[X3AP] Great new player experience! Not! LOL

General discussions about the games by Egosoft including X-BTF, XT, X², X³: Reunion, X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

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donzi
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[X3AP] Great new player experience! Not! LOL

Post by donzi » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 19:40

Just for kicks I started an AP nostalgic argon start. First time starting AP FWIW. At least it wasn't my first exposure to the series..

Kind of a massive AI failure.

1. Flight school did the first few up until docking at the stock exchange station. Instructor stuck on signage for station and blew up shortly after I undocked.

2. rapid response collosus bouncing off the equipment dock, blew up. At least both stations survived. :roll:


Seems like a bad omen to me.. On the bright side thoug, I got a little loot from the flight school explosion. hehe

Time to go back to X3TC where I have already sunk a bit of time.

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Post by Alan Phipps » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 19:52

I'm unsure how you managed to see that while training as the Flight Instructor in my vanilla X3AP is invulnerable and cannot ever go below 93% hull (while awaiting or in training at least).

Now the RRF capital I can believe, especially if the Player uses SETA.
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Re: [X3AP] Great new player experience! Not! LOL

Post by Carlo the Curious » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 19:55

The autopillock crashing into things isn't unique to AP :).

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Post by AngryNewb » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 19:58

Friends I've gotten to start this game usually message me within 5 minutes of starting the game with something like: "Hey, the flight instructor tells me to shoot at something but my starting ship doesn't have any weapons" or "Dude, I was flying around for five minutes in the same system and someone just blew me up, wtf?!"

There are definately some rough edges...and while I appreciate the sandbox thing...maybe have a more defined newbie career that starts you off in a fairly safe system with multiple tutorials.
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Post by Terre » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 20:16

AngryNewb wrote:Friends I've gotten to start this game usually message me within 5 minutes of starting the game with something like: "Hey, the flight instructor tells me to shoot at something but my starting ship doesn't have any weapons" or "Dude, I was flying around for five minutes in the same system and someone just blew me up, wtf?!"

There are definately some rough edges...and while I appreciate the sandbox thing...maybe have a more defined newbie career that starts you off in a fairly safe system with multiple tutorials.
They are not rough edges, It's all part of these games. If you need a weapon, then earn a few credits and buy one. If you are carrying something considered illegal or get in the way of a pirate, then you will be attacked.

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Post by donzi » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 21:00

Alan Phipps wrote:I'm unsure how you managed to see that while training as the Flight Instructor in my vanilla X3AP is invulnerable and cannot ever go below 93% hull (while awaiting or in training at least).

Now the RRF capital I can believe, especially if the Player uses SETA.
I assumed that the flight school instructor would have been invulnerable too. I heard something (him hehe) banging on something while I was docking in the stock exchange. Discovered it was him upon exit. Not really sure why the guy flew near the station.

I was in the midst of the training, doing the dock at..undock part. Naturally, the mission vanished once he blew up. Maybe having started the mission removed his invulnerability.. or the fact that I unlocked the script editor before doing anything. Vanilla but wanted to disable the achievements so did the script editor first thing as I knew flight training was the first achievement.

In any event, he wasn't able to get unstuck anyhow. The mission was doomed anyhow. Before he actually blew up I flew to him and then into free space..thinking maybe he'd follow. He was intent on banging on the station wall. ;-)

I don't use seta, but after the flight instructor blew up I noticed the collosus when I targeted the shipyard (not equ dock as previously thought) and saw it's shield < 100%.

AngryNewb: I kind of agree about a safe spot. Seems that a special safe sector could be made in X3 easy enough, just to failproof the most basic instructions. Better maybe, separate it from the game like in X2. Then people could easily run the sims again w/o live game being affected -- or the need to move/backup existing saved games if wanting to refresh basics.
Last edited by donzi on Tue, 31. Jul 12, 21:03, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Baconfortress » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 21:01

For certain the start of x3 (any iteration) has been hard for people right out the gate. I think alot of new players are used to current gen AAA titles that have an arrow pointing to your objective, an ally screaming for you to go there, and a single hallway with no tangents that only leads to it. Alot of folks are told to hit x to use, hit space to jump etc. X3 has far too much depth for a tutorial of that level to function. It also allows for the player experience to vary wildly, which can get fun, and for some can be frustrating. The main thing with a game like this, is to do your research, some of this stuff is surprisingly simple.

