Important information the game fails to explain.

[Dutch Vanya]

There are certain unwritten rules about GOI that all new players need to know, that tend to cause conflicts and are not immediately obvious. Not just any tips, but important core ideas that the tutorials and game itself fail to explain. This information should be provided clearly , before new players can play a match. I'm looking for you guys to add to this list and hopefully it can make the GOI experience better for everyone. Something along the lines of these:

This game is all about teamwork and communication, you will not succeed alone.

There is no good reason to have more than one gunner. Engineers can shoot and keep the ship intact. Gunners only provide ammo variety.

You should learn the game as crew before attempting to pilot.

[Lanliss]

Chem spray. Learn to keep chem spray cycles going.

Learn when to buff, and when not to buff.

Learn which ammo is good on which gun. Do not use exchanger on flamer.

Abuse the shell out of mino before it gets merged.

Also, I disagree with the learn to crew before you captain thing. I understand why some people think that way, but I do not think you need to be a good engie before you can be a good pilot. Just a matter of picking up on how to fly. Some learn quickly some don't. Not trying to start an argument, just my opinion.

[Arturo Sanchez]

I already sent an email to muse.
*regarding doing all tutorials as a mandatory thing to graduate. even if you lvl up to graduation.

That could work if the the tutorials were more intuitive.

You don't really feel the immediacy of the tutorials until you get
into combat and by then you've let your peers down.

Reactions vary from there to either, "this game is stupid because I
can't win by trying", "I need to get better", "it's that other
person's fault, my pilot was bad, my other engie didn't do his job,
etc"

The tutorials need a fail state. Where there are conditions of which
they must succeed and standards the player is challenged to reach/go
beyond.


Creates specific scenarios where you use the specific aspect of
gameplay and slowly learn intricacies of the gameplay bit by bit. I
know the current tutorial does this, but it doesn't quite illustrate
the importance of the actions. A classic show not tell problem. I know
you show... but SHOW HARDER

I never learn just how specifically fatal a destroyed balloon or hull
or engines merely by seeing red parts that I have to build (learned
that in-game and in matches. I know it tells me but it never went in.

And in public matches? I won't have time to fathom what happened as
veterans will do what they do and go about the most efficient way
possible and go for the kill. Noobs can only fathom that shooting a
target=it will eventually die.

They aren't really shown what a hull break does, or engine destroy, or
a balloon pop.

And most importantly, they are not taught correctly what gun DOES the
kinds of damage they want when ship building. So many flaks, so many
guns that don't line up arcs, such little understanding of what a
ship's strengths and weaknesses are (so many... GALLEONS).

And yes, I know the info is there. I knew that gatling was for hull,
carronade was for balloon as it said on the gun description, BUT WHY!?
What a downed hull mean? What does a downed balloon do? What are the
consequences?

Again, I know you tell me. But you don't SHOW ME.

So what can be learned from this? Give more information for one thing
and illustrate it with a playable scenario. A tutorial isn't a manual
it's an interactive learning experience.

You've been messing around with CO-OP recently right? Surely you've
been messing around with AI bots ships and their pathing. Heck you've
done that with Flight of Icarus. It might actually be a nice call back
to recreate these scenarios with that kinda set up.

So what to take away from this?
1. damage type tutorial
2.a) actual illustration of hull break consequences (scenario where
you repair hull before ship hp reaches zero or let ship survive for X
seconds but repairing and rebuilding hull),
b)  illustrate balloon break (rebuild balloon before you die and add
in extra condition that hull must be intact, to illustrate just how
FAST your reactions must be to a balloon break),
c) illustrate engine breaks (turning engines are out so they must be
fixed to allow the AI pilot to turn the ship to get guns in arc). Main
engines? Guns cannot get in rage without the main engines active.
Naturally make these harsh conditions with fail states where if you
are too slow, the target ship will kill you.
3. separate each tutorial part into numerous selectable scenarios that
easily sets up the idealise situation to illustrate the importance of
learning each thing.
4. teach proper ship building! demonstrate what damage types do and
mean. demonstrate what bad ship builds are.
5. teach proper gun shooting. set up tutorials on specific gun
shooting with specific conditions on how they are properly used (lock
off things outside the condition-like hull breaks wen ur teaching
component sniping or balloon sniping). e.g. have the mino gun make a
merc gun lose arc for x seconds. or art/ merc training shoot x
components on a ship (merc is basically a stationary galleon ahead
while an artemis has a target closer but vertically lower).
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Add star  Ceres Bane<ceresbane@gmail.com>   Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 7:43 PM
To: Howard T <howard@musegames.com>
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Also whats the point of a stricter condition for graduating novice, if
nothing is actually keeping them in novice?

