Why is the game's tutorial or guide so lacking?

[Goobs]

I was playing and tried to figure out how to do train interrupts, parametization, and other more complex functions inside the game, but when I looked through the 'guide book' it really didn't satisfy any of my curiosity or questions about the systems I wanted to interact with.

I feel like after playing Factorio for so long, I understand how certain things work, yet others still elude me, and although video guides on the internet are available, I have to ask myself why Factorio is not as new-player friendly after the release of Space Age. The wild-card function is interesting, but a little hard to grasp for me. The game doesn't actually help me understand it, either.

It seems the only way to really grasp things is trial and error, which can take hours upon hours of time when there could have been a proper tutorial for it? Why is the game lacking in this area specifically when it all revolves around logistics?

[malogoss]

You're pointing at interrupts and parameterised blueprints.

My suggestion is to go read the related FFF's. The day they dropped, some FFF were tough to understand fully. But now that we have SA on our screens, those FFF's are more or less that, tutorials.

I went back to a few of them in the last weeks and it helped me.

[Goobs]

Originally posted by malogoss:

You're pointing at interrupts and parameterised blueprints.

My suggestion is to go read the related FFF's. The day they dropped, some FFF were tough to understand fully. But now that we have SA on our screens, those FFF's are more or less that, tutorials.

I went back to a few of them in the last weeks and it helped me.

I get what you mean, but if the FFF's could be seen as tutorials, or at least some of them, why not have them added or parsed into the game's guide book? Even basic train functions could be improved upon within the guide book. That's what I mean. It doesn't paint the whole picture in-game.

[Defektiv]

Step 1, Build things.
Step 2, Place things.
Step 3, Troubleshoot problems.
Repeat until success.

[Goobs]

Originally posted by Defektiv:

Step 1, Build things.
Step 2, Place things.
Step 3, Troubleshoot problems.
Repeat until success.

Once again someone misses the point.
I'm talking about the guide book being improved upon.

[Goobs]

I'm waiting for the post that says to just copy blueprints from others. That's totally going to help someone learn the ropes, right?

[malogoss]

What are you calling "the guide book"? The in game factoriopedia? Something else?

[Xarokk]

it is a game for smart people

[End of history]

So while I agree that the tutorial in the game is currently lacking I'm also not entirely sure better tutorials is what I'd consider worthwhile for the team to focus on. They've tried in the past. It's really hard to make good ones.

The advantage of sand boxes is that you can set things up and try for yourself. Having small mini scenarios that help you focus on one thing would of course be nice.

I know I'm not helping, but there are good guides out there if you want to learn the ropes.

[Defektiv]

Originally posted by Prisoner:

Originally posted by Defektiv:

Step 1, Build things.
Step 2, Place things.
Step 3, Troubleshoot problems.
Repeat until success.

Once again someone misses the point.
I'm talking about the guide book being improved upon.

It really is the truth though. While careful planning is indeed needed if you want to build a finely optimized build of something, finding success is simply a matter of going for it. The more you scale your factory and automate things, the easier and more satisfying the outcome. I can't count how many times I read up on something, watched videos and stressed my brain trying to understand something in this game before attempting it, and then when I finally just started doing things instead everything worked itself out. It's tempting to think you are going to screw something up and brick your run but in reality the game is designed for you to flourish in glorious amounts of resources and power.

[jagholin]

Factorio historically never had a thorough ingame guide or tutorial on all its mechanics. That's just how it is. Partially I suspect it is due to some of its inspirations coming from minecraft modding scene - that game is(was) especially notorious for not documenting anything at all (it's got better in the recent years, but for a very long time there wasnt even any ingame list of crafting recipes) - you are supposed either to experiment and discover stuff yourself, or (more probably) go and read wiki/read 3rd party guides. Other contributing factor is just Wube not being good at creating tutorials(how many times were tutorial missions redesigned? and now they are as good as abandoned)

Also advanced stuff like circuits, blueprint paremeters, interrupts are never explained - and you also don't need any of it to finish the game.

[Goobs]

Originally posted by Xarokk:

it is a game for smart people

What a smart post.

[11clock]

My issue with the tutorial was that it kept dropping me into partially prebuilt factories, which I found really overwhelming. By the 5th tutorial I gave up on it and started the game so that I could learn things at my own pace.

It's how I prefer to learn programming, too. I'd rather start with a blank project than a premade one with some missing code, since the latter forces me to also learn the code that is already there, which overwhelms me.

[Goobs]

Yeah that's what I mean, the game is fun and learning is definitely a highlight of playing it, but the most you're ever going to learn is always going to be from actually playing around with stuff. This isn't wrong in any way, but not having the option to actively go and do a tutorial is what really sours my experience at higher points in the game.
I know you can beat the game without doing the best builds right away and instead improve each time, but you're basically on your own from the start. They did manage to add a very good interface for how items work, how to make them, how much and what materials they need, etc. It just sucks there's a limited tutorial that's not as good as it could be.

[🆄🅽🅲🅻🅴 🅹🅾]

Originally posted by Prisoner:

It seems the only way to really grasp things is trial and error, which can take hours upon hours of time when there could have been a proper tutorial for it? Why is the game lacking in this area specifically when it all revolves around logistics?

This is exactly the intention of the game; trial and error, problem solving, experimentation. Hours upon hours of it. I'm not saying you should never view videos or refer to the Wiki, I still do it, but for me, the intention of the game is to figure it out yourself. Now with SA, I think I scrapped my very first platform 6 or 7 times before I got it to work properly. (It still has issues I'm figuring out)

I'm a bit thrown by this "guide book" you mention, what is that?

All the information a new player would ever need is in the game itself; plop a thing down, and check what it does. It starts from the moment you first dive in; place a burner drill, feed it some fuel, and out comes a raw material. Tutorial 1 of 10 Gazillion.

Literally every aspect, recipe and finest detail of this game is explained while playing it, step by step.

The game is a tutorial within itself, that's why it's so good.

My 2 cents.

[End of history]

So, as an aside, I've just landed on Gleba after doing Vulcanus and Fulgora. I have set up a good 300spm base on Nauvis so I can really ship anything that I want. It's well walled off fromr biters so I don't have to worry.

I have just started hand crafting some stuff, got some eggs, made some bioflux, crafted a sicence pack that spoilt, I have watched a few guides and read up on the mechanics.

I am, currently, quite lost, but i have direction. I have purpose. I know what I want to do.

People give Gleba hate. I absolutely love it. It forces me to focus on other ways to build my factory, just like Fulgora forced me to work with recycling. It took me several attempts to set up a recycler that did not deadlock after a while but in the end I'm happy.

There are other things, like advanced circuiting, that I'm not that good at, and things that I have learnt (like trains) that i now am good at and I love it.

For Gleba I brought an uncommon tank and I have started producing a few hundred tank shells on planet.... those one shot the stompers that I'm currently facing.... but that's not bound to last.

I look forward to all of this, even though there are no tutorials, but I'm not too proud to not look things up online. In the end I will make the factory the way I want it anyway.