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TUTORIALS, LEARNING AND HAND-HOLDING
Posts
wildwes
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Closeauthor=LockeZauthor=wildwesYou're wrong. Every Mario game has in-game tutorials. They're just hidden better in some of them than other.
Of course, most platforming Mario games don't even HAVE in-game tutorials...
They work in very much the same way as the Mega Man X tutorial in the OP. Which you apparently didn't even watch, which is a shame, since it's what this topic is about.
:(
I watched it... I just didn't think about it that way...
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Travioauthor=doomed2dieI think the best way to do this is to put the player in a situation where that ability is useful but not necessary. For example - you just learned a shield against magic attacks. The next boss/whatever uses a lot of magic attacks - you can defeat the boss with some thought and work without using the shield, but the shield will make your life far easier. You don't have to use the shield to win, but it's useful in the situation as it keeps you from having to heal as often so you can focus on offense and shorten the battle.
When you say something like "put the player in a position where he inevitably will use the newly acquired mechanic," how different is that really from "gray out all buttons except the desired one"? They ultimately serve the same purpose which is to essentially force the player to take the desired action.
I disagree. I have to really question the effectiveness of a tutorial that can be beaten without learning any of what you are supposed to learn.
I think the better way is probably what Crystalgate sort of suggested: make sure they learn how to do what you want them to learn how to do, but make sure there are also other things they have to do besides that. Learning how to stun enemies as they're charging up is all well and good, but it shouldn't be the only thing you are doing. You should still have to do all the same things you were doing before.
Also, just the simple fact that the game gives you a choice is important - even if there's a right choice and a wrong choice, having choices is the difference between cut scenes and gameplay. Plus, leading the player to understand why he picked the choice he did is the important thing, it's what you're trying to teach. And graying out everything else on the menu doesn't accomplish that. Making it really obvious that it's the right choice actually does accomplish it.
Daria
71
Gotta love the illusion if choice. The outcome may be identical but the player feels better about the situation if they think they are in control.
Travio
149
author=LockeZauthor=TravioI disagree. I have to really question the effectiveness of a tutorial that can be beaten without learning any of what you are supposed to learn.author=doomed2dieI think the best way to do this is to put the player in a situation where that ability is useful but not necessary. For example - you just learned a shield against magic attacks. The next boss/whatever uses a lot of magic attacks - you can defeat the boss with some thought and work without using the shield, but the shield will make your life far easier. You don't have to use the shield to win, but it's useful in the situation as it keeps you from having to heal as often so you can focus on offense and shorten the battle.
When you say something like "put the player in a position where he inevitably will use the newly acquired mechanic," how different is that really from "gray out all buttons except the desired one"? They ultimately serve the same purpose which is to essentially force the player to take the desired action.
I think the better way is probably what Crystalgate sort of suggested: make sure they learn how to do what you want them to learn how to do, but make sure there are also other things they have to do besides that. Learning how to stun enemies as they're charging up is all well and good, but it shouldn't be the only thing you are doing. You should still have to do all the same things you were doing before.
Also, just the simple fact that the game gives you a choice is important - even if there's a right choice and a wrong choice, having choices is the difference between cut scenes and gameplay. Plus, leading the player to understand why he picked the choice he did is the important thing, it's what you're trying to teach. And graying out everything else on the menu doesn't accomplish that. Making it really obvious that it's the right choice actually does accomplish it.
Short of being extremely punishing to the player, though, most, if not all, tutorials in an RPG have to be able to be beaten without learning the actual mechanic behind it. Otherwise you're not going to be able to teach them without frustrating them - let's use your charging up example.
The enemy charges up their attack - if you don't stun them, do they kill your party? Do they kill a member? When you're early enough in the game that you're still learning mechanics, either of those is both frustrating and possibly enough to make me put the game up (what if I happened to miss that little message that the enemy is charging this turn because it wasn't on the screen long enough or wasn't clear enough?). So the attack has to be survivable and, by that measure, you could potentially complete that battle without ever learning the mechanic and some players might just do that - and you should be ready, as a designer, for that as well. I'm not saying to make the resulting tutorial battle easy without the ability, but it's pretty much a necessity to make the tutorial able to be completed without learning the attached mechanic (in the sense of menu driven combat) unless you're greying out all the abilities except the one you want the player to use.
