About 3 Weeks in....New Player feedback

Describe your experience with the latest version of FreeOrion to help us improve it.

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Bulgroz
Krill Swarm
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Jan 14, 2015 9:51 am

About 3 Weeks in....New Player feedback

#1 Post by Bulgroz »

Playing SVN 7809 Win32 on Win7 64-bit.

TL;DR: I love it! but have a comment or two.

So I started out using those single player game options which came out of the box. After all I've played 4X games on and off since Civilisation came out (I forget if there was anything before) so did not expect to need to resort to beginner settings.

Wrong.

I had no idea how to handle the Black Krakens roaming near my home planet. Thus, restart with Monster Frequency set to low. Then I was able to progress somewhat in a game where a neighbouring AI gave Peace but another AI which out-teched me (they got good Shields from a ruin) started chewing me up. So I tried lowering the AI settings and had to go to Max AI Aggression: Cautious and then I could handle the AIs and have gradually cranked this setting back up - it's now at Aggressive but that is with Native frequency: High, which is to my advantage. Still it is best when I can get peace with one of my neighbours.

So the game is challenging and I still have a ways to go. Bravo! Me like.

I do think the Quick Play Guide could use some love. It is, I believe not quite up to date. More importantly, while a steep learning curve is not a bad thing, too steep and the game itself will not be interesting once you learned it. And with all the stuff you need to find out, it is easy to overlook crucial things.So a few suggestions for the Quick Play Guide:
- Make it very clear that "problems" such as the repairing of ships or which races can survive in which environments are generally fixable by researching appropriate technologies.
- Explain Diplomacy. It seems to me that there is only war and peace, war being the default. And I have yet to see an AI break a peace.

Next, Experimentors. Not knowing what to expect (being a newbie), discovering them smack in the middle of your empire when you're unprepared is, hm, humbling. New game.

Then in the following game I thought I had the Experimentors nailed - they were more conveniently located and I had this nice Mu Ursh battle fleet that could just repeatedly one-hit destroy gangs of more than one Black Kraken/Bloated Juggernaut. Then, along came some Psionic Snowflakes and in about 3 turns my entire Battle Fleet was gone.

I understand these Snowflakes can be countered by using telepathic and/or non-organic pilots (and so I am going to crew my next fleet with Laenfa - if I live long enough) and of course it is good that Mu Ursh piloted ships have a weakness but I feel the game would be richer if there was also a way for organic-crewed ships to stand up to the snowflakes (well, there might be a way already which I have yet to discover).

Last: A bug? When looking up my empire in the Pedia, lots and lots of fleets which do not exist anymore are listed under "Owned Fleets".

And a PS: "Head on a Spike" - hilarious!
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Vezzra
Release Manager, Design
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Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 12:56 pm
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Re: About 3 Weeks in....New Player feedback

#2 Post by Vezzra »

Hi there! Sorry for the lack of responses, we've all been a bit short on time these last months.

But lets rectify that now.
Bulgroz wrote:I love it!
Thanks! :D
I do think the Quick Play Guide could use some love. It is, I believe not quite up to date.
No kidding. Matt has it on his todo list, but as this list seems to be of considerable size (and, judging by his comments now and then, growing bigger each day ;)), no guesses about when he will finally come around to deal with that.

The hassles of a purely volunteer based project...
Explain Diplomacy. It seems to me that there is only war and peace, war being the default. And I have yet to see an AI break a peace.
Diplomacy is practically still non-existent. What you've seen is just a very basic, rudimentary implementation, just the bare minimum that's more of a fundamental framework to work from than something usable in-game.
Next, Experimentors. Not knowing what to expect (being a newbie), discovering them smack in the middle of your empire when you're unprepared is, hm, humbling.
Agreed. That has already been subject of complaints repeatedly, and there are definite plans to do something about them. The idea is basically to introduce some options in the game setup dialog that will allow you to control if and how strong you want them in your game.
And a PS: "Head on a Spike" - hilarious!
Um, yes. You have no idea just how much I agree with that sentiment... ;)

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Bulgroz
Krill Swarm
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Re: About 3 Weeks in....New Player feedback

#3 Post by Bulgroz »

