Trailmakers 2.0 - Pioneers
Tutorial and First Time User Experience
I was responsible for fixing one of Trailmakers biggest issues — High player drop rates early on. The game is very technical and hard to get into, so I aimed to create an onboarding experience to ease new players into the game and getting comfortable quick for Pioneers 2.0, with the goal of them becoming part of the hard core player base we know and love.
Below is a video of YouTuber Scrap Man getting his hands on the tutorial.
What I did as owner of the tutorial and player onboarding:
- Designed the bite-sized and intriguing tutorial steps.
- Fine-tuned pacing between action and learning to make it not feel like a tutorial.
- Wrote the dialogue and designed the charming Master Sapo character.
- Level design with good flow with focus on making an awe-inspiring first impression.
- Took the whole experience from concept to final implementation.
- Designed well-paced feature introductions outside of the tutorial to avoid front-loading information
Patch Notes
An example of balancing and stat tweaking in a multiplayer context
The game is loved by a strong community of hard-core users, that spend thousands of hours making all sorts of vehicles and contraptions. When we do a change to the game, that change is applied to all their beloved creations. Good motivation and communicating said change is a must.
Here’s an example of some patch notes I wrote for a Trailmakers balance patch.
Shotgun
When we released pioneers we wanted the shotgun to be the main weapon for a new user as the flow of combat was interesting but not too difficult. It was more about timing than aiming, and we wanted the weapon to be generous. But it was overtuned in terms of damage, making the other weapons less viable. Rather than experimenting with other weapons as you progress, it was just so much better sticking with your guns (badum tss). With this change we hope that the Shotguns will keep it’s ideal use case, while allowing other weapons to not get overshadowed.
- Dmg per pellet: 50 > 40 (8 pellets per shot still)
Mini Grenade Launcher
This was simply over tuned, and the community let us know. (Thanks for that!) Though the weapon is trickier to hit with, just getting one okay shot in would end the fight instantly which is not too fun. The idea was always for the grenade launcher to reward timing and positioning and feeling satisfying when getting a good hit, but it was simply too strong. As a quick fix before the release of Pioneers the reload delay was extended to balance out it’s power. But in the end the long reload time felt so awkward, almost enough to forget about it being there between shots. With a slightly shorter reload time and less power we hope for it to be more of an in-and-out weapon with a more comfortable engage/disengage cycle.
- Reload Cooldown: 5s > 3.5s
- Blast damage: 300 > 150
- Blast pushback force: 800 > 150
- Total allowed block penetration damage per blast: 1500 > 700
- Blast expansion duration: 0.05s > 0.1s
Open world puzzles and interactions
For Pioneers which was all about exploring, we wanted to have side missions and optional puzzles riddled across the land. An example of this is the mysterious Obsidian Obsessor puzzles, where you had to complete physics based puzzles of moving a special rock to it’s “original resting place”. The challenge was to be creative with your building, making a unique contraption to achieve a very specific goal. For example, building a working crane using pistons that lifts the item to a plateau.
Video coming soon™️