Using an actual example from a game, Final Fantasy VII - the first boss teaches you that hey, some guys will go into a mode and counterattack. You can still complete the boss even if you attack while they're in counterattack mode, it's just much more difficult - you don't have to ever technically learn that particular combat mechanic. The game doesn't go, "I won't let you attack because the guy will counterattack," it goes, "do what you want, but there's an easy way to do this." And that easy way is to learn the mechanic and complete the tutorial as designed.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Sending you backwards and not being able to continue are different things. I feel like it's a very meaningful difference in a tutorial.
FF7 is a pretty bad example, but let's look at it, since it almost works. It has several pieces of a functional teaching system in place.
You are supposed to learn to stop attacking at the right time. If you don't, the boss does massive damage - several times as much as its usual attacks. If you continue to ignore the problem, you'll very quickly get down to critical HP. Oh no, a game over here will make the player quit playing!
But come on, you're never going to let it kill you with that move. You're just not. No one is. It's a counterattack, and you have a healing skill that you already learned how to use earlier in the game, so it's going to stop using the killer move while you heal. It looks dangerous and feels dangerous, but you're not going to die unless you had an aneurism in the 10 minutes since you learned how to heal. The boss is designed to teach you how ATB works, but if you ignore the lesson when saving yourself from dying, the game doesn't mind - it only cares if you ignore the lesson when trying to get past the lesson.
That said, FF4 and FF6 did it better. The Mist Dragon and the Whelk use the same gimmick to teach the ATB system to the player, but also are immune to damage when they're in counterattack mode. So while you can't die from failing to understand the ATB, you also won't progress - you'll spend most of your turns healing and most of the rest of your turns hitting an enemy that's invincible. You can eventually win, but not really, you'll get bored and try alternate things before that happens. Whereas in FF7, if you ignore the tutorial and just attack and heal, you'll actually win faster than if you paid attention. That's a miserable failure of a tutorial if ever I heard one: the game punishes you for learning what you're supposed to.
If the Whelk and Mist Dragon healed themselves when hit instead of counterattacking, they could totally avoid the possibility of the player failing the tutorial - though the designers realized that getting attacked for massive damage is a much clearer "you did something wrong" indicator to a novice player than the boss healing itself, so they didn't go that route. If those bosses didn't leave counterattack mode until you stopped attacking, that would work too, but then the player would have no way to know that they'd ever leave counterattack mode, so recognizing the pattern would be much harder. The FF designers decided these situations were more problematic than the player not learning how ATB works - and were right, since ATB isn't a matter of life and death again until Mt. Ordeals in FF4 or the Magitek Factory in FF6, by which point you've learned how ATB works from watching fifteen hours of random battles.
FF7 is a pretty bad example, but let's look at it, since it almost works. It has several pieces of a functional teaching system in place.
You are supposed to learn to stop attacking at the right time. If you don't, the boss does massive damage - several times as much as its usual attacks. If you continue to ignore the problem, you'll very quickly get down to critical HP. Oh no, a game over here will make the player quit playing!
But come on, you're never going to let it kill you with that move. You're just not. No one is. It's a counterattack, and you have a healing skill that you already learned how to use earlier in the game, so it's going to stop using the killer move while you heal. It looks dangerous and feels dangerous, but you're not going to die unless you had an aneurism in the 10 minutes since you learned how to heal. The boss is designed to teach you how ATB works, but if you ignore the lesson when saving yourself from dying, the game doesn't mind - it only cares if you ignore the lesson when trying to get past the lesson.
That said, FF4 and FF6 did it better. The Mist Dragon and the Whelk use the same gimmick to teach the ATB system to the player, but also are immune to damage when they're in counterattack mode. So while you can't die from failing to understand the ATB, you also won't progress - you'll spend most of your turns healing and most of the rest of your turns hitting an enemy that's invincible. You can eventually win, but not really, you'll get bored and try alternate things before that happens. Whereas in FF7, if you ignore the tutorial and just attack and heal, you'll actually win faster than if you paid attention. That's a miserable failure of a tutorial if ever I heard one: the game punishes you for learning what you're supposed to.
