Fun and Balance Percieved by Two Completely New Players

[eleninrec]

Hello everyone,

I and another player, completely new to BTW, played ABCE5 together.

We took 61 in-game days to reach our first brick oven. It took several dozens of HCS, five serious respawns, two almost-ragequit-serious respawns.

After the first oven I just died once, and my friend had no more death. Now we are around day 100, and we are with an iron axe and nearly ready for the hoe.

From the beginning we gathered every information available, the wiki, the forum, all the spoilers and videos.


For us, the fun curve was like the following.

Until around day 20, I thought I was not built for this mod, and perseverance rather than the fun was the key motivation. My friend, on the other hand, had great fun from the beginning, even with no progress.

Day 20 - 55 was SUPER FUN for both of us, seeing progress every respawn, discovering things, mapping with the pen and paper.

Day 55-60 was the 'survival monotony.' We, all of a sudden, learned how to survive with the campfires, and every day was scheduled the same. The blandness motivated me to venture out and progress by brick drying. My friend was instead motivated to build and plan the base during this period. Later, of course, we appreciated each other.

Post-oven... now this is completely new kind of game, and we are not experienced enough to summarize it.

Over time, we had developed a gamey behavior. Sometimes HCS stuck in one place for many times, and we just made the bet and died to fill the hunger. Generally our expectation was met and we suceeded. Sometimes we were penalized for doing this, but I recall this was positively reinforced in general. We naturally graduated from this as we learned to survive properly.

We did not restart the world, and we managed to survive in our very first world. This was entirely thanks to the forum reading which taught us the BTW philosophy. Unless we would have restarted at least several times, considering our habit in other games.


I have seen many observations are made from seasoned players who respond to the recent change. So I thought our play data would be a useful addition.

Thank you very much for this great work!! I really love everything I experienced, and I now dream in BTW, literally.

[the_fodder]

congratulation for sticking with it. your patience will be rewarded as the game really opens up the higher the tech level you get.

Do you remember why it took 61 in-game days to create the oven?

[eleninrec]

Thank you, the_fodder!

61-day pre-oven was natural learning curve for us. Unless we were plainly doomed in a new spawn, it took around 5 days to figure out that our approach had been wrong. So around 10 experimentations with some wiggle room could fill the period.

Notable experimentations that were unique and pertinent to new player experience (mechanics existed before the early game overhaul):

jumping vs. slabbing playstyle
investing in road clearing vs not
survival attept in a swamp
trying to trap, wall, or whatever to assist hunting
trying to understand how HC spawn works
...

Combine them with the learning curve of the post-AAAAAAAAAAHHHH contents you are already aware of. That is not simple addition but complicated interaction! So the result was 20+ hours of pre-oven playtime.

Sometimes it felt too steep or futile, but mostly it was fun and meaningful.