In the tutorial, list tasks with the dependencies above the task itself

[NieDzejkob]

TL;DR

Put the tasks below their dependencies in the tutorial task list to make it harder to miss.

What ?

Consider this list of tasks in the tutorial:

gcd8iaaqbd341.png (62.17 KiB) Viewed 3306 times

The dependency tree, while nice, has the undesirable property that the player can become "blind" to the higher-level tasks. I believe this effect would be minimized if the higher-level tasks were below their dependencies:

factorio-tutorial-mockup.png (59.71 KiB) Viewed 3306 times

Why ?

I got inspired by this post on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/factorio/comme ... e_able_to/
As you can see by reading the discussion, it's not unheard of to not notice the "Bring the items to Compilatron" item.

[ssilk]

Ya, it's a bit confusing.

My opinion: Instead of turning all around I would try to remove depth:

- See a demonstration
- Put these into your pockets:
---- Have a Burner mining drill 1/1
---- Have some Transport belts 12/2
---- Have a Burner inserter 2/1
- Bring those Items to Compilatron

[valneq]

But that tree really is kind of a dependency tree: you need to do everything listed before you can see the demonstration. In ssilk's suggestion, it looks like you see a demonstration before you do the other stuff, or in any order you like. While in the current representation, only the things on the same hierarchical level can be done in any order, and the tree represents the dependencies.

Keep in mind that later on, some objectives consist of several (partially) independent dependency trees that should still be represented in the objective window. Therefore, if you want to keep the order of first to last being up to down, you should flip everything around, and keep the hierarchy as the suggestion in the OP.

[abregado]

Ill explain the process behind it ending up the way it is. Im not trying to shoot down any ideas here, just draw back the curtain of development thinking.

The main reason for it being the way it is:

1) Having the "easiest to do" task at the bottom promotes players reading the whole list before starting, instead of completing tasks top down like a robot and forgetting what they did (see 0.16 tutorial).

2) After I explained this to Kovarex he noted the similarities to a hierarchy graph and suggested using this parent/child structure. It sounded pretty good, so we tried it and it worked with new players.

A lot of people find it odd simply because they are used to doing tasks from a list without thinking about the list itself. The top item in this case IS the most important, but it is also the most dependent on other tasks.

- See a demonstration
- Put these into your pockets:
---- Have a Burner mining drill 1/1
---- Have some Transport belts 12/2
---- Have a Burner inserter 2/1
- Bring those Items to Compilatron

In this example, why is "See a Demonstration" on the top? Technically you will see a demonstration after you get to the bottom of the list. Reading order is just one piece of the puzzle. The way humans read is still not very well understood, that is why there is a whole branch of Psychology dedicated to it.

I feel the reddit post linked in OP is more a problem of not introducing Compilatron. This was sadly a side effect of doing the opening cutscene as the final task...

[ssilk]

Coming back to this... I think your explanation makes sense, but there are habits. And one of them is that mankind normally reads from top to bottom. I don’t say bottom to top is wrong. But I think this should then look more like a graph, and not like a reversed list, to make it more clear, that it is pure purpose.

For example: if that pops up at the bottom of screen, it would make a big difference in how to read it. Just one of some small changes, that could be done.