters to carry the loot salvaged after defeating one fleet as big or bigger than the player's, without exceeding capacity. Then a third of the supplies looted will be consumed to fix your ships. 10 Logistics needs to be set aside for freighters and four Oxen (because freighters are slow). Oxen used for freighter(s) means the player has one left to speed up any other cruiser or battleship he may have. Freighters should be used for trading or supply runs, not an obligatory bag of holding for basic functions.
I like the idea of CR, without it you could deploy your whole fleet for every engagement with no consequence.
This is one thing I dislike about the game now, as I am now forced to get Leadership/Fleet Logistics to get backup ships. Even without backup, I still need Leadership/Fleet Logistics 3 for one battleship (or a squad of frigates) and pack mules to carry all the loot from large fleet battles.
"get as many ships as possible with as many crew you can hold and do battle as often as possible" was just plain wrong.
And that is a shame. It should be a viable playstyle like it used to be.
and that will always give me more satisfaction than rolling round as a god of war
I have the most fun rolling around as "a god of war". After I struggle and claw my way out of low level weakness, I want to step on everyone as a high level demigod, even on other high level demigods.
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Accusing people of not having mental prowess to grasp a mechanic is rather insulting. I get the mechanic and understand why it's there.
I don't understand why the devs made it a priority (it's not at this stage), they should have focused on bug fixing, universe building, economy , missions, and adding more ships.
I don't understand who would ever believe taking control of the ship away from the player is a good idea. IF YOU WANT TO LOSE CONTROL, PLAY DRAGON'S LAIR
I don't understand why, for some mysterious reason, if you leave combat with a perfect victory and zero losses, your CR drops like a stone, and somehow your weapons and engines simply stop working.
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It is not a priority. It is a crucial part of (future) gameplay. The pieces are laid one by one and will fit together nicely, eventually. You can not blame developers for intoducing and testing out gameplay features in an alpha build. Even if a feature may seem out of place now, it may work nicely when more / new gameplay features are introduced. If it didn't work like this, we wouldn't receive any updates at all.
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IF YOU WANT TO LOSE CONTROL, PLAY DRAGON'S LAIR
Dragon's Lair was fun when it first came out in arcades (before operators cranked difficulty to unfair levels years later). Probably because it was unique at the time. Certainly a break from various video games and pinball machines. Space Ace, not so much.
Of course, I understand your point, I think. You hopefully input the correct move at the correct time. You do, you live. If not, you die embarrassingly and/or humorously. Either way, you enjoy the show as a spectator, briefly. Like Shadowgate or Zork, once you solve the game, there is little left to do other than find the many embarrassing ways to die.
In case of Starsector, you watch in horror as the enemy picks off your crippled non-combat ready ships one-by-one.
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Alex has allready said he will tone down cr cost for deployment. After that, i think it will be fine... I dont recall this game ever trying to be an arcade shooter.
Its still easy as hell tho, maybe for once, use your head?
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CR values are being tweaked for the next release: half the deployment costs (roughly), half the recoup rates. Should iron out a lot of things.
I'm surprised more people don't complain about the "slow fleet after successful escape" bug now THATS a kick to the nuts.
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I'm surprised more people don't complain about the "slow fleet after successful escape" bug now THATS a kick to the nuts.
I feel like a lot of people never actually attempt the retreat option. There are only a few on this forum that enjoy the pre-"whoop everything's ass" section of the game, so the retreat isn't a necessary option.
Personally, that bug is probably the most annoying one I've ever run in to in this game, and I cannot believe that it wasn't fixed quicker.
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I never felt that CR had any huge negative impact (or hardly at all) to my playing style since I'm not the guy to wants every ship or lead huge battlefleet. I usually roleplay on my own in this scarce quest/mission sector together with ghost officers and their ships. I've had great experiences due to the CR implementation, which further added some depth to my imagination. I have ghost friends -.-"
For entertainment I usually go max Combat route first, since when you get larger fleet, opponents usually flees which was a tedious chore to chase after, in my opinion. And I like to set artificial difficulty to myself. Never found starting campaign difficult at all.
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Had some minor trouble with CR when it was first implemented - my fault for playing the game like before. Took some time to read the tool tips, experimented a bit and no more problems.
