(If there is another thread about it and i missed it please linked it here for me.) So i thought i test the Tutorial today as with Version 1.0 there probably gonna be a couple of new players who gonna start that first. I general i think it is good so far, at least far better than the simple Robinson Protocoll. (The last time i tested the Robinson Protocoll was during Experimental Alpha 12.) And there a some issues i noticed. Minor: In the beginning i felt hot and (maybe i missed it) i wasn't introduced to the heater cooler. When i was told to repair the base the number of damage to be repaired increased constantly i dunno how i it finaly decided that i am done with that part. When i was supposed to place the turrets it said i already placed 56 turrets... too many dangerous animals When asked to go to the "nearby lake" there could be a waypoint leading there (there is none). On the map, since this is a swamp planet, the lakes are "green" and unless the new player got severely off track while going from starting wreck to the base, he most likely has no clue where to look for a lake. Good luck to him trying to steer his HV in the dense forest to get there... When instructed to "make Large O2 bottles" once again these components are simply named "O2 Bottle" (the blue one). Same problem here as with the "O2 Condenser" = player will not find it in constructors templates. Medium You are supposed to craft Growing plots without beeing introduced in how you can get water, that part just comes right after the Green house. The first 3 steps (open PDA, open PDA log feel kinda awkward i had to check 3 boxes by myself to be done with it. It might would help to highlight the check boyes on the right side of the scrren the first time i may missed them in the first place. the requested solar panels are not sufficent to provide the base with enough energy When player is instructed to "craft and put down the O2 condenser" : the device name is " Water/ O2 Condenser", and the player already has one from the start of the game. If he tries (logically) to find this newly named "O2 Condenser" in the large/ small/ portable constructors he will never find the template, and neither while searching in the tech tree. Major: If you guys find any other things i will gladly add them to this list so we keep a good overview. Edits: cmguardia & Kassonade added on 10.08.
I confirm that placing turrets does not take the mission for granted. I placed 5 turrets and I don't get the check. I also see that error in the steps of the parcels since the materials are not available. They should be chained in some other way. If you want to finish the plot and you make the water purifier yourself to make the plot. The next mission will ask you to re-manufacture the water purifier. At an earlier point when you head to the wreckage. In the closet there are materials but they are not enough to make the portable constructor since they only leave you 2 iron minerals. If you choose to run the base with solar energy it is not enough to keep it lit with few panels. The consumer brand of the base is more than 300 and with 4 solar panels (2 small and 2 large) I only get 57 on the best day. Obligatory it is necessary to manufacture a generator for the nights. When you have to make ammunition you may or may not take the ammunition you already have in your backpack. In my case I did not take the quantity of shotgun shells and bullets, I only took the rifle ones. When I removed the bullets from the backpack and reloaded them into the backpack the shotgun shells were counted but the bullets were not. I had to make more bullets to finish the mission. I also think that for a tutorial there are too many dangerous animals. There are raptors and spiders everywhere! Also when I reached the base I eliminated the dogs but I only counted 1 of them in the mission check. Confirmo que colocar torretas no da por echo la misión. Coloqué 5 torretas y no obtengo el check. También veo ese error en los pasos de las parcelas ya que no se tienen los materiales. Deberian estar encadenados de alguna otra manera. Si tu quieres terminar la parcela y fabricas por ti mismo el purificador de agua para hacer la parcela. La misión siguiente te pedirá fabricar nuevamente el purificador de agua. En un punto anterior cuando te diriges a los restos. En el armario hay materiales pero no son suficientes para fabricar el constructor portatil ya que te dejan solo 2 minerales de hierro. Si escoges hacer funcionar la base con energia solar no es suficiente para que quede encendida con pocos paneles. La marca de consumo de la base es de mas de 300 y con 4 paneles solares (2 pequeños y 2 grandes) solo obtengo 57 en el mejor día. Obligadamente hay que fabricar un generador para las noches. Cuando tienes que fabricar munición puede o no tomar la munición que ya tienes en la mochila. En mi caso no tomaba la cantidad de cartuchos de escopeta y balas, solo tomaba los de rifle. Cuando quite de la mochila las balas y volví a cargarlas en la mochila los cartuchos de escopetas fueron contabilizados pero no las balas. Tuve que fabricar mas balas para terminar la misión. Creo además que para ser un tutorial hay demasiados animales peligrosos. Hay raptors y arañas por todos lados! También al llegar a la base eliminé a los perros pero solo contaba 1 de ellos en el check de al misión.
