Why is the tutorial so bad

[SirLoathing]

Coming from Stellaris and Civ VI and your tutorial is just... making me consider requesting a refund. The most infuriating part is googling my issues with it and seeing posts on these forums from 2-3+ years ago where people are complaining about similar things and you haven't addressed it. It's not like I'm opposed to spending 100$ on a great game and all its DLC but if you can't put together a comprehensive tutorial why are you worth my time?

[SirLoathing]

For example; why is science still glowing after I've finished selecting a part of it and closed the menu --> this leads me to believe I missed something you wanted me to handle there. What am I supposed to do with this hero? Why am I tabbing out to check a YouTube guide instead of using the one made by the designers. How do you expect to develop and retain new players who will go on to enjoy your game and buy DLC when you don't put time into your tutorial.

[Singularity's Marauder]

Because the game is really easy to play. Its mechanics are super straightforward. Some people would argue that that is ES2's biggest weakness. Mechanically it is a very shallow game. Quests yield weird obvious rewards, some rewards are also kinda super easy to understand.
For example... Name me this reward, what does it do? "add approval". It just adds approval. What does approval do? If you hover your mouse over it, it says "increases food and influence production". And if you check the dictature government system, it says "low approval systems will rebel".
You could complain about the tutorial being bad, but what you can't complain is walls and walls of text over every single stat in the game, explaining to you what the ♥♥♥♥ is going on.
And if it comes to combat, most of it is kinda automated... Just select "manage ships on range" before a battle... And done. You don't have to think anymore.
You could say that the amount of information you receive is not good enough for you to study the in-depth mechanics of the game in order to beat the AI on Endless difficulty or enter multiplayer where probably evil tryhards are playing... But then again. Why would you want to ruin your fun like that.

Besides... Endless Space 2 isn't about the gameplay, it's about the story and visuals at this point. Of course, gameplay is good, but... Ehhhhhhhhh... There is a strong case that it was more focused back in ES1. But that was kinda the problem. In ES1 the gameplay was too focused. You could catch the entire lightning of the game in 100 hours. In ES2 the gameplay is so spread out over a lot of easy to understand elements that ultimately form a cohesive and micro-heavy union. This adds a high skill ceiling, that is ultimately ignored, because of the fact that the AI is trash, multiplayer barely works, and I think I can guess that 70% of the community plays on non-vanilla mods that drastically change the game's balance, making it impossible for you to join them, unless you already know the basics of the mods.

That being sad, I shouldn't be answering this question. After all I'm just a complete noob in this who has only 600 hours.

[Singularity's Marauder]

Edit: In the first link skip to 52 seconds. In the second link skip to 50 seconds in order to get the joke.

Another thing that I could say is that the reason why the mechanics of the game may be poorly explained, although I have never played the tutorial, is because the developers of the game don't know themselves how to play this game. They are more interested in creating stories and great visuals, than developing game balanced and deep enough to have e-sport potential, for example like Heroes of Might and Magic 3. That game has a great tutorial btw.

The thing about Endless Space 2 is that... It doesn't feel like a real video game. It's more of a mix between a book, movie and some gameplay. This can be kinda painful, because all the elements feel disjointed from one another. The music is cool for example, you can listen to it on your TIDAL playlist, but in the end it is super annoying. You are trying to read like an essay on the politics of Pangea or whatever and this is playing in the background. https://youtu.be/9Q6l7yJV42c?t=52 And you are finally going with this music, and finally you say https://youtu.be/p51I7clXqf0?t=50

The story is good, but the way how you interact with it is stupid. It stands absolutely disjointed from the entire game. It's just a bunch of texts on quest that you read whilst beating a random enemy empire with a shovel. Like... On one hand you are having this story of the good guys Sophons doing wacky ♥♥♥♥, and on the other you are doing some scary genocide run in which you just butchered the other seven Sophon empires and pillaged all their systems as dictature. And the game has no way of addressing this.
RPGs usually mount your gameplay actions with a great story. Games like Fallout 3 keep what you are doing in check by giving you karmic points, New Vegas gives you reputation, Mass Effect tracks what you have done over a large period of time, giving you consequences for your actions, Endless Space 2 just gives you more text which you can freely ignore as the only thing that it is going to do in gameplay is give you some random adaptive rewards like +100% on sterile or something.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't spend playing this game for 700 hours if I thought it was trash, but I do feel like it has some fundemental flaws. That doesn't mean it's bad. Games without fundamental flaws are kinda... A whole different boat that usually just bores you to death. ES2 may not be perfect in that it wasn't designed like some sort of hyper-precision masterpiece, for example Celeste, Hollow Knight or Half Life... But its strongest suite is definitly its freedom.
For example... Once you actually get into the gameplay, you would realize that unlike ES1 you can play every race in a lot of ways. There are a lot of parties that you can manipulate your nation into believing, those including Religious, Ecologist and Scientific. There are a lot of linear quest paths that allow you to take your nation into different different directions thanks to how their rewards work. Rewards can greatly influence how you can maximize the power of your empire...

etc. etc. etc.

[Singularity's Marauder]

I know I kinda ignored the fact that by "bad" you meant buggy. But at this point who cares.

[SirLoathing]

You are right that it has been very easy to pickup once I got past what was bothering me about the tutorial and turned to google to answer the few questions I had. I have been enjoying it and plan on playing more.

[Singularity's Marauder]

Originally posted by SirLoathing:

You are right that it has been very easy to pickup once I got past what was bothering me about the tutorial and turned to google to answer the few questions I had. I have been enjoying it and plan on playing more.

what race sparked your interest?

[SirLoathing]

I am the type of player who starts with the most basic looking.. the Mario or Jund to learn the game and then usually gravitate toward extremes. So first run is earth empire, then I'll try the peaceful traders. Then I'll probably try whatever their version of Stellaris' FP/DS

[Singularity's Marauder]

Originally posted by SirLoathing:

I am the type of player who starts with the most basic looking.. the Mario or Jund to learn the game and then usually gravitate toward extremes. So first run is earth empire, then I'll try the peaceful traders. Then I'll probably try whatever their version of Stellaris' FP/DS

You should try Riftborn they're real easy to pick up.
laughs mysteriously