Frankly, I think CR is a great addition to prevent players from steam rolling everything by mid-game but it does need to present this new concept in a way that's more easily understood for casual players who just want to go pew pew (may I recommend SPAZ for those that don't like reading manuals?).
In any case, it is quite easy to win battle, earn money/ship and keep CR around 80%, and I have a hard time understanding why some people complain about the difficulty. Of course the game will be hard if you don't learn the more intricate rules and just try to play it like a mobile game.
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Because CR punishes some play-styles and fleet or skill choices and builds (that were fun and viable in previous versions) and forces other play-styles and choices some may not like just to be effective. (e.g., must have some Fleet Logistics by level 30 or forget it.) Just because someone can survive a game with CR does not mean he has to like it, especially if his favorite play-style before v0.6 was ruined in v0.6. Since the game is an alpha, this is precisely the time to voice our concerns so that Alex can either rip CR out (yeah, right!) or fix it so that CR is less troublesome... before the game is finished.
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All of Megas' points are true in respect to CR and fun. I think people forget that how people enjoy a game differs.
There seems to be a lot of pious defence of CR, and excusing the current state of the build on the people buying it, that people should go download a mod for the game.
Really @Valkyrial?
All it means really is that this update was obviously too advanced for the majority of people to mentally grasp
That's just demeaning to the community and insulting to the people who purchased the product. If people don't understand the game mechanics then they haven't been educated or had it communicated properly - and THAT is the fault of the developer.
If you're selling a product to an end user that is incomplete, you are still obliged to inform them of it's operation of what is and is not working, and how to properly operate it. What do you get when you buy it?
"Please note that Starsector is a work in progress. The current alpha version is available for download now, and we’ll be releasing new versions as we add new features."
But this is not properly communicating to the consumer what exactly they're getting and what the current state of the game is as it changes every few months. There also needs to be acknowledgements that it is not balanced, and that they're feedback on what needs balancing is important.
Better yet, knowing it's not balanced from the start and that there is no economy yet - give them more money to start off with, give them a constant supply of cash for a couple of in game months. Have different difficulty levels with different cash flows or starting amounts.
There also needs to be a better communication with the gamer upon getting into the game, starting with tutorials, have build announcements and affected game play information. Giving someone a half baked build without explanation is just setting up the customer for disappointment.
There should also be a 'Kerbal Space Port' type website as well, and a link within the game menu that opens up the web browser to a fairly polished website showing the mods available to freely download and enhance the game.
And after the person has exited Star Sector at the very least there should be a form that pops up that asks if they'd like to leave feedback addressing the various aspects of the game that are complete, and to upload the savegame data (vanilla games only). This allows Alex to gather both human feedback as well as specific data analysis of player usage and be able to make comparison. There has no doubt been thousands of man hours of gameplay cumulatively put into this game by everyone, and none of the usage data has been analysed to determine how to best balance the game.
The point is, even as an alpha product it is presented in an unprofessional manner. Users are not emailed when new builds are available and without Google they'll have trouble finding the Starsector wiki.
On another tangent and most worryingly there is no official completion date or milestones, if I was a stakeholder for a commercial project with no scheduled milestones or completion date I'd pull my support and funding straight away. No commercial project starts without milestones or completion dates - it just doesn't happen.
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All that said... it's really time-consuming to build, collect and analyze that kind of data, and a lot of it will tell you the obvious or lead to bad conclusions.
You can build data-analysis tools that give out ELO for a given ship design, for example, but it's pretty worthless if the real reason it's "OP" is because it's a fan favorite because of how it looks and gets more play-time dedicated to it, rather than how balanced it actually is.
Like, for example, the Enforcer, which is one of the best ships in the Vanilla game (imho) vs. the Hammerhead. I suspect that a lot more newbies gravitate to the Hammerhead, simply because of the iconic design, vs. the ugly look of the Enforcer. So Hammerhead ELO (when averaged across all players, all player-times) is probably superior.
The above trend is probably especially pernicious during the early stages of development, because a lot of planned things that will influence final balance don't exist yet.
