A Stupid Second Impression - Build 34

[stupidity]

So I took a long enough break that when I came back to the game some significant changes had been implemented. As chances were, I had to start over as well (lost my save state) so I basically approached G12 from the beginning again. Thus, I am writing a Stupid second impression very similar to my Stupid first impression thread, as though it were my first review of the game.

I have killed all the things, collected all the loot, achieved victory, and spent a ton of VP.

I LIKED IT:

• The zoomed out map gives me a good sense of direction when I start. I really like seeing the different types of gridpoints (conquered, enemy controlled, unscouted, vacant). This gives me a really good sense when I start that my immediate goal is to go conquer territory. Cool! It’s, like, grid based territory control (called grid12, I dig…). This is a great upgrade from when I spawned in the middle of a city bustling with sockets and I have no idea what to put in them (gridshards) or how I would get those (kill stuff).
  
• I also feel like it makes game progression much more organic. Conquered territory means that as time goes on the global map will be impacted by my actions. And the map does not look like 10 circles of Origin. Since I can see where other people have scouted and there are roads connecting the cities I have an actual colony situation shaping up. Very cool.
  
• Speaking of roads, I love the mini-rewards associated with little achievements. Connected a city? Boom! Here’s a screen pop letting you know that you did something good and putting something in your bank as a reward. Discovered a city? 50K gridshards, right on the top. Leveled a city? You get some victory points (sweeeeet).
  
• The random enemy composition is fun. I like the variability of running into the same enemies at different structures or different mixes of enemies together. This kind of thing makes the same things more interesting by seeing the ways they interact.
  
• I really dig having high value targets. Drill stations and control towers are awesome. These encounters make you feel like slogging through enemy territory can actually be very interesting. Not only that, but they break up the utter monotony of the grid without detracting from the grid theme. What I mean is, all enemies on the same square pattern is pretty uninteresting, but having these high value targets in there makes it interesting (especially the supersized drill station, or running into two drill stations next to each other!).
  

I DIDN’T LIKE IT:

• I would like to say that my city is garbage. My “city” consists of a hole in the ground that I dump enemy resources into. Am I an evil oil baron destroying the surrounding countryside to plunder their resources?
  
• Speaking of that, what’s with the DMZ? When I destroy enough enemy structures I “conquer” a gridpoint (which is really cool) but then it just sits vacant and no one attacks or defends it? It’s just a big empty space for me to wander through? Can’t I build a fence, or turrets, or….something?
  
• And on that topic, I miss all the old sockets. Dumping all my shards into a hole in the ground just to make it a bigger hole in the ground is arbitrary. And then achieving “victory” by doing this 150 times is even more arbitrary. I’d like my investments to do something. They don’t feel like they impact the game at all.
  
• NPE is horrible. HORRIBLE. H.O.R.R.I.B.L.E. It took me a very, very long time to get back into this game because when I logged on I was by myself. It is a chasmic leap to go from one player to two. And the difference between having no upgrades to fully upgraded prisms is so much that I literally could not kill anything on the “single battlefront.” I farmed the tutorial for 2 hours to unlock a tank that I thought could break through and kill some basic structures. I am probably going to write a separate post about the beginner experience it was so bad.
  
• The Enhancements feel meaningless. I just don’t feel like my achievements are very important. I don’t feel like much more of a killer as a result of having them. Prisms make a marked, noticeable difference. But spending VP does nothing for me.
  
• Victory is dull. Oh? I won. I’ve been working on this for days. My reward is the server saying “victory achieved. Reset in thirty seconds.” How very blasé. Oh, and if you are sitting on 100k gridshards it kind of sucks to be you.
  
• Although the random enemy composition varies what you are fighting, 90% of all enemy encounters are the same. Even more so when you are new. You run up, get torched, and run away. Or you run up to the structure and ignore everything else while you pound on it. It takes a very long time in game before you have enough ability to vary your gameplay and employ different strategies. You will not feel that you have any options or choices until you have already achieved a good number of goals.
  

STUFF I WANT:

• I should be informed that I can and should teleport to other players/areas of the map by the time I join the server.
  
• Why are there still no roaming enemies?
  
• I want some projectiles. I want to dodge stuff. Auto-targeting lasers are cool and all, but it doesn’t let me feel like I’m cool for not getting hit. All shield management and no dodging makes Stupid a sad boy.
  

[rob]

Hey Stu,

Thanks for this well thought-out analysis.

I agree with all the dislikes.

The cities and the freed-up areas should look better and have some function. I don't yet have a strong feeling about what we should put there. It would be great for players to build stuff, and conquering territory should help your team somehow.