- The Heater/Cooler is introduced quite early on. Like in the first 15 min. You should not feel hot, though as the area you come down should be quite temperate (possibly you got a seed where this is not the case) - Repair > there is no real defined goal to repair a certain amount. So you did what I expected the players will do. - The turrets count sound like a bug. Will check. - Growing Plot > Will add a few for the players to find as the introduction of the water generator does not fit that stage - The highlighting is not possible at the moment, but I will look into the wording
@Hummel-o-War it might help with refining to see someone going through the tutorial as a brand new player: There's 3 in the series so far
This is the thing when creating tutorials. You have to take into account people who are new to the game will make mistakes. The tutorial has to be very basic and actually point players to items by highlighting them. Before they published the tutorial they should have got a new player to go through it, watch them play it and then fine tune it.
Will work through these .. but actually it would HELP the ppls progress a lot if they actually READ what is displayed
People misread things. The tutorial is throwing lots of info at you that you are trying to remember, so mistakes may happen.
I acknowledge that, especially for when you are creating a video or stream, you are easily distracted because you have to talk to the audience as well and are of course less concentrated on what is displayed on the screen. And snip..missed an important part. And yes, there is a LOT to learn. There is a reason why the Tutorial has 12 Chapters. And thats maybe a bit more than half of the gameplay at best. But the rest is often a matter of wanting to explore the game mechanics, read the overlays and hints where available and sometimes it is simply transmissing mechanics you have learned in the tutorial (or by trial and error) onto new stuff. Example: If you have learned how to power a hovercraft (sth you learn in chapter 2) with a fuel tank and a generator..do I really need to repeat that in a Tutorial chapter for each and every vessel step by step, or is it enough to rely on what you should remember and simply ask you to apply the method you already were taught and just say "fuel it". Same for placing a block. Or crafting and placing devices. Same for mining. Same for nearly 80% of related tasks to those basics we guide you through in the Tutorial. That being said, there is always room for improvements. Thats why we f.ex. increased display times, added several triggers and are constantly optimizing (like a few things I plan to change for one of the next updates based on the feedback I got). But, apart from human error , in case someone is not willing to follow what is printed on the screen, there is not a lot I can do to fix that. An the latter is more regularly the case than the "human error".
There isn't much, no. The problem is, they'll still get frustrated anyway, so it still falls on the author to overcome that as much as possible. Fair? No. Frustrating? Probably. But it is what it is Remember, all the stupid warnings and instructions on consumer products are there because of what some idiot did. A couple suggestions I would have is to avoid walls of text- condense instructions into fewer lines. Use images to show what's being discussed, and highlight the tabs in the constructor with the idea that ores turn into components, and components into blocks and devices. Probably should minimize starting equipment for the tutorial so the player has to build nearly everything Also, the drone needs to feature much earlier, pointing out that it can be used for scouting, repair, and mining
I just finished the tutorial. I had to start fresh because my savegame did not want to load and gave me an error (I was just about to leave for Polaris). On this new start I picked up lots of plants that were in abundance close to the first ship wreck. Then I put down the tent and started crafting some ammo for the weapons and got killed by a spider at night. It camped my backpack right next to the tent. When getting close to the first base there were lots of raptors. I couldn't get out of the HV without them getting in the way, right in front of the base main camp. I described these parts in detail (first playthrough) in the " 1.0 release thread" yesterday, I don't think it's necessary to repeat it here... or is it ? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Up to the base repair, just before going to Polaris, it's a tutorial. After that it's overwhelming. I have experience but it requires much focus and knowledge, and I could hardly pretend to be a "noob" because there were not much directions. In fact past the base it is a bit like a normal game, with normal mission pointers : talk to X, go get item, come back, go to Y, destroy core, etc. And to get in space after that is like a big spoiler for the "real" game. I remember one of the coolest moments on my first playthrough was to get in space for the first time, with a ship I built myself. The tutorial takes us at level 1 with nothing and brings the new players to the captain chair of a CV in a few hours... I think it's too much for a "tutorial" and some parts were not noob-friendly. The part in the tomb with spiders can be frustrating for players not into close combat with fiddly collision spiders and jetpack-jumping to get out. Getting a ship to fly is one thing, fighting rapid drones and docking in a relatively small CV hangar at an angle is another. After killing the first drone I was instructed to get into the CV, but as I