TBH, I think it's worth a lot more to the developer to spend more time interacting with the customers. I get much more worried when I see Indie developers get into their shells and quit paying attention to feedback than I do if their front-end website isn't fancy enough :)
On the release dates / milestones issues, I don't really have any complaints. Most of the stuff that takes a long time takes a long time for obvious reasons (building major framework stuff is not fast, getting it polished enough to present is even less fast, and there is only one coder on this thing).
If this was a project with a 2-4 coder team, that's a little different. I've often wondered if this wouldn't go a bit smoother with a second coder on the team, tasked with polishing areas where the fundamental design is done so that Alex can do the big initiatives and not have to keep returning to areas where time allocation says, "no" but feedback says, "yes".
But that's something that largely comes down to money, and there isn't tons of it to throw around. Alex isn't starving to death or looking over cardboard boxes for their insulating properties, but I'm sure he's having months where he wonders whether he can fix his car.
That said, I'm quite sure that taking the title to Steam Greenlight or Kickstarter, or both, would address that pretty easily; the game's gotten this far and has pretty solid fundamentals based largely on word-of-mouth, and a major update will put the game back into the limelight in terms of getting some free press. The money's there, in short. Alex doesn't want to do that, and that's a business decision; I'm sure there are good reasons for that, starting with over-exposing a game a little too early and risking negative feedback trauma.
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All that said... it's really time-consuming to build, collect and analyze that kind of data, and a lot of it will tell you the obvious or lead to bad conclusions.
Or it could lead to valuable insight into player trends, player progress, fleet composition, over utilised and under utilised features or ships.
...The above trend is probably especially pernicious during the early stages of development, because a lot of planned things that will influence final balance don't exist yet...
By looking at trends you can then influence the desired final game balance.
TBH, I think it's worth a lot more to the developer to spend more time interacting with the customers. I get much more worried when I see Indie developers get into their shells and quit paying attention to feedback than I do if their front-end website isn't fancy enough :)
Customers don't always know what they want, interacting with them doesn't always give you the right information and sometimes they outright lie for some other reason or benefit. The information collected from the customer needs to be backed up by facts that can be collected from actual product usage. If you only listen to a small number of customers who yell loud enough, you can miss out on addressing the large number of silent customers.
On the release dates / milestones issues, I don't really have any complaints. Most of the stuff that takes a long time takes a long time for obvious reasons (building major framework stuff is not fast, getting it polished enough to present is even less fast, and there is only one coder on this thing).
Building major framework is not fast. Giving players the right information at the right time to best understand the game and get the best out of what is currently in the build should be much easier. How difficult is it to script a text pop-up? A tutorial or two? Educating users is the key to gaining customer acceptance as well as managing their expectations.
That said, I'm quite sure that taking the title to Steam Greenlight or Kickstarter, or both, would address that pretty easily; the game's gotten this far and has pretty solid fundamentals based largely on word-of-mouth, and a major update will put the game back into the limelight in terms of getting some free press. The money's there, in short. Alex doesn't want to do that, and that's a business decision; I'm sure there are good reasons for that, starting with over-exposing a game a little too early and risking negative feedback trauma.
Negative feedback trauma can be handled by setting their expectations and actively involving them in providing feedback. If you set no expectations, or high expectations with fancy graphics and videos they will be let down. If you actively seek feedback on exit or on game crashes, then it acknowledges their feedback and reminds them the product is still undergoing work. If milestones were set Alex could have a in-game information display informing the user when the next release is to be available, and alert them if a new one is available for download with a direct link.
Managing client expectations can be tricky, these methods won't work on everyone, but enough that the game can be consumed by players on a larger scale leading to greater income and hopefully faster development of the game.
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I am glad to see that this thread produced good conversation and not a flame war.
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Debido, a lot of these suggestions are coming from a culture that is probably predominant in software companies.... but very against indie game design philosophy. Indie games are designed more like art than software. The focus is on the game, not the customer, which is what the customer wants anyway. That doesn't mean there can't be a tutorial or anything in the final version - there should be, because that would make the best game. It does mean that in this alpha stage, Alex is not going to babysit us. Instead he will work on major features. It also means that, while he should and does take advice from us as his alpha testers, we are not "always right" as companies like to call their customers. He is the game designer here and his vision and expertise are what have made this game what it is so far.
