Demo Feedback - Tutorial needs to do a lot more to teach you how to play

[Ragnar]

I started playing the demo today, going through the intro tutorial, and I'm completely lost. It really needs to do a lot more to teach you how to play - at this point it's the equivalent of teaching you how to swim by throwing you in at the deep end.

For example, the initial objective is to build a Workshop and Stockpile, but it's not really clear how they're supposed to be connected to a road - I placed it next to a road, thinking it was connected, but it was actually facing away from it because I didn't see the arrows that were pointing away from me. You could add some text to rotate them so that they're facing a road, or show a visual indication that they'll colored be green when they are.

There's nothing saying to build roads to other supply storage areas, or that you only need to connect the roads to one side of them rather than to all the sides. I figured it out, but it seems like the sort of thing the tutorial should mention in-between the constant lore-dump messages.

Finally, I was doing the objectives as they came up, exactly as they came up, and I built the Refectory when instructed which says it provides food for up to 100 people. You're instructed to change the Stockpile to hold food, but I built a Stockpile for food as that seemed to make more sense. A short while later, I get notified that my workers are starving, and of the original 85 workers, all but 27 starved. Why? I honestly have no idea. I did everything as instructed, and yet most of the workers died, and I have no idea what I did wrong.

It seems like a lot of effort was spent on setting the look and theme - the opening cinematic, all the messages with all their jargon - but not enough on easing people into the game and teaching them how to actually play.

This game seems modeled after Frostpunk, and I've played and beaten all the campaigns in Frostpunk, so if I'm struggling during the opening tutorial and have no idea why my workforce starved to death, I can only imagine how much more confused people who haven't played similar games would feel. Frostpunk, by contrast, had a really good tutorial that explained everything really well, such that I never felt confused as to what was happening or why.

Also, I have no idea how W and S are supposed to move the camera, but the way they actually move the camera is bizarre and disorienting. W zooms out while moving backwards and left, and then starts panning right. S zooms in while moving forward and right, then starts to slowly pan left. I don't know why they don't just move the camera view up and down, as you would expect.

[Ragnar]

OMG, I just realized you're supposed to click on the icons above a resource supply to actually collect it. This is something that should be explained in the game proper, and not tucked away in the Tutorial General Information Compendium - aka the in-game manual.

If you're not going to teach people how to actually play the game, and are going to require them to read whole in-game manual, you need to make this explicit at the very beginning, because no other game does that anymore in this day and age.

Figuring out how to harvest supplies for the very first objective required opening the in-game manual, selecting the 5th subheading, selecting the 3rd tab, and then reading that page. The info for completing the very first objective should not be buried that deep in an in-game manual.

[Ragnar]

Adding to the confusion, I'm not sure why you have to click above a resource supply to harvest it. Shouldn't it just be harvested automatically, as available/needed?

Likewise, it appears that after the Science Ship resolves an event that gives Research, I then have to select the Science Ship and click on the location of the event to start gathering the Research? Why is this not automatic?

Thirdly, I just got a pop-up message superimposed over the game screen that says: Confirm - Send Turtle to the event on Mars?

Who or what is Turtle? What is the event on Mars? I already completed an event on Mars. Is there a new one? Because there's nothing on the planetary system map. The pop-up makes it so that I can't check the in-game manual or notifications or fleet control or anything.

Edit: It looks like that last one is a bug. Turtle is apparently my cargo ship, which had already been dispatched to Mars and completed the event long ago. I'm not sure why I suddenly got a pop-up covering everything up and disabling all the in-game info sections to confirm dispatching the cargo ship long after I had completed the associated event.

[Ragnar]

I just learned from another forum thread that the Refectory consumes food, rather than creates food. When I read, "Prepares up to 10 food, to feed up to 100 crew members," I assumed it meant that it manufactured food - since food is a resource, and the in-game visual makes the Refectory look like a place where they would grow food. Thus I was very confused that my Refectory was working and yet people were starving (I'm still not sure why everyone starved in my first game, but maybe it's because I didn't click the icon above the food supply to harvest it?)

It would be a lot clearer if the Refectory text was changed to something like: "Consumes up to 10 food, to feed up to 100 crew members." That would make it clear that it is consuming food rather than making it.

[frank]

This guy's making some points. A bit more hand-holding at the start would be helpful.

[Bobucles]

Wow, look at all the nice steel icons!
One month later...
Wait, why's no one doing anything?

