Frustrating!

[Bird]

First of all; you start the game, and you don't have the faintest idea where to go.

No hint where you should start.

I went with the second option, whatever that was.
Slowly-slowly picking things up, having to restart because it's quite hard to figure out what/why/how; there's precious little help. The logic of the game is quite alien, too.

Then the bloody game gave me a task "Unlock cattle pasture" - and I'm utterly stumped.

How? What do I need to do?

I don't want to keep restarting because there's a massive lack of explanations, hints & tutorials.

The game maybe good, but it's mighty frustrating that's for sure.

[SpurloS]

Originally posted by Bird:

First of all; you start the game, and you don't have the faintest idea where to go.

No hint where you should start.

I went with the second option, whatever that was.
Slowly-slowly picking things up, having to restart because it's quite hard to figure out what/why/how; there's precious little help. The logic of the game is quite alien, too.

Then the bloody game gave me a task "Unlock cattle pasture" - and I'm utterly stumped.

How? What do I need to do?

I don't want to keep restarting because there's a massive lack of explanations, hints & tutorials.

The game maybe good, but it's mighty frustrating that's for sure.

Hey Bird, I'm really sorry to hear that!
It seems that the tutorial did not appear for you... but you can easily reset the tutorial in the settings (first tab, scroll down) and then you should see some explanations for the game in whatever game mode you start next.
For the scenario quest: The Cattle Pasture is a building from the Farming deck - I hope this helps.

[Richon]

Personally, I found that doing the Challenge Terras has been helpful in learning the quirks of the game. The description subtly nudges you in that direction, too, by telling you that it introduces you to the various concepts. I would encourage you to play some of the challenge maps first.

[Bird]

Originally posted by SpurloS:

Hey Bird, I'm really sorry to hear that!
It seems that the tutorial did not appear for you... but you can easily reset the tutorial in the settings (first tab, scroll down) and then you should see some explanations for the game in whatever game mode you start next.
For the scenario quest: The Cattle Pasture is a building from the Farming deck - I hope this helps.

Thanks for the response, however, sadly no; it does not help.

I'm not even sure it's correct. The message in-game says "Unlock cattle pasture (Basic Food)" - not to mention there is no "Farming" deck in this scenario at all ("New hope").

I've no idea how to unlock stuff here.

Resetting the tutorial did not tell me what mode to start playing in for a good beginner experience, either. It has started giving me basic advice eg how to move the game screen around - which is exactly how every game is moved around in the last 20 years.

But it seems do botch the job of explaining the game mechanics and fails to give examples on what to do exactly.

Eh, I don't find this struggle fun at all.

[SpurloS]

Originally posted by Bird:

Originally posted by SpurloS:

Hey Bird, I'm really sorry to hear that!
It seems that the tutorial did not appear for you... but you can easily reset the tutorial in the settings (first tab, scroll down) and then you should see some explanations for the game in whatever game mode you start next.
For the scenario quest: The Cattle Pasture is a building from the Farming deck - I hope this helps.

Thanks for the response, however, sadly no; it does not help.

I'm not even sure it's correct. The message in-game says "Unlock cattle pasture (Basic Food)" - not to mention there is no "Farming" deck in this scenario at all ("New hope").

I've no idea how to unlock stuff here.

Resetting the tutorial did not tell me what mode to start playing in for a good beginner experience, either. It has started giving me basic advice eg how to move the game screen around - which is exactly how every game is moved around in the last 20 years.

But it seems do botch the job of explaining the game mechanics and fails to give examples on what to do exactly.

Eh, I don't find this struggle fun at all.

Yes my bad - I'm sorry, it's in the Basic Food deck.
The tutorial should give you a hint, how to unlock new Decks or Buildings (new Buildings are unlocked through points whenever you completely fill the bubble int the to left of your screen).
Actually these hints should explain every important game mechanic - can you tell me, what you are missing?
The tutorial is not designed to tell you what game mode to play, everyone of us is different and likes different modes - you can easily get the basics down in every mode.