CDR dave (youtube name) has put up a tutorial for the humble merchant start I found really informative (again on youtube) and this community has proved helpful as well, with over 240 hours of gameplay on this playthrough, I can tell you that if your patient you wont be running out of new content to learn and explore very quickly. Just understand as the scale of the game increases, those little bugs are bound to happen. this is what autosave is for!

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Post by Ulan Dhor » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 21:23

Terre wrote:
AngryNewb wrote:Friends I've gotten to start this game usually message me within 5 minutes of starting the game with something like: "Hey, the flight instructor tells me to shoot at something but my starting ship doesn't have any weapons" or "Dude, I was flying around for five minutes in the same system and someone just blew me up, wtf?!"

There are definately some rough edges...and while I appreciate the sandbox thing...maybe have a more defined newbie career that starts you off in a fairly safe system with multiple tutorials.
They are not rough edges, It's all part of these games. If you need a weapon, then earn a few credits and buy one. If you are carrying something considered illegal or get in the way of a pirate, then you will be attacked.
I have to disagree with you here, Terre. There are rough edges here. The tutorial thing existed for years and hasn't been fixed.

Just think of it: This is a very basic tutorial that is supposed to tell you which button to press to move a ship forward, or backward, and so on. This is as basic as it can get, and it doesn't even assume you read anything beforehand. Now it gets to the step to tell you which button to press in order to shoot something. Still a very basic point. But you think it's normal that you notice that you sit in a ship without front weapons, or one that only has a turret with nothing in it, and even if it had a weapon installed, that you would have to switch to the turret to fire it at hand? All of these points are not very basic at all anymore and require a much higher level of knowledge, compared to what the tutorial is supposed to teach you, which is to press Ctrl to fire a weapon. This is simply a tutorial mega fail in one of the standard game starts.

I got over it and played the game, anyway. That's still a pretty inexcusable failure in a basic tutorial.

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Post by donzi » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 21:34

Baconfortress: I don't really know what brought that on..

Anyhow, it's very apparent that egosoft wanted to do more hand holding with the mission director and more helpful start in TC and AP over X3R.

While I agree with what you've said essentially, the direction since X3R has been to try and enhance some of the new player hurdles IMO.

The sandbox and complexity probably will always keep some gamers away but those that are more inclined to stick it out if minimal help gets them there is a good. Ultimatly the effort to help gain new fans by a little more hand holding should be optional, as it is.. yet it shouldn't canibalize itself either. I generally don't rely on first impressions but others do. I'd imagine there are a few X detractors out there that are perhaps so by the situation as I'd described above.

Although the above case doesn't really reflect the majority of typical real gameplay, for the most part, but it did bring some occassional game quirks front and center at a very bad time, the first 10-20 mins a player tries the game. That surly is a time when the software should ensure quirks don't show.. no?

Bottom line, they could have left starting as in X3R, IIRC a lot less hand holding/tutor stuff. Since they did add more help it should do what it set out to do, at least without eating itself. ;-)

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Post by Baconfortress » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 22:25

Its clear that the flight school thing could be better, and that there are some missed opportunities in the new player training department

Fortunately like I said community support will get you through it

Ive tried to get quite a few people into this game, and many mention the lack of clear direction (and in TC the fact that seta autopilot was suicide) But Im not sure creating a "tutorial sector" is the answer. There is alot of content to cover, and that sort of tutorial would be overwhelming

anyone who has played endless space would know what im talking about

in regards to the rough edges, im pretty sure if egosoft could eliminate collision and stuff for any amount of time they would do it for the whole game, its a bug, they cant turn off bugs for the first 20 mins regardless of how much it would help the beginner experience

again the original point I made was that games used to have a higher degree of difficulty out of the gate and are nowadays on training wheels, x3 isnt and honestly this game is one where I think some learning and natural exploration of its features is better than a dedicated tutorial which would have a heck of a job choosing which features to highlight and the depth to which they are covered.

