A Question Of Gravity

If there's another developer half as keen as Starry on asking players what they think about the game they're playing, I certainly haven't come across them. The number of surveys Starry puts up for Once Human verges on the absurd. I mean, I'm all for taking a sounding but come on!

Yesterday I noticed, a couple of days late as usual, that there'd been a major update to the game. And when I say "major" I'm not ladling it on for effect the way publishers do with that "Soon to be a major motion picture" line they slap on any book that's even been optioned.

Just take a look at the details on the official website... no, wait, don't do that. You'll go blind!

Have you ever tried to find anything on there? It's like someone hired an advertising agency to produce fifty campaigns at once and then chucked a bomb into the office and filmed the explosion. Try the Steam Community Page instead. That's a lot easier to follow.

Or if you're pushed for time you could watch the trailer. Here it is.

 Wait, though... there's another

And a third!

 This is all for the one update, mind you. There's a lot going on. I could break it down but we'd be here all day. The tl:dr is 

• New PvE Scenario
• New Vision Wheel 
• New PvP Mode

It's like three expansions one on top of another in a way, although the PVP "Raidzone" is being touted as a spin-off game in its own right.  

To get back to those surveys, last night I completed three of them. It's been about two weeks since the last time I played and I did two then. So that's five surveys this month I've filled out. They duplicate heavily but no two are exactly the same. 

For most of the questions that ask for a 1-5 rating, I gave the game five stars. Story, lore, graphics, gameplay, combat, you name it, I'm Very Satisfied with it. Would I recommend it to my friends? Yes, I would. Why? because it's the best game of its kind I've played. I am the model of a satisfied customer.

There is one aspect of Once Human that I'm Very Disatisfied with, though, and I'm happy to take every opportunity to tell the developers about it. That's the ludicrous and wholly unnecessary complexity of the Server/Scenario/Vision Wheel set-up. It's the main thing that puts me off playing more than I do.

Take the last couple of days. I wanted to try the new Vision Wheel event. It sounded like it was going to be a lot of fun. Here's how it works:

"The inverted star will generate gravitational tides from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM (server time) daily, during which players will enter a unique low-gravity state known as Stellar Levity, allowing for higher jumps, extended airtime, immunity to fall damage, and significantly increased Load capacity."

Basically, for half the time you're playing, you'll be able to jump around like a kangaroo on a pogo stick and goof about in the air like one of the Flying Wallendas with a jetpack. Or something.

I only recently made a new character but I started her on a Novice server and those don't get Vision Wheels or any new events, so she was out. Luckily, my original character was idling away in Eternaland with nothing better to do so I thought I'd wake her up, pick a server running the new scenario (Endless Dream), which also looks interesting, and that way I could try both the new things at once.

Seems simple enough, doesn't it? Hah! Doesn't work that way as I found out but only after I'd moved her.

Because Starry can never do anything the way anyone else does, the new PvE Scenario, which is technically still in "Early Access", is nevertheless available via exactly the same procedure as any other scenario. You don't have to use Steam's Beta process or sign up for anything. It's just there on the list with all the rest.

What I didn't know then was that EA servers don't get the Vision Wheel. I guess if you're testing you want to stay focused That makes sense. What I also didn't know, at least until this morning, was that lots of servers don't get the Vision Wheel either, not just the EA and Novice ones.

As I now understand, before you to pick a server, you need to check a whole bunch of things: the region, the population, the current scenario stage the server's at, which scenario it's running and whether it has access to the Vision Wheel or not. Probably some other stuff I don't know too, I shouldn't wonder.

Some of this is obvious, some of it isn't. Some of it requires you to click for further information or read a mouse-over. Most of this, last night, I did not do. I just picked a server running Endless Dream and signed my older character up for it. 

And that started very well. The new scenario begins with an excellent intro movie that I watched with enjoyment. Then I glided down, grabbed a spot for my base and jogged over to Meyer's Market to talk to the woman with the old-school TV for a head. She hands out the quests for the new storyline.

