Severe lack of explanations in game!

[SilentStorm]

This is going to be a bit of a rant...

We have all these great things in the game, in fact you even added an entire god damn Factoriopedia into the game.
There is an entire basically full screen tips and tricks window, and yet except for the utter basics of things (which were already present in 1.1 in mostly the same way), or some very cringe worthy "thanks captain obvious" moments, not much is **actually** explained in there at all.

Hell even some basic things that most people will know aren't actually explained at all. Like Requester Chest basically says "Requests stuff from the logistic networks" like oh really? Who would have guessed based on the name of the item...

There are also Tips that basically say "Hey gun turrets can shoot things" (OH REALLY?!?). Good thing we have an article about that stuff, it would be too bad if people got confused when their space ships get hit by asteroids and then they wouldn't know how to cope with that without said article...

However what utterly lacks ANY documentation whatsoever, is basically anything added with 2.0 except for the very basic stuff already mentioned.

Interrupts, Space ship logistics, any of the conditions / triggers? NOPE.... It's just a big middle finger towards the player and a good luck googling that stuff and / or spending 50 hours testing in game ripping your hair out. It's utterly disgusting really.
We have these nice facilities in the actual game right there when and as you play it, but nope we are either forced to waste time trying to make sense of some obscure text that doesn't do any of the obvious things the text suggests after thinking about what it could possibly mean, or just go and search through google results, the reddit rabbit hole or maybe the wiki might possibly have something about it.
Why?!? Just why?!

What does "Any planet import zero" even do? You get to select a planet, but whenever the space ship requests something and doesn't have any of it it doesn't do anything.
Do you get any explanation for it? NOPE, it's just that bit of text there that doesn't make any sense.
What does "Any request not satisfied" even do? You don't get any explanation for it, nor does it have any kind of filters or limitations on it. Yet it's available as an interrupt condition for some obscure reason. Is it any request on any planet is not satisfied? Is it any request the ship has that is not satisfied? Who even bloody knows, there is zero documentation or information about it anywhere.... And neither of the two possible things you'd come up with that it could potentially possibly maybe do, make any sense as an interrupt condition in the first place.

But hey at least we get an info text on what "Allow interrupting other interrupts" will do, because that totally isn't self-explanatory....

in any case... tl;dr:
Game "explains" the stuff that doesn't need explaining, but doesn't give any info on the things that actually don't make any sense.

[meganothing]

The important information (for example which chest does what and how stuff works) does not need to be googled. The (official!?) factorio wiki has it.

[SilentStorm]

The important information (for example which chest does what and how stuff works) does not need to be googled. The (official!?) factorio wiki has it.

Again, that requires knowing about the Wiki or finding it and more importantly having access to it.
Factorio can be played offline (thankfully), which means you don't have access to the wiki (even if you know of it).

Regardless it is still an external to the game thing that you would have to go to instead of the game explaining itself. We have the Tips and tricks window, it should be used.

Yes it cannot be updated as easily as the wiki can, and it won't have any of the player contributed extra information. But the game should explain itself properly.

I don't need to see a fullscreen GIF / simulation / video or a belt moving or see a swarm of bots looping around a moving character. I can see that while playing the game and know how a moving belt looks after 30 minutes of playing the game (considering a brand new player never having seen anything of the game).
The Tips and Tricks shouldn't be 95% animated and 5% text (which is often not actually adding any explanation beyond what is already obvious from the names). It should instead be more text and then add animations / videos / simulations where necessary and in a size that is appropriate for the content being shown / the thing that is to be explained.

And even just the logistic chests. The ingame Tips and tricks about it is pretty laughable, although not the worst example.

"Passive Provider chest supplies its items to the logistic network." You basically just replaced the word "provide" from the item name with "supplies" which is effectively just another word for the exact same thing.
The second sentence that is there is "This means any items in the passive provider chests can be taken by robots to fulfill logistic or construction orders", which I guess fair enough, but it also does not explain any of the differences wrt the other type of chests.
But hey at least we get a 7:1 ratio of video animation and text field, and seeing how the text field is only used to 50% of it's ability more like a 14:1 ratio.

