You know when you first posted, about how this game was too hard to learn, I did an eye roll. What’s he talking about,. Old World has fantastic tooltips which made the game a breeze to learn. So then, I saw Tom review and I thought well maybe it wasn’t that easy to learn.
I went back and read the forum comments from May 2020 shortly after the game entered early access.
I came across this post from myself from May 2020
Documentation
This a great game, that just needs to be more accessible.
The primary way people will learn this game is tooltips. You have a great tooltip system, and you just need to keep reminding people that they can freeze tooltips, using the middle mouse button.You do need more tooltips. Obvious new ones to include: buying tiles, religious units building monasteries, Ships can transport troops. Plus some little tidbits, like not all wonders appear in all games.
I know people don’t read manuals so you can skip writing on them.
People do use google and many will read Wiki’sThe current help system is woefully inadequate and is just rehash of the tooltip info, and the UI is painful. I’m glad you add a search function, but no one does search as well as google so it is pointless to try and do one, IMO. Most importantly the help system doesn’t lend itself to the high-level overview that @Piemax2, copied from Reddit in post 504. This is exactly the type of information that would be perfect on Old World Wiki on the topic of tips for Civ players. I hope you junk the existing help system and considers this alternative.
I think Paradox. starting with Hearts of Iron IV and several other games, just junked the traditionally help system and instead it just opens a browser window, to the HOI IV wiki. Paradox employees were initially the main authors of the wiki, but probably for the last couple of years, most of the work is done by members of the community.
To me of the biggest advantage is I can simply google stuff and 90% of the time it will redirect me to the correct wiki page. Sometimes, I don’t have time to play the game, but mind is still thinking about strategies and I want to know something, quick like what is the tech requirement for a Turretted African Elephant, or even what is the new name for it.
So anyway my apologies to you and Tom, for thinking you are were all too impatient, too slow. I really hope @SorenJohnson and @Leyla_Johnson take the feedback from you and Tom and even mine to heart.
To update my 14-month-old post.
I still read manuals, Shadow Empire manual was the only thing that made the game a ridiculously complex game, at least somewhat playable. A manual would be good at least for some people.
I went back a looked at resources for new players available on Discord. Honestly, it’s not good. There are 16, ~15 minutes tutorials, from early access days. I thought they weren’t good back then and would be even worse today. A couple of other strategy guides for specific areas, like how to pick the right families. The beauty of Wiki is these can be updated/discussed and kept up to date. None of this seems to happen on Discord
Tom nailed it with this.
But a new player just jumping in, expecting to have his hand held like in other strategy games, expecting to be shown what he’s got before him? I don’t think it’s going to make a very good first impression on people who want to know the rules of a game as they play
Not to mention those of us who prefer to know the rules of a game before we play (too many strategy games operate under the premise that your first several playthroughs are for learning the game instead of actually playing the game; as a boardgame, I find this intolerable).
Personally, I get enjoyment from figuring out how the complex system works, but not everybody thinks figuring out complex games is fun.