Negative first-time impressions from five new players

[unclesporky]

Yesterday some of my friends wanted to get together to play Edge of Space.

"Really?" I said. "I haven't really heard much about it. Steam reviews look mixed. I've heard a lot of good word of mouth for Starbound and haven't played it yet, why don't we play that?"

Well, most of us didn't own Starbound, and the four of them had gone in together to buy a four pack of Edge of Space a year ago, and had never gotten around to play it. I was the only person who didn't own it. With a little trepidation I went ahead and bought it just to be able to play with them.

I sprung for the special edition, thinking "why not," and didn't notice anything special or different about my copy of the game the whole time we played. I checked the description just now and finally noticed "The items will be included in the FULL game launch and are not accessible during Early Access." Kind of disappointed about that since I don't know if we'll ever be playing the game again.

I wanted to make sure the game would even run on my mediocre laptop so I started a game before meeting up with the rest of them, which took maybe 15 minutes on a "loading" screen before I was able to confirm that it did run, and reasonably well. When I got to the house we were playing at, someone had the sever already started. I played through the rest of the tutorial on the single player game I had started, just to get through it, and then I figured I'd join the server. Come to find out, characters are not treated as they are in Terraria, and I had to create a new character again for the server, and do the tutorial all over again. (I wanted the gun and jetpack and resources.)

When we were all in the server and could see each other, everyone was noticeably "dancing" or jittering up and down in place when standing still. I want to say it looked like the players were switching between their falling frame and their standing frame rapidly. This gave us an immediate feeling of jankiness that didn't provide a good first impression and pervaded throughout the experience.

As we were exploring the game and learning about it, one of my friends kept getting so frustrated with it that he kept tabbing out to play a round of Binding of Isaac instead. The rest of us wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt and wanted to like the game, and tried to convince ourselves that we did. I'm not sure that it worked in retrospect, but we tried. Here's some of what we experienced as we played over the course of 7 hours:

- The server machine's client crashed 3 or 4 times. He had to stop the game and the server, kicked us all out, and we all joined back in each time. I think what kept happening to him was a load screen popping up that wouldn't progress at all. When he took the server down, either it froze the rest of us on a loading screen or we got stuck in the main menu with an error about the 1337 port that wouldn't go away, so we had to force quit the game. The last time it crashed, he just quit playing and let us keep playing despite the fact that his client was broken. His abandoned character just stood at the cryopod shooting constantly. Another friend's client crashed 3 or 4 times as well, and he had to keep force quitting the game and going back in.

- I didn't experience the above issues other than when the server went down, but I did keep having hover info windows stuck on the screen, informing me about ice or whatever. Once I had to restart the client because it just wouldn't go away.

- On two of my friends' computers, they quickly encountered a bug where only the tunnels were dark, and any hidden tiles were missing, showing the skybox instead. This was beneficial but it bugged one of them enough to restart the game client.

- Another computer was a high end i7 laptop, I forget the exact specs, but it displayed the game wrong - all visible background tiles were transparent with the skybox visible behind them, and the underground purple moss was visible at all times, essentially showing where all the tunnels were despite the darkness. Tiles were also either fully bright or black, with no shading.

- I had read on a wiki ahead of time that the game had an interesting death mechanic, where you could respawn without dropping your items as long as you had cryorods remaining. One guy slowly depleted them and ran out, and I frantically tried to make more for him, but then he died again and nothing bad happened. Meanwhile, I died a few times and didn't lose any cryorods, the counter stayed at 10. The first few times I died, I respawned instantly, seeing a flash of a window that said "you are in-capped." Later I actually stayed dead for a few seconds and got to see that window, but whether I clicked self-destruct or just waited, I always respawned with all my items. I guess there must be no death penalty? The first time we had to restart the server, I went from 10 cryorods to 0, and my friend who had been dying went from 0 cryorods to 10...but they seem to do nothing anyway. None of us ever dropped our items on death.

- Before I learned that death had no penalty, I was trying to craft healing items for our group, but they are far too difficult to make for simply being a consumable. At the start of the game none of us could figure out how to get any protovine, and then later when that was no longer a problem we discovered that biomass is a critical and hard-to-get resource in the early game. Spending 5 to get an item that heals for maybe 60 HP (according to my friend who used it) is ridiculous. Also, why don't the consumables actually say what they do in terms of statistics like armor does? I don't know what that second consumable item is for, it sounds like a self buff of some sort.