If the Whelk and Mist Dragon healed themselves when hit instead of counterattacking, they could totally avoid the possibility of the player failing the tutorial - though the designers realized that getting attacked for massive damage is a much clearer "you did something wrong" indicator to a novice player than the boss healing itself, so they didn't go that route. If those bosses didn't leave counterattack mode until you stopped attacking, that would work too, but then the player would have no way to know that they'd ever leave counterattack mode, so recognizing the pattern would be much harder. The FF designers decided these situations were more problematic than the player not learning how ATB works - and were right, since ATB isn't a matter of life and death again until Mt. Ordeals in FF4 or the Magitek Factory in FF6, by which point you've learned how ATB works from watching fifteen hours of random battles.
Whelk is also screwed up because because it can recoil into its shell after you've already selected an attack.
Travio
149
FF7 might have been a bad example, yes, but it's the first one that came to mind as I'd recently read some articles talking about it's implementation of an introduction.
Honestly, I understand what you're saying, but in a game using menus, short of hand-holding by greying out all the other options or making an impassable barrier without the use of a mechanic, you have to understand there's an inevitability that someone can defeat the tutorial encounter in another manner. The version of the example in FF4 and FF6 are much better done in this case - they're an impassable barrier, and I consider the Whelk the better of the two examples (if only because I can't recall the Mist Dragon encounter exactly off the top of my head). The game doesn't stop you from attacking the Whelk when it's in its shell, and it doesn't kill you outright if you fail to understand the mechanic (which, as Jude points out, is a good thing due to the wonkiness of that particular encounter).
Anyways, we've got kind of far from my original point - I was just trying to get across that a battle where a player is intended to use a particular mechanic to defeat it, and to learn how to use that mechanic in the meantime, doesn't have to be as simple as greying out everything else, especially if there's a more difficult way to fight the battle without it (and I know there's some players who would prefer that alternate, more difficult battle). And I'd prefer a battle where I was expected to use a mechanic/ability (ie the free choice battle method) as a tutorial over one where I was forced to use that mechanic to proceed (ie the greying out method).
Honestly, I understand what you're saying, but in a game using menus, short of hand-holding by greying out all the other options or making an impassable barrier without the use of a mechanic, you have to understand there's an inevitability that someone can defeat the tutorial encounter in another manner. The version of the example in FF4 and FF6 are much better done in this case - they're an impassable barrier, and I consider the Whelk the better of the two examples (if only because I can't recall the Mist Dragon encounter exactly off the top of my head). The game doesn't stop you from attacking the Whelk when it's in its shell, and it doesn't kill you outright if you fail to understand the mechanic (which, as Jude points out, is a good thing due to the wonkiness of that particular encounter).
Anyways, we've got kind of far from my original point - I was just trying to get across that a battle where a player is intended to use a particular mechanic to defeat it, and to learn how to use that mechanic in the meantime, doesn't have to be as simple as greying out everything else, especially if there's a more difficult way to fight the battle without it (and I know there's some players who would prefer that alternate, more difficult battle). And I'd prefer a battle where I was expected to use a mechanic/ability (ie the free choice battle method) as a tutorial over one where I was forced to use that mechanic to proceed (ie the greying out method).
doomed2die
180
The problem with the aforementioned method being that an individual who passes through the boss fight without using the desired mechanic has learned nothing of the mechanic, and therefore, has gained no direction.
Each and every method has issues
-Box Popups: Can be boring, and even a little patronizing but can give the most information without too much of a hassle
-Video Tutorials: Can take too long but manages to add a more aesthetically appealing element to your tutorial.
-Grayoutalltheoptions Tutorial: Forces you to manually utilize the mechanic and discover its properties but can fail to convey the full of the information and takes away any sense of player control
-Forceyoutousetheoption Tutorial: It's merely hiding the fact thatyou're robbing the player of control...
It doesn't matter how you do anything; there are pros and cons. I personally think that the Text Popups are the best for games I play; I'm a fast reader and going through pointless battles and videos to learn mechanics seems unnecessarily long to me. But that may not apply to everyone.
