Having started with Juno a few days ago, here are my thoughts as a KSP player with almost 800h on Steam:
For me, the lack of tutorials was quite frustrating. Without prior knowledge from KSP I would've given up quite early. Especially for people who don't know about orbital mechanics and things like that it's probably very hard to understand what's going on. For example, if I remember correctly I was asked to put a craft in orbit at a certain inclination early on, but there was no explanation what an inclination actually is and how to change it.
Right now on Steam, only 8.8% of players managed to get into the SOI of Luna or Brigo. That means 91% of players have given up before even reaching this (IMHO small) goal. Only 23.6% of player have reached orbit! So more than 75% give up before even getting into orbit. That's something the developer's should be worried about, new players need to get more explanations/tutorials.
Juno has lots of great parts, the editor is great, ability to "script" your crafts to automate tasks is great, etc. But a lot of it feels disconnected, and yes, is missing some charm (IMHO). There's not that much incentive to do something, like earning science/tech points: KSP has lots of small rewards, like do an EVA to earn a few science points, etc. In Juno, the rewards are for larger tasks so you don't get a reward as often and sometime actively have to seek out things to do on your own as the missions (even with "progression") often don't give a reward except money.
I also miss some map of the solar system showing all my current crafts. Like, I have a craft on longer journey to Vulco, next burn is in a 100 days or so and I want to do some missions in between. I need to actively remember which crafts are on active missions, click through them in "Resume Flight" to check their state, as there is no overview of any kind.
So yeah, the game is great but IMHO is missing some quality-of-life features and needs to better guide new players. It has a lot of potential so I'd love to see it get some improvements.
Having started with Juno a few days ago, here are my thoughts as a KSP player with almost 800h on Steam:
For me, the lack of tutorials was quite frustrating. Without prior knowledge from KSP I would've given up quite early. Especially for people who don't know about orbital mechanics and things like that it's probably very hard to understand what's going on. For example, if I remember correctly I was asked to put a craft in orbit at a certain inclination early on, but there was no explanation what an inclination actually is and how to change it.
Right now on Steam, only 8.8% of players managed to get into the SOI of Luna or Brigo. That means 91% of players have given up before even reaching this (IMHO small) goal. Only 23.6% of player have reached orbit! So more than 75% give up before even getting into orbit. That's something the developer's should be worried about, new players need to get more explanations/tutorials.
Juno has lots of great parts, the editor is great, ability to "script" your crafts to automate tasks is great, etc. But a lot of it feels disconnected, and yes, is missing some charm (IMHO). There's not that much incentive to do something, like earning science/tech points: KSP has lots of small rewards, like do an EVA to earn a few science points, etc. In Juno, the rewards are for larger tasks so you don't get a reward as often and sometime actively have to seek out things to do on your own as the missions (even with "progression") often don't give a reward except money.
I also miss some map of the solar system showing all my current crafts. Like, I have a craft on longer journey to Vulco, next burn is in a 100 days or so and I want to do some missions in between. I need to actively remember which crafts are on active missions, click through them in "Resume Flight" to check their state, as there is no overview of any kind.
So yeah, the game is great but IMHO is missing some quality-of-life features and needs to better guide new players. It has a lot of potential so I'd love to see it get some improvements.
+3 one month ago