Mech Engineer Inconvenienced Me And So I Began To Rant - Assorted Thoughts
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- Опубліковано 14 чер 2024
- I played a very small amount of Mech Engineer, hopeful at first. Then I got so miserable so rapidly that I decided to just call it a day and make a video about how my view got so sour. So here it is! Pretty much this turned into an extended response to one random guy in the steam reviews, as will eventually become clear. The question is: are the disgusting casuals like me right to complain that the game is hard to use and learn?
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You brought up the word "onboarding", which I think really taps into what this game needs. If you're stepping into the role of being the guy who's controlling a whole-ass walking city with the last remnants of humanity, wouldn't you expect to at least be told what the buttons do? It's not hand holding to be told the bare minimum to make the game happen
You are not playing as human.
There are some games where figuring out pieces of the game is part of the point of the game. "Emergent gameplay" is ALL based around figuring out how pieces of the game work together without being told. This is just a janky UI. I am trying to think of a way to integrate the idea of barely understood technology into the game. I'm currently thinking along the lines of 1)You are told what the buttons do, 2)They do that but 3)they also do other things that the game doesn't explicitly tell you. Like what if there was no indicator for heat and you had to guess by experience and testing what amount cooling is necessary to prevent your mech from melting down. The a game tells you how to put a laser and coolant on your mech. It doesn't tell you how much the interact with each other.
I don't know. I really like the concept but it's tricky to make work.
As ranted about towards the start of this video, I thought the more immersive angle might be what the game was going for. Or perhaps should have gone for. But yes actually gamifying the jank in a cool way is probably easier said than done. If it works, it would have great potential for immersion in a game that already has a very strong theme/aesthetic, I think. The game probably wasn't going for this approach though, I just got hopeful when I thought 'maybe the weird UI is actually a sign of depth' or something.
Interacting with bad user interfaces as a 4th wall immersive technique is something that was really established in the current indie zeitgeist through Cruelty Squad (I'm sure more before but this one broke the mold) and many games are taking note of how UI can enrich the world building and not just the UX. Using UI/inaccessibility for a game as a technique to further demonstrate the "otherworldliness" of other places and THEIR inaccessibility can be a fine line to break from fun and engaging to killing a project just from its own merits.
It's a really interesting idea, and one I thought might be happening here in mech engineer at first. A dangerous game to play for sure, since making something inaccessible is a good way to convert any potential arty intention into 'nothing' i.e. people just don't go through with it.
I started playing yesterday, but I didn't go in blind, much better experience. Going in blind sounds like a a very rough experience.
Yes, going online to find a guide lets us learn within an hour, but that does spoil some of the difficulty/mystery. I end up seeing lots of posts of people who can't get past the first few missions thus a bad experience.
This is definitely a game I did not want to play when I first saw it way back, figured it needed some time to cook and for some others to figure out.
Anyway, to comment the bit around 27:00 about mechs taking damage, that could be from overheating, but that map was pretty cool, so the narrow spaces + rocket splash dmg MAYBE?
But like, 3 pips of damage isn't enough to kill a mech so I'm most likely going to say the pilot's vitality ran out or something, you definitely do not want to sent low VIT pilots out and to put them in the hospital before ending the day to boost their stats up.
I say it was probably the pilots dying because those mechs didn't self destruct, starting mechs have that feature installed on them which will kill everything around them, including your own.
Basically the starting mechs arn't great and need a lot of work to make them good. I feel like the starting designs were meant to showcase a wide variety of features like overheating, multiple ammo pools, etc.
There is the self destruct and also a melee weapon, both of which are generally a bad idea or waste of weight. You actually can drill through the walls if you hold the move order and draw your mouse in a path through walls. Mechs with drill arms will break the walls which can be useful to clear line of sight in an area.
The starting mech weapons are also modified to be lighter so I just reworked the mechs but that was because I did some research.
Anyway, if this game had better UX it would be amazing, but fighting the UI does degrade the experience. I do feel like I want to play more but then put the game down after 1-2 missions, I just can't play it for long. xD
Drill arms sounds pretty cool actually! yes I am sure doing research makes it better, but then again I also wonder if the 'true' experience is to try and learn it without doing so. Could be a difficult balance to strike between having an idea of what direction to go vs getting spoiled for intended challenges the moment you type 'mech engineer guide' into the search bar.
