Better Documentation!!! Also, a couple really broken balance

[acehawk]

Please, dear god give us proper documentation. I love your games but they are not even remotely intuitive and I always get sick of them because I have NO IDEA WHAT ANYTHING REALLY DOES.

Your Getting Started guides are always outdated and missing massive chunks of information. It killed Star Traders Elite for me and I will not buy Age of Pirates Elite if it lacks a good user manual. Hell, even correct and detailed tooltips would be acceptable.

I'm not even asking for a complete list of all the ships in the game or something, just a basic this upgrade affects gameplay like this. Right now the tooltips amount to, "Arm the crew with handaxes and hatchets." I understand that it implies that it probably improves your crew's effectiveness in boarding actions or maybe in defense against boarding, or maybe their effectriveness in protecting themselves while on Gathering missions... Do you see how ambiguous that is? WHAT DOES IT DO?!

And I'm assuming muskets are better since they cost more, but HOW MUCH BETTER? A little or a lot? Or do the effect entirely different things? I have NO IDEA from the tooltips.

This is not a minor complaint, for me this is a massively important make or break problem.


I really want to love this game. The basic gameplay is fantastic and I like its balance MUCH more that Star Traders. Except two things, I find that in some area it is way too easy to make money and in some parts of combat I get unrealistically annihilated. Example: In one spot you can buy shot and powder for around 30c and then sell it 10 tiles away for 4-6s. Easily make thousands of silver that way. For the other, I whittle down a ship at range, they have low hull masts and no sails and 3 crew. My ship has at least 40 crew and almost full everything. I board and then my masts go from full to 0! WHAT THE HELL. How can 3 men possibly inflict that much damage? And in the same turn I take out their captain, but instead of ripping apart their ship to repair the damage to mine or just taking their ship outright I lose because my masts have been somehow ripped to shreds in one blow. I don't get how that is even possible from a mechanics standpoint. Their ship should have been effectively sitting in the water at that point.


If these things were fixed I'd 100% buy the elite version of the game, for more than you are currently selling it for by the way.

[fallen]

acehawk - thanks for the feedback, its really helpful! We are working to enhance the game as fast as we can, and documentation is part of that plan. A tutorial, some introductory explanation of the screen buttons, and some changes to make the UI more intuitive are up, so we hope that helps.

We are working on the balance of shot and powder specifically.

[acehawk]

Glad to hear it. Like I said, I love this game a lot already, I'd just like you know what the things I'm doing actually mean, ya know?

By the way, I'd really love to be able to replace an upgrade with another, and maybe have a few more upgrade slots. Just a more minor suggestion.

[fallen]

acehawk - one of the advantages Age of Pirates brings to the table is that the system is now capable of removing updates. The UI isn't in yet, but it will be doable.

[acehawk]

Awesome to know!

I can't wait to see how this game develops

[fallen]

acehawk - you should see that almost daily for a while!

[acehawk]

Actually, I have one more comment. I found that with Star Trader the game became incredibly difficult very quickly. While I understand the desire for a challenging game, it quickly became more of a chore to play than it was fun, even on the easiest difficulties. I really hope that Age of Pirates maintains a less steep difficulty curve as the game progresses, on the lower difficulties at least. Being one shot completely at random is not fun, at least to me