Are there plans for a real tutorial?

[darthraven]

Now I know the X games have never been ones to hold players hands and this is fine and cool and one of the things I think most of us like about the games, but honestly, as an X2 and X3 player I find myself lost at the start of this game. Even starting with the young gun which is meant to be the tutorial start if I understand correctly and all we get is an H menu with disjointed and very hard to follow "tutorials". Although I would not call them that, they hardly explain anything and hardly give any info. Who made these? Sorry to be so negative but you did a very very bad job there mate, need to redo the whole thing from scratch.

Anyway after being totally lost for about an hour I went online to see if I'm just being an idiot to find lots and lots of threads about how bad the tutorial is (I couldn't agree more) and how many people refunded or gave up on the game because they were so lost at the start. Even for an old X player if I am finding this hard and frustrating I wonder how it is for people totally new to the X universe. I mean OK the X games are for the most part complex games (X:R not included) but this is just silly.

Let's look at this objectively from the point of view a totally new player... you start on a dock with a ship in front of you, and that's it? No tutorial narrative? no helpful NPC to help you with your first steps? No tutorial storyline? It takes like 60 seconds to even be told you have to press H for the so-called tutorial missions, and honestly, I am having a hard time calling them tutorials. So you press H and at that point, your faced with a daunting interface you have no idea about, how to navigate it or what all those buttons and icons mean (I know the UI is cleaner than in the past but it's still a very complex dump of info coming at you at a million miles per hour). But ok so you choose the flight tutorial that seems to be a good place to start, except your told to look around and for what you have no idea? what am I meant to be facing, what are all these icons, why is there a ship bumping into me I'm not even moving, is that gold outline meant to mean something? Ohhh that's a mission marker and I'm meant to face it, would have been nice if someone explained what the UI is all about first don't you think? Anyway, we are moving now but to where and why? ohh X and Z are speed controls? how come you didn't tell me the mouse wheel also works? would have saved me trying to remap them because of how badly placed they are, wait you're not even going to tell me about how WASD works? ohh I gotta work that out by myself... wait did you just tell me something, I missed that message how do I see it? ahh wait there is a messages button at the lower left. If the UI had being explained maybe I would know what the shortcut keys are to see them... and this goes on and on and on.

Do you see where I'm coming from and how could the developers not see this coming and actually spend some time making an actual tutorial? I mean games as old as freelancer (though they may not be as complex) knew how to make tutorials, how to make it part of the starting narrative, and games since then has expanded and built upon those ideas with prelude tutorials that you can skip on further playthroughs, why for a game this complex and daunting at the start it was not deemed necessary?

Anyway going back to the post title, have the developers realized how much of a big problem this is (just look at the steam reviews) and are they going to do something about it, or has it been left to the community to make tutorial videos to be uploaded to YT because the developers don't care (I guess)?

I have 2 rules I usually stand by, 1: no game should need an outside source to learn the basics off, and 2: no game should need mods to make it playable. At the moment X4 breaks rule 1 for me. Any info you guys can provide would be much appreciated, while I go off to watch a couple hours of youtube videos about the game I was hoping to play tonight

[Hector0x]

I also had to get used to the gameplay, but the initial learning phase was rewarding nonetheless and i'm glad it isn't even over yet. Sometimes it has its own logic, but it is consistent with its rules.
If something did not work it was either my fault, or a bug. And most of the bugs i encountered have been fixed in the first two weeks after release. I know i will play this game over the next decade like X3 over the last, so the "investment" is well worth it too.

We are getting pampered by modern games and also forget that games should make us curious, and playfully, and inspire us to try out new things. Today i often find myself minmaxing, optimizing, and playing "efficient", which feels more like work than fun. Stumbling around at X4's release weekend has been my best gaming experience in a long time.

Setting up "rules" for something that is supposed to give joy leads directly into the dull mass market that triple a gaming has become.

[Socratatus]

This is one of those games that a 1990s type manual would be perfect for...

However, these days manuals come in the form of `check the net or just learn it by trial and error`. And I often think even the Devs aren`t sure what their game fully does.

Sad, really.

[darthraven]

I also had to get used to the gameplay, but the initial learning phase was rewarding nonetheless and i'm glad it isn't even over yet. Sometimes it has its own logic, but it is consistent with its rules.
If something did not work it was either my fault, or a bug. And most of the bugs i encountered have been fixed in the first two weeks after release. I know i will play this game over the next decade like X3 over the last, so the "investment" is well worth it too.

We are getting pampered by modern games and also forget that games should make us curious, and playfully, and inspire us to try out new things. Today i often find myself minmaxing, optimizing, and playing "efficient", which feels more like work than fun. Stumbling around at X4's release weekend has been my best gaming experience in a long time.

Setting up "rules" for something that is supposed to give joy leads directly into the dull mass market that triple a gaming has become.

Yeah I will probably end up putting 2000+ hours as I have done for X2 and the X3's, that's not the problem, I'm going to play this game because IT IS complex... my problem is the tutorial, it is a massive let down and needs to be redone. That is what I was asking, you know are they going to fix it or not.

How much better would it be if the game actually showed people how to play so the player base is larger, how much better would it be if the sales were double what they are, how much better would it be if people didn't leave reviews on steam saying the game is too hard to learn or the tutorial is confusing AF. How much better would it be if developers actually cared enough to make a way for new people to get into, most of us here have years of X game experience, they probably have countless man-hours of working on the game, and maybe that means they are not aware of how daunting it is because everything comes second nature to them. But a good alpha, beta or quality test team would have told them the tutorial is pants and needs to be redone, so either those steps were not taken or they were ignored.