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Play Report

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Neko:
Arg, too big apparently. See below for my post :)

nemchenk:
Hi Neko,

I think your post got cut off, as tobbe's are :) Try to draft your post in a separate editor (text editor, Wordpad, email client, whatever) so at least you don't loose your post until you know it has appeared on the forum! :)

Neko:
Hey everyone. I just played through a "Standard" Difficulty game, and I really loved it! I am truly impressed by how great this game is, and by all the effort put into it. This one really captured me, in the "realizing at 2am on a weekday that what I'm doing is not smart" way. I'm mostly posting this to show my respect to you guys for the incredible work you did. The UFO feeling is really there, and I love the game the way it is.

So, I am going to give you a play report as feedback on the version 2.2 I played. This will probably highlight more the problems and less-than-perfect features I found than what was truly great, but I'm doing so in case you want some Feedback. A lot of it may sound like Nit-Picking or stupid criticism. Just remember, I wrote in the first paragraph what I think about the game ;)

Now, I know a little C++ and have helped in developing several games (on computers and off), so that's where I'm coming from. I also know that lots of feedback is well-meaning but either not realistically implementable, redundant because it's a problem you've known about for a while, or completely against standing design philosophies - do tell me if I do such things. Also, I might have overlooked information somewhere, in that case change "not there" to "too difficult to find for the average dumb-ass user"  8)

Anyway, I'll begin with a short summary, followed by detailed feedback:

Played the Standard Campaign, set up shop in Greece. Went through a few missions, expanded to North America and China, etc.etc. Later set up Interception bases at the North Pole, in Madagascar and Brazil. Expanded all bases, some to Research centers, storage bases, Production...  Mainly used the first three. I got to the end of the research tree, there's nothing more to do for me. At around the same time, some screen popped up with two lines of text scrolling by, and now I am kinda done. I get few ufos, no research anymore, game seems kind of "Finished" right now, in mid-July of the first year. Also, I edited out the civilian death limit by setting it to 40000 after reading about it in the forum. Otherwise I didn't edit anything.


Ok, detailed stuff:

* Tried playing in english on my Computer, where the Windows system language is German. This resulted in a horrible mix of languages.

* Also, accidentally changed the language to Japanese, which also changed the display of languages to Japanese, for which I didn't have the characters. I had to click randomly around till I found a language where I recognized the words for German or English. My suggestion would be to display each language in the Language in this list in the options. E.g.: English, Francais, Deutsch, Espanol,...

* In my base, I didn't know I could keep two or more ships in one hangar, this should be clarified.

* The capacity of the quarters is not stated anywhere to my knowledge. I hit a limit without expecting it when hiring scientists, which delayed my research. Would be great to see this.

* Similarly, I don't know if there is a capacity limit for storage. I did get the message about earning money from automatically selling stuff several times. I assume this might be connected, but I don't know. That message needs to be more detailed. What got sold and why? And how do I prevent that?

* Please, let there be a way to "fire" soldiers from the Recruitment screen. I found it tiresome to get through 30 weak guys to find that one dude I was looking for. Firing would mean I only had to do it once. I realize that people who do not restart missions when they lose a soldier need a fresh supply, but I did (got too attached) and that huge list was not fun.

* Some stuff shows up in gray in the Research menu because the item is in another base. It would be great to see which base.

* Research (and production to a lesser extent) is spread over several bases. A single "Research" ( and "Production") Screen where you could easily switch between research assignments for different bases would be very convenient.

Neko:


* I had way too much cash at the beginning. I got a ton of cash at the end of the first month. Looking back, enough for probably 3 or 4 bases. I continued to get enough cash that so that I never had to sell anything or think about money. In the end I had 6 full bases, all fully equipped, about 85 researchers, 30 workers, 5 docs and 3 Landing parties of soldiers. I think I might now be losing money due to large upkeep costs. Maybe. Anyway: From a balance view, there is way too much cash around. Covering the globe should, in my opinion take longer, and even if it shouldn't, building everything everywhere should take longer. You should drastically reduce the amount of cash available to make the economy relevant.
On a similar note, there was also "employee inflation", I got tons and tons of guys. Researchers were always appreciated, but maybe even for those there were too many. I'd reduce the amount of people supplied as well.

* Similarly, upkeep costs are a bad idea without a "Finances" screen. I don't know how much I gained and lost each month, unless I sum it personally and write it on a piece of paper. Such a screen is really needed if upkeep is a serious factor in finances.

