Well, basically, obviously that one was hand-scripted from end to end, and so if any new feature came online, anything else that the player needed to learn came online at that point in time, it was very difficult to separate things and move them apart and then interject new aspects of gameplay there. So it really fell to the wayside as we were so heavy in development at that time. So upkeeping that thing just became too big of a task. So we let it slide and we knew that we were going to come back to it at a later point in time.
TL;DRTodd Papy says the core player and ship mechanics are now settled enough that this is a good time to build the tutorial, starting with contextual controls and hints and adding more later.
Well, I think now we're so far along, we know what our base hero mechanics are from a player perspective, we know what our base mechanics are from a ship perspective. So I think right now is one of the best times to be doing it. But in previous games and everything like that, first level and last level were always the ones that we built. Just because you understood, here's everything that I need to teach and then I can do it at that point in time. But since we have such a high learning curve, we decided, all right, there's certain things in here that we needed done first, and we felt once those were completed... and really that to me was the contextual controls and contextual hints. Those were the biggest things and everything was built around that thought process and what we wanted to teach. And then from there we felt like we can add on certain things later on and have it be still a cohesive experience, but also at the same time drip-feed it a little bit better, because I think getting in and playing it and not having some of those hints, some of those controls, because we use all the keyboard and plus some with all of our shift modifications and everything, we wanted to make sure that the players could always remember it. Let's say they went away for two weeks or three months or whatever, and then they come back to it. It's like, how did I do this again? So on and so forth. So we wanted to kind of always have those constant reminders there. And then that really was the catalyst for us pushing forward on this.
TL;DRThe high-level goal was teaching very basic things like movement, interaction, eating and drinking, inventory, leaving the spaceport and flying, with more still to teach and some repetition built in.
From my standpoint, because I was the one who wrote the initial doc, it was really teaching the player very, very core basic things. So getting up, moving around, what are the basic controls for this, interactions, eating, drinking, anything that will kill you if you don't do it. And then once you start getting into other aspects as far as what happens when you buy something, and we have a deeper thread there that we haven't unlocked yet, as far as being able to go and use a weapon or be able to go and try something out, or being able to try and compare, and all of those aspects that need to be taught as well. Then there's the player combat side from an FPS and then there's the ship combat side. So us just hitting very high-level things, which was teaching you interaction, teaching you how to eat and drink, teaching you how to deal with inventory. We still need to teach more on that. Teaching you how to walk and run and jump and then being able to teach you how to get out of the spaceport and fly your ship. But still trying to dole that out and kind of have some of those repetitious experiences that sometimes people need to do to actually learn it properly.
So mobiGlass was another thing that we felt we needed to teach. And also the other thing with this room, the idea is that you're locked in this room. Obviously with the Persistent Universe, there's not too many places that you can actually lock a player into a space. A traditional tutorial would be, let's pause the game, let's make it so that the player has to push this button for it to continue, and so on and so forth. So we have that here in certain areas, but once you walk out of the hab, you're free. And trying to teach that, it's very difficult.
Well, the thought process behind it was basically we have two locations that, in order to get to our shopping area, you can walk directly from the habs to the shopping area, and then you've got some that you actually have to get on the tram to. So Area 18 and Lorville are the only ones that you can walk to the shopping area. Other ones, New Babbage and Orison, you have to go to the tram first. So we wanted to also just teach the player, all right, hey, this is clean and simple. It allows you to go shopping. And then also with Cubby Blast, this one made sense from an armor and weapon perspective to lead the player there to that point.
TL;DRThe player is guided to a shop to learn to use the kiosk and elevator, and the team plans to roll similar signposting out to every major landing zone and also work out how to do it in space stations.
So right now the player's exited the hab and we're going to send them down to Cubby Blast so they can get some experience in a shop, basically. The main thing we wanted to teach there was you don't talk to the NPC behind the counter like you do in most games, but you interact with the kiosk. So we're breadcrumbing the player down through the elevator, which will be the first time that they've used an elevator. So we guide them to the little panel next to the elevator itself and teach them to interact with that. And then when they get in, tell them which floor they need to go to. To be honest, they can't really go wrong at this point, because there is no other exit than the elevator. Theoretically, it's literally their first time in game, so it doesn't do any harm to put a little marker over the elevator panel and say, hey, press this.
I was going to say, at every fork in the road through the landing zone, basically, the branding team and the environment art team have gone through and said, okay, if you go this way, then this is what you get. If you go to the left, then you get this other experience or shopping or so on and so forth. So this is something that we will roll out to every major landing zone, and then we'll also figure out how we can do it in space stations, just so that it's very, very clear for the player to understand where they can go and what they can do.
The signage change in ArcCorp is huge. When I first heard of them adding signs, I'll admit, I kind of dismissed it. You're going to add some signs, some directional arrows here and there, and seeing the sheer amount that they've done and how effective each one is, I was like, oh, okay. We're coming up on the first big obvious one, a brand new kind of overhead map of Area 18 here.
Yeah, it took us a while to go through and work out. Obviously, for every major landing zone, we want it to feel unique to itself. So, for example, an airport sign in Germany is different than an airport sign in the UK versus it's different in the US. But it still has something to do with an airplane. Same with food. In Asia, it would be different than in Europe. So there's certain terminology and certain things that we look at to basically say, okay, hey, this is something that we can carry through, but this will feel special for ArcCorp versus, all right, when we do Lorville, it'll be a somewhat different icon pass, but it's got to fit still in this box.
