Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Diaspora => Topic started by: newman on October 25, 2012, 12:57:02 pm
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It's funny how people complain about gameplay complexity - I don't recall the same complaints for when FS2 came out. But, if we decreased complexity we'd get others complaining about it being too arcade-like. I'm thinking people just got too used to console-like simplified gameplay that today's games offer by large. I do concede that having some targeting hotkeys that let you wade through all the crap to the critical stuff would be welcome, but cutting the number of controls to simplify gameplay..? FS2 style games were never exactly Orbiter, it's a bit disconcerting seeing people completely out of their element when a game has a bit more complexity than your run of the mill FPS...
Still, mostly praise, and that's good. Just not liking the principle of gameplay having to be super-simplified for today's audiences.
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Is IGN's review the first numeric review, i.e., the first one to assign a score, particularly from a major game review site?
Also, because of the IGN review, there's now a Metacritic page (http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/diaspora-shattered-armistice).
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It's funny how people complain about gameplay complexity - I don't recall the same complaints for when FS2 came out. But, if we decreased complexity we'd get others complaining about it being too arcade-like. I'm thinking people just got too used to console-like simplified gameplay that today's games offer by large. I do concede that having some targeting hotkeys that let you wade through all the crap to the critical stuff would be welcome, but cutting the number of controls to simplify gameplay..? FS2 style games were never exactly Orbiter, it's a bit disconcerting seeing people completely out of their element when a game has a bit more complexity than your run of the mill FPS...
Still, mostly praise, and that's good. Just not liking the principle of gameplay having to be super-simplified for today's audiences.
It should be noted however that the tutorial does force you to go through a lot of commands that are rarely/barely/never used. Instead of a FS-ish movement tuto followed by combat tuto, it may have been wiser to have one basic command tuto and one advanced commands tuto.
Basically what I mean is, you shouldn't need more than afterburner, glide, weapon commands and toggling auto-speed/auto-target to play Diaspora ! The rest is superfluous for first-time players.
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While the tutorial was technically really well made, I think in the end it was bad user experience.
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I agree. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the FREDing of the tutorial, or the execution, or the ambience or anything like that, but the progression was not, imho, adapted for first-time players that would like to get in the action as fast as possible with only the most basic required keys to play correctly.
Ideally, maybe the tutorial should even be a separate campaign so players can go back to it easily after one or two mission in order to learn more advanced commands, without having to go through the mission simulator they most likely don't even know exists.
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While I see your points, it's probably best I refrain from commenting this further since FREDing isn't my department. IGN gave us a mostly favorable review, and the things they didn't like we planned on fixing anyway for the most part, so there's that :)
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I think the lack of multiplayer (both perceived and actual real players) hurt us too.
But that's what r1.5 is meant to correct.
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I think the main issue was perceived difficulty be it controls and, namely, dying. Not a lot we can do without revamping the health system.
Working in (for players) something like the Assassin's creed system where health is divided into 5% segments that can regenerate might help a lot and could be tied to lower difficulties like autoaim currently is. (so if a missile nails you down to 83% it can regen some of those blocks back)
Of course I now feel fully justified during beta when people complained it was too easy and I said it was still too hard ;)
We did get a higher score than BSG Online... so... there's that...
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I think simply having Hull Integrity just magically repair to 25% whenever it gets below that threshold (Or whichever number that causes the damage gauge to go red) would go a long way. Perhaps just in the lower difficulties.
In terms of how that would affect suspension of disbelief, we already have subsystems repairing themselves so it doesn't seem much of a stretch to me to see all numbers on your damage gauge increasing instead of just many.
We implemented difficulty conceits with auto aim and lenient combat landings. Having regenerative hit points in the lower difficulties as well isn't exactly selling our souls here.
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Don't ****ing ruin the game because of a ****ty IGN review. The game's difficulty and complexity are fine.
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I doubt we'd do anything to the standard setting, but maybe for easy.
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way i see it IGN is not hardcore.
and i don't think they ever liked freespace to begin with.
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My 2 cents...
