Something that annoys me about most MMOs out there is that the tutorial seems to be the start of gameplay, rather than actually being a tutorial to teach you how to play the game. It's lazy. Gameplay should start at level 1 for all characters.
The tutorial should start you at level -2, or level B, or some number that is not 1. You go through the tutorial, you learn how to play... then you start at 1. Or you skip the tutorial... and you start at 1.
And the tutorial shouldn't be just "Here is how you move, here is how you talk to NPCs, here is how you fight". It should have at least one part where you learn how to play the role you've chosen to play. If you're a tank, then you get teamed with an NPC healer and an NPC striker, and you have to go through a fight maintaining aggro, keeping the healer alive, and using taunts to take the aggro away from the striker.
Here's what I'd like to see: When you choose to play the tutorial, rather than playing your character, you get handed control of an Iconic hero of your same role/class. (He may have different powers, but he should have the same type of play.) You get directed through lessons of how to move, how to run, how to interact with NPCs and objects, how to fight, how to level up... and then you get a mission to defeat a bad guy. You get given two other Iconic Heroes (NPCs) to interact with, to learn your roles:
Tank: You're teamed with the Iconic Healer and the Iconic DPS. You have to learn how to maintain aggro, defend the healer and take aggro back from the DPS.
DPS: You're teamed with the Iconic Controller and the Iconic Healer. You learn how to manage your aggro, how to deal with adds and how to keep enemies off your friends.
Healer: You get the Iconic Tank and the Iconic Controller. Your job is to keep the tank alive, keep the Controller alive too and learn how to manage healing aggro.
Controller: You get the Iconic Tank and the Iconic DPS. Your mission: learn how to control adds/crowds, and how to debuff the opposition so the DPS has an easier time getting rid of them.
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"My attention span doesn't wander. It takes long trips to exotic locales where it meets strange women that leave it crying and broken in the hot, hot sun."
--me
Or.. you just get no experience for the tutorial.
Steve
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"Listen, and understand. City of Titans is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely [i]will not stop, ever,[/i] until we are live!"
Warcabbit
Agree with you steve...
Codyklous brutality!!!
interesting concept but I think the role specific thing kind of pigeon hole people into the holy trinity of roles and based on the assumption that they will team and have to protect, in the case of the tank for example the tank, the healer.
Some people, based off of COX, picked a tank but played more like scrappers or picked a brute and played more like tanks, picked blasters but blapped in melee range, some defenders player controller like, come controllers played blaster like. And a whole bunch of in between. Even seen a few blasters actually tank, some were straight up some were kiting and doing their thing.
But the base of the concept I think is very good. The tutorial should be deeper and go more into the aspects of combat and tactics.
But I do think the tutorial should be played solely on the characters toon. Usually, sometimes even at low levels, there is a different feel between a player made character and an NPC assigned player. Me personally if I'm learning the game I rather learn on my own toon.
Or maybe those role specific things can be optional. Like if someone regardless of class, can take those tutorial lessons and see how they do.
I like the tutorial idea of learning but I don't care for the trinity approach.
I played every kinda combo on CoH and CoV , plus did every team force, strike force and trial there were often in non trinity groups ie; a full corrupter STF, amix of trollers and scrappers barracuda, I feel the trinity form is fine but we are a super hero /villain game and there is always ways to do anything with the group u have.
if people want to play the trinity great but in CoH u didn't have to if u didn't want or couldn't because theres no tanks available.
to me its more fun to figure out how to make teams with what is at hand not waiting for the 3 to make the team ready
Perhaps it might be useful for a part of the tutorial that teaches teaming up, but not for the entire tutorial. Maybe have multiple tutorials that instruct the new player in beginning and more advanced lessons.
"You have now reached the end of the introductory tutorial."
"Do you wish to continue?"
Or...Just enter the game at level one, and there is a training center you can go to to learn various aspects of the game. Pop-ups would suggest this option to beginning players.
Oh, wait. You still have to learn to move and basic fighting. We're still gonna need a basic tutorial. ;)
Steve
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"Listen, and understand. City of Titans is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely [i]will not stop, ever,[/i] until we are live!"
Warcabbit
Unfortunatly while this seems a good idea, thats probably only from the perspective of someone who has played MMO's before and we need to look at those that havn't. Thus why tutorials are so simply designed as a first time MMO or first time gamer in general may not have a clue how to move about thus need to be told its the wasd keys to move and often space to jump, then whatever keys/button combo's it is to use whatever abilities they picked.
Sadly while it would be interesting to add the 'teamplay' part of the tutorial it might be offputting to some of the much newer players that may come in and when it comes to MMO's you need to try and make the game as 'accessable' as you can to attract a wider audiance.
That being said maybe it might be an idea that after the 'basic' tutorial a player is then offered to participate in an advanced tutorial that teaches them about teamplay, possibly dangling a little bonus starting exp or a badge as a reward for successfully completing it.
