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New Player Experience is bad because of distance to free tiles


Kirth Gersen

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Ongoing Twitch stream with 4k viewers and the guy has to drive 30+km because free tiles on Sanctuary are far away from districts...very bad first impression.

 

I've also seen 2 people quit because of this. The tutorial ask to go to a free tile, then return to the market then go back to your tile...it's too much travelling.

 

Plz fix that.

 

May spawn new districts with free tiles around or provide a faster starting speeder. or change the whole tutorial to avoid so much travel.

 

The "New Player Experience" is very important and this is hurting the game.

 

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10 minutes ago, Kirth Gersen said:

Ongoing Twitch stream with 4k viewers and the guy has to drive 30+km because free tiles on Sanctuary are far away from districts...very bad first impression.

 

I've also seen 2 people quit because of this. The tutorial ask to go to a free tile, then return to the market then go back to your tile...it's too much travelling.

 

Plz fix that.

 

May spawn new districts with free tiles around or provide a faster starting speeder. or change the whole tutorial to avoid so much travel.

 

The "New Player Experience" is very important and this is hurting the game.

 

So how do you propose they fix this when there will always be someone there first. Right now the game had 1 month of continuous player base planting down STU’s, of course the first people there will claim the closest hexes. 

But, you really don’t want to be near any of the markets anyway, too many constructs, lag, people crashing ships left and right due to the above mention.
 

I started the first day of soft release, and I still traveled 20km away from the market i was in to place my STU to avoid the issues. With a good speeder, 20km to 30km travel time is just a few minutes, running is a different story...

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Sanctuary is blighty as all hell anyways.  You can feel the server getting ready to crash hours before it actually does.  The experience will be full of all forms of pending operations.

 

likewise the tutorial starts players in a trial by fire by starting them out in an Alioth market place.  Which are even less stable than Sanctuary, and leaves them with a monstrous load screen since it needs to load dozens of abandoned ships.

 

———

 

In summary, new player experience is quite bad, and starts/encourages them to stay in the worst part of the game.  

 

And as PvP is introduced with it is likely to deadend new players on Sanctuary as well (if they get caught, which they will considering you can see ships 2SU away on a .6SU moon), something that’s already possible if those new players build a few too many industry machines.

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1 hour ago, Kirth Gersen said:

Ongoing Twitch stream with 4k viewers and the guy has to drive 30+km because free tiles on Sanctuary are far away from districts...very bad first impression.

 

I've also seen 2 people quit because of this. The tutorial ask to go to a free tile, then return to the market then go back to your tile...it's too much travelling.

 

Plz fix that.

 

May spawn new districts with free tiles around or provide a faster starting speeder. or change the whole tutorial to avoid so much travel.

 

The "New Player Experience" is very important and this is hurting the game.

 

Imho they would quit when they would realize how much grind and time gates there is.
Really, 30km in a speeder is few minutes. Going to Thades from Sanct or Alioth is around 2 hours of real life time flight, most of it in afk coasting mode.
So this tutorial is kind of... early warning? 

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Yeah, I mean, I'm all for improving the new player experience since it's so important for a game like this, but if players are getting turned off explicitly because of 20-30km travel times, then they simply aren't going to enjoy this game regardless. This is not a game for people who want instant gratification, and no amount of improvements to the new player experience are going to change that.

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If distance is an issue there are still free tiles within 15km from the districts. If your going 30km you are choosing specific tiles. Only 21% of the tiles have been claimed on Sanctuary so there are plenty more to claim.  You get a free speeder and free fuel so you can make many trips at the start.  And I agree if the couple minutes to do this is such a huge problem. then the hours long travel time between planets is going to be a huge problem for them.  

 

Granted this is all saved with faster ships. and warp drives and pre planning from streamers. 

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This is a non issue  - all the newbie speeders can be turned into planes. 

 

Covering 30km at ~400kmh takes about 5 minutes.

 

You can buy a few more engines and push that speeder up to 700km/h.

 

Travel time is a major component of DU just like it was in EVE.

 

Only thing I would change is adding the tutorial step to turn your speeder into a plane.

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There is nothing wrong to ask to improve the new player experince. We can all try to be creative and help come up with something to make people lives better. More people playing this game will keep this game going. So instead of being a bunch of naysayers how about we try to come up with something. 

 

An example of something that could help would be an instance area for beginner players that has basic tutorials to help players learn the game away from the crippling framerates of market. (Maybe not the best idea but its a start)

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1 hour ago, DarkAster said:

There is nothing wrong to ask to improve the new player experince. We can all try to be creative and help come up with something to make people lives better. More people playing this game will keep this game going. So instead of being a bunch of naysayers how about we try to come up with something. 

 

An example of something that could help would be an instance area for beginner players that has basic tutorials to help players learn the game away from the crippling framerates of market. (Maybe not the best idea but its a start)

Apples and oranges.

 

FPS issues in the starting zone are a valid concern - because they do not represent the rest of the game. Once you leave the newbie zone, you have far fewer FPS issues.

 

Travel times are not a valid concern. Travel times are a fundamental aspect of DU.

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2 hours ago, DarkAster said:

There is nothing wrong to ask to improve the new player experince. We can all try to be creative and help come up with something to make people lives better. More people playing this game will keep this game going. So instead of being a bunch of naysayers how about we try to come up with something. 

 

An example of something that could help would be an instance area for beginner players that has basic tutorials to help players learn the game away from the crippling framerates of market. (Maybe not the best idea but its a start)

Not really 'naysaying' just that if someone gets bored having to fly a trivial 30km, then they are not going to enjoy a game where flying to planets can take several hours.  Some game arent for some people, you cannot change a game to suit everyone.  Flying space ships is a pretty important part of the game, if you dont enjoy doing it then.............