Nothing is even giving incentive to them to stay in novice.

I personally stayed in novice to my own pedantry of going through the
proper process. People aren't like me. Most aren't.

Add star  Howard T<howard@musegames.com>   Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 7:47 PM
To: Ceres Bane <ceresbane@gmail.com>
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Yeah basically you want the tutorials to be more like missions (like Arkham City's VR training), so something along those lines right?   
We would love to.  That's basically the dream or the aim.  Just takes a lot of work so we haven't done it yet.  But it's something we want to work towards for absolutely sure. 
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Add star  Howard T<howard@musegames.com>   Mon, Mar 2, 2015 at 7:51 PM
To: Ceres Bane <ceresbane@gmail.com>
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It could be interesting that if we have mission based tutorial, once they complete them for each class or mechanic, they graduate immediately. 

Yeah I know what you mean.  It's just a tough balance between needing them to learn, but not trying to force them to.  Yeah maybe we need to force them more.  One additional concern is also that, when people buy this game that's supposed to give them all gameplay related contents, if we hard lock them for a bit, people might feel cheated.  I know that might be a secondary concern, but it's one I have anyway. 

Bottomline is, yeah teaching people isn't something we've perfected yet. 

[Hoja Lateralus]

@up, salute for that

"Ammo types" and "Games types" are the tutorials we desperately need

Going back to the subject: Division of duties on the ship connected with trust for your crewmates is 'very' important. (especially as engineer) You need to make some kind of agreement on how you run a ship and both trust the second guy to do his part good and deserve to be trusted to do your part good. Also - communication! Communication! COMMUNICAAAATIOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!

[Arturo Sanchez]

never really needed that personally i just used common sense.

Oh look the balloon popped and the hull is down. Whole crew is running to hull... ok... I guess its my job to fix the balloon since they never realise we kinda need that in a game about flying in the air.

Update

Dedicated servers a possible solution? Moreover dedicated servers confirmed to be in the works?

Well it comes down to 2 major issues really and deciding the lesser evil.

The new player base being put off by the harsh learning curve that is
surviving the pub lobbies (since they never stay in novice due to its
low population despite the high novice population during sales) and
steadily losing your veteran population with frustration.

That is the game as it is now.

Or the reverse occurring, The alternative is having novices hard
locked with other people of their ability level. And vets due to the
low population of the vets (and possibly middle level graduates),in
pub  go into novice matches (not allowing them to be pilots- pilots
are the real deciders of stacking in this game) to play more easy
matches than advanced pub.

So basically give higher level players the ability to control the
population (this includes ability to invite novices to advanced
lobbies and stay for as long as they are in said lobby/crew form) than
the lower level ones as opposed to the reverse. Playing quality on
average increases as a result. The advance pub stabilises and the
novice population stabilises.

Frankly I would much prefer to voluntarily come into a situation than
it being forced upon me.

On 3/2/15, Howard T <howard@musegames.com> wrote:
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Add star  Howard T<howard@musegames.com>   Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 5:44 PM
To: Ceres Bane <ceresbane@gmail.com>, Matthew Hartman <keyvias@musegames.com>
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I mean, the harsh learning curve proportionally comes more at the hands of vets actually.  But both are issues I agree. 

And the other thing is, there is no great way to judge exact ability level.  For me to use a metric to judge ability, that's a myth in this game.  We can't strictly correlate ability with level.  We're kidding ourselves if we do. 

Honestly, if some vets don't want to play with players they consider lesser ability.  They need to form custom games.  And the complaint about wait time is really debatable given that this was the system we had before.  We can debate whether people want to use it, match making is faster etc, but still, if people really want to, they get to insulate themselves from people they don't want.  If people really want to make sure they play with the exact people that they want, there is a tool for that. 

