Tutorial Beta feedback

[76561198392478228]

The Tutorial Beta is live!

Read the announcement for all details:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/800270/announcements/detail/1675785220201111311

Please share your feedback below. Don't forget to indicate your level of experience with the original board game!

[Daelin]

Hi there .. first of all, my english is not the best and i am playing with the german translation, so i have problems to tell you the english card names.

My experience with the board game is beginner level. I played it ca. 7-8 times. 3x with friends and the rest as solo variant. One time i managed to finish it in time according to the solo rules.

The following things/bugs have i found playing the beta tutorial 2 times:

The AI is cheating. If it gets and plays the City Noctis card, it places the city everywhere it wants, not on the Noctis field.

The cards, where you use an action per generation to put a ressource on the card and exchange 2 ressources to 1% oxygen or 2°C temperature, it can use once per generation to advance oxygen and the temperature. In the board game you would need 3 generations and not just one. (2 gens for gaining the needed ressources and 1 for exchanging them.) In the second tutorial playthrough both oxygen and temperature were maxed out in generation 10 and the ai had about terraforming level 50+.

In the tutorial you are skipping most stuff til gen 10 and when your M€ counter reaches 99 or 100 it gets reset to 0, or 1.

In the first playthrough i could not sell any cards. The calculated value for selling them was to high and after clicking on okay, the action was accepted, but the cards were not sold and i haven´t got any money. The action counter however went 1 down. I tried it several times. In the second paythrough however, it worked.

Hud/GUI:

One thing is really annoying. The card windows .. both for playing out cards, or the one for cards you played, need an X for closing it. Clicking next to it to close it, isn´t always working.

Thats all for now.

I would like to help you more, but skipping the tutorial generations to finally be able to play freely, is really annoying. :(

Perhaps .. eventually tomorrow i am willing to try it again.

[Lyyar]

Graphics design issue: too many CRT interlace effects on graphics it makes simply headache. This is my personal opinion. I'm using 2560x1440 monitor 72Hz, but I remember old times when CRT monitors were common and PAL and NTSC signals have really annoying frames interlacing feature. If possible please consider removing such effects from graphics elements, especialy animated horizontal lines. :)

[hK]

First impression:

Sweet mercy you guys knocked it out of the park with the Ocean graphics. Congratulations this is done masterfully, perhaps something similar, albeit keeping colors or borders perhaps, with greeneries and cities?

Final scoring, the slides as a final race are done really well. Perhaps try it with an announcer? I know that would mean extra work but perhaps that would open the way for announcers?

Things to improve in my opinion

Please add hotkeys, even at this stage. The tutorials could teach you to skip turn and then say "Hotkey (k)". Only clicking will make the game sloppier.

Please add animations to the card actions. I know this would mean more work but it would greatly enhance the visuals of the game. Just a tiny tardigrade popping up and then vanishing as four to become a VP.

Same with cards that increase the parameters. I played Comet for example and was expecting something big to happen, instead only two clicks happened. I even had to check the game log to see if I played it.

Add something more to differentiate players. The line is good but perhaps you could add something more, perhaps another line or some background light color.

Just to be clear, I love the current visuals and approve the lack of visual and noise pollution, but on the other hand you have to make sure your future clients know what's happening on the map. I have played Catan, Twilight Struggle, Scythe and Talisman on Steam. Out of those four, only Scythe made me feel clueless about what's happening.

Ideas

Let me start by acknowledging that all of this will be more work, but please ponder if it will improve and make the game better.

Add animations to the whole map. Imagine if the card Birds and then you see tiny birds roaming the map as a random event from time to time. It doesn't have to be huge or be in your face, but just tiny details like that would greatly improve the game like the water imo.

Try bigger zoom when a card is played and perhaps some tiny animations (or deluxe edition?) I believe both Twilight Struggle and Talisman deal with this alright.

Bigger announcements on phases. A voiced announcer might be too much but a clearer announcer of End of Generation and Collecting Phase needs to be added.

Things to fix

I'm Peruvian so my game booted up in Spanish. The translation needs to be reviewed, if you guys provide a thread I would gladly post all the translation issues there.

