First and last thoughts of 2 hours of gameplay from a new player to this genre

General
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Hello, i would like to give some feedback regarding my 2 short hours i spent in game.

First of, i expected to play with a friend of mine from start, i am from EU, shes from Canada, the first BIG downside to me was to find out that we spawned on a different planets??, and to be able to find eachother takes a very long time???

The quests or what ever are those" get that and that, kill that monster etc", are very random and not representing a good way of introducing the player to world, to the place where it starts.
It gives you from start things that are already to far from your starting point. Instead it should focus on the things that player can do right there on the spot where it starts and not sending to nowhere .

Placing a beacon on the ground should give a straight popup window that attention you to save your location, also there should be a option on/off to see the beacon even through walls and blocks, so u can easy spot. " Experienced players please refrain arguing this aspect"
I got lost, and took me a while to figure out that the beacon is the orange icon which was hidden between many other blue icons and sometimes was not even showing up on the compass, which is weird.

When i started to explore i accidentally fell into a hole and i tried to make my way up, was very hard since the the top layer was ice and my totem could not break that to make it into stair.
I remembered from other games the idea of placing blocks to get out, i couldn’t do that because this game has different type of shapes and angles and the grid system is weird.
I got somehow almost out, but then i got to a point where the block wouldn’t place at all.
Yes in the end i found the last solution, escape key, and Return to Sanctum but when i entered through portal i was still in that hole. Took me a while to figure out that u can reset the sanctum portal to get a new location. Anyway after 4 portal resets it placed me above the hole, but that’s not really a fair solution".
The grappling hook should be given straight away, just like that totem and light you give in the start, to be able to get out from holes. What’s the secret strategy by not allowing to craft the grappling hook from start?

I did fight with few monsters, i find that annoying as well, it seems that monsters does not hit you physical with their body, is just a hit animation played from distance, as for the spitters, is almost impossible to avoid their spitting thingy.

Sometimes the tool u have equipped gets back in inventory randomly

The inventory slots drag and drop does not exist, is click to drag and click to drop

I don;t like how crafting system works, there are no offline recipes " just to see what u can make ", you have to place blocks randomly to figure out what recipes you can craft from those blocks.

Another thing, if u place for example: rocks or wood to get other resource from it, that resource gets in the same inventory with the raw blocks u got from the world. There should be some separated slots in the inventory which serves to the resources u get out of crafting.

If u craft something for the quest, and if that item is in the output inventory, the quest doesn’t know u have it, unless u send it to main inventory.

The queue and time to craft something is ridiculous, i mean peoples pay 32 euro minimum to get the game, you get your money, does it really need to be this hardcore?. In 2017, in a speed era, I don’t think this waiting time to craft something makes the game more interesting" if you want to make the player think they achieved something, this is not the way".
I know you guys don;t have enough content and want to give player the impression that has a lot of things to do in game, but this is just waste of time waiting minutes and hours to craft something, as well hitting a block ridiculously lots of times, imagine the hits you make in a day of play, cmon…

There are many other problems with inventory and how the crafting system works, but i just lost my thoughts as i lost my interest to play because of many small annoying things " yes i know is alpha and u put that big message " get the game only if u want to support the devs", the game needs a lot of changes to be enjoyable, otherwise all those ppl who bought the game would be in game right now chatting and filling the world , but is empty game.

I cannot pass over these problems, so i don’t care how good the game gets later on after many days or weeks of play. The start is the most important aspect for a successful game. End game is something that many game buyers will never reach

I don’t like spending my time outside game on websites finding solutions , or how to play the game. The game should be straight forward and explanatory, which is not.

As for those for are reading the forum before buying the game, yes the game is in alpha state, my post should not discourage you from buying the game, is a very beautiful game, better than minecraft in many aspects, but i stick to the things i don’t like about, and hopefully get changed or fixed in future that way new players like me will not encounter these problems as i did.

excuse my grammar and my english

6 Likes
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@someonelse

I agree that there are a number of things missing from the new player experience compared to many of the early access games on steam. This is something that really should be addressed soon. I think some detail on what you feel is missing would be appreciated here:

The game is very much at the early side of early access games even though it has undergone a few major improvements in the last year. For the size team the game is making great progress in my opinion.

From your review it would seem you were expecting a much more mature game. I hope you stick with it and look past the current state as being early, early access. It really does have great potential and the devs are quite responsive to the community.

See ya in game!

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firstly, the game is not even 1.0 yet.

secondly, good point about the friend thing. choosing your server first with a note that each server has different planets before you start at the sanctuary would be nice in the future.

lastly, while i understand youre new and that maybe you arent quite familiar with how ‘under construction’ the game still is, there are ways around the distance between you and your friend.

for example, a player like myself can simply visit either of you and give you a location marker to the other friends planet… which would allow you then to simply build the warp blocks which cost nearly nothing, and the coin to travel there.

assuming of course they make the warp travel affordable in a different way

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" for example, a player like myself can simply visit either of you and give you a location marker to the other friends planet… which would allow you then to simply build the warp blocks which cost nearly nothing, and the coin to travel there. "

Yeah but you see that’s not a game feature, that’s help from a player which i might not find when i play.

This game is not out from yesterday, in these 2 years they could have added a temporary solution, like add a builder button attached to beacon, and when that button is pressed a window to popup. Then on that window you press " add a builder, and next to its name have a button " summon builder".
This way no matter where that player is located will be summoned.
By only allowing builders to be summoned, then players will not abuse this teleport system, like friends from list or etc, only builders that are added on that beacon will be able to be summoned.

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The warps really haven’t been around for that long, at first we had naturally occurring portals as a placeholder. Warps where first pushed last October and until now there haven’t really been a recurring problem with people ending up on a planet away from their friends.

Also wouldn’t it just have been easier to have a “Join with friend button” which needs to be added anyway than adding a whole new teleportation mechanic for the beacon? Just wondering?

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Yeah Join with friend button woks too, if was there. I only said in other way because then everyone could teleport anywhere through friend list and nobody will use that totem feature anymore. But i guess you can set up join with friend in a way so player can only use that feature once a hour or something.

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Despite what criticism you might receive, this is what Turbulenz is very interested in right now as they are working on tutorials etc :blush: All of your points should be looked at so that they can make things more intuitive.

It’s also difficult for existing players to stay objective, as we already know the methods we should use and keep the tools we want on us!

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the warp costs till like last week were only 500c per warp. so as said the portals werent really an issue prior. they are workin on the join friend when you start out, so thats a major plus and should help with players being international friends.

and on the devs behalf i have to say that the game for two years was very skin an bones by comparison. in the last eight months the game has come a long way with development being much speedier after the to c++ conversion from java