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Post by Lazerius » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 23:20

IMO, there shouldn't even be a flight school in AP.


If you're running AP before TC, you're gonna have a bad time. :o


I think TC is much more player friendly than AP in this regard, especially when you choose to go trader, and you're forced to deal with AI that pretty well get instagibbed when they step into a warzone sector, even when best friends with both sides of the war.


And aren't the only starts without ANY guns (including weapons in the back turret of freighters) like the DID start? Why would you want to bother with flight school doing DID?

As far as I"m concerned, the only reason to go through flight school is to learn how to fight. If you're in a freighter anyway, what exactly is the flight school teaching you that you need to know. How to pick up crates? How to dock? Even 1st 2 minutes in the series I learned how to do this without a flight school.


It's not an excuse for the bugs, but when it comes to AP flight school, I also don't see a huge reason to complain about it either.
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Post by Ulan Dhor » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 23:28

Lazerius wrote:And aren't the only starts without ANY guns (including weapons in the back turret of freighters) like the DID start? Why would you want to bother with flight school doing DID?
The "Humble Trader" one doesn't have a single gun. You get a Mercury and a Disco, both without weapons. You sit in the Mercury when the flight school starts.
Lazerius wrote:As far as I"m concerned, the only reason to go through flight school is to learn how to fight. If you're in a freighter anyway, what exactly is the flight school teaching you that you need to know. How to pick up crates? How to dock? Even 1st 2 minutes in the series I learned how to do this without a flight school.
Most flight school "lessons" are about flight. Which reminds me of another quirk. Sitting in the Mercury, I was told to dock at "High Yield Production Complex Alpha". I thought I was clever when I used the "autodock" command that I had already seen in the flight menu. Now, the docking lane of "High Yield Production Complex Alpha" starts about 2 meters away from the surface of an asteroid. You can imagine the dance that followed :D.

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Post by Lazerius » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 23:50

Ulan Dhor wrote:
Lazerius wrote:And aren't the only starts without ANY guns (including weapons in the back turret of freighters) like the DID start? Why would you want to bother with flight school doing DID?
The "Humble Trader" one doesn't have a single gun. You get a Mercury and a Disco, both without weapons. You sit in the Mercury when the flight school starts.
Lazerius wrote:As far as I"m concerned, the only reason to go through flight school is to learn how to fight. If you're in a freighter anyway, what exactly is the flight school teaching you that you need to know. How to pick up crates? How to dock? Even 1st 2 minutes in the series I learned how to do this without a flight school.
Most flight school "lessons" are about flight. Which reminds me of another quirk. Sitting in the Mercury, I was told to dock at "High Yield Production Complex Alpha". I thought I was clever when I used the "autodock" command that I had already seen in the flight menu. Now, the docking lane of "High Yield Production Complex Alpha" starts about 2 meters away from the surface of an asteroid. You can imagine the dance that followed :D.

Which still returns to my question of why you're playing AP if you don't already know how to fly or fight.

This is what TC and even reunion are for.
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Post by Ulan Dhor » Tue, 31. Jul 12, 23:58

Lazerius wrote:Which still returns to my question of why you're playing AP if you don't already know how to fly or fight.

This is what TC and even reunion are for.
This thread is called "Great new player experience! Not!" We are talking about new players. If you buy the game now, you will probably buy what is marketed as newest game, which is AP. If you buy AP on Steam, AP is the only login you get, even if there's TC underneath. "Humble Trader" is one of the AP starts, at least how it is presented. You start the game up the first time and are presented with the flight school. That's the reality we are talking about.

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Post by Lazerius » Wed, 1. Aug 12, 00:07

Ulan Dhor wrote:
Lazerius wrote:Which still returns to my question of why you're playing AP if you don't already know how to fly or fight.

This is what TC and even reunion are for.
This thread is called "Great new player experience! Not!" We are talking about new players. If you buy the game now, you will probably buy what is marketed as newest game, which is AP. If you buy AP on Steam, AP is the only login you get, even if there's TC underneath. "Humble Trader" is one of the AP starts, at least how it is presented. You start the game up the first time and are presented with the flight school. That's the reality we are talking about.

