The Academy feedback from a new player

[Juki]

I know designing tutorial stuff is really not trivial and it's difficult to get into the head space of a new player so I thought I'd provide some feedback of my experience with it so far. I'll be forthright, this is pretty much all negative but it's honest and, I hope, constructive. I took these notes while playing - please keep in mind I know practically nothing about the gameplay at this point apart from snippets I've seen in dev logs over a number of years.

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General
- So much information, so little practical application... reading reams of text is a drag at the best of times but trying to learn from hundreds of pages of text without doing much is just not going to sink in.
- The point where the academy started to lose me was at the galaxy map room. All the info panels explaining the game in the abstract were information overload - a lot of these symbols and pieces of information really should be taught in an in-game setting because I forgot them not long after.
- Some things have to be clicked instead of pressing F?
- Music is monotonous for the length of time spent reading and seems to randomly jump / skip / repeat badly

Classes

- By the time I got to the class tutorials room I'd been playing for 50 minutes! This includes setting up and fiddling with controls and stuff but still. At this point I really just wanted to be learning in-game because I couldn't take much more abstract information but worried I wouldn't know enough to play.

Weapons
- There's weapons but nothing to do with them?
- Most panels don't do anything
- Missile launcher panel with system targeting isn't explained? Had to figure this out.

Pilot
- "Be sure to try out all the different modes!"
- > First person not available in academy
- No indication of HOW to make ship move, just more information overload about heat and cameras! Compounded by ...
- No idea what the difference between manual and auto really is and was stumped when the control scheme entirely changed, I initially thought this was because I changed the camera.
- I expected auto vs manual to mean inertial dampening.
- Wall collision feels off (didn't look like a collision) and is maddening to be sent back to the start when still getting to grips with things. The more impatient I got, the longer this took - maybe start out in open space?

Captain
- Is there meant to be something interactive here? What does the captain DO?

Engineer
- Why did I fail to refine the scrap? It looked like it hit the centre, is it random? What does warping have to do with resetting attempts? What do I gain from even doing this? What does upgrading look like?
- Viruses? Reloading "programs" with fuel? I am so confused at this point. Maybe these really should be in some sort of order, is this to do with the scientist?
- The power simulation was absolutely baffling. At this point I strongly considered refunding the game as I'm almost at the TWO HOURS MARK and still bumbling around in the dark.
- Making this test a timed thing where you have to just figure it out really felt cruel. I'm now over the refund period and getting really quite annoyed. I gave up with this task.

Scientist
- I have no idea what it's asking me to do at the dish turret thing.
- At this point saw the pile of plants and crafting station and, at 2 hours 20 minutes, I gave up with the tutorial and closed the game.

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So to conclude: This honestly feels like how games prior to HL2 viewed tutorials - massive, monolithic information dumps with no context. First impressions matter a LOT and so far my first interaction with the game has been dull, frustrating and isolating. I probably should have joined a public game and just asked for help.

I hope this feedback is helpful and again I really don't mean to be overly critical, this is just an honest summary and I wish the best for the game.

[kellumar]

As a old player from before the Academy existed I can confirm that its horrible

[obvious]

What?! I do not think it is "horrible". I just think it is partly not a tutorial. The first part partly IS a tutorial, but it also is a in-depth interactive user-manual for some things. The part with the jobs is basically just a slightly interactive in-depth user-manual.

a) The academy is better than it was to just have the long just-text-and-3-screenshots manual before.

b) The academy cannot be played like a generic tutorial, because it indeed is too much information at once. But then again they named it "Academy", not "Tutorial". So they may be aware of this. I normally recommend new players to just play one branch and then hop onto games. And later, when they learn other jobs, to revisit the academy to learn more about those.

c) Yes, there is a lot of text. But that is how the entire game is. There is no voice output and a lot of texts in dialogues, mission logs, long range comms and so on. The text-heaviness does not misrepresent the game experience.