 

Oh and you really dont want to be playing from Sanc moon at this point IHMO, drop you tile and head off to a proper planet.

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2 hours ago, blazemonger said:

If people are too lazy to actually play the game and can't be bothered to put any sort of effort in by demanding instant gratification.. 

 

DU may well not be for them anyway..

Wait till they start crafting things, and see a batch of one part for something simple takes 25 minutes! Oh dear :D 

 

---


We started this game as new players, and picked a tile pretty far from one of the sanctuary markets, much farther than all the open tiles (because we wanted a snowy mountain top). Using our newb speeders, going back and forth, and eventually even shuttling everything off sanctuary and onto alioth... the distances and travel times never really came up. Learning not to crash into things... did........ <_< 

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And it is only going to get worse. I have a pretty good location close to a district on Alioth, and already I have to travel 20km+ to find an unclaimed tile for mining. And those unclaimed tiles are looking more and more like swiss cheese from all the district players mining them.

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Day 1 i flew over 84 Km just to get to the place me and my friend decided to call home, never had a second i thought, muhhhh this is too far, lets quit.

 

Maybe the issue is not the distance but that you didnt have a hoover that could actually fly at about 330 km/hr. Thats about the speed the BP hovers can get with the gifted elements.

 

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5 hours ago, Aaron Cain said:

Day 1 i flew over 84 Km just to get to the place me and my friend decided to call home, never had a second i thought, muhhhh this is too far, lets quit.

 

Maybe the issue is not the distance but that you didnt have a hoover that could actually fly at about 330 km/hr. Thats about the speed the BP hovers can get with the gifted elements.

 

And if you design for sub orbital flight, 84 Km is less then a 5min trip.

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This will only get worse, but hopefully they start deleting claims from people that played for 20 minutes and stopped right after they plopped down their territory unit...

 

"Well the rest of the game is even worse" isn't really a great angle, here. If new players have to spend longer and longer to get started, that's definitely a problem. Can you imagine how bad it will be in a year? Or if the game actually became popular? :D 

 

Complaining about ever-increasing monotony at the start of the game isn't demanding "instant gratification"... no need for value judgements, especially at the point where players haven't yet experienced other parts of the game. 

 

Personally the reason I find travel via Speeder at the start of the game so bad is that everything is so incredibly ugly. There's nothing to look at during this phase of the game...just 90s era terrain textures, tree-like models, and unroofed mini factories. 

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53 minutes ago, michaelk said:

is that everything is so incredibly ugly. There's nothing to look at during this phase of the game...just 90s era terrain textures, tree-like models, and unroofed mini factories.

Well this is more than truth!

 

.... and the .... pop ins! HOLY lol. Was flying over a mountain, looked clear, POP IN PEAK OF BLAND DEATH !!! crash.

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1 hour ago, michaelk said:

This will only get worse, but hopefully they start deleting claims from people that played for 20 minutes and stopped right after they plopped down their territory unit...

 

"Well the rest of the game is even worse" isn't really a great angle, here. If new players have to spend longer and longer to get started, that's definitely a problem. Can you imagine how bad it will be in a year? Or if the game actually became popular? :D 

 

Complaining about ever-increasing monotony at the start of the game isn't demanding "instant gratification"... no need for value judgements, especially at the point where players haven't yet experienced other parts of the game. 

 

Personally the reason I find travel via Speeder at the start of the game so bad is that everything is so incredibly ugly. There's nothing to look at during this phase of the game...just 90s era terrain textures, tree-like models, and unroofed mini factories. 

There are absolutely parts of the new player experience that I think desperately need help.

 

For example, Sanctuary as a whole is a trap because you cannot mine unclaimed tiles and it's not hard to mine out your own tile. So newbies end up clicking 20L rocks for hours when instead had the game told them to go set up a claim on Alioth they would be far better off. Oh but now they don't want to rebase in Alioth because they built their factory on Sanctuary...MOVE IT

 

The starting package is abysmal.

 

They should get some free basic industries, a handful of s crates, a refinery, metal worker and an m assembler at start would help tremendously. Sure sure you can buy all that easy but noobs don't know to and spend days handrefining and handcrafting things and complaining that it all takes too long while the reality is that they could have bought all their starting industries to jumpstart their production for the 100k they got.

 

Teach newbies to turn their hovercraft into a plane. Hovercraft are useless in this game and inferior to planes.

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4 hours ago, Mordgier said:

Teach newbies to turn their hovercraft into a plane. Hovercraft are useless in this game and inferior to planes.

I agree with what you say, but that is actually by design. There is a build tutorial that shows how to make the speeder fly. Problem is, the tutorial is broken.....

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2 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

I agree with what you say, but that is actually by design. There is a build tutorial that shows how to make the speeder fly. Problem is, the tutorial is broken.....

   
(tutorial worked fine for me ) I do think they should add to it talking moor about building tools  and other things you can do 

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I keep myself amused with thoughts of what this forum would look like if tree collision was still a thing.

 

I spent two hours humping a craft through a forest I'd crashed in because I was too far to walk home and my fetch was used up (and before you ask, no room in my inv to dissamble the craft (and no death penalty) force respawn home.)

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22 hours ago, michaelk said:

This will only get worse, but hopefully they start deleting claims from people that played for 20 minutes and stopped right after they plopped down their territory unit...

 

 

Probably this will not happen

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3 hours ago, Anopheles said:

I keep myself amused with thoughts of what this forum would look like if tree collision was still a thing.

 

I kind of wish it was still a thing ?  ... flying through trees makes the bland 1999's landscape even more bland LOL.

 

Once you get off the ground (adjust your speeder to fly), then trees are a null issue.

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