I couldn't agree with Topgun more.
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way i see it IGN is not hardcore.
...what does that even mean?
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Damn what y'all upset about, that was a perfectly fair review and a fine score.
It's particularly exciting to see Diaspora get covered as a real release, rather than shoved into some mod roundup paragraph.
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way i see it IGN is not hardcore.
...what does that even mean?
They only like simple games.
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way i see it IGN is not hardcore.
and i don't think they ever liked freespace to begin with.
It's not so much they are not hardcore as they review games from the perspective of the average player. We do need to remember that this type of game, with this level of difficulty has always been 'niche'. If you compare the difficulty of Diaspora to some of the later missions in Tie Fighter or Wing Commander, the difficulty curve is not that different, the difficulty level is just fine in my opinion, the audience you aimed for is the audience you hit perfectly.
I think decreasing the difficulty of the game would be like nerfing the Minbari in the B5 project. It'd kind of defeat the whole point of the campaign ;)
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They only like simple games.
I doubt that extremely. I suspect you're seeing the result of a Space Sim produced by Space Sim players of years and years, i.e. the difficulty has been skewed from what a commercial product would have because we've all been at this much too long.
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They only like simple games.
I doubt that extremely. I suspect you're seeing the result of a Space Sim produced by Space Sim players of years and years, i.e. the difficulty has been skewed from what a commercial product would have because we've all been at this much too long.
(http://i.imgur.com/ij8Gk.jpg)
I don't think the average player would rate party babyz a 7.5
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The last thing I want to talk about is gamers' opinion of reviews of games. I disagree with NGTM1R a little, though - I think on the two lowest Diaspora difficulties the game is pretty welcoming at the mechanical level. Once players realize they only need a couple basic controls, they should be fine.
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And this is why numerical scores are bad.
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Well, IGN's review of God Hand is famous for the ire it stirred up among fans, and even four years later, long after the person who wrote that actual review left the site, people still rage about it.
As for the second review, I'm not entirely certain what it is trying to say, that because a childrens game got a high-score for being well targetted and executed from the reviewers persective, that it makes the company less 'hardcore' for not only having reviewed it, but enjoyed it as well?
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Hehe, they've misspelled "Armistice" on their front page. Seriously though, congratulations on getting reviewed (and very positively, too!) by one of the hugest mainstream gaming sites out there. Hopefully it'll help FSO reach a bunch of new people :yes:
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I don't think the average player would rate party babyz a 7.5
Pretty sure the average player who bothered picking it up would. Also, timely and clearly related, this is not.
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What it boils down to, I suppose, is that this is perfectly fair and accurate review. Consider, is the reviewer actually saying anything that we didn't already know? Freespace and its kin were famous for their vast plethora of controls, some even blamed that as part of the reason that Space-combat sims faltered as a genre, and the Multiplayer is still in Beta, this site makes no secret of that fact.
All in all Diaspora gets very positive comments for presentation, atmosphere and story, and justifiably so, there are still weak spots, the developers would be the first to agree with that, and this review identifies the weak along with the strong, it wouldn't be a very good review if it didn't.
All in all, I think both the Diaspora AND the SCP teams should be incredibly proud of that review, you got a rating that wouldn't be insulting to a moderate commercial release based on work done on an entirely voluntary basis and purely out of affection for a ten-year old game engine and the BSG Universe. To see the SCP Engine not only throw down the gauntlet to more modern games, but actually have its visual quality commented on is a far more incredible achievement than I think many people realise.
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I don't see why this topic was split. Now it looks like I was bothered enough to start a new topic when it was just a passing remark to an existing one.
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I'd rather keep the other thread just for links rather than discussion. I'll rename the thread to make it clear though.
I tend to agree with Battuta and Flipside on the issue of the score. The issues the review brought up are ones we're perfectly aware of and have taken steps to mitigate in R2. And the fact that we've achieved a score that says "If you're interested in BSG or Space sims, you'll probably want to try this out" when compared against games from commercial studios, is pretty impressive. I'm not at all unhappy about that.
