At one point, I tried and played Star Sonata the first for a short period of time. During this time I enjoyed the game, but there were certain mechanics issues coupled with a lack of money which stopped me from playing for very long. The primary reason that I applied for the Star Sonata 2 beta was both that I wanted to see how the game had improved since I played it the first time and I wanted to give a perspective of a newbieish player which has not played the game for a long period. This thread may offer a differing perspective from that of an experienced player due to ignorance and that is a possible user target which could offer some insight into attracting new players.

Positives

+ Compared to the old engine, the new one looks much nicer and is very polished, while still re-using many of the old art assets. Graphics are always a good way to attract new blood to the game, and more people will be interested in Star Sonata 2 with a nicer looking engine. A very good job was done here in my opinion.

+ Game balance has been vastly improved from the old days. The largest and most satisfying change is now energy supplies have enough power and recharge to actually kill enemies. When I played a significant time ago, there were issues where you never had enough power to kill even one enemy, and now it's much easier to collect and maintain energy. This in turn makes fighting much faster and more interesting. Changing shield banks so they are more reliant on size then tech is also appreciated.

+ At least on the beta server, the community is spot on. It's small but overall seems very friendly. Everyone is willing to help and by extension this makes me feel very willing to help as well. This also applies to player attitude. I never ran into people who killed for sport or the sake of it on the beta servers, though I have no idea if those people exist on live servers.

+ A significant amount of work has been done to normalize classes and equipment. It's not all perfect, but effort has been made in the right direction.

+ The new player experience is better then ever. The Nexus was a good introduction area in SS1, and the improved Nexus is even better then that.

Negatives

- Following the nexus, the game still suffers from a total lack of direction. Quest lines are hard to find and follow and the primary way to get exp is to kill ships. There are no direction to these ships and not enough unique sectors to find them in, leading to new players being confused. Future issues could also arise from there not being enough unique sectors if the game gets more popular. DGs are a step in the right direction, but they vary wildly in challenge and value, and you generally must fight a large swarm of ships lower level then you, which is poor for experience. Why can't there be DGs where the rooms consist of a small number of high level ships, instead?

- While drones now need you to have the same TL ship to equip them, slaves have no requirement. Slaves cost less skill points per level, and the only real limitation to having an army of slaves is the cost of the equipment. Items which are built into lowbie ships become deadly weapons when a swarm of slaves is spamming them. Wingships and helgas can be massed to create nearly inescapable walls of death for a low level player. Thankfully, I have never been on the receiving end.

- As an extension of the previous issue, this means that classes that mass slaves and to a lesser extent drones are absurdly good at low levels. I'm not sure of their high level capabilities. Most classes with 1v1 ship abilities are outclassed because massing AIs is so powerful.

- The interface is still hit and miss. Your ship has a plethora of stats which are extrapolated from your items that can not be viewed anywhere. Is there some kind of engine restriction that keeps you from being to show a list of your ship's total capabilities somewhere? While the interface is still better then that of SS1, there are still poorly realized elements.


To repeat, these are my opinions as a fairly new player experiencing Star Sonata 2 for the first time. My opinions are likely tempered by my inexperience. I would enjoy feedback on my opinions and how this could make Star Sonata 2 a better game for players of every skill level.

You hit some pretty good points and for the most part I tend to agree with your feedback!

The leveling focus being drones and slaves was right on the spot! A majority of high levels on the beta test have access to drones or slaves! And now that they can be controlled RTS-style, they are easily ahead of the curve at lower levels! This is augmented by the fact that the SP/AI balance isn't complete!

Especially at the start, a non-newb knowledge of SP is critical in your success in the next 100 levels or so. Of course the admins/devs plan to fix this by changing AI difficulty, adding new missions to gain more levels (after Nexus), and other fun stuff!

I also feel like the UI is missing a lot of 'new' functions such as ship statistics. A majority of the menus and dialogs are taken directly from C1, so there's still some work to be done with that!

How did you find the difficulty and learning curve starting out?

Stats of individual items if that is what you are missing are shown in the tool tips when you hover over the items in your inventory, don't mean to insult if thats not what you meant. My hope is that in the future the ship tab will also give some more relevant information.

The lvl20-400 missions are being redone from top to bottom and will be much easier to locate and have clear mission chains to follow. If the nexus is any indication of what is to come that will all be quite good.

this gives me hope for c2.