- Inventory space was far more limited than we expected from this sort of game. We all ran out very quickly. My top priority was to figure out how to get more inventory space, but this game seems to be impervious to Google. I couldn't find any information about how to increase inventory space, or even which type or research would result in a backpack (which I assumed was what I would need, and eventually unlocked in-game through trial and error). I finally found it this morning by digging around online. One wiki was wrong about which tier the backpack was in. The official forum seemed to have accurate info. Still, it's strange that not one single person who played this game ever asked "how to increase inventory space?" and was answered "get utility to 3 and make the backpack, along with an outfitting station hooked up to power." We ran into multiple other confusing things that we tried to Google and could never find helpful information, in spite of this game having two wikis. In general we had the sense that we were the first people to ever play this game because nobody else has bothered to accurately document it!

- As a result of the small inventory, the confusing XP system was made more confusing, because my friends crafted data and then couldn't find it anywhere, because it went directly to the "Rewards" button. I don't remember any sort of pop up saying "Because your inventory was full, extra items have been sent to Rewards," pointing us to look up in the corner. I'd suggest adding that to help new players.

- None of us are used to XP as a resource that you cap out and then spend...on other XP. I think it could use a different name to signify that it is sort of a currency you're earning.

- All of us kept having an issue where clicking within windows and menus translated to clicking in-world as well, so we would leave the crafting window to find torches placed all over or floors mined out.

- I was confused, looking at the enhancements tab, noticing all these different types of weapons and "research" for which there was no data to craft, and some other kind of meters at the bottom of that tab. I would remove this until it is implemented because it's just one more point of confusion in an already confusing game.

- One of my friends was excited about pets and kept working through those tiers, and got really frustrated when he encountered tiers where he unlocked nothing at all. I don't know if a new pet needs to be there every level, but SOMETHING should be.

- One of my friends built the second tier of doors but couldn't figure out how to wire them up to power, because of the aforementioned lack of Google-able information. He may have found some info on it eventually but gave up because it was gated behind some other resource grind, I'm not sure, I just know that we never got those doors working.

- In general there is far too much grinding in the game. We played for 7 hours and it felt like we made no progress at all. We didn't get to the second biome, I didn't even know there were different biomes. We kept dying from exposure as we started to see snow. The game felt content-starved, that we were being forced to farm snails for biomass and searching all over for aluminum just to make one new item. Then we'd unlock a new tier and be faced with another huge laundry list of things to find. I pushed forward to phase weapons 4 and saw that the weapon required tons of headhunter stuff which we'd only gotten a few of and it was just disheartening.

- Exploration is not rewarding enough. We felt like we were doing it just to be doing it, rather than WANTING to see what was out there, because we quickly learned that nothing very interesting was out there. No chests underground. Some of us found these shrine type things that said our energy was upgraded, and we eventually noticed that this had made some of our numbers go up, but this wasn't terribly exciting when we were out trying to find 40 biomass or whatever.

- In the time we played, none of us ever succeeded at a world event. We discovered many of them, from defending a platform, to killing crabs in a nest or an artillery bear, to surviving in a hostile area. We never were able to complete one. Once we decided we were all going to get together and take out a crab nest, and then when we started it, the event never actually began with its timer countdown and such, so we didn't know if we succeeded at it or not. This contributed to the overall sense of hopelessness and disappointment; our equipment wasn't powerful enough for us to accomplish anything and new equipment was gated behind long grinds.

- The most fun we had in the game was right at the end when I made a couple mortars and my friend and I kept killing each other with the explosions...which wouldn't have even been possible if there was a death penalty.

So I'm not sure if we'll ever play it again. At the end we were wishing we had gone with Starbound instead or some other game entirely. My friend who kept tabbing out was pretty aggravated and I don't know if he would play again. I might try again but 7 hours was already a long time to spend without having much fun. In general we all had the feeling of, "this game has been on Steam since June 2013, it's been almost 2 years and it is still in this state? Other players are twitching around and the client keeps crashing?" We'd never played it before, my friends waited a whole year to play it and we were met with a buggy, grindy, frustrating mess. Honestly I would ask for some sort of refund if I didn't know that probably wouldn't be possible.

[CraneStyle]

Hey, I'm really sorry that you had such a bad experience. I am taking time to read over all of your post and piece out some things I can look into.

A few questions:

-Where you playing in the optin beta? There are a few issues here that have been cleared up but we have not put into the mainstream download yet. I would love for if you would be willing to try that out and give feedback.

-Yes this game has been up but we are an extremely small team and this is a very big game. So it's been a long road.

- Exploring: We are going to be dealing with this VERY VERY SOON we just had to focus on some other parts first but i can promise this is very high on our priority.