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Fair enough, and thanks :)
And yes, numerical scores can be misleading, depending on the kind of player you are. If you already have space sim experience and don't care about multi, you'll probably find Diaspora better than the overall IGN score suggested.
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I would like to know what difficulty he was playing on. Also if he had space sim experience as he claimed, I feel like the control scheme is pretty standard for the important stuff.
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Don't ****ing ruin the game because of a ****ty IGN review. The game's difficulty and complexity are fine.
Since when is helping newbies on lower levels of difficulties "ruining the game" ? If you want to play the game à la hardcore, play Insane, that's what it's here for ! Diaspora has to worry about all the new players that want an enjoyable experience without hours of training. Level of difficulties are here to satisfy both ends of the player spectrum.
Which get us back to square 1 : I can see the way training missions are right now being a barrier to entry for first-time players.
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One thing I've always been for is making sure that the game is approachable. R2 will add some more complexity, but doing things like an alternate damage system that is more lenient on easier difficulties is an idea that we should go forward with.
I've never bought into the "hardcore" or "e-sports" mindsets because such things often are used as justification for bad design decisions intended to make games harder for no reason.
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Damn what y'all upset about, that was a perfectly fair review and a fine score.
It's particularly exciting to see Diaspora get covered as a real release, rather than shoved into some mod roundup paragraph.
Yep, that was my thought as well. I thought the reviewer was bang-on for all of the highlights and lowlights (although I do wonder if they played through on the default difficulty level).
I am curious to see how things like alternative damage systems work out, and I agree that trimming down controls to the essentials is possible and largely desirable.
Multiplayer is tricky, since we never got enough players to make it self-sustaining. A multiplayer-focused release might possibly fix that, I guess, but I don't think anyone is surprised that Diaspora (and Freespace) is first and foremost a single-player experience.
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Congrats on getting a good review on IGN, this only reinforces my idea about you guys on the backside being awesome.
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I seem to remember that in the FS2 campaign there are two sets of training missions. The first set does a lot of the basic flight and targeting controls and the second set (several missions later) teaches the advanced controls. I always wondered if Diaspora should follow a similar model. But then I realized that with only six mission it would be hard to fit in a second round of training without breaking the action.
If Diaspora ever does a Saga release (aka R1, R2, R3, etc. all in one release) then breaking up the training into basic and advanced and placing them throughout the campaign would really flatten that learning curve, and help bring in new players.
I don't recommend changing too much with the damage system. That is what has killed many a good game, when a fun (yet difficult) health system is replaced by a system that tends towards casual gamers. (I'm looking at you Halo 2) I think the idea of regenerating a 'section' of your health is viable, but don't turn the health system into pips. Just have the ship heal up to the nearest 10% (for example) and that should help a lot of those newer players. Maybe even have the easier difficulties heal to the nearest 25% while the harder ones heal to the nearest 10% and have the hard difficulties just not heal at all, some sort of sliding scale.
We should also have a screen right after the training (or before) that asks the user to select their difficulty. I think a lot of nuggets jumped in on normal difficulty when they were only ready for easy and that lead too a lot of frustration.
As for multiplayer, would it ever be possible to get AI working in some of the more basic mission types. Then a few permanent servers could be set up where slots are filled with AI. That way people wont be turned off instantly because they cant find a game. With AI they could play a few games while other players queue up for the next game.
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If Diaspora ever does a Saga release (aka R1, R2, R3, etc. all in one release) then breaking up the training into basic and advanced and placing them throughout the campaign would really flatten that learning curve, and help bring in new players.
That won't be possible, though - Shattered Armistice concluded the Theseus storyline, and the next release will focus on a different story. So even if we'll have one big release containing all campaigns, they'll still be separate ones.
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It would, however, be possible to split the tutorials out into their own, separate campaign, wouldn't it?
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Yes but it would seem rather odd that way as we have all kinds of story hooks in the tutorials that don't pay off.
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BtA has a demo as a separate campaign, with a lot of story hooks in it. I don't see how that would be any different from having the tutorial as a separate campaign.
