0014096: Story and Tutorial Text Suggestions

ID	Project	Category		Date Submitted	Last Update

0014096	The Last Federation	Gameplay Issue		Apr 15, 2014 12:38 pm	Apr 15, 2014 12:38 pm

Reporter	Cyprene	Assigned To
Status	new	Resolution	open
Product Version	0.900 (Adviser, Attitude Dispatches, Science)

Summary	0014096: Story and Tutorial Text Suggestions
Description	Hi Chris- Thanks for accepting me into the Alpha. I've been watching the progress of this game for a long time, and it's been simply amazing to see it develop. I know you've got a lot riding on the success of this title, and I'm eager to contribute in any way I can. Unfortunately, I have the tactical and strategic skills of an enraged howler monkey. When I play AI War, I set the difficulty to five, bop around the universe with a giant ball of units, and then swarm the enemy homeworld while playing triumphant music. So asking me to critique things like balance, or tell you which weapons are overpowered and which are underpowered, or what tactics can be exploited, isn't going to get you the results you're looking for. What I do know, however, is writing. I've got an editor to handle my spelling, which is fortunate, but communicating ideas and phrasing sentences is something I understand fairly well, and this is an area where I think I can give you something the other testers aren't focusing on. Thus, my comments will concern mainly the game's story and tutorials. I pasted this on the forum and they told me to go ahead and post it here. They also told me you'd be reluctant to accept wholesale rewrites, which is something I completely understand. Please take these suggestions in the spirit they are offered: as mere suggestions, and feel free to discard any or all of them if they don't meet your vision for the game. The opening text of the game could use some work. Remember this is the first thing your player is going to see, and so it's worth thinking about a little. I know there's the story video, but I only know this because I saw it on the forums. If I was a new buyer I'd never see it, and even if it was displayed at the beginning, I might well skip past a 5-minute long video to get to the shooty parts. Section 2-7 of the intro screen could use a bit of cleaning up, writing wise. Suggestion: "When our race was wiped out, I was the sole survivor. I was away from our planet, on a renegade mission to deliver spacefaring technology to the other species." Section 3-7 is good, but I think it needs a comma. "My goal? The creation of a peaceful, (<- Comma goes here) unified federation of planets." Section 4-7 could use a bit of touching up as well. Suggestion: "When I crash-landed on this planet, I was placed in "captivity". Having no concept of my strength, they did not realize I was merely waiting. And that I could wait a long, long time." If the last sentence strikes you as cliche, perhaps just the first one. Why'd he crash land? Was his mission a failure? Section 5-7 is fine as it is. Section 6-7 isn't as clear as it could be. Particularly this section: "I have a short window of opportunity." Opportunity to do what? Mechanical CEOs making planetary "acquisitions" is a neat concept that tells you something about the race. That should be kept. I realize you're hitting your length limit, though. I think the important information to share here for a new player is that nobody else has spacefaring tech. Suggested revision for the first two sentences, "The Actuians are the only ones with sparefaring technology, but their program is still in its infancy. Soon, though, their mechanical CEOs..." Welcome to Combat Tutorial: The text is fine, but after it says, "You need to give your ship a movement order," it doesn't actually tell you how to do that. I see that it says what to do lower on the screen, but it seems odd not to have it in the tutorial text itself. First Encounter Text: This is a little confusing. When it says, "Make things even worse by attacking their infrastructure," what am I making worse? Am I damaging relations with them? Setting them back technologically? Also, I don't think I see any infrastructure to blow up. Also, the top text reads "Destroy all flagships or dock with survey platform", but the first encounter text tells me that I need to blow up all the flagships. I noticed also that there's nothing here that tells me what a "flagship" is. I can guess it's the three yellow dudes, but its absence seems odd. Now it's Time To Attack Tutorial: It tells me I have three weapons, but it's not immediately obvious what they are. I see the Minigun, Energy Blaster, and Gravity Lance, and I know from watching videos that these are weapons, but when I mouse over them it tells me "This special weapon has been completely used up, and can be swapped out for another in 30 turns." Are they special weapons or normal ones? Objectives Tutorial: This is fine. It's very clear and gets across all the information you want to share, and the parenethetical asides are a neat touch. Power Management Tutorial: 2/6: Part of the last sentence is cut off by the "next" button. I think that last sentence could use a bit of rewriting too. Suggestion: "Increasing power to your Engines gives you faster movement, better turning arcs, and increases the distance you can move each turn." 5/6: I suggest adding this sentence to the first paragraph. "The engine power system is the yellow bar on the right side." It's fairly obvious if you think about it, but no reason not to say it. 6/6: If you want to use an em-dash instead of the --, it's alt+0151. The -- is kinda retro-techno-y though, so if you wanna leave it as is that's probably fine. Solar Map Tutorial: A word about time progressing on the map might be a good idea; I didn't realize this was the case until I went to the logbook to re-read things . Again, a word about what you're actually supposed to do would probably be a good idea. "Click on a planet and then click the "friendly acts" button." or something similar. Also, what's a dispatch mission? Is it different than a joint mission? Deliver Spacefaring: At the end, there's a note, "Preparing to withdraw, sir!" about how your ship needs time to jump to lightspeed, with a comment about how calculating the neccessary coordinates "isn't like dusting crops," a reference which I am afraid eludes me. However, there's an "end combat" button which immediately whisks me away. Geopolitical Fancy Analysis Tutorial: Others have said this, but I don't think anybody is gonna know what RCI means in this context unless you tell them. I'm pretty much in your target market (I read your forums, I own every arcen game, etc.) and I would've been bewildered by what you meant if I hadn't read the thread where someone else was complaining about it. I understand that there may not be a good alternative for this phrase (I thought a while and I couldn't come up with anything), so how about defining it the first time it's used? Could you just say something like, (RCI is short for Residential, Commercial, Industrial: the values that determine what kind of place a planet is like.) Thanks for taking the time to read this rather verbose message, I know you're extremely busy. I'll keep them shorter in the future. Best of luck with the release, I'm cheering for you.
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