Also, for vets to freely opt into a more novice match smells like a disaster.  So basically, we would allow not only imbalance, but vets to freely stomp, which was a big problem with the old system.  I don't know what controlling the population means.  I mean, if we want to make this game so new player unfriendly, and so catered to vets who are unwilling to help us shape a community and who are so averse to playing with new people, we should make dedicated servers happen asap, which we are, or we should just stop supporting the game and go home. 

With dedicated servers, the vets who are so averse to playing new players can not only set up their own matches, they can set up their own rule sets as well.  That might be the better solution.  And of course improving the tutorial as well.
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Add star  Howard T<howard@musegames.com>   Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 5:59 PM
To: Ceres Bane <ceresbane@gmail.com>, Matthew Hartman <keyvias@musegames.com>
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I think the bottom line is, your point is totally valid.  We need to keep reducing that learning curve, and so that by the time you can to play with new players, they are better prepared to make your experience enjoyable.  But I do think that dedicated servers will help in this regard as well, as it will give you a lot more freedom and flexibility to play the game the way you want to. 

And don't worry, while match balance etc are tough, and they are sometimes a sore spot for me, we're not going home, or anywhere else  

But I do hear your points though.  I'm not sure I'm totally agreeing on the solution, but I absolutely agree with the problem. 

About to hop on a flight to SF for GDC. 

Are you going to Pax Ceres?  If I don't see you at Pax, we'll keep chatting about this. 

Thanks a lot!  Howard

As for this comment about community. The vets are the people that stay. They aren't the 500-700 or so sales noobies that just come in and leave as they get stomped.The vet community wants the playerbase to grow, as such I suggested that control be put to people that actually care about the community, the people IN the active community of the game, the vets.

Noobs aren't invested in anything but their chance to win and be entertained. Vets are highly involved with the games progress and direction and continue to play after years as they've become part of the essence of what makes and frankly maintains the game's playerbase indefinitely. The players themselves that have established a community around the game and maintaining enthusiasm for it.



As it stands the people that have control of the power balance are the novices that don't stay in novice. How do we know this? Because the flow is only one way. Vets cannot go into novices while novices can go into advanced pub games with no restraint.

[Squidslinger Gilder]

Also, I disagree with the learn to crew before you captain thing. I understand why some people think that way, but I do not think you need to be a good engie before you can be a good pilot. Just a matter of picking up on how to fly. Some learn quickly some don't. Not trying to start an argument, just my opinion.

Because pilots who don't understand the plight of their crews or understand how their ship handles from a crew perspective, are utter crap. Sure you can fly without crew experience but you won't learn or get better till you crew. Not that you need to stay in that state. Ideally early on, you want to be doing both, building up your experience. You won't really grasp things till you hit the mid levels. Till then it's a lot of trial and error with eureka moments. Do a little crewing, do a little piloting, rinse and repeat. Try things out on both sides as much as you can.

[Omniraptor]

@ceresbance

There was a really interesting article on polygon about player activity and feedback. http://www.polygon.com/2015/3/3/8139699/the-long-dark-early-access-gdc-2015 Basically the long dark's forum community was asking very loudly for a certain design, but when the long dark devs gathered data in-game from players they saw that the larger playerbase wanted a different design.

Also, custom rulesets on dedicated servers? VERY interesting. very interesting indeed. I am now officially hyped.

[Thomas]

Does anyone know wth Lanliss is talking about?


But yeah, there's a lot of things new players don't learn. Some of them are more important than others, and there's not a good way to teach all of them in a quick little tutorial. Chem spray is hugely important if they want to do well in pub games, because fire weapons, and flamers in particularly are so abused in pub matches it's not even funny (since new players don't know how to chem spray).

But there's no easy way to teach chem spray, as it's a really high level technique. You have to master timing on a variety of ships, knowing when to chem and when to repair to make sure things don't catch fire and don't break. This takes a good understanding of weapons and damage types, as well as knowing how to look at what the enemy is using.



Realistically, all the important stuff needs to be learned from more experienced players, or picked up on much slower as you play and ignore everyone. One of the problems with this is that some people think they know what they're talking about, and they're incredibly wrong. There's a surprising amount of misinformation out there that even some high level players will swear by.


The real challenge is deciding what information is the most important and currently not being taught effectively at early levels, and how to teach players this in a quick and easy fashion? There's whole novels worth of information about how to play the game, but we can't encourage them to read through all of that. Nor can we sit them through a 30 minute video.


So it's important to decide on what's important, what can wait, and how to deliver the information.

