Star Control: BETA 1 Response Thread

Greetings!

To help keep track of your feedback that's in this thread. We are using this thread here to provide updates and responses to your feedback so that it doesn't get lost in comments.  

Last Update: 6/10/2018

Because of the sheer quantity I am going to start linking to the Google Docs with responses within.

BETA 1A: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HpSjazquCNMt53AB9im9SXHTNMvttyXU8zsqXz5ceXc/edit# 

ACTIVE DISCUSSIONS

Sense of Urgency

There is going to be an intro screen before the start of the game where you set up your ship and name yourself and so forth.  This will have the briefing screen that gives you the backdrop to everything.  Then you transition to Commander Hayes where she tells you that the ship is ready to go.

Planet Scan UI

Needs a leave orbit button.

Re Intro

Really excited to be playing a Star Control game. I feel the opening of the game could have been a bit different though. The sequence of finding crash-landed Tywom on a planet and then a Scryve probe showing up was just too eerily similar to SC2 with the Spathi hiding on the moon etc and then an Ur Quan probe show up followed by an Ilwrath enforcer. To have such a similar story structure with almost exactly the same plot points feels a bit off.

This is a really good thing to bring up because it mirrors discussions we've had internally on this topic.  The question is how much should be focus on the Lexites?

To use a TV analogy, think of Star Control: Origins as being Season 1.  For Season 1, the Scryve are the focus but the broader story arc begins with the Lexites, the strong AI beings that warn humanity that danger is coming and leave Earth.  Their sudden departure causes the various governments to work together to form Star Control to discover the nature of this threat and find out the fate of the Lexites.

We have debated a great deal as to how much the opening cut-scene should get into that background lore.  Right now, the consensus is to simply dive in with as little background given up front and let the player slowly discover the various themes running through Star Control.

The consensus is that jumping into the game rapidly is not the way to go. We will need to revisit this.

Re Solar System camera

This was, by far, the #1 requested improvement.  The Beta 1A update should address this.

Re getting more landers

Doh. yea, fixing. In Beta 1A

Re Inertia in flight

Increasing this. In Beta 1A.

Re UI

Several users felt that the UI of the game felt too "Zyngalike".  Too gamey.  

BETA 1A updates the ship-based UI to being more like you're on a ship with a view screen and your ship status console being more immersive.

Re Controls and Intuitiveness

We need to walk players through how to land on planets, pick their landing zone,  or why the landing zone must be hit in order to not die.

Lastly, I think more consideration is required for making the game easier to understand for first time players. I could see a little "training video" for new captains or some sort of tutorial to allow new players to get up to speed quickly on understanding the various mini games within the main game.

It might be worth having the Commander have an option to show you a tutorial video or something. Could be made fun even (think Simpsons style 1950s "Space Aliens and YOU! Using your space ship!" style informational video.

ESC to leave orbit wasn't a natural keypress for me. With no instructions and no access to my keybinds on the planet I had to figure it out by trial and error. Not a huge chore, but I did press ESC a couple times with no effect. Could be a bug, or perhaps ESC needed to be depressed longer to lift off?

We definitely need to find a way to explain the controls without littering the screen with instructions.  Please feel free to comment on ideas on this. 

Re Writing

Consensus summed up: "Don't be afraid in having characters elaborate."

Wymdoo needs to have more lines explaining why they're trying to save us from the Scryve. Why would they do this?

We need an exposition scene that gives more background on why Star Control was formed. 

Re Scryve first encounters

For an alien race that is supposed to be very formidable with their extermination rhetoric, I found it quite odd that humanity's first spaceship (which supposedly is scraping the bottom of the barrel based on intergalactic standards and what other star-faring races ships should be capable of doing) easily destroyed two of their space vessels. They don't seem all that terribly powerful that we need to fear them right now (I realize that this is certainly not supposed to be the case, but just basing this comment on the in-game experience). I'm not certain what to do about this, though, as this part of the game needs to be a bit easy or you'll turn off new players, but at the same time, the Scryve ships that we fight seem to not instill any fear or portend that they are indeed all that powerful.

I think the Scryve probe works ok.  But I agree, I think we need to communicate better on the second ship and call it something like a Scryve Light Scout to make it clear this is a minor ship.

