Tutorial Improvement Suggestions

[Stylesjl]

I was just going through the tutorials to check what new players were being shown about the game and I noticed that there were a few things that could be improved:

- The Manufacturing Tutorial does not make any mention of using the big plus icon to set up an item to manufacture. I think some mention of this in the tutorial should be made, at the moment it tries to show you the more cumbersome method of setting up individual purchase/manufacturing/sales units:

Plus.png (42.74 KiB) Viewed 410 times

- In the manufacturing tutorial you are given the objective of selling products in other cities. I think that just before you are instructed to sell your products the player should be given a reminder to be careful about selecting their own products, sometimes if the seaport or other company is selling the same product you might accidentally select the competing product. A simple reminder to the new player to make sure they are buying from their own factory might be ideal in this case.

- Branding scenario - the tutorial for advertising does not explain that branding only applies to the same city.

- Headquarters, the headquarters is available to build in the Stock Market, Agriculture and R&D scenarios. This is despite the fact that these tutorials come before the last tutorial (which explains how the headquarters works).

- R&D Scenario - in the beginning it mentions something called the Top Tech and notes that this is the competitors tech level. This is generally correct but I think it should also mention that the top tech level is always set to 100 at the start of the game as well. It should also mention that if your tech level is lower than the top tech this reduces the quality of a product relative to your competition.

- One minor issue in this scenario as well, the Coffee Machines cannot be produced right away as they need plastic. It still possible to finish the tutorial when a company eventually makes plastic but I think it would go smoother if plastic was available from the seaport right away.

- The final scenario for headquarters does not really make the player use the various departments of the headquarters. I think this scenario could be improved if you walked the player through some sort of process such as hiring an executive, setting the training slider or setting a salary/dividend for the CEO, just so the player can get a feel for how it works. Alternatively maybe adding a new tutorial for these could be a good idea.

- There is no tutorial explaining how media or real estate companies work. It might be worthwhile to have one. This can include an explanation on how to improve Real Estate value such as building Civic/Sports buildings nearby, buying up land for later development and also allowing other companies room to place their own stores (to drive up real estate value).

[Stylesjl]

Some further thoughts I have as well:

- In the first tutorial there should be a reference to changing the game speed - making the game go faster, slower or paused. This is only first mentioned in the R&D Tutorial.
- The tutorials don't really explain speciality stores - it should be explained what advantages store types like a computer or cosmetics store have.
- The manufacturing scenario should be extended to explain how semi products work, along with an example. It is not really explained anywhere that you can't sell a semi product in a retail shop, but only to another factory (and also brands don't apply to semi products).
- The R&D Scenario should mention the development of new products - not just improving existing ones.
- There is no tutorial on how to use Warehouses - I think it should be mentioned in one of them (maybe the agriculture tutorial to mitigate the crop cycles).
- There should be some discussion about competitors - for example they can buy your products (but you can block them with Internal Sale if you want to preserve supply), they can take your market share as competitors (so you will need to offer better quality/prices/brand if they start competing with you) and in the stock market scenario it should be mentioned that if they own more 50% of your company they will kick you out of the game (it doesn't really properly explain the danger of share dilution).
- No discussion of debt or borrowing money - this should be mentioned as a feature.

Finally this is a bit more ambitious but there should probably be tutorials for the DLCs.

- How to run for office (CES) and government mode.
- How to use a service firm (Service DLC)
- How to run a bank/insurance company/basics of the bond/stock market (Banking and Finance DLC)
- Fine tuned subsidiary control. In the original tutorial it mentions that controlling more than 50% of a company allows you to control the company, but is very limited, but in the Subsidiary DLC you get much greater control, so it might be great to show the player the new tools for controlling a subsidiary.