Forums » Suggestions
Suggestions from a first timer
So, I think I'm ~7 hours into my 8 hour trial. It's been pretty cool so far.
Things I like :- The chat seems fairly mature (I've played WoW) and people seem generally helpful. Also, the game is fairly friendly to newbs. I lost my first ship by firing at the station you start at, because I didn't know what clicking would do :)
However, things that are slightly annoying me already.
Once I completed the first training missions, it got too open ended. The station offered me a bunch of quests, but they were all generic quests as far as I could tell. I did a few escort quests, all through safe zones, and the amount of cash handed out was fairly phenomenal, given that I barely stayed with the convoy.
Speaking of staying with the convoy, and I've seen this mentioned on the forums, but the HUD really needs more ways to tell who is who. I never actually worked out who I was escorting on my quests. I just followed the jumps. I did see the 3-4 other ships, presumably NPCs, in my group, but I wasn't sure whether they were the convoy, or NPC guards sent to help me?
These escort missions gave out a fair amount of cash, as I mentioned. 35k for running through 3 star systems in total, all safe zones. This was enough to cover at least 10 replacements of the ship I was in at the time.
So next I went to try some combat. At first, I tried to do one of these Hive quests, apparently with 6 bots spotted in the zone. I got my arse kicked, but wasn't too peeved. Maybe I was out of my league, I can't say I'm good at twitch games. So I went back and did Advanced Combat Training (kill 4 bots).
All in all, I did this quest at least 25 times. At first, it was fun. I got up to about 75-100 kills, my licenses got to 2/1/1/1/0, and it started getting fairly easy. I could take on some of the harder bots.
But there was so much junk floating around. Each kill would drop 3-7 floating cargo containers. And the next bot would arrive before I'd manage to get all of them inside my cargo bay at times even. I quickly learnt that the best bet was to just keep killing bots, grab any cargo that I could between fights, and jump back home when I needed to repair and grab more ammo.
This annoyed me. In these missions (which seemed an appropriate difficulty for me, not too easy, not too hard), I could not see any way of looting everything. This would be quite fair, if I had time to actually inspect what I picked up, but quite often I would be fired upon as I was picking up something even, so I'd stop looting, kill another bot, and bam, more cargo and we start over again. After an hour or so of my grind at this particular sector, I could easily spot clusters of 10-15 cargo containers, and I probably left close to 100 lying around.
Again, the only issue with this is that in this case, I did not have enough time between fights to select what to pick up, what to jettison etc.
A small side note, is that it would be nice to be able to tell how much something was worth at the last station, while your are out in space. Say I kill a bot, and it drops 2 different types of minerals. I can see that one of the types sold for 10x more than the other, and I know which to pick up. If I had spare time to select my cargo, I would have had to note these down by hand. I apologise if this information is already ingame, but I could not see a way to check station prices (even outdated ones) while in space.
While on these combat training missions, I felt like I was wasting my time as well. I could not seem to make a significant impact on the number of bots. In other MMOs, respawn times are such that you can see what difference you make. It would be nice if someone spent an hour in a sector clearing it, if the zone would start to run out of bots, signifying that the player has had some sort of impact. Along these lines, if the ideal quest progression for players is to complete this Advanced Training mission several times, then it would be good to re-write the text for the mission to make it seem more "required" and less of a training mission. As in, tell the player "sector XY has recently seen a influx of AAA type bots, we need you to go clear them out to keep those infidels under control" rather than saying what sounded to me like "hi, just go somewhere, kill something, stay out of my hair for 5 minutes"
Anyway, sorry for being long winded, but those are my thoughts at least. Hope I haven't repeated anything, or insulted anyone
Things I like :- The chat seems fairly mature (I've played WoW) and people seem generally helpful. Also, the game is fairly friendly to newbs. I lost my first ship by firing at the station you start at, because I didn't know what clicking would do :)
However, things that are slightly annoying me already.
Once I completed the first training missions, it got too open ended. The station offered me a bunch of quests, but they were all generic quests as far as I could tell. I did a few escort quests, all through safe zones, and the amount of cash handed out was fairly phenomenal, given that I barely stayed with the convoy.
Speaking of staying with the convoy, and I've seen this mentioned on the forums, but the HUD really needs more ways to tell who is who. I never actually worked out who I was escorting on my quests. I just followed the jumps. I did see the 3-4 other ships, presumably NPCs, in my group, but I wasn't sure whether they were the convoy, or NPC guards sent to help me?
These escort missions gave out a fair amount of cash, as I mentioned. 35k for running through 3 star systems in total, all safe zones. This was enough to cover at least 10 replacements of the ship I was in at the time.
So next I went to try some combat. At first, I tried to do one of these Hive quests, apparently with 6 bots spotted in the zone. I got my arse kicked, but wasn't too peeved. Maybe I was out of my league, I can't say I'm good at twitch games. So I went back and did Advanced Combat Training (kill 4 bots).
All in all, I did this quest at least 25 times. At first, it was fun. I got up to about 75-100 kills, my licenses got to 2/1/1/1/0, and it started getting fairly easy. I could take on some of the harder bots.
