Nenjin
Posts: 171
7/7/2014
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L2P is indeed rewarding; but not when it's a protracted multi-hour search for a non-losing or at least a fun strategy (which to many, many, many players became grinding pirates or Venderblight.)
The game needs to do a better job of getting players to where money gets made. I play plenty of roguelikes, but none where I had to search for a way to play for that many hours. Walking through corridors and stabbing things in the face is a far cry from what SS is doing, and winning in Angband isn't exactly a relevant comparison to SS difficulty. It's like saying "Cooking is hard." "Well, I won the Grand Prix so clearly it's not!"
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Ewan C.
Posts: 675
7/7/2014
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Nenjin wrote:
I'd ask first, other than going to the known money spot of Mutton Island, where else did you go to get your first 500?
Colonists and a little wine north, picking up the first Strategic Info from Demeaux; port reports; two pirates taken as prizes just outside Wolfstack, back to FL encountering additional ports en route. Zee-bat told me about Godfall while sailing from Abbey to Mutton, went there, discovered that they want wine. Back to FL (with Egg) and knock off a couple more pirates, pick up wine and new Admiralty desire, take wine south. Happened to pick up Magician - here's a case where I only know from spoilers that his Serpent thing is in Venderbight, otherwise I would have the bonus fun of finding that out. Enough bats/crabs along the way that no need to buy any supplies yet, and enough fuel from the Bruiser that I have not bought fuel either.
Next Admiralty need is for Chapel of Lights. So, plan is to head that direction now and act as though I don't know it gets much more dangerous, curious to see how it actually plays.
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Nenjin
Posts: 171
7/7/2014
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The key there is you actually went after the Strategic Information. I don't think that describes a lot of new players to SS. I know I spent many, many hours hunting pirates before I dared going out that far.
Without port reports and the Strategic Information, money is not exactly easy to come by. That's really something you only learn after dying several times and getting fed up with playing it safe. I've suggested a couple times that this stuff be moved closer so players get into making money faster. Because Demeaux isn't exactly an accessible spot to get to for a new player.
edited by Nenjin on 7/7/2014
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Richard
Posts: 304
7/7/2014
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Nenjin wrote:
L2P is indeed rewarding; but not when it's a protracted multi-hour search for a non-losing or at least a fun strategy (which to many, many, many players became grinding pirates or Venderblight.)
The game needs to do a better job of getting players to where money gets made. Which is a completely fair point and, again, made by many. But as I said some time ago, I started out by doing the most naive possible thing - just to go wherever the Admiralty told me to - and it steered me pretty quickly towards the profitable cycle of port reports which you've recently highlighted yourself. Any extra opportunities I found along the way felt like nice bonuses, and were satisfying precisely because I'd found them on my own.
And that approach was fun from the start, because exploring and revealing the map is fundamentally fun. (Caveat: the initial cycle of repeated unexpected death wasn't fun, but I've talked about that in another post.) For me, and a handful of others who have posted to this thread, this was a clearly-signposted and attractive option.
So the interesting question to my mind is why so many people - and I completely agree there are many people - ignore that option, and instead start grinding pirates or Venderbight. Someone in one of the Steam threads pointed out that if you're familiar with Pirates! and similar games, then you come in with a strong expectation that you're meant to be trading. Perhaps that's the root of the issue.
Anyway, I can't help thinking these points are all now comprehensively made, and we really just have to wait and see what direction the devs choose to take it in.
Cheers
Richard
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Ewan C.
Posts: 675
7/7/2014
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Richard wrote:
Anyway, I can't help thinking these points are all now comprehensively made, and we really just have to wait and see what direction the devs choose to take it in.
Yeah, fair enough  .
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Hierophant
Posts: 782
7/7/2014
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Off topicish, but: SS caught a certain amount of love over at Penny Arcade today. Nothing substantial, but even a name drop's got to be good for the old bottom line.
edited by levineg85 on 7/7/2014
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Head Writer
Zero Summer
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Inky Petrel
Posts: 370
7/7/2014
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Just adding my experience to this discussion (probaby unwanted :p) The first time I started the game I also (naively, it turned out) trotted off to find what the Admiral was looking for, because it seemed to be the only clear instruction, and I figured it was probably semi in-game-tutorialish? ...I was wrong, I died several times before I found the place. It was a little discouraging.