One should not have to go to the Wiki (or any external resource for that matter) to be told about how these chests (and the different types) work as well as interact with each other.

Really that is the entire point: We have the facilities in the game, they are just not used at all, and what is there is lackluster at best.

[NineNine]

It's just a big middle finger towards the player and a good luck googling that stuff and / or spending 50 hours testing in game ripping your hair out. It's utterly disgusting really.

I'm having a hard time understanding your point. Are you saying that you're unhappy with some aspect of the game?

[pioruns]

However what utterly lacks ANY documentation whatsoever, is basically anything added with 2.0 except for the very basic stuff already mentioned.

Extensive documentation/manuals in-game is an exception, not a norm. Factorio could have ZERO documentation, and you would have to google everything, like in another ten thousand games. Zero documentation is a STANDARD. So, stop ranting and search google for whatever you are missing. Not to mention, you have excellent official forum, where you can ask anything.
I don't see a problem here.

[NineNine]

The base game has good documentation. The (excellent) demo walks you through all of the basic mechanics of the game, and then there is in-game help for the rest of it.

There's not a ton of explicit in-game instructions for SA, but SA is an add-on that can only be played if you already own the base game. So, anybody playing SA should have already played through the basic game, and understand the mechanics. So really, there's not a lot of brand new stuff in SA that somebody who's already played the base game can't figure out. And between the wiki, and this forum, it's really not all that heard to learn about SA. I had a couple of head scratcher moments when I first started SA, but it certainly didn't take me any where near 50 hours to figure them out.

[Tertius]

I agree there is zero explanation of the platform interrupt triggers and waiting conditions and this is severely lacking.
The other points are not valid. There is the tutorial, there is the tips and tricks with examples. The tips and tricks are not complete unfortunately, but it's not nothing.

All modern games don't explain how to play. They have a tutorial for the core basics, that's all. Most players will skip any documentation anyway, so spending development time is wasted. They want to explore the game features on their own. Often, game features change over the course of development, so any tutorial needs to be made after the game is finished. But keeping a finished game unreleased until some player-facing game-integrated documentation is finished just isn't feasible.
For the players who require documentation, the players created game wikis to document more of the game. With Factorio, it's the same.

[Premu]

All modern games don't explain how to play. They have a tutorial for the core basics, that's all. Most players will skip any documentation anyway, so spending development time is wasted. They want to explore the game features on their own. Often, game features change over the course of development, so any tutorial needs to be made after the game is finished. But keeping a finished game unreleased until some player-facing game-integrated documentation is finished just isn't feasible.
For the players who require documentation, the players created game wikis to document more of the game. With Factorio, it's the same.

Just because all games do it, does it make it good?

The criticism has a point - while I love Factorio, some aspects have to be found out by extensive googeling or trial and error. That is not good game design. Other games being equally bad doesn't make it better.

And Factorio actually already has some excellent tutorials compared to other games for the base game. These mini-tutorials which pop up just after a specific technology has been researched, so just at the time you need to know something, are a really good way to teach a player without much hassle. And they are short, so they don't distract too much. So - why not make some similar tutorials for SA features?

[pioruns]

The criticism has a point - while I love Factorio, some aspects have to be found out by extensive googeling or trial and error. That is not good game design. Other games being equally bad doesn't make it better.

Don't want to sound too offensive, but...
Nah you are just lazy or want to be hand-holded during gameplay. Figure it out.

[mmmPI]

Keep in mind that Space Age is still getting worked on !

True there are many things that aren't explained.

Thats not really a problem to me, i play many games without reading the documentation, considering observation and deduction are part of the game, and understanding how to progress.

But i do wish to have a source of very precise exhaustive documentation about everything "available", which i think for Factorio would be the combo of Wiki + forum and other internet sources.

I think part of what isn't documented in game is also about the combinators, the way "each" function, and other edge cases where you can find out for yourself each one but struggle to try and infer the rules that devs often repeat on the forum on erroneous bug reports.

