[FEEDBACK] Tutorials

[DocAce]

Info
In 7.00 the previously existing Tutorials are replaced with several new ones. They now cover a much wider range of gameplay elements, from basic things such as docking to more advanced features such as boarding. We would appreciate feedback on all of them.



Feedback Notes:

• General Feedback to the Tutorial feel and purpose. For example if you learned and understood what it was explaining.
• Feedback if they cover all the essential elements or if any are missing
• Feedback functionality, does it work as expected, report finding in this topic.

Tutorial List:

• Walking and Interaction
• Flight
• Docking
• Travel Mode
• Highways and Gates
• Combat
• Map
• Missions
• Spacesuit
• Basic Trading
• Basic Mining
• Orders
• Trade Orders
• Mining Orders
• Object Deployment
• Relative Movement
• Cameras
• Long Range Scan
• Object Scan
• Signal Leaks
• Flight Assist
• Adaptive Steering

NOTE: Make sure to note which tutorial you are referring to by its name when reporting your issues or feedback.

Known Issues:

• Some tutorial voice lines are placeholders

[Skygallant]

Bug occurs In build number: 528286
If the player is using a controller during the Travel Mode tutorial, the deaccelerate step is skipped and any deaccelerate input is ignored for the subsequent step of strafing. In Addition, strafe input during the strafing step causes the ship to lock up, the throttle becomes stuck and travel mode can not be re-engaged for the subsequent step of the tutorial, thus brickign the tutorial.

[tolodine]

I saw this in the tutorial feedback

Bug occurs In build number: 528286
If the player is using a controller during the Travel Mode tutorial, the deaccelerate step is skipped and any deaccelerate input is ignored for the subsequent step of strafing. In Addition, strafe input during the strafing step causes the ship to lock up, the throttle becomes stuck and travel mode can not be re-engaged for the subsequent step of the tutorial, thus brickign the tutorial.

I can confirm this is also happening with keyboard and mouse in the newest build, 528286, also. Cannot finish this tutorial because of this. So far no workaround.

[pithica42]

I had the same experience using keyboard and mouse. I completed the strafe step after engaging/disengaging the travel mode and it asked me to re-activate it, but it wouldn't let me reactivate with either Shift+1 or the Escape/Ship Options menu (the mode is grayed out).

[pbright]

Add the following: Allow a user to customize any small, medium, large ships (all factions) and go into a battlefield/dog fighting arena to practice combat against waves and waves of zenon. This would give a new user a good place to go to test out ships and configurations so when they get into the real game what they might try to get to fly.

[Nailuj]

Hello all,

missing one or more small steps or orders of the trainer may cause you to not fulfill the chapter.
It occurs that the game tells you to rightclick the scout (in movement chapter), but you have no idea of what is expected. Finally right clicking the scout leaves you alone with all following options.
In case that real life takes your attention for a few seconds and you miss a step it would be nice, to go back 2 or 3 steps instead of re-starting the whole chapter

I finally quit the tutorial, as I did not recognize what to do next.
I stuck at the point after I had to set some waypoints for the scout, changing a waypoint and then real life took a short time of attention What do? Quit real life?

[LetMeIn11]

The tutorials become a lot more useful overall, here are some issues I had with them:

Walking and Interaction: At the first launch a tooltip above the "Pay attention to me" text didn't appear and all controls were locked out until I pressed ESC to exit to the main menu. This was a rough start, however, I was unable to reproduce this issue on subsequent restarts.

Spacesuit: While the tutor was explaining to me how to use boost I managed to get in proximity to my ship. Then he told: "It seems you already know that" and he didn't explain how to enter my ship or what to do next. I remember the exact same issue with the old tutorial which forced me to restart it when I tried the game the first time. It seems like newer tutorials don't have such cuts and all queued voice messages are being pronounced no matter what the player is doing. It would be great to remove such cuts in the tutorials that reuse parts from the older tutorial and always voice all lines.

Mining Orders: This one tells you to deploy a resource probe but the "Object deployment" tutorial explaining how to do that comes only after it.

Object Scan: This tutorial doesn't exist

Signal Leaks: This tutorial doesn't exist too

Adaptive Steering: It would be great to have Nav beacons to fly by like in the flight tutorial instead of the timer. Timer doesn't give enough time to understand what is going on and how to roll ship by a mouse effectively.

[Arsaneus]

Going through all of them but will split up my feedback to smaller posts (as I finished all of them yet).

Walking and Interaction

Nothing to add. Simple enough and not so different to other FPS games.

Flight

Fine but I think it would be a good idea to quickly go through the various HUD elements mentioning that they will be explained in more details in the respective tutorial.
If possible, highlight the element in question with a different color or even better. Add them one by one as they are being explained?

Docking / & Travel Mode

Nothing to add.