That's why I think the game explicitly telling you to not look up things, or encourage you to experience my straight up telling you that's what the game intends, could avoid potential issues here. Or if that's not the developer intention, then the opposite: tell everyone to watch an official starter guide before it begins. Although at that point I would be asking why they won't just make an in-game tutorial.
thanks!
@@OffyDGG Well, being a long-time Dwarf Fortress player and playing some other similar games with steep learning curves and no in-game information to teach players how to play many of those games do well by the community filling in.
Eventually with DF as an example the developer did a bunch of tutorial and UI work for the steam release because he recognized the massive wall the old UX was for new players.
Now for some games with small indie devs the tutorials are quite bare as they are a lot of work that can become obsolete fast but with Mech Engineers being 1.0 they should do a full hand holding tutorial players can opt into.
Learning through failure is not a problem for me; however, I need the feedback to know why I failed. Like your two mech pilots dying, I still don't 100% know what happened there, the 3rd and 4th definitely died from the boss lasering their face off causing a self-destruction. The main way I learned what was going on was via the community, especially when some players actually dig into the code. xD
I think the feedback point is key. UI aside, my gameplay failure in this footage was very much 'what even happened?' in nature. Whether I have even failed by losing mechs isn't known to me! I don't know what I would do differently if I played again, other than go to guides or walkthroughs, and I put that down to the game not giving feedback on what's going on moment to moment, and hence I can't develop ideas of what my options are - which is probably partly from unfamiliarly with UI as well.
I think ultimately having this knowledge in advance is the answer, but the game still bares some responsibility for telling me this is the case, if it isn't going to outright provide some fun content for beginners to learn from (well, unless you find the trial and error part fun of course, but I mean something more crafted, like an introductory or prologue mini-campaign).
@@OffyDGG You can specialize a mech for specific damage type and to target a specific enemy as priority when dragging the mech to the deploy slot, but you then gotta know the silhouette for each enemy and look up their resistances. Having a rocket mech to take out nests for example can let you snipe nests to stop the constant spawning (since nests resist kinetic dmg). Meanwhile a chain gun mech to focus the mobs keeps the swarm controlled.
For me that part is interesting and I feel like that is what most players who like the game are talking about, especially as different enemy types can appear.
But man blind first playthrough is ROUGH, confusing, and not fun at all.
Then there is the actual base management, you NEED components to upgrade anything and the time it takes to make more starts out at like 8 days, your upgrade points cap at 5, you get 1 per day. The game should absolutely tell you it is a very VERY good idea to upgrade the module that reduces the time to make components (also adds a few % more components each batch), you can upgrade this twice on day 1 and it reduces the time to 4 days. This lets you queue like 2 stacks of components day 1 to arrive before your upgrade points cap out again.
Or else you start soft-locking yourself as the city loses health every day only mitigated by upgrades. xD
That would be a perfect hand-hold prompt to show you how to prioritize city upgrades, can even tell you that to get the last level of that component factory you need to upgrade the "lower level" modules that support the higher levels, which is when the upgrade priorities are more relaxed.
Like there is one module that when maxed out lets you research any tech in the tree without the pre-requisites. The game doesn't need to tell us about this one (its for players looking to power tech something specific) but that component one is MASSIVE.
So you mentioned that taking away player control is a dangerous game to play. I agree. The key to making it interesting rather than frustrating is to provide away to prevent it. The old total war games very much remove your control over your units when they break. However, you can directly prevent this by making sure they don't get flanked, become locally outnumbered, or take too many losses especially over a short amount of time. This thus feeds into the gameplay as another concern in addition to just having your units killed. This game has stats that can be manipulated to improve your control. I find this less interesting but at least it's there.
That does sound like an improvement. Or at least, it's the kind of improvement where it makes the annoying part less annoying! It did seem you can train the pilots in various ways, so you probably can get to a point when the mechanic doesn't apply much and then it's not a problem.
