I demand no tutorial.

[LadyCrimson]

I must be the only person who doesn't like tutorials because I read the ****ing manuals and understand what I can and can not do for the most part when I start the game.

I read the manuals (when there's one that consists of more than telling me what hotkeys do what...) ... but I don't mind tutorials. IF they're not too long. And if they're the intro of the game, it's nice if you can largely skip them on replays ... either with a "I don't need this, Skip, yes/no" choice or by making it so the player can just dash right to the "point" and ignore all those little side tutorial things. I can't think of a single game tutorial that actually gave me any sense of "learning" how to play that just playing the game doesn't do by itself, if you know what I mean...but some people like them, if they add a little to lore/story background. The set-up, as it were.

 

Completely separate tutorials ... eh, I've seen those in some RTS games. I don't think they're any better and it would feel weird in a RPG. You can make in-game tutorials skippable in some fashion...seems good enough to me.

[PsychoBlonde]

I must be the only person who doesn't like tutorials because I read the ****ing manuals and understand what I can and can not do for the most part when I start the game.

I read the manuals (when there's one that consists of more than telling me what hotkeys do what...) ... but I don't mind tutorials.

 

I never read manuals any more--the only reason I ever looked at the the stupid things was to find that list of all the hotkeys, but generally you can find this now just by checking the keymapping options. I have to actually look at the game for a while before anything in the manual makes any sense to me, and by then, I've already figured out how to play it.

 

That, and most modern manuals are so sketchy about what your abilities actually DO for you that I generally just find out everything by trial and error anyway. Plus, it's more fun that way.

[jezz555]

I see were you're coming from on this, but I'm kind of divided on it myself. On the one hand a cinematic tutorial would be...well cinematic. But on the other hand I don't want to have to see that every time I start a new game.

[LadyCrimson]

I never read manuals any more--the only reason I ever looked at the the stupid things was to find that list of all the hotkeys, but generally you can find this now just by checking the keymapping options. I have to actually look at the game for a while before anything in the manual makes any sense to me, and by then, I've already figured out how to play it.

 

That, and most modern manuals are so sketchy about what your abilities actually DO for you that I generally just find out everything by trial and error anyway. Plus, it's more fun that way.

Agree about manuals today.

I used to like the thick paper manuals for RTS/builder games, where they'd give you all kinds of info on unit stats, requirements, and the like. Number crunching kinds of stuff that I could refer to. They don't do that much anymore.

[Elerond]

I never read manuals any more--the only reason I ever looked at the the stupid things was to find that list of all the hotkeys, but generally you can find this now just by checking the keymapping options. I have to actually look at the game for a while before anything in the manual makes any sense to me, and by then, I've already figured out how to play it.

 

That, and most modern manuals are so sketchy about what your abilities actually DO for you that I generally just find out everything by trial and error anyway. Plus, it's more fun that way.

Agree about manuals today.

I used to like the thick paper manuals for RTS/builder games, where they'd give you all kinds of info on unit stats, requirements, and the like. Number crunching kinds of stuff that I could refer to. They don't do that much anymore.

 

I miss those manuals very much

[HansKrSG]

Make the tutorial wholly optional, or weave it in well hidden in the game (and make it still optional to avctually do), so that it won't be a chore that hurts replayability and patronises the gamer.

In BG 1, the idea of having people you can talk to, to give you info on play mechanics were nice, I can ignore those whithout loosing anything in the game. Doing the quests that show you how to control a group were uniterresting, and didn't work well when replaying. An idea is to make the tutorial completely separate from the game, so that you don't feel that you "have to" do them, to not loose out on anyhting in the actual game.

[JFSOCC]

as the guy in the video said, the game needs to show you the ropes. it can be done with an explicit tutorial or by clever design of the game, or just of the interface itself.

lets take the BG interface as an example. you had buttons on the left, buttons on the bottom and portraits on the right. you moved the mouse over a button and you got a tooltip showing what it does... simple and efficient and most of all not insulting for our intelligence. a person of average intelligence needed about 30-40 seconds to figure everthing out... i click this, i cast spells, i click this i attack, i cant click the special ability button so my character has nothing there, the same icon used in the bar for talking appears when i pass the cursor over an npc so i talking is the default action when i click on someone, these rats have a red circle and are moving toward me and if i pass the pointer over them it turns to a sword so they are hostile and the default action is to attack. i got hit and my portrait became red, so it indicates my hp etc, etc, etc.

when there is a button saying "search for traps", i dont think there need to be a tutorial explaining how to press the button and what happens when you press it... anyone can figure out that if you have pressed the button and a red square appeared on the floor, that square is a trap.

one thing almost all developers and mostly all pubblishers seem to have forgoten in recent years, is that gaming is first and foremost a mental exercise. it was born as a form of interactive entertaintment for "smart" people to strain the only muscle they had developed.