I am taking notes and will have more for you later but thank you SO much for the feedback its very important to us.

[unclesporky]

Thanks for your prompt reply. That is one thing I've noticed from looking at other threads here, there is a lot of developer discussion which is good. I should make it clear that I don't take any pleasure from giving a negative impression of this game, I'd sure like to see it be fun and awesome, I just don't feel like it's there yet.

We were not playing the beta. We essentially took the attitude of, "hey, most of us bought this game a year ago, we haven't played it yet, we should do that, let's just grab it off of Steam and go. It should be in a pretty good state, having had a year's development since we first saw it."

I might try the beta but I'm reading a lot here about broken arclights and constant zombies and such. I probably couldn't get everyone to try the beta, it would just be me if at all.

I wish I had better info for you on the crashes and such we experienced, I don't have everyone's machine specs and I couldn't see everyone's monitors so much of what I said above is "I think" etc.

[unclesporky]

If I could make specific suggestions for some of the issues mentioned in my post:

- This is probably a tall order, but the game would benefit from characters functioning as they do in Terraria, being a separate entity from the world and being usable at any time on any server. There must be a sense of not wanting players to "cheat," not jumping into a server with everything already unlocked, but I think it's more important that players feel a sense of consistent progression with a character if this is such a long term game. However, I understand that this could take significant coding to accomplish.

- I don't know whether or not this is already the case, but for players who opt to skip the tutorial...start them out with all the benefits they would've gotten from the tutorial anyway. Pick, jetpack and gun in inventory, all the tiles of rock and dirt, and equivalent XP.

- Fixing the jittery characters in multiplayer should be a high priority, that would go a long way toward making the game feel more stable. I don't know if you already have this fixed in beta, or if it's something unique we experienced.

- Make that first healing item easier to craft. Maybe require 1 biomass and 5 protovine, or simply 10 protovine (plus whatever else there was, generic mineral or something). I think it can already be difficult enough to remember to use consumables in the middle of combat, and/or be hesitant to use them so you don't waste them. Players should be encouraged to make and consume many of them right from the start.

- I think the game could use more inventory slots. This is just going to be a balance thing and if you think you've already got it where you like it, then that's fine, I would just disagree unless it's a technical limitation. There is a lot to collect and craft early on and it's frustrating to hit a wall so early.

- Let players know with a pop up the first time they have items go to the Rewards button. As I said above I forget whether or not this was already implemented. I don't remember seeing it.

- Offer something on every pet tier. Perhaps players could craft a second kind of each pet that does things a little differently, which wouldn't require too much extra work. A blue firefox that provides blue light for fun, or a heal kitty that restores your shields instead.

- Rename the XP you spend to something else, so it doesn't conflict with the other type of XP. I realize this might be a weird thing for existing players but I think it would help new players understand how it works better. Perhaps it could be RP (research points) or CP (crafting points).

- Remove unimplemented items from the UI until they are implemented.

- Promote faster progression at least in the early game. I realize you are probably concerned about having a game that takes a long time to play through, a long time to reach endgame, but we need to feel like we are making progress with each expedition downward, as opposed to just one dive of 10 in order to get enough resources for the next piece of armor. It can slow down as you reach the second biome if it must, but the game would've grabbed us much better if it had a little faster progression. Actually if you add chests you can find underground that have rich rewards like 40 biomass and 20 aluminum, that would solve multiple issues: suddenly there's more of a point to exploration, and upgrades come faster without you even needing to tweak the crafting numbers.

- Maybe make some easier world events that might be able to be beaten right from the start, to give players a sense of success early on. For example, randomly spawn a big flying jellyfish that when shot spawns a lot of the small yellow jellyfish which aren't very hostile/active, and you have to kill all of them within a generous time limit.

That said, I'm no expert on game balance and how to keep players hooked, so any number of these things might not ultimately provide the expected benefit. This is just some of what I would've liked to have seen when we all first started playing.

[CraneStyle]

This is fantastic feedback im printing it off, some of this has been fixed in the opt-in version of the game currently. Some still needs to be addressed.

[CraneStyle]

- Rename the XP you spend to something else, so it doesn't conflict with the other type of XP. I realize this might be a weird thing for existing players but I think it would help new players understand how it works better. Perhaps it could be RP (research points) or CP (crafting points).

This has changed BIG time. In the opt in, also we will be making it so research points and science XP will be 1 to 1 value conversions soon

[MightyMittensss]

Thanks for posting this unclesporky. I was one of the players. I ran the server and played on my desktop and let another player user my laptop -the aforementioned laptop with the issue.

