New players - share your tutorial / campaign experience

[Selvek]

There are many, many discussions about the new 0.17 tutorial / campaign. As far as I can tell, virtually all of them come from veterans. But, this is supposed to be the "new player experience", and yet, there are very few stories from new players!

Are you a new player? Is the new tutorial the first experience you had of Factorio? If so, please share your experience below!

[EverettSpair]

Hey.
First of, I'm not "truly" a new player. I played like 2 hours 2 years ago but I consider myself to be pretty much a new player.

Overall impression of the Introduction campaign is that it was annoying.
There was a lot of confusion along the way. I remember the game wanted me to make copper plates out of nowhere without telling me how to do that at all.
Took me a long time running around aimlessly until I managed to find copper ore and then even longer to realize that the stone furnace could make copper plates in addition to the iron plates.
A huge annoyance that may not be the campaign itself was the inventory screen. every time I opened it it appeared in the center of the screen and if I wanted to place an object I had to move the window out of the way every time. Super annoying but might just be the GUI not being completed.

after that things went kinda smooth until the game wanted me to make green circuits. So in order to make them I needed copper wire and iron plates (or was it iron gears? I dont remember). But I couldnt make copper wire on my own so I needed another assembler to make them. I couldnt make another assembler because I needed green circuits to make one. See the problem here? I tried to change the recipie on the premade assembler but the game didnt allow that.
My solution was to have the assembler make a few copper wire first. then I demolished the copper wire production and made a green circuits production with the few copper wires I had made.

Then the biters arrived and the game needed me to make more copper wire (I think). Now this was too much. I was already past the copper wire part and now I needed to switch the assembler setup to copper wire AGAIN? (to do that I had to demolish my now non-functional green circuit setup)
I quit the game there because it was too annoying. Switching my entire setup back and forth is not fun in any way.

This was my experience at least. Maybe I misunderstood what I was actually supposed to do. I dont know. If I did misunderstood then the tutorial needs to be a lot more clear on what you're supposed to do.

edit: One thing I forgot to mention is that the order in which information is given is sometimes reversed. The game wanted me to place an inserter for the first time into the assembler. so I did. It didn't work. Then AFTER I'd placed it the game told me I could rotate it with R. This just felt like the game was trolling me for not knowing all the controls. If its required to rotate an object in order for it to work you have to tell the player that BEFORE they place it.

[jotun]

Fairly new here. I played the demo a couple times and skimmed a couple of videos to get the gist of what the game was about and how to set up a starter base. Didn't do any freeplay before playing Introduction

Main points:

- I thought it was all fine up until the final objective with the escalating biter waves. I probably thought of a few nitpicks along the way, but nothing specific that I remember right now.

- I died horribly and it felt rather unfair and unexpected. I didn't think that was the type of game this was, and it didn't feel right for a tutorial. I built significantly more defenses and ammo production than the mission requirements, but still got totally overrun. I even had semi-automated loading on my turrets, but I still had to run back and forth to refill the feeder chests. By the time it became apparent that I couldn't keep up, there was no way to take a break from ammo loading to try to build up more production.

- I had no idea that the final objective actually was the final objective until I replayed it and won. I don't think there was any indication that researching the green research packs would somehow get me out of there. Even though I may have been seconds away from victory on my first attempt, I didn't know that at the time.

- I really wish I had underground belts

[abregado]

after that things went kinda smooth until the game wanted me to make green circuits. So in order to make them I needed copper wire and iron plates (or was it iron gears? I dont remember). But I couldnt make copper wire on my own so I needed another assembler to make them. I couldnt make another assembler because I needed green circuits to make one. See the problem here? I tried to change the recipie on the premade assembler but the game didnt allow that.
My solution was to have the assembler make a few copper wire first. then I demolished the copper wire production and made a green circuits production with the few copper wires I had made.

There is a button in the Assembling machine that lets you change the recipe, but Im seeing this come up a lot so it is clearly a problem. I will make sure we look into it when we redo the User interface for the Assembling machines.

