| Author |
First Impressions by a new player |
BrightMK
Captain
Joined: December 15, 2014
Posts: 1
|  Posted: 2014-12-18 22:44
Hello,
I just started to play this game three days ago and wanted to share my
experience and help to improve it.
First of all, this game has a great concept and its a shame i just got a hint from a subverse user-advertising in another game forum. DS is just as i imagined, how a popular space sim should be. Obviously its not that popular and there may be different reasons.
For my case. i was just overwhelmed by its spartanic and counterintuitive interface. I can imagine, that it perfectly fits advanced players as I get used to it myself with time. But it was very frustrating for me in the beginning although i am not new to this genre (play space sim games for at least 20 years now).
It took unnecessary much effort to understand the basic UI and interactions, so that the option of uninstalling the game seemd to be a temptive option, not only once.
I know that there is a fine tutorial and i walked half through first. But be honest: Who wants to waste time on a tutorial because the UI consists of some visually unattractive unnamed boxes with wired symbols and numbers in strange places. Luckily there are some tooltips that slightly reduced the wiki usage.
For example?...there are hundreds
I pick out the most obvious one:
Shields and Armor UI - why unsorted in a line and not positioned accordingly to their mount points. perhaps a nice ship diagram with all stats
Isn't the space a 2D plane!? Why no mini map then? Hey, if you get an in-combat-visual and need an overview, stop everything and zoom out or switch to Navigation.
Another one is the annoying overdone top down view on your ship. i've to pull down the horizon everytime i click an a targetable object.
I am not sure what the target group of this game is, but that are just my thoughts
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Fluttershy
Fleet Admiral
Joined: September 24, 2011
Posts: 778
From: Fluttershy
| Posted: 2014-12-19 08:30
I agree with your concerns, and so have some others, but uhhh... I'm afraid none of that will be fixed, I've tried and have been shot down for various reasons, mainly technical limitations.
You've stumbled upon a game that is largely abandoned, just played by a handful of players that have been around for a long time. Most new players learn this and move on to other games by the time they reach admiral.
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Talien
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: May 11, 2010
Posts: 2044
From: Michigan
| Posted: 2014-12-19 11:24
I'm not a dev so I can't really say much on how easy it would or would not be to make UI changes, but one reason there's no minimap is the galaxy map itself changes from time to time. Of course, just zooming out a bit is basically a minimap itself.
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Adapt or die.
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0stego
Fleet Admiral
United Armed Corps
Joined: October 04, 2008
Posts: 154
From: Sol System, Earth, Canada, AB.
| Posted: 2014-12-19 12:35
Just a random comment from a forum lurker that hasn't played in awhile...
I personally have never had a problem without a mini-map as I just zoom out on the area map.
Might be different now as I have not re-downloaded and played the current version... might have to get on that. 
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Fluttershy
Fleet Admiral
Joined: September 24, 2011
Posts: 778
From: Fluttershy
| Posted: 2014-12-19 17:33
It's just disorienting for some people to have tactical and navigation entirely split.
Having to go into navigation to plot an escape vector out of battle is tricky, and there's really no quick way to plot a far out path, and check to make sure it is safe, and then make corrections, and ect ect, by the time it's all done you could be dead.
Fact is, the interface is counter-intuitive for no good reason.
Yes it is "challenging" but in the worse sense of the word.
If I could do some HUD work I would volunteer for it, but they probably wont allow me to because they don't trust me, and they don't think I can do it.
(btw, sorry I never did get around to that project you gave me, Fattie, I had an HDD crash and RL stuff got in the way on top of it D: )
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-DBS
Marshal
Joined: January 04, 2011
Posts: 204
From: St. Petersburg, FL
| Posted: 2014-12-19 18:41
Quote:
On 2014-12-19 17:33, Fluttershy wrote:
It's just disorienting for some people to have tactical and navigation entirely split.
Having to go into navigation to plot an escape vector out of battle is tricky, and there's really no quick way to plot a far out path, and check to make sure it is safe, and then make corrections, and ect ect, by the time it's all done you could be dead.
Fact is, the interface is counter-intuitive for no good reason.
Yes it is "challenging" but in the worse sense of the word.
If I could do some HUD work I would volunteer for it, but they probably wont allow me to because they don't trust me, and they don't think I can do it.
(btw, sorry I never did get around to that project you gave me, Fattie, I had an HDD crash and RL stuff got in the way on top of it D: )
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Many of us have no problems point jumping around space while engaged in heavy fire. Every once and a while someone hits a planet or a star, but that is user error.
Use your mouse wheel to scroll in and out... I can E Jump most of the time and use the J to stop the jump where I want also
I agree about the button symbols and armor layout in the GUI. But, like any new game, you have to learn how to play 
-DBS
[ This Message was edited by: -DBS on 2014-12-19 18:43 ]
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Fluttershy
Fleet Admiral
Joined: September 24, 2011
Posts: 778
From: Fluttershy
| Posted: 2014-12-19 23:19
Those things aside, there's still one quirk that irritates the hell out of me.
When using J, it WILL NOT abort if you press A or D.
When using O or F, it WILL abort when you press A or D.
This really should be fixed, it's a small change. If the player tries steering at all before a jump, it should abort immediately as it does for Orbit and Follow commands.
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DiepLuc
Chief Marshal
Joined: March 23, 2010
Posts: 1187
| Posted: 2014-12-20 08:50
Let's celebrate and welcome him.
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