[Kirei]

game is nice, skipped tutorial and had 0 problems with playing a game

[Jeffros]

I got stuck on the same part as Bird, unlocking the cattle pasture. BUT I am certain I must have missed the tooltip that new buildings are unlocked by getting points in a specific deck. This is probably due to me doing 20 terra puzzles first, before diving into scenarios. (so I might have had some tunnelvission going on there lol). Anyway, I just kept on popping down more buildings after which it quickly unlocked. Love the game btw, having a blast!

[Dissenswurst]

Generally, there can be games where next to nothing is explained - if the main objective of the game is to discover things. But this here is a puzzler, and to me, it is like trying to play chess, but no one is explaining the rules, and all you get when you do something wrong is "Nope, you can't do that!".

I started with the challenges section, so it was possible for me to come gradually into the game. However, if it was not for my wife, I would have been stuck forever at "Verzweigte Sache" (German; English "Branched thing"?) since the "Königlicher Wald" (German: English "Royal Forest"?) just wouldn't be generated at several locations, and because of the lack of information, I came to false rules. Extremely frustrating! I'm still not completely sure why the "Königlicher Wald" didn't spawn at some locations; is it because of different terrain level? At any rate, this HAS TO be explained in the reference, and there should be a Terrapedia explaining ALL rules. The lack of this is in my eyes a huge bug.

This is a game where the main objective is to find out what to build where in which order. Needing to find out the rules in a laboriously and error pronely way costs the game in my eyes at least 3/10 points, so that I can give it only 6/10 instead of 9/10.

Why is it that nowadays games come without rules? That is something I didn't like about Dorfromantik as well, and games like Millennia explain a lot of things, but still in an extremely incomplete way.

And why isn't there an own tile "Tutorial" where just everything is explained without being bothered with other objectives? Indeed, I was very puzzled as well when I started the game.

So, overall, I'm not only seconding everything that Bird said, I'm going even further.

[Dissenswurst]

I have just found 3 more threads that go in a similar direction, and I was still not far into the heap of discussion here. So there seems to be a whole bunch of players that have problems with the lack of information the game provides.

[Cynth]

Originally posted by Dissenswurst:

I started with the challenges section, so it was possible for me to come gradually into the game. However, if it was not for my wife, I would have been stuck forever at "Verzweigte Sache" (German; English "Branched thing"?) since the "Königlicher Wald" (German: English "Royal Forest"?) just wouldn't be generated at several locations, and because of the lack of information, I came to false rules. Extremely frustrating! I'm still not completely sure why the "Königlicher Wald" didn't spawn at some locations; is it because of different terrain level? At any rate, this HAS TO be explained in the reference, and there should be a Terrapedia explaining ALL rules. The lack of this is in my eyes a huge bug.

There are no other reasons than a stone cliff or a false layout that can prevent merging. But thats also explained in the tutorial. If you need the tutorial again, you can simply reactivate it in settings > gameplay (on the bottom).

Originally posted by Dissenswurst:

This is a game where the main objective is to find out what to build where in which order. Needing to find out the rules in a laboriously and error pronely way costs the game in my eyes at least 3/10 points, so that I can give it only 6/10 instead of 9/10.

All rules and influences as also the effects of the merges buildings you can find in the building tooltips and the glossary (right hand side of the screen).
I don't understand what additional information you need, could you explain?

Originally posted by Dissenswurst:

And why isn't there an own tile "Tutorial" where just everything is explained without being bothered with other objectives? Indeed, I was very puzzled as well when I started the game.

We are still considering whether we want to offer a dedicated tutorial or keep the ongoing tutorial. however, there are extremely few complaints about the tutorials. in surveys it was rated as absolutely sufficient and suitable.

Best whishes

[Dissenswurst]

Originally posted by Cynth:

There are no other reasons than a stone cliff or a false layout that can prevent merging. But thats also explained in the tutorial. If you need the tutorial again, you can simply reactivate it in settings > gameplay (on the bottom).

