Alain Kinsella
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Posted - 2009.07.28 08:20:00 -
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Just under a month in now, and ran all three career agent paths within the first week. Pretty much nailed all of them too (each group of 10 usually completed in a day), except the one combat mission...
Anyway...
-> Merge the Business and Industry paths into a single, 15-part mini-arc (to reduce redundant mission work). Set his timeout to 14 days (the length of the 'standard' trial). These two paths are partially intertwined anyway.
-> Please replace the 'Hacking' skillbook reward with something else. I *still* have it three weeks later and not likely to use it for another two months.
-> Expand the Combat path into a 15-mission mini-arc as well, if possible including the various suggestions regarding death and PvP here (or add exploration to this mini-arc, and have a separate 10-mission set just for PvP in all its forms).
I have yet to lose a ship or be podded (though I'm also naturally cautious), but it would have been invaluable earlier to get the 'first death' over with. I'm just now coming to grips with how things work here in that respect, and have had to make a longer (post 1.6 Mil) skills detour than before to accommodate that.
-> I can't comment much on the UI (as a long-time SL/There/Uru user, I'm hardened against bad UIs), but will comment about the learning curve. It took a *lot* of coaxing, questions, and early research - about three months - before I followed through on a friend's invite email.
-> And speaking of the starting setup, you and Steam need to make it *much* clearer that existing accounts - Trial or paid - will NOT work with Steam's distributed forms of the client. Also, the Atari box should be clearer about how you get its extras; There's a good chance my card will end up being shelved until I'm prepared to consider properly training an 'alt. All these confusing (and at times highly conflicting) *payment* and *access* methods aren't helping the NPE when you're not even *in* the actual NPE yet.
I'm sure there's more I can think of, but these are the immediate 'pain points' that came to mind with the overall tutorial. It still was a reasonable and useful intro, and just needs some serious polish.
--A_K
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