Cookie Badge: "Congratulations, you passed the teambuilding tutorial, have a cookie!"
The game Portal is almost all Tutorial it just so well done it integrated in the game play.
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Personal rules of good roleplay
1.) Nothing goes as planned.
2.) If it goes as planned it's not good RP
I actually thought the old CoX tutorial was better than the newer one in terms of actually introducing the basics of how the game worked -- find and talk to contacts, use insps, slot enhancement, enter and complete missions, that sort of thing. The new tutorial was flashier, but it had some wackiness, like death being impossible, that I thought made it a much less useful tutorial. I skipped it a lot more often than I did the old one.
The sequence of introductory missions had some weirdness, as well, like being introduced to the concept of a trainer when you had to be at least level five by the time you got the mission. I never understood the logic behind that.
One thing that I think a tutorial zone should have is a free tailor. So many time, I spawned and realised the height or colours or something was off compared to the character creator view. It would be nice to be able to tweak things at that stage.
Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning
I believe that a tutorial should instruct players in the basic concepts of a game -- movement, combat, interacting with NPCs, etc. I also believe that we should use our own original character and receive experience points and loot (such as the inspirations in the CoH tutorial).
I don't understand why mention was made earlier of the tutorial character not getting XP and actually starting at less than first level. We're playing our character and should be properly rewarded for our time and effort.
[center][color=purple][size=16][b][I][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78N2SP6JFaI]Just a cat from another star![/url][/I][/b][/size][/color][/center]
Actually, I disagree. I found the newer tutorial much more streamlined and empowering. The old tutorial through a hell of a lot at you, and a lot of it involved reading huge blocks of text. The new one just focused on the basics of moving around and attacking. It also did a good job of making you feel a part of the story. It was about getting you in the action and feeling like a hero/villain. Bare in mind though, "Galaxy's Last Stand" was not the entire tutorial, it was continued in the Continuing tutorial arcs. These spread out the learning, showed you around the city and the core buildings you would need to know about, and wrapped it up in a nice story. I liked the story enough to play through the red and blue side arcs several times.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
I think the idea of gaining levels in a tutorial is one of player reward, gratification, and introduction to the leveling system, not just basic game mechanics.
Some of the previous discussion of tutorials brought up these ideas (mind you, they're just concepts at this time):
1. The tutorials should be modular: one to teach controls; one to teach the GUI; one to teach combat; one to teach the contact system; etc... This allows players to replay them if they wish at any time and in any order they wish.
2. Some of the more basic ones, like movement, should be available as a standalone that can be run through outside of logging on.
Former Online Community Manager & Forum Moderator
[img]http://missingworldsmedia.com/images/favicon.ico[/img]
Like I said before, you [b][i]SHOULDN'T[/i][/b] be playing your character in the tutorial. The tutorial is there to teach you how to play the game. Not to be the start of the game.
The start of the game should be Level 1, the same place that the people who didn't go through the tutorial start. That's where you start setting up storylines. Not in the tutorial.
City of Heroes, at least in the latter days, had the destruction of Gateway City (I know I messed that up, and quite frankly [i]I don't care[/i]), a storyline that... went nowhere. At least I saw nothing of it for the first 30 levels of the game, either redside or blueside. That's not a good thing to do. You don't introduce a whole storyline and then have it go away. But I know that was retrofitted into the game.
Champions Online has the Qularr Invasion. Which is referenced again and again, in gameplay. However, the Qularr Invasion isn't a tutorial -- it's the first six levels of gameplay. Forced levels, at that. If you want to skip the invasion, then you start at level 6. And you get a new power, a travel power and a stat boost right away. I don't get it -- if they wanted us to start at level 6, why didn't they just boost level 1 to that point?
DCUO has the same thing. The tutorial is meshed into the storyline. But it also screws with the gamer, in that it's also your origin story -- and it therefore becomes EVERYONE'S origin story. (At least, for those of us who aren't quick with coming up alternate explanations.)
I suppose that yes, the tutorial could be part of the storyline -- but then it becomes impossible for you to skip, if you want to know the whole truth. If you want your character to have gone through the whole story. Now, CoH and DCUO's tutorials are kind of fun to play through. CO, on the other hand, is not. (No travel power, and an unskippable team fight against enemies which are suddenly ten times toughter than the guys you've been fighting -- I've seen players drop like flies, over and over again, during that last fight, and then I get an IM telling me "Champions sucks", and I lose another potential game-mate.) In CO, you kind of want to skip the monstrosity that is their tutorial. And that means your character misses out on the storyline. (And all those NPCs running up and telling you how grateful they are that you saved the world.)
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"My attention span doesn't wander. It takes long trips to exotic locales where it meets strange women that leave it crying and broken in the hot, hot sun."
