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Design the in-game tutorial for the mmorpg
Wandering Mist
Moderator, Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One
One of the most important aspects to get new players into a game is the tutorial. I'm sure we've all played games with bad tutorials that either didn't give us enough information to work with, or assumed we were neanderthals that had never seen a keyboard before. A good tutorial can be the difference between someone sticking with a game and quitting in the first 10 minutes.
With that in mind, what would you include in an in-game tutorial for Ashes of Creation? And how would you go about delivering that tutorial? Bare in mind that your tutorial segment should be suitable for both players new to mmorpgs and seasoned veterans.
I look forward to seeing what people come up with, it's always fascinating.
With that in mind, what would you include in an in-game tutorial for Ashes of Creation? And how would you go about delivering that tutorial? Bare in mind that your tutorial segment should be suitable for both players new to mmorpgs and seasoned veterans.
I look forward to seeing what people come up with, it's always fascinating.
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Comments
One, where you learn the basics even before creating a character, which you can skip. You would just have a basic nondescript grey humanoid to controll and theys would teach you things like looting monsters, basic controlls, rebinding hotkeys, configuring your interface etc. It would be an optional button to press during character selection.
The second one would be in the character creation (also optional), where you can play your class at lvl 30 to see how it plays with all the base abilities etc.
I know tons of people who roled a certain class and then decided to make a new character, because the class wasnt what they wanted in the end. This would provide people to experience the class for themselves before taking their first steps in the "real" world so to speak.
There are elements where I feel like the player should take it upon themselves to try and learn intricate elements of the game as to reward those that take the time to learn to use the systems to their utmost efficiency, but having a basic tutorial is key Imo.
For more complex systems like enchanting and farming, maybe the good ol expert trainer NPCs who explain the systems and wait for the player to make something basic before explaining the next thing. The explanations would be using diagrams and show exactly what order to press what button in. I'm thinking enchanting, smithing, alchemy, etc. will have both familiar and different elements to other MMOs, so the initial hand-holding would be a big help.
Formerly T-Elf
What I hate seeing is a world that is supposed to be harsh and unforgiving, only to have every third person help you out with basic things that your character should know - even if you don't.
If the tutorial can take place before we are in that harsh and unforgiving world, it means that world retains that sensh of being harsh and unforgiving, but in a way where the game can still provide players with a tutorial.
Having a tutorial happen before character creation also accomplishs this, I just personally prefer it to happen after.
I'm also a fan of any tutorial being able to be skipped if it has already been completed once on the account.
or maybe have some kind of turn on buttom for windows that pop up with info about new things u discover with links to some class of book explaining every tecnical aspect of in game mechanics, so if u like to read that is the way to go for u
I think it's better just to have a tutorial that doesn't railroad you. Rather it just prompts you with basic tasks (go pick this up, talk to this guy, punch this target dummy) that you can go through really quick if you already know how. And if you need more specific instructions or don't know the controls, they should just pop-up on the side when they're relevant. Plus a guide NPC can follow you and spout all kinds of directions and tips and flavor text, but if you're a veteran you don't have to pay attention to it.
And make the whole thing skip-able, of course. If people want to learn by bumbling around, they're welcome to. In any case, there should also be a search-able player's manual (with text/picture descriptions) available outside the tutorial, so people can find basic explanations about specific things at their leisure.
For Newbies: The most important stuff really just boils down to proper labeling: What is this thing? How do I interact with it? Put the interaction button next to the item it interacts with. What are my goals? Put those goals/objectives in a consistent location. Make sure the first thing you teach newbies is where to look for more instructions/hints. Of all the things and people in the tutorial, which are important right now, and which are just there for immersion? What UI elements are important right now, and what can I ignore (should be greyed-out/inoperable)? Put the crucial information in relevant places. MAKE GOOD TOOLTIPS.
Play testing is very important in tutorials too. Intrepid needs to sit down with 20 people of various skill levels, and one-on-one walk them through the tutorial. Have the mentors provide help when needed. Then have the mentors (and players) take notes of all the common mistakes and what hints were most helpful to players, and add those to the final tutorial.
For All Players: At least attempt to make the tutorial quests/NPCs interesting. Maybe give a choice at the start for who you want to be your guide. A sassy crafter? A gruff warrior? An excitable scholar? Don't just stick everyone with the same naggy, generic Tutorial Person who's only purpose in life is to give 4th-wall-breaking instructions. Give the tutorial some color, some character, some banter; anything to give meaning to (or distract from) the mundane tutorial tasks.
To be clear, I fully expect the tutorial to be boring. I think everyone should accept that. I've seen tutorials that the devs tried too hard to make interesting, with an over-wrought, semi-canon, epic story behind it and too much action. But that tends to just make them confusing and tacky. I'd rather have something boring, functional, and immersive, with stream-lined objectives that you can get over with quickly, and decent dialogue to make all the reading more tolerable.
~1-6: You start the game and it needs to introduce you to questing, your base class/levels, and gear basics.
~8: A little further down the line i'd probably make them choose a profession and give them simple quest to drive them through it.
