My thoughts on the Tutorials (thus far)

[Aeronic]

Anytime the game updates, I always start a "v05xx test" map. I've been watching the Tutorial grow with each update and the v0.537 patch really plumped the tut. quite a bit. I think it's shaping up quite nicely.

My main reason for starting this thread is because I want to give a place for feedback on the tutorials. I figure something as important as how the game should be introduced to a new player should be discussed and ideas thrown around (and general praise to the devs for making it work!)

For my praise/suggestions:

I think that the tutorial is rather descriptive without being too wordy. I remember reading some of the memory crystals back in early October, and swiftly closing the window due to massive amounts of small text.. and I was worried that the tutorial would be plagued by the same. I have however been joyfully surprised on how the use of dead NPC's act as examples to hint towards things you shouldn't do/should watch out for. That's a very good way to give the player a nudge in the right direction without outright telling them what to do (figuring it out on your own is far more fun then reading how to do it point blank!) and it does all this with usually 1 sentence.

For a suggestion; Once memory stations make it back into the game, you should be able to find a coffer in the building that's in the tutorial right now, that has a memory crystal by a dead NPC (perhaps when you go to see what happened to the NPC that was trapped in the collapsed room, it could have belonged to them) that could explain what the hell happened to space and time to make things the way they are (I know that the player could probably just watch the title screen story, but maybe it'd be nice to get into a bit more detail if they choose to read it?)

[x4000]

Cheers, thanks!  The whole point of the intro mission has been to give players a structured, linear way to play and experiment and learn about the basics of the game, without having to read a lot unless they get stuck.  The adviser guardian stone and a lot of that sort of thing was really just more of a temporary stopgap measure, although we'll probably keep some form of adviser guardian in place.  Probably with more of a menu tree to make getting at info easier to do, but we'll see on that.

With regard to a lot of the spacetime stuff, the details are something that are one of the biggest mysteries of each individual world, and will have to be something that would be figured out over a long period of play through clues and crystals.  THAT said, I think it's a great idea to have the stuff from the intro text somewhat rehashed in a more condensed form from the first memory crystal found in the intro mission.  Will be good to go back and add that in a few months when memory crystals make their return.