[Ormy]

Hi

I discovered factorio about 2 weeks ago, loving it so far. I played through the tutorial campaign (took about 8 hours), now I'm about 30 hours into my first freeplay game.

I found the tutorial very helpful in figuring out how the game works, you did a great job hitting all the bullet points in FF#284, especially the one about learning to play the game instead of learning to finish the scenario, the scope for creativity and open-endedness of the game was immediately obvious and was the main thing that got me hooked straight away.

I've read several comments on the forums about the difficulty of the biters. I got overrun the first time a big wave arrived (after completing one of the objectives that triggers them to come), mainly because I had no idea what to expect. I went back to a previous save, made sure I had plenty of turrets before completing that objective again (about 5 each side of my base (EDIT: more like 10 each side looking at the screenshots)) and after loading each one with its max ammo capacity I had no problems with the biters. Producing all the ammo I needed actually taught me some valuable lessons about production lines and bottlenecks. I would say the difficulty is just fine. Anyone with experience in any RTS or tower-defence game should have no trouble.

I didn't realise at the time but after playing in freeplay for a while I can say that the lack of underground belts hampered my progress in the tutorial, I spent quite a while figuring out how to route belts round eachother, and then that skill becomes a bit useless once you have underground belts. Lack of splitters is not as much of an issue because you can use inserters to split belts, but please consider allowing the player to research underground belts in the second area of the tutorial.

One thing I learned later on in freeplay is the concept of 'lanes' on each belt. i.e. having separate items on each side of a belt so that one belt can deliver two sets of items to an assembler, but you have to be careful that each item doesn't 'contaminate' the wrong side of the belt or production will cease. Have you considered using compilatron to demonstrate this quite important concept to players during the tutorial?

Another thing that I needed guidance on early on but had to figure out for myself: the assemblers that are already present (the ones with a fixed recipe that require no electricity) have an arrow telling you where to insert items. When I built my first 'real' assembler I didn't know which side to insert items and where to remove (I was expecting some kind of arrow, something like you get for fluids). A little tooltip saying something like "you can remove and insert items to an assembler from ANY direction/side, you can even insert and remove on the same side (with separate inserters ofcourse)". Please strongly consider giving the player this info when they build their first assembler.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have utility science pack production lines to set up.

[edkz]

I'm a new player, but I did watch some videos, so I did already have some idea of what I needed to do. I did the 0.16 demo tutorials then decided to buy the game and got 0.17.11. Playing the first tutorial campaign. I like this much better than the demo version. Here are the parts that I suggest for improvement:
In general, I think if I didn't watch some videos, I wouldn't know what to do after the first few objectives. I think there should be more details on all the steps to get things done.
At the point where you need to pick up your stuff and move the base, its not clear that you need to pick up EVERYTHING that can be picked up. I think it would be helpful to explain at some point that things can be deconstructed and put back into your inventory.
When the robot runs away (at the same point where you need to move the base), it runs too fast to read its messages. Fortunately I figured out how to pause the game so I just timed the pause to catch it. Maybe this would be a good way to teach the pause feature if you put it as an Objective.
When I get to the lake, an inventory tutorial pops up. After the tutorial is done, the pop up remains on screen, I had to press ESC to make it go away. It probably should say on the dialog to press ESC to close it.
That's all for now, have to go to sleep.... Maybe add a "remember to sleep" tutorial.

[EverettSpair]

Having read more stuff here and remembering how I played I realized that I was constantly running around picking up coal from the coal drill and putting it into everything else.
It seems I was supposed to move coal into everything else with belts and inserters but the game never told me I should or even that I could do that.

On a positive note (I think I need some positive things as well) the little robot buddy did come with some helpful stuff. I hope I remember correctly but I think I had a problem with the coal drill in that it only mined 2 coals and then stopped. Robo then came up and suggested I build a chest next to the drill so the coal could pile up inside it. That was good.

[proclion]

So I had my girlfriend give the factorio tutorial (v0.17.8) a try (she's never tried factorio). She got to just after making electricity then stopped for the day.