~9-10: Right after professions, i'd probably explain mounts and caravans as well as the corruption system.
~10: When they hit a node, I'd explain node basics, probably make them become a citizen of that node or lead them to the closest available node. As the node levels up, new quests to explain new mechanics will start to show.
~15+: At some point, i'd start to introduce them to different gear types and stats. Throughout the level process, I'd give them more options to try different equipment. I'd try to make this a little more interesting then it usually is, maybe have certain quests force them to use a special weapon of one type to complete a quest. Like you need to take this silver sword and use it to kill a werewolf. Just try to do something a little more then here are some weapons you can choose.
~20: explain some group pve content
~20-30: When they unlock their secondary, i'd explain augments and where you can get them. Possibly introduce them to religion around this time or wait a little longer.
~35: If i didn't explain religion yet, i'd do so it a little later.
I'd also try to have a well-structured appendix so people can look up the systems at any time. Try to make it so that if someone wants to do something, it's easy for them to figure out how to do it or the options they have.
I'd probably communicate the death penalty through an optional text overlay that is on by default. It would trigger when they get low on health and warn them of the death penalty. When they die, i'd probably clearly display what they lost on the screen. I would also do this with durability, As gear gets low, give them a warning text.
Formerly T-Elf
Also, it's 2020, I'm sure we can do better than separate tutorials for newbies and veterans. I'm very much in favour of adaptive tutorials, as in tutorials that only activate if you clearly don't know what to do. For example, let's say you have just picked up a new weapon that went into your inventory. If you didn't access your inventory and look at the weapon within a certain amount of time, a pop-up would appear telling you how to open your inventory and equip items. This way, players would only get the information they needed which would be a lot less frustrating than forcing tutorials on everyone.
I would also advocate for a data bank of all the available tutorials that can accessed at any time from the in-game menu, and if a player hasn't logged in for a number of days or weeks, the next time they log in a pop up would appear asking the player if they want to review any of the tutorials.
Whilst I feel like that is a decent idea to an extent, I do think that players should feel an incentive to learn things themselves. Too many tutorials can be too "hand-holding" Imo and whilst I think players should be helped at the start, having a tutorial begin whenever you pick something new up also takes away from players needing to interact with one another for help.
Ok, here's my stance on "hand-holding". There is a big difference between hand-holding and telling a player that a function exists. Hand-holding is where you tell a player exactly how and when to use a certain function. For example, telling a player that they can press the Shift key to do a dodge-roll isn't hand-holding, because you aren't telling the player how and when to use that feature. All you are doing is informing the player that the feature exists and then letting them figure out for themselves how and when to use it.
I definitely agree that there should be an easily, in-game accessible, menu that people can access for tutorials. I also agree with @Wandering Mist about hand-holding. If you are new to MMOs it's a huge learning curve, where as, for people who played the genre before don't need as much. I remember at the PAXs when Ashes was introduced MANY people had never played an MMO before and the Devs were having to teach them how to play.
Formerly T-Elf
Ah I get that. I thought you were refering to whenver you pick up an item, you get a guide showing you how to use it, regardless of your level.
Ah I see. No, I agree that would be very hand-holding. The example I gave before about the inventory would only appear the first time you picked up a new piece of equipment, and all the tutorial would do is tell you how to open the inventory and equip an item. Nothing more, nothing less.
Want to know how to fight? Then watch the fighting video.
Want to know how to change your interface and hotkeys? Got a video for that.
Want to know how to start a caravan? You guessed it: got a video for that.
It would take them a ridiculously small amount of time to do them, and if they dont, then i will probably do them myself xD
Yes they could, but I believe you shouldn't have to go searching online for such tutorials, they should be included in the game itself.
I dont really think that it would be THAT much of an effort for people tbh xD
I mean, they would have to go to the website either way to download it, and most people look around on websites to see if there is any information about the gameplay.
So it's probably not relevant to start-of-game tutorials, but I do think it's a decent idea for Intrepid to place links in-game that lead to websites or videos for more advanced guides or reference materials. GW2 has an official comprehensive wiki, and even a text command in the game that let's you search the wiki. I don't think Intrepid needs to go quite that far, but I'd at least expect an online rundown of all the classes, skills, and (most) augments, plus some guides on the more complex systems (anything related to nodes for example).
They can also highlight community-created learning resources, like many companies do for streamers and content creators.
I'm used to this kind of hierarchy to game information: Basics are taught in-game via tutorials. More advanced stuff is explained in articles on an official website, or in the game via manuals (either way you have to look for it yourself, and it involves a fair bit of reading). All the other gritty details can be figured out by the community and collected in various third-party resources (which are occasionally given an official shoutout).
Personally I like the idea of mentoring programs. Great way to get more people raid ready.
You're right, I did. The main difference though is in attitude. A player who is logging into a game for the first time is more likely to accept tuition than someone who has been playing for months and reached max level. A lot of players believe that just the fact that they are max level means they are good at the game and therefore don't need to learn anything else.