d) As someone who has taught countless players over the years: The learning curve in the beginning is steep for most people. Even when I try to step-by-step teach newbies, sometimes they will have to handle quite a chunk of info to be functional enough in their jobs to get a gameplay going that allows for "learning by doing" teaching. And if "the Academy is too long!" is a complaint, then it will be even longer if it is more interactive and more about learning-by-doing. Because, see the next point.

e) There simply is relatively much to know about the game. Teaching people takes long. And a solo-captain will need all this information in order to be able to successfully play, since they have nobody to teach them. They struggled a lot before the academy and since it exists i read "oh my god this is impossible" complaints from solo players or players in general way less often.

f) Some of the complaint points about missing info are true (especially since some things changed a bit since the Academy was launched and I think not all info was updated yet), yet the only solution to those would be to add even more text. Also I think the hailing tutorial in the captain's room is broken, tbh, as is the research-pick-up in the sensor dish. Also I agree that especially the parts that are about crew coordination (e.g. fuel capsules + science) are difficult to get from the Academy. But that partly is because they require a crew to interact with to be properly experienced. The Academy surely needs some polish in a few places.

g) Some of the complaint points I cannot really follow. For example that there are weapons and "nothing to do with them". Shooting was trained before, there is not really a big point in adding a second shooting range, aside of making the Academy more lengthy. Also the only panel there is the missile one and it of course does something. And it IS explained by the guy standing in the middle of the room. How to fly IS explained in the right side tool-tips when you are at the helm. The helpful robot at the counter also explains the differences between manual and auto. (auto tilts and rotates the ship according to your camera angle). And even in very few and concise words, so no text walls. The collision is just like it is in game. And since you are not steering the academy building itself but a drone, having no first person view does make sense there and is imho not a big loss, since you always can try it out in-game and discover there that is is highly impractical :D. In engineering a poster on the wall answers some of your questions regarding the use of processing scrap. A guy explains the sensor dish. Aside of those "missing infos" that aren't actually missing after all, I think some demands are contradictory. E.g. you want more details regarding the upgrading, ok, but you don't want the tutorial to contain more text nor be more lengthy? That does not work out. It is paradoxical to on the one hand complain about information overload and on the other criticize that they left out detailed information on the more advanced mechanics like upgrading. This paradoxical sentiment is entirely justified btw, because both IS true at the same time. There is "too much" information but still not ENOUGH to fully understand everything. But like I said, this is because of the game being what it is, a cooperative rogue-like game with very distinct role mechanics. Every tutorial will have to be a balance between "too much" and "not enough". And I think they did ok with the middle-ground they chose.

In conclusion: The academy is not a normal "play this for 5 minutes and off you go" tutorial and likely was not planned as one. It can be used to get a basic grasp on the game and then later be revisited to get in-depth information. It does its job well to inform people and it does not misrepresent the actual game-play experience.
While I DO hope the Academy gets more polished before the end of beta, I STRONGLY oppose the notion that it is "horrible". And I say it can't be compared to some tripple-A single player title's tutorial, because single player games scale the difficulty for new players even after the tutorial and keep on teaching them things bit by bit, in multiplayer that is not possible. To quote Euclid here: "There is no Royal Road to geometry" and the same is true for Pulsar. All other cooperative games (Guns of Icarus, Payday1+2, Barotrauma, Wolfpack, We Need To Go Deeper, you name it) have a similarly steep learning curve in the beginning that requires new players to learn a big chunk at once in order to be able to participate properly in multiplayer. That is not a design-flaw though, but results from the genre. And I think the Academy does mitigate this well enough, judging from all the new players that played the Academy and join their first real games relatively well informed and the visible decline in "how do i do [basic role task]?" posts.

[Juki]

Honestly, you might be right about some of that being contradictory but I think the majority of my qualms come from it being text over practical application. But anyway, I'm not really one to say - It's early access feedback for the developers because I know first hand that designing these user onboarding systems can be really difficult and getting critical user play-test data is time consuming and expensive. If I missed something and incorrectly attributed that to not being told when it really was there then maybe it needed more visibility - I don't know and that's not for me to say.

