Question for anyone who got into the closed alpha, once the embargo ends...

[Amos.37]

For any lucky players that managed to get selected for the closed alpha, and any devs at liberty to say, what are your first impressions of Starbase?
Loads of bugs (even for a closed alpha)?
Better than you could have dreamed?
About what you expected?

 

[Meetbolio]

[waiting for embargo to end because I also want to know these answers]

 

[TimeTraveler]

[Waiting for the embargo so people can answer this question]

 

[Cannon Machine Ballista]

[waiting for embargo to end because I have a ton problem and a grumpy idea]

 

[TimeTraveler]

Haha! I fooled you! I am in the alpha! But i havent experienced any gamebreaking bugs yet!

 

[CalenLoki]

Not too many bugs. At least for me. But I spent most of my limited game time in SSC.
Feels more polished than a lot of EA games.

It's quite limited in what you can do: no stations, no factories, only visual navigation, ect. Only mining and staged combat. But that was totally expected.

 

[Recatek]

Very positive so far. Huge potential, and living up to it in a lot of ways. The game feels good to play as far as just the way you get into the world, the UI (a lot of which is on screens in the world for things like buying and selling at shops), and so on. Needs more of a game loop and a purpose for continuing past a certain point though. The main two pillars currently in the game are ship designing and mining. Both are solid, but as a PvP player personally I want to see more done in that particular sphere of gameplay. Namely, a reason to go out and fight, and the ability to be self-sustaining without being tethered to the safe zone. I'd also like to see more mechanics explained and tutorialized especially in the ship designer for things like getting thrusters working. For early alpha though, this is a rock solid start, even with the occasional bug and issue.

 

[Meetbolio]

Alright, time to answer. And yes, I said that I'm waiting to not seem suspicious. I'm messing with you guys
The game has enormous potential, feels like a lot of fun and tons of opportunities for expanding the game world. Definitely needs more content, but hey, we're playing what is essentially a more polished dev build so I don't blame them just yet. Bugs aren't very disturbing, they're more fun than infuriating (for example my ship today had its own brain, started to fly around when I was just standing on the roof and dancing with my friends). The developers have some very big questions on the horizon that they will need to answer, namely stuff like how safe zones work and other controversial topics, but I believe in them and I'm excited to see what's ahead!

 

[KV-5]

early game sucks, very grindy and unless you know the thruster assembly bug your going to be spending hours making the same thruster over and over for hours. also, if you have a mid-range rig like me you may have some issues with frames. even with a rx-570 and a lower then average i5, i struggle to get decent frames on very-low. so far i haven't been able to enjoy the game since at the moment its just a job sim.

 

[Recatek]

early game sucks, very grindy and unless you know the thruster assembly bug your going to be spending hours making the same thruster over and over for hours.

This is some harsh criticism but I agree and I hope this is addressed. The gap between first getting into the game and getting your first mining ship (a hauler, most likely) is long, dull, and repetitive and the game will lose people early on before they cross it. Especially since I'm assuming the assembly job exploit will be fixed, which will make it even slower. It's a pretty unsatisfying new player experience for a game that's entirely about getting into a ship and flying into space on an adventure.

 

[Meetbolio]

I'd say that the starter jobs should serve as a grounded version of what you might experience out there. I'd personally prefer if players had a sort of area with respawning asteroids somewhere near the station. Give them a free loaner tugger and make em fly! They get to have fun in a ship, they learn ship controls, they learn mining, they learn ores, they fall in love with the game. Now that would be a great starter job.

 

[Venombrew]

hey Meet and Recatek, i was thinking what wold really help the beginning grind of content as well as be informative is this. Instead of changing the two jobs so far, add a couple more basic jobs like the mining and the assembly. Turn them into literally a first time tutorial of how it works, make it a bit more elobarate for new players. Make it like any beginning tutorial would be, "here is the bolt gun", "place them this way, use these keys to turn item", etc. And make the rewards during the first time a player can do the tutorials much more profitable. Adjust my numbers here but for example, Meetbolio starts game, goes to assembly job, does tutorial and mission reward on top of the 500 credits earned is like 20k credits. Than you he has 4 other tutorial jobs to go do that also will give him a 20k reward for completing each of the last tutorials.

Your killing two birds with one stone here, new players are informed with tutorials on the basics of the games through jobs, and the player is getting somewhat of a credit boost that cut out a good chunk of his or hers initial grind for his first ship. And after the tutorials are over with, you can revisit them if need be but the credit earned is much much lower to balance. Couple more jobs with a tutorial attached to them that rewards a much higher round of credits the first time you do them.

EDIT: Hell the tutorials could even be a chain of missions that runs you through each job and at the end of it the idea is to spend those credits on a cheap ship like vasama. OR you could save what credits earned during tutorial for a bigger ship, the coding would be easy on it, just make the line of missions end when the player finally owns any ship not just a vasama.