I tried playing this game, got massively overwhelmed and closed it after around 10 minutes. Months later i tried playing it again and i was thoroughly convinced the game wasn't in a playable state yet. Few other games have bamboozled me this much.
It's weird how we went from games that were ridiculously easy to games that are artificially hard lol
Dev laziness, make game the game cryptic to add challenge theyd otherwise have to make themselves. Simple as lol
Didnt games start out super hard? Like early NES games or Arcade games designed to make you spend more money?
All games are artificial, so their difficulty would be too.
@@TheAssassin642 Yes. Back then mastery was synonymous with enjoyment.
Somebody once told me that British captains were once expected to know how to do everything on their ship, and I have absolutely no idea if that's true, but that's the kind of thing this sort of game reminds me of: you can't delegate, you can't ask for advice, you can't overlook any details, and all of this is because we're apparently at sea, so the men will presumably rebel and become pirates if you don't prove you can do everything yourself.
Well, even those captains would have started with tying knots and cleaning guns, not, "Navigating the Anatomy of a Self Propelled Walking City 101," or "A Rough Guide to the Adequate Regulation of a Nuclear Reactor's Temperature."
I mean, even the old Sim City's at least had advisors saying helpful things like, "we have too many roads," or, "YOU CAN'T CUT BACK ON FUNDING YOU WILL REGRET THIS" that at least gave the player a bloke to blame for failures while first learning to play the game...
I'm only a third into this video, but I have to say that I already agree with a lot of what you're ranting about.
I've had similar experiences with the UI designs of the mainline Paradox Interactive games in particular, as they tend to have menus and submenus and even tinier menus behind those. Even though it's the only game I play these days, I had to gaslight myself into thinking I was enjoying Europa Universalis IV when I first started playing it. I think it wasn't only until about a hundred hours later (I'm also the type too stubborn to sit through online tutorials for a game that can't provide a decent one of their own) that I could genuinely feel that I was enjoying the experience of playing that game rather than playing pretend, as, at that point, I had already grasped at least the main mechanics and could understand the minimum of what I was doing. If it weren't for my persistence in playing the game and my insistence that I had been enjoying the game, I don't think I would've lasted more than a couple hours of playing before dropping it outright. Today, I believe I have a total of around 1,500 hours in EU4 because I do genuinely enjoy it.
Obfuscation is a real problem and I don't think any game warrants doing it to its own mechanics. There can be a great game behind the mess of what a first impression could provide, but it may never found or experienced if the player is driven away before getting there.
Maybe the developers didn´t have Testplayer who could have tried and told them about the usability, or there were just so used to the gameplay
I fear if there was a obvious tutorial button devin would have overlooked it only discover it when he is almost done.
Jank is art when its thematic and also not overbearing, when its a sort of season on a well built base.
If the foundations arent there then it goes from fun jank to broken game.
The first time I've heard your voice outside of a Kings and Generals video. A surreal but welcome experience!
Also, anyone who spouts that we shouldn't expect hand-holding in a game and to RTFM doesn't know shit. Manuals are MEANT to hold your hand, it's literally in the name! (Manual > handbook > enchiridion > "that which is held in the hand".)
Ha, that's an amazing connection! I think ultimately the issue in ME isn't that it technically does hold your hand, it just doesn't do it well enough and people are getting lost right from the beginning.
Are you saying the directors cut of this video is longer than your playtime of the actual game?
It actually was, which is why footage repeats at the end. this is perhaps my least 'actually played the game' commentary yet, a new milestone!
This is the game that reminds old guard gamers what it feels like to be a green horn gamer.
Patholigic vibes throughout, until you understand. Then it's an intriguing RTS because you've completely shut down the auto battle component.
I don't like auto battle, strategy rpgs were my start into RTS games.
Play Tunic, I want to see if you can be bitter about a cute Zelda clone.
An interesting talk on onboarding, but i think you're misrepresenting the position of the people opposed to it, or at least some of the people opposed to it, somewhat. When you're talking about it as some dichotomy between having difficulty getting into the game vs. getting a sense of achievement out of it, that is only one view of the issue.