Again, I'm not trying to be overly negative or critical I'm just trying to provide an honest recap of my first two hours with the game. Don't worry, I WILL put in the effort to learn more about and it and play it more and I will overcome the learning curve just like I did with Elite Dangerous back when the tutorial was basically "go away and watch stuff on youtube".

[obvious]

A lot of practical things that you were missing would require a crew to be properly done. Especially the captain's tasks. How to have a tutorial on how to order around your human players? Or how to coordinate piloting with your weapon specialist's shooting AND the power supply? Just with more detached-from-practice texts.
And the game itself IS relatively heavily text based, so the complaint about this felt out of place for me, at least as a critique point for the academy.
While I agree that missile-guy should be placed next to the missile screen, I still don't think the NPCs with the "missing" infos were hard to find. (aside of the note regarding the scrap, that one is indeed tricky) But as you said, you honestly had this experience and you had it for a reason. I just think the reason wasn't lack of info or visibility of it (in most cases) but that the way it is presented is clunky and made you over-read it after 2 hours of reading.
I just wanted to point out that Pulsar faces entirely different challenges for a tutorial than most other games.
And while I thought that you will likely reassess your critique after having played the actual game (and thus initially didn't think an answer would be needed) I felt the "i am an experienced player and also say it is entirely horrible" thing was misleading. And that it needed balancing input from an experienced player who definitely has less work with teaching new players since the academy exists :D

And I am glad you give the game a chance. The learning curve gets flat very soon, so the info-overload won't last for more than 2-3 sessions. DO join random crews. Most people are friendly and helpful. They don't mind teaching new players. But please keep an open mind and embrace the text :D The story and lore are really nice and mostly experienced through dialogues.

[Tigershadow]

My $0.02 I'm sure no one cares about: I greatly appreciate the addition of the academy, it's a great place to point my friends when they first play the game to both get a quick overview + to set up and test the controls, etc. Overall I think it is A) simply not finished, and B) when it IS finished will be better digested doing a single role per session rather than all of them at once. This is a complicated game that needs something more in the direction of an interactive encyclopedia rather than a simple tutorial... that said, I do hope they able to add a few more simulation demos to augment all the text instruction.

[gerald2]

Originally posted by obvious:

A lot of practical things that you were missing would require a crew to be properly done. Especially the captain's tasks. How to have a tutorial on how to order around your human players? Or how to coordinate piloting with your weapon specialist's shooting AND the power supply? Just with more detached-from-practice texts.
And the game itself IS relatively heavily text based, so the complaint about this felt out of place for me, at least as a critique point for the academy.
While I agree that missile-guy should be placed next to the missile screen, I still don't think the NPCs with the "missing" infos were hard to find. (aside of the note regarding the scrap, that one is indeed tricky) But as you said, you honestly had this experience and you had it for a reason. I just think the reason wasn't lack of info or visibility of it (in most cases) but that the way it is presented is clunky and made you over-read it after 2 hours of reading.
I just wanted to point out that Pulsar faces entirely different challenges for a tutorial than most other games.
And while I thought that you will likely reassess your critique after having played the actual game (and thus initially didn't think an answer would be needed) I felt the "i am an experienced player and also say it is entirely horrible" thing was misleading. And that it needed balancing input from an experienced player who definitely has less work with teaching new players since the academy exists :D

And I am glad you give the game a chance. The learning curve gets flat very soon, so the info-overload won't last for more than 2-3 sessions. DO join random crews. Most people are friendly and helpful. They don't mind teaching new players. But please keep an open mind and embrace the text :D The story and lore are really nice and mostly experienced through dialogues.

they could add basic task training with AI crew ,not all of us play with people some prefer play with AI and academy could show what command does what or some tips on AI setup.

[obvious]

I agree, it would be cool to have a 3rd branch of the Academy about AI.

[kellumar]

Agreed.