That's all for my first game. I'll play more later and see what more I can find. Many thanks for this game!

[thebadmeringue]

I have a moderate amount of experience with the board game (~two dozen plays between solo and multiplayer, both with the base game and expansions); I even beat the computer during the tutorial!

A few notes:

Graphics - The overall aesthetic jives well with the board game. The parallax effect is subtle and works well for me (although I can see how this might produce motion sickness in some people). I wish the GUI was more dynamic (e.g. movable and minimized windows), as there can be a lot of data to process and areas to review at the same time; I didn't find the current system very intuitive.

Gameplay - Fundamentally the same as the board game, although the tutorial does make some questionable strategic choices in an effort to teach the game; it might be difficult to do this, but teaching the game while providing a solid base for a beginner would be important in making the new player feel confident about the game and more willing to play it. I think a tutorial could be developed that produced a good synergized opening tableau with a more clear strategy for future turns.

When building projects during the tutorial (pre-control handover), steel and titanium resources can be spent in conjunction with MC, but this is not explained yet in the tutorial. Might be confusing for a new player if they were clicking around.

Verbiage when NOT buying project cards should be changed (paraphrasing: "Are you sure you don't want to purchase project cards?" vs "Are you sure you want to spend 0 credits?")

Reminder to utilize cards with available actions before passing; the card action section is buried in the GUI and I forgot my own blue cards although I am very familiar with their importance.

Misc - Some calculation bugs here and there (e.g. 7 biomass/plant resources spent instead of 8 when building greenery).

My observations aside, I am very excited for a digital version of TM, as it is one of my favorite games of all time! Good luck with the digitizing process!

[Serarya]

Hello,

thanks to a friend with which I play weeky board games (one of them is terraforming mars) I found your beta digital board game.

I play the german localisation.

So I am very familiar with terraforming mars.

The first impression is nice, the graphic details are a little bit to low and too less detailed for my taste (Anti Aliasing?). I like the sound effects, they feel modern and futureistic.

The Tutorial was too long for how I like my tutorials. What I did not like was that I hadn't a chance to choose the cards myself. The chooses the tutorial makes are bad in my point of view, and ressources aren't deployed optimal, to a point where it gets a little bit frustrating - and thats why the tutorial isn't beatable (or only very hard beatable) - since the enemy plays nearly optimal (or lets say better than the player does), we can't (even with the handycap of the KI). If there is a possibility to choose from a set of 3 cards for tutorial proposal it would be a little bit better to have a feel of infuence. Actualy it is pretty staright forward.

Sometimes I lost the overview, because things were happening very fast in another players turns. A funtion, where to look up every action done (and cards played) would be nice. If there is already a function I couldn't find it.

It took me some time to leave the ingame menues where I can cee my cards in detail, due I was searching for a "back"-Button :).

So much for my look and feel now for small bugs I discovered:

When you are about to choose no card at the Beginning of your generation, the game asks "if you realy want to buy this cards", even if you did not choose any.

I don't know if small milestones has been implemented - for example with reaching 0° normaly the player reaching this gets a free piece of water - I never did get one of this small milestones.

Last seen Bug was with the KI - even after the temperature has been raised to maximum - tries to raise the temperature even further.

I hope my Feedback will help you to improve the game :).

[Daelin]

Some further suggestions/bugs after thinking my playthoughs over .. in the board game variant, i like seeing the cards my opponents play. In the digital variant you only see the AI played card for a few seconds. Perhaps add a longer delay or add a press this button to continue.. or maybe an option for both .. one likes this, the other one likes that..

This isn´t the issue for only the cards but for every step the AI does. Sometimes it´s hard to comprehend what the AI did. The best would be to implement a button for an additional window that displays a short overview on what the opponent did, with links to the cards he played.

The first few steps/windows in the tutorial can be advanced by pressing Return but then suddenly this isn´t any longer possible.

You should try to display all card information directly on the cards. Having to click the information button to see what a card does is simply annoying and hindering the play flow. (Don´t know if you say this in english .. we germans call it Spielfluss ;-)) It´s even more annoying the bigger your monitor is. In the board game everything important can be seen directly on the card .. you don´t have to turn the card around .. metaphoric for clicking the i button.

