Thoughts on the new tutorial

Due to some various situations, Fall of Galaxy City got brought up in chat last night. I stated my dislike of it which brought about some interesting reactions and a few different conversations in private tell. I think a lot of what I saw was a difference in mindset coming into it which in turn affected perceptions of the tutorial itself.

Running it in Beta it felt cramped and claustrophobic and that gave me the impression that the devs were simply trying to rush us out the door as fast as possible rather than actually teach us anything. Others I spoke with found it action packed. Despite being newer than most, I had a certain amount of nostalgia for the other tutorials despite their obvious flaws. In fact, I felt that Precinct 5 got it right, with a decent amount of info and just enough action despite the irony that I don't actually have a single Praetorian on Live (yet). The counterpoint was made that the others had too much text and were too slow paced. Plus, something they called me out on is that they know I'm a decent player and for the most part don't need a tutorial.

Something else is that I felt it was impersonal. While an alien attack is more "epic", the tutorial does a lot to make it feel like you don't actually matter. A lot of things are defeated without you actually needing to press a single button. The giant shivan can be defeated by you simply sitting on your hands due to the Vanguard airstrikes. As someone who doesn't quite share other's dislike of Statesman, it bugged me that it felt like Statesman, Positron, Lady Grey, Dark Watcher, and Apex seemed to be standing around doing nothing, chatting it up instead of helping.

Which brings me to Coyote...

For all of my rather strong dislike of the tutorial itself, I feel that Coyote's role is not only the best part of the tutorial, it's one of the strongest parts of the whole game. Here's a hero who's actually helping people in need in a rather calm reassuring manner that's done subtly without pompous flash. Perhaps the sole disappointments is that you can't help him out and that you'll never see him outside of the tutorial. It's interesting that in a game that seems to really take to heart Levantera's mindset of "kill your enemies" they had moment that displayed Borea's mindset of "save your allies".

I guess a lot of this thread has me wondering if I'm just massively off base compared to other player's mindset. The discussions had me really thinking about how I view some things in the game versus others.

I like it. And if you take into consideration that the Twinshot arcs are continuations of the tutorial then i don't think it seems rushed at all.

No one viewpoint is ever going to be identical to another's. What works for some, won't work for you, and that's fine.

The capability to accept that there are varied viewpoints and that they are just as valid, in their own way, as yours is what is important .

Either that or you're all WRONG WRONG WRONG.



Osmenthne.

The Twinshot/Graves arcs are utter failures as tutorials. What they teach comes way too late and in a very plodding and ineffective manner.

Once I got use to the crackle of the radio over the voice it wasn't to bad, but the first few times I ran the new tutorial, I really couldn't catch what the voice was saying, simply knowing I had to get to the way point kept me moving, and the counter in the nav box let me know I was supposed to kill something. Would have liked either a little cleaner voice over, or actual text to read along with the voice, even if it was only in the chat window instead of a popup.

I'm just going to leave this here:

Paragon Studios is seeking a Contract Sr. Content Designer to join our quest to create unparalleled revolutionary online gaming experiences.

I also felt the actual tutorial was way too short. You show up, you walk somewhere, you kill four things, you help/kill a guy, then you fight a big monster and you're done.

All this time you're probably wondering to yourself, "Inspirations? What are those? What's this Enhancement tab? How do I even use my powers? Who is that guy?"

In Beta I always chalked it up to the rest of the tutorial not being ready for release, but surprise, it went live like that.

Now, I'll probably be talked sternly to for this, but if you compare it to the tutorial in Champions Online, you can really see how it doesn't quite go the distance expected of a tutorial.

In Champions you get a little cutscene telling you what's going on. CoH does this too, albeit with an easily-missable comic that you can read during the very short loading screen.

All through the CO tutorial you're given missions that kinda clue you into how to play the game, from beating down enemies to escorting lost citizens to recovering items and bringing them back to your quest giver.

Along the way you meet a bunch of characters who explain the situation further, along with a little of the backstory, and by the end you know exactly what's going on and exactly what's at stake.

The penultimate step of the CO tutorial is to take part in a public mission that involves firing an iron person out of a cannon and destroying the Qularr (Rikti) mothership (The wreckage of which can then be seen in the city proper after you leave)

The final step is to actually waltz into the Champions' (Freedom Phalanx's) home base and clear it out. You meet up with Defender (Statesman) and the both of you take on Black Talon (Black Scorpion), at which point you learn of an even greater threat to the city: Dr. Destroyer (Lord Recluse).

After you defeat him and leave the Champions' HQ, you walk triumphantly past a ton of soldiers, all of which are saluting your bravery and whatever, and meet the mayor who grants you the Key to the City for being so cool.

So just like that you get to have a cool adventure, you learn the backstory of CO, you learn who the main enemy is (and the following zones all have you taking on another of Dr. Destroyer's (Recluse's) Lt.s, which makes the tutorial play into the rest of the game) and you're ready for the rest of CO.