[ulzgoroth]

I think most everything was pretty clear if you read the manual material as the game provided it. Definitely including the points mentioned.

If you don't I imagine you have no idea how to do much of anything.

Also IIRC after I built the workshop 1 space too far from the road there was a message from Edden about connecting it. (Might not have gotten that if I placed the workshop right and then the storage wrong, though, IDK.)

[Ragnar]

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Wow, look at all the nice steel icons!
One month later...
Wait, why's no one doing anything?

The thing is, Alloy did start trickling in, slowly, so I didn't realize anything was wrong. I thought that's just how long it took to gather. I completed the gather 40 alloy task, it just took much longer than expected, but I didn't realize anything was wrong because the game never indicated that something was wrong.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Ragnar:

Originally posted by Bobucles:

Wow, look at all the nice steel icons!
One month later...
Wait, why's no one doing anything?

The thing is, Alloy did start trickling in, slowly, so I didn't realize anything was wrong. I thought that's just how long it took to gather. I completed the gather 40 alloy task, it just took much longer than expected, but I didn't realize anything was wrong because the game never indicated that something was wrong.

That's weird, I can't think of what would cause alloy to trickle in unless you accidentally triggered collection of some of the supply piles.

[Jaspericusdhoom]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by Ragnar:

The thing is, Alloy did start trickling in, slowly, so I didn't realize anything was wrong. I thought that's just how long it took to gather. I completed the gather 40 alloy task, it just took much longer than expected, but I didn't realize anything was wrong because the game never indicated that something was wrong.

That's weird, I can't think of what would cause alloy to trickle in unless you accidentally triggered collection of some of the supply piles.

it should come in from the supply point for Alloys (set up supply ship)

[Ragnar]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

I think most everything was pretty clear if you read the manual material as the game provided it. Definitely including the points mentioned.

Yes, but making the in-game manual available, and requiring that you read it, is not a tutorial. And this was supposed to be a tutorial, as evidenced by the devs asking, "How would you rate the tutorial during the prologue experience?" on their demo feedback questionnaire. A tutorial should teach you how to play the game without requiring you to read the in-game manual, as games stopped requiring reading the manual about two decades ago.

Reading the in-game manual is what you do when you don't fully understand something, or when you chose to disable/skip the tutorial. It shouldn't be something you have to do to learn how to actually play the game. If the second objective is collecting 40 Alloy, and you have the option to disable the tutorial, then pause the game and show me an image of the manual page that shows how to collect that resource. Don't make me open up the manual and have to find the 3rd tab of the 5th section to figure out how to accomplish the 2nd objective of the tutorial.

I'm also looking at this from the perspective of new gamers, or those new to the genre. I am familiar with city-building games, from Frostpunk to Cities: Skylines, and even I was confused and had my whole workforce die during the tutorial. I had to restart the tutorial because I failed the tutorial - that shouldn't be something you can do by accident. Failing the tutorial should take concerted effort. So if I was confused and failed the tutorial, I can only imagine how someone new to the genre would feel.

[Ragnar]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by Ragnar:

The thing is, Alloy did start trickling in, slowly, so I didn't realize anything was wrong. I thought that's just how long it took to gather. I completed the gather 40 alloy task, it just took much longer than expected, but I didn't realize anything was wrong because the game never indicated that something was wrong.

That's weird, I can't think of what would cause alloy to trickle in unless you accidentally triggered collection of some of the supply piles.

I'm not sure either, but that's why I didn't realize there was a problem. The first time that I realized something was wrong was when 70% of my workers died of starvation, and I had no idea why they died as I had built the Refectory that I (incorrectly) thought provided enough food to feed 100 people, along with a food Stockpile, and there was that supply of 300 food just sitting there, no being utilized...

That's kind of my point, I didn't realize there was a problem until I failed the tutorial, and that's not something that you should be able to do by accident. I'm all for games letting you fail tutorials on purpose, but it shouldn't happen by accident while trying to follow all the instructions.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Ragnar:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

I think most everything was pretty clear if you read the manual material as the game provided it. Definitely including the points mentioned.

Yes, but making the in-game manual available, and requiring that you read it, is not a tutorial. And this was supposed to be a tutorial, as evidenced by the devs asking, "How would you rate the tutorial during the prologue experience?" on their demo feedback questionnaire. A tutorial should teach you how to play the game without requiring you to read the in-game manual, as games stopped requiring reading the manual about two decades ago.