BUT I don't think it's unreasonable to think that players use the Admiralty instructions for direction, since there isn't much else offered. Also, completing the chart was a big carrot for me, quite aside from any actual loot rewards. I deliberately killed off 3 or 4 of my first captains and took their charts just so I could see where everything was. (Of course it didn't occur to me until I was sailing with a captain I wanted to keep that I had cheated her out of a large number of fragments by doing this *facepalm* but by then I didn't want to start again, so she's just had to struggle a little on Secrets. Also I have the memory of a very small shrimp, and the directional sense of a cabbage, I NEED a map. :p)
Rambling, but point is, I agree with points on both sides of this. Dying repeatedly when you start is a good way to help your "real" character along, and is expected... buuut starting direction for a new player is pretty vague, and the learning curve is kind of ridiculously steep, even for a rougelike.
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Re: Fallen London, please don't invite me to things or send me things, I'm only on occasionally, so you will waste your candle Thank you.
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Nenjin
Posts: 171
7/7/2014
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I don't know if ridiculously steep is accurate. It's not Dwarf Fortress Adventure mode, or something. But every person I've gotten to buy the game has come back with the same complaint: why is it so hard to make money? And the only answer I can give them is: don't just go to Mutton Island/Venderblight/everything west of the first parallel.
But for people with no money, and no idea how to get money, zailing off to east of the 2nd or 3rd parallel with no idea where they'er going, no idea of fuel costs and no way to pay down the mounds of terror they're going to get....it basically seems like you have to fail, to know. And that's not a situation I think being in the Roguelike genre excuses. It's simply that there's not enough money from where you start to get you where you need to go (without a good hour of tedious grinding first.) The only thing that makes up the difference is foreknowledge.
edited by Nenjin on 7/7/2014
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cjo
Posts: 13
7/7/2014
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Here’s more newbie feedback… I’ve actually put in hours and hours by now, but I still feel like a clueless newbie.
Difficulty: Right now IMO the game is simply too hard. However, I don’t want to harp on that point, because Alexis already said it will get easier in time, and it’s becoming a point of contention on the forums.
Time requirements: Sunless Sea is really time-consuming to play. I was excited when I read that rogue-like games were part of the inspiration for Sunless Seas, because I love Nethack and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. I love the way that rogue-like gameplay feels very fluid and fast even though it is turn-based, and I love how well the interface supports creative eccentricities. Text-based rogue-likes are limited by how fast you feel like hitting the keys. A lot of times the wise thing to do is to play slowly, but you don’t HAVE to play slowly.
In contrast, in Sunless Seas it takes me about an hour to do a port circuit. Furthermore, I have to be “on” the whole time, because I have to micromanage how close my ship is to land or to light sources in order to avoid terror gain. This wouldn’t be so bad if each voyage meant you took a major step forward, but it doesn’t. The game feels very grindy. Again, I know more resources are going to be added, so I don’t want to go on and on, but on the other hand I can only give feedback on the game as it currently exists.
Merciful Mode: This is actually pretty cool. In most roguelikes, the primary danger is death, and if you savescum there’s no challenge left. In Sunless Seas, you are also struggling to make echos. Using merciful mode doesn’t mean you’re going to turn a profit and progress in the game. I have actually wasted hours just breaking even, or I have run at a loss and gone backwards. The downside of this is that even on merciful mode the game is still too hard for me. The upside is that merciful mode is fun to play and still feels like a game. I imagine it would be different if I did scummy stuff like save and then go look for a tough enemy to fight, but I don’t. Because of the high time requirements, I am currently only interested in playing merciful mode, despite liking permadeath fine in other settings.
Favorite bits: The graphics are amazing in how lovely and engaging they are despite (or more likely because) of their simplicity. The text is clever and funny just like in Fallen London. Several times I have called my husband over so I could read stuff aloud to him. The music is great. So often I get bored of game music and just turn it off, but I have never done that in Sunless Seas.