Personally, I'd have done the tutorial a little differently, and if you're not bored yet, here's how!

Now granted there aren't any "items" in the game, but it couldn't hurt to have Otacon-- Er, the tutorial guy actually be standing somewhere in the zone. Say he contacts you by radio initially, and you have to find and save him from Shivans.

Once he's safe, he gives you a mission to recover a super-Shivan-melter so that he can set up a safe zone. Just like that, you know what it's like to enter a mission and find a glowie.

Once the safe zone is up, he takes on the task of accruing medical supplies and stuff to help the wounded. Your next job is to save a bunch of people trapped in a burning building so that you know what escort missions are like. The last person you save is actually a wounded hero who kinda botched his rescue mission. If you help him out he gives you a handful of inspirations (or you can beat him down further for being such a weakling, which gives you double the amount of inspirations).

Once you're done with that mission, you can return to the safe zone. Surprise! Now there's a nurse there, and what's-his-face has you introduce yourself so you know what nurses are for. After that he decides that the next step should be to take the fight to the Shivans and push them out of the area, and to do that you're going to have to rally the scattered heroes and bring them back to the safe zone.

So you go to another mission where you meet one of the city's random NPC heroes. This hero is one of those tryhards, who ended up buying too many enhancements, so he/she shares them with you 'cause that's what friends are for! Also, you can threaten them with a beatdown to get more enhancements, but while this makes you stronger it debuffs them by a small amount. Either way though, this mission shows you what it's like to have an NPC buddy.

This mission will take place outdoors so you know what it's like to have an outdoor map and have to search high and low for other heroes. Also so you don't have to fight for spawns with other players.

Anywho, after that the safe zone will have a Hero Corps field trainer, and you get to go talk to him and learn about buying and selling enhancements.

So then you have one more mission that involves finding a scientist and leading him to a doohickey to reactivate a thing that blows up more Shivans, and after that you discover that you and your new allies have cleared out all the Shivans, but OMG THERE'S SOME KIND OF TERRIBLE DISTURBANCE WHAT COULD IT BE!?

So yeah, Big Shivan time, and when you get to the area you find all your NPC pals standing around (so this way everyone who saved them earlier gets to feel like they were the ones who saved them), and so you beat down some little Shivans to draw out the big one, then beat down the big one.

Yay! The city is saved!

...OR IS IT?

No sir, Lord Recluse is still there.

So now you get a big final mission, and this is the one where all your kindness or selfishness earlier can come into play.

Your NPC friends are already in the mission, brawling with Arachnos to push through into their safe zone and get them out of the city. After you save them you get to have a little chat with them and either bolster their heroism or convince them that being selfish and power-hungry owns. Some will agree with your choices, others will flip out and fight you, but whatever, you're better than them, so down they go.

It all leads up to finding the last person, who is pulling a Blue Spectrum and is at Death's door. You now make the final morality choice which will decide your alignment. Save him by giving him your powers, which debuffs you, or kill him and take his powers, which buffs you.

If you save him, one of Recluse's Lts busts in and you have an epic fight between them and your friends (one of whom will be a tank to avoid any embarrassing deaths). When you beat them, Recluse and the other three Lts jump in, and he's all "LOL HI" and gets ready to lay down the murder, but then the Freedom Phalanx shows up and Recluse is forced to bail after a vicious beatdown.

If you kill him, you still meet one of Recluse's Lts, but this time they're all "WE'VE BEEN WATCHING YOU, NO NOT IN THE SHOWER WEIRDO" and they offer you an opportunity to come with them to the Isles and become a Destined One. Then one of the Phalanx busts in and you all fight him, then the rest bust in and you're all "Aw." but then Recluse shows up and after a big epic battle the Phalanx is forced to withdraw and you go to the Isles and blah blah blah.




Holy god I need a hobby or something, this was too much to write.

edit: Dammit Sam I'm the wall-of-texter in this thread thank you very much.

I started the game up a month ago and mostly played with Praetorians, checking out Resistance and Loyalist sides. Before Freedom launched I made a Hero to check out the start content since a friend told me that they were going to change it up post-Freedom.

I'll toss my hat into the 'non-plussed' crowd now that I've played through it with a couple characters and have seen the previous stuff.

It's kind of cool and flashy, certainly, I liked the mini comic and that they gave you time to read it, and it's pretty exciting starting in the rubble and seeing all the chaos.

But it is short. I agree you just get kind of pushed through. I kind of like the moral choice that sets you as either hero or villain, but then at the same time I have to wonder, what is a fledgling villain doing in the heart of Paragon city? So that part didn't make a *ton* of sense to me. I mean unless the concept is that you're just average joe and this is how you gain your powers but then... that's a bit silly that basically all powered players 'spawn' from Blue Spectrum.

