Stars Reach's New Take On Player Onboarding

Sometime during the last few days, a new entry appeared on the public Stars Reach roadmap. Or maybe it had already been there before, but it’s description got fleshed out. (Credit for the discovery goes to Chef Jerek!)

It’s titled “Making Haven More Sandboxy” - and we’ve known for a while now, that developers were internally debating making some changes there. They said they would want to make everything that’s profession related be optional, the whole experience to feel less on-rails, players be able to revisit the tutorials at a later date. Generally it should also be obvious, that there is a lot more stuff that needs teaching than you can reasonably put into a front-loaded tutorial without making that overwhelming.

I wrote in the previous Test-Report:

Changes are being planned for future updates - and from what I heard, the plan is, to open up Haven a little more, and make the chores it offers to players more optional and a little less on rails.

Thus, seeing a “Making Haven More Sandboxy” entry was not surprising at all. What did catch me unaware though, was the extent of it.

The new roadmap entry

Haven (and Crucible, which it orbits) has recently undergone an attack from the Corruption! Some things are still being damaged and rebuilt; if the player wants to prove that they’re ready to be a member of the galactic community they should help in the rebuilding effort here.

Mechanics: Instead of a long series of 5 step, dialogue heavy questlines in a Haven Themepark, we offload the majority of the tutorial into two places:

1. TPL Challenges - A new tab in the Datapad/Collections Window, the TPL Challenges are an “Achievement” Style system. There will be easily viewable achievements for a wide range of things including:

• Beginner tutorials like “Equip a Pathfinder” and “Survey a Single Survey Point”
• Intermediate gameplay like “Survey an entire world” and “Craft a Map”
• Endgame Goals like “Become Leader of an Entire Planet”

So these will run from the Beginning of Haven through the entire game. It is not expected that players will complete all of these. These will guide players looking for a hand to hold, but players can 100% ignore this entire system if they want to. Or, they can try to achieve them which will inevitably guide them into learning parts of the game. The rewards should be small enough that players don’t feel pressured to achieve them, even for the very impressive end game achievements. We may want “Pages” on the TPL Challenges to separate out “Beginner Tutorials” from “Advanced Impressive Achievements”

2. Instead of going through the previous FTUE Hallway, players land in Haven Starport Customs. As players encounter Obstacles they need to learn movement to traverse, they get a popup telling them what to do, and a “Galactopedia Entry unlocked” notification adding the popup permanently to the Galactopedia.

3. As players exit the Starport, they get a mission: Go Talk to Mayor Bob. He gives them three missions to help Haven rebuild. The mission to talk to Mayor Bob turns into “Complete the other 3 Missions to help Rebuild Haven”, so players will have 4 Missions at this point. These are the only missions players will receive on Haven.

Once all three are done, The Player’s original Mayor Bob mission advances to “Talk to Mayor Bob to get your Starship Key. That’s it. That’s all we force players to do to learn the game. If a player can (in any order):

• collect a couple of survey nodes
• gather plants
• kill creatures to gather meat
• mine bauxite
• craft the things they gathered via Cooking and Refining

then that player knows enough of how to play the game to be allowed into the greater galaxy.

And we don’t put rails on how they complete these three missions. If a player manages to trade for or buy Mushroom Skewers, Meat Kabobs, Aluminum, and a Completed Map, then they understand interdependence and cooperation enough to be able to learn from other players.

That seems a significtantly bigger change than I would have expected, given what has been said so far. Or it might be - we’ll have to wait and see until this update arrives, to know what we actually get.

Now, the 1 - 2 - 3 numbering in this text seems a little botched, unfortunately. So, I think the two new tutorial places are supposed to be:

• TPL Challenges
• Galactopedia

That’s where all of the teaching stuff is supposed to get offloaded to, which does free up the NPCs and their dialogue to focus more on lore and world-building. Something which we see also indicated by little hints like the appearance of the Corruption, as well as The Hallway being turned into the “Haven Starport Customs”.

Let’s analyze the implications of all of that in more detail.

The FTUE Hallway is gone - or is it?

The previous FTUE Hallway in space is going to be replaced by Haven Starport Customs. Which is likely going to be a building, damaged by the corruption, that the Player has to navigate through to get out onto Haven.

It might just be the same hallway transplanted onto Haven - but more likely it’s gonna be a rebuilt version of the hallway on Haven, that still shows you a WASD-popup and requires you to crouch and climb and jump, to teach you the basics of movement. There’s no mention on whether the electric field will stay there or not. I’d definitely not take for granted that it will be gone.

As a new player, you’ll still be going through some sort of hallway or building, that tries to teach movement through pop-up text-boxes. Only this time it’s a building that sits right on Haven. Although even that isn’t granted - as “Haven Starport” might theoretically be a space station. But then this would literally boil down to nothing but a name change. From the way the text is written, I would assume a bigger change than just the name, so I’m guessing that the Starport will be on the Moon’s surface, rather than just a different hallway in space.