Inability to save while sailing, even on merciful mode: It’s not a big deal, but when the doorbell rings and someone drops by unexpectedly, it would be kinda nice.
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Mordaine Barimen
Posts: 670
7/7/2014
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You can pause, however, at any time by hitting the Space Bar. Very useful and easy to forget.
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I'm sorry, but due to policy clarifications, I will no longer be giving detailed mechanics advice on the forums.
If you still need help, try the IRC channel.
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Ewan C.
Posts: 675
7/7/2014
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The 'having to be on' grindiness complaint I _probably_ agree with - having to navigate closely along shorelines *is* fiddly and the kind of thing that one might expect the game to do for itself somehow - just find the route for yourself the first time and then say 'go here with minimum terror.'
Not that I have any implementation solution; but it's a fair point in general.
edited by Ewan C. on 7/7/2014
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heresiarch
Posts: 13
7/8/2014
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I second cjo's concern about the game's time-consumption--I'd really like a 2x speed button like in EV: Nova for when I'm crossing some deep water or crawling along a shoreline.
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"...London Bridge is rising up; rising up, rising up; London Bridge is rising up, my fair dev'less..."
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/heresiarch
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Kerine
Posts: 72
7/8/2014
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One other thing that's been bugging me, which has probably been said before:
I feel like dying from skip sinking is a little too unforgiving, if that makes sense. Sometimes i'll get unlucky and a monster or ship - unfinished pirates, western angler crabs, to name some - that i've killed many times before suddenly goes ahead and one-shots me. I don't think this in particular is the issue, since otherwise combat would be no fun, and it's not the same when I go decide I can fight a pirate frigate and it turns out I can't, but when this happens I wish there were some chance of still making it through. The whole chance life or death thing is really fun imo - when you have a mutiny you think "oh I got unlucky but I guess it was my fault for going on even though I had no chance of making it back out with my candles", but when you get killed by a lucky shot it just feels hopeless and discouraging - coming from someone who consistently does stupid things all the while knowing they were really stupid and will get me killed - at least then I know I caused my own death.
(if that made no sense, i'm not saying that there shouldn't be a chance to be murdered horribly, i'm just saying that there should be a chance to survive despite that)
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Kerine
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Zee-Bat
Posts: 140
7/8/2014
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But in the case of Lifebergs or other big beasties that makes sense as I'm sure they would eat you and your ship as soon as it started going down. Or worse.
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It's rather like eating a trout, if the trout had tried to kill you a few hours ago. Take that ersatz trout.
I didn't do it, wouldn't know how to do it, and I was in Paris at the time it happened Officer.
Shiro Kuroba is a Person of Some Importance and many bats.
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Richard
Posts: 304
7/8/2014
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Kerine wrote:
when you have a mutiny you think "oh I got unlucky but I guess it was my fault for going on even though I had no chance of making it back out with my candles", but when you get killed by a lucky shot it just feels hopeless and discouraging Yeah, I hadn't thought about it this way, but I agree with that. Combined with the fact it's so easy to out-manoeuvre things, it means I'm almost always evading combat and there's presumably a big chunk of the game I haven't really seen. (Or to put it another way, I'm reducing combat to fishing for supplies in the immediate environs of Wolfstack Docks.)
I'd had in mind that maybe combat was just a bit too difficult, but you're quite right, it's the one-lucky-hit thing which I really don't like.
Cheers
Richard
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Nenjin
Posts: 171
7/8/2014
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Combat is a numbers game, truly. You've got to know what the max damage per shot an enemy is likely to inflict on you. Then realize that, without good Veils or Mirrors, the chances they'll fire on you more than once are much greater. For all players without a purchased ship, you're going to get 1-shot (most large monsters, devastating salvo) or 2-shot (a pair of salvos.)
So you have to plan around combat with the understanding that you're pretty much guaranteed a 5 to 10% chance of dying in any fight. Only when you can one-shot your enemies, or withstand more than 3 salvos, does that number go down. You basically have to be an entire tier above a class of enemy to have no chance at death. (Monsters with specific combat rules who are more predictable are easier to fight, conversely, than pirate ships which are very unpredictable.)