Ok, that is good to know, and that means that this is not as bad as I expected. As already answered in another thread, this information from the tutorial slipped my memory. And it is not exactly good usability if I have to go completely anew through the tutorials just to find some information I may miss. And if I have problems I don't know which information I miss, not even if I miss information from the tutorial. It would be so much better to have a good structured Terrapedia with (for example) a point "Placing rules" and another point "Compound structures" where I can expect that the information about the cliffs (I didn't remember) is in at least one of those sections. I would find it there and stumble across it - without having to read through all the other sections.

Originally posted by Cynth:

All rules and influences as also the effects of the merges buildings you can find in the building tooltips and the glossary (right hand side of the screen).
I don't understand what additional information you need, could you explain?

The glossary does not contain the general rule that cliffs prevent merging. And after my experience I expected many specialties of the different buildings and compound structures. Well, as said before, if this is really all then this is not such a big thing - all that is missing is this general rule in the glossary.

Originally posted by Cynth:

We are still considering whether we want to offer a dedicated tutorial or keep the ongoing tutorial. however, there are extremely few complaints about the tutorials. in surveys it was rated as absolutely sufficient and suitable.

Best whishes

So that means that I'm probably belonging to a minority of players. As much as I hate this fact I'm nevertheless going to accept it. If you should decide to add such a dedicated tutorial I would much appreciate it. And still I would like to have all the information as a well-ordered text rather than a tutorial. For me, this would be so much better.

Thank you for your patient and detailed reply!

[Dissenswurst]

I just had a phone call with a friend. He started the game similar to me and was frustrated as well - because of similar reasons.

Just a conjecture: The players who were frustrated because of the lack of a Terrapedia are underrepresented in your survey since they just didn' t take part in it. Of course, even if this conjecture should be true, it is not clear how many players this would be. Could still be that these were a small minority. But at least there may be more than your survey suggests.

[poppamidnight]

Hi, i actually stumbled across this thread and wanted to add my thoughts:
I goit known the game through a youtuber- names dont matter- there the game was displayed it quiet a tutorial style and the "cliff-problem" was also somehow in it.
THIS was my tutorial. I could immagine this as quiet a factor for a lot of players (and if its just searching your "problem" on youtube).
So i knew the basics of the game and was hyped to play it (still am, thx for the update:3 ) and i knew what to do and what misstakes to prevent.
I can immagine if you start blind, its a lot harder to figure out stuff, which could be also a point for future sells when the hype slows down. A tutorial showing me (or example) with a highlighted area that theres a cliff in the way and giving me the lower land card to correct it would be a nice thing. I think a tutorial would come in handy.

[Cynth]

Originally posted by poppamidnight:

Hi, i actually stumbled across this thread and wanted to add my thoughts:
I goit known the game through a youtuber- names dont matter- there the game was displayed it quiet a tutorial style and the "cliff-problem" was also somehow in it.
THIS was my tutorial. I could immagine this as quiet a factor for a lot of players (and if its just searching your "problem" on youtube).
So i knew the basics of the game and was hyped to play it (still am, thx for the update:3 ) and i knew what to do and what misstakes to prevent.
I can immagine if you start blind, its a lot harder to figure out stuff, which could be also a point for future sells when the hype slows down. A tutorial showing me (or example) with a highlighted area that theres a cliff in the way and giving me the lower land card to correct it would be a nice thing. I think a tutorial would come in handy.

Yea we see this problem. the tutorial need a full overhaul. We're planning to rework it and make it as a own scenario with small objectives and so on.

[Moon]

Overall I did not have huge issues to get into the game (and I did not watch any youtube or something). But yeah for the cliffs some tutorial would be helpful. Only figured this out thanks to the posts here.

[lolz]

I just started playing this game with the tutorial on and I'm also finding it frustrating. Where are the controls? How do you place things? Where are the menus? Where are the mouse over explanations? What are cards and what are they for?
I've played many games like this over the years but this one is not intuitive and is definitely too minimalist in description and UI. There's kind of an expected norm for how things work and I lack time and patience for struggling with basic operation that should not be hard to access. I want to sit down and play, not spend forever trying to figure out how the heck to plant a building. Don't make things so difficult to get into right up front, it's offputting.