The AI is still converting heat after the temperature is fully maximized.

And last but not least .. the tutorial .. as it is now .. could hinder new players to find their fun with the game. You have enogh money to buy cards or play out this or that card or standard project, but are not allowed to and the AI, if it gets good cards gets more and more terraforming points or pushes both temperature and oxygen level. (depends on the cards it gets - see the bugs in my first post) Perhaps remove the randomness of cards for the turtorial and give both players and AI a fixed set of cards. It should be manageable and not unfair for new players.

[JPLRocket]

Mayor milestone is bugged: when holding 2 cities + phobos space haven, the player should correctly be able to lock it. Presently, this is not possible and only cities on mars are being counted. This is likely a bug that extends in various places, since some cards count all cities, while Martian Rails and several others count only ON MARS cities.

[Tcheodorius]

Hi there.

I am TM player with some experience (150 games). Joined in as fast as possible.

Art Style - I did enjoy very much the art style of the game even tho it's much different from the original and might take time to get used to. The overall effects are wonderful and the ocean placing animation is just gorgeous, altho as someone said earlier, they might get overwhelming after some time, due to sheer number of flashing elements etc. The cards are designed nicely and i love that the game indicates when you have enough plants/heat for greenery/heat level.

As of tutorial i have mixed feelings.

The rules were explained in simple and effective way, but due to the tutorial giving me no choice in what i am doing i felt really frustrated (even at the game's end when i still had loads of titanium). Please consider that even veterans might wanna play tutorial on PC version at first. Some of the rules weren't explained properly or at all.

Other issues;
- Game doesn't take discounts into account.
- The oxygen and heat levels are misleading (especially for bonuses)
- The AI kept spending 8 heat to convert even after it hit 8 degrees
- The AI played like an idiot (for me), but oh well maybe it should, but loosing to an idiot as veteran was frustrating
- If you have 2 production of heat/plants, and 8 (or more) of them available, the indicator that you can build forest/up temp might falsly suggest that you're able to buy 2 of them
- There should be indicator that you still have some actions to do/cards to buy, so you can recheck, since it's so freakin easy to forget about your cards.
- The shaky mars is nice at first, but after a while it gets distracting
- Tharsis Republic had misalligned graphics for starting ME.

[StaryManieek]

too much chaos for me:(((

[hK]

It is gamebreaking that the AI can use Noctis wherever they want AND that they can use the Action Cards to convert resources for oxygen even if they don't have the resources. I'll take this as a challenge and try to beat it tho.

[bluesapphyre]

After playing throught the tutorial twice, here's my thoughts:

The AI is super dumb. It's trivially easy to win, even after the AI gets a 10 round head start. But maybe that's the intended design for the tutorial.

One thing I kept messing up is where the temp and oxygen levels were, it looks like it's below the level it's currently at.

Otherwise, it's a very slick, well designed game.

[Sventhir]

I've played 40+ games consisting of 2-5 players.

The game makes some extremely questionable plays while trying to teach you the game. It would be more work, but if you could ask the player to choose an action, and then explain whether that is a good idea and why it would provide a much better base for new players.

I had Dust Seals in my available cards to buy, and then the AI played it a few generations later. Is the discard pile going to be constantly shuffled in to the draw pile? Becasue that will DRASTICALLY change the strategy of the game.

An indicator that you still have Actions Cards (Blue Cards) available to use would help a lot as they're pretty easily forgettable tucked away in the corner.

When I placed a Greenery tile next to 3 Ocean tiles, it correctly gave me 6 MC, HOWEVER, it popped up that it was giving me 6 MC 3 times, rather than giving me 6 MC once or 2 MC 3 times.

There should be an indication that an opponent has passed for the rest of the generation.

I increased the temperature to 0 degrees, but I didn't get to place an Ocean tile.

There should be a way to minimize the card buy screen so that you can veiw the board.

At the end of the game I had 15 plant resources but could not place a Greenery tile.

[itsdavidthegreat]

Initial feedback - capturing as I go through this for the first time.