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I love how rethinking and softening mechanics that lead to frustration (like purely attritive damage) would be "****ing ruining the game". I guess it's the same as how the new XCOM sucks because it removed number-munging and how DX:HR sucked because it removed the tedium of scrounging for medkits.
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Yes but it would seem rather odd that way as we have all kinds of story hooks in the tutorials that don't pay off.
The idea that someone is going to play the tutorial and not proceed directly to play the campaign because it requires a number of extra mouseclicks under ten is remarkably strange.
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I don't understand your point. If you're saying that if we uncouple the tutorials from the rest of the campaign that people will still play the campaign immediately afterwards, then the question has to be why would we do that in the first place?
BtA has a demo as a separate campaign, with a lot of story hooks in it. I don't see how that would be any different from having the tutorial as a separate campaign.
And you expect people to play the BtA demo, go off and play something else like Blue Planet and then come back and play the rest?
Cause that's what splitting off the tutorials would be like. We'd be expecting the player to play the whole of the R1 tutorial, then R2 and then the R1 campaign. That's definitely odd since there is no connection between R1 and R2 beyond that they are in the same universe.
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Wha? He means packaging it with the R1 campaign.
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He knows that. Splitting the tutorial would still be patchwork at best. If we're going to do something about them, then we should try and address the things people didn't like in them, not detach them from the campaign so nobody ever plays them again. So basically, streamline them a bit, kick out the unnecessary parts, and show the basic things you need to know in shortened missions.
Whether or not something's to be done about this at all or if we'll just focus on R2 dev and live with it is really something that'll be up to the team's fred-ers, though. I just hate patchwork fixes - either fix what's wrong or don't touch it; sweeping them under the carpet would be the wrong thing to do here, imo.
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I agree on the comments that the tutorials could have been shortened and maybe even skipped entirely...
Here's a very stupid reason why:
Very few people like reading the manual to discover everything a product can do before they turn it on...
The perfect example of this is my iPhone: I had no idea how to organize menus by touch-holding or dragging, nor did I know about the app-killer by double touching the menu button when I first got it...I found out about these a few weeks of using it later.
The idea direction to take Diaspora in is this:
Make the game realistically hard...make it likely you will die if you don't know what you are doing...you don't need to give the enemy bonus HP or reduce the players hull rating, make everything fair, just make the enemies smarter and more accurate.
Then, make the tutorial very short...let players fail and become better with practice... Maybe even put tutorial training in a completely separate campaign...
What should occur in the ideal is that beginner players will go through the campaign and suck at it, they should die a whole bunch of times or maybe not even complete it until they take the time to learn how to fly the ship correctly. This is a normal learning experience. Think about how many times you played the original Super Mario in order until you found out about the level warps...then you notice...you never play levels 2 and 3 anymore...
Why?
Because your goal is to WIN the game, not to learn how to play the game. The goal of the player should be to have a realistic gameplay experience and the goal of the team should be to make a realistic simulator with as little hand-holding and suggesting as possible.
Quite possibly the perfect example of this is Half-Life 2...nobody...NOBODY tells Gordon what he has to do, everyone assumes he already knows and works at helping him toward that goal.
So why does the tutorial assume you've never once played a flight simulator before? No offense to the people who Fred'd it. You accomplished your goal of making a good tutorial mission perfectly.
I might even suggest doing away with Freespace 2's interface/targetting all together. As far as I know...there isn't a single radar system IN THE WORLD that can target a ship because it's attacking another ship...or because it's a bomber...or because it has a missile lock on you...
All of these are inventions to make games more accessible to people who want to have the feeling of accomplishment without actually working for it...it also goes against BSG canon which was to have the most realistic world possible made using current technology with the exception of the story taking place in space...
If you wanna see what I mean, download DCS World / SU-25T (The base package is free to play...) Then turn off all of the enemy and friendly markers to make the game as realistic as possible. While it's impossible to tell who the friendly and enemy tanks are while flying high visually...it really makes you think "Wow, pilots really have a stressful job making sure they don't blow up their own forces by accident..."
