Sick of the same questions that were covered in the tutorial because newbs didn't read. It's getting annoying because they don't know how to tell us what they did (wrong), and how we can help.

You could always just... not answer. Some people prefer to ask questions in order to reinforce something they've already learned. Learning differences, etc...

Let's start the newbies in Odia and make them fly to the training sector as their first mission. No text. No instruction. Just give them an objective.

I certainly understand where Kierky is coming from. But to be honest, there is only so much lazy and stupid that can be designed against.

We've got some great new players that have come to us from the mobile developments that are engaging and adding to the community in positive gameplay. Unfortunately we've also gotten a bunch of lazy, spoiled, entitled brats that can't be assed to do a bit of work or put a bit of thought into something before asking to be hand led through the game and then pout quitting because something is 'hard'. One little sob actually wanted me to let him kill me so he could get his combat standing up without having to learn to fly his ship! And this was / is / whothefuckcares a guildmate! Last night on one of my alts, I was going to help two new players in a different guild on the rogue queen mission (which I've never done). The silly buggers run the mission and show up in rangeroks and then pout and log off because one of them died and the mission failed.

I feel the pain, though I still want to help new players when and where it makes sense. We've just got a lot of chaff in with the wheat. Not much we can do but appreciate the good ones.

Oh and +1 Savet /me wanders off innotently

It's not about force feeding new players objectives and making their progress dependent on meeting them before progressing. They still ask questions and will try to sidestep that stuff because it's fundementally a flawed tutorial. It's boring. It's not engaging. It's not in any way fun. It's a different player mindset that is coming from mobile and it requires a totally different approach to teaching the game mechanics than players coming to the game from PC/mac. What that different approach is, i can't say specifically, there are many ways games approach teaching new players but it seems pretty obvious that what works for PC wont work for mobile necessarily, despite that's what VO is currently trying to do and apparently obviously failing.

Players are coming to the game because they're being advertised it. If it isn't really fun unless you have a keyboard and wireless bt controller or something then it needs to be made apparent so you dont get all the chaff thinking the game will be great without those devices. If the game isn't really playable on a phone sized screen and really requires something more tablet like, then it needs to be limited to that. Chaff is a result of the net being spread unnecessarily too wide, catching players who really wouldn't like playing the game and ending up with negative feedback that wouldn't exist if it had avoided mediums or improperly communicated requirements that the game really didn't fit well with or couldn't be played well without.

It's really not a bad tutorial, given the devs' current resources. I don't mind reading in games, so long as the writing is of passable quality. There is a fair bit of information that needs to be disseminated; arming newbies with some of this right off the bat is better than dropping them into the world, cold-turkey (it's not like the devs haven't researched this, or been around industry conferences where these topics are discussed).

Furthermore, I think the extent of the reading gets exaggerated based on veterans' perceptions of frequently asked questions coming from newbies. Most of the "just reading" comes in Training II and Training IV, iirc. The rest of the training missions involve "doing"... not to mention the battle sequence, target dummy kill, and docking rings at the very beginning of the game.

Lastly (and please forgive me), as a former MS/HS math and science teacher, "forcing" players to do anything is a pretty good way to make sure they don't learn whatever it is the tutorial is really trying to teach. It's like a part of the brain responsible for learning automatically switches to off whenever there is some outside authority imposing a task. It's weird, but kind of true.

In a nutshell: I understand Kierky's sentiment, however, I trust the devs know what they are doing. If it's a case of a newbie not being able to correctly describe a problem, I recommend saying "I don't know how to help you", or just letting someone else answer. It's simple, but it has worked for me.

-1 I like being able to click thru everything in seconds when making an alt. I doubt it would reduce the questions. People do the tutorial on one session then come back a day later and forget the details. If you're not prepared to do some extremely patient hand-holding, then perhaps you should /leave 1. Snarky, impatient mentors don't help player retention.

I'm also a former HS math teacher (mostly 14-16 y.o.'s - nearly 15 fifteen years in the trenches in inner city schools), and I've found that the carrot often works better than the stick to get students to learn. Why not provide some kind of reward for completing the different training missions? The missions would have to be reconfigured in order to check for competency to complete that mission, but providing an incentive (e.g. money, an installed weapon they wouldn't otherwise get until a later level) would provide an impetus for completing training, rather than just jumping out into the universe then bugging people ad nauseum about things they should have learned in the first place.

The problem with the tutorial is that it tries to read like one would speak, with too many fluff transitional words. The more words you give people, the less they read. Tutorials need to be distilled to the meat of the request in text form.

i think the issue is that mobile and, to an extent, console players are used to a different kind of format for learning the mechanics of a game than PC players are used to. Those tutorials tend to offer pointers and advice on how the game works as needed in the beginning rather than all up front.

Perhaps an optional tutorial which can be skipped and in your PDA interface, a always available howto and information repository for common tasks and frequently asked questions. Step by step explanations of how to do things like mine, best practices... how to shoot, how the license system works, how penalties work, how standing works. What the different factions mean etc. All the info (but up to date) that you currently are forced to go to the wiki to find out (within reason) should exist in the game in the pilot's PDA.

Then anyone with a question can be told to just look it up in their PDA ..everything they need to know is in there.

To agree with Savet, the tutorials should be rewritten so that people should DO things to complete them, not just read and click through. I think that's part of what the OP wanted.