If new players try to solo, they are going to have a bad time. This is because they don't know what they are doing, and because they don't have enough prisms yet. Perhaps the way to solve this is to have a newb dungeon -- there can be a portal to it sitting in Origin at all times, for example. This dungeon has three parts: a super duper easy part that drops level 1 prisms, a super easy part that drops level 2 prisms, and an easy part that drops level 3 prisms. Newbs can run this dungeon until they know how to play and have some prisms. Say, 20 minutes total?

I agree, augments are only noticeable in groups. Unfortunately, if we make each augment noticeable, then veteran players end up being much much more powerful than new players. This is already a problem and I don't want to make it worse by simply buffing augments. But we're kicking around a few ideas.

Victory is anticlimactic -- we could have a gigantic end-of-the-world showdown battle. Other ideas?

The encounters definitely need work. They feel repetitive mainly because we have fewer than 10 types of enemy fortress. The fortresses all sit still and the minions all stick close to home. It's also pretty lame to always be able to back away from a fight you're losing. Shaking this up is something that we'd like to do soon.

About the likes: I'm glad you're enjoying the map stuff -- we've been working hard on it recently. Hopefully you'll feel the same way about some of the dislikes after we iterate on them a bit.

Rob

[stupidity]

re: climax

so.....the victory is anticlimactic for multiple reasons. I'm not sure a beach oryx alone is the answer. ;D

IMO, a good video game, like good literature and good music, tells an engaging story. I'm a fan of the dramatic structure associated with Gustav Freytag's analysis of greek drama as it relates to this. Freytag suggested that drama can be broken up into five acts with the following purposes:

• 1.Exposition/Introduction: This section familiarizes us with the main characters, their surface motivations, the setting, and any backstory necessary for the plot to be understood.
  
• 2.Rising Action: most of the plot happens here. The point is to get you involved, make you experience things, show you things in a different light, whatever. The most important thing is that tension is built here. In music, we build tension through the artful use of dissonance. The more dissonant the piece (within the bounds of taste), the better the listener feels when they hear its resolution.
  
• 3.Climax: this is the height of rising action, where the stakes are clearly understood and emotional engagement is at its highest.
  
• 4.Falling Action: the climax is resolved. It need not be put away forever, but a clear sense of completion should be involved.
  
• 5. Denouement: This is just the stuff that happens after. In literature, often this is where all the plot twists are unraveled and those irritating questions are answered. Amazingly, although none of the "real" action happens during this section, it has some of the greatest payoff for audience satisfaction. How irritating is it when you think about a minor character that feels like they have an unresolved storyline? Even in music, a slow fade out is one of the worst ways to end a song because it leaves the listener feeling incomplete.
  

Here's how I think it relates to g12

• Exposition/Introduction: this is the tutorial and probably the first several levels. Everything until you get the hang of the game and get going. This part of g12 is reasonably self explanatory but excruciating to play. That's actually not a completely terrible place to be. Usually the hard part is usually getting the player immersed and familiarized with everything. Although I do think there is still some work to be done making things a little more intuitive and less overwhelming, I think the groundwork is really strong here. You just need to make it possible for the newbie to succeed.
  
• Rising Action: Your plot development looks like it is coming along. I like the progression of discovering towns, building them up, unlocking tanks, spending VP, defeating high value targets. There's a lot of cool and engaging stuff going on, but there is one problem: none of it relates to an overarching storyline. I don't feel like there's any real long-term tension building. I need this in order to really feel like the climax is strong.
  
• Climax: there is none. I put in 150 levels to the cities. Okay. There is nothing truly different between the last level and the first.
  
• Falling action: Nope. There is no climax to resolve, so resolution is not really happening.
  
• Denouement: I suppose this is the awarding of all the victory points or the server reset.
  

So, IMO, the victory is anticlimactic for a couple of reasons. You really need continuity connecting the beginning and middle game to the end. In realm, events spawn and die with an oryx callout, which climaxes in the final battle (originally just Oryx, now with more castle!). There's a sense of progression. In g12, we don't really know anything about why we are doing what we are doing, so victory doesn't make much sense anyway. So my opinion is that you need a climax, yes, but you also need something to connect the beginning and middle game to that climax. You could use the sectors to help achieve this goal, or you could introduce other mechanics as well.

That's my 3 cents.

p.s. I would like a splash screen when the server resets telling me something about what happened (like, how many cities were discovered and leveled and by whom, other statistics, stuff like that). This is the feel good denouement.

[vkm]

Why are dungeons necessary at all? Do you(rob) intend to have lots of dungeons like in realm??? I don't like that idea IMO (too much like realm) instead why not just add fly level monsters that give the lower tier prisms very close to the towns so that the first thing noobs find outside the town is low level content like how in realm you found pirates when you first enter a realm. Also in my first encounters with the game I have found your leveling system somewhat confusing honestly. I will do a full review later on what I think after an hours worth of playing


Showdown battle at the end sounds interesting

[linkshot]

Would definitely enjoy post-victory events, whether they be silly scavenger hunts or various climactic battles.