Tutorials- hate 'em or love 'em

LauriJ

LauriJ

Goomba
Same as title. What are your opinions on VG tutorials, especially if they are forced down your throat?
 
Happy said:
they're good as long as they're optional
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pretty much, or just really short in general, not something like kingdom hearts 2 style.
 
I remembered reading one article about Plants vs Zombies, where the developer (I believe it's George Fan) has found a good balance for a tutorial. Basically, he incorporated them as part of the series of levels. In the first level, the field is simple, where there's only one lane to worry about with one plant (a shooter). The second level made more lanes available, as well as introducing another important plant (sun-spawning). The third introduces a bomb, and so on.

What I am saying is that tutorials can be a good tool to teach players, but it should at least be something that fits seamlessly into the gameplay. The most prominent example of this is Super Mario Bros.' World 1-1 level, in which every element in this game is to teach the player something.

Thanks for reading.
 
I definitely prefer subtle signposting to huge blocks of text. A recent indie game I picked up on Steam tutorialized everything; how to jump, how to open doors, how to shoot, what save stations are, how to talk to NPC's, and oh my god let me play the game. The narration isn't even well-written, so it just becomes a slog.
 
Portal has the best tutorial of any game. Over half the game is a tutorial and you don't even realize it
 
yeah, the portal games are examples of really, really great level design

if you haven't, i really recommend listening to the director's commentary; there's a lot of thought that goes into the game, and the lack of annoying tutorials really makes the game all that more enjoyable
 
It depends on how the tutorial is designed. A good tutorial designer should always ask themselves "Can the player reasonably find this out on their own?" and if the answer is "Yes", not tutorialize it.

In most cases, a "what button does what" tutorial is unnecessary because players will usually press all buttons and see what they do once they start the game, or they look at the key bindings. Restrict the tutorializing to complex button chains, or things that aren't immediately self-explanatory. Never tutorialize the obvious (If your health runs out, you die? You can reach higher ground by jumping? Keys open doors? Collect health pickups to regain health? No fucking shit!).

Basically, find a good middle-ground between "Don't treat your player like an idiot" and "Don't expect your player to be a mind-reader".
 
FE7's tutorial is the absolute worst, and it's my number-one problem with the game. It's 10 chapters of the game holding your hand, and sometimes forcing you to make stupid decisions. What's worse about it is that when you replay the game, if you want an advantage, you need to sit through it again. I get that it's the first Fire Emblem game to come out outside of Japan but they just went way over the top. I think it's better if they make tutorials optional, or at least short. For example, Sacred Stones has tutorials only on the easiest difficulty, the only difficulty someone would need a tutorial on.
 
This is just a nitpick, but having a character actually say the tutorial instructions, and then break the fourth wall so unknowingly kind of takes me out of it. They're telling the character you're playing as to "press A to do thing" even though the playable character likely has no clue what button they're talking about. I know it's supposed to be for the player themselves but in context it's being said to the character that's being played.
 
Tutorials can be a slog to get through but they wouldn't deteriorate my overall enjoyment of the game unless they're too excessive.