Sometimes, on-boarding is essentially cost-free. For example, including an optional tutorial mission doesn't impact anyone who doesn't need it (we're leaving artistic concerns aside here). However, very often it is not that self-contained and involves making changes to game that are permanent, for example to the UI. I've heard this about Endless Space 2 before for example, where a lot of the more detailed information is hidden in menus you need to click at (and look for in the first place). However, for an experienced player who knows this by heart, this is actually more efficient, especially in multiplayer with timed turns.
Personally, i'm also in the camp of people who generally say that you shouldn't make a game cater to beginners, however not because it ruins the game for "everyone else", but because it ruins the game for everyone. After all, everyone starts out as a beginner but doesn't stay one for long. A game that is very clearly oriented towards easy onboarding is a game that i will immediately suspect of being designed to be played for half a dozen hours, and then never again. So in a way if a game dev pays too much attention to being beginner-friendly, i suspect that they have no confidence that i'll like the game and keep playing it even when i'm no longer a beginner, not a good sign.
Of course this isn't an excuse to not have any of the cost-free ways of onboarding players, like optional tutorials or, at the very least, a manual.
That's an interesting point, although I see it differently. To me, if making things onboard-y is actually harming the game, then that's another category of complaint to be had and I would just rant about that! But I think some skilled developers shouldn't need to choose one or the other. In situations where being easy to use becomes a problem in niche cases, or cases of expert play, I would rather see ability to change modes or some such thing, than say that only one or the other player should be catered to. Mech Engineer actually does this a bit I think, as tooltips for certain values and terms on the UI can be disabled, although I am not sure why it's useful to do that given my lack of experience.
Personally I wouldn't suspect either short runtime or lack of staying power in the gameplay if there was a lot of beginner friendly stuff. I interpret it more as aiming at a wide market, something like that. Or even sheer developer interest in UX. But there are so many ways of doing it, it's hard to compare and really say anything general. For example, a game that just shows you the gameplay in a piecemeal way, then tells you to use it all together, (breath of the wild is a possible example) I would call onboard-y in a way that doesn't interfere, and gives people fun things to do while they are still not skilled enough to play the full game.
So in the context and spirit of Mech Engineer, perhaps that would mean a mini-campaign where there isn't much to lose if you have to start again. Then it throws you into the nightmare campaign with even more stuff to worry about, yet your handle on things already gained could make it fun from the get go. Highfleet did something like this, although I think they didn't pull it off fully.
Essentially beginner experience not ruining it for non-beginners a challenge for the devs to overcome, and I think usually it's easy enough. In the realm of software, if the devs are willing to put the work in, aiming to please everyone isn't all that unrealistic! Although perhaps it is right to suspect that they will not have done this, and maybe that's where you are coming from here.
Thanks!
@@OffyDGG Well, to frame it as a challenge the developers have to overcome, we have to accept the premise that this is possible. And i don't think that's correct, or at least not always correct. Ultimately, different people want different things and it's just not always possible to make something that is good for everyone. I don't think that'S really a controversial assertion either, it's the case in many, many hobbies, certainly not unique to gaming. Even the specific problem: players needing to invest time to learn the game before the game gets fun, is not unique. I'd go so far as to say it is the norm, even among activities we do for fun, rather than the exception. Frictionless gratification is unnatural, so to speak.
Which is not say that this excuses all problems that beginners face, of course. The tutorialization in ME is frankly non-existent and that could certainly be improved, you are doubtlessly correct in that. However i suspect (i haven't really played it that much so not sure) that even given a good tutorial, the game would still come across as unfriendly to beginners, simply because even the best learning aid cannot change the fact that pllayers have to learn a lot to play the game, and that remains a barrier to entry. And, as you also pointed out in the video, the dark theme of the game probably makes this phase feel more stressful than a more positive theme would.
For me, it's both possible and preferable to at least aim for having onboarding routes for all passengers, so to speak. I think I'd like to assume such a thing is possible until known otherwise. Really depends on what exactly a particular game needs to do to get people into it, so hard to really commit to some general principal here anyway. I would like imagine there is always a fun way to teach a game, with content that leads into the main content, avoiding the 'it gets fun after you x' situation as doing x is itself fun. Feels like this should usually be possible, although this is ignoring practical issues such as such approaches being more expensive, or diverting dev time from 'real' content, and such.
