Be sure to provide plenty of feedback on your experience. One thing no one's done yet is to write a "daily journal" of their activities. Example:kylekrack wrote:Thank you for the response. I definitely feel like it all makes more sense now. I'll get to playing it when I'm done working on my own project for today.
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My Coffee Making Journal
Day 1: Learned how to make coffee. Felt really accomplished, now that I've mastered an essential part of the game. Three of the eight customers who came to my line were jerks and wouldn't accept my coffee. That's okay. I gave them trash coffee. They deserved it. Made $12. Wish I'd made more. I really hope Pepsi Ranger redraws their sprites. They are Uuugly (note the capital "U").
Day 2: Now that I know what I'm doing, I feel more confident about my chances at success. I bought just the right ingredients (the ones I could afford), and I didn't feel the need to steal anything, as I still had some leftover items I stole the day before. My customers were better, too. No complaints. I even got a tip from one. Made over $20. Progress! Not sure I like that Lease Agent, though. He's a shark.
Day 3: Oh, a new map opened! Explored it for a bit. Impressed with the stuff available to buy. Was tempted to buy an Open Sign at the novelty shop (forget the name), but I wasn't sure how much I needed it. Is it a vanity item? Is it functional? I left it at the shop, but maybe I'll pick it up later. Continued to explore the area, saw there wasn't much to the north of the area (maybe it's still under construction for a future update?). I wasn't watching the clock, of course. Before I knew it, it was time for work, and I hadn't even stocked my ingredients for the day. Needless to say, the work day was awful. Upset just about everyone who came to my line when I told them I was out of this and out of that, and compensating by delivering one trash coffee after another. I'm such a bad barista.
Day 4: Who the f is the Coffee Critic, and why do I have to impress him??? I'm still trying to figure this crap out. And starting at home means I gotta walk father. This game...does it want me to fail??? Never mind, I was able to give the coffee critic a good cup, and he gave me a reward. Life is good.
I'm certainly not expecting it, but it would be nice to get something like this from someone.
Yeah, it isn't easy to balance everything, and the game keeps getting bigger, so my work isn't anywhere near finished. Fortunately, TMC gave me some tips on how to speed up the development process. I'm going to start rewriting the code after I finish building three of the shops I need for the next version and stocking the current empties.kylekrack wrote:I was considering the whole hand-holding element. I didn't mean to suggest that there *should* be a checklist of things to start out, simply that I didn't have one, and got really lost, probably because I have a bad memory. It's clear that giving an easy victory is not the goal of this game. The way it throws in so suddenly did not set the bar low. I like that. It does feel more emotionally realistic that way, starting a business from scratch and figuring things out each step of the way. It is important to balance difficulty with player progression, though, especially when the player is first starting out. I can see how it could be difficult to know just what a newbie needs to get going without becoming too frustrated right off the bat. In fact, I can't even imagine how you end up balancing all of the resources in this game, it's huge.
My plan for the improved tutorial (aka the beginner tutorial) is to start three days before the contest between Buck and Chet is issued. These will be advanced by event, not by a game clock, so the player can take his sweet time figuring out how to play. Each day is broken up by story bits that require Buck to do something specific relative to his business venture. Miyagi will "train" him, of course. If Buck can make Miyagi five cups of good coffee in a row, for example, Miyagi will pass him for the day. Obviously, Miyagi will have his own ingredients that Buck can use for practice. I also plan to give Buck a starting stash of ingredients (courtesy of Miyagi) so that he can have a better business launch. I haven't worked out yet how this will be incorporated with the "throw you into the deep end" style of gameplay, nor how it'll be changed by difficulty. But I will. The idea is that by the time you get to Day 1, to the story, and to the business, you'll know essentially what you need to start effectively. Most likely, I'll set up a series of options at the start of the game to let you choose your beginning.
But this should hopefully help get new players on the right foot. Still, I don't want to set it up to be too easy. Unfortunately, I know the game well, so I know how to play it, and I don't have the objectivity I need to start it off in a way that befits new players without outright holding their hands. This is why I appreciate suggestions from those who have played it (and want to like it), both from those who are good at it and those who don't have the slightest clue what they're doing (but also understand that I don't want to hold their hand more than what's necessary to get them to Day 2). I've trained myself to ignore complaints from those who don't get the point, or feel it should be something it was never meant to be (like a traditional RPG).