At the instruction "The top left corner shows the cost in ME, the circle indicates VP gained..." - the user action for "Use 30$" is only indicated by an arrow. Instructive text like "Click 'Use 30$ to continue" would be helpful here.

On the next instruction, "You can perform 2 actions per turn. If you can no longer perform an action, or do not wish to perform one, select this button" - would be clearer if it read "select the SKIP button", and should use the same visual indicator as the prior instructions. Also, it should require clicking SKIP instead of "Next"

The Pass instruction should include an example of how the visual changes from Skip to Pass, and require clicking the Pass button.

Turns should end automatically, without user input/action once 2 actions have been completed.

"You can place greeneries, even if the maximum Oxygen is reached" should include a clarifying statement along the lines of "but your Terraform Rating will not increase"

Production area should show the Terraform Rating as part of the ME production. Example: 20(TR icon) + 2

In the card selection phase, the text should not read "are you sure you want to buy the selected cards" when no cards are selected. It should say "are you sure you don't want to buy any cards?"

Oh look.... there's the clarification on Greenery production I was looking for earlier! It should probably say "Placing Greenery" instead of just talking about Plant Conversion though.

I wasn't sure the tutorial wanted me to place it wherever I wanted.

END OF INSTRUCTIONS!

Overall:

The flow of the instructions is good, even with the above feedback. It introduces the game concepts at a good pace without overwhelming players with information at once.

However, the gameplay is extremely slow. Graphics are slow and stutter, animation is a little much. Perhaps there should be an option to disable some of the board animations and heavy graphic elements to make the gameplay smoother?

All in all, VERY excited about this release. Can't wait to buy the full version and play with friends.

[huh41]

Hi. Just did a play-through of the tutorial. Visually, it was pleasing, but I think there needs to be more emphasis on the lower right section for events and card actions. It is easy to forget about those available plays. Also, I agree with a comment above about showing all the details when enlarging the card because it is annoying to additionally click the info icon. Another detail I think would improve the game would be skipping the end of turn confirmation after the second action if there is no undo button. An undo button would be nice. Thanks for the beta. I actually won even with the terrible moves the tutorial forced on me before free play.

[ArtEntre]

I've played the physical board game 5 times, and seen the twitch pre-alpha video, so I already knew the rules and was somewhat familiar with the game UI.

I played through the tutorial 3 times.

Tutorial specific feedback

• There were a few times where it wasn't immediately apparent where the arrow that indicated what I should click next was. It wasn't too bad, and I don't know if making the arrow/choice more visually prominent might get obnoxious.
  
• In the scripted part of the tutorial, the space mirror card is played after using titanium is introduced, but it won't allow titanium to be used. That may be intended, but it stood out to me since I was able to use titanium (optionally) on at least one previous card.
  
• The tutorial never discusses terraforming parameter progress rewards (temperature track's two heat increases and ocean placement, O2 track's heat increase).
  
• Tutorial AI ignores milestones and awards, but this is likely intentional.
  
• Tutorial AI uses the convert heat to temperature action even when temperature is maxed. It also performs other questionable actions in the last generation.
  
• My final scores were 85, 83, and 80 versus the AI's 72, 66, and 76 respectively. The AI is "hard" in that it can get a big lead with all the player's suboptimal moves in the scripted portion of the tutorial, but the AI not getting any awards or milestones is a pretty big handicap.
  
• I somehow got 16 plant resources at the of gen 9. I didn't notice exactly how it happened, but my guess is it happened somehow when I selected the plants->greenery action but didn't do it, then switched to heat->temperature. Edit: It seems to often happen at the switch from scripted to open play in the tutorial.

General game bugs

• Tutorial AI used the Mangrove card (place a greenery on a spot reserved for an ocean) to place on a spot not reserved for an ocean. I have used that same card in a different game, and it did limit me to the correct options, so it seems to only the AI.
  
  
• Activating a Milestone or Award seems to animate the heat resource icon as well as money (money is properly -8, heat flashes with what looks like -0 at the same time).
  
  
• Sometimes unable to click and view cards in log. I noticed when viewing the log, sometimes clicking a played card properly brings up the full card and sometimes it doesn't respond.