The scryve were clearly meant to be ominous and threatening but the two skirmishes we have with them are absurdly easy. If I put myself in the mind of my captain, I would leave these encounters imagining that I have absolutely nothing to be afraid of. The first encounter you can almost get away with because the probe comes across as ill-equipped, but if this is a race with "thousands of years" more advanced tech I'm not impressed.  Obviously the player can't have a doomsday battle in the first 15 minutes, but there are better ways to approach this.  I have ideas, but I don't want to draw this out here.  In short, it would be more impactful if the Scryve (at least the second encounter) come within inches of wiping the floor with the player before experiencing a system failure of some sort, thus disabling their weapons and letting the player finish them off. Obviously there are other approaches, but consider how the weakness of the first two encounters plays against the dialogue. I'm sure you have ideas of your own to improve this (or, perhaps we are way more powerful than anyone expected and that's part of the story? If so, then you're off in the right direction!)

The private Beta 1 we had, before it went out to Founders had a full Scryve cruiser which resulted in very negative feedback that it was too tough.  I think we've gone too far the other way.

Re Setting up your ship name and such

We have this disabled for now as we have to start new games about 50 times per day.  We'll be adding that screen back in around Beta 3(July).

Dialog

Either hide choices that have been taken already or change them to a different color so the player knows they've already chosen it.

Also, we need to get the different moods in sooner rather than later so that our Commander doesn't seem all happy when we're telling her we're about to die.

ARCHIVED / TABLED DISCUSSIONS / IMPLEMENTED

Re Lander Missions

Third, agree with all the others. Lander missions are not at all fun right now. They take a long time and the FPS type perspective makes me feel nauseous. A big reason why I like top-down or isometric games is I get severe vertigo from FP perspective graphics. The lander missions the way they are now make it probable that I won't play this game much upon full release. Feeling like I need to vomit after a half hour of play is not fun. There was nothing wrong with the old top down view of lander missions. In fact, it was quite fun. Not everything needs to be 3-D for the sake of 3-D. As I'm playing these lander missions on multiple different planets, there just does not seem to be much of a real gameplay impact by making it 3-D. 

Have you tried hitting the 4 key? You can control the camera angle there but we should probably make that more clear via the UI.

The reason the planets are 3D is because it allows us to have an extra dimension to work with in terms of placement of quests, items, and resources.   So for instance, we can have caverns and plateaus that we can place things onto that might require the player to obtain better jumping or acquire other equipment to reach.

I love the idea of driving around on these planets... but I can't say it's fun yet, and I can certainly say it's something I don't want to do hundreds of times.  It's kinda a huge time sink, and nailing this experience and making it fun are going to be very important for anyone playing this game for more than a day.

This is one of the reasons we shrunk the planets down.  We want players to be able to do what they want to do on planets fairly quickly.  Realistically, you shouldn't be landing on most planets because it's a waste of time (collecting water is not very useful).   

As the beta continues, we hope to get more feedback and slowly refine the planet exploration experience to where it's really satisfying.

Re Resource values

If you mouse over the resource table on the planet scan it will tell you their value.  But we should make these more obvious.

Re the Lexites

This is interesting as there is a structure erected on the Moon that was built by the Lexites. There is literally no information presented to the player in game about them and so this is all news to me when I visit this structure. In fact, I really had no idea who the Lexites were. There is a mention that you need to acquire some uranium and so you need to go find some in the solar system.

The Lexites are pretty important in the larger story arc but are not the immediate focus in Origins. So the question arises, how much should we get into them here if there isn't going to be a major pay off in Origins?

There's several years worth of lore put together (we've been working on this for several years now) so we have the luxury of a lot of foreshadowing.  

That said, I think the consensus is that we need to give more information about the Lexites and the original Star Control mission.

Re Planet Exploration user experience

We've increased the HUD to make it easier to find resources. Hopefully this will help along with the 1,2,3,4 keys.

General Performance

You can get maximum performance if you go to settings.ini and change the terrain height map quality to 0.  We will be hooking this up to the UI.  It does result in decreased visual fidelity though you may not notice it.

Performance improvements in Beta 1A.

Loading screens

If we have any loading screens that come up, we should use that opportunity to give lore.

Re Minerals

Second, having a mineral value chart showing the diff values of each color type during the lander missions would be helpful. It helps us prioritize which minerals to pick up with our limited cargo space. Doesn't seem to have much differentiating info on what gaseous type blue vs crystal/rock type blue minerals constitutes either. Some more clarity there would be helpful or is it simply fluff diversification?

The colors are designed to let you know how valuable they are in RUs. The shapes tell you if they're solid or gasses.

