View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0029591 | Heart Of The Machine | Suggestion | Oct 27, 2024 8:13 am | Oct 29, 2024 11:31 am | |
| Reporter | Fluffiest | Assigned To | |||
| Status | new | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 0.593 The Girl With The Flower | ||||
| Summary | 0029591: Player overload issue - automatic unlocks in chapter 1 | ||||
| Description | Prior to the Chapter 1 rework, almost everything you unlocked in Chapter 1, from the smart pistol to the brain extraction vehicle, first needed to be researched. This wasn't quite right - since players were also granted a large number of upgrade researches in this time, it meant that the optimal way to play involved a lot of passing turns waiting for research to finish. The current Chapter 1 does away with most of this. Almost everything the player receives, they can just build or utilize straight away, no need to research it first. On the plus side, this means the chapter has a LOT less mandatory research, and a lot less pressing end turn. This is good. On the minus side, there are several steps where multiple items are given to the player at once, or as a side-effect of doing something else. Having to manually research them did have one very useful effect - it made it much harder for the player to miss that they now have a new option. When you get multiple unlocks at once, it's a lot of information to take in. The one turn for manual research helped space out these unlocks over time, giving the player a chance to process each one separately with a little break in between - even if the little break was just clicking "end turn". And selecting the research from a list of options made the player feel they were choosing to get the item. The example that first made me think of this ticket was the plant seed theft. Currently, this gives you the hydroponic tower and the Achilles rifle. Since the hydroponic tower is the main reward for the task, and the Achilles is an unexpected bonus that you had no idea you were going to get, it's actually easy to miss that you now have an Achilles. It's also not very clear *why* you got the Achilles (I asked in tester chat, and apparently it's as a response to the troops with riot shields). I'm fine with the hydroponic tower being an instant unlock. Having to research it doesn't add much - you know where it came from, you were expecting to get it, and you need to build one to proceed. Making the player spend a turn researching it might add a tiny bit of verisimilitude but it's probably not worth the hassle. The Achilles, on the other hand, I think would benefit from needing to be researched. The "inspiration" popup could indicate it's a respone to riot shields. Selecting it from the research menu and having it pop up as "research complete" a turn later would give the player a second chance to notice it on a turn when less is happening. Completing the vehicle theft a few turns later drops an absolute *deluge* of items on the player, none of which require research - suddenly, you can do everything all at once, and all of this together felt a bit overwhelming. A few turns later, you shoot down a military transport and get even more unlocks. I stopped playing for the night at that point. I'll revisit chapter 1 later, and see if I think anything else really needs to be delayed by a brief research. If you like, I can try to put together a list of "things" unlocked in chapter 1 that might (or might not) benefit from a brief research delay. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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I ran into this a bit when I was diving back in too. The game does tell you everything you've unlocked on a turn its just that those notifications auto-dismiss after a while. I think the solution is not necessarily research gating but just having a longer (or no) notification dismissal time. Having newly added items be tagged as new until you click (or mouse over) is another way of handling this too. Mint put in a related suggestion a while ago about having a UI toggle to turn off the notification timer completely which is a good idea, but I think in this case any of the above would help without necessarily adding the extra step and time of research. |