As for not changing/patching the tutorial...
Apple just fired the guy responsible for the maps-mess up because of the irreparable damage he did to the company's reputation...the company knows it has to change and that pursuing that style of mapping system/cutting off Google was a HUGE mistake.
The sooner you ditch the tutorial-system in favor of the above or something else the better off you will be.
I'll even attest, I played the tutorial "for the complete experience" only. Not because I didn't know how to fly a Viper, and not because I didn't spend 20 minutes configuring every control to my joystick. I probably would've been happier skipping it and just going straight to the game in retrospect but people feel the need to do it "because it's there."
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The majority of people playing our game either haven't played a flight sim in years or haven't ever played one. I'm all for ideas for how to introduce the concepts of flight to someone but repeatedly killing them in the first missions just quickly gets annoying. We'd probably lose far more players to "It's too hard, I didn't pay for this so there's no reason to go back to it"
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Quite possibly the perfect example of this is Half-Life 2...nobody...NOBODY tells Gordon what he has to do, everyone assumes he already knows and works at helping him toward that goal.
you have quite literally no clue what you are talking about. While HL2 lacks designated tutorials (Except for the Gravity Gun!), the basic rythm with every game mechanic introduced there is this: 1. Introduce game mechanic in a non-combat, non-timed situation. 2. Have the player perform the same action under stress (i.e. while being shot at). 3. Twist the mechanic (i.e. use it in a different way).
And yeah, what Karajorma said. There is a balance that needs to be found between providing just enough handholding so that people new to the genre will feel empowered by the mechanics rather than being railroaded, and providing enough challenge for Veterans so that they'll come back wanting more. The XCOM Demo, for example, fails spectacularly on both counts.
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Very few people like reading the manual to discover everything a product can do before they turn it on...
Wrong.
Make the game realistically hard...make it likely you will die if you don't know what you are doing...you don't need to give the enemy bonus HP or reduce the players hull rating, make everything fair, just make the enemies smarter and more accurate.
1) **** Realism. With Barbed Wire.
2) The game is already hard enough for most players who, like Karaj said, never played a space sim or did it a decade and a half ago. Diaspora's intended public isn't predominantly composed of hardened FS players, contrary to other in-universe mods like BP, VD or PI.
What should occur in the ideal is that beginner players will go through the campaign and suck at it, they should die a whole bunch of times or maybe not even complete it until they take the time to learn how to fly the ship correctly. This is a normal learning experience. Think about how many times you played the original Super Mario in order until you found out about the level warps...then you notice...you never play levels 2 and 3 anymore...
This would have been great, like, about twenty-thirty years ago, when most gamers were ready to do that because this was how other games did it, and they had the time and motivation to stay on only one game even after tons of frustration.
Times have changed. So have games. Diaspora isn't intended to be a piece of archeology.
Because your goal is to WIN the game, not to learn how to play the game. The goal of the player should be to have a realistic gameplay experience and the goal of the team should be to make a realistic simulator with as little hand-holding and suggesting as possible.
1) Wrong, your goal isn't to win the game, your goal is to have fun. And the player, new to the genre, has to learn about some mechanics before he can start having fun. And learning about stuff is less fun than just playing the thing, which is the heart of the problem.
2) Wrong, the goal isn't a realistic experience. This isn't a space flight simulator, this is a space shooter. If you want a hardcore simulator, go make it yourself.
Quite possibly the perfect example of this is Half-Life 2...nobody...NOBODY tells Gordon what he has to do, everyone assumes he already knows and works at helping him toward that goal.
So why does the tutorial assume you've never once played a flight simulator before? No offense to the people who Fred'd it. You accomplished your goal of making a good tutorial mission perfectly.
Because HL2 is a FPS, a very well anchored genre that has the privilege to be able to expect his players have played other shooters before. Plus, FPS game mechanics are much simpler and easier to master than FS's.
On the other hand, the last successful space shooter was, well, FS2 itself. That's 13 years go. Diaspora can't do similar assumptions.