Highways and Gates

They are sufficiently explained. However, the time between the gates is too long. Use a faster/more agile ship and/or explain to the player, that the travel drive can be used to fly through the gates. Obvious to us but maybe not to everyone.
Also: After exiting the gate by using the highway, the ship is so fast, the player zooms past the indicated "Exit" marker before he is being made aware that he needs to exit it and how to do so.

Combat

First part is fine but as the player was never introduced to his own ships' hull/shield health bars, this would be a good opportunity to highlight them before the mine is used to simulate the damage. The tutorial also ends too quickly after the last line.
Explain to the player that the shield will recharge, the hull however needs to be repaired and how that can be done.

I also suggest to add a voice-line explaining that this concludes the basic tutorial and where to continue. Instead, the player is dropped after a longer black-screen (in my case roughly 10 seconds) in Argon Prime with not much understanding of what is going on.

That's it for now.

[Kal Ryper]

Missions

Appear to be stuck in a loop, after entering the sphere of interest.

In the map, have right-clicked and selected "Start Guidance to Position"
If it is far enough from the ship, the position remains until I get close to it.
if it is already close to the ship, it disappears as soon as I close the map.

The sphere of interest returns, telling me to "Fly to: The Void", which I am already in.
I did try flying to other other zone and returning to The Void, but cannot progress.

[DirkGriffin]

Tutorial: Travel Mode
Issue: Travel mode not available.
Save: Not available.

Background:
After engaging travel drive the first time (Pressing Shift + 1) the ship spooled up the drive and after reaching full speed the game triggered the event to turn off the travel drive, also did this with (Shift + 1) this initiated the coasting and after the conversation the mission changed to "Activate Travel Mode" trying to do this with (Shift + 1) fails with an audible ingame sound, pressing enter and navigating to the Modes reveals travel mode to be grayed out.

Testing:

• Game can not be saved, so reloading is not an option to try and fix the issue.
• You are also not allowed to get up from the seat to try and refresh the controls.
• pressing (TAB) to boost does nothing.
• Strafing still works.
• Forward & Backwards travel does not work, tried mouse wheel as well as (Z - Back) & (X - Forward)
• Backspace to stop does nothing.
• quick save is disabled.
• Changing camera views does nothing.
• New Map Function (Right click ship => Activate Travel Mode) does nothing.
• Disabling mission and re-enabling it does nothing.

Note: Travel Mode tutorial shows as incomplete.
Restarting the mission and engaging travel mode the way the mission suggest from the ship menu seems to allow you to engage travel mode again.
Retesting this again by restarting and using (Shift + 1) And this again causes Travel Mode to be disabled.


PC Hardware:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Socket AM4 1331
MOBO: Asrock A320M-HDV R4
RAM: Kingmax DDR4 3002 1501MHz 16GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB 128 bit

[Kal Ryper]

Missions

Appear to be stuck in a loop, after entering the sphere of interest.

In the map, have right-clicked and selected "Start Guidance to Position"
If it is far enough from the ship, the position remains until I get close to it.
if it is already close to the ship, it disappears as soon as I close the map.

The sphere of interest returns, telling me to "Fly to: The Void", which I am already in.
I did try flying to other other zone and returning to The Void, but cannot progress.

Can't edit my original post, so correcting it here.
Having completed all the other tutorials, I figured I was the issue and not the tutorial.

Personally, I find this tutorial misleading since the on-screen prompt is always telling you to open the map and set guidance to the target, which visually is still the sphere of interest.
I clearly missed the first time, the instruction to fly to the next sector and target the station. However, this is still skewed since the dialogue then tells me I have to fly through a gate (Which I've already done).
This requires flying back to The Void, for the dialogue to carry on, and then the tutorial can continue as expected.

[Fradler]

Beta 7.0 528286

Walking:

Upon initial load, able to move with the mouse, then locks camera which prompts 'look at me' display. It reset to be able to move after ~1 min.

Flying:

Same bug as others mentioned. Locks out travel mode when doing any other action other than directed decel. Loses the waypoint and effectively 'locks' the engine to 0.

[Codejnki]

Tutorial: Maps
Feedback: I am working through the maps tutorial at a brisk pace. The "radio static" noise between each sentence is a bit overwhelming when repeatedly played back to back. Please consider having fewer instances of the "radio static" noise between dialog lines.

[Woode]

I agree with a couple of others. I am brand new to X4 and am working though the tutorials. The Travel Mode tutorial cannot be finished. Not sure what happened, but coast phase after stopping travel mode didn't seem right. When the instructions told me to reenable travel mode, it was greyed out, breaking the tutorial.

[Fradler]

Beta 7.0 528286

Walking:

Upon initial load, able to move with the mouse, then locks camera which prompts 'look at me' display. It reset to be able to move after ~1 min.