Each and every method has issues
-Box Popups: Can be boring, and even a little patronizing but can give the most information without too much of a hassle
-Video Tutorials: Can take too long but manages to add a more aesthetically appealing element to your tutorial.
-Grayoutalltheoptions Tutorial: Forces you to manually utilize the mechanic and discover its properties but can fail to convey the full of the information and takes away any sense of player control
-Forceyoutousetheoption Tutorial: It's merely hiding the fact thatyou're robbing the player of control...
It doesn't matter how you do anything; there are pros and cons. I personally think that the Text Popups are the best for games I play; I'm a fast reader and going through pointless battles and videos to learn mechanics seems unnecessarily long to me. But that may not apply to everyone.
Crystalgate
694
If you design a boss to specifically encourage the use of a certain mechanic and the player manages to beat the boss without using that certain mechanic, chance is the rest of the game can be beaten without the mechanic just fine. In this case, the player didn't learn to use the intended mechanic, but the player did however learn how to get past challenges which encourages that mechanic by other means. That works too.
Daria
71
author=doomed2die
The problem with the aforementioned method being that an individual who passes through the boss fight without using the desired mechanic has learned nothing of the mechanic, and therefore, has gained no direction.
Each and every method has issues
-Box Popups: Can be boring, and even a little patronizing but can give the most information without too much of a hassle
-Video Tutorials: Can take too long but manages to add a more aesthetically appealing element to your tutorial.
-Grayoutalltheoptions Tutorial: Forces you to manually utilize the mechanic and discover its properties but can fail to convey the full of the information and takes away any sense of player control
-Forceyoutousetheoption Tutorial: It's merely hiding the fact thatyou're robbing the player of control...
It doesn't matter how you do anything; there are pros and cons. I personally think that the Text Popups are the best for games I play; I'm a fast reader and going through pointless battles and videos to learn mechanics seems unnecessarily long to me. But that may not apply to everyone.
I think the worst possible thing you can do is bore your players. Personally I like the idea of not-so-subtly encouraging the player to use the mechanic in a tailored battle. Like Crystalgate pointed out even if they don't pick up the intended lesson they still find a way to overcome the challenge, and if that's an issue then throw in a NPC later that reminds the player via a brief message. Eg. "When I was an adventurer I was nearly done in by a whelk. Let me tell you, I wouldn't be here bothering you today if I didn't learn how to counter attack!"
And if they die during the battle... well if you set up the battle to be easily conquered using the intended mechanic, and you made it obvious that the option was available to the player, then you did all you could do as a designer. Stupid players can't be helped and maybe dying was a lesson they needed to learn too.
Just don't preach to the lowest common denominator, it's patronizing for everyone else.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=Crystalgate
If you design a boss to specifically encourage the use of a certain mechanic and the player manages to beat the boss without using that certain mechanic, chance is the rest of the game can be beaten without the mechanic just fine. In this case, the player didn't learn to use the intended mechanic, but the player did however learn how to get past challenges which encourages that mechanic by other means. That works too.
...Mmm. This is actually pretty sensible. In the example of the ATB tutorial boss, it's definitely true. It's certainly not always true, though. It depends how hard your game is. I mean, the bosstorial is probably at the beginning of the game and is thus pretty easy. Later in the game when bosses get hard enough that one mistake causes a game over, you're gonna need to not only know how to do the thing you learned but you're gonna have to apply it in a very specific way.
Example! Mega Man X drops you into that pit that you can only get out of by wall jumping. But if you have perfect reflexes, you can jump to the edge before the platform falls, and avoid ever realizing wall-jump exists. But later in the game you have to use the wall jumping to ascend vertical stages.