TPL Challenges & Galactopedia

TPL Challenges (a type of unlockable achievements) will be a new tab in the Datapad/Collections window - and thus be available anytime and any place. Challenges will seemingly come in three tiers: beginner, intermediate and advanced and they are not meant to be 100% completed by players. That’s because they will span all the different professions and playstyles, and the advanced tier will feature some more aspirational elder game goals. Ideally these higher tier goals can serve as inspiration for players, to figure out what they’d like to do in the game, and set their own self-directed goals.

The Galactopedia will probably be it’s own window. A growing list of data-entries, that contain helpful information, and can be unlocked by the player one at a time. This format has some advantages:

• it’s available anytime and any place,
• players can ignore/skip new entries and come back to them anytime later, when they need to
• everything in there is “repeatable”,
• it starts empty or with just one single entry - thus not overwhelming the player
• it should probably come with a search function, for later when collected entries become more numerous
• breaking the 4th wall in such entries is less awkward/immersion-breaking then when it happens in NPC dialogue
• since it’s not NPC-dialogue it can be more concise and to the point
• new entries can pop up at just the right moment - like you could unlock an entry about death and grave markers, exactly the first time you die
• it’s easier to maintain and update for future changes, than NPC questlines typically are

But it also comes with the disadvantage that it’s easier to just overlook and ignore completely. It requires some clever UI design, to actually help with the discoverability of the contained information.

Haven after the changes

Will of course include the Starbase Customs (former Hallway) - but we’ve already talked about that one.

It further seems that Haven will end up still having 3 mandatory missions (4 if you include the initial “talk to mayor Bob” starter):

• collect some survey nodes
• gather plants (mushrooms) + cook (mushroom skewer)
• kill animals + craft medicine (using the looted meat)
• mine bauxite and refine into aluminium

Yes, those are four, not three - I guess the last one is on Crucible and thus they didn’t count it towards Haven missions? Or maybe the count was off anyway, as the roadmap actually shows these as 5 or 6 missions (I’ve combined gather+craft to just a single one here).

Supposedly players further along will also be able to just hand the required items (map, food, medicine, aluminium) to new players, thus allowing them to complete the missions without having to actually do the work. What’s not mentioned though is, whether veterans will be able to return to Haven at a later time. That’s something developers have talked about, something they’d generally like to do, but that also first requires working out, how Haven will instance/multiply, when there are many new players. To my knowledge there’s no final decision on that yet.

Some ideas and suggestions

What I think still is needed here, is for the Hallway to point players towards the keybind graphic (pressing F1) - and for Haven NPCs to point players towards both the TPL missions and the Galactopedia. Players should probably be made aware of those three tools and how they work, before leaving the tutorial area(s).

With the reduction in missions and thus required NPC dialogue, there’s also a great opportunity opening up: NPCs which are now freed of quest-duty, could instead be given a little bit of lore-dialogue to help with world-building. People could talk about the TPL, the Corruption, the games’ factions and their own experiences with immigrating to the Garden. There also could be representatives of different Professions, talking about what they do, and how it integrates into the economy. No quests, no extrinsic rewards - just talking to people to learn something about the world. Again with the goal of giving players ideas, and showing them the different options they have, for what they want to do in the game.

Ostensibly the main goal behind making Haven a themepark was to teach players how to play in a sandbox, before then slowly and gradually switching them over. But I don’t think any of that was in the game yet - or do you think that after Crucible, when reaching the TPL players were prepared for self-directed play, knew what to do next, how to run missions and how to get to the planets? I felt that part was still missing. Not having the themepark give people the wrong impression and ideas might help - having these longer-term achievements might help as well. But ideally, we would players to get to the TPL with at least a half-formed next goal in their mind. Something simple like: “I want to train up my mining more and unlock some extra skills in that profession” would already do perfectly.

So, having some profession represenative NPCs that can explain a few things to the player, and point them towards a profession-related TPL challenge (achievement), that allows them to try out a bit more mining (for example) on Crucible, might help with that. If Haven has a resident miner NPC and a tailor NPC and an entertainer NPC, and a ranger NPC, and a hunter NPC, etc. - those might serve as showcases of what’s possible. Allow players to weigh their options and develop their fantasy.

It’s also important to not understimate the importance the UI plays in all of this. A good UI can make many basic things self-explanatory, allowing the Galactopedia to focus more on things that go beyond basic. Take the upcoming Item Decay implementation as an example: Currently the devs only plan for chat messages and mid-screen notices to inform the player about item durability, while in your inventory, when looking at the item, you’ll see a bare text: “current durability: 15% / max durability: 90%”, but also a color-coded “pristine - worn - damaged - unusable” qualifier.

