Improving new players experience through advanced tutorials

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It is no secret that the first month for a new player is EXTREMMELY slow. So much that this is the main complain about PrUn I read on the internet.

Many things make that start slower than it should be :

  1. Due to a lack of capital, new players must sell at bid and buy at ask price, because it needs the money to buy new input goods. they can’t afford to wait.
  2. Because they have relatively few buildings, they must ship their goods however small they are. Sending their ship to the CX with their cargo almost empty consumes more fuels per sales.

This is an issue because it makes the game much more slower than it is at 1 full base and more. While this game can definitly be considered a niche, many players that would enjoy the game at 1 full base and later, quit because of the early game.

The early game is so slow than the community developped programs to counter it :

To give a perspective, a player that took neither grant or loans reached 1.15M equity in 75 days in the ADI discord server. This means that the ADI grant (or a first loan) speed up new players by about 70 days.

While they’re very effective, those solutions are accessible only through discord. This game need an in-game solution to this issue, discord should not be a requirement.

My suggestion is the following :
After the tutorial ends (the current 6 first missions), new advanced mission (an advanced tutorial) would start. Those advanced mission would give goals for the new players while giving significant reward. The goal would be that, after a month, the faction gave roughly half a full base worth.

Here’s a few missions ideas :

  • production missions: the faction buying your production at ask Price on the cx
  • expansion missions : expand your base ( 3 missions like this, from starting 2 buildings to 3 → 5 → 10 ?)
  • shipping missions : like faction contract but more rewarding
  • burn mission : have enough reserve for 1->3->5 days of production
  • New base mission : Once a player used 480 area of his first base and has 5 days of reserve, they would receive the materials to create a new base

Those missions would be running all at once, spanning around 1 month. The new base mission would be the last one.

I strongly believe this would improve the new players retention.

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2

As a player having played for more than 1 month now, i have to say that the early game isn’t terrible, but also isn’t as good as it could be. The help tile doesn’t actually do anything and brings up an annoying notification if you haven’t gotten pro yet. On top of that, the tutorial contracts give very little money - only knowledge.

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Also, names for the missions which are a bit better:
High Price Sale: The CX’s station manager gives you contact with a company which will buy a certain commodity you produce at a high price.
Industry Expansion: Your faction wishes to help new CEOs by providing them with money for expanding into new industries.
Long Range Transportation: Send a shipment from one CX to another CX and get monetary rewards and faction points from both CXs.
Base Supply Mission: Get paid for having consumables available for multiple days in advance.
Expandatory Incentive: You are provided the materials to build a base on another planet - build that base and get a cheap supply of startup goods there plus a monetary reward.

4

This issue has been discussed before. I see it like this:

There are two main phases of the game of PrUn. In phase one, you grow a company from scratch. In phase two, you manage a huge (and still growing) space empire.

Some people don’t find the first phase particularly interesting, and want to jump straight into the empire management. These are the players who are always lobbying for a quicker start, more funds, more buildings, etc.

However, some people prefer the first phase. They like the idea of knife-edge trading, enduring the possibility of running out of materials at any moment, and having to time ship flights down to the minute. These are the players who complain that the game runs out of content at the higher levels, and they tend to abandon the game after they’ve acquired two or three bases.

If you bypass the first phase, and start everyone off in the second phase, you’re going to lose all the players who like the first phase of the game the best.

Also, cutting out that early phase seems to be missing the point somehow - it’s part of how the game works. It would be like complaining that in the Civilization games you only start with one city and the game doesn’t get good until you have 10 cities. You might feel that way, but that early growth is integral to the game’s structure, and starting with 10 cities would feel like starting mid-game to a lot of players.

Full disclosure: I’m one of the players who enjoys the early game the best. I’ve basically stopped playing PrUn now, because after reaching 5 bases it feels like I “won”, so now I’m waiting for the next universe reset to start playing again from scratch.

My hope is that next time around new players start with even less than they currently do. My ideal would be that ship trading is added as a feature, and then new players start with a single 100t ship, and half the credits. This would prolong the most exciting and content-rich parts of the game for me.

2 Likes