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For a newcomer, the tutorial is not so good. It doesn't feel like someone teaching a game through playing, but as someone remembering rules as things happen and mentioning them in passing.
A few issues that would annoy me if I had never played the game before:
1. Why can't I see my opponent's info during my turn? I understand that tutorials usually have limited access, but you could just limit the actions and give full access to see the complete state of the game.
2. Cards are being bought in turns, but there's no explanation on why some cards are chosen over others (or why sometimes no cards). Something as simple as saying "we are trying to save money to play this other card" or "we want to increase Energy production to be able to play this card" would be good.
3. In the same vein, there's no discussion on why placing in certain locations is good. When placing things, it's a good time to discuss the placement bonuses as well as final placement scoring.
4. Most of the tutorial seems extremely automated, with the player just clicking on their next option as prompted but without knowing why. I feel that some text walls where the tutorial explains things for a bit without the user doing anything are ok.
5. Why does the tutorial player play so suboptimally? I understand that the goal of the tutorial is not necessarily to win, but not using the resources as they are available with no strategic reason (or if there is, without telling) makes no sense to a new player.
Most tutorials introduce things one at a time, without showing the player the rest of the game, unveiling as necessary. This one seems to want to do everything at once, realizing it can, failing and then just tacking on rules. Please, look at tutorials for games like "Through the Ages" where they explain each step as well as the reasoning behind the actions taken.
Overall, the interface and the design looks great. I don't care much about the individual art for the cards so I didn't pay much attention to it (I don't care much about the art in the actual cards either). It would be great if there was an undo button. Many of the actions taken do not reveal new information to the player and can be undone with no strategic significance but makes it nice for the player to be able to make mistakes and roll back (in particular, with accounting mistakes).
I totally agree on every point made.
Point 1
Having knowlege can give a player insight on what the best action is
Point 2
The cards I was forced to get I would never have picked over some i was forced to not buy.
This was both fustrating and made the learning experience less effective
Point 3
agreed
Point 4
the tutorial was less informative than it was confining and boring.
Point 5
Having the tutorial teach new coming players how to optimize thier moves would be helpful. Instead the tutorial just blindly rushes in and directs you to do things with no regaurd to playing smart.
The tutorial is slow, boring and overall useless at teaching.
I think it could be improved by setting up multiple tutorials beginer, intermediate, and advanced.
begginer should show you what moves you can do and how to do them from buying cards, playing different card types, standard projects, awards, milestones and teach about card requirements.
intermediate should teachn corporation abilities, how to pick a starting hand, show why you may choose one card over another and show why generation of specific reasources can help you later in the game.
advanced should teach how to plan out moves to make optimum playing (example building ocean before playing next to it and others), order of play in terraforming mars can have a big effect on end game score.
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Please do not get me wrong I love this game. That is why I am so very hard on the digital version. I hope my ideas/ input helped
Played game 3, and ran across a few oddities and other critques.
Green (player): 86
Purple (computer): 74
As many others have commented, I think the UI and production quality of the digital game is excellent. So overall, well done!
Regarding pain points - and leaving aside the known issues you cited in the beta solicitation post - there were two main concerns for me:
1. without trial and error, it seemed a bit ambiguous to me whether the number on the oxygen or temperature scale was the current level or the next level, and similarly I wasn't sure whether the bonus heat-production/ocean-placement/temperature-gain on those global parameter tracks was one hop away or already realized.
2. When selecting cards at the beginning of each generation, I couldn't figure out how to look at my current hand of already selected cards (to help decide which if any of the new set of 4 cards would work with my current cards), or look at which cards I've already played or my opponents have played, or more generally refer to any data re the state of the game. In the physical game that's definitely something folks do (e.g. if I take this card with a building tag, will I be able to beat my opponent to the building tag milestone? hmmm, let me peek at how many building tags she's played already...). To be clear, I did figure out how to examine the game state during my turn phase, it just didn't seem to be available specifically during card selection.
Hope that helps!
Also, there was a reset of money half the way through tutorial. You allowed AI to develop very fast and very far ahead, then say: ok, you can play couple of rounds, try to race that AI.
Also I find very unintuitive the screen of selecting card to buy on the start of the round. Once you click the card and get detailed info on it, there is no easy way to get to prevbious screen where all 4 cards were visible.
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(Separate from above) A bug I noticed after my first batch of games I already posted feedback on...
I had funded Miner and Landlord. For Landlord, after both placing one greenery in the end-game plant conversion, the AI had 11 tiles and I had 13. For Miner, I couldn't go back to check the exact board state, but the displayed steel and titanium resources were something like 10 AI to 23 me (no way the AI had enough production to make up the gap). I checked the log to be sure I did fund those two particular, so I wasn't mistaken on which awards were funded.
Tutorial Specific Issues:
1) One of the most common mistakes new players make with the board game is not realising you can take multiple turns in a single generation. At no point in the tutorial do you ever take multiple turns in a single generation (indeed sometimes you immediately pass).
2). As has been noted by numerous people despite telling you about using steel and titanium to reduce the cost of playing cards on the previous generation when you are asked to build the space mirror you do not have the option of reducing the cost to 0 by simply spending a single titanium.
3) If you are going to ask the user to pass when there are plenty of things they could still do at least say something along the lines of 'there is more you could do now but as this is just a tutorial we will just pass'.