I made a little mockup of a durability bar, that would turn that information into something more visually telling:

usage (red pulsing) slowly reduces durability until unsuable (white blink), and repairing (green pulse) recharges while also slightly reducing max

Of course you can’t put one of those bars for every item into the UI. There’s way to many items that can be affected to show them all. That bar would have to go onto the item display in the inventory - and there the whole animation part doesn’t make much sense. There definitely should be an UI element though, that persistently warns you as long as you’ve equipped at least one item that’s in immediate need of repairs. But the goal with this mockup was less to create a suggestion of what it should actually look like - and more to provide proof that visual UI stuff can provide some player guidance a lot better than text explanations. The right use of color, glows, animations, etc. - can convey a lot of information in a way that makes it feel intuitive and self-explanatory.

Potential risks

As I have said before, introducing players to the dopamine reward-loop of a treadmill only to later take that away, comes with the risk of upsetting players. Players generally don’t like if something is taken away from them - and if that something is the dopamine, then things can get ugly.

That’s one of the main arguments for not going that “bait & switch” route in a sandbox to begin with. But we are now at a point, where there’s already players who haven fallen in love with the treadmill that Haven originally offered.

I’ve always pointed out, that there is a portion of testers who genuinely enjoy that treadmill and love Haven for it. As I wrote in the previous Test-Report:

Opinions on Haven seem pretty mixed overall. […] Others love it, call it a great example of what the game is going for, and a showcase of the future of Stars Reach, and a great representation of what the future will hold. […] The “new direction” is already taking hold among the players. The data now clearly shows, this is the way to go.

And in my original Test-Report on Haven I ended with:

Haven does nothing to display the unique strengths of the game, and hides/gates away it’s sandbox nature until later. The current implementation of quests is a bit clunky and feels old, when compared to modern themeparks.

Player reception has nevertheless been overwhelmingly positive. Testers are starved for new gameplay content, and during the limited 3 hour run of yesterday’s test, they were able to indulge in more new stuff, than we’ve seen in a long time. Only a little bit of that carries over into the main game past Haven though.

This update feels a bit like a return to form. A patch that adds a significant amount of new things to try out. After months of more under-the-hood changes and some really issue-laden patches, it’s very welcome to see a big, gameplay oriented update. Buzz on the ground is good, testers are in high spirits.

The question now is, how will those players react, if after being place for maybe two months, the treadmill is removed again? Will people be upset?

Haven is not being removed - neither are the NPCs. A lot of the things that people love do indeed stay in place. Some mandatory missions stay in place - other things are turned into achievements, but are still available in that changed form. But the current treadmill is gonna go away, the reward-flow might be reduced, and there will be less missions than before. Will this cause dopamine-withdrawal? Negative feedback? Backlash? I honestly don’t know much people love the stuff that stays - and how much they love the stuff that’s to be removed.

Of course, exactly the same problem would also exist, when the game switches from themepark to sandbox. Right now that happens very abruptly when you go finish Crucible and go to the TPL Space Station. I’m not sure how much people are aware that Haven is an exception and the rest of the game is very different - or how much they think they’ve just reached the end of the demo, and more quest-content is to get added later. We don’t really know yet, how players would react to that switch either.

The developers previously did bet that they could make that transition from Haven to the real game smooth and natural enough, that nobody notices that a switch happened - or everyone who does is just fine with it. Which is not impossible to do - there are examples of past games which took that risk and did pull it off. But we now live in a time where themeparks are considered boring and outdated - and younger audiences shun them entirely. When the bait isn’t much baiting anymore, taking that risk makes less sense, doesn’t it?

But now, if the treadmill is just removed with a patch, that might feel less than smooth. But then again, a lot of what people love about Haven, does stay… what do you think the reception will be?

Conclusion

It seems the upcoming changes to the quests in Haven will be more substantial than I would have expected. A step further than just making quests more optional and less on rails.

A screenshot of the roadmap description of the upcoming changes was posted to the Discord, and responses to it ranged from positive to indifferent - it did not attract a ton of attention though. I have yet to see a negative reaction to it. I hope I haven’t jinxed it just now…

It’s currently the topmost entry in the “in internal testing” column (followed by the Galactopedia and Item Decay) - which might indicate, that it’s gonna be part of the next update already.

The planned changes should make the tutorial material more independent of time and place, as well as repeatable. The new system is also useful throughout the entire game - and not limited to just a front-loaded tutorial-island. More importantly though - players will no longer be given that misleading of a first impression of the game. I do hope though that we can still come up with even more ideas on how to ease people into finding their own goals, and having self-directed play. I.e. - more guidance that teaches “how to sandbox”.

We’ll have to wait and see until the update actually lands, and look at how it’s actually implemented, to really understand how big of a change it is - or isn’t. But I’m definitely looking forward to it. And if it does end up being disliked by some people who genuinely loved the treadmill part of the introduction - I can’t help but wonder how those same people would have felt about the later switch to sandbox, that a themepark intro necessitates.