Should games start with a tutorial

[Goth-Girl-Supremacy]

Just wanted to post and say I hate Lhynn and hope he one day meets a grim fate.

[Humbaba]

Alright we've gone from "fuck tutorials" to "non-mandatory tutorials are fine". Let me remind everyone that this is besides the point and the discussion is about whether or not manuals or tutorials are a better way to deliver information to the player.

[maidenhaver]

Manuals would filter women.

[Dead]

Trial and error + manual is the best. Tutorials break immersion even before the game starts, and most importantly they're totally uninteresting.

Non-mandatory tutorials are not fine; merely knowing they exist lowers the experience of the game.

[Tweed]

Yes they should, but they should be skippable.

[rusty_shackleford]

Games should have an optional tutorial that just causes the game to uninstall when you try to use it. Get good, noob.

[rusty_shackleford]

tried to remember why I didn't like Alaloth, installed it again, every single action I take has a tutorial popup attached to it

for fucks sake

[NotAI]

RE: "the discussion is about whether or not manuals or tutorials are a better way to deliver information to the player"

(Short Reply)

Not really though.

I pointed out that good starting areas are needed. That's all. Not much but most games don't have 'em. But good starting areas do not necessarily contain tutorials. The "Megaman! Megaman!" exampled are examples of this. Not of tutorials. That video was clearly criticizing the notion of a tutorial being needed. Let alone being mandatory.

(Long Reply)

In Gothic 1 & 2 the player just woke up and went to try stuff. It worked out.

Early enemies were tough but not too much if 1-on-1 and could be led away into a 1-on-1 due to the simulation mechanics.

NPCs showed off later abilities and easily dealt with enemies and the player watched. Plenty of quests of venturing around together with NPCs to watch them and also to help the player early on, even while the game made a pretense of being very hard at the start. These early areas were clearly gated by danger from all sides hence the player was be there for a while. The player learned to play by trial and error and imitation and some creativity and it worked. Immersion never was never broken there.

Those two "Megaman! Megaman!" examples again show off good solutions. In this case for platformers. But notice they're not tutorials. No popups or explanations. Just gentle starting areas. Which telegraphed and added mechanics such that trial and error worked out fine. And told a story. Good starting areas are not tutorials.

Tutorials are something else. They should not be confused with properly done starting areas.

Dijkstra once famously defined good computing as independent of machine specifics to figure out how to do something, and here we can define good in good starting area as where trial and error is safe enough to figure out how to play and progress.

There was a GDC talk that was good a while back. (Is it just me or good GDC talks are getting more and more infrequent?)

Most people new to games can't play Tomb Raider or whatever because they assume Lara Croft can't survive falling onto spikes (she can) or being set aflame (she can) and assume (wrongly) they can't win by just reaching the end of the level. So they run up to a chasm and stop there and are confused what to do next. This despite all the tutorials and popups. Abstraction makes games work but most people can't think abstractly. How to get them to buy and play shit?

Solution is clearly just the old method of encouraging trial and error in an obviously safe way. Like where other characters are present that encourage the player to monkey see monkey do...like falling on spikes while on fire and just climbing off and using a medkit. And turning around and starting at the fool player...but not saying anything at all. Just waiting for them to follow them. "What one monkey can do another can too" went the most famous 19th century calculus textbook.

RE: "optional"

Definitely, if it's there, it should be optional.

Proof. People want to restart with a new character in rpgs. Often as soon as they finished the first hour of the game. It's just the way people play rpgs.

Nonoptional tutorials that last an hour fuck that up completely. It's nice that the Deux Ex tutorial was optional. Good example.

But that being said, most people will still need to select even the optional tutorial at first and most tutorials are still too are too slow and too boring for casuals.

However, casuals provide the numbers that have to be hit. They get bored easily. Fuck. They don't read shit. Fuck. They also can't learn quickly in an abstract way. So actually no amount of handholding and flow is going to help much. Fuck. They want a blockbuster film. Breaking immersion triggers them. So as it happens, Fuck x Fuck x Fuck = 6/10 * Player Score + 9/10 Reviewer Score is the first fundamental theorem of game design for modern audiances.

[Humbaba]

But good starting areas do not necessarily contain tutorials.

Starting areas are tutorials, that's why we call em "tutorial areas". The Irenicus dungeon is a tutorial. All games have starting areas, because tutorials are necessary, even if there's a manual.

I certainly hope you guys' definition of tutorial wasn't "gameplay interrupted by pop ups" because that would make you look pretty dumb.

[asf]

@Humbaba is clearly too stupid to learn a game without hand holding

[General Reign]

Wasteland 2 was supposed to bring back the hardcore stuff like manuals and the manual is a little piece of shit. Sad.

[Humbaba]

@asf please explain to us how the Irenicus dungeon holds your hand.

[NotAI]

This is still relevant:

[rusty_shackleford]

listened to his voice for 5 seconds and I know he knows nothing about designing game rules

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I just started playing another Trails game and was very glad it started with a tutorial. Even though it uses the same battle system as the last 8 games, the battle system has become insanely complex that it is very easy to forget several mechanics. EP for arts, CP for crafts, buffs and debuffs, status elements, mobs have 7 different elemental attributes, mobs are more or less vulnerable to 4 different weapon damage types, mobs now have break bars and each ability you have deals different amounts of break bar damage, turn order bonuses, characters can pair up to form combat links and different combinations yield different abilities like recharging EP after casting a spell or protecting a character from an enemy attack, some characters you can press a button to transform their weapon into a different mode that changes their attack range and stats, sometimes when you attack a mob you proc a link attack where you have to quickly make a decision about whether or not to press A to do an extra attack to gain BP or spend that BP on more powerful attacks, BP can be spent on Brave Orders that last 4 turns and yield various effects like multiplying break bar damage or giving every character reflect, some characters can spend all of their EP to summon a mech during battle.. it's a lot. If the game hadn't started with a tutorial I wouldn't have remembered half of this stuff.

[Klerik]

i tried using internet forums to convince autistic level one awareness evil retards that my opinion is superior because i have a tiny penis and am afraid of the big bad nigger outside.

[NotAI]

#SomebodyOnTheInternetIsWrong

[KnightoftheWind]

I have developed PTSD over forced game tutorials with pop-up messages, I hope I never have to play a game like that again. Either the game is designed like Super Mario Bros, which bakes in the "tutorial" as an aspect of level design, or it's treated like the Hazard Course from Half-Life. Games should be intuitive and quick to start, not bog you down with walls of text and real-time cutscenes.