Knowing that the systems in this game are mostly modeled after real life systems than after RPG systems should hopefully make decisions in the game easier. Would you buy that much coffee without other supplies to go with it (like cups or a filter, or the coffeepot itself) in real life? Would buying that much break your budget? If so, then maybe don't buy that much coffee, not unless you're sure you can get a decent return on your investment. (Eventually, you'll be able to borrow from a bank and even take out a credit card--the latter of which I've brainstormed and listed in my journal tonight, so it's a brand new feature-in-waiting--but these will also come with a debt system, so they aren't golden keys to success. But using them might help early on when money is tight and thievery isn't something you want to live by.) Of course, to know how successful you'll be depends on how well you know your clientele. If you know your shop isn't popular right now, then you probably don't want to overspend your budget. Even though I've provided a ton of statistics you can check to see how well you're doing, the game is designed to "play out" your statistics enough that you don't really need to check them. There are statistics in the game I forget are there because the game just speaks for itself. For example, if "dead hour" hits after the fourth customer leaves, you are not popular, and you will probably want to keep your supply purchases low until you can increase it. How do you increase it? Think about why you'd want to visit Buck's Coffee Pavilion in the first place, and what he would need to do to get you to come back, or what would make you hesitate to come back. Whatever you think of is what you'll want to put into practice. It's really common sense if you think about it from a real life perspective.
The hardest part is in navigating the menus. You should thank TMC for suggesting I only display items that are relevant to the moment (i.e. display only those items that are in your inventory). It was once a lot worse.
Anyway, my compromise between the beginner and the learn-by-failing (or succeed-by-reading-the-instructions) mechanic is to base the tutorial only on the coffee business, as that's the mainline feature. All of the side stuff, like doing chores, making smoothies (in v1.3--no need to worry about that now), investing in other businesses, etc., can be figured out by diving in and adapting. I think that's fair.
Funny you should say that. I was just thinking the same thing after I responded to your last message. I kind of want to wait until larger resolutions are natively supported (right now they are in the secret menu, and you can't drag the edges to double the screen size if they're anything other than the default--I hope this is addressed soon), as I want to change the default screen size to 480x300 to make shop windows fit better on the screen, and I think a wider screen will allow me to better fit the whole map. Alternatively, I could upload a zipped .jpg or .png showing the implemented area with labels of each section. In fact, I may just do that anyway. I've been wanting to. Might be a fun way to kill an hour.kylekrack wrote:That being said, I think just having easy access to a simple map of the city would help. Learning the layout of any area takes time, whether it's playing a new game, or moving to a new town IRL. With a map, there are at least landmarks to travel to for potential information grabbing.
On a side note, there's a game I have on Steam called Kenshi that's whole purpose is to throw you into the deep end. It's one of my favorites (and one of the ones I have the most hours logged into--Terraria being the top at the moment). It's basically a squad-based RPG where you're no hero, just a man or woman thrown into a collapsed world who has a sword and nothing else. What you make of your life is up to you. Do you want to be a master swordsman who commands large armies and destroys empires? Or do you want to be a farmer? How about both? The game gives you so many options for advancing your character and navigating your place in the world that it's almost ridiculous. It's notorious for its difficulty, and its unwillingness to hold your hand. It's a brilliant game (though, it's still in alpha, as the developers recently moved the game to a new world map, and they've unlocked only two sections of it--I think there will be either nine or twelve blocks total--but these two blocks alone are massive and provide much to explore--and there are still plenty of bugs lingering). If you like games that don't care how much of a beginner you are and expect you to hit the ground running (even if you don't know what you're running toward), then I'd highly suggest looking into it. If you do, keep in mind that the developers still have a lot more to do before they call it finished, but what's there is great. It's also quite the moody game. I'm sure you can find videos of it on Youtube. Anything showing you vast desert dunes is from the old map, which I personally liked, so it's probably old. But the new one is much more diverse, and provides better pathfinding for long distance travel, and actually provides some lore. Anyway, off-topic, but worth sharing if you like open ended games that let you pick your hero's journey and don't care if you succeed or fail (like Entrepreneur).
Anyway, share your experience here. It helps me to know what the game still needs. And I will try to put a labeled map together and post it here as a temporary workaround. I don't really want to put it in the game until I can safely change it to 480x300 and zoom it to twice the screen size.