I would like to stress that for me the game never “got fun eventually”, it was fun since the beginning, with ups and downs of course and considering it needs still some tweaking.
I never felt such huge frustration that some commenters write about. Yes, at the beginning it is not easy: fuel tends to disappear faster than expected, terror to rise too much, combat needs some attempts to get the hold of, and there is no obvious way to make money at the beginning.
I was not that shocked though, because I put all those problems as part of the learning curve of the game, and indeed in my experience this was exactly the case. Now that I know the game mechanics and the various locations more, all the new games I started recently were quite smooth. And it didn’t take hundred of hours.
Also I somehow manage to avoid the excessive grinding. Yes, there are some routes you travel more than others, but never obsessively. But it can also be due to my way of playing. Of course there must be people that go back and forth dozens of times to the Salt Lions until they have buckets of Echoes, but I don’t like that. This means I’m raising my money slowlier but I think I have more fun in the process.
I don’t want to say people have no right to be frustrated, but just that’s not my experience of the game. I gave myself time to learn, though.
And I also agree that some aspects of the game definitely need some revision, I also think trade should be expanded - which can be done without turning Sunless Sea into a trade game!
Yes, definetly!
Winning is for people with low frustration-tolerance
[quote=CameoAppearance][quote=papa_spielt]@ nyrk:
I think a very good way to have some fun with Sunless Sea is to embrace failure.
Yes, that is not quite an easy task, I know. But it is rewarding and will keep you from sticking to close to Fallen London. Head for the unknown - and fail![/quote]
Fail better, one might say.[/quote]
[quote=Master Polarimini]I would like to stress that for me the game never "got fun eventually", it was fun since the beginning, with ups and downs of course and considering it needs still some tweaking.
I never felt such huge frustration that some commenters write about. Yes, at the beginning it is not easy: fuel tends to disappear faster than expected, terror to rise too much, combat needs some attempts to get the hold of, and there is no obvious way to make money at the beginning.
I was not that shocked though, because I put all those problems as part of the learning curve of the game, and indeed in my experience this was exactly the case. Now that I know the game mechanics and the various locations more, all the new games I started recently were quite smooth. And it didn’t take hundred of hours.
Also I somehow manage to avoid the excessive grinding. Yes, there are some routes you travel more than others, but never obsessively. But it can also be due to my way of playing. Of course there must be people that go back and forth dozens of times to the Salt Lions until they have buckets of Echoes, but I don’t like that. This means I’m raising my money slowlier but I think I have more fun in the process.
I don’t want to say people have no right to be frustrated, but just that’s not my experience of the game. I gave myself time to learn, though.
And I also agree that some aspects of the game definitely need some revision, I also think trade should be expanded - which can be done without turning Sunless Sea into a trade game![/quote]
I simply wish to say that I agree with what has been said here completely, and it has mirrored my own experiences. It also may have been due to the fact that I got bored playing it safe rather quickly, and so could blame all my deaths on zailing off into the unknown with no supplies, fuel, or knowledge rather than a lack of any money.
[li]i feel … like i’m caught in limbo. smart enough to avoid death, smart enough to know where & how to exploit the paltry cash offerings on hand … but still stuck waiting and waiting for reluctant events or for that slow-slow accrual of cash to build up to a point where i can use it. a nether-realm of always being inbetween, until a threshold is broken and suddenly everything’s a breeze.
and for a newer player? it’s not just a matter of ramping it up on the learning curve. it’s spending all that time to get ‘somewhere’ and then having to repeat and repeat and repeat with each accidental death or underestimation.
it’s like trying to read "War and Peace" on the condition that, if you ever pause or put the book down … you gotta start from the beginning all over again. plenty of twitchy games work on that premise. but something with legs that runs into the hours? oi vay …!
So, I’ve seen a bunch of suggestions on how to help newbies, but i have one that no one has offered yet:
Does anything think it would be worth uploading a save that has a bunch of heirlooms on it, so newbies can sell them for a quick infusion of cash, just so they can explore the content without worrying about echoes? It’s a bit cheaty, but it’s better than altering the save files :)
I think people just aren’t prepared for the pace of the game. Having to save a significant amount of resources to zail into the unknown and maybe find something isn’t necessarily everyone’s cup of tea. Running a profit route 30 or 40 times to get the resources you need for a better ship doesn’t necessarily occur to people who think the game is supposed to be about exploration and trading.
I like "long haul" games personally. Sunless Sea has routines with little bits of randomness and spice to keep it fresh. But it is a long grind and if you don’t find routinized gameplay fun, Sunless Sea is a seemingly frustrating game because resource consumption and managing it is something that you end up having to plan for, and grind against.