Re selling

For selling cargo, there needs to be a sell all capability (as in the entire cargo bay).

We actually have that button hidden right now as it is generally enjoyable to click through each item and we worry that players might get into the habit of selling everything when they might want to keep certain resources occasionally.  We'd like to hear more feedback on this.

Personally, with many thousands of hours in, I really enjoy that experience of selling them.  I also know if there was a "sell all" I would use that instead which would diminish the UX a bit.  

Artemis

I'm assuming that Artemis / Elpis is the theorized planet X that Mike Brown and others at CalTech theorize exists due to an approximately 10 Earth mass ice giant that would make up for the strange perturbations seen in various Kuiper Belt objects like Haumea, Makemake, etc. For those that have not heard about this, here's an interesting read: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/astronomers-say-neptune-sized-planet-lurks-beyond-pluto

And THIS is why I prefer to make Sci-Fi games rather than fantasy games.  I hope you guys don't take this the wrong way but I really like making games for people who are interested in science.

Anyway, yes. You are exactly correct.

Also, the robots are not supposed to respawn.

Re Pluto

Pluto really isn't a planet. We put in a planet that we think will be discovered in the next 15 years and even gave it a name we thought would be possible.

Captain's Log

Hit TAB to bring up your notebook, starmap (which is disabled right now), manifest and fleet status.

Beta 1A has the first officer tell you about the TAB key.

Re the Scryve

The Scryve in the initial conversation don't come across as intellectual sociopaths. They come across as clumsy schoolyard bullies. That's not the sort of thing you expect out of a civilization advanced enough to be space-faring and militarily dominant over its neighbors.

The Scryve are not bullies nor are they sociopaths.  One of the things I think people will discover is that a lot of differences come down to perspective and that many differences are simply irreconcilable.  

On a personal note, I don't like sympathetic antagonists in general.  One of the advantages we have today is the wealth of historical research we have on empires and civilizations of the past and one thing that has really struck me is that many civilizations that are lazily described as "evil" were simply civilizations that worked on a different axiom than ours.

I think the Ur-Quan and Kohr-Ah were good antagonists but at the end of the day, you could sympathize with them and see how the things that happened to them might have made them feel justified for what they were doing.  However, the Scryve are not like that.  We want you to be able to see why they are the way they are and that it makes total sense from their perspective but they are not necessarily sympathetic.  

The Scryve reminded me of the Star Trek species, the Sheliak, which are considerably more advanced than the federation and have virtually no respect for human life, to the point of considering conversation a waste of time ("you don't discuss, you gibber"). There's a similar feeling given. I was struck by the way the Scryve talked down to us.  It's a good start, and I look forward to seeing where it goes from there.

Thanks.  The Scryve are the way they are for reasons that I suspect players will understand but not necessarily sympathize with.  If someone wants to start a spoiler thread we can discuss that a bit more.  As the story progresses, I like the Scryve more and more.  It's sort of a  "Yea...they're bastards. But are they wrong?"

Re Conversations

Would be good to have some kind of conversation kill button where we don't have to navigate through dialog options to leave convos.

I'm not sure the best way of handling this.  I'm not familiar with any RPG where you can simply terminate a discussion chain outright like that.  I'll ask the team to give that some thought on what can be done.

Realism

I should be able to communicate to the Starbase and talk to the Commander without returning to it. We have the technology right now to do that with our current probes.

There's no instant communication yet.  It would take hours for a message to get to you from far away so we tend to prefer to send radio signals back and forth to your first officer who relays them to you.

Jupiter and solar bodies

About the four moons presented at Jupiter, I'm surprised we don't see all four Galilean moons presented (Callisto is missing) and instead we have the smallest inner moon Adrastea. I was a bit disappointed not to see the four Galilean moons as that is something you look for when viewing Jupiter from an amateur telescope. If you are lucky when looking at Jupiter you may see all 4 as tiny bright dots a short ways away from Jupiter. So because of that, I was disappointed that all four were not included.

This is a good point.  As a Meade LX90 owner, I understand.  I didn't include Callisto at the time because I didn't have a good planet class for it.  That has changed so it may be time to revisit that.

Triton has a retrograde orbit. Uranus's axis is sideways.

Kuiper belt will be in next update.

It's very tempting to do Phobos and Deimos but there were issues with having such small bodies.  We'll try though.

Gas Giants

Scanning is in for next update.