The sooner you ditch the tutorial-system in favor of the above or something else the better off you will be.
I do not think "not having any players anymore" is the best off Diaspora can be.
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The majority of people playing our game either haven't played a flight sim in years or haven't ever played one. I'm all for ideas for how to introduce the concepts of flight to someone but repeatedly killing them in the first missions just quickly gets annoying. We'd probably lose far more players to "It's too hard, I didn't pay for this so there's no reason to go back to it"
Probably a simple yet comprehensive training campaign that explains the mechanics and massages newcomers? (The main problem I'm seeing with this is like every other flight sim I've played save for Microsoft Flight Simulator, they're fully optional and don't drive the plot as much as I would hope.)
I remember MicroProse's hella old F-15 Strike Eagle II manual, they did a fine job of condensing how a lot of things work (but I don't see a manual or ref sheet for this mod coming out anytime soon).
This is what I gathered up for thought after looking from training missions from F-22, Jane's USAF, and MechWarrior 3 (if you guys have any better idea on how to streamline/condense/replace this, be my guest):
Day 1: Touch and Go - get to know your fighter (introduce to the basic flight controls, basic maneuvers, such and such).
Day 2: Basic Target Practice - mock Air to Air training, explaining how your weapons systems work (if there's no feasible fighter only bombing operations so you can do Air to Ground, probably put that under Combined Arms training).
Day 3: Advanced target practice / flying techniques (probably feature the glide maneuver, evasive tactics and other flight tactics, such as the Scissors Turn and jinking).
Day 4: Tactical Training - Coordination and communication with friendly assets/wingmen (make your fighter unarmed and let your squad do the work, unless you want to make sure that the player is a leader who can fight as well as communicate), and possibly Combined Arms training (working in tandem with a capital ship asset if you're not going to do bomber ops).
Day 5: Graduation Day - featuring live ammo, try to imagine a complete theater of a real-world-ish combat scenario, something like the Red Flag program.
Very few people like reading the manual to discover everything a product can do before they turn it on...
Wrong.
The sooner you ditch the tutorial-system in favor of the above or something else the better off you will be.
I do not think "not having any players anymore" is the best off Diaspora can be.
Oh god, this is making me recall Knights in the Nightmare. (That was literally one of the handheld games in which if you didn't either read the manual or do the optional in-game tutorials to get how the game worked, you'd be boned.)
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One of the big ideas with the Diaspora tutorial was to turn that whole "Nugget learning how to fly" idea on its head. You start the game as Theseus' top gun and the reason you are doing the tutorial is not because you don't know how to fly but cause you're testing out the CNP before they let the real nuggets go at it.
Now while I tend to agree with a lot of the criticism of the tutorials being too long (believe me, I know! You have no idea how often I playtested them) I don't think getting rid of them or uncoupling them from the story is necessarily a good idea. The tutorial does more than show how to play the game, it sets up things like who Obit is and why you should care about him in M2/M3.
Diaspora suffers from a problem that many other games don't have. The fall of the colonies was swift (a few hours really) and without warning. There's no time for skirmishes or other such missions to give the player a chance to improve basic skills. The entire game has to fit within a span of a few hours. If we had been able to start with a 1st Cylon War campaign (and in hindsight that might not have been a bad idea), I suspect we'd have done things quite differently.
But in the end, we're still on R1. We've got plenty of time to learn from our mistakes for R2.
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There's nothing stopping anyone (on or off the team) who thinks they have good ideas on what would make a better tutorial mission/campaign from going ahead and writing it.
An effective, non-storyline, "quick-start" tutorial mission (for example) would be a fantastic thing to make available to new players.
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Am I the only one who liked the tutorial? I thought it was well paced, sufficiently thorough, interesting, and skippable.
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The problem is that it was too thorough, introducing a lot of superfluous concepts for new players, most of whom would rather only get the most basic controls so they can start have fun right away.
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And a lot of the non-obvious concepts were reiterated with HUD tooltips in the real missions ("Press X to target turrets," "Press Y to target bombs"). I imagine the hypothetical Valve-style newbie campaign (maybe something with pirates?) would make heavy use of these.