All and all, i disagree with the "severe" term used, because i think the undocumented things are also advanced features that won't be critically missed by players to have fun, those are more the things you need to "understand everything". If some features are still being worked on or considered for modifications, that could explain also why those parts aren't already fully documented in game. In terms of priority it would sit pretty low.

Just because all games do it, does it make it good?

I understood previous sentence as "all modern games don't explain how to play" = "not all modern games explain how to play".

Considering "modern games" are those were people can go on the internet to get the manual or latest player-discovered tips-and-tricks, or games with frequent updates that makes it so that not everything is documented in manuals but also under the form of changelogs and the organisation of the information takes a bit of time to do so is always a few updates behind.

Not saying it's "good", but it has some explanations for why it is something that "is". And player skipping doc "because" they know they can ask somewhere only the things that they still didn't get after going at it like a fool without reading the rules first.

Some" modern games" even proclaim as an artistic / dev-stated intent, to skip all documentation, (and HUD sometimes) for more immersion. ( no alt-mode style )

[Premu]

The criticism has a point - while I love Factorio, some aspects have to be found out by extensive googeling or trial and error. That is not good game design. Other games being equally bad doesn't make it better.

Don't want to sound too offensive, but...
Nah you are just lazy or want to be hand-holded during gameplay. Figure it out.

If you don't want to sound too offensive, why do you insult me?

Besides, I already figured out the game. I don't really need such tutorials anymore. But - new players might.

The point of a game is that it should be fun. And it should be centered around its core features. Factorio is essentially a puzzle game - how can you implement the production chain with all the different means at your disposal? And how can you scale it up? How do you deal with the "external" factors like limitations by the different planets?

Factorio's gameplay is not centered around (and no game really should be): Deciphering the game mechanics. I know, it's something many complex games are bad at, and it's made worse with the modern tendencies that constant patching changes some of these mechanics over and over again. That doesn't mean that a game can help new players and make the learning curve a little bit smoother.

[meganothing]

While we talk about tutorials: In my view tutorials and tips&tricks that are not actively searched for by the player are a bad idea, unless they are about the UI. Part of the fun in this game is experimenting with and finding out about ever new ways how to use and combine everything in the game. Especially at the start there is nothing in there that can't be simply found out through experimenting and it is 100 times more fulfilling to find it out yourself versus getting it shown.

Even such a simple idea as putting different items on the same belt will be something a new player might not immediately see but would be A) obvious enough to find out soon and B) would give him the satisfaction necessary to continue playing the game, if he is a "factorio player" at all. How much better when the player finds out himself how to balance belts or how a passive provider chest works.

I actually don't find the wiki needing an internet connection a real problem. You don't need the wiki all the time and even if there isn't any computer around almost everyone has a smartphone by now. Ok, there will always be that one solitary canadian trapper in his log cabin playing Factorio on his generator-powered PC having no access to the wiki until his yearly visit to the next town .

[SilentStorm]

Extensive documentation/manuals in-game is an exception, not a norm. Factorio could have ZERO documentation, and you would have to google everything, like in another ten thousand games. Zero documentation is a STANDARD. So, stop ranting and search google for whatever you are missing. Not to mention, you have excellent official forum, where you can ask anything.
I don't see a problem here.

It's easy to say "but everyone does it" and then just call it a day. Just because everything else is bad, doesn't mean one cannot improve and do it better. It's an easy broad shutdown pseudo "argument" nothing else.

Regardless Factorio is an exception (of the good kind) in a lot of ways, why not be one in this regard too?
I am also not sure that I would agree with the general statement of everyone else has zero documentation.

The base game has good documentation. The (excellent) demo walks you through all of the basic mechanics of the game, and then there is in-game help for the rest of it.

I'm not really arguing much about the base game, although having looked at the Logistic Chest section again when making the post, I do believe that to be lacking. Most of us, including myself, know how they work and interact with each other. However it wouldn't hurt to have a small 5 sentence paragraph about the general gist of them in the relevant section of the Tips and Tricks for those who don't yet.