--me
Actually, the new intro arc blue side did reference the fallout of galaxy city getting slagged. so that was your first 3 contacts. Although yes, later arcs don't mention it because they couldn't scrap all the arcs and write from scratch, but it was going to tie into the new content that was scheduled to start when the game got canned.
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I never set anything on fire accidentally!
The Titan Legacy - Defender of the Inner Flame
Oh, yeah, I guess it did at that. (I usually got into a sewer trial after leaving the Galaxy City tutorial. But I'd done all the in-game content already, so I figured it wasn't worth going through all of that all over again...
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"My attention span doesn't wander. It takes long trips to exotic locales where it meets strange women that leave it crying and broken in the hot, hot sun."
--me
Which was ironic, because the developers *said* that there was new low level content to do....
oooohhhhhh like an actual tutorial tutorial.
Hmm I don't recall having travel powers in COX tutorial though. In fact until near the end a travel power wasn't even available until level 14 compared to as soon as ya touch down in MC enter the powerhouse and choose one. Well unless in COX ya managed to have one of those temporary jet pack packages.
And Black Talon is super easy now. When I first started, it seemed like an intro to what one would be actually facing. I kind of liked it like that personally. It taught you how to block or get molly whopped. When they dumbed it down, now people get molly whopped in alerts and cause failures especially fighting the likes of Ao' worm dude. I hate when tutorials are super easy then ya enter the game and get skull dragged. But that's me and I liked the CO tutorial better than COX new tutorial thing but the old COX tutorial was decently interesting with the outbreak folk but then it seemed to be nearly the last of that storyline there. And I see why they dumbed it down. A lot of players that were new did find it too intense starting off.
But if the first six levels are skippable after the first time especially, then how is it forced?
But yeah I don't understand why if a toon is going to start out at level 6 anyways, why didnt they just make that the level 1? I think it would be a PITA to change it around now and make contacts and mobs level 1-5. I wonder what was the logic in their decision to start at level 6.
The original CoH tutorial was easily accomplished within half an hour of gameplay, unless you were going for the badge. It was a bit long... but not too bad, unless you got a mission door (the last thing you had to do) way across the zone. The new one -- Escape from Galaxy City -- took maybe 10 minutes, if you were lollygagging, and was very, very short, distance wise. CO's tutorial is... gah. Like I said, the big fight near the end... where the bugs you've been killing suddenly become three times as tough? Not fun. You want to skip it.
Heh. If you think it's bad [i]now[/i], you should have seen it in the beta. Back then, they let you go through the final mission with a group... and if you were a squishie, you pretty much had to. Every time you died, Black Talon would regenerate all health... blocking didn't block [u]all[/u] the damage... if you didn't make a tank to begin with, it was going to take you [i]forever[/i] to get through that fight.
Because it's six (well, five) game levels that I get for free. Five game levels I could have been [i]playing the game[/i]. If I don't need to learn the controls, I shouldn't be forced to go through the boring-as-hell tutorial in order to get in those five game levels. In City of Heroes, the tutorial was only [b]one[/b] level, and was easily skippable -- you lost out on that level, but it wasn't like starting one level down was going to seriously hurt you. It never hurt me.
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"My attention span doesn't wander. It takes long trips to exotic locales where it meets strange women that leave it crying and broken in the hot, hot sun."
--me
Yeah, I always got the mission door way across the map in the original COX tutorial.
I heard about black talon beta version and how many people found it rough. Now, they nerfed him tooooo much. And the new batch coming out it's easy to tell.They don't know how to block, and they don't know what to do with stuff you cant kill in two hits. Hell now they complaining about Poe and Talos (the old guy with electric suit) is too hard. I'm like really? I take those two out even before I even decide on what passive to take easily. All you have to do is block when they charge up and hit when they aint charging up. Simple stuff.
No badges in the tutorial please, i only want to play it once, then skip it for the rest of my toons.
Ridgid of COH, 50 +3 NRG/NRG Blaster, Victory server
Blaster of Phoenix Rising
I like both of these ideas although it sounds like a lot of work on your end. Players who want to skip the Market (there WILL be a Market tutorial right?) completely can skip that tutorial and so on. Basics like movement as a standalone is cool too IMHO. I know it's been mentioned lots of times but can we try for a costume creator on-line as a standalone PLEASE? Many of the players I know almost considered the CC the best minigame ever and would have messed with costumes even when servers were down. Feed that addiction and they'll stay forever.
I do have to say though, as one who was brand new to MMOs when I started CoH, it's vital to let players know that info is out there even if they missed it earlier. I had to have another player explain what a dual-origin enhancement was. I think the NPCs can be vital sources of information. So copy the Enhancement part of the tutorial text into the NPCs who sell Enhancements and put it under a Help button.
Make it friendly to newcomers and they will come.
I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...