was approaching the hangar another drone started shooting at me from a dead angle. I suggest only 1 drone, and when it's dead let the player try to complete the next task (get in hangar) with no other distraction. I had many instances where I had to open the PDA and look at the log to read the info I missed. When asked to put a T2 CPU extender after putting down the teleport in the base, I received an alert and just a few seconds later my generator exploded. I got another one, made a CPU extender, and same thing happened before I had time to make another generator. I knew that it was the generator that made the loud "bang" I heard, but I'm not sure a new player would not rush out with guns in hand to see who is attacking. So there are the normal game warnings that can not be ignored, and those can interfere with reading the tutorial instructions : they are like 2 parallel streams of information, and the game requires immediate action, which can make the player skip tutorial text in the rush of things. When asked to make a lever to shut down the base, the text opened and closed quickly and I missed it. Is it because I was busy doing things and I hit the wrong key at that time ? Possible. But that's exactly the kind of thing that should not happen in a tutorial. I know how to set up switches, but the scenario expected me to shut down the generators, not the core (which I did). I guessed I had no choice so I did it again with a new switch linked to the generators, and it "completed the task". There is a warning at that moment that fridges will spoil food when powering down the base, I'm not sure how to consider this. Is it necessary to show Circuits Logic this way instead of simply showing the principle on a door or light ? I think the tutorial takes for granted that new players will read tons of text besides what they already have to do, because in many tasks I relied on what I knew I had to do, like searching for promethium to avoid cutting a million trees or putting a gatling on the hover bike to travel safely, knowing what stuff is important to carry around on a "combat" mission (the tomb, the zirax outpost), what stuff to leave behind because inventory is full, etc. But the amount of content covered after repairing the base is just too much, too fast. Of course I chained all chapters one right after another, and I even cheated "crafting" with item menu for many items because I couldn't bear it to watch the slow construction of devices and ammo for the nth time. I had to wait 19 minutes to get the Polaris Scout SV to be out of the factory, and I just went back into the disabled zirax outpost to wait. When I checked how much time was left, I could not see it, and I simply spawned the scout with codes. When I was flying I finally got the message that the ship was ready. Too bad. The dialogues and interactions were a real nice addition, and gave a nice ambiance to the experience, but I felt it was a spoiler to see this in a tutorial. I suggest that the standing NPCs all have their arms repositioned a bit closer to their torsos instead of the semi-A-default pose - it looks weird. Given that the game seems to have problems with saves / loads during a scenario the more this tutorial lasts the more prone it makes for errors and bugs. Death is everywhere around the player, piloting the HV through dense forest is not cool even for experienced players, and we don't use the motorbike at all if we rapidly follow chapters when they appear. There could be more details in each chapters, and a longer timer between each, and maybe the longer tasks could be skipped and the players directed to do these in a more general way between chapters, and not as an "additional info" below an instruction in the middle of a chapter. It's quite obvious that if mass/ volume was enabled in the tutorial things would get complicated very fast. I suggest removing all dangerous critters from the planet so players can focus on the tasks. I also suggest using more simple POIs with focus on the tasks too, not so much on deco and ambiance. Following the yellow markers in buildings is a bit confusing, the markers get lost in the colors and many items around. I suggest condensing the deposits and plants around the starter zone, and gifting most items to the player as rewards, to avoid spending too long in constructors interfaces, and focus on learning building rules. Maybe the first captured base could be designed simpler, as for the "check if base is airtight" part has a timer running and there are many parts of the building to inspect. Maybe put this base real close to a lake for the water generator part, with less dense forest in the way. I suggest giving more precise indications to the player as to what devices can be put in the factory to accelerate building the Polaris Scout, and maybe have most of these devices in easy to find places in the zirax POI. Edit : forgot one detail When at the first base, the player is told to make 4 blue oxygen bottles to "oxygenate the base". In fact we have to make 4 x templates ( so 8 bottles) to "complete the task" - making only 4 bottles does not finish it.
Hes on episode four now. And he got pretty critical about the bike and backpack disappearing, among a few other things. I have expressed similar feelings about the same things. Created a thread around this guy, The Scarlet Seeker, and his criticisms, on the 4th episode. https://empyriononline.com/threads/a-critical-examination-of-the-tutorial-by-new-player.95456/
There is absolutely zero reason for the bike to disappear in singleplayer, especially in the tutorial. It should stay in world as a bike...
