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« on: November 10, 2014, 07:17:34 AM »
Yes yes, all these things -can- be learned. My primary concern is that the game is a mass of spreadsheets. While those of us who already understand the game mechanics and have a feel for the ships can say 'just play', that's way too much to expect from most new players and it's not a good thing if you want to attract players at all.
As it is now, whenever there's a balancing run I have to spend hours in sim fiddling and relearning, and I already know the mechanics. Imagine if you were new!
Plus, there's no way to embrace and learn the whole system and spectrum of equipment at once. You discover bits and pieces of new things as you go and they're all an unidentifiable blur to a new player, who might quickly give up after a point because he's hunting the same old small fleets and can't figure out what to optimise in order to improve.
With certain complex games (I'll take pokemon) there's big, complete wikis to help. Bulbapedia, to use pokemon as an example. The community does its part to nurture new players while the developer builds the game. We don't even have a brief list of what each mysterious weapon and ship is good for and why.
Yes, you could tell a new player to just learn to read the spreadsheets / learn from painful experience but not everyone will have the patience for that, and I don't want to see this beautifully complex game which Alex has worked so hard on to be forgotten or dismissed because of a huge, boring barrier to entry.
Edit: to simplify and clarify. This game's depth and complexity is one of its greatest strengths. It just needs to be properly presented in UI so the cliff-like learning curve doesn't turn potential fans away.
I also think the community could help a lot with that, by collating your combined wisdom- say, when it comes to the relative usefulness of ships. This would also let Alex see quickly if a particular ship, weapon or hullmod needs to be toned down or buffed.