My experience as a new player.

JoofusDoofus

Landlubber
Joined
Aug 9, 2022
Messages
1
Renown
0
I shall notate in [text like this] where I think could be improvement.
The game begins.

I am introduced to a brief tutorial on farming and quests. After leaving the farm and selling my crops, the tutorial suddenly halts.
[Tutorials can be simplified into a several-panel comic-like explanation for ease of understanding of game mechanics.
For example: plant(holding seed)/water(occasionally while holding can)/harvest(holding pitchfork)]


I spend my time farming carrots to get some initial gold. I complete a couple easy quests around the starting lands. Naturally, I explore a bit and fight the skeletons off on the direct right. I learn some mechanics of combat naturally, but others I still do not understand.

[Numbered cooldowns on abilities?]
[Why is it that attacks inconsistently fill up the bar at different speeds between attacks?]
[It feels more efficient to rapidly click enemies while pressing hotkeys]
[Killing the same skeletons repeatedly didn't seem to give me any progression, and the loot drop tables made it feel not worth it to waste time on them. Rare (cosmetic?) item drops would be interesting]


Exploring around I see dozens of what looks like Cobwebs scattered around. I fail to interact with them, thinking they may be burned to fall into a submap and re-emerge from them later after unlocking something. It took asking the main chat how to interact with them before discovering how they work. Same goes with how ships can "boost" themselves forward. As well as switching levers. As well as how to open a world map. Many things were lost in me just going around without guidance, leading to frustration.

[Adding in a "Help" chat tab would be good if you believe the tutorial is good enough.]
[The resetting "silver piece" system was not explained well, and doesn't make sense. Sure, one-time upgrades for that map is cool in concept, but it sucks to repeatedly see all your hard work be wasted when going to another screen.]


I completed my first little adventure to the west, which was quite good. I explored to the southwest and the east but hit roadblocks repeatedly as I ran out of food for the journey. In my eyes, there was no more progress to make as I had just stuck to the coasts and could not make pit stops at the various fake-cities I passed.

[It doesn't make sense for a ship to collapse immediately after running out of food. The three little guys in the top left were a weird concept as well.]
[Again, numbered timers would be quite helpful in determining how far my ship could sail.]
[Drops for standard materials for quests, cloth and such, felt too inconsistent to farm for from random ships.]


I ended up leaving the game after 3-4 hours of gameplay, feeling that there was nothing more within my grasp to accomplish. Farming was fun, but I never got to discover what Guild farms were or how to start one. House decor was cute, but meaningless. Gaining a single new combat ability was cool, but made the rest to discover feel daunting. Combat became tedium after grinding in an area with no rewards for doing so.

This is simply my account of my gameplay, and isn't meant to be anything else. I was excited for this game as I signed up for the beta and forgot all about it later on.

I hope this helps the devs to see new player perspectives.
 
Top