Some points to consider:

• "E" to close inventory was not mentioned when you need to use it but instead a while beforehand. She got stuck there.
• For the "Salvage scrap metal" objective it wasn't clear what needed doing. gf says: "That's not scrap metal"
• Not obvious which objective is next in the objective tree.
• She was seriously offended by not being able to place at a distance.
• The fact that belts going up to a chest didn't load that chest was unintuitive. "Doesn't make sense that things can go straight into chest from miner, but not via belt."
• It wasn't clear how to give items to the feeder.
• How to rotate objects needed repeating, I suspect referencing where to find hotkeys and keeping that visible throughout the tutorial might be useful.
• Figuring out how to get iron gear wheels took a bit (wasn't obvious that you need to use that already placed building).
• Loader lead to the wrong intuitions about how loading things works (and it going away was a headscratcher). Seriously consider replacing with a non-fuel-needing inserter.
• Placing belts is annoying as you have to turn them all the time (this has also bothered me a lot).
• The example automation was very helpful.
• forgot how to make iron gear wheels via the pre-built assembler
• The reserve of iron plates in a box was helpful.
• For most of the game she thought double-click removed things rather than a prolonged press removing things.
• The right side of the inventory (the item creation one) was repeatedly clicked on when an item was desired.
• The search box in recipe menu searching descriptions would have been useful.
• How to make electricity was confusing. There was no "small electricity provider" (what had been seen before) and icon for not supplying electricity is same icon as not being supplied with electricity so she thought there were other components besides the steam engine required. Spent a long time finding out how else to make electricity.

[abregado]

Thanks for using your newbie for Factorio testing. Thanks to your partner as well.

"E" to close inventory was not mentioned when you need to use it but instead a while beforehand. She got stuck there.
How to rotate objects needed repeating, I suspect referencing where to find hotkeys and keeping that visible throughout the tutorial might be useful.

Ill have these repeat. The eventual plan is that the hints go into a "log" where you can access them again.. but we need to wait for gui designers.

For the "Salvage scrap metal" objective it wasn't clear what needed doing. gf says: "That's not scrap metal"
It wasn't clear how to give items to the feeder.

I hope the new art will solve these

She was seriously offended by not being able to place at a distance.

What? You CAN place at a distance... just not a very long distance

The fact that belts going up to a chest didn't load that chest was unintuitive. "Doesn't make sense that things can go straight into chest from miner, but not via belt."

Yeah, this is a common sticking point with new players. Miners are the only things that do this with items. We even observed new players attaching chests to boilers and offshore pumps to collect the water (since they also have arrow outputs)

Figuring out how to get iron gear wheels took a bit (wasn't obvious that you need to use that already placed building).
forgot how to make iron gear wheels via the pre-built assembler

Going to try a cutscene for this one. Alt mode just is not enough to show this.

How to make electricity was confusing. There was no "small electricity provider" (what had been seen before) and icon for not supplying electricity is same icon as not being supplied with electricity so she thought there were other components besides the steam engine required. Spent a long time finding out how else to make electricity

I had considered adding a steam geyser entity, just so the new players can start by connecting a steam engine directly. Then we could teach boilers later on. But that is not in the Freeplay so I will have to come up with something else.

[IlyasNL]

I had new player(my gf) play the starter campaign, this was 0.17.14 or .12, I'm no sure.
These were my observations, sortof grouped in chronological order.
Italicized text is the observation, the text directly under it are my comments.

Sorry for the wall of text, it's been years since I've had to work with PHPBB markup.