I will also note that when I played Mega Man X as a kid, I fell in that pit, could not get out, decided the game was bullshit for putting an inescapable trap so early in the game, figured this was an indication that it would probably have multiple such traps on every stage, returned it to Blockbuster and never played it again. I had played a lot of terrible tv-series-licensed platformer games that actually did that kind of thing, OKAY? This is actually a danger of covert tutorials - the player may think that he has been placed in an unwinnable situation as a punishment for doing something wrong earlier, or even just think that he's in an unwinnable situation as a result of terrible game design. I think this is avoidable, though. One obvious way to avoid it is to make the tutorial passable without learning it. Another way that I've played with in the past, but never really nailed down, is to start with a covert challenge-based tutorial but then if the player goes a certain amount of time without beating it, I show a standard walloftextorial that explains exactly what is happening and how to get past it. I do this for solutions to individual puzzles more often than systems tutorials, but it could work in systems tutorials too, I think. Sort of like Devil May Cry's difficulty system where if you get enough game overs it unlocks easy mode, haha, except instead of being caused by a game over it's caused by getting stuck. It can be hard to figure out exactly how long I should wait before assuming the player is a dumbass, though.
Daria
71
author=LockeZ
It can be hard to figure out exactly how long I should wait before assuming the player is a dumbass, though.
"Mmm.. boss battle. That means sammich time!"
*later*
"Tutorial? WTF?!"
Seriously though. I like this solution too. Although you may want to have a prompt that asks the player if they would like to see the solution first.
author=LockeZ
Personally, I don't really consider a manual or readme a valid option for scenarios that involve, uh... video games. To me the question is tutorial vs. easy gameplay vs. player exploration.
Well, in my eyes, they're all the same thing. If you want to teach a player, majorly, don't shower these though. It's very obvious, and I don't know why I felt I had to mention that, but oh well.
Manual-
Good parts: It can be optional, and can help the player if they're stuck, without a text box going,"MEGAMAN MEGAMAN! KILL THAT THING!", or "MEGAMAN MEGAMAN! THAT PLATFORM WILL FALL!", because the manual is real life, and you don't get that kind of stuff.
Bad parts: Let's say you are far into a game, and you get confused of what to do. You look in the manual, and nowadays, as far as I know not many games come with manuals, but when they do...controls. You find the controls for the game, and that's it. It may give you a few tips, but other than that, it's either the internet, or you're screwed.
Easy gameplay-
Good parts:While manuals and tutorials are good, this is a nice idea because it allows the game to be for all gamers, sucky gamers and hardcore. No tutorials needed here.
Bad parts:But that's pretty much it, it doesn't give much challenge, sadly.
Tutorial 1: The loudmouth character-
Good parts:Well, let's say you're an idiot, and you don't know what to do. You walk up to something and something screams at you,"MEGAMAN MEGAMAN! THAT THING WILL...DO SOMETHING!", now you figured it out, and if you forget, because remember, you are an idiot, it will happen AGAIN, AND AGAIN...
Bad parts: ...AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN...
Until the hardcore players give up, not because the game is to hard, but because of that annoying girl, or annoying fairy that keeps on and on. Seriously, someone should make a challenge game where they have all annoying characters on one screen, and see how long you can last, before your brain explodes with information not needed.
Tutorial 2: STOP WITH YOUR QUEST AND FIGHT THESE GUYS WITH A WEAPON YOU JUST GOT THEN BLAHBLAHGBLAH... -
Good parts:Well, at least its better than the loudmouth character. It doesn't talk, and is more or less obvious what you have to do, without being told to do it. Pretty much, you get a super uber powerful sword, let's say, and you're an idiot again. You don't know how to attack, and an enemy pops up. So now, you find out you can equip stuff, and you learn how to attack, how? I don't know.
Bad things:If you play the game enough, this will stop the progress from what you really want to do if you're a hardcore gamer, but if not, and you're an idiot, these things won't happen enough because you keep forgetting that a monster just shoved your own sword up your ass. It's insanity, pretty much. But not many people agree with me with this, think of Goldensun. The very beginning of the game, you learn a few things, but to learn these things, you have to stop. So a friend of yours is about to die, and your family wants you to help, but no, you want to try out move, which doesn't work at this time. Yes, that doesn't make any sense, I don't care, because remember, in this situation you are an idiot. In real life, you aren't, but this is hypothetical, Mr. or Mrs. Reader.
Not going into depth about the kind of tutorial the guy in the video was showing, but in my eyes, that is the best, and also relates to player exploration, so OK, there it goes. All tutorials in my eyes, told from my perspective, the good and bad things about each that Lockez mentioned. And most of the games I've tried making use player exploration, and my Dad doesn't like that. Says something about him. :3
