There's a consistent struggle for any game: how much do you let the player discover for themselves, how much do you tell them, and what if anything do you force them to do? I've always held games like Celeste in high regard for how much the game teaches the player through "Show, don't Tell", but that gets harder and harder to do well as you give the player an increasing amount of actions and freedom.
Sometimes complex games just throw you in the deep end to sink or swim, and I honestly think that's more correct than not. I've always advocated to respect the intelligence of your players. That said, confusion and boredom are the quickest ways to cool your player's enthusiasm, so there is definitely not a one-size-fits-all approach. Add to that the myriad of player psychologies and approaches to solving problems and that's as good an encapsulation of game design challenges as any.
MoteMancer has the extra hurdle of the alchemy skin, since that kit that is not commonly seen in modern media. So with that in mind, MoteMancer's early tutorial deliberately tries to give you as little information as possible, while still guiding you through the important mechanics of the game. This worked to some degree, but it needs improvement, and I'd like to talk through some of the specific areas I've learned from as I've watched players directly or indirectly through comments.
Logistics Puzzles
One of the big critiques I've heard is that "you don't get to the fun fast enough". I think when the game allows you to place Structures anywhere just to see what they do that makes sense, but one of the game's strengths is how logistics puzzles on the hex grid create a novel space for your brain to puzzle in, even in the first few Structures placed. I think that because the player is forced to hand-craft their initial Structures, they are spending more brain cycles on the crafting chain than the logistics puzzle, and I can help them there by providing an objective and a handful of Structures to get started with.
Even a setup as small as this already has interest - Collectors are 2:1 ratio to Grindstones, they can be setup with a direct output line, and a single Mana Flare can power them all. Most players will start with something like the example on the right, which is perfectly serviceable, but it doesn't prime them for where the joy and interest in the game truly resides. This is a perfect case where a player will probably figure it out eventually, but will a player bounce off the game before they get there? Some for sure, so it's probably worth directly asking them to solve a simple puzzle like "Power 3 Structures with a single Mana Flare" just to get their gears turning.
Novel Research
MoteMancer's research style is not common in automation games, but is also not completely original, many Minecraft mods use Fusion Crafting in one form or another, and this is heavily inspired by that. One of the biggest benefits of this style of research is that it flows back into the logistics puzzle part of the game, where positioning and transport matters just as much as the recipe itself. Despite having an animated gif and examples on the store page, players often don’t stumble onto extra Altar layouts as early as they could, even though it usually delights them once they do.
One other thing people don't think of is how Pedestals can act as a simple buffer as well to allow for chaining research like this image on the left. And the right image is a demonstration of either 6 altars researching the same thing, or it could be changed into a hub researching 3 separate things at double speed because Pedestals can share Altars and vice versa. This is another area where simply planting the seed "Have at least 2 Pedestals linked to 2 different Infusion Altars" as an objective points them in a direction of problem solving and fun rather than asking for "A way to speed the game up" because they are just waiting on one Altar to do all the work.
The new Entropy Update is fast approaching, and part of that is going to be trying to smooth out the early game tutorials in places like this, as well as making Entropy much more interesting to interact with rather than just being a cleansable area denial. Even the way you first interact with Entropy when you unlock Riptide will change, but I'll save that update for next week.
If you are reading this and have suggestions for other ways to improve the early game tutorialization or "things i wish i knew earlier", I'd be happy to hear them and incorporate them if possible.
Thank you for the ongoing feedback and engagement, MoteMancer is better because of you, keep it coming!
~CyanAvatar