Frankly, it's not a manual. It's just tutorial pages filed in a place you can look at them as many times as you want. And it doles out additional pages on an as-needed basis and pops a notification each time it does so...

(Also, games never really stopped requiring reading the manual. They just stopped writing the manual and offloaded that to fan-made wikis.)

[Ragnar]

Some more feedback having finished the demo.

As I mentioned previously, making more in-game manual pages available is not a tutorial - that's what I would expect from skipping/disabling the tutorial. The tutorial should actually instruct you in what to do, or at the very least show you the relevant manual page for each objective. If you think it's necessary to create a pop-up to confirm sending a cargo ship to complete an event, then it should certainly be necessary to create a pop-up to teach people how to play the game. As is, on my initial playthrough I failed to learn how to harvest supplies, misunderstood what Refectories did, had everyone starve to death despite trying to keep them alive (while doing the objective to build housing), and failed the tutorial.

Likewise, if there's a problem - such as the Refectory not having any food and the people are starving as a result - the game needs to let you know explicitly and not just via an icon at the bottom.

While it's cool that the dialog in the interior view sounds like it's coming from a loudspeaker, it makes it much harder to understand what they're saying. I ended up switching to the exterior or planetary view for the dialogs just so I could hear them better without the loudspeaker effect on top.

I wish there was more differentiation in the building visual design and/or color scheme. It was fine with one section, since I remembered where I put everything, but I can imagine it causing a problem as the section fills up, and as you get access to multiple sections. With all 8 sections, I can imagine finding a particular building to be a nightmare. The screenshots on the store page are bright, colorful, and beautiful, but the actual game on my screen was drab, dark, and very uniform.

I really don't like the design of the Tech Tree. The options arranged in circles is fine, but all the sub-options hidden under each option just looks like a nightmare to keep track of. It seems like a dizzying amount of research options, most of which are hidden from view until you individually inspecting each item, but also seems to be filled with kinda boring research options. I'd personally rather have fewer significant options (branching or not) than a dozen options for each item where each is a boring "10% faster cargo ship speed".

With no day/night cycle, there's nothing to indicate the passage of time. Objectives on timers such as "within 12 cycles" become nebulous as the 12 cycles is just a counter in the corner that slowly increments with no real visual indication.

I'm not sure why you have to click on a supply to gather resources from it to move to a Stockpile, it seems like an unnecessary extra step, like the workers should automatically start gathering supplies from a connected supply pile to put in the Stockpile. It seems like one of those things you could automate to just make everything simpler. To be honest, I'm not sure why you have to move it to the stockpile in the first place. Why not just take the resource straight from the supply pile? It seems like something introduced by the Stockpile lobby to give Stockpiles a reason for existing (and consuming resources / electricity / people). It also seems counter to in-game logic that a Stockpile can only hold, say, 100 food, but a supply pile of food that's the same size or smaller can hold 300.

Speaking of in-game logic, you arrive on the station to find three separate, unconnected sections of roads littered with supply piles? Why? Why are the roads not connected? Why are there supply piles haphazardly arranged? I know it's nitpicking, but these are the kinds of things that make one feel like they're in a real place versus in an artificial video game space.

I encountered a few bugs:
-My science ship did not appear to automatically start gathering research from the moon event until after I selected it and selected the moon again.
-I got a confirmation pop-up to send my cargo ship to Mars long after I had sent it to Mars and completed that event.
-At some point, either after sending the cargo ship to Mars or after clicking the confirmation pop-up that appeared later, my cargo ship disappeared and stopped gathering food. I had to build a second one to not have everyone starve.
-The main menu would open by itself when panning the camera left/right with the A/D keys. It would happen every time after clicking the Electric View button and pressing D to pan right, but would also happen randomly while panning at other times.

The ending cinematic was really well done, even though I'm confused as to what exactly I saw towards the end (maybe that's supposed to be a mystery?), and while the ending was very dramatic, I'm not sure how it's relevant given that the rest of the game is supposed to take place (as I understood it) outside our solar system. I also got the feeling that a lot of effort went into making the cinematics, writing the characters and backstory, and the voice acting, and not nearly as much time went into playtesting the game with people who weren't already intimately familiar with how the game worked.

