Also, exploration missions need work at the moment; People simply have no idea what to do with it.

What people have suggested before is that on starting the mission, the location of the galaxy is revealed, but not the route to it. That way they at least know where to go, if not how to get there exactly.

I think the main problems for new, low level players are:

- Abuse from higher level / more experienced f2ps / other players.
- The leveling process is a long one, and boring. This game is very grindy in the aquisition of experience, loot etc. The experience does not change much from level to level, and is more dependent upon gear than level.
- It has less of a learning curve, more of a learning graph of the form y=mx+c where m tends to zero. It is worse than EVE in my opinion, and I love that. But... new players might get lost.
- Money is difficult at low levels. The most effective ways of leveling are usually not possible for the new player. Due to lack of money, knowledge, and stored gear.
- Questions on All chat are not always answered, or are responded to as if they are spam. Help chat is useful, of course, but I don't know how much it is actually used. I do see a lot of new players asking questions in All, rather than help.

Solution:
- When C2 is released I'll be making several video tutorials for the game. It'd be good if the very annoying Help-Bot thing at the start said something like - 'Hi! Check out the website www.starsonata.com for tutorials on the game, and viewforum.php?f=17 for guides written by players.
- The nexus should be extended to like... level 100. At present, players leave it at level 10, or so and get raped by the AI outside. They simply aren't equipped to fight things like Rosburst AI, Space Blue AI etc. Extending it, adding mission chains with ship and item rewards based on focus would be a good direction to head in.
- Have The Nexus instanced to prevent possible future overcrowding, each 10th player or so spawns a new instance.
- Why did you remove the Greeter button?
- Have the in-game Help button point somewhere more useful, like the wiki.

The Nexus also needs to cover more areas of the game. Possibly with demonstrations by AI.

e.g. Remote Control Area : Can train RC up to 2, you get a demonstration by an 'instructor' AI who has slaves of his own, who kills a few other AI to show you how good slaves are.
The same with drones, and various combat styles.

- By the time the player leaves after completing all the missions, they should have aquired a full set of gear and a ship suitable for a chosen focus, which is capable of seeing them through the next 50 or so levels.


Hmm... I should go and do the entire Nexus again, then post more feedback, perhaps.

Thanks,
Paladin,

That'll be so long...

When you first start the game for the first time you will be shown just some easy controls, like scooping, flying, warping, docking, shooting, and the very core basics. After all of that is covered you will be directed to a AI base and you may do a few easy missions just to get you accustom the controls and learn some more advanced controls and Skill Points and Neuro Training. This whole time you will have like objective markers (something like them) directing you where to go so that you can’t mess up even if you tried. After you do your first few missions you’ll be given a mission entitled ‘Choose Your Class’ or something like that. Anyway, in that mission you can choose what class (or focus) you want to be. It will explain every class and the pros and cons so you can make an informed decision. You’ll also be told that you will not get this class or focus until you become level 21. This will give you some reason to become level 20 so you can test out your class.

After choosing your class you will be sent to one chain of galaxies that each chain is focused on that specific class you’ve chosen so you can somewhat get a feel for them before you even try them out and the missions will be tailored to do this as well along with introducing you to all of the races and some more advanced controls.

At level 13-15 you will leave your respective chain of galaxies and will enter into Sol. You’ll be greeted by an Earth force Fuzz ship. He’ll explain Safety Lock, Protected Galaxies, PvP ranges (and what can alter them), along with what the Emperor is. Then he’ll send you off to do your own thing and you will be on your own mostly after this point.

You may get infrequent help up until level 150 when you reach milestones. Like when you first try and enter a Warp 1 galaxy a dialog box will explain the different warp levels, danger factors, and where to train the first level of Warp 1. It can also do stuff like this when you Create your first Squad & Team and it will explain all the features of that and stuff and all of that.

That’s all I can think of right now and I’m getting too tired to explain anything else. This is all subject to change.


This can be lessened if it seems like to much hand holding.

i don't see anything wrong with that.

Sure, they shouldn't have access to a great amount of credits. But there is also little guidance on how to make money within the game. Commodity trading isn't very profitable, and the economy isn't very accessable to a new, low level, player.