So far, so good. Except I really wanted to do the anti-gravity thing and there was no sign of it. So I opened up the map to have a look, which was when I discovered a couple of awkward facts about my new home. 

One was that, as I've already explained, the Starfall Inversion event isn't available at all on Endless Dream servers. The other is that the Endless Dream content itself starts at around Level 18. Or at least it appears that way. I could be wrong. I hope I am.

I'm probably not, though. As far as I can tell, it takes place mostly, maybe entirely, in instances and although there are plenty of them, the lowest Recommended Level for any I could see on the  map was 18. And that was in the starting area so I doubt there are any lower anywhere else. 

I was clearly going to have to buckle down and level up before I could even poke my nose in for a look. Which was annoying because I just leveled one character to 15 a couple of weeks ago. I didn't really want to do it all again quite so soon. And in any case, it was the other new stuff I wanted to see first.

And that's how I came to spend the rest of the session filling out surveys instead of playing. This morning I started over yet again with a third character. I have some Free Move tokens left over, I think, so I could have moved someone to a server running a scenario with the Vision Wheel but I still wanted to see the Endless Dream too so that didn't seem like the best plan. 

Instead, I spent a fair amount of time checking all the servers carefully until I was sure I  knew what content was available on which. When I was positive I had it right, I realized I was going to have to make another new character to get onto the one I wanted, so that's what I did.

And then I had to run that character through the unskippable tutorial. Seriously, why do unskippable tutorials for characters after the first on an account even exist? 

All of that took me an hour or so, plus the inevitable setting up of the base, after which I was finally able to go look for the new up-in-the-air stuff. Only it was four in the morning, game time, and the gravity doesn't switch off until nine. 

Luckily, time passes fairly quickly in game so it didn't feel like too long before I saw the message that things were about to change. And it was worth the wait.

I might - probably will - do a whole post on the Starfall Inversion, when I've been able to give it a couple more sessions, but my initial impressions are very favorable. For a start, it looks great. When the gravity goes, a blue haze appears that makes the whole world look ethereal and somehow cleaner, so that's nice. Then there's the huge sphere hanging in the sky that might remind you of the Death Star or Warworld depending on your personal points of reference. It's hard not to notice things have changed.

I'm guessing that sphere is responsible for the disruption to local physics although it could just be a very large chunk of space detritus. There are certainly plenty of disused satellites and space capsules drifting about, along with all kinds of free-floating junk. Everything from billboards and bits of building to loose rowing boats and cars.

The temptation to try to get up to them is enormous but at the start, even with the hugely increased jump height and no risk of falling damage if you miss, most of them are too high to reach. That can be fixed through the acquisition of a new gear set that, among other things,  gives you the ability to jump even higher. 

I already have the boots. I got them from a Gear Crate guarded by a very impressive new elite mob and his many lackeys and hench-creatures. I spotted him as I was trying to gain enough height to find out what the glowing rings in the sky might be (They increase your gliding speed if you fly through them, just like similar ones in several other games I could name.),

Since I had nothing to lose, playing a brand new character, I thought I'd take him on. It was a chaotic fight, what with the excessive use of the z-axis, and a long one, mostly because although I'd made a pistol, I'd forgotten to equip it, so I had to chop away at the thing's tentacles with a machete. In the end, I came out the winner and those boots, among other goodies, were my reward.

I carried on leaping and gliding until the clock ticked round to 9pm game time and the gravity came back on. That would be a nasty surprise if it happened while you were high in the air. Maybe there should be a klaxon. 

I was on the ground so I was fine but by then I'd been playing for a couple of hours, about my limit for a session these days, so I thought it would be a suitable place to stop. All in all I was very impressed with the new event. If nothing else it's great for goofing about, just like I hoped it would be.

I'm not sure I'll pursue whatever the storyline is with any great diligence but I would like to take advantage of the advertised "Build a Home in the Sky" feature so I will definitely be giving it some more time. As for the Endless Dream, I may have to consider my options again. 

I really don't want to be leveling three characters at once.