Fun and Balance Percieved by Two Completely New Players
Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2018 10:11 pm
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.
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.