• Drag & drop doesn't work in inventory screens.
  When transferring items between inventory and an entity, she expected drag and drop to be a thing.
• Escape button doesn't work as clear cursor.
  It seems that "Q" is not explained earlier enough and remains an illogical choice.
  She kept hitting escape to close windows, which only works for some of them.
• What are feeders?
  The objective mentions feeders but it's not immediately clear what feeders are. The graphics are also not helping.
  I know the intro text mentions placeholder assets, I assume this is one of them.
  They need a more clear way to tell the player how to 'interact' with them.
• How to manually drop items on a belt?
  She wanted to drop a stack onto a belt but had no idea how.
• Splitting item stacks it not mentioned.
  Not a direct issue but when all items still require fuel, putting a large stack of coal into a burner inserter feels.....wrong.
  Again, minor issue for me, not for a beginning player I suppose.
• Placing and rotating items is not mentioned, clearly.
  At some point, it's mentioned you can rotate items by pressing R, but it's NOT being made clear that you can do this WITHOUT picking up items and placing them.
  I think more attention should be given to this.
• Unclear that you can mine by HOLDING rmb.
  She kept clicking rmb to mine items, but maybe she didn't read the text on screen properly.
• "THIS GAME USES TOO MANY BUTTONS!"
  I told her I didn't see the problem.
• New tech available prompt too small/short on screen.
  Should be onscreen more prominently I'd say. It's a big step forward.
• Belt lane mixing is not addressed.
  At some point, Copper plates and gears got mixed on a single belt and stopped production of Red Science.
  Maybe Compilatron should signal this and take action....somehow when this is detected?
• Unclear where to connect Small Electric Pole.
  This ties in with another minor annoyance of mine. The Power Low icon on power generating entities should be different than those on power consuming entities.
  It just doesn't make sense. Either invert the icon, or change the color to blue or change the iconography.
  Change SOMETHING.
• Research complete screen is in an non-logical place.
  It's way too low on the screen and sticks on the screen for no reason.

I'm no UX/UI expert but I'd say the new design is going into the right direction. It's not there yet though.
For example, when clicking an item from the inventory, most people would expect the inventory to close instead of having to manually close it.
Maybe this can be set as a toggle option or automatically change after having opened the inventory menu X amount of times.

Compilator's on screen stats are ludicrous, there is even an exponential readout for it's damage.
Maybe tweak that to more normal values.

That's about it, I hope the devs can make sens of it.
Thanks for putting so much effort into this!

[knightelite]

Didn't see this thread before I posted this morning. I posted my wife's first experiences in this thread.

[briane2k]

I think the objectives is confusing because the conclusion is on top.
I think since most people read top down, it would be better if the sub-goals would be above the final goal.

[Selleri]

Had my friend play the introduction. I wrote my observations in plaintext, and own thoughts on the subject in italics.

• Subtle hints to use belts to the "feeders" worked great. Player actually felt that he discovered something.

• When the player researched the "improved character inventory", one which lets you handcraft circuits and other items, he stated that he doesn't need circuit automation anymore, so he removed the assemblers. He proceeded to handcraft circuits, explaining that it's easier this way.

• The first biter attacks were annoying more than exciting. A single biter could destroy seemingly lot of progress. The progress lost wasn't huge, mainly a drill or furnace with couple of belts. It took the player several minutes and biter attacks before he could build first turret. Maybe biter damage should ramp up, where first biters are very weak and don't manage to destroy structures? Or perhaps give the player a single turret already in place.

• Jagged beach made it irritating to place steam electricity compositions. Several "you cannot place that on water" -cases happened, before successful setup.

• Introduction is very lengthy. The player took over 2 hours to get to the turret phase.

• Burner inserters were a burden to keep fueled. Basic inserters could not require any power at all in the start?

[McDuff]

I had considered adding a steam geyser entity, just so the new players can start by connecting a steam engine directly. Then we could teach boilers later on. But that is not in the Freeplay so I will have to come up with something else.

This might actually be a nice little addition to the base game. If a "steam geyser" produced, say, enough 165 degree steam to power 1 steam engine, you would have a nice little base starter power plant, but still need coal to go up any scale. They would also function as backup in case everything else ran down so you would never be *completely* without power, or be useful for small outposts.

My maths says you can run 10 mining drills from 1 steam engine, so if you made sure Steam Geysers were only spawned as singles, you'd get a bunch of handy little "baseline" power sources but still need to develop your major power generation infrastructure for any serious expansion. Could also be a challenge - since it would *technically* be possible to go all the way to the end game (albeit very slowly) without burning any coal for power, if you launch a rocket without doing this you get a "super green" achievement or something.