Well, and even with this, so for example, you go in and buy a weapon, we want you to be able to go and test the weapon so that you don't have buyer's remorse. All right, I'm spending my hard-earned cash on this. What am I actually getting? Does this fit my play style? So that to me is going forward in the future. This is one of the big things that was called out in the original new user experience that obviously hasn't made it to this one.
Whether it's a firing range within its actual location, so the player actually walks up to it, or via sim pod or something. But the idea is for the player to be able to go and try out different weapons, different ships, so on and so forth. If you're buying a ship item or something, oh, I want to buy this power plant versus this other power plant, you want to be able to go and test it and see if it fits your play style.
During a summit, Chris and myself and other directors, we had a very long conversation in regards to what the final new player experience will look like. The bare-bones aspect that we're building here, it might be that we start at a different place besides your hab, but we're teaching you the same exact things. We're teaching you the very basics. And then from there, again, we wanted it to be kind of a small bite-sized gameplay and then unleash the player into the world because, again, we don't know what you're doing. It could be that you're going through this experience just to meet up with some friends, and we don't want to keep you from that. But we want to at least be able to, if the player needs to have their hand held a little bit, help them out.
That's one of the things we need to fix. We know that basically the old mobiGlass needs to burn in hell. And then with the visor, it's being worked on and being adjusted.
TL;DRIn the developers' private test server it was always Hangar 3 for unclear reasons; on live servers it will be whichever hangar is assigned, and the larger hangars might be 1 and 2.
Well, it's whenever, because I would go over to James's desk and he would be getting it ready, and so when I was doing reviews on it and everything like that, it's always Hangar 3. I don't know why, but...
Correct. But no matter what, it's always Hangar 3. So if I was doing it at James's desk, even if we tried out different ships in the beginning, it was always Hangar 3.
And people are like, they don't know why? No, it's part of what happens when you build a systemic universe. You're building all these individual systems.
Well, Hangar 1 and 2 could be the oversized hangars. I don't know how this one is exactly set up. So it might be that those are the extra-large hangars that are set up.
Well, it's LODs. It's basically, we have things off in the distance that will show designer or kind of arted boxes. It basically helps us run a consistent frame rate. So he was just going through and turning that stuff off, so it actually gave a decent-looking skyline.
No. Basically because whenever we do the testing, it's always spinning up a new server. So I would always get to Baijini Point and it's completely dark, completely black. So it's difficult to see. So we still need to work through it. Some issues.
No. Well, sorry, it should be that, because with the German keyboards, Z and Y are flipped, but it should just be the placement of where it's actually at on the keyboard; it should be a Y instead of Z.
TL;DRThe flight teaches the basic process rather than skipping to quantum travel, and the team has also trimmed the missions offered afterward and wants them to unlock gradually from a small starting set.
Yeah. So again, for this, Sam's going through and trying to make it look pretty, versus as an average player, you're going to be looking at it from your cockpit. You're going to be trying to speed through it, I think, or do a speed run for it. And usually our reviews take 30 minutes, and maybe 10 of those are calling out notes and talking about any sort of blockers or anything like that. So I think James and I can get through this in what, 15 minutes, if that?
So it's usually a pretty quick experience. So for example, here, right now you have a whole bunch of QT markers associated with this. Again, one of the things that we were trying to do was strip away all of these, or have it be that you didn't have enough fuel to fly over there. So then he would have to come here, refuel, and then things are open to the player. There's other aspects in regards to the amount of missions that are shown to the player and everything.
Yeah, we were conscious, once the player finishes the tutorial, of the missions that would be available immediately afterwards, and while we couldn't get to all of them, we've cut down the number and we've hopefully cut down some of the more difficult ones for new players. So they should have a more suitable selection than they would previously, let's say.
If we talk about this, let's say you are a new player, or maybe you've played this one patch. If we do any sort of resets or wipes or anything like that, the idea would be after you finish the new player experience, that gets you to the same baseline that everybody else starts the game at if they don't choose the new player experience and they just started and everything's reset. It gets everybody the same baseline. And so again, for our missions, we want to make sure that they branch out. It's not like you get 40 choices in the very beginning. You'll have three, and then you do one, and then now that opens up two more and now you have five available. So it's slowly doling those things out.
That is the contextual control aspects that we were talking about, and also part of the contextual hints. So because there's certain things that we wanted to teach or reinforce to the player all the time. Again, if you haven't played the game in a while or you're coming back fresh, then basically this allows us to gently remind you.
TL;DRTodd Papy admits new players following the same path can be targeted by griefers; the team will watch feedback and add blocks if needed, but rejected an isolated planet as not fitting the game.
It does. Unfortunately, it does. So right now, this is what we have. And we will continue to make it better, but we will roll this out to different landing zones. Obviously, from there, we'll also look at feedback on, if people are clubbing the baby seals over and over and over again, then we will institute other things to block that. We had talked about putting it on a unique planet that nobody could get to and nobody could QT to. It's its own space. We had thought about that. But that's not our game. And so we had those conversations and talked about it, but it just didn't feel right. So this is what we have. And so we need to build and tune for a game. Obviously I think the new player experience at Lorville versus the new player experience at Orison will be a little bit different, but we're just trying to teach you the main concepts.
Yeah, that's a little bit more difficult, and I think that's something that James and Dan and Kristoff and I will need to sit down and really go through and talk about, because right now in Pyro...
So when the player lands, they get out of their ship and you're sort of asked to store it. And as soon as you store your ship, you've landed at Baijini Point, you've learned all kinds of stuff, and that's the ending point.