After lurking to Discord channel of Factorio I met someone that was struggling to learn the game and with the help of the community he's doing great and learns new stuff. I somewhat remember how I first felt about Factorio when I first started playing the game. It was confusing, I didn't know exactly why the game was so appreciated, why I'm attacked by bitters so early and often, why I have to craft all these things manually etc.. and I have to admit that I gave up playing Factorio for 2 months until I decided to give a second chance which this time really caught me.
So, to avoid this, I decided to say my opinion about this and hope that might be useful to improve the game for new players getting into Factorio.
* When first time a player enter the game, the player must be greeted with a message like "are you new to this game? (yes/no)" if Yes, then the game will have a specific settings for a new player such as disabled bitters, high amount of resources, rare forest etc.. and even day only if possible.
* When the player start the game, beside task list what to do, also create blueprints for each task or images as example to show the player what to create and expecially HOW to create stuff so the player must place all items, belts, boilers, drills in the designated area from the spawned blueprint and show information like how can delete, rotate stuff if the player makes mistakes.
* Keep giving hints until the player reach a specific technology like knowing how to obtain gas from oil and then rather showing a mission complete text, let the player continue the game like a normal singleplayer game until the player construct the rocket and fly away.
* During the player journey to learn the game, the player always have available a 'help' button in case of help. For example, if the player is unable to understand how the nuclear power works, how to do Kovarex or circuits, the player select the help button and select the help needed. Once selected, spawn a blueprint on the map near the player on an empty area to build and let the player construct it and give examples and reason why this. If the blueprint is spawned outside the visual of the player, let him know by also showing arrows where to go and an icon to minimap.
* Giving few tips during the game is also a great idea to show the player. For example how to split items from one belt to 2 belts etc.
* It's important to let the player understand that the game is about automation even if at the begin nothing like that seems to be true where you have to do manual job like mining for coal, crafting inserters, belts and have an impression (like i did first time) that I have to do this manually a lot before having to automatize stuff and the game might quickly become boring or too complex.
* Having in game links redirect to wikipedia may be a good thing or a short image/video with explanation ingame.
The above list is not complete and could be added lots of ideas but that's what comes in my mind right now.
Other suggestion or critics are also welcome here to better improve the experience of the game for new players so this way it increases chance that a new player is getting into the game easy rather than quitting and never play again.
Tutorial suggestion for new players
Post your ideas and suggestions how to improve the game.
Moderator: ickputzdirwech
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