Travel Mode:

Same bug as others mentioned. Locks out travel mode when doing any other action other than directed decel. Loses the waypoint and effectively 'locks' the engine to 0.

Adding more.

Highways and Gates:

Somehow managed to get ejected from the spacelane when approaching the superhighway. This led me to be 4k away from SH and had to manually pilot back to rejoin. New players may not be able to accomplish this.

Maybe I missed it, but no directions on how to 'exit the SH now' are provided. May not be obvious to new players how to do this; providing guidance would help reassure them of the correct actions to take.

Combat:

The pacing seems wrong, especially for new players. Missle count whizzed right by without me seeing the indicator. When taking damage was introduced, the transition time was -just- too long, and then the next transition was way too fast.


Spacesuit:

Not sure how I triggered it, but the 'shoot locks' remained while being directed to return to the ship. No guidance on how to dock with the ship was provided.

Orders:

Doing any interaction before the completion of the dictated instruction can hang the progression of the tutorial. IE right-clicking to remove an order before being directed to will cause that step to hang prior to looking at the scout's Information menu. EDIT: this might have been triggered because I used right-click on the ship to get to the info tab rather than the highlighted box on the left screen side. However, the highlighted 'right-click to interact with line' screen instruction remains.

Mining Orders:

Suggest that this comes after the Object Deployment tutorial. A new player would likely be stuck without knowing how to deploy a probe in that general area.

Combat Scenario:

Unable to progress. K had engines disabled early and stopped moving. Presuming it should jump out at some point?

[DirkGriffin]

Tutorial: Mining Orders
Issue: Object Deployment not covered yet.
Save: Not available.

Background:
When following the list of tutorials in sequence from top to bottom, the Object Deployment tutorial is below the Mining Orders tutorial, the Mining Orders tutorial however expects you to deploy a resource probe. New players would have no knowledge of how to do this.

Note:
I suggest moving the Object Deployment tutorial above the Mining Orders tutorial.

PC Hardware:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Socket AM4 1331
MOBO: Asrock A320M-HDV R4
RAM: Kingmax DDR4 3002 1501MHz 16GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB 128 bit

[Arsaneus]

Map

That's a tough one. Highly depends on the resolution and UI scale - but in my case I had a few issues with the tutorial.
When it says "Open the highlighted Menu" for the first time (Legend) I kept looking for a highlighted button but couldn't fine one as I expected to look on the left side.
I did turn off UI Glow so that could be a possible reason why it was hard to see (UI Glow is far too strong on an OLED monitor).

When asked to open the crew menu and then on the "+" of the crew member - I got lost. Again, the highlight is very small and I accidently clicked on another menu. When this happens, there is no "guide" back to the correct menu so I did no longer know what the tutorial expected me to do.
Clicked through many menus again until I saw that little plus flashing a little bit with the yellow border.

Same issue with the last task: Click on the "?" Help button. Top right corner and very small.

So overall, it would be helpful if the entire button is filled with another color and not just the border and maybe make it flashing to make it easier to see.
Also add a voice/text line to indicate the rough position of the button in question.
If possible, also guide a user to the correct menu when accidently opened up another one or "lock" others down so the user can't do anything wrong?

[DirkGriffin]

Tutorial: Combat Scenario
Issue: Boron can't destroy Xenon K
Save: Linked.

Background:
After destroying initial Xenon fighters at the Accelerator the station contacts the Ray Destroyer regarding a Xenon attack, traveling to the station you destroy the surface modules after which the Xenon K is stuck at 70% Hull. The station as well as the Newly created Shark fires at the K without lowering the Hull. I have now been hovering over the K for 10 minutes without any Hull damage.

Testing:

• Dock at Ray, switch to the Mako
• Use all 12 rockets on the Barracuda on the K
• Made sure all surface elements are destroyed on the K
• Keep attacking Xenon Fighters

Links:
Save Data:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... drive_link

PC Hardware:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Socket AM4 1331
MOBO: Asrock A320M-HDV R4
RAM: Kingmax DDR4 3002 1501MHz 16GB
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4GB 128 bit

[Falcrack]

Playing the Combat tutorial (under Basic Tutorials), I notice that for this first part while the dude is yammering away, my throttle controls are stuck. I cannot stop or decelerate, though I can steer. It is not an issue with my throttle not being recognized, because the targeting buttons are on the throttle and work fine. It is only after he stops talking that I can then adjust the throttle, stop, etc. I had to continually steer around while he was talking so I didn't get too far away from the hostile drones.

[Falcrack]

On the Spacesuit tutorial, when I started it, the wreck was not already spawned, and I started flying forwards. This meant that when the station did spawn, my ship was now stuck firmly inside the wreck. To reproduce, simply start the scenario, and immediately start flying forwards. The wreck will spawn, and the ship will now be stuck in it.