1:00 ...such as the are for any engineer in the present (and future, as it turns out). ;)
I'm enjoying the game but you are right about a lot of the UI stuff. I wish there icons and things you build had simple names over them, that you could name weapons so you can remember what they are set up as and so on. Also the way it handles saving is odd and confusing.
I don't know why
But i still remember the ikko ikki play through you did years back and the troops climbing a ladder down in a heap of dead bodies 😂😂
Good old days
A delightful memory, I remember that too!
100% agree, this game was the equivalent of being sat behind the controls of an airliner, then being told to do a trans atlantic flight with no experience and NONE of the instruments in the cockpit being explained to you.
It seems the dev went for the "throwback" game but back then games came witha printed MANUAL that explained the concepts.
The game has an in-game manual, it just doesn't talk about the controls and process.
UA-cam seems to have eaten your reply.
Devin, you are my OSHI.
OffyD best vtuber confirmed
@@OffyDGG Live2D model when
I'm not even against it, I just can't be bothered to work out how you do it. If I ever have more time to work on videos, I would consider it.
The game in all honesty is hard, its unforgiving, doesnt teach you shit, and expects you to put a foot forwards to cook. People will enjoy that, some people wont enjoy that, its why these types of games are for select groups of people.
Am getting to used to the rapid fire content future self will be mildly disappointed.
While i'm the kinda person that clicks through all the instructions impatiently to get to the game (wasting more time "figuring it out") they should probably tell you how to play or at least tell you why they don't tell you. Otherwise the "that's the game that's how your supposed to do it" by fans is a copout.
I generally agree, but I'm trying to keeping an open mind on whether the 'that's how you're supposed to it' angle might actually have a point, in that there could be a unique experience only possible by giving players that hard work and misery early on. I think probably not, and it might actually be sour grapes or just people complaining about beginner complaints in a curmudgeonly way. But perhaps it is still possible, especially if the game would lean into it, as per my ramblings on the manual towards the start of this video.
And you have the fact I have blind-played a load of things I didn't like recently for the rapid fire releases :D The bad news is I ended up playing a load of games for real recently so it's back to massive irregular podcast-tier commentaries for the time being.
MechCommander 2 did this better 20 years ago.
Ironically, including an in-game manual counters any argument that the intended design is to not be "hand holdie". It really is a lack of UI design/imagination that the designers could not integrate an immersive way to tie the info in the manual to the elements on the screen. Something like a ctrl+rclick on a button to open up its relate page in the in-game manual. You still have to read the page and understand it like you would with a real life manual (and apply it), but it's just a small QoL abstraction (because it's a video game) that provides the info in a smoother way.
That's a good point. Something a few games do is have words be highlighted if they can be linked to a codex explainer, or some tooltips or something. I remember in Highfleet this worked well, as you could use it to get extra info in dialogue, simulating how the player character knows what they are talking about when they use in-universe jargon yet the player doesn't. Having the manual be in the game is a step in that direction for Mech Engineer, which is cool. But yeah maybe it needs to be integrated a little more, as you said.
I am enjoying the game so far. It is odd to me how you hate the UI and think the game is bad because of it, yet I think the opposite. I think the game is pretty good because of the UI. I feel you are making it seem harder to understand than it actually is for some reason. The UI is pretty darn simple. The only thing is its appearance which can take a minute to figure out. I love the atmosphere of the game the UI contributes to presenting.
The hardest component of the game imo is the actual gameplay and no the UI is not a part of the gameplay lmao. That is just you over complicating it. Building capable mechs, resource/city management and time/map management ect.
The game is trial and error in nature. Failure is to be expected. Death is expected. That is not everyone's type of game and it seems almost everything about the game goes against what you enjoy playing. You cant say a game is bad because you don't/cant understand it imo. That is just being disingenuous. Sure you can say the game is not for you and that's fine but you are speaking from a place of complete ignorance when you say something is bad or good when you know almost nothing about what you are claiming to be bad or good. It is kinda crazy to me.
ua-cam.com/video/zvSzvAul5z8/v-deo.html I recommend watching others play it. It will help ALOT and you will realize the UI is NOT the difficult part of the game and that it is fairly simple.