General game feedback

• It felt like the bottom "board" switched from the AI to the player (or visa versa) in the middle of resource plus/minus animation, such that there were times it made it look like I was losing or gaining resources from cards the AI played. That wasn't actually the case, my resource numbers were unaffected, but the little animation that pops up above it made it seem that way.
  
  
• I got confused on how to exit from viewing my hand of cards. It seemed clicking on the window with my cards would close it, but clicking outside that window would not, which is the opposite of what I'd expect.
  
  
• The log is awesome, but I strongly suggest breaking the strict rules of the board game to fully show all event cards in the log (they are currently "hidden"); making all events visible doesn't really impact that game, as far as I'm aware of the cards. The switch to digital makes it easy to miss what's been played, so a slight tweak to what's mostly a convenience rule in the physical board game is fine in my opinion. Or the at least, you should be able to read any event cards played since your last turn in the log.
  
  
• It'd be great if there was a prompt for passing when you have unused blue card actions. This could probably be added conditionally to the standard prompt for passing.
  
  
• After playing Ganymede Colony, I spent some time confused why the game seemed frozen before realizing that it wanted me to click on a little hexagon on the edge of the screen. My first suggestion would be that you shouldn't need to click on the location for this card (and others like it), since there are no options in terms of placement. If not doing that, I would make it much more prominent and/or have a prominent text box that tells you need to place the city.
  
  
• I thought the way the Temperature and Oxygen level scales were filled was not intuitive. As is, the current number is slightly bolded, and there is a filled bar below the current number. I would find it more intuitive to have the top of the bar at the top of the current number, which would likely necessitate making at least a bit of that bar semi-transparent so that you can see the current number. There are other ways you could do it, but it's confusing for the line/bar to be below the number for me.
  
  
• Tied in to the above, I sometimes got confused which was the correct level to get the parameter progress bonus reward (heat production, ocean tile, temperature increase). As is, the reward icon is next to the middle of number that must be reached, becomes slightly bolded when that number is the current number (and the reward is consumed), and then disappears once that terraforming parameter passes that number. I would find it more intuitive if the bonus was awarded at the point when the filled in bar reaches the icon and if the icon disappeared as soon as (after a little animation) the bonus was awarded.
  
  
• I think it'd be nice to have a confirmation that a parameter is already at maximum when playing a card that increases it. I didn't notice one of the AI's moves, and then accidentally played a card that did nothing because all the oceans were out.
  
  
• The contents Ironworks card appeared blank when viewing it in the game log (it was played by the AI) and probably when it popped up. I was able to view the card text by clicking the information "i", but it seems like there should be some iconography on the card for it's action. Edit: It seems this is true for multiple cards.
  
  
• Related to above regarding Ironworks, that card and the Capital had important text related to the card effects that was hidden underneath needing to press the information "i" (the fact that the Capital VP counts oceans wasn't simply displayed, I thought). It'd be nice to make that more prominent to know that you need to click it; or alternatively, in the single card view mode, I wonder if you could automatically expand all the text on the card. Capital in particular seemed like a complete card from what was displayed without the extra text (it does have "...", but that's easy to miss); I had to remember from playing previously that there was something related to oceans in order to know to look for and click the "i".
  
  
• In the research phase (buy cards at the start of a gen), I think we need to be able to minimize that window in order to look our current hand of cards and the board state before deciding which cards to select.
  
  
• The moving bars for scoring at the end is cool. But I noticed that it seems to be fixed width per point, and when I got to 85 it was pretty close to the edge of my screen. Maybe it would resize itself if I got more points, but it seemed like it might just run off my screen so I thought I'd mention it. Edit: I hit 100 in a subsequent game, and it stayed on the screen, so dynamic scaling seems to work for me (though I saw someone in another post say it didn't for them).

Closing feedback

• I spent a lot of time with comments on negatives, but I'm overall very happy with and excited for the game. I generally don't pay to much attention to the game art, but I'd say the current art is good; I do like the "digital" display feel to the cards and whatnot for the digital game. Other than a few things, I think the UI is pretty intuitive and efficient. I am very excited to buy the game and think it's looking great.