Concerning the Quick Play Guide, if it was my todo list I should prioritise it as I am guessing many people who start playing will install the game, start a new game while looking in the Quick Play Guide and only later turn to the forums or various search engines. So together with the game itself, this guide is new players' introduction to the game and so having it reflect the state of the latest release helps to make new players stay.
Vezzra wrote:
Next, Experimentors. Not knowing what to expect (being a newbie), discovering them smack in the middle of your empire when you're unprepared is, hm, humbling.
Agreed. That has already been subject of complaints repeatedly, and there are definite plans to do something about them. The idea is basically to introduce some options in the game setup dialog that will allow you to control if and how strong you want them in your game.
I am definitely not complaining! It is not that I wish to always have the easy-win reward (which is a curse of many a game these years)...really in that game I thought I was winning and even though I'd noticed something on the forums about Experimentors popping up at some time I was not prepared for their home to be in the middle of my territory while my fleets were waging war on the borders...but I digress and risk spoiling for other newcomers.

The Experimentors seem fine to me as is and in my current game I am now ganking them at least until they come up with something completely different. So it's all fine for us who come to FreeOrion after decades of playing 4X games but I do agree there ought to be sort of an "Absolute Beginner" mode.

And another PS: An option I should like to have is to turn Victory-by-Transcendence off. Or it could be like in the Culture novels where transcending species simply leave the physical universe so if an AI reached Transcendence they'd simply leave the map.
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Dilvish
AI Lead and Programmer Emeritus
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Re: About 3 Weeks in....New Player feedback

#4 Post by Dilvish »

Bulgroz wrote:- Explain Diplomacy. It seems to me that there is only war and peace, war being the default. And I have yet to see an AI break a peace.
That's it in a nutshell, for now. Even the ability to get peace at all is just sort of a stub-handling by the AI, perhaps reasonable as a fallback for beginning players but not really intended to play a role in regular games. We do have some plans & discussions for more involved diplomacy, but it's a small handful of people taking care of all this, purely as a hobby, so there is a large backlog of ideas waiting for follow-up.
Last: A bug? When looking up my empire in the Pedia, lots and lots of fleets which do not exist anymore are listed under "Owned Fleets".
Hmm, yes-- I'll probably put in a fix for that later today.
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vincele
Space Dragon
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Re: About 3 Weeks in....New Player feedback

#5 Post by vincele »

Bulgroz wrote:So together with the game itself, this guide is new players' introduction to the game and so having it reflect the state of the latest release helps to make new players stay.
And we'll get less noise about work in progress or works as designed in the forums... ;-)

Don't get me wrong, your asking is quite normal and understandable, I've been in that same seat not so long ago.

And if you try an older release, you'll see that the easiest settings of the game have been toned down by quite a bit in the last year or so...

Happy playing
And keep washing your teeth with Zugol+Br !
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Let's unleash the dyson forest powa!

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MatGB
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Re: About 3 Weeks in....New Player feedback

#6 Post by MatGB »

I did get about half way down the page updating it before life got in the way last year, I do hope to get back to it but I can't guarantee that would be soon. On the other hand I can edit it, so if anyone else writes up a paragraph and says "replace paragraph #X with this" I can copy it in fairly quickly.
Mat Bowles

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Bulgroz
Krill Swarm
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Re: About 3 Weeks in....New Player feedback

#7 Post by Bulgroz »

Dilvish wrote:it's a small handful of people taking care of all this, purely as a hobby, so there is a large backlog of ideas waiting for follow-up.
Yeah, I grok that. My understanding is it is the job of testers (this is the play-testing feedback subforum!) to be annoying and raise any issue they can think of and rely on somebody else to prioritise the backlog. That is fine with me.
MatGB wrote:On the other hand I can edit it, so if anyone else writes up a paragraph and says "replace paragraph #X with this" I can copy it in fairly quickly.
OK, I'll bite. Please find a couple of suggestions in the Quick Play Guide forum thread.
Code or patches in anything posted is released under the CC and GPL licences in use for the FO project.
Suggested wiki content posted is released under the the CC and GPL licences (whichever applies in the context) in use for the FO wiki.

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