There's not a ton of explicit in-game instructions for SA, but SA is an add-on that can only be played if you already own the base game. So, anybody playing SA should have already played through the basic game, and understand the mechanics. So really, there's not a lot of brand new stuff in SA that somebody who's already played the base game can't figure out. And between the wiki, and this forum, it's really not all that heard to learn about SA. I had a couple of head scratcher moments when I first started SA, but it certainly didn't take me any where near 50 hours to figure them out.

The 50 hours was mostly an exaggeration, however there's a ton of new stuff in SA that goes beyond any of the base game mechanics and how things are played. If you had never played mods like Space Exploration or other excessive permanent multi surface mods, all of that is new. The entire interrupt system is new and never seen before, and it has literally zero explanation anywhere in game.
I want to play the game, not scour the depths of the internet trying to find someone else having had the same issue I have and hope they or someone else chimed in a potential solution. If I want that I go to work, because that's basically work at that point.
I don't mind problem solving and coming up with ways to do things.
I do not want a front to back explanation of the system or have a solution be presented. That's what reddit, wiki or the forums are there for.
But I do expect the game to explain the building blocks. Especially for advanced topics like interrupts where things aren't explaining themselves clearly.

The interrupt conditions for example are horrible. Things like "All Requests satisfied" are self explanatory, same as pretty much any of the ones we had in 1.x already. Others like "Any Request Zero" don't many any sense and could be understood in multiple ways, which already means they require an explanation of what they actually do. I should not have to scour the internet for a quick explainer for them. I don't need or want to watch a 20 minute video on it, which the essence of can be summarized in 30 seconds or a 5 sentence paragraph, which should be provided in game using the pre-existing facilities the game has.

All modern games don't explain how to play. They have a tutorial for the core basics, that's all. Most players will skip any documentation anyway, so spending development time is wasted. They want to explore the game features on their own. Often, game features change over the course of development, so any tutorial needs to be made after the game is finished. But keeping a finished game unreleased until some player-facing game-integrated documentation is finished just isn't feasible.
For the players who require documentation, the players created game wikis to document more of the game. With Factorio, it's the same.

Just because all games do it, does it make it good?

The criticism has a point - while I love Factorio, some aspects have to be found out by extensive googeling or trial and error. That is not good game design. Other games being equally bad doesn't make it better.

And Factorio actually already has some excellent tutorials compared to other games for the base game. These mini-tutorials which pop up just after a specific technology has been researched, so just at the time you need to know something, are a really good way to teach a player without much hassle. And they are short, so they don't distract too much. So - why not make some similar tutorials for SA features?

Exactly this. I love the game, if I wouldn't love the game so much I would have long quit after having played Space Age. Suffice to say there are quite a few "yeah f this I'm done" moments in Space Age, where the game doesn't explain itself while not doing anything that you can reasonably expect things to do based on what you see. And this is after thousands of hours played in modded base game.

In fact, the more I play and hear the more I am getting the impression that there is exactly one way to play Space Age or at least do certain things in it, when there shouldn't be such restrictions and there ought to be more of a "do whatever you want" like there was in the base game.

The criticism has a point - while I love Factorio, some aspects have to be found out by extensive googeling or trial and error. That is not good game design. Other games being equally bad doesn't make it better.

Don't want to sound too offensive, but...
Nah you are just lazy or want to be hand-holded during gameplay. Figure it out.

Figuring things out needs the building blocks explained, or for them to be self-explanatory. This isn't the case often enough with Space Age content and it shows. Sure I can spent hours and hours trying to figure out how the building blocks work by spending hours on Google or just do what someone else did because it worked for them right? That is not how I want to play the game though. I want to do my own stuff without being influenced by what others have found to work for them. Not to mention my situation might be entirely different than theirs.

I only need to know what the building blocks the game offers do and how they work - and that needs to be explained in game or be self explanatory.

I think part of what isn't documented in game is also about the combinators, the way "each" function, and other edge cases where you can find out for yourself each one but struggle to try and infer the rules that devs often repeat on the forum on erroneous bug reports.

All and all, i disagree with the "severe" term used, because i think the undocumented things are also advanced features that won't be critically missed by players to have fun, those are more the things you need to "understand everything". If some features are still being worked on or considered for modifications, that could explain also why those parts aren't already fully documented in game. In terms of priority it would sit pretty low.

