Plot/Tutorial in X Rebirth

[BigBANGtheory]

Good tutorials are:
- Interactive
- Give verbal instruction with prompts, not text based instruction
- Are short, organized and progressive
- Teach you something useful as opposed to blindly obvious like 'now fly forwards' to prove you can fly forwards
- Occasionally talking about the wider context of a topic such as why its useful to do things a certain way or mastery of this skill will be beneficial because...

[RAVEN.myst]

Good tutorials are:
...
- Occasionally talking about the wider context of a topic such as why its useful to do things a certain way or mastery of this skill will be beneficial because...

Well said, good point.

As for verbal vs textual, I think BOTH should be present, ie. at the very least subtitles to the voiceover - different people absorb information differently. I know that I, for instance, usually derive more benefit from the visual input of text (and, if/when applicable, graphics or animations) - some speech mannerisms can be distracting, often voice acted content is paced appropriately for conversation which tends to be too fast for instruction, accents may obscure words, and generally it can often be helpful to see a particular word spelled out, especially if it's a proper noun or something contextually unique to the game (or whatever's being taught!) in question.

Of course, text-only is at least equally undesirable - for starters, it feels antiquated to modern audiences, lacking in dynamism. Also, some people are slow readers, so for those people the subtitles are there for reference (such as in the abovementioned case of specific names and the like), rather than as the primary mechanism for imparting information.

I think many people would fall somewhere in the middle: listening to the voiceover while watching the demonstration, and following the subtitles with half an eye (or, in some cases, more). Taking in the instruction via multiple sensory channels in this manner is significantly more effective at "fixing" the information in the recipient brain (hence lecturers/teachers, while delivering their lectures, also write down salient points on their black/whiteboards or use projectors in a similar fashion.)

[birdtable]

A good tutorial should also be broken down into individually accessible chapters, nothing worse than trawling a sequence of events to find the salient solution.
The WIKI should be the reference go to point for text based "How To" solutions, that should be at a developed stage before release.
The tutorial / text should not be developed by an employee/dev, they assume too much regarding the first time players knowledge of the game.

[Nikola515]

I suppose videos would be best thing for egosoft at this point... Less buggs we would have to worry about Also i find it much easier to learn how to play game trough let's play trough than tutorials... A video that explains step by step would be good idea....

[Santi]

As English is not my first language, I prefer text and also a log where I can go back to check explanations that I may have skipped.

Videos are very good as Nikolai515 points out, it is the "norm" now when looking for how a game works. There is quite a few community members that did an amazing job posting "how to" videos about X-Rebirth on their channels. Something worth for Egosoft to consider.

[Loltak]

Hi,

Like some other, English is not my native language so both audio and text is necessary.
Myself I have a correct understanding of English but I can miss some information in the action. It's good to have the possibility to read the info afterwards.
I think it's also important for people who wants to stay in English but have not a "fluent understanding".
Personally, now for some game I prefer stay in English, especially when there is mod, for compatibility.

Regarding the video, as I already answered I appreciate them.
However I would prefer a offl-ine version because my network connexion is not really fast so if I need to watch them several time, I don"t want to dl them each time.

Bye

[spankahontis]

I'm curious to know what you thought of the stand alone tutorials introduced in 4.0. They're more of the stand-alone, repeatable tutorials you can find in other games.

I think my newest game was 3.0, not sure if you are referring to the video tutorials that were added to the main menu or new in game ones. The video tutorials are good, will prefer an actual in game scenario, otherwise for the 4.0 will need to start a new game and check them out.

Is there a section of DevNet or Egosoft in general that has an X Universe Lore Master that instructs what the best course of action is in terms of making a plot and keeping it lore friendly?
A discussion group or something?

The only active (ish) section of DevNet right now is the Level 3 ideas forum, that you can access by ticking the box in your profile, so no at DevNet level.

Going to quote Ketraar from this discussion as that pretty much explains it (I believe).

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php? ... sc&start=0

This Ancients stuff is also not a storyline at all, its lore. The distinction being that story is narrated, while lore "just" exists (induced through various media).

Some lore is hard to track, it may be from books (most are german only), from plot in games or object/system descriptions. Then you add normal confusion added in forums by people trying to tell and debate it.

But I guess the charm of lore is exactly that its not needed to be factual (not that its bad if it is), just interesting.

MFG

Ketraar

Basically, Egosoft are winging it when it comes to plots.

Thankyou Santi, i'll get around to adding myself to DevNet eventually.