Duality of the tutorial

[jfs]

I'm not sure how to best phrase it, but it sometimes feels like the tutorial is so excited to show off all the things you can do in the game, that it forgets to teach you how to be successful.

Many of the things presented in the tutorial are "dead end" evolutions of buildings that have very specific uses, but are not always what you need in your city. For example Religious Neighborhood or Artistic Neighborhood buildings are useful in some situations, but it feels like the tutorial forgets to tell you that, in the end, they are optional.
It is that way with several things in the tutorial: After building it to see how, you might be better off demolishing it again.

The tutorial is also easy to mistake for the path to win the game: It's on the screen all the time, and constantly serves you small bite-size objectives. Meanwhile the actual way to win is hidden behind a menu that you can't keep open, because it covers most of the screen.

I'm not sure what the best way to improve this would be, but somehow reworking it to be more reactive or on-demand would help.
For example, after teaching the basics of how to put down housing, food production, and resource gathering, and reading the building info screens about evolutions, the tutorial can ask you to pick a path to victory to pursue, and then guides you to achieve the trigger goal for that path.
After selecting your path to victory, the tutorial could hide away, and the goals/achievements window show instead. Then, let the player click a goal in that window to get a mini-tutorial on the tools that can help reach that goal. For example, if the goal is to reach happiness 10, and you don't have any Religious Neighborhood, it could show you how to make those.
Reactive tutorials could be something like trying to build something that requires Highly Skilled Work while you have none/very little. If the player tries doing that, show a tutorial explaining how building a Bank allows suburban housing to evolve into urban housing.

I love the game and have totally lost track of time the first several plays, but the logic in the game absolutely requires some wrapping your head around in a way different from most other city building games. I think highlighting these differences and allowing the player to get some more hand-holding will make it easier for others to get hooked the same way I did.

[Jimmy James]

I think that making religious, artistic, etc neighborhoods more involved in the objectives would be nice. The objectives are kind of all over the place, there are some that are trivial or "cheese-able" that could be served by maybe requiring multiple neighborhoods of variable sizes at the same time. Or maybe "hard mode" objectives that require precise juggling of high cost structures? As it stands there are definitely too many low-demand/no-reward builds that are fine for sandbox building but sandbox isn't the main draw of the game.

[Olleus]

Very good points. Here is a potential solution:

Have the tutorial be its own (shorter) map that you have to do before unlocking the others. Rather than the normal 3 paths to progress, it has a unique one which is what the tutorial is telling you to do. That is, rather than a separate tutorial, it's a custom path for the tutorial map. This wouldn't need to go all the way to the end game (let the player discover that outside the tutorial). I think the right balance is to show all the options, but not force the player to take every single one. For housing, that would mean unlocking all of them, and building enough different types that you are one upgrade away from having all of them. For other building, it would be to progress enough so that they're all shown on the build menu, but not necessarily every single one needing to be selectable.

Oh, and on all the maps, the objectives for the current path should be shown on the bottom right menu where the tutorial text is. It's nice to have it be permanently up there as a reminder, rather than hidden in an obscure menu.

[Underpants22]

I think the tutorial is just there to give you some ideas how the game works. Other than that, I believe you should experiment by yourself. The tutorial box itself is always present every time you start a new game (you can close it tho).
Having said that, I kind of understand what you feel. When the first time I played Urbek on its full release, the tutorial felt like random. Build this, build that, achieve this, achieve that, without any kind of purpose what so ever, until I realized it was just a guidance. What you need to do is follow one of the three paths.
The tutorial might really need a rework. From my pov, it is indeed really weird to always have the tutorial box on every new game after couple hours of playing.

[jfs]

Originally posted by Underpants22:

I think the tutorial is just there to give you some ideas how the game works. Other than that, I believe you should experiment by yourself. The tutorial box itself is always present every time you start a new game (you can close it tho).

That is exactly the point I wanted to make.
The tutorial is ever-present even when not needed, and it's very imposing compared to the actual win goals, that it's easy to mistake the tutorial for the win goals.

Originally posted by Olleus:

Have the tutorial be its own (shorter) map that you have to do before unlocking the others.

This is a good idea, although I'm not sure I agree with gating the rest of the game behind completing the tutorial. Not everyone might feel they want/need it, e.g. players coming from watching a Let's Play/stream of the game.

[FungusMouse]

Glad I found this thread which made me consider turning the tutorial off. I got confused when it told me about pathways to win, set me on a path, and then had me go on doing things that seemed unnecessary/counter-intuitive to actually finishing that path. Starting a new save and turning it off has been much more enjoyable.

[Seattle's Darling]

Thank you, that is exactly how I feel. The ever-present tutorial compels one to follow along and build what is asked for, thinking that there is an end just around the corner, but after awhile it begins to feel demanding and that creative free-building isn't going to be rewarded. After about the 27th task, my patience wore through as I was no longer enjoying the game, and the direction of my city was nowhere near the style I wanted it to be. In addition to the tutorial, I was trying to make progress with achievements with leads to less space with more resource demands for a city that wasn't what I wanted. I tried to start a new city, but all the other biomes are locked until the first one is won. I just can't make it to the end of the tutorial, it's far too long. I didn't realize you don't have to complete the tutorial to win the game! So glad I found this post! Thanks again!