I might misremember but doesn't Each has a sort of half decent tooltip?

They might be considered "advanced" features, but I am not sure about the "you don't need them to have fun and progress" bit. I mean yeah I guess you could just throw more resources at a problem and be done with it. But there's no fun in that is there?

I would think that advanced features are in even more need of an explanation, just by virtue of being advanced / more complex features.
I don't want or need an entire "circuit cookbook" wiki page in the game, that would be excessive and way beyond reasonable. But having the basic building blocks explained, like that combinators delay signals by a tick, that signals on wires get merged via addition, what the 3 special signals do and their behavior and quirks that are intrinsic to them. And of course how interrupts work, when they are checked, when they trigger, what the conditions do and how they work and what they actually look for.
All of that are things that need to be explained in the game - and it has the facilities to do it very well. Wube just chose not to for one reason or another.
I totally understand it not being the utmost priority, but it needs to be there on release really.

The point of a game is that it should be fun. And it should be centered around its core features. Factorio is essentially a puzzle game - how can you implement the production chain with all the different means at your disposal? And how can you scale it up? How do you deal with the "external" factors like limitations by the different planets?

Factorio's gameplay is not centered around (and no game really should be): Deciphering the game mechanics. I know, it's something many complex games are bad at, and it's made worse with the modern tendencies that constant patching changes some of these mechanics over and over again. That doesn't mean that a game can help new players and make the learning curve a little bit smoother.

Exactly, I do like the puzzle bit in that how do you make all these different parts at your disposal work together to achieve whatever it might be you want to do. It just requires that the parts themselves are explained or self-explanatory.

While we talk about tutorials: In my view tutorials and tips&tricks that are not actively searched for by the player are a bad idea, unless they are about the UI. Part of the fun in this game is experimenting with and finding out about ever new ways how to use and combine everything in the game. Especially at the start there is nothing in there that can't be simply found out through experimenting and it is 100 times more fulfilling to find it out yourself versus getting it shown.

Even such a simple idea as putting different items on the same belt will be something a new player might not immediately see but would be A) obvious enough to find out soon and B) would give him the satisfaction necessary to continue playing the game, if he is a "factorio player" at all.

Not quite sure I get what you're saying, but there doesn't need to be an explanation of how to put down belts or that inserters put stuff onto a belt, or that power poles do transmit power to other buildings. All that is kind of self-explanatory and easily figured out.
Although having tips and tricks about the more intricate behavior of inserters and how they put stuff on a belt and where might be worthwhile, so when you encounter an issue with that and question what is going on you can go and easily read about it in game.

How much better when the player finds out himself how to balance belts or how a passive provider chest works.

While it's not that difficult to figure out I guess there are a lot of people still struggling with that and a tips and tricks explaining them might not be a bad idea. Certainly would help quite a few people.

[Premu]

While we talk about tutorials: In my view tutorials and tips&tricks that are not actively searched for by the player are a bad idea, unless they are about the UI. Part of the fun in this game is experimenting with and finding out about ever new ways how to use and combine everything in the game. Especially at the start there is nothing in there that can't be simply found out through experimenting and it is 100 times more fulfilling to find it out yourself versus getting it shown.

Even such a simple idea as putting different items on the same belt will be something a new player might not immediately see but would be A) obvious enough to find out soon and B) would give him the satisfaction necessary to continue playing the game, if he is a "factorio player" at all. How much better when the player finds out himself how to balance belts or how a passive provider chest works.

I generally agree with that. Learning how to use belts efficiently is part of the game's learning curve, and it's rewarding to see that you're improving. In my first game I started with a sushi belt for the first two science packs. Obviously the production numbers didn't fit, so it piled up, and I fixed it by emptying the end of the belt in a crate. After some thinking I started to use dedicated belts for each good. And I even had the great idea to put the most common ingrediants on parallel belts, and split these off for some smaller modules with common ingrediants at the side. I didn't have a fancy name for this concept, yet, though. :p So yeah, that was rewarding. Searching for how to activate your discharge defense is not such a rewarding thing, though.