I am not saying this is inherently a better way to make games - just that you should be aware of this. This mindset has made some really great games, and also some failed projects. But many people here, including me, prefer it this way and have a hard time seeing it any other way. It's a little like you are speaking a different language, actually. :P
Oh, and as for the balance thing - balance is not as important in a singleplayer game. Nothing is blatantly overpowered in this game except for the player. A little variation is actually good - there is variation in the real world, and that makes it interesting. For example, the enforcer should be one of the best destroyers to have in a fight - according to lore, it was designed expressly for it, and it has stood the test of time. But if it was weaker, it would just be a cheap old rust bucket with a lot of heavier weapons - which is still interesting. It's not that the game shouldn't be balanced - it's just that putting as much effort into balancing this as is put into balancing a multiplayer game is unnecessary. People use ships for their character as often as for their ability.
As for CR, it was probably a bad campaign mechanic to implement early. It's not necessarily done badly, it's just a punishing mechanic. While it is good as part of the big picture, it just feels bad with the game as it is because we don't have the rest of the picture. It is not a good idea to crack down too hard on it now, in my opinion.
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There is two ways to go about this.
1. Make something everyone likes.
2. Make something a few like alot, while the rest not as much.
I think the choice has allready been made.
Also on the note of there should be this, there should be that....
Please know that "Fractal Softworks" is nothing like "Activision", resources are limited.
Know that if there is a feedback function in the game, we get less ships. There is a reply to every post, we get less features. That is a fact.
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Most successful businesses know not all feedback are valuable. Heck, the majority of feedback are counter productive from people who just want more of the same and have no idea what elements makes an enjoyable game. A game that caters to the majority's whim will certainly be easy, bland and mediocre.
I hope the devs stick with their vision of a semi-complex logistic system to limit certain 'play style'. The pre-CR game was wayyyy too easy to build up a fleet quickly and steam roll everything (it still is btw). The AAAs are forced to cater to the masses to turn a profit but a small indie does have the option of trying to create something new/unique - who knows, Starfarer might even become a classic rather than becoming just another run of the mill tablet game where winning comes easy and reward weights as feathers.
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Indie games are designed more like art than software.
How you design something doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how you going through the process of creating it, but if you're trying to make out that indie games have some sort of intrinsic intangible value by placing the words 'indie games' and 'art' in the same sentence then I'd suggest you play more AAA games as they're not all generic. Certainly for every "World of Warcraft" there is a "Skyrim", every "Flashpoint Red Dragon" there is a "Spec Ops: The Line". There are many soulless indie derivatives running around on PC's, tablets and iPhones every day as much as there are AAA steaming piles like "Thor: God of Thunder".
That doesn't mean there can't be a tutorial or anything in the final version - there should be, because that would make the best game. It does mean that in this alpha stage, Alex is not going to babysit us.
Yes he does. He is selling a product and he needs to give them the proper information on it. Not toss sell the game and say 'Go figure it out for yourself, the information is out there somewhere' (figuratively, never literally spoken). You may want to argue that people shouldn't need to be spoon fed, but a lot of people don't have the time to figure things out or go find the documentation or blogs. The best way to make someone dislike your software is to not properly inform them of how to use it. Period.
Instead he will work on major features.
That's fine, just needs to keep people informed more effectively of the changes he's making.
I am not saying this is inherently a better way to make games - just that you should be aware of this. This mindset has made some really great games, and also some failed projects. But many people here, including me, prefer it this way and have a hard time seeing it any other way.
Structured processes don't fail, people do. Structure helps to reduce the risk of human failure. Human's are inherently faulty, just look at the Nocebo effect.
Oh, and as for the balance thing - balance is not as important in a singleplayer game.
Balance determines time spent in a game and time between 'achievements' that give people some artificial sense of achieving something. Different people have different levels of ability and amount of time available to spend on a game to 'achieve' and be satisfied by that achievement. Catering to different people means modifying variables within the game to increase or decrease the 'difficulty' that determines how frequently they 'achieve' or achieve the final goal of the game. If the majority of people buying the game are not satisfied within the amount of time spent playing with a game that has a fixed 'difficulty/achievement' curve, then less people will be happy with the game, there will be less buyers, Alex won't receive as much profit share and the future of Fractal Softworks as a business entity is in doubt.
