Stars Reach - History Of The New Player Experience

I swear, I had zero intention or plan of writing another blog post on this topic. (Well it’s not exactly the same topic…). These words just wanted out, and so I started typing what I believed could maybe serve as a chapter in the next test report, when the Crucible update lands, next Thursday.

But it quickly grew way too long for that. So I rewrote everything, shortening it down to less then half of it’s previous length. Still way too long. At that point, I had no idea what to do with it. Should I publish it, given the current situation? Is it too critical? Too opinionated? Or does it finally bring closure to the topic, and allow me to move on? I have no idea.

It might be my best worded take on it yet - and being specifically about Stars Reach (and even more specifically about how the introduction of new players changed over the last year) does make it different from the previous, more generalized posts. Would be a shame to just delete it…

Players enter the game with dreams of becoming entertainers, cooks, space traders, bounty hunters, tailors, tamers, toolmakers, miners, combateers or something else. They have a fantasy they want to see fullfilled - and marketing materials including game trailers would do very well to lean into this fantasy.

Many start testing and then quit again, as they find their fantasy impossible to achieve yet. The desired gameplay either isn’t implemented yet at all - or is a barebones version that ultimately has no purpose yet. Neither economic, nor social. Many also quit because they want a beta, and things are still to rough and too pre-alpha for them. Or because they can’t bear low and unstable framerates, wipes, bugs, crashes, rollbacks and character corruptions. Some also can’t play comfortably as they can’t rebind keys to fit their left-handedness.

There are many different reasons why testers might not stick around - but I honestly do not believe that a lack of “kill 10 rats” quests ever was one of those. In fact, the only people who do seem to stick around, are those who are happy to just continually start new homestead building projects, only to then see them deleted again. There is really not that much else to keep doing yet in the game. “Lack of stuff to do” is the main cited reason among veterans, to not be playing more frequently.

Phase 1: Nothing

Originally, players would just spawn on a planet with a terraformer equipped, some other tools on their belt and being told to dig. Digging would give them discovery XP and bring them close to animals begging to be hunt, plants just asking to be harvested and trees longing to be logged. When the player manages to figure out how to switch tools, they are rewarded with new gameplay and a bunch of new discovery XP to be earned. And everything is a matter of when - not “if” - because they can take as much time as they want, doing other stuff until then. There’s no penalty for not figuring something out - only a reward waiting patiently for when they do.

If they do figure out to walk through the portal, they get to see space - and from there maybe to other planets. If not, they can still do all the skill training and crafting and homestead building on the planet they already are on. If they do figure out how to use crafting stations, they can build themselves better tools, or if not, they still got the starter ones. Everything was forgiving like that, rewarding to figure out, but just waiting patiently if you couldn’t (yet). The game let you take all the time in the world, to do things whenever and in whatever order you wanted. You were given some tools (giving you actions/verbs), and encouraged to try see what you can do with those.

On the flip-side, there were many things most players couldn’t easily figure out, without asking for help (not that asking for help should be considered an issue in a social game!). The verbs and actions players were given, often were in desperate need of more explanation. Like, you had a grapple, but most never even knew that. Logging trees would require opening the inventory and equipping the xyloslicer, but that was never properly explained, and who would even know that this is what you’d call a space axe? You’d get rewarded after figuring things out - but there were no beforehand hints to help at figuring out anything. There was a great need for little hints and nudges, like for example getting a “you need to equip a xyloslicer to log this tree” message, when you tried to use a terraformer beam on a tree. Grapple and associated key being shown in the UI. Inventory offering better UX in general, with more reliable drag-n-drop, automatic slot highlighting, filter options and visual indicators for equipables, etc.

There also was a bigger issue with the mindset this game start induced: people thought they were playing a survival game. That’s fine enough (and actually helpful) at the start, when crafting tools and building homesteads - it is a sandbox mindset after all. But it becomes a liability later on, because people start debating that the toolbelt is too limited, and that limiting skill points is a bad idea, and that every player must be able to do everything - all of which is true for a survival game. In this mindset there simply is no place for specialization and interdependency. But I think there would be ways to solve this, without completely steering away from that mindset. It is helpful for getting started after all.

Phase 2: Hallway

During this phase, players would spawn in an instanced hallway, that would require them to overcome certain obstacles, before being allowed into the game proper. Then they would be dumped on a space station (offering no minable ground, no harvestable plants, no loggable trees, nothing dynamic/interactive) with absolutely no clue as to how to get down to a planet. The planet portals are out in space and not intuitively recognisable as such and players don’t even know they can just jump off the station and fly through space to get there. Ultimately, players are also forced into doing “kill 10 rats” style missions to earn the money that now strictly gates access to everything else. The path to fullfilling the fantasy is more obscured than before.

The hallway itself is a test - like an entrance exam. It demands you use the grapple now, and if you can’t figure it out then your only other option is to quit. Gone are the days of being given infinite time to figure things out in whatever order and then get rewarded. Where in the past people who couldn’t figure out the grapple were still building entire cities by only walking - they now are actively being kicked out of the game within the first five minutes. And that’s just one example of many - the hallway did turn a formerly flexible, forgiving and rewarding approach, into a rigid, unforgiving and punishing one. Prove you can do it, or leave!