For example - We constantly see things like 'selling minor recovery aug' in trade. Who is going to bother to take the time to buy a single minor recovery aug? They cannot contribute properly to the market, and therefore not raise the money to buy from it either. We also aren't going to keep players who get frustrated because no one will buy their collection of two or three minor augs.

The current Nexus teaches the new player about mining, and promethium from ferm in asteroids, which is good. But it should also cover things like what a price check is, how to use trade, and maybe talk about some other methods of making money in-game.

Meh.

Paladin,

Maybe somebody should ask a third-party person to review SS's beginning areas?

I'm 99.9% sure the people at JeffL's Paranoia Alert have never seen SS.

Lack of knowledge is really the only issue with leveling or making money at lower levels.


When initially starting you can do a few missions and kill the various rats for XP and a bit of cash. If you feel you need more cash you can then do trading in Preloaded. Killing the various flies in Deep Space works well also after a short while.

Once you have some cash buying a Paximinus works well: low tech, good hull size, high resists, and the speed isn't too bad. The downside of only 2 aug slots isn't an issue when at that level you won't have the necessary augs anyway.

You could also start doing Paxius missions now for some easy non-combat SP and credits. I personally prefer not spending the medals on Warp Navigation 1 or 2 and just saving them for 3. There's also the option of selling them to other people for a sum of credits that's pretty good at lower levels.

I've found Space Blue Alphas and Interceptors are good targets for leveling due to their low shield banks for their relatively high levels. A Paximinus with AI station gear can take these out around level 15. SP can then be put into slaves for an SP-cheap leveling method. Drones or just kiting AI also work well.

After Interceptors you can move onto Infernos and Goblins. After you level up on these AI you should be able to get a prismatic conversion and start capping Infernos for a pretty good profit, allowing you to get a better ship, augs, and gear.

At this point it's on to Seraphs or the Copper AI in Copper 3 (if I remember the number correctly). By the time you've sufficiently leveled on these you shouldn't even need to be explained what are good options.



While this is all a rather easy method of playing from level 0 without any assistance, low levels don't know what options are available to them and how things compare to each other, so they won't even know about these sorts of shortcuts. Previous money or gear isn't the issue, it's game knowledge.


I don't think this is entirely bad, however. It just needs to be determined when the player has sufficient knowledge that they should be left on their own as to what to do. Guiding a new player also is a pretty delicate design area and needs to coerce a player into doing exactly what you want without forcing them.



As for the current Nexus, a lot of design oversights do seem to cause problems for new players.

On the missions side of things, silicon is sometimes required in Nexus missions. However, once past level 15 one cannot return to Preload and acquire silicon. Currently there are two suns in the main Nexus that dispense asteroids holding metals; one of those should probably have silicon.

Aug Tweaking missions 1 and 2 in the Nexus are pretty annoying: at that level you will not be lucky enough to have the augs necessary to complete either of them. By the time you likely do you will already be out of Nexus and completely forget about the missions. These missions need to be made do-able by a complete newbie.

The Volcom output mission to acquire cargo from destroyed ships is also a bit of a pain.

Fly Embryos (Level 1 mobs) actually have more shields than Maggots (Level 8 mobs), plus are very deadly damage-wise due to being bunched together in a special galaxy. Ur'Ziq mobs in Paximinus like to swarm very close to the Ur'Ziq Bana wormhole near a dark sun: this makes it difficult to hit them, annoying to range them due to weak radar power, and they deal pretty high damage output as well. AI in the Volcom output deal a ton of damage. This seems to be a constant issue with the Nexus that likely resulted from the item re-balance: almost all AI are overpowered for a player who is just starting and has no idea how to play.

The physical-damage knockback from Fly Pellets on various enemies can also be rather frustrating for new players who do not yet understand how to control their ships properly.

A common issue I've seen with new players is flying out in some random direction in a galaxy and having no idea what to do. That's certainly something that needs to be taught better to the user.

