P2 Tutorial - Close Read

[ntsheep]

I did say "at the moment" contributor I'm not trying to do a 180. Most of what I don't or didn't like you've brought up also. That's what being an Alpha tester is for. The randomness threw me off, I was getting ready to post it as a bug and then saw fallen say it was meant to be that way. It took me 7 tries on Normal on my laptop and 6 on my tablet to beat it. The crazy spawns, the random node blow ups all made me feel like it was just dumb luck that let me win. Not that I manage to use good tactics or played smart.

Now in terms of artwork and level design, it's great!

[fallen]

Improved L3 with ...

- Dialog being explicit that any Templar can enable power relay nodes
- Minor Meditch Ordnance and explanation on how to use Ordnance
- Moved spawning points back and away from main paths - giving some breathing room

[jknut]

Jun 30, 2015 16:49:12 GMT -5 contributor said:

I think main thing is that you have to cover a lot of ground and when you don't know the level (as new players won't) you're not likely to do it in a very efficient manner. That means you're going to be in that level for a long time and with no reinforcements and no healing and things blowing up everywhere forcing you to walk through fire you're going to lose one or two templars. This game is all about doing stuff fast, before you're overwhelmed by the spawn rate. If I do it again, I'll be splitting my forces and running as fast as I can to get to all the nodes before there's xenos everywhere. 

I like the new L3 Power Node better than the last one, but I agree with contributor that players may think they should stay and kill each Xeno.

It might be good to have the tutorial encourage to split squad and move as fast as possible.  Don't take shots unless you've used up all your Move Points.

The first time I lost my engineer but I had everyone going solo.  The second time, I used two squads and it took me 8 turns out of goal 12 with only a 0.5 kill/turn ratio on Normal.  

The first time, I drew a quick little map to show which nodes were good -- assuming that I would have to replay the level.  The second time, I laughed when I realized the nodes were random.

[anvil]

Here's my take on L3. I played it 3 times last night on normal. The first time there was too much unlearning and frustration. I also hit 4 bad switches straight off and fried my team.

The second time I knew it was new and payed more attention. I hit 3 bad switches, one good one, then made a colosal mistake and restarted.

The third time, by total luck, hit all good switches and was nearly done when by player error and a spawn too close lost my engineer. I was suspecting, but did not know for sure that others could flip the switches, so restarted.

I found some confusing things that could be cleared up in the text.

First, when you start the map, two switches are thrown. The second shows how it works. All well and good. The unclear problem is the game goals say flip 7 out of 10 switches. Are these first two part of the 7? This is not clear and there is no indication of how many switches are left! It's pretty hard checking the map as the lit switches are hard to see. This is frustrating.

The second problem is similar. I have the turned off the level without finishing. When I restart the whole map, other than that surrounding the team is totally black and there is absolutely no way( other than memory) as to how many have been switched.

Would it be possible to show (upper left button) how many switches remain to be flipped instead of the total?

I believe the text in the first two games states pretty clearly that a team working together is important. Yet here in the third game, tutorial, the best tactic is without a doubt, split up and hit the switches quickly and get out. This is the only way to be able to finish in 12 turns. This would be a great place in the tutorial to let players know you are introducing a new tactic and disperse your squad instead of doing teamwork.

There should be no real surprises in the tutorial, just learning. Or at least that should be the general focus.

I can see now that that dispersing tour troops is the best and perhaps, only way to complete the level in 12 turns. It would have taken me 2-3 more tries to figure out your balance and how to beat it. With the added hint that working alone is what this is all about, I would call it an excellent tutorial scenario. Without, its great for farther in the game but not suitable as a tutorial game.

[fallen]

anvil - thanks for all the feedback. The next release includes an updated, easier level and better advice on some parts. Still working on adding the part about splitting up, but that is pretty clearly needed.

[bobc]

Been through the Tutorial L1 - 3, playing on Normal, and the updated dialogue and library entries are looking really good.  The only piece that has not been fully explored from previous threads is the movement, that using AP also burns MP.  Both the tutorial and the library entry correctly state this, but it is only half the story.  Would it be worth expanding the library entry with extra detail explaining that moving first and using AP second means getting the full benefit of all the MP; AP will only burn MP if there are any MP left?

The revised L3 is fun to play through (though reading this thread first did help) and is reminiscent of the tutorial in TA where you are also introduced to the need to split your squad sometimes to meet certain constraints.  What caught me flat-footed was the combat re-balancing, the xeno ripped through my knights like they were paper and I didn't land half as many hits on them as I did before the update.  I've still to get through without losing anybody.

[Deleted]

Jul 3, 2015 2:28:29 GMT -5 bobc said:

What caught me flat-footed was the combat re-balancing, the xeno ripped through my knights like they were paper and I didn't land half as many hits on them as I did before the update.  I've still to get through without losing anybody.