As for CR, it was probably a bad campaign mechanic to implement early. It's not necessarily done badly, it's just a punishing mechanic. While it is good as part of the big picture, it just feels bad with the game as it is because we don't have the rest of the picture.
Again my point on properly informing the customer, the customer has to go look for 'the big picture', they get punished and they don't know why. CR is great and is doing exactly what it's meant to be doing, and I imagine that Industry is going to be help reduce that negative effect on the player when it's implemented. If Alex had put in information in the game like 'I've put in CR which will force you to reduce the size of your fleets, this will be eased later by Industry when it's implemented. Until then, see how big you can make your fleet!'. Now CR becomes a challenge and it would be important to gather information on when players are struggling to grow there fleet due to CR, how many fleet points? What is the fleet composition? How successful is it in combat? By having this information you can implement Industry and determine how many supplies it will give the player to *** the effect of CR and supply usage etc. for example.
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All I know is I've stopped playing this game since the first CR version. It isn't really a difficulty issue with me, either --- I'm fine playing dwarf fortress or nethack or any number of games that I've never succeeded at, because I actually enjoy playing them, even as I play them badly. And I still check out the blog for this game and the forum occasionally to see if the devs have changed the game into something I want to play.
But I play Starfarer for the combat, and the game just isn't fun to me with CR. Similarly, I used to recommend this game to people on other forums, and I don't really do that anymore, because I can't recommend that others play a game that I don't enjoy. In fact, CR makes it feel like the game is punishing me for trying to have fun.
Not saying that it won't be fun in the future. Nor am I demanding that the devs do what I want. They can do whatever they want, as far as I'm concerned. I've already more than gotten my money's worth from the game, and even if I hadn't, they don't owe me anything. Moreover, I would never say that they're bad devs --- they are plainly far more talented at game design & programming than I will ever be.
On the other hand, I think it's valuable for the devs to know people's perspectives. After all, they presumably wouldn't have released the game and set up a forum dedicated to it, if they didn't want people to tell them what they thought.
And I, frankly (as well as apparently a bunch of other people), don't have fun in the game with CR as it is currently implemented. So it goes, I guess.
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I was only talking about the way indie developers go about making their games, and I did say that it is not necessarily better. But it is a legitimate way to make games and has been successful in the past. The point is, Alex does not need to do anything except make this game. Right on the front page it says that this is not the final product, and that you are buying the game at a discount early when you spend your money on this. As a bonus you are gaining access to ongoing builds. "Builds" does not imply a polished product, finished or not. It is simply whatever work he has accomplished so far on the way to the end destination. Alex's builds are actually very balanced and stable compared to many public alpha games so count yourself lucky!
About the structured processes thing: who is making these structured processes? Humans. And humans are interpreting it anyway. So all structure does is add another layer of failure while making the development process less agile and more stressful for some people. It's different if you are working with a big team - then structure is more useful to maintain order. But a single person or very small team does not need a lot of structure.
On balance: Yes, the game should be playable by different skill levels, but ships don't need to be perfectly balanced to each other because the player is not bound to one particular ship or another and it's always fun to find something that is a little stronger. Only blatant imbalance can make things boring in singleplayer games. Are you talking about the same kind of balance as I was? Maybe I misunderstood. But either way, collecting data from the game is more of a luxury than a necessity in a singleplayer game. Feedback is good enough. If people are unhappy they will say something as they are now, and if not, what's the problem? Maybe data can find patterns that people cannot see, but I have not heard of any singeplayer games that are uncannily good because of this data so I am skeptical of its value to cost in time.
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I was going to post something, but my destroyer was just obliterated by a wave of fighters when I suddenly started a combat and could not so much as TURN MY SHIP.
Because obviously no one noticed holes getting punched by pea shooters... even when bulkheads collapsed and engines exploded.
Edit:
I just tried playing again, got to the point where I had a carrier and a small fighter fleet. For some reason, my CR dropped from 70% to 2% after a fight, and I lost my flagship to a pair of tiny destroyers because no one could so much as shoot a gun (evidently, people dying is not a good enough sign that we are under attack, and my fighters don't so much as blink to defend the carrier)
It's not enough that I want my money back for this abortion of a game choice, I want to scream for an hour in front of the developers, asking them what made them think this was a good idea.