The Nexus should be re-thought to be a learning experience. Every mission should serve to teach the player something important about playing the game without being too difficult or confusing. Dark Lead to Sol? That's just a huge pain: having them carry it to another very close station in the current galaxy should be sufficient if you want to try to enforce the concept of weight via that method. Missions should also not be too difficult: if a player can fail the game's "tutorial" of sorts they won't want to stick around long enough to experience more. They do, however, need to feel that they've accomplished something in order to stick around longer. Sadly, Star Sonata can't use the obvious gratitude or congratulations cut-scene for budgeting reasons, but other methods could be utilized.


"Prettyfying" the starting Preload galaxy also couldn't hurt. Players need to be presented with something a bit more interesting to keep them for those vital few seconds until they begin experiencing the actual gameplay.



Recording test users in some form is also great for determining what changes should be made and where they are getting stuck or bored.

If you make things like this, you should prepare for complications(player not playing the role, flying far away etc) a story only seems to be happening around you if it changes based on your decisions.

The reason why i stayed with SS is because when i started out i was getting killed by some guy in a helga, so i asked for hep and a guy PMed me and told me to go to the nexus. so i did. i waited and saw an EFF show up, and i was like omfg that is huge (compared to all the zebus and mini volcoms running around) and then 2 more showed up (his slaves).

the reason why i stayed is because i saw what could be done, and when i went P2P i just realised all there is to do, all these new ships and skills.

When you start SS i think it should be a cinematic, showing you where you could get to, like an EFF,a dread, maby show some PvP and/or PvE.

Hehe. Yeah, I used to like taking a dread with slaves down to Nexus just to show all the newbies something that would impress them. It wasn't that I needed to feel big or anything. I just wanted them to feel that "OMFG that's amazing I want one of those someday" feeling that you are talking about.

Since I started out on a speed demon route, I was most impressed with the Wingship IVs I saw flying around. I wanted that speed and manueverability, and a Wing IV was my big goal for the longest time. I was sad when I finally got to the point where I could fly one and found out it was worthless as a combat ship

This is part of Paladinofdoom and I's complete redo of The Nexus and Preload. I'm bugging Pala atm for his part.


Restructure of BOTH Preload AND Nexus. This is a massive project, and would be akin to Olympus or the Bana UZ. However, once done, it should allow minimum help from greeters and push more new players into wanting p2p.

The current issues of both PL and TN is that the initial missions are massive walls of text, the place lacks much direction, some AI are way too powerful for the players intended, and that the galaxies are horribly out of scale.
For Preload:

This is instanced.

You begin as a person in a Zebucart. There is a POP UP mission board that tells you a short introduction to the game and auto-gives you the first mission. You can’t decline the first missions in preload. The first series of missions reside in an empty galaxy devoid of anything but a non damaging Sun. The missions tell you have to move, general weapon testing, what the basic equipments on your ship are, etc.

Then, it gives you the mission to go to the big gate (this gate would be about 2x the size of normal w0 gates, and the icon will flash on the new player’s mini-radar). You are ordered to warp through, and to dock (it tells you how) at the AI base in this second galaxy. Here, the base will give you a mission to kill the AI (3 to be exact). The combined dps of all the AI will not dent the ship’s shields, not that they would stay agro after their shields get 100%.

The AI would have a 0% crit rate and use energy weaponry. The missions here will teach about slightly more advanced equipments, like chargers and panels, as well as critical hits (the instanced crit will cause 50% of the shields of the AI to come off.).

The next galaxy will teach about mining, trading, and basic kill missions. It would be a friendlier Mini Volcom place. The fourth galaxy would be the final place, where you are to kill the Mega Mini Volcom, a sort of uber that the player has to kill, as well as the unaggroed Drone nearby. Both are separate missions.

Each galaxy you pass through is locked in reverse, to prevent players from getting lost by going back, and to nudge them forwards. Redundant missions will review what have been learnt before, in case a player forgot. Each set will have increasingly larger reviews, and will be accessed eventually in the nexus’ main base.

One of the major issues with low level stuff, from my viewpoint, is that the HR/HR+ is just broken.

I did a play-test with 2 chars, one using a HR(+) and one not using one; the difficulty curve differential was huge.


So, at the moment, I'm all up for Nexus changes, but the HR needs a change.