No, the title of this thread is "[X3AP] Great new player experience! Not! LOL"

You CANNOT play AP without TC. There's a reason that AP is an expansion of AP. Even on steam, it says that AP is considered DLC for TC...How many games have you purchased that you bought it, and started with the DLC?

If a new player wants to start their series off with "the most recent" instead of the one that they're required to own that is SIGNIFIGANTLY more new player friendly (except the interface, it sucked), than that's THEIR bad, and I'll laugh at them for doing so, and continue to refer them to the link to the many many guides for the series, and tell them start with TC, or else suck it up and learn on their own. It's not mine, the community, or Egosoft's fault they choose to skip the easier game that they have full access to, than complain about the learning curve.
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Post by Vim Razz » Wed, 1. Aug 12, 00:22

I don't necessarily agree that TC is more new-player friendly than AP. There are serious problems with the basic TC plots that can cause major headaches (any of the plot boardings, for example, or the potentially game-breaking problems you can run into with misplaced Terran agents/astronauts, among others).

AP also allows players to get the Hub and PHQ in a pretty reasonable amount of time, as well as improved functionality in several basic areas: boarding works much better, convoy missions work much better, the Terran economy doesn't self-destruct in the same way it does in TC, etc. More ships to play with, too, and it's easier to get many ships that were rare in TC. These changes are all much new-player-friendlier than their TC incarnations.

And while War sectors might be a headache to learn about, it's not any more problematic than kha'ak cluster harassment. New players aren't used to being able to let UTs run free without worry anyway, so it's not like blacklisting a few sectors sparks the same "what!? we never had to do this before"-type reactions that you get from players coming out of TC.

Now that 2.5 is out and Terrans have everything but marines (even if overall Terran gameplay is still a bit more challenging than Commonwealth), it's easier to recommend on that front, too.

So if someone wants to start with one game rather than another, that doesn't really strike me as something to make a fuss about, tbh.

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Post by Ulan Dhor » Wed, 1. Aug 12, 00:31

@Lazerius: So, tell me, what about the "Humble Trader" start, the flight school, or any of the problems with the "Nostalgic Argon" start in this thread is specific for AP and has not already been part of the TC experience?

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Post by Lazerius » Wed, 1. Aug 12, 00:39

Ulan Dhor wrote:@Lazerius: So, tell me, what about the "Humble Trader" start, the flight school, or any of the problems with the "Nostalgic Argon" start in this thread is specific for AP and has not already been part of the TC experience?

I just started a Nostalgic Argon start, and had 2 IRE's.

You'd think that the Discoverer with Humble Merchant start would have guns, but nope.

But like I said, I'm all for removing the flight schools altogether in AP, and give a message that this game is designed for those that have played TC. If you are new to the series, we recommend you start there.
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Post by Lazerius » Wed, 1. Aug 12, 00:42

And anyone with noobie questions for the series, I'd recommend they start here:

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=162408


And here's where I started off my trip into the X Universe (except it was for Reunion at the time): http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=1571302
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Post by Nanook » Wed, 1. Aug 12, 00:51

I think this whole flight school/humble merchant debacle could've been easily avoided by the devs if those in charge of missions communicated with those in charge of starts. It's obvious that that didn't happen to the extent it should've.

Mission Director Dev: "Hey, I'm creating a tutorial flight school mission sequence, guys. And it includes shooting a laser. Anyone see any problems?"

Start Creator Dev: "Oh, yeah, the Humble Merchant start doesn't have any weapons. What should I do?"

Etc.......


However, you would've thought that they'd at least fix it for AP, since it's been a complaint about TC almost from the beginning. Maybe they figured new players wouldn't use that start anyway, opting for the 'easier' plot start. If that was the case, they should've put it in the unlockable starts, which only experienced players would have access to.

Whatever the reasons, it's far too late now. Development has probably all but ceased on TC and AP, I'd guess, except for the most egregious problems, which this isn't.
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