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So, er... play one of the mods that makes things different / better, until this gets addressed in 0.62a?
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You have to pay just as much attention to your fleet outside of combat as you do while in a combat situation. If your CR dropped from 70% to 2% after one fight, you did something very wrong.
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I was going to post something, but my destroyer was just obliterated by a wave of fighters when I suddenly started a combat and could not so much as TURN MY SHIP.
Because obviously no one noticed holes getting punched by pea shooters... even when bulkheads collapsed and engines exploded.
Edit:
I just tried playing again, got to the point where I had a carrier and a small fighter fleet. For some reason, my CR dropped from 70% to 2% after a fight, and I lost my flagship to a pair of tiny destroyers because no one could so much as shoot a gun (evidently, people dying is not a good enough sign that we are under attack, and my fighters don't so much as blink to defend the carrier)
It's not enough that I want my money back for this abortion of a game choice, I want to scream for an hour in front of the developers, asking them what made them think this was a good idea.
Oh ffs. First, why couldn't your destroyer be guttered by fighters? Even in real life, fighter-bombers are bane to capital ships. Maybe improve your piloting or equip your ship so you can actually take on fast moving fighters?
Second, you bloody answered your own question: "For some reason, my CR dropped from 70% to 2% after a fight..." Figure out HOW CR works and WHY it drops first maybe? That 'feedback' was the equivalent of "I don't know how it works but I still want it to do what I want! WAHHHH".
Your lack of enjoyment stems from your refusal to engage the game mechanic beyond pew pew so either you learn to understand the game or find something simpler to play. In fact, go read the dev blogs too so you'll know why CR was implemented instead of screaming for an hour like an idiot.
Constructive criticism people! Don't just complain because you don't like something. Current CR is not perfect but there's a fine line between whining and feedback. No, actually it's a great bloody highway between the two. Think DEEPER!
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If your CR dropped from 70% to 2% after one fight, you did something very wrong.
Yeah, like take heavy damage, have low CR from damage and a couple of rounds of fighting (Pursuit after a decisive victory) and not have nearly enough room for the 1000 Supplies / Fuel / Loot that just dropped. If you lose enough Crew, this can quite easily happen, as the Logistics penalty piles on with the not-enough-Crew penalties, which are quite severe.
This is why I said I think that Logistics penalties should affect Burn, rather than suddenly crippling CR. It's not an intuitive mechanic. It's hard to see what's happened and why. It's also hard to react fast enough, in some situations, before CR has already dropped into the toilet.
Hopefully, the new explanation dialogs will educate new players to the point where this isn't a major hassle, but frankly, I've seen that kind of scenario happen, and there isn't any good way out, other than knowing the mechanics work this way in advance and being extremely cautious on the Loot screen. Which is tedious, and, after beating a formidable enemy at great odds, very frustrating.
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Spoiler
I was going to post something, but my destroyer was just obliterated by a wave of fighters when I suddenly started a combat and could not so much as TURN MY SHIP.
Because obviously no one noticed holes getting punched by pea shooters... even when bulkheads collapsed and engines exploded.
Edit:
I just tried playing again, got to the point where I had a carrier and a small fighter fleet. For some reason, my CR dropped from 70% to 2% after a fight, and I lost my flagship to a pair of tiny destroyers because no one could so much as shoot a gun (evidently, people dying is not a good enough sign that we are under attack, and my fighters don't so much as blink to defend the carrier)
It's not enough that I want my money back for this abortion of a game choice, I want to scream for an hour in front of the developers, asking them what made them think this was a good idea.
Oh ffs. First, why couldn't your destroyer be guttered by fighters? Even in real life, fighter-bombers are bane to capital ships. Maybe improve your piloting or equip your ship so you can actually take on fast moving fighters?
Second, you bloody answered your own question: "For some reason, my CR dropped from 70% to 2% after a fight..." Figure out HOW CR works and WHY it drops first maybe? That 'feedback' was the equivalent of "I don't know how it works but I still want it to do what I want! WAHHHH".
Your lack of enjoyment stems from your refusal to engage the game mechanic beyond pew pew so either you learn to understand the game or find something simpler to play. In fact, go read the dev blogs too so you'll know why CR was implemented instead of screaming for an hour like an idiot.
