Poor game manuals

[Chris21wen]

This a general beef on the quality of game manuals. The example here is from Polaris Sector but it is by no means restricted to that.

Revisiting Polaris Sector after more than two years meant going through the tutorial again and it was only then that I realised just how bad the manual is that comes with it.

The writers seem to have concentrated on creating documents that look pretty with loads of background picture but with little valuable content apart from the barest ouline. Creating a printable version doen't fix it, it's the same document just not as pretty (but easier to read). I did post back in 2020 about this manual, but it took approx 10 min to when I recognised the problem was still there when I went to look something else up.

This something was; where are the 'fleet command buttons' mentioned in the tutorial. If you type it in to the pdf it finds nothing, even just usuing the individual words doesn't find anything. Looking at the section on interface finds nothing. Another examle 'Fleet Rally Point'. Hows it work? All-in-all a pointless manual but this is just one instance.

I know you don't create the games, just publish them but you/matrix or any other publisher should insist that a half decent manual be supplied.

Even games with a good manual can lapse due to patches etc, WitP AE for instance when it was released. It's manual was way out of date until very recently. Another WitE had a good manual but patches etc made it difficult to understand, I even resorted to writing an unofficial version for it.

A good, up-to-date manual would stop many forum questions about game play.

Rant over