Finally, this seems to be a Frostpunk style game - from the crew member events that pop up, to the resource management, to the fact that all your populace will starve to death without food. But Frostpunk is all about the tension - even if you succeed, which you usually do, you still constantly feel the tension and the pressure - and the demo lacked any kind of tension. The closest it came was the deadline to complete the housing objective, but without a day/night cycle to tell the passage of time, it just seemed like an arbitrary thing - I did some math to figure out how many houses I needed to build, clicked several times, and watched buildings go up according to their build timers while an arbitrary cycle timer in the corner went down. The game doesn't have to be hard - Frostpunk generally isn't, which I think actually makes it better and more enjoyable - but it needs some sense of impending danger to create that tension and suspense. Looking at the first Frostpunk scenario, I weathered every storm (as you're supposed to), but the impending nature of the storm and unknown duration created both a constant source of tension and a feeling of relief and accomplishment when I came out of each storm. I would urge you to focus on creating that tension and accompanying feeling of relief and accomplishment. I realize this may be something already planned for the full game, it's just something I noticed was missing from the demo.

[Ragnar]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by Ragnar:

Yes, but making the in-game manual available, and requiring that you read it, is not a tutorial. And this was supposed to be a tutorial, as evidenced by the devs asking, "How would you rate the tutorial during the prologue experience?" on their demo feedback questionnaire. A tutorial should teach you how to play the game without requiring you to read the in-game manual, as games stopped requiring reading the manual about two decades ago.

Frankly, it's not a manual. It's just tutorial pages filed in a place you can look at them as many times as you want. And it doles out additional pages on an as-needed basis and pops a notification each time it does so...

It's a long series of pages (dozens) - organized by sections, with tabs for sub-sections -containing information about the game and how to play it. You can call it "tutorial pages" if you want, but it's an in-game manual. The information on how to complete the second tutorial objective is a page in section 5, sub-section 3. You are not referred to check that page, you just have to find it on your own. Granted, the in-game manual doesn't make all ten(?) sections available from the start, to limit how many sections you have to search, so at least that's nice, but it very much expects you to read the in-game manual to learn how to play rather than teach you how to play.

Making more in-game manual pages available as you go is not a tutorial. I'm not necessarily averse to having to RTFM to figure out how to play (though I don't appreciate it in a time-limited demo), but if that's the case it should be made explicit at the start, because almost all games have moved away from that format.

Even having the relevant page appear as a pop-up would be better, so that I'd be able to see at a glance what I need to do to complete the second objective, rather than having to go into the manual and navigate to section 5, sub-section 3 myself.

(Also, games never really stopped requiring reading the manual. They just stopped writing the manual and offloaded that to fan-made wikis.)

I get what you're saying about some games that really should have a manual, but games in general have gotten really good at teaching people how to play within the game itself. I beat FrostPunk without having to look anything up in a manual or wiki. I can't remember the last time I had to read a manual to learn how to play a game (Neverwinter Nights back in 2002?), and I haven't had to consult wikis for anything other than sandbox crafting games.

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Ragnar:

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Frankly, it's not a manual. It's just tutorial pages filed in a place you can look at them as many times as you want. And it doles out additional pages on an as-needed basis and pops a notification each time it does so...

It's a long series of pages (dozens) - organized by sections, with tabs for sub-sections -containing information about the game and how to play it. You can call it "tutorial pages" if you want, but it's an in-game manual. The information on how to complete the second tutorial objective is a page in section 5, sub-section 3. You are not referred to check that page, you just have to find it on your own. Granted, the in-game manual doesn't make all ten(?) sections available from the start, to limit how many sections you have to search, so at least that's nice, but it very much expects you to read the in-game manual to learn how to play rather than teach you how to play.

Making more in-game manual pages available as you go is not a tutorial. I'm not necessarily averse to having to RTFM to figure out how to play (though I don't appreciate it in a time-limited demo), but if that's the case it should be made explicit at the start, because almost all games have moved away from that format.

Even having the relevant page appear as a pop-up would be better, so that I'd be able to see at a glance what I need to do to complete the second objective, rather than having to go into the manual and navigate to section 5, sub-section 3 myself.

I've seen tutorials, and not bad ones, that threw more content than that entire 'manual' directly onto the user's screen. And had hyperlinks into an actual in-game reference manual.

I mean, I concede that it's weird and awkward for the tutorial to say 'do the thing' but require you to follow a discreetly blinking cue to find any instructions on hot to do the thing. A tutorial [i[could[/i] teach the user to look things up, but if that's the goal it really should at least present that lesson.