There should be an in game help menu - as most games have. This needs to be implemented using a wiki style system on the back end. I remember having a discussion with an EQ2 developer years ago about how the in game help referenced things that had been taken out of the game months - or even years - earlier. He said that develoepers had been asking for the system to be converted to a wiki format for years, as in its state at the time, it was too time consuming to edit.
In my mind, a tutorial is showing someone a basic function - such as dodging. Players have no real need to go back and reference this basic level of tutorial once they have done it the first time - they know dodge is in the game, and if they forget which key it is, a little experimenting or opening up the control settings should tell them.
If somethig has the level of depth to it that a player may want to go back to it, we've moved on from tutorial to guide - which in my opinion moves from psomething that should be in the game to something that the community should develop and people wanting it should look for.
Your character awakes in some kind of cot bed in what we could assume are an improvised barracks, near the bed there's a little table with a note (item) you can pick up and start reading (maybe the quest items can have some kind of glow so we can identify them more easily):
"I'm going ahead for the assemble, today is the great day (name of your character), how about one last round of training with instructor (random NPC name) before the ceremony?, he/she would be probably near the training ground, you should go as fast as you wake up"
Some characters indicating what keys in the keyboard or mouse you should use to move
"I will draw you a map, you may be ready for Verra but you still confuse the left and the right..."
A marker appears in your map
Once you arrive with the instructor you start with the basics, BUT the NPC always talks to you in a role playing language, never mentioning anything about "bars" or "hotkeys" or "cursor", the technical instructions appears in little windows after the NPC explanation.
With the instructor you learn how to use abilities, how to equip items (perfect moment for the game to give us a very basic set of armor and weapons), how to use potions AND MOST IMPORTANTLY ANY KIND OF FEATURE THAT WE CAN FIND IN AOC THAT DOES NOT EXIST IN OTHER GAMES SUCH AS DODGING; AIR JUMPING; BLOCKING etc etc
Note: All the prior stuff should happen in Sanctuary and before we take the divine gateway to Verra.
And then when the time comes to choose a second archetype or a profession it should be trough a quest chain that starts with a letter sent to you by an already known NPC, and that quest should let you do some "testing" with the profession before finally choose it and the reward for finishing the chain should be a basic set of that profession's tools.
It's more about UX then it being hard.
When someone starts up a game, it's not good for the flow if you then tell them to stop playing and watch a video. You want them to be able to start playing the game and learn as they play.
Yes, there are some people who will take the time to research but there are many that don't. On the other side, i'd like to argue that anyone who would take a time to watch these videos would instead go watch a content creator as they are a better source of information when it comes to how to play the game.
I'd like to back up @noaani's point here about differentiating between a tutorial and a guide. Following their description I believe tutorials should be solely in the game whereas guides might be found outside of the game client. The types of guides I would always go to content creators for would be things like class guides and guides for specific pieces of group content (e.g. raids or caravans). These are things that typically the community decides on not the developer, and if the developer tries to create such guides they are often wrong or quickly outdated. After all, it's the players that decide what terminology to use in raids, not the devs.
Guides I'd expect to see in the in-game client from the developer are things like general combat mechanics, quests, or anything that uses a specific in-game interface such as crafting.
I was not saying that the videos should be THE tutorial. My comment was rather, that they should be supplementary videos to ingame tutorials. Maybe some more indepth guides on specific things.
Yea, after my most recent comment i re-read what you originally said and got this impression (which wasn't what i initially thought) but I still think it would be ideal if this information was baked into the game. In my opinion, anything you think you need a video to explain, you should try to find a way to explain it in the game. Maybe it's not correct to call it a tutorial but having this information placed in the interface where it is relevant and structuring menus so they are intuitive to use is more user friendly then making a video.
This isn't a perfect example what to try to explain what i'm talking about, if you have certain resources that require a caravan, it tells you this in the bank or where you can view the resource. Maybe when you try to drag it into your bag a message pops up. You can then click a link that briefly describes how caravans work and then are stepped through the process of acquiring a caravan.
I really liked the suggestion is that when you wake up...you get to learn...this could be done by the one taking care of you, i.e. - "Woah there, you look a little shaky on your feet...see if you can make it to the table over there(learning to move),
"Ah, now then, it looks like you have some balance about you. Here, take a drink of this (lore text) It will help you a little more and get some wits about ya..(learning how to use an item.)
See that table over there? Yeah, the ones with the bottles filled with the blue liquid on them? Step over there and grab you an extra bottle of (Lore item), you can save it for later if you need it.(learn how to store stuff in your inventory)
"Now, let's get you something to wear, can't go having you wandering out in the wild in nothing but your skin suit eh? Go see Arianaa outside in the next tent, she will get you some clothes and your gear. (moving again and learning to speak to someone and explore your inventory at the same time.)
just examples, but this way it keeps you from leaving the game...it keeps you immersed and gives you a bit of lore to go with it.
Now for harder stuff like crafting, potion making, etc..those should be driven by a good example either in game video in the help ui or an external link video off the wiki.
Just my two cents but I'm digging reading what everyone is posting.