PAT28 Open Horizons
Welcome to this newest entry in my ongoing series of blog posts reporting on the (P)re-(A)lpha-(T)ests of Stars Reach.
Stars Reach is a currently in development social sandbox MMORPG, designed by Raph Koster, who is well known for designing both UO and SWG (pre-CU). Stars Reach aims to create a truly living virtual world and society - using a design approach that’s heavy on systems and simulation - favoring emergent, player-driven and social gameplay over static, canned content.
Haven still mostly looks the same
Previously on Stars Reach Pre-Alpha
The previous two patch updates - which took 7 and 5 weeks respectively, making them longest, most time-intensive updates the game has seen so far - have added Haven and Crucible to the game: A moon and the planet it circles. Part of an effort to improve the first impressions players get of the game and to increase player retention - the first versions of Haven and Crucible were nothing but static, canned content. A linear checklist of reward-driven, npc-given chores for new players to go through. Player reception was pretty mixed.
The fog makes everything appear hazy and slightly blurry
Many people loved the newly introduced lore and story-elements and hoped for more of that. Others (including myself) felt, that introducing a themepark-like treadmill with the stated intention of later removing it again, would likely backfire - as it misrepresents the game, and primes players to expect something the game has no intention to deliver. It also seemed to go squarely against previous statements of the developers, regarding who they were making this game for.
Even denser fog is not a rarity
This new update - called “Open Horizons” - is now about correcting course and making Haven more sandbox again - and it happened in direct response to the feedback (both positive and negative), that devs have received from players, since the initial release of haven. Now, Haven and Crucible took a total of 12 weeks to make, while this update took only 3 weeks - so it shouldn’t be too surprising that the newly introduced systems don’t cover all of the previous teaching material yet. But it is already achieving a lot more, than that week number comparison might suggest.
What Remains of Haven
After a short introductory text crawl and creating a new character - a new player now ends up right on Haven, inside the starport building. Gone is the claustrophobic hallway in space that players previously had to go through (and often got stuck in). The starport is damaged and the inside is a bit of a mess - so you have to crouch under a toppled shelf and jump over some boxes to get out. The room is more spacious, and through the large glass windows, you can see the green planet and parts ot the town outside.
Far less claustrophobic now
Once out of the starport building, you are greeted by Mayor Bob, who wants you to help three other people on Haven, before he let’s you off into the greater galaxy. I don’t want to dive into the lore here - but Haven got attacked by the Cornucopia, and that’s why the Starport is damaged, and why other citizen of the town need some help with the cleanup and the aftermath.
Some jumping and climbing required
In it’s previous iteration, Haven used to have a lot more such chores/quests for the player to do - and they involved a lot more to and fro. One NPC would send you to another, who would send you go do something, then you had to return, only to be sent on to yet another NPC - and so on, and so forth. That has been cut down to just those three tasks, all of which are rather short and straight-forward in comparison.
Mayor Bob is still there
Go out there, scan three survey points - and you’re done. Don’t even have to return to the quest-giver. But that also means, there’s a lot less dialogue now - much to the chargrin of some players who greatly enjoyed talking to the NPCs. The other two tasks see you collect some fungi and meat to craft food, and go to Crucible to mine some minerals there. And that’s it. If you do just that, it’s a lot shorter than it was before. But there is something else now instead: the TPL challenges and the Galactopedia. And if you are intent on 100%-ing as much of those as you can on Haven, then you’re in for a much longer time, than it would previously take.
Survey Quest
What I think is a very fun idea, is that if you have to bring items (crafted food, mined bauxite) back to an NPC, in order to hand it over to them, you open a trade window and go through exactly the same steps as you would, when trading with another player. Sure, that’s a bit more clicking than if you just auto-handed the stuff to the NPC. But as a result you learn how to trade player-to-player without even noticing. That’s pretty clever, if you ask me!
Mining Quest on Crucible
The New Systems
A lot - but not yet quite all - of the learning material previously part of the quests/chores has now been moved over to TPL challenges and the Galactopedia. Both of those are part of your UI, as tabs right next to inventory, skill tree and the map. The big advantage is, that you can go back and reread these whenever you want - instead of being a one-time, frontloaded “please-remember-this” affair.
More Surveying
The text is more clear and concise than it was in NPC-dialogue form, and can also contain images. Both systems stay with the player for the entire game, and can easily be appended with new entries throughout the entire lifetime of the game. They allow for help and teaching that goes far beyond just the tutorial-island. Or rather tutorial-planet, in this case.