Constructive criticism people! Don't just complain because you don't like something. Current CR is not perfect but there's a fine line between whining and feedback. No, actually it's a great bloody highway between the two. Think DEEPER!
No need to blatantly insult other community members SQW, his complaints are systemic from the lack of in game information which I have discussed previously.
At the very least point him towards the FAQ and be polite about it. Or try to discuss at length the problems with his play style, fleet composition or combat tactics.
ATM directing fighters and bombers to targets is like herding cats, getting them to target unshielded sections is like playing the lottery.
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Xeno, I think reducing the burn is a boring mechanic compared to the current one, because it promotes moving slow on the map (without suffering serious penalties), compared to the current "harsh" that promotes fleet management directly. I find most threads\posts that describe fleet management as frustrating quite opposite to my opinion given how painfully short SS playthroughs are.
About the OP, you need to calm down, I feel like the feedback you are giving is totally nonconstructive and blatantly harsh. Read stuff on the forum, get informed, ask away, the community here is way better then the way you sound right now so it will help you with your misinformed opinions.
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Link to the FAQ and Guide (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=1222.0)
Now let's not take things too personal everybody. Let's stay on topic. ;)
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I think what Alex is planning to do (nerf the current penalties a bit, give newbies an easier starting option, give them copious information) is probably enough to get this issue fixed. We'll just have to see what the feedback looks like then, but I'm optimistic :)
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No need to blatantly insult other community members SQW, his complaints are systemic from the lack of in game information which I have discussed previously.
I guess I lost patience with members who whine first and think never. If he/she had not came off so immature and hostile to the dev I'd have given him/her some slack.
Complaining without first attempting to understand the game is hugely disrespectful to the creator and clutter up the forum with useless 'me want' posts.
As for the un-intuitiveness of the game so far, yeah I agree with you it's a problem but it's also an Alpha so a bit of digging is expected. In fact, most of the info are present - just buried under tool tips all over the place.
I do hope Alex hire a professional to do a proper tutorial/manual at the end so casual gamers don't down vote the game because they never played a space game where you have to think about logistic.
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I agree his closing comments were rude as directed at the developers. As much as I'd like to give social commentary on the way he communicated his dissatisfaction of his gameplay experience, I fear I have spoken unfavorably of aspects of Alex's work and Starsector in not too dissimilar a fashion at various posts - though I have probably tried at greater length to understand the concepts behind what I find dissatisfactory in the game.
I've been one of the persistent advocates for change I the Cr system, however I do see what it is for and I want it to be I the game. The caveat is that there needs to be a longer term means to still allow players to scale their fleet up to carry multiple battleships. Those mechanics, whether they be Industry or some skill or specialization or balancing I don't know.
All I do know is that when SS hits 1.0 there will be glorious firefights with my fleets of battleships.
Either that or I'm going to take Alex to task. ;D
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It's a sad day when you have to get third party support to make a game work the way it should.
What is worse is that at some point in the design process, someone thought "Hey, this would be a -great- Idea!!"
The nail in the coffin is that his coworkers didn't slap him across the face for thinking it.
With a nail studded bat.
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Okay, you clearly don't want help in learning how to play the game properly, so I'm just going to stop trying to help.
Mod your game back to easy mode and quit complaining.
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Seriously... it takes like 5 minutes to mod out CR entirely; it was easier to nerf it severely than to get it to the point where it's challenging but doesn't cause serious problems (still working on balance over here, not satisfied I've found the sweet spot yet).
But it's not like this is a system you have to live with if you're really unhappy with it; the game's easy to mod.
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The nail in the coffin is that his coworkers didn't slap him across the face for thinking it.
With a nail studded bat.
OK, two points:
- Getting personal like that is absolutely unnecessary, inappropriate and frankly, distasteful. I'll give you an official warning for that, further comments in this vein will lead to a temp ban.
- Constructive criticism of the game is very welcome. I have real trouble finding anything of the like in your comments though. If you have specific suggestion what to change about the game, feel free to post them in Suggestions. That you are not happy with the current state of the game has been understood and does not need further emphasis.
The thread is closed.