This caught me as well. I was noticing the first two levels seemed harder but I managed it without too much trouble. L3 took me 8 tries to get through without losing a knight and then mostly it was luck rather than increased skill on my part. I'm encouraged to hear that this level has been "dumbed down" because I think it did represent a difficulty spike that could turn off many first time players.

Aside from that I'm loving the new descriptions about combat mechanics within the game (I had no idea that penetrating hits were marking with a P!) I feel like the descriptions are a good balance between hinting about good strategy with certain classes but not trying to do too much hand-holding and letting players figure out their own tactics. In that vein, I do disagree a bit with bobc, I don't think we need to have a tutorial that shares all the tactics of playing the game like using MP before AP. I hold that idea pretty loosely, however.

[anvil]

I'm going to add to my locked thread on power grid relay L3 v0.0.19. I should have thought to put it here. I'm playing on hard.
I've played 7 times so far and succeed with only one casualty this last run. I started a new 0.0.19 squad.

Fallen, I did know the switches were not connected. My comment was meant to show I liked the pre 0.0.10 or whichever where triple redundancy ruled. I thought that was pretty slick and it built a strong mental pic of the tech of this world. That's a good thing. This version doesn't do that. It's a bunch of random switches randomly placed and adds nothing to creating the mental image of this world. Just my 2 centavos.

I consider this map purl a game of luck. There is little or no skill, tactics needed especially if played cold. This is my least favorite of game types. Thus my bias as I've not seen this in any other of your games.

To figure out this map and test a suspected problem I used titanium backup. From the one working switch I sent one man to the left, one to the right and two straight ahead. It takes two turns to get to these switches. Turn 2 I flipped the switches. The left was bad and straight ahead was bad. The one to the right was good. I restarted and double checked. I restarted and sent 2 up and 2 to the right.

I followed this procedure to completion. Two switches, upper left and upper right, should have been good by my count. Both blew up! I back tracked and found that the switch directly above the initial good switch and the one to its left were now good switches. This is what I suspected and wanted to check out. I can only guess that if you save a game, at least with titanium backup, the switches will reset. The ones that tested good didnt, but the untested and the bad ones did. I'm going to run this again and see what happens.

I don't know how this plays on normal, but on hard the difficulty of play vs the other three tutorial games are not even in the same ballpark. I would not consider this a tutorial type game. I would consider this a game for a much more experienced player and a squad with more experience.

I feel that any map that must be played 8+ times to succeed doesn't belong as a tutorial.

[fallen]

anvil - perfect, thanks for bringing the post over here! To help the conversation flow, I'll port my response as well --

1. There is no "circuitry" to the relay grid. You simply need to get 7 (including the one that is turned on in the intro) turned on.
2. Yes, every time you play, the ones that will overload and explode are randomized. This was added due to the volume of suggestions that it should be random every time by the alpha team.
3. We down-balanced the monsters hard in 0.0.19 and really gutted the spawning on that level. I will take another look and see how we can continue to improve, sorry that you are having a hard time against it.

[anvil]

In case it's confusing, when I said restart above, I restarted from my titanium backup saves. I did not just restart from scratch. Other than the two bad switches becoming good, all else in the save was as it should be.

I became suspicious this was happening when I was using the games saves. There is no way for us to check this since the game only saves the current game.

Using titanium backup I was able to go back and confirm these changes.

[fallen]

anvil - I can confirm that using Titanium backup will not remove the randomness factor from which nodes are broken or not.

[contributor]

Ok, I finished the tutorial on 0.0.19. I seemed to go well. I beat the infamous level 3 the first time, but I lost my scout. That was on brutal difficulty, but I was already familiar with the level and had a plan of attack. I should have been reading more carefully but I'm kind of lost now for trying to see this thing with fresh eyes. It would be great if there was a way to test the tutorial with people who were really total noobs to the game. I don't know if there are any alpha players who haven't touched it yet, but it would be great to try and get their impressions.

[anvil]

The infamous L3:

That would be good.

I've yet to finish it w/o a loss. I may be able to next time. The shortest time to completion for me is 20 turns

[jknut]

Tutorial L1: "I need to use the remnants of this barricade as a choke point."

There is no way to really use it as a choke point because the Xenos could still surround you from any side.

More importantly, I think telling the player to set-up a choke point encourages more "take and hold" strategy.  I think the language should encourage the Captain to move as fast as possible (turn goals) and use MP whenever possible before using AP.  Perhaps language around "sometimes it's better to move towards a goal than stay and kill Xenos.... we can't kill every Xeno, they just keep coming out of the cracks"

[fallen]

jknut - you can use the barricade to avoid being attacked by all three. The door leaving the area is locked, so in this case, you must kill all of the xenos.