TPL Challenges
These are basically achievements. Survey an entire planet. Kill 4 dangerous enemies. Craft and use a health-booster. Use a bioscanner. Craft a weapon. That sort of thing - ranging all the way from completely trivial to are you kidding me?
Completing a challenge shows you a text-notification on the center of your screen, and you can then go to the challenges list to collect your reward: typically a few XP, as of right now. Looking at the list, you will spot other things you could complete easily - thus it is giving ideas of other stuff to try and do.
Challenges
There isn’t a ton of these yet - but as I said: only 3 weeks for this patch, and I can see these getting expanded a lot over time, maybe even including some secret challenges that won’t be shown to you until you complete them.
More Challenges
As of now, these don’t quite show you yet, what you might like to be doing in the game, what professions you might want to specialize on - but neither did the old iteration of Haven. So the question of “what should I do next?” once you are through Haven, might still puzzle players, same way as it previously did. Funnily enough, that seemed to be less of an issue, before all those player introduction systems got added, and new testers just got dumped on a planet… people just started harvesting and collecting and crafting stuff, as the survival-game instinct kicked in.
Galactopedia
Just like it sounds, this is a collection of encyclopedia like entries that the player unlocks over time. First time you do something in the game, you get the corresponding entry added to your Galactopedia - giving you helpful information and insights on how stuff works in the game.
Galactopedia
This kind of searchable knowledge database is of course both of a lot more long-time use to players than a front-loaded one-time tutorial - but also easier to maintain and keep up to date by the developers - as it is just text entries, not connected quest chains with triggers and completion conditions and associated NPCs and locations.
Galactopedia
Just as with the challenges, it isn’t super content rich yet - and not all that is there, has been perfectly adopted to the new encyclopledia format yet. Most of the text is just copied over from the previous F1 help screens. Those were less organized and started to feel a bit overloaded anyways, so the move over seems an improvement overall. Except hat I can’t seem to find the graphic for the keybindings anymore - that’s a sad loss, if that is no longer there!
What Got Lost
As I’ve already said, we’ve lost a lot of NPC dialogue in the transition, and with it quite a bit of flavour. There wasn’t a ton of lore information or story or anything in those dialogues - but at least a few of those NPCs did have distinct personalities and fun to talk to.
Maybe some dialogue can be restored in the future - no quests, no rewards, no main story - just a bit of optional lore and exposition, told through the eyes of the citizens of Haven.
H(e)aven is still active
What also got lost, is the dopamine-loop of the quest-treadmill… but since that is the part that was never meant to be in the main game, I think it might just be better to not even introduce it in the tutorial, only to then take it away again. But since it was in the game for 10 weeks now - it might of course feel like a loss for some players.
And there’s of course some content that got lost temporarily. I already mentioned the keybind-graphic. I also mentioned that the challenges and galactopedia don’t seem to cover everything yet that was already there previously. But I feel confident that that is just a consequence of the 3-week timeframe, and we will see all that stuff and more get re-added over time.
Other Changes
Check out the official patch notes, to learn about everything that got changed and added in this patch.
I’m not going to go through all of that - but I do want to summarily mention the many changes to the UI and especially the skills window, that this update brought. I wouldn’t call the skill forest handy and easily readable quite yet - but things have definitely improved. There’s still a way to go, though. But hey, progress is progress!
Conclusion
This is the supposedly last update for a while, that’s focussed on the new player experience and the first tutorials players interact with. Sure - challenges and galactopedia will see further additions over time, but if you look at the roadmap for the next planned updates, you’ll find the focus now shifts towards more gameplay stuff, like item decay, skill caps and improved surveying. Also a first implementation of character creation. And of course more ongoing preformance improvement work - both for servers and for the client.
Next up is then the long awaited combat system expansion. Parts of that - especially when it comes to the new weapons - are already getting added to the game, bit by bit, right now. I truly hope that this expanded combat is fun and worthwhile to do on a more regular basis - thus driving up economic demand for weapons, shields and consumables. Especially after item decay and skill caps are added, that’s imho exactly what the game needs next.
Deep in the Mines of Crucible
I can only speculate as to when the next update will land - but item decay and some other things have been set to “in internal testing” for close to a week now. So chances are, the next update will land in closer to 3 weeks, rather than 7.
Until next time!