That's about the absolute basics though, the interface. That would still tell you nothing about the game. (except that it has traps)

[teknoman2]

as the guy in the video said, the game needs to show you the ropes. it can be done with an explicit tutorial or by clever design of the game, or just of the interface itself.

lets take the BG interface as an example. you had buttons on the left, buttons on the bottom and portraits on the right. you moved the mouse over a button and you got a tooltip showing what it does... simple and efficient and most of all not insulting for our intelligence. a person of average intelligence needed about 30-40 seconds to figure everthing out... i click this, i cast spells, i click this i attack, i cant click the special ability button so my character has nothing there, the same icon used in the bar for talking appears when i pass the cursor over an npc so i talking is the default action when i click on someone, these rats have a red circle and are moving toward me and if i pass the pointer over them it turns to a sword so they are hostile and the default action is to attack. i got hit and my portrait became red, so it indicates my hp etc, etc, etc.

when there is a button saying "search for traps", i dont think there need to be a tutorial explaining how to press the button and what happens when you press it... anyone can figure out that if you have pressed the button and a red square appeared on the floor, that square is a trap.

one thing almost all developers and mostly all pubblishers seem to have forgoten in recent years, is that gaming is first and foremost a mental exercise. it was born as a form of interactive entertaintment for "smart" people to strain the only muscle they had developed.

That's about the absolute basics though, the interface. That would still tell you nothing about the game. (except that it has traps)

look i played BG1 and 2, IWD1 and 2, fallout 1 and 2, arcanum and PT without reading a single page from the manual. all i had to do was to look at the tooltips appearing on the interface buttons to know what i could do and how to do it (well maybe not in arcanum but it was still manageable). it was all pretty straightforward.

i picked up an item... do i need a big sign to tell me "click here to open the inventory"? im pretty sure i can see the button just fine and i think i know i picked up an item so i dont need a sign to explain it to me every time i pick something up. same thing with quests: a simple "journal updated" message is enough... i can open the journal without a constant indication that the journal button is *here*

today the fashion is to make games retard-proof, so even a guy with minsc's intelligence can play them, thing that makes those with a bit more brain or experience in the sport feel like the developers consider them idiots. and you can see that in everything, from the controls, to the interface to the level design, it's al made so that you wont need to use even a single brain cell in order to go on in the game.

[Pope]

Yes it did. It was optional and it wasnt even a story introduction. It was in a small dungeon or basement and u had to kill some gibberlings and open some stuff.

Now that I think of it, I vaguely remember a sequence with Branwen and Xan in BG2. Was that by any chance the tutorial or am I hallucinating again?

[obsidiansquid]

I'd like a tutorial. I'd prefer it to be optional, because the drag of having to go through a tutorial every time I want to start over in a RPG usually keeps me from replaying.

[Hormalakh]

Yes it did. It was optional and it wasnt even a story introduction. It was in a small dungeon or basement and u had to kill some gibberlings and open some stuff.

Now that I think of it, I vaguely remember a sequence with Branwen and Xan in BG2. Was that by any chance the tutorial or am I hallucinating again?

 

You really gotta lay off the weed. But yeah...Brandwen/Xan are in BG2's tutorial.

Edited November 19, 2012 by Hormalakh

[JFSOCC]

as the guy in the video said, the game needs to show you the ropes. it can be done with an explicit tutorial or by clever design of the game, or just of the interface itself.

lets take the BG interface as an example. you had buttons on the left, buttons on the bottom and portraits on the right. you moved the mouse over a button and you got a tooltip showing what it does... simple and efficient and most of all not insulting for our intelligence. a person of average intelligence needed about 30-40 seconds to figure everthing out... i click this, i cast spells, i click this i attack, i cant click the special ability button so my character has nothing there, the same icon used in the bar for talking appears when i pass the cursor over an npc so i talking is the default action when i click on someone, these rats have a red circle and are moving toward me and if i pass the pointer over them it turns to a sword so they are hostile and the default action is to attack. i got hit and my portrait became red, so it indicates my hp etc, etc, etc.

when there is a button saying "search for traps", i dont think there need to be a tutorial explaining how to press the button and what happens when you press it... anyone can figure out that if you have pressed the button and a red square appeared on the floor, that square is a trap.

one thing almost all developers and mostly all pubblishers seem to have forgoten in recent years, is that gaming is first and foremost a mental exercise. it was born as a form of interactive entertaintment for "smart" people to strain the only muscle they had developed.