* I encountered an early attack in Wellington, New Zealand. At the time, I had one base in Greece, and one under construction in North America. My plane couldn't reach Wellington from Greece, even with 2 fuel pods. As I had only started a small hangar in NA, I had to wait 4 days for it to finish and then use a single soldier to clear the hotspot. Quite frustrating, especially as I had to watch them kill people there... Would recommend either programming it so that hotspots stay in range of bases (might be difficult) or to increase fuel pods to reach around the globe (maybe a large pod so that 2 of them will reach, but will slow down the plane). As it was, it was impossible to do anything for several days, which was frustrating as a player.

* The Tech Tree is very broad and moves too fast from a balancing point of view. I had over a dozen different options incredibly soon, from alien weapons, to autopsies, to lasers and the bolter, and so on. These all stayed around forever, with a nice flow of new research, and then it ended. Now, I assume the ending is because it's not finished :) But from a design view, you are currently swamping the player with options right at the start, which can be overwhelming. In addition, there's a lot of tech (like 5 primary weapons, 4 secondaries, the knife and lots of grenades) already available right away, so I never even experimented with half of the stuff.
My recommendation would be to "elongate" the tech tree. By this I mean, move more options to the back, add more dependencies and make it a little more linear. This helps to ease players into research, and keeps the game interesting longer. The reason is, if I have new tech to play with, an otherwise standard mission is "new" again, because I am solving it in a different way. So, having a longer, slimmer tech tree would make the game be fun longer while removing the "research option overkill" I kind of felt.
Possible Ideas might be:
 - Don't give a Quarantine Station right away, have players research it as a consequence of autopsies or Breathing Apparatus (I played in German, so specific names might be off here...)
 - Require a hospital for autopsies
 - Somehow prevent research of plasma weapons for a while, so that lasers are more of an option. I read in the forum that they used to be weaker than lasers, but seriously: They are alien weapons, everyone expects them to be better! Have them be better, but (a) make them more difficult to research and (b) make alien weapons scarce.
 - While I love the great texts in both the proposals and the research reports, I feel that both should have a summary and a numerical value describing the complexity in e.g. man-hours. That would help make informed decisions about research without a lot of work. For example: Laser Pistol. Summary: A laser-based secondary weapon. Expected Man-hours required: 1000h. Something like this right at the top would be great.

* As I said, I feel that there are too many different weapons available from the beginning on. Have some of them be researchable to reduce the amount of experimenting players have to do right at the start. It might require some good writing to explain why a shotgun has to be researched, though. This is simply from a design perspective. On the other hand, you could require this research for plasma weapons, so that they show up later (see above).

* Production seems to cost money, time and place in a base. I never produced anything I couldn't have bought, because apparently, many things turn up on the market if I researched them. That, and my apparently limitless supply of cash, meant I never really needed anything built. The only exception were Nanocomposite Armors, which were not available in amounts I needed. My suggestion: Don't offer stuff that had to be researched on the market at all. No stun sticks, no Stingrays, no Plasma Ammo... Then Production would mean something. Also, with production costs, costs for workers, costs for Workshops, I had no idea what's cheaper: Production or buying. I would remove production costs to simplify this. Remember, you know all the formulas for cash inside out, players don't (this is a problem I run in often in one of my games).

* What's with that screen I had? xcvi_1 or something, then _2? Looks like a placeholder for a cut-scene of a movie. Even if it's beta, please give some information for new players :)

* I assume I am at the end of existing content right now. I had to dig pretty deep in the wiki to find out however. Please, have some short description of the current status somewhere so we all know why the game stopped. (As I follow releases, this won't be a problem anymore in the future, but is important for new players.)


That's all I can think of right now :) Remember, I loved playing no matter what I wrote, this is only meant to help, if you want to use it. If not, re-read paragraph one and leave it at that.

I'll be around in the forum to see what you replied. If you want help, I can elaborate on my ideas, and I could give the Tech-Tree a go to see if I could make something I would consider more appropriate. I could also try and have a look at the economy to make that more interesting if you are interested. But, from my own development experience, game design is the part that's most fun, while coding, art and other stuff is more of a chore (at least, for me it is). So if you feel that you have enough own ideas and plans, by all means tell me "No thanks". You are the dev team, and you should get to do what's most fun for you :)

Neko:
Finally. There it is. Ironically, I had indeed copied my test to an editor while writing, for fear of losing what I wrote. Young and reckless (read: stupid) as I am, that editor ended up being Word... all the weird apostrophes ended up cutting the posts short so I had to find them all individually...

Ah, the hubris of coming in here and whining about problems with the game, only to be too stupid to use the forum...  ;D

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