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And a lot of the non-obvious concepts were reiterated with HUD tooltips in the real missions ("Press X to target turrets," "Press Y to target bombs"). I imagine the hypothetical Valve-style newbie campaign (maybe something with pirates or raiders?) would make heavy use of these.
I think this would actually be the best method. Instead of having a standard FS-style "tutorial" where you have to sit and do things in order, and slowly, have a mission or three where you actually do interesting things with the controls popping up HL2-style. The important thing being to let the player learn as fast as they're comfortable with, while doing something interesting.
Example: M1, "Patrol"
Follow Red 1 on patrol, while shaking down the new CNP system. Follow a waypoint, target (and maybe scan) some freighters, burn out to follow a transport, engage glide to move past it while keeping it in sight. But only the orders coming from Red 1, the actual keypresses and stuff popping up in a tooltip and directive.
M2, "Dogfight"
Red 1 will observe a mock dogfight against Red 3 in order to test out the CNP weapons controls. When you beat him or lose, a pair of pirates or something jumps in, and you take command of Red wing and get to blast the bad guys. Here you get to learn more targeting controls and how to lead a target to hit it.
The combat part of the actual Diaspora tutorial was pretty good, but the "Target this guy and face him. Good. Now target this guy" part was a bit tedious.
I think the most important thing we've learned from this thread is that a tutorial should focus on the most necessary skills to the game (flying and gliding, shooting accurately, targeting nearest enemy), with secondary skills introduced only when needed, or just referenced instead.
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Sounds like a good idea to me.
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Am I the only one who liked the tutorial? I thought it was well paced, sufficiently thorough, interesting, and skippable.
Nope! I thought similarly. I appreciated the effort to tie it into the storyline (in such a way that it isn't nearly as rich if you skip straight to mission 1).
I think this would actually be the best method. Instead of having a standard FS-style "tutorial" where you have to sit and do things in order, and slowly, have a mission or three where you actually do interesting things with the controls popping up HL2-style. The important thing being to let the player learn as fast as they're comfortable with, while doing something interesting.
Example: M1, "Patrol"
Follow Red 1 on patrol, while shaking down the new CNP system. Follow a waypoint, target (and maybe scan) some freighters, burn out to follow a transport, engage glide to move past it while keeping it in sight. But only the orders coming from Red 1, the actual keypresses and stuff popping up in a tooltip and directive.
M2, "Dogfight"
Red 1 will observe a mock dogfight against Red 3 in order to test out the CNP weapons controls. When you beat him or lose, a pair of pirates or something jumps in, and you take command of Red wing and get to blast the bad guys. Here you get to learn more targeting controls and how to lead a target to hit it.
The combat part of the actual Diaspora tutorial was pretty good, but the "Target this guy and face him. Good. Now target this guy" part was a bit tedious.
I think the most important thing we've learned from this thread is that a tutorial should focus on the most necessary skills to the game (flying and gliding, shooting accurately, targeting nearest enemy), with secondary skills introduced only when needed, or just referenced instead.
This could also be a good way to do it. While the storyline in R1 really required things panning out the way they did, if a story could be written on this basis it would be worth considering. The 'turn to face this guy - good' part really dragged me back mentally to the FS1/FS2 tutorials (are you sure those missiles weren't fired by a Fenris?), and did seem a little out-of-step with the way more modern games do things. Indeed, almost out-of-step with the innovative nature of the R1 missions themselves.
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so who is Diaspora's PR guy, because I've been posting here for a while and still haven't identified anyone working that angle in particular
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We have a PR guy? I don't think there is anyone who acts in that capacity officially. Why do you ask?
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Doing any form of extensive PR would be the opposite of what we were trying to do - which was to fly under the radar after the whole moddb thing. So no, we don't have anyone doing that. What we could use is someone who'd take care of and maintain our site - but that's about it.
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The whole "flying under the radar" thing is now over though.