Not sure how much technical specs will help if there is a separate version that we weren't "opted in" to, but the laptop troubles seemed to stem from it using a NVIDIA Quadro K3100M chipset. Quadro chips aren't really considered in most games, so that isn't surprising in itself. I agree with unclesporky's view of the version of the game we played.

I would love to give this game a shot again with another version. I bought the original 4-pack and I want this game to work, but the version we played was frustrating per unclesporky's feedback. If I can provide any useful additional info, please let me know. I would love to love it.

[MoonlightEmber]

Originally posted by MightyMittensss:

Thanks for posting this unclesporky. I was one of the players. I ran the server and played on my desktop and let another player user my laptop -the aforementioned laptop with the issue.

Not sure how much technical specs will help if there is a separate version that we weren't "opted in" to, but the laptop troubles seemed to stem from it using a NVIDIA Quadro K3100M chipset. Quadro chips aren't really considered in most games, so that isn't surprising in itself. I agree with unclesporky's view of the version of the game we played.

I would love to give this game a shot again with another version. I bought the original 4-pack and I want this game to work, but the version we played was frustrating per unclesporky's feedback. If I can provide any useful additional info, please let me know. I would love to love it.

If we could get you to send in log files for the crashes that were mentioned, that would be a big help to us. Crashing is actually pretty unusual for EoS, so when something comes up, especially repeatedly, we definitely want to look into what happened there.

[unclesporky]

Originally posted by LadyAijou:

Originally posted by MightyMittensss:

Thanks for posting this unclesporky. I was one of the players. I ran the server and played on my desktop and let another player user my laptop -the aforementioned laptop with the issue.

Not sure how much technical specs will help if there is a separate version that we weren't "opted in" to, but the laptop troubles seemed to stem from it using a NVIDIA Quadro K3100M chipset. Quadro chips aren't really considered in most games, so that isn't surprising in itself. I agree with unclesporky's view of the version of the game we played.

I would love to give this game a shot again with another version. I bought the original 4-pack and I want this game to work, but the version we played was frustrating per unclesporky's feedback. If I can provide any useful additional info, please let me know. I would love to love it.

If we could get you to send in log files for the crashes that were mentioned, that would be a big help to us. Crashing is actually pretty unusual for EoS, so when something comes up, especially repeatedly, we definitely want to look into what happened there.

Well, I used the word crash, but it wasn't a crash to desktop, more like a hard lock. Unfortunately I didn't get to see what the crash looked like so MightyMittensss will have to give more detail. From what he said it sounded like a loading screen popped up suddenly that wouldn't go away, and I think the same thing happened to another person. The problems the rest of us experienced came after he shut down the server, where we sent to the main screen looking at a pop up error message about the 1337 port, and clicking ok did nothing, requiring a hard reboot of the client.


On a completely different topic, I've been playing more in single player and I believe I almost completed on of the world events but wasn't sure how to tell if I was successful. I've gotten "survive the hostile environment" or somesuch, which just had a timer countdown and a lot of difficult enemies spawning. I stayed in the area and survived until time ran out and nothing happened, twice now. Maybe I'm misinterpreting what I'm supposed to do there.

[MightyMittensss]

It was more of a Loading screen that would never go away. Had to alt-tab out and close the program. No event logs or anything. If there is a game log that would be useful, let me know, I will certainly provide.

[MoonlightEmber]

Originally posted by MightyMittensss:

It was more of a Loading screen that would never go away. Had to alt-tab out and close the program. No event logs or anything. If there is a game log that would be useful, let me know, I will certainly provide.

The log files would definitely show us if the game was throwing errors at the time that caused the situation, so by all means send them through. We would need your output.log file and it would be under:

Program FIles (x86) > Steam > Steam Apps > Common > Edge of Space > Edge of Space_Data

You can upload that with pastebin or the uploader of your choice, and link that here, and we'll get that to QA. If you haven't launched the game since the crash, it should still be there. If you have, then it would overwrite, so we'd have to beg ya to see if the issue would replicate.

[MightyMittensss]

https://paste.ee/p/XWbMO

[MoonlightEmber]

Originally posted by MightyMittensss:

https://paste.ee/p/XWbMO

I'm sending this through to the team to see what we can dig up, hopefully we can track the issue down :)

[coreoveride]

Originally posted by MightyMittensss:

https://paste.ee/p/XWbMO

Thank You for the log, this will greatly assist us. we do see some anomolies in the log which we are investigating. you can also send logs when possible through the in game support button (via main menu and the esc/options menu when in game worlds. the in game system will send the current log and the previous log just fyi. again thank you very much for the log