But there was so much junk floating around. Each kill would drop 3-7 floating cargo containers. And the next bot would arrive before I'd manage to get all of them inside my cargo bay at times even. I quickly learnt that the best bet was to just keep killing bots, grab any cargo that I could between fights, and jump back home when I needed to repair and grab more ammo.
This annoyed me. In these missions (which seemed an appropriate difficulty for me, not too easy, not too hard), I could not see any way of looting everything. This would be quite fair, if I had time to actually inspect what I picked up, but quite often I would be fired upon as I was picking up something even, so I'd stop looting, kill another bot, and bam, more cargo and we start over again. After an hour or so of my grind at this particular sector, I could easily spot clusters of 10-15 cargo containers, and I probably left close to 100 lying around.
Again, the only issue with this is that in this case, I did not have enough time between fights to select what to pick up, what to jettison etc.
A small side note, is that it would be nice to be able to tell how much something was worth at the last station, while your are out in space. Say I kill a bot, and it drops 2 different types of minerals. I can see that one of the types sold for 10x more than the other, and I know which to pick up. If I had spare time to select my cargo, I would have had to note these down by hand. I apologise if this information is already ingame, but I could not see a way to check station prices (even outdated ones) while in space.
While on these combat training missions, I felt like I was wasting my time as well. I could not seem to make a significant impact on the number of bots. In other MMOs, respawn times are such that you can see what difference you make. It would be nice if someone spent an hour in a sector clearing it, if the zone would start to run out of bots, signifying that the player has had some sort of impact. Along these lines, if the ideal quest progression for players is to complete this Advanced Training mission several times, then it would be good to re-write the text for the mission to make it seem more "required" and less of a training mission. As in, tell the player "sector XY has recently seen a influx of AAA type bots, we need you to go clear them out to keep those infidels under control" rather than saying what sounded to me like "hi, just go somewhere, kill something, stay out of my hair for 5 minutes"
Anyway, sorry for being long winded, but those are my thoughts at least. Hope I haven't repeated anything, or insulted anyone
welcome to vo.
the station prices are not listed in space because the actual price will vary from one station to the next. also, selling many of the same items to a station will affect it's price.
the whole point of the combat mission, though, is for you to get experience at blowing away opponents and deal with multiple targets. i suggest you even avoid taking up cargo until you're ready to head back to a station for repairs and ammo (if applicable to your ship setup).
money does *seem* to come easy in this game but before long, you'll be blowing away millions in a night. so, it's not a bad idea to start accumulating for your old days.
the station prices are not listed in space because the actual price will vary from one station to the next. also, selling many of the same items to a station will affect it's price.
the whole point of the combat mission, though, is for you to get experience at blowing away opponents and deal with multiple targets. i suggest you even avoid taking up cargo until you're ready to head back to a station for repairs and ammo (if applicable to your ship setup).
money does *seem* to come easy in this game but before long, you'll be blowing away millions in a night. so, it's not a bad idea to start accumulating for your old days.
Just a quick note before I go to bed. RE: having prices available. I know that the prices vary. And I know that have accurate prices would royally screw up any economy. What I more wanted, was some sort of indicator on the help page, saying "Sold for xx credits/CU at last station" or "Last sale for xx credits at Station YY". Basically, it'll be the same as someone taking notes with a pen and paper. This probably won't help people who have played a while, as they start to learn what's good and what's not, but can possibly help newbies pick out the good from the bad.
your pda has a section where you can take notes.
And if you check your advancement log, it's got things like how much XP you earned, credits you loss, etc.
You might wanna' check out [edit]the completely not broken whatever upper case seems to think[/edit] Border Patrol or Border Skirmish up in Deneb/Geira Rutilus if you're Itani/Serco respectively. That might be more what you're looking for, and you'll be more likely to see some PvP.
You might wanna' check out [edit]the completely not broken whatever upper case seems to think[/edit] Border Patrol or Border Skirmish up in Deneb/Geira Rutilus if you're Itani/Serco respectively. That might be more what you're looking for, and you'll be more likely to see some PvP.
i wouldn't recommend any noob to go in there because of the mission abuse problem.
I think that anenigma has a point about the widget price helper. It would be nice to have, but definitely not a high priority, especially since, like upper case mentioned, the PDA allows people to take notes.
For that matter, a script could probably be programmed to parse those prices to a note in-game. Sadly, I suck too much at programming, plus I lack the motivation to do something like that.
For that matter, a script could probably be programmed to parse those prices to a note in-game. Sadly, I suck too much at programming, plus I lack the motivation to do something like that.
As in, tell the player "sector XY has recently seen a influx of AAA type bots, we need you to go clear them out to keep those infidels under control" rather than saying what sounded to me like "hi, just go somewhere, kill something, stay out of my hair for 5 minutes"
Advanced Combat Practice missions are actually practice missions. There are already experimental Hive missions you are asking for, but currently they are available in gray space only. In the future there will be 3 Hives dynamically expanding/being eliminated, but there also will be always some kind of training missions
Advanced Combat Practice missions are actually practice missions. There are already experimental Hive missions you are asking for, but currently they are available in gray space only. In the future there will be 3 Hives dynamically expanding/being eliminated, but there also will be always some kind of training missions