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The whole "flying under the radar" thing is now over though.
Is it? The fact we're out doesn't change the fact we're making a free but unlicensed game. We still plan on making several releases and it would be a shame if we were prevented in doing so by something silly that's in nobody's best interest.
Anyway, question answered: no, we don't have a dedicated PR person, but we could use someone to deal with our website.
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I was a little annoyed by the review, though it was decent under the circumstances. The real problem was that he (or she?) was rating and judging the game on the standards of a professional/'for profit' game on top of completely failing to understand the development/release/content structure and plan of the game.
Doesn't have multiplayer? Well, sure, it flat-out says so because it's still in a closed beta stage, and it's just R1. A shot campaign? Again, it's the first release and something of a proof of concept/very well-made trial run, not a full, published game that's made for profit.
Clunky controls? Look, maybe if he could point to a game at all similar with a significantly better control scheme it would be a fair criticism, but it's like he's complaining that a Viper combat simulator isn't as simple as Call of Duty--there's room for improvement, sure, but when nobody in a comparable field does any better and you're a fan-made, completely free and zero-pay first release game mod, it comes off to me as a complete ignorance to the context and game he's reviewing.
Difficulty--in some ways fair, but he glosses over the whole option of choosing different difficulties, mission recommendations, and the main-hall tips.
He apparently didn't even know that the multiplayer is still in development, and instead expressed disappointment that there didn't seem to be anyone playing it online or any servers up and running.
He explains how BSG fans have been waiting for so many years for a half-decent BSG game, and how finally Diaspora has become that game--and then criticizes it in ways that clearly demonstrate he didn't even bother to learn any of the (even basic) facets of the genre (even when included in the main FAQ...) before or after playing the game. He points out no comparisons of any kinds of similar games (that clearly have never been pulled off after so man years for BSG, as he says) to base his criticisms in the realm of fairness and realism.
In terms of basic journalism, it's very sloppy to write a professional review of an indy project and not even bother to do any research on either it or the context of it all, and his ignorance shows rather significantly. Maybe I'm being too harsh here, but I was taught (and did) better in my high school journalism class alone, and this is a mainstream gaming news site.
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To be honest, I'm really not upset with the review at all. There are some sloppy mistakes but I'm actually quite proud of the fact that we're being compared against commercial releases. That really says something about our desired level of quality and that although R1 did have flaws it was good enough that reviewers don't bat an eyelid at the idea of comparing a fan-made game against something made by a professional studio.
Most of the team feel that the criticisms the reviewer made are actually fair ones in that light. Hell, almost all of them have been flagged as something we want to improve.
Doesn't have multiplayer? Well, sure, it flat-out says so because it's still in a closed beta stage, and it's just R1.
Yes but the lack of standalone servers did have a detrimental effect on multiplayer. People couldn't just drop by and see that games were being played, so they quickly formed the opinion that multiplayer is dead. That's not true of course, we're in open beta. But without standalones running, it doesn't seem that way. Getting the standalone (and multi in general) up to scratch is my priority at the moment.
A shot campaign? Again, it's the first release and something of a proof of concept/very well-made trial run, not a full, published game that's made for profit.
R1 was designed as something we could push out the door very quickly so that we could grab some interest before the show ended. Hell, if you look at the dev blog estimate thread you can see how wrong we got that. :D
So yeah, it is short. Had I known it would take 4 years to develop, I'd have suggested we go with a longer campaign.
Clunky controls? Look, maybe if he could point to a game at all similar with a significantly better control scheme it would be a fair criticism, but it's like he's complaining that a Viper combat simulator isn't as simple as Call of Duty--there's room for improvement, sure, but when nobody in a comparable field does any better and you're a fan-made, completely free and zero-pay first release game mod, it comes off to me as a complete ignorance to the context and game he's reviewing.
Again this is something we changed almost immediately after release. Diaspora released using a very FS2-style control config. We immediately patched this after release to use something WASD based instead since that actually removes some of the burden from us when it comes to learning how to play the game.
I tend to agree somewhat with your other points to an extent though.