So any tutorials and hints should be limited to the GUI or bare game mechanics. For example, there's no explanation how interrupts work right now in the game. I followed the FFs, so I knew already about those and what you might could do with them. But someone who didn't do that might just get confused. So just include these in the train tutorial as well.

[quineotio]

I hear you. There are many things you can do that aren't documented anywhere, and some things are indeed a bit obscure and difficult to figure out. I think one of the reasons for the lack of documentation is because there are SO MANY features. It would be a monumental effort to document everything. And also, things change, so maintaining the documentation would be quite an effort in itself.

I think the situation is similar to minecraft, where the burden of documentation is outsourced to the community, which isn't an entirely invalid way of doing things, even if it's not ideal. I guess it comes down to: would you rather the devs spent time on documentation or on new features and bugfixes?

[Tertius]

It's easy to say "but everyone does it" and then just call it a day. Just because everything else is bad, doesn't mean one cannot improve and do it better.

It's not that easy. Do you know early software? DOS software? Command line tools without even --help parameter? For such software documentation is obligatory, otherwise you wouldn't be able to even start it.

State of the art software design says software is self-explaining and intuitive to use. Not in the sense that it should include detailed documentation within the software, but software should be shaped in a way that you intuitively know what and where to click to use its functionality. In my opinion, Factorio delivers this design. Wherever you hover, click and drag, you get what you expect (after a small learning curve). Additionally, Factorio even delivers a reference with the integrated Factoriopedia. That's already beyond the scope of intuitive software design.

What you're asking for is a "howto" documentation. How to play Factorio. Not how to use the Factorio app. Using the app is intuitive, but how to successfully play a map is given to the player. It's already part of the game to explore the game. Not delivering an in-depth howto (the tips&tricks is just a howto for the most basic game functionality) is a valid design decision for a game, not a way to cheese out of an obligation. Since everybody takes a different approach to learn how to play a game, it's valid to give this task to the players. Someone asks, and someone else answers exactly what was asked. Some players have fun to explain game functionality to others. This has the advantage to see the same functionality explained by different people, so you see different aspects of the same thing. Something an integrated howto can never do.

[mmmPI]

They might be considered "advanced" features, but I am not sure about the "you don't need them to have fun and progress" bit. I mean yeah I guess you could just throw more resources at a problem and be done with it. But there's no fun in that is there?

I am sure i was able to progress and have a lot of fun with a state of the game that had less informations given, even finished the game couple time ! I don't mind "throwing intellectual ressources to understand how to progress in a game", as i said for me it's part of the game to practice observation and deduction, it's fun

As I mentionned the edge cases for the "each" signals, your argument sound overly dramatic to me x), it doesn't need to be explained thoroughly to have fun.

I would think that advanced features are in even more need of an explanation, just by virtue of being advanced / more complex features.
I don't want or need an entire "circuit cookbook" wiki page in the game, that would be excessive and way beyond reasonable. But having the basic building blocks explained, like that combinators delay signals by a tick, that signals on wires get merged via addition, what the 3 special signals do and their behavior and quirks that are intrinsic to them. And of course how interrupts work, when they are checked, when they trigger, what the conditions do and how they work and what they actually look for.
All of that are things that need to be explained in the game - and it has the facilities to do it very well. Wube just chose not to for one reason or another.
I totally understand it not being the utmost priority, but it needs to be there on release really.

You are going too far i think, i was just mentionning what i think is a detail, but you are asking for much more , some that are already present in tutorials and making it sound as it's necessary they be included. I think Tertius has a point :

What you're asking for is a "howto" documentation. How to play Factorio. Not how to use the Factorio app.

Besides, the game has received some updates since release , and some of them were related to interrupts, so it couldn't have been documented at release. It takes some time to do the documentation, and if the features are susceptible to updates or upcoming changes it is a valid reason to me to rely on "internet" sources, because those are updates often. Hence my disagreement on the "severe" term. "Some things aren't documented in game". Yeah a list of those to me be more useful than conflated self-pity rant