Had my wife play the tutorial! Wrote up a whole lot of notes. I tried to not give her any feedback, just let her talk it through and figure it out.
Chronologically:
On the very first inventory screen, there are little popups "This area does X <TAB>" "This area does Y <TAB>". She thought it was weird that it told her 4 things in a row before letting her do anything. Maybe should have told her what she can do, let her do it, then popped up a new message.
Didn’t notice the hint to Ctrl+click to get everything from a box. This persisted for a long time.
The top-left objectives is a bullet point list, but one of the first things it tells you to do is make a stone furnace, which requires mining stone. She was confused because the top thing said to make a furnace, and UNDER THAT it said to get stone. You have to complete things in bottom->top order, which she didn't understand.
Thought she had to mine a LOT of stone (not just 5). She didn't notice that furnaces require 5 stone.
She accidentally built 2 furnaces immediately somehow.
She didn’t know how to get furnace out of inventory (figured it out after a few seconds).
She didn’t know how to deselect furnace with Q after placing (she had built 2). She eventually opened up the inventory and clicked it back in there.
She didn’t know where to find iron. The guide was telling her to put fuel in the furnace instead of go mine iron (should maybe tell her to go mine first?).
She didn’t know how to close the furnace window. Why are there no X close buttons in the UI?
She didn’t know to take iron out of the furnace after the iron was created. She tried to make a mining drill and was confused why she didn't have Iron in her inventory.
She placed the the mining drill on the iron instead of coal.
She didn’t know how to pick the mining drill back up. She tapped right click, but didn't hold down right click, and figured that she couldn't pick it back up. Didn't notice the progress bar along the bottom of the screen (we have 4K monitors).
Speaking of 4K monitors, I suggested she zoom in because she was zoomed way out and couldn't see the details of the buildings very well.
Once she got to the point where the Compilatron needed stuff, she said the game was stupid, tedious, and not fun. She didn’t want to go collect all the stuff for the Compilatron.
She did manage to go build the Compilatron stuff by hand.
She built 4 transport belts instead of 2. She wanted to put just 2 into the Compilatron but didn't know how. Thought she put in all 4 (though actually I think it only accepted 2).
She didn’t understand the automated demonstration, a bunch of buildings were placed (including Inserters!) and it was more than she could figure out.
SUGGESTION: Before the Compilatron stuff, I think it should walk you through automating self-feeding of the Coal Mining Drill - a few belts, 2 inserters, and a chest. This would show off how belts work, and what inserters are and how they work. It would also give you a steady supply of coal.
After the automated demonstration, she was required to build transport belts. She didn’t understand how to build them at first, but eventually got it. As with above suggestion, perhaps more hand-holding around building belts (and inserters) would be useful prior to this step?
Accidentally popped up "more details" window for transport belts, didn’t know how to close it.
Couldn’t reach the last spot to put down transport belts because was too far away, didn’t understand why at first. Got frustrated, rotated some belts. Eventually figured out that "out of reach" error meant her engineer's body was too far away from the belts.
Because she accidentally rotated belts the wrong way, the iron didn't go into the feeder. She got confused.
She kept going and grabbing wood instead of taking coal from the chest. I ended up telling her to get the coal.
The sub-tutorial (with the grid background) for how to pick up and transfer items began. The checkerboard background for this tutorial is SUPER DIZZYING on a big monitor. It really looked awful! It needs to change!
Text typos in sub-tutorial:
“on a empty” --> “on an empty”
“on a iron plate” --> “on an iron plate”
The “transfer all” / “transfer half” etc. was very confusing to her. There were so many possible ways to move things. “There’s no way I could know everything they just tried to teach me. I would need to live in the tutorial for like 4 hours” It was an overwhelming amount of information.
She tried to put coal into the iron furnaces. She took 25 coal into her hand with right click, then ctrl+clicked it into a furnace. This cleared out her hand of 25 coal, but then refilled it with... 50 coal. She expected it to be filled with 25 coal from her inventory.
She got to the point where it asked her to automate copper, then she got tired of it. "This game is not for me."
(For the record, this game is VERY MUCH for me. Just not my wife ^_^)