[Arturo Sanchez]

Does anyone know wth Lanliss is talking about?


But yeah, there's a lot of things new players don't learn. Some of them are more important than others, and there's not a good way to teach all of them in a quick little tutorial. Chem spray is hugely important if they want to do well in pub games, because fire weapons, and flamers in particularly are so abused in pub matches it's not even funny (since new players don't know how to chem spray).

But there's no easy way to teach chem spray, as it's a really high level technique. You have to master timing on a variety of ships, knowing when to chem and when to repair to make sure things don't catch fire and don't break. This takes a good understanding of weapons and damage types, as well as knowing how to look at what the enemy is using.



Realistically, all the important stuff needs to be learned from more experienced players, or picked up on much slower as you play and ignore everyone. One of the problems with this is that some people think they know what they're talking about, and they're incredibly wrong. There's a surprising amount of misinformation out there that even some high level players will swear by.


The real challenge is deciding what information is the most important and currently not being taught effectively at early levels, and how to teach players this in a quick and easy fashion? There's whole novels worth of information about how to play the game, but we can't encourage them to read through all of that. Nor can we sit them through a 30 minute video.


So it's important to decide on what's important, what can wait, and how to deliver the information.

If you don't put in the time then what the hell are you doing playing the game? Is getting schooled such a fun thing?

They can say the "we're only having fun" excuse as much as they want but I won't believe for a second that its fun waiting in a 200 second lobby only to lose in about 200 seconds.

You don't play a competitive game for the participation award. You play to get good and beat people.

My novice AI is diligently learning all 3 classes as I instructed and rapidly he's becoming a freakin monster. Why? Because any information that goes in is properly internalised and diligently refined with practice.

But case in point, all the info is given in the game. Not as spelled out as one would think on some aspects but intelligence speaks for alot for filling in the gaps.

At the core of this, we pretty much have to narrow down how to teach an imbecile thats too lazy to learn?

[Thomas]

As surprising as this may sound, it turns out that people do in fact play games for fun. Even more surprising, browsing through guides and trudging through tutorials isn't fun. Go figure. A lot of people like to jump in and learn as they go, and with this game being so different than other games, you can't actually do that very effectively.

The goal is to give new players a running start, or at least a trot. They don't have to come in knowing everything, but they should have a solid foundation so that the learning curve isn't as steep and unforgiving. Players that listen and want to learn are great, but they are the minority. Some players come from gaming communities full of trolls and rude players, so they tend to turn off voice/ignore players. Others just want to learn and experiment on their own, and don't want to put up with someone trying to instruct their every move.

We can't teach everyone, because not everyone wants to be taught. But if we could find a way to have necessary information be more accessible to newer players without overwhelming them, the community would greatly benefit from it.

[Replaceable]

Also, I disagree with the learn to crew before you captain thing. I understand why some people think that way, but I do not think you need to be a good engie before you can be a good pilot. Just a matter of picking up on how to fly. Some learn quickly some don't. Not trying to start an argument, just my opinion.

You can learn how to fly a ship. How to dodge. When to burn tools. When to fight. When to run.

You will not learn to be a commander.

Without knowing how to run your ship you will never be a great pilot in this game.

Learn a ships arcs as a gunner. Learn how much of a beating your ship can take as an engineer.

With knowledge of both of these things. You can push your ship to the absolute limit- which will make you better than the rest.

[Kamoba]

As surprising as this may sound, it turns out that people do in fact play games for fun.

Salute.

[Dutch Vanya]

These are supposed to be core ideas that can be understood before ever playing the game. Something like chem spray and buffs is important but more advanced.

Also, ceresbane, if everyone thought like you, no one would play this game. That's the problem with all the discussion about new players right now. They have every right to just jump in and play the game without having to practice for hours and take orders from from some delusional captain like you who thinks they have real authority. They bought a game. It's not supposed to be a second job.

But the point of this thread is to have a few simple lines of information available that will drastically cut down on the amount of conflict and improve the gameplay experience for everyone. Because these ideas are pretty much unique to goi and need to be explicitly stated.

[Lanliss]

Does anyone know wth Lanliss is talking about?

Specify which part confuses you, I will elaborate if I can.

[Thomas]

'Do not use exchanger on flamer'
'Abuse the shell out of mino before it gets merged'