Roughly it seems like this to me:
-Pirate Steamers, Bats, Crabs
-Unfinished Pirates
-Corsair Frigates, Khanate Corsairs (not what they're called I think)
-Lifebergs, Sharks
-Flukes, Moth?
Playing Merciful and doing a lot of save reloading has given me a pretty good feel for combat odds. In most cases, enemy ships will be able to fire by the 3rd, or 4th action. So they need to be dead by then. In a smaller set of cases, the enemy AI will just do stupid things that have no chance of hurting you. The wild salvos contributed a bit to this pool, since that's essentially 3 lost tickers for negligible damage and illumination. To me, wild salvos are just one more chance for the enemy ship to do something dumb.
And then there's the smallest set of possibilities, when enemy ships:
-Illuminate you in two actions, fire a salvo in three. (most common)
-Illuminate you in 1 action, fire a salvo in two actions. (rare)
-Illuminate you in two actions, fire a devastating salvo in three. (very rare)
Maybe it's different odds for evasion players...but with enemy illumination being a big unknown factor, it'd seem you eventually cannot avoid being hit in combat, against an enemy that is dead set on opening fire.
So you just gotta factor that into combat, whether or not you can take the moderate risk of being fired on. For hardcore players, unfortunately, there is just an inescapable % of fights that you will lose, and when your numbers come up isn't something you can plan for. The best you can do is avoid fights where it's possible, and for most players, that's most fights until they can get a ship with more than 75 hull.
edited by Nenjin on 7/8/2014
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Kerine
Posts: 72
7/8/2014
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It really just feels like - if I have a chance to save myself when I do something stupid, why can't I when I do things right but just get unlucky?
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Kerine
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Nenjin
Posts: 171
7/8/2014
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Because in combat, getting unlucky is anywhere from 30% to 100% of your hull damage. I think combat is the way it is to keep it lethal and continually give players pause before they decide to farm.
Honestly if all hull values were way higher, you'd have more chances and options in combat. But when most fights can be over in 3 to 4 rounds, you get very little choice to react to being unlucky, because you're just dead. It's like playing DnD with a 3HP characters and monsters, and everybody carries a 1d4 damage weapon.
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Kerine
Posts: 72
7/8/2014
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That is another interesting thought - the chance that an enemy can get lucky is fine, but then you have a chance to react to the bad luck on your part (just as the enemy could to good luck on yours). combat would end up being significantly more time consuming, though. Things you could easily kill would take a while, and challenges even longer, which might just get boring, especially since the game isn't really combat-focused imo.
Maybe if the enemies focused a bit more on evasion instead of just spamming
Hmm... If the problem is that enemies - even ones you could easily kill - do too much damage when they hit you, then solutions could be:
-Less damage done/give the player more hull (just generally makes things weaker when they're already killable)
-Remove more variation in damage (makes it feel like a straight skill check)
-lessen the difference between hull strength and damage done (enemies could one-shot themselves right now...that seems a bit off.) A slight increase in hull strength to the enemies would help drive home the point that they are stronger, rather than people thinking "oh, I can kill these with 2-3 hits, they must be weak. perhaps with a general lowering of monster strength slightly. Might make battles longer though)
-Increase hull without having to spend so much (yes, i know this has been beaten into the ground, and i'm sure it will be a LOT easier with the release of new content, officer stories, etc, so i'll not comment here)
Actually, given the thought about hull, this might just fix itself pretty soon (like the large spaces of darkness between islands - particularly in different areas (void's approach, palmerston's reach, etc.), will probably fix itself when map randomization is added)
edited by Kerine on 7/8/2014
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Kerine
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Nenjin
Posts: 171
7/8/2014
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Buyable hull armor is actually a pretty cool idea. Adds hull, adds weight. Is consumed when destroyed. It'd be another Echoes sink for players, another trade good that could be bought, sold and found. Allows players to further hedge their bets when exploring by investing echoes in more hull armor, with some trade offs like money, less efficient fuel use and increased terror gain from a lower speed. Each class of ship should probably have a cap of some sort on the maximum armor they could purchase.
I think it's a capital idea.
edited by Nenjin on 7/8/2014
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