That's about the absolute basics though, the interface. That would still tell you nothing about the game. (except that it has traps)

look i played BG1 and 2, IWD1 and 2, fallout 1 and 2, arcanum and PT without reading a single page from the manual. all i had to do was to look at the tooltips appearing on the interface buttons to know what i could do and how to do it (well maybe not in arcanum but it was still manageable). it was all pretty straightforward.

i picked up an item... do i need a big sign to tell me "click here to open the inventory"? im pretty sure i can see the button just fine and i think i know i picked up an item so i dont need a sign to explain it to me every time i pick something up. same thing with quests: a simple "journal updated" message is enough... i can open the journal without a constant indication that the journal button is *here*

today the fashion is to make games retard-proof, so even a guy with minsc's intelligence can play them, thing that makes those with a bit more brain or experience in the sport feel like the developers consider them idiots. and you can see that in everything, from the controls, to the interface to the level design, it's al made so that you wont need to use even a single brain cell in order to go on in the game.

You misunderstand me, I'm not arguing for hand-holding tutorials. I do feel the game could be taught to the player, but in subtler ways. What you described isn't a tutorial in the sense that it teaches, that's all I'm saying

[GhostofAnakin]

I've always been in favor of optional tutorials. Nothing is as aggravating as having to sit through the tutorial on subsequent play throughs, and having no way to skip or fast forward through them.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I never read manuals any more--the only reason I ever looked at the the stupid things was to find that list of all the hotkeys, but generally you can find this now just by checking the keymapping options. I have to actually look at the game for a while before anything in the manual makes any sense to me, and by then, I've already figured out how to play it.

 

That, and most modern manuals are so sketchy about what your abilities actually DO for you that I generally just find out everything by trial and error anyway. Plus, it's more fun that way.

Agree about manuals today.

I used to like the thick paper manuals for RTS/builder games, where they'd give you all kinds of info on unit stats, requirements, and the like. Number crunching kinds of stuff that I could refer to. They don't do that much anymore.

I usually read the manual before I even install the game. Not being able to do that now (because the manual contains no information) has diminished by enjoyment of gaming.

[jivex5k]

I'm all for a separate tutorial, don't make it the beginning of the game please.

Tutorials already break immersion by telling you what keys to press, no reason to work the tutorial into gameplay.

 

Some games got away with this awesomely though, like Halo. Yeah, the first one!

 

And I'd love a PDF version of a paper manual chock full of info.

 

I remember reading the manual for Ultima Online over and over...of course the information was all wrong eventually but this isn't an MMORPG with changing rules.

Edited November 20, 2012 by jivex5k

[Chippy]

For me alot of gaming is about how you absorb information, the guy in the Op's video would likely be considered an activist in his approach to gaming. People who have to try it and form an oppinion based on whaterver happens. Not to be confused with a dumb ass like the guy I once had a conversation with who thought it was hillarious that his flat tire didn't take him through a 25 mile 70mph motorway journey and only stopped when the police flagged him. Who he could barely see through the sparks.

I need to read the manual and analyse the rules - rolling a 1, why I made my save vs will & fort but still died because I was under 4hd, the crit range and multiplier of enemies weapons. Although that could be considered playstyle.

 

What I really appreciate is knowing where the boundaries are. The BG manual states that if you're reputation is too low, you'll be attacked at every opportunity and "you won't survive this". So one guy might think "XP farming!" while I might think "Crap, that means I might not be able to rest" and I'll likely not take the risk. Which is cool, because otherwise I'm taking a gamble based on the percieved limitations of the engine, my prior experience of what other RPG's have done, and expectations of the developers - e.g. in NWN2 there might have been an option to stick a certain sword into a certain golem and tell it to wander off a cliff, or complete the quest for me. There's a possibility that Obsidian might have written/made another 10 hours of content if I chose that, and the activist would likely try - but I would expect a game over screen, while they might want to salvage the situation.

 

So I'd love more content, consequences and multiple playstyles catered for - but I really appreciate some advice from the manual, or the skills and abilities of my player factoring into life or death decisions - because I'm roleplaying a character and he knows more about the virtual world than I do.

[Hassat Hunter]

Not sure why "tutorial at the start" became a fad when a seperate one is just a zillion times better, and the first ruins game re-runs.

 

But maybe games aren't made anymore to be run twice, and I am just an old-fashioned geezer who should get along with the ride down the cliff?

 

Tl;dr: Yes, I agree.