PC Game Manuals

[Bison]

What is wrong with developers these days when it comes to a manuals? 

I started playing SH5 last night and I downloaded a 35 page manual.  I'm thinking well it's a little bulkier than most so it should be somewhat useful.  It had some nice data, but no depth of explanation.  There are a ton of options and features in SH5 and for someone who has never played a Sub Sim before it's quite a bit to take in and disgest.  I've got all these great tools to use with the planning map and no clue how to use them at all.  One would think the manual would at least give some sort of basic overview of all these tools.  Wrong!  It's like UBI thinks everyone who plays the game was a freaking sub commander or something.  It annoying that I need to go to a site like subsim to attempt and understand basic principles of the game.  The tutorial phase of the game was pretty limited too.  It took me an hour to figure out how the hell to use the deck gun and another 15 minutes to figure out how to fire it.  That should not be the case.

Unfortunately this short changing the manual seems to becoming more prevalent in the market these days.  There are some notiable exceptions, but they are few and far between. 

[Grim.Reaper]

Amen.

[TheCommandTent]

Amen.

+1 

Its almost like you need to wait until someone does a 'Lets Play' or writes an strategy guide before you can understand the complexities of some games.

[tgb]

So is this the first game you've bought since 1999?

[steve58]

You'll get no argument from me.  But I think we can all blame the internet.  Most of the forums for the games (as well as great sites like Grogheads 8)) have more useful information than the "manuals" that come with the games...and I believe that the game developers have come to depend on that fact...

[Bison]

So is this the first game you've bought since 1999?

It's the only one I felt like I needed to read the manual.

[W8taminute]

While it's true that one can learn the nuances of a game simply by perusing forums and google-fu, this fact should not convince game makers to skimp on manuals.  Ok, I understand, no more paper manuals but if they include a PDF manual for a game it better damn well tell me that clicking this button does this and when confronted with this situation select this choice by right alt clicking.  Nowadays the manual doesn't even include that. 

[Nefaro]

While it's true that one can learn the nuances of a game simply by perusing forums and google-fu, this fact should not convince game makers to skimp on manuals.  Ok, I understand, no more paper manuals but if they include a PDF manual for a game it better damn well tell me that clicking this button does this and when confronted with this situation select this choice by right alt clicking.  Nowadays the manual doesn't even include that.

I think Paradox has had a good approach to this issue, with some of their own in-house games.  While they generally had a game "manual" that detailed the interface elements and commands, etc like any other game would - they have also had beta testers (?) write up a Strategy Guide compilation in a separate PDF to give specific strategy, tips, and explanations.  They put them in the tech support section of their forum, for the specific game, so that only people who had registered their key with their login could d/l it.  The last one I recall seeing, from memory, was one for HOI3.  There's a drawback, however, whenever those games would receive so many DLCs that the gameplay would morph over time, so such strategy guides for the original game would probably become less representative of the game mechanics later on.   
Of course, that wouldn't be the case with games like the Silent Hunter series since they only release a handful of patches that only fix some issues (and still leave them buggy but that's another spiel).

[Bison]

The part that gets me with games is that the developers don't even seem fit to expain the dang UI.  That's really what bothers me the most.  You have 3 dozen clickables and they explain what 4 of them do and leave the others for the player to figure out what the heck they do.