Honestly, from a game design standpoint, adding in an assist early on WOULD be beneficial short-term in helping people. What are they supposed to do once they're out in space and need to dock to refuel or hand in a contract? They'd enter a station without docking assist and suddenly be just as confused as they would have been with the current setup. What they should do is just rework the tutorial missions to be a bit more clear.
I'm not bashing your suggestion I'm just trying to actually think about how they would incorporate it so as to not hurt players when push comes to shove and their 'training wheels' have to suddenly come off.
No, I'm not taking it as bashing the suggestion. What you did was actually CONTRIBUTE to the idea, by questioning what happens once the newbie goes to a non-assisted station, which is a very fair question. And for that, I thank you.
You also pointed out something that I totally agree with... Like you, I actually watched ALL the videos and went through each of the tutorials and found it all very familiar and exciting. But I get to the docking simulation and OMG!!! Nowhere does it mention (to remind you) that the controls that you *might* have custom set up for flight are possible to be different for landing. I know it's all second nature now, but I wasn't even sure when/why my controls were stuffing up... I thought it was as soon as I entered the station or some rubbish! So yes, I totally agree that they should maybe put some extra notes on the starting screen of that tutorial to being attention to key setups possibly being different and to check them if your yaw, pitch or roll axis suddenly become reversed when landing gear is deployed!! Some more onscreen cues like reminding people to look at their little radar (the one with the blue dot) and aligning it so that it is on the edge of the circle and directly down would also help.
But, as to your question for what to do with newbies when they are forced to remove their training wheels... Well, going through the tutorials, with the improvements listed above, would still apply and help... But for a complete N00b who has never played a flight or space sim EVER, surely getting them hooked on the freedom of flight and maybe a simple dogfight or two, before getting to the drudgery of docking a ship, would be a far better "hook" to encourage them to learn the finer points of the game than the barrier, for no real good reason other than to engorge the member of a few of the participants in this thread?
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