And while it tried to provide guidance about specialization and interdependency by introducing starter packages for different professions - that failed because it created a mindset where players expected they would then be locked in to their “class” choice forever. So that ultimately had to be removed again.

But the biggest problem is, that players now are given a “follow the instructions” mindset - being taught to expect the game to tell them what to do. And when they game drops them off in the TPL and stops telling them what to do, they feel lost, confused and directionless. Where the survival-game mindset encourages players to try find their own direction - this mindset discourages that, and teaches players to rely on directions provided by the game instead. As a result, players who weren’t kicked out during the hallway, will now quit when the game stops giving directions - because if the game doesn’t tell them what to do next, that can only mean there is nothing more to do.

I think the hallway was a mistake and a failure. It did not achieve it’s goals of teaching to grapple and explaining specialization and interdependency - but instead it made people quit faster. It tried fixing the survival-game mindset, but instead ended up replacing it with a worse one that’s even more problematic. And while trying to add more explicit guidance, it instead completely broke what little implicit guidance had existed before. It did near nothing to help better explain the verbs and actions the player could use - instead it focused on giving objectives that required using these still unexplained verbs and actions. Ultimately, the hallway caused more problems, than it tried (and failed) to solve.

Phase 3: Haven

During this phase, players still had to complete the hallway first - after which they get to a moon, which basically is like a planet, but made static and unchangeable. No mining, no logging, no maker-destruction, no dynamic simulation systems changing the world. Everything is fixed in place, including fixed creature spawn points - and players can’t touch or influence any of it. Exactly like in a themepark, if anything ever happens in Haven, it has to be a scripted event. There is no living world, no visible dynamic simulation, no player-driven systems, no player agency, no social interactions, no sandbox whatsoever. This place has absolutely nothing of what Stars Reach is all about. Instead it’s full of NPC quest givers standing around in the same spot forever.

A new player who isn’t rushing can spend roughly an hour doing quests here. There are no choices to be made, no agency at all, everything is completely on rails. Follow the arrow, kill 10 space rats, get rewarded with XP and items, rinse and repeat. And yes, everyone has to kill 10 space rats - regardless which fantasy they want, regardless whether they are pacifists. Only after completing all the quests, are you allowed to move on. If this doesn’t lock down the “follow instructions” mindset in the player and thoroughly prepares and trains them to expect a themepark experience, then I don’t know what else possibly does. The plan now seems to be to add another update called “Crucible” which then has to try to untrain and unprepare all of that again.

The hallway did introduce a new problem: metrics and surveys show players now strongly expect the game to tell them what to do, and will quit when the game stops doing that. Haven just continues telling the player exactly what do do - thereby failing to fix the problem, but instead simply delaying its consequences. Players who previously quit when the instructions stopped, now stay on for another hour. Instead it’s the people who want a sandbox and not a static themepark treadmill who are now quitting. That is, only if they can make it through the hallway exam first.

Haven not only repeats all the mistakes the hallway made - it doubles down on them. It teaches a tiny little bit of procedural knowledge - like which buttons to press - but first and foremost it teaches things, which Crucible will then have to unteach again. The developers seem utterly unable to even imagine any other way or method of teaching those button presses. It’s like to them, this is the only possible option. It’s either that themepark treadmill - or no player guidance at all. As if nothing else could even exist. At the same time, pre-schoolers can figure out Minecraft without any of that just fine.

Conclusion

The two original problems remain unsolved:

• there’s a lack of explanation of the verbs and actions available to the player, and a lack of hints
• players aren’t taught anything about specialization and interdependency

The hallway failed to fix those first two, but instead added three more problems on top:

• players are taught to expect the game to tell them what to do
• the hallway makes people quit and replaces rewards with punishment
• the implicit guidance formerly provided by the survival-game mindset is broken, and has no replacement

And now Haven doesn’t even try to address the first two, fails to fix the three caused by the hallway, and adds it’s own three new ones on top:

• players are now trained and prepared to expect a themepark
• sandbox ethusiasts are now quitting early as well as the game world in Haven feels static and scripted
• the quest-reward dopamine-loop is introduced to the game and has to later be very carefully withdrawn again

Afaik, Crucible is now supposed to fix at least two of those last three problems, maybe even all three - all of which are mainly caused by Haven. Testers will probably jubilate if it does achieve that and metrics will go up as well! But so far it doesn’t seem as if Crucible will even attempt to address either the problems caused by the hallway, nor the two original, still unadressed issues.

All the while, players still want to become entertainers, cooks, space traders, bounty hunters, tailors, tamers, toolmakers, miners, combateers or something else - and the game still can’t fullfill that fantasy. Most of these things aren’t in the game yet, or only in a version that doesn’t serve any real purpose yet. There’s no economy to tie it all together.

Even if Crucible should somehow miraculously succeed at removing all the reasons to quit - the game still doesn’t offer any reasons to stay.

Given that funds seem to be running low, I feel it might be time to just cut the losses, to maybe give up on these ill-fated attempts to try and remove all reasons to quit - and spend what little time and money is left on adding stronger reasons to stay instead. That might be just the “startover” we need.