I can say that after getting a new ship and some spending money, the game feels a lot more open. You still worriedly watch some trips cost you echoes instead of earning them, and have to learn to take pure losses just for the sake of exploration. But once you’re not shackled to needing to do profit runs, and can actually explore, I think the game reaches maximum fun at that point. It’s why I don’t play it hardcore, the ability to roll back a poor choice or result in SS lets me get somewhere, instead of further increasing the grind by adding lots of failures. edited by Nenjin on 8/11/2014
earlier, a guy in the forum suggested bumping up the distance between ports and making the monsters even deadlier. like most people, it didn’t strike me at the time.
but now? maybe he had a point.
even with shuffling, islands are still pretty closely spaced. there usually aren’t many open / dead zones of any real length to navigate, and a shot of zee-bat usually cures any issues of indecision. you might not know what’s coming, but you know something’s probably there. the risk is muted.
so what about increasing the distances, and boosting the missions, rewards, and terror-reducing options at each port as compensation? then the game is less about hitting a bunch of ports and scurrying off back to London to tally out; each port itself becomes a destination / event in its own right. with a few exceptions (west coast being fixed) you really are heading out into the deep unknown. you’re gonna lose lots of fuel and get jacked on terror … maybe NOT have enough to skirt on back to London Dock. you have to rely more on what’s at offer in that next port, so you can chain-off to the next destination, as opposed to scouting a route, packing bags, and cruising through half the zee before tanking up at a refuel station to finish the other half. each port is critical, not a waypoint, and it points the way to other destinations nearby.
and the extra-nasty monsters? that forces a major decision on the gamer’s part: buy up on guns and warships and push those confrontations head-on, or pick a more evasive path with speedy smuggler boats. leave killing to the killers and lovin’ to the lovers, so-to-speak.
between one and the other, it breeds differentiation in approach and means. best of all, the game naturally pushes you forward, rewards the effort, and (possibly) doesn’t come off as punishing or repetitive if things don’t play out, in part because it doesn’t force-tie you to one home port or set of institutionalized refueling / provisioning stations.
The grindiness is in some ways a legacy issue from Fallen London, but while that’s a grim necessity for browser games, Sunless Sea doesn’t profit in any way by gating content behind repetitive drudgery.
I think there are already a bunch of steps in the right direction. Hunter’s Keep provides an easy way to relieve Terror and Hunger early on, giving new players the leeway to explore and take risks. The way it vanishes is great both mechanically (jarringly forces you to use your map knowledge to strike out further) and thematically (you were sort of taking advantage of them, but with work, you can make partial amends). Similarly, the Khanate sets up a tough challenge for more map access that really does feel like earning passage through a totalitarian regime. Most of said map is a yawning void right now, but it works in concept.
The First Curator and the Uttershroom are also fun ways of encouraging exploration and experimentation. And they even interlock! So you can be hunting pirates or whatever as you drop off blemmigans, which also gets you the thing for the guy! It’s like you’re making multiple kinds of progress at once.
The problem is that, as it stands, the best ways to earn cash for clearing hurdles and making exploratory missions is just parking outside Whither and massacring lifebergs (not long ago, it was parking outside your doorstep and massacring pirates). And that’s despite mechanics like the port reports, which try to promote making big trips.
I don’t think anyone assumes the finished game will be like this, but I do support more medium-sized incentives to do interesting things while working towards larger goals.
[li]
I think that is my main problem right now with the game: That the grindiness does not match up well with (almost) complete wipe of your progress in unforgiving mode (and when starting out as a new player it does not help, that the game basically tells you, unforgiving mode is how it should be played). I don’t mind spending time building up wealth, getting better weapons to get ready to explore. I do mind wasting 10+ hours of my time building up, just to die after one unfortunate fight or wrong choice and having to start over.
Dispelling this perception would go a long way to solving this problem, I think. If playing on Completely Optional Exceptionally Difficult Mode isn’t fun for you - especially for players who have just started out - then of course it isn’t how the game should be played. Perhaps Unforgiving should be something we opt into when rolling a new character, rather than opting out once we’ve already begun.
Dispelling this perception would go a long way to solving this problem, I think. If playing on Completely Optional Exceptionally Difficult Mode isn’t fun for you - especially for players who have just started out - then of course it isn’t how the game should be played. Perhaps Unforgiving should be something we opt into when rolling a new character, rather than opting out once we’ve already begun.[/quote]
I support this. Yes, it takes away a little bit from Sunless Sea billing itself as a hardcore rogue-like. But I think it will pay dividends in a lot fewer frustrated players, who feel like they’ve somehow failed because they had to play Merciful mode. There should just be "Normal mode" and "Legend of The Zees" mode.
Dispelling this perception would go a long way to solving this problem, I think. If playing on Completely Optional Exceptionally Difficult Mode isn’t fun for you - especially for players who have just started out - then of course it isn’t how the game should be played. Perhaps Unforgiving should be something we opt into when rolling a new character, rather than opting out once we’ve already begun.[/quote]
…perhaps giving the player the option outright would be the best way? What if, during character creation, you were given the choice to select either merciful or unforgiving mode, and given an explanation of each? The description could even say "for new players" or "this is the way the game is meant to be played" etc, but still clearly gives the player the choice of selection.
[li][/li][li] edited by SouthSea Rutherby on 8/13/2014
I really like the idea of giving the player the choice at the beginning – you might still hope to be able to play later on the more authentic, difficult mode, but it feels less like failure to select the easy level at the beginning than to switch something off.
I think my initial frustration with the game was partly just because I dove into it without really looking around much – I was coming from Fallen London where gameplay-wise you really can’t do much to irreperably damage the story, especially in early game, and where canonically death isn’t permanent. Thinking it was the same general sort of game with just a different focus I was quite sad when my carefully-constructed character promptly died on her third time out of port. Now that I know to treat my characters as more or less disposable until I figure things out a bit more, it’s much more satisfying and there’s even a certain thrill to a really epic death.
