Making History DLC needs to explain failure reasons better

[Dunbaratu]

While I found the stock missions in the Making History DLC fun at first, I am getting more and more frustrated with the poor way in which the objectives are communicated to the player, so you end up having to do several play-throughs just to learn what they really wanted you to do.  I'm always having to read through the info panels on the right with a sharp eye to catch the places where the descriptions don't match the real objectives.

Rather than go over all of them, here's one simple case where I got really confused for a while:  The game doesn't explain why you failed a mission.  It took me a long time to realize (and this is still just a guess on my part since the game doesn't say for sure) that failure isn't a matter of one specific bullet point you miss, but rather of not getting a high enough score.

If you failed the mission because the general final score wasn't high enough, then failure dialog box needs to tell you this (and how far you fell short of the needed score) instead of making you hunt around guessing which specific bullet point you missed.  It's only through trial and error that I'm starting to guess that there's probably this rule about a minimum score, since it never said anything about it.

An example of a better way to communicate it to the player would be if the failure dialog box said this:
 

Quote

Mission Failed.
Reason: Score too low.  Minimum Bronze required.
Minimum scores for this mission are: Bronze: ______, Silver: ______, Gold: _____.

In another instance, I kept failing the Agena launch for the rendezvous mission, because I "missed the launch window".  At no point did the mission tell me that what this *really* means is that I need to complete everything within 20 minutes of game clock time.  I had to pull the mission into the editor to figure this out because, again, the player isn't being told the real reason for the failure.

You can't meet objectives that you don't even know what they are.

I feel sad about this DLC because I know it needs to financially succeed for Kerbal to continue and for SQUAD to keep working on it, but things like this are a real hurdle to that happening, I think.  Players shouldn't have to struggle to wrench information from the game about what the objectives even are.

Edited March 15, 2018 by Steven Mading

[cordilon]

Quote

In another instance, I kept failing the Agena launch for the rendezvous mission, because I "missed the launch window".

I just had the exact same thing happen to me.

After that I failed the mission, because the game didn't register me actually undocking from the other craft... or at least I assume so with the weirdly complicated mission logic window not having a checkmark on that objective.

Still I'm confident that squad will adress such issues, because they surely know that the mission builder and all the possible community content that it could bring is the core of this expansion

[Temeter]

I played two missions, both didn't end at all. Apparently the logic didn't register correctly.

Edited March 16, 2018 by Temeter

[klesh]

5 hours ago, Temeter said:

I played two missions, both didn't end at all. Apparently the logic didn't register correctly.

 

I played 2 as well, and gave up after returning to Kerbin with the game just sitting there. Went back to KSC, all buildings locked.  I didn't pay money for this to frustratingly fight against bad design.

$15 parts pack it is then, I guess.

[Temeter]

9 minutes ago, klesh said:

I played 2 as well, and gave up after returning to Kerbin with the game just sitting there. Went back to KSC, all buildings locked.  I didn't pay money for this to frustratingly fight against bad design.

$15 parts pack it is then, I guess.

On a sidenote, that bug is already registered and should be fixed with the next patch. I wonder if they're gonna comment on the criticisms in devnote tuesday.

[klesh]

Just now, Temeter said:

that bug is already registered and should be fixed with the next patch.

 

Indeed.  Its time to put this DLC on the backburner and let it simmer a bit.  It feels like we're back in the Alpha/Beta years again.

[Temeter]

2 minutes ago, klesh said:

Indeed.  Its time to put this DLC on the backburner and let it simmer a bit.  It feels like we're back in the Alpha/Beta years again.

True. Back then they'd put out the patch itself in beta/experimentals beforehand, and I think that was quite helpful. Also motivating for modders to work on updating their mods, so there were a lot of mods at release.

Edited March 16, 2018 by Temeter