4) The starter corp you are forced to choose explicitly states you will start with 10 cards yet you start with 3 and there is no explanation why - if you are just wanting to avoid clutter in the tutorial at least say so.
AI Issues (may or may not be tutorial related)
1) As noted by many people the AI seems to ignore placement restrictions - examples include Noctis City placed elsewhere, Ganymede Colony placed elsewhere, Mangrove placed on a non-ocean tile and Reseach Facility placed next to another tile.
2) As noted by many people the AI does not correctly add resources and take resources from a card e.g. either add a microbe to a card or remove 3 microbes to increase oxygen one step, the AI will increase the oxygen every generation (note this was a bug I noticed playing solo at UK Games Expo but I have yet to get a card to let me test if it is still an issue with this beta).
3) Once the temperature track is complete the AI is still able to remove 8 heat - he gains no benefit from this beyond delaying other actions on the same turn.
4) The AI takes full advantage of the fact you can take multiple turns in a single generation while the user is forced to pass - in the tutorial the AI should be limited.
5) There is no explanation of the trigger points on the oxygen and heat tracks.
General Issues:
1) When placing a tile next to multiple oceans (say 2) you see an animation of 4 ME adding to your cash twice while your total cash goes up by 2 each time. This either wants to be a single animation of 4 ME and your cash increasing by 4 or two animations of 2 ME with your cash increasing by 2 each time. This was previously reported by me after playing the demo at UK Games Expo (though I can't remember whether the cash increased in steps of 2 then or not)
2) When selecting an award it correctly has an animation of the cost for the award but also an animation of 0 Heat dropping down to your heat resources.
3) When looking at the log you cannot see what events have been played - they are left face down after playing in the board game because any tags on a card only apply when the card is played however you can still look at events that have been played. You need to be able to look at past events (especially when playing multiplayer) so you can work out what has happened.
Comments:
1) The running count on how many oceans have been played is a definite improvement over playing solo at UK Games Expo - it was hard to track how many still needed to be played there.
2) The temperature and oxygen tracks could be clearer as to what the current level is - it took a few plays to be able to recognise how many steps to the trigger point.
I'm looking forward to seeing the whole thing
- AI can place cities that should go to a reserved tile everywhere
- when tutorial explains that you can use titanium to buy space cards, the arrow indicates not the space icon but the energy icon
suggestions:
- make ocean tiles more visible
- make the tutorial more logic. passing doing nothing makes no sense at all. I know the rules, but a new player watching himself insta passing while the AI plays wouldn't understand the game at all.
Awesome implementation of the game, I have several comments:
- card information might be more visible even with smaller characters, I don't want to click for info for every card
- Oxygen level did not trigger the heat bonus, also, heat did not trigger the ocean bonus for me
- an undo action button is a must, in case I change my mind or accidentaly click on an action I did not want.
The game will be an instant buy, please polish it a bit more. Many thanks!
I play the german version of the Beta.
I found following problems/bugs/...:
- graphics are not perfect .. the city tiles are overexposed (to much light on them) and the ocean tiles look strange..
- in the tutorial when the titanium Tag is explained the arrow points to the energy tag. I think this can be coonfusing for new players. Instead you can use another card..
- the tutorial is boring, you have to click on so many buttons and have no choices.
-> at least make an option to turn off the popups with Do you really want to .... end your turn, buy that cards... they are annoying
- at the end of each generation the board with o2,ocean and temp. disappers for a short while.... thats pointless.
- The full information from the cards should be shown with a mouse-over, and/or at least when you click on the name ...
- in the milestone menu on the button to buy them was the german word "verwenden" severed into "verwen" and "den" underneath.. that looks bad. at least you need to write "verwen-" "den"
- same problem with "Phobos Raumhafen" it´s shown as "Phobos" "Raumhafe" "n"
- and same on some Cards: "Asteroideneinschlag" is shown as "Asteroideneinsc" "hlag"
- when i sell a patent a popup shows up with the englich word "sell" - it has to be "verkaufen"
- in the tutorial in Gen.3 the player builds a city and after that an ocean... it would be more intelligent to play them in different order to get the 2 Gold for placing the city next to an ocean...
- the german word for aquifer is "Bewässerung" and its not translated.
I would like to have a less detailed view. More boardgame-style.
If you're a veteran of Terraforming Mars: did you enjoy the tutorial?
I would like to skip the boardgame rules, and concentrate on the interface.
And yes, I enjoyed the tutorial, played it three times. Was able to win it.
I like the art style. But the Tutorial seems not to be a good tutorial for new players.
The tutorial tells how to raise the temp, oxy and ocean and the score, and also how to pay cards with rescources, but in the researchphase, i have to take the cards already choosen by the tutorial (in the first few gens), but didn't got an explaination why take exactly this cards.
I think it's important for new players to know, why to choose a specific card, because the game is all about making good choices also in the researchphase. For that, the player have to know the reasons for choosing this cards!
Wanting the players just accept the choice of the game is no good didactic and demotivating (like having a bad teacher in mathclass xD)
Then a few bugs:
There're sometimes curiouse things happening to the credits. In Gen 4. is somesing strange (didn't figured out yet), and in Gen 8. the Credits jumping from 96 to 13 for no reason. I think it's about balancing the game to make it challanging, but like i said above, this have to be reasoned to the player. If not, players could think it's a bug thats never been solved and will always think "i would have won, if this bug wasn't happen".
The AI spend heat also the temp is already max, so the acivement for the most heatressources is save 5 point