"It's easy when you know how" - guy who knows how. That's it really. Since you are saying the UI isn't part of the gameplay, surely then you wouldn't care if the game straight up introduced all the basics in the first half hour or so? Obviously it's not that hard to understand, since you are commenting on a video of me actually doing it; your claims that I am exaggerating are themselves exaggerations.
But just the fact it made the first session of the game really unfun and slow is the problem, no matter whether it stops being an issue later on. This is a commentary on that initial experience, after all. I am not talking about the main gameplay, and I am pretty sure I said that explicitly multiple times.
If you want to say I can't say it's a bad game overall (despite me never saying this) because it's designed not to be enjoyable to me, then you are practically disagreeing with the concept of an opinion, or a first impression. If you stand by this point, you must also say that you are not allowed to think the game is good if you like it at first.
If I said 'I had a great first hour in mech engineer', would you write "Sure you can say the game is for you and that's fine but you are speaking from a place of complete ignorance when you say something is bad or good when you know almost nothing about what you are claiming to be bad or good."? Perhaps you see the problem. While technically there is a point here, it's pretty normal to claim that not wanting to do thing (i.e. play more of the game) is a 'bad' thing for the game.
In a game that's 'not for everyone' you have to just take the hit when people try it and don't like it, and not get mad about it. I talked about this in the video as well.
Having the learning experience be unfun is a problem I am free to speak about. You word it as 'you can't understand it', which is disingenuous, then you claim that the words you just put in my mouth there are *me* being disingenuous. And more to the point, I disagree that not understanding the game isn't something people are allowed to complain about, same as how they are allowed to say it's good after they do understand it. Dunno, this seems obvious so I'll just leave it there. As a great man once said: "It's kinda crazy to me".
@@OffyDGG The issue and the sole issue is you cant seem to understand what is being presented to you and you bash on the game because of that. Is that the games fault? I don't think so because I managed to figure it out without too much hassle and I am no paragon of intelligence. That is why I think you either refuse to try to understand it or simply cant understand it hence the disingenuous claim. Again, some things are not everyone's cup of tea, but to me you clearly implied that you think the game is bad while only looking at the literal surface level of the product and again, that is crazy to me.
"is it the game's fault?" yes 👍👍👍 but that's not even really the issue, which is that it makes it less fun in the beginning for no good reason - whether there secretly *is* a good reason is what this video is about. I think you are over thinking this somehow.
We've got you down from 'said' to 'implied', so that's more fair. Remember, the video says multiple times I am not talking about the gameplay beyond 1 hour, only the initial experience.
Still, if I think it is 'bad' for bogging me down, you'll just have to let me think that if you can't justify the bad stuff. If you got over it - congrats! By your rules, remember you can't say that the game good though because that didn't happen to me 🤔🤔🤔 I am being annoying here in the hopes you will see the problem with your complaint. And really just repeating my previous comment here so I say let's just leave it at that. But don't let me catch you "implying a game is bad" if you have any issues with it 😉
The main reason for that post was that I was trying to call you stupid without directly calling you stupid. The game is not that challenging to understand. You are overthinking it, making it more complicated than it is. You just play the game and learn as you go. That is how the game is supposed to be played.
The game is unique and with that unfamiliarity comes "challenge" but not because any of it is actually challenging. It is just unfamiliar and requires a person to actually think for a moment and sometimes you even have to just try something to see what happens and fail in the process. The games sole difficulty comes from the fact that not everything is explained but none of that is a new concept. Many games do that and many of them are niche. I have like 20 hours in the game and I have restarted my save so many times to implement new things I learned, try something different entirely or for just slight efficiency adjustments.
To be blunt and crude, you are simply dumb and bad. You just play the game and it will all make sense yet you wont because you don't like these types of games so you will never understand it due to never playing it. That is the reality of the situation at hand.