The fight with the Giant Shivan is certainly cinematic, but I also feel it's kind of misleading because it really doesn't teach you how dangerous giant monsters are and kind of sets a standard for giant monsters, where so far, they're really not that common and you really only want to even attempt them with a team.

it is a lot quicker and a lot less text heavy, but I think they kind of shove you through the door a little too fast. I mean the only real value of the intro as it stands is to start you out at level 2.

I haven't played through the Twinshot arc yet on my new Defender, but I did just recently finish Dr. Graves with a dominator.

I agree the Contact tutorials are too clunky and drawn out, teaching stuff that you should already know by the time you reach it. For one I think there's just too many characters, giving a mission for each character makes it plod along a lot slower. I liked the concept for the tournament, but having 4 different characters each with their own missions to go through kind of makes it drag, and I'm already doing other missions in the mean time where I'm learning about a lot of things it's trying to teach. I did kind of like one of the early missions, where the villains are all setting up for their own heists as a way to introduce you to some things like day jobs and certain functions like the hospital and market, though demonstrations would've been nicer instead of 'yeah here's this thing, it does this'.

The difficulty in some of them is kind of awkward too. I mean I am a new player so I'm sure someone more experience breezed through a lot of them, but like the mission where Crosscut is messing with the Snakes kind of chumpblocked me from the start because here I have a Dominator (very squishy) and I'm immediately jumped by 2 Boss monsters that really tear you up in melee. Or Omnicore's test where it's just 3 bosses consecutively. Or Zephyr's mission where he's invulnerable and the very first thing you run into (Though that might've just been bad luck on my part where he spawned, but still. And of course you're really meant to *run past him*).

Then you compare it to the Praetorian tutorial. It sets you up with how to target, how to fight, enhancements, missions, inspirations, dialogue, then you get the Aligment choice, quick boss battle, level up, and right out the door they drop you in front of a very friendly area with a trainer, dispatcher, day jobs info, merit vendor info, and enhancement vendor. It's all pretty quick, fairly tightly written and nicely informative and you can get going and play as you please.

The other thing that kind of bothers me about the whole destroyed Galaxy City as a major plot point is that you get tossed into this crisis, you get out of it and if you're villainside, it's promptly forgotten and you just go about until the killing game when it's all pretty calmed down and resembles something like Faultline or The Hollows. Heroside, the first few missions deal with the fallout from the crisis, having to deal with gangs trying to cause trouble in Atlas etc, but once you get going that dies down an things kinda continue on as normal. It just seems kind of clunky because most of the 'crisis' about galaxy city is contained pretty much in Atlas Park, outside of it paragon city is pretty much 'business as usual'.

I don't like the Galaxy City tutorial or the Twinshot arc, or the new Atlas park content. It's all flavorless and dull in my opinion. I'm not even going to try the new Mercy Island stuff. The old Outbreak/Breakout tutorials taught the basics. They were dull too, but mercifully brief. Selling the large inspirations gave me start up money or I would have skipped them.

I'd rather street sweep to level 5 then head to Kings Row/Port Oakes to do the safeguard/mayhem missions and be assigned a real contact. It's quicker and more fun. Or go to the MA building and run the "Learning the Ropes" mission, which is one of my favorites.

I actually like the new content, for the most part. Overall it's a vast improvement over the previous stuff. I think that has to be acknowledged.

However, the extended tutorials, while great arcs, are a bit lacking as actual extended tutorials.

One thing esp red side I found that the 2nd group of arcs (where you "play the hero") just kinda mentioned things but didn't really instruct you at all. At least blue side Proton says "Go get some enhancements kid." I don't recall being told actually do anything red side. Just "Zephyr gave away his enhancement powers, that was dumb."

So I'd propose a small change. Add one NPC who's job it is to instruct us about these things. Blue side, the hero you saved would work. He's grateful, so he'll take the time to tell you about stuff. Red side, I got no ideas, so let's just add Arbiter Bacon to Port Oaks whose long suffering job it is to explain the ropes to noobs.

At various points in the extended tutorial, you're directed to this new contact who gives you a wall of text about the stuff you need to learn about. Like in the first part of the level 10 arc, you could be directed to this person by Proton/your mysterious benefactor to learn more about enhancements.

If you approach this new NPC out side of these arcs, you get a menu of "tell me more about a subject" so you can review what you learned before, or even re-read the info on a character that hasn't done the extended tutorial. This should work a bit like Prometheus's text, where there's submenus so you can cram all the info into their text box.

That's what I got. Good luck.

Just trying to recollect Dr. Graves' arc, I remember that the tutorial on the Ferries you get early on is excellent. Don't change that one. Just add the ferry bits to Arbiter Bacon so you can review the info if you need to.

What else could go on Arbiter Bacon.

1. Enhancements. This is important, because people on the help channel are super confused. How to slot. WHAT to slot. Where to buy and sell. What to do with extra Enh (Sell Them!). TOs, DOs., SOs. SOs from Death from Below (They're great! Do some Death From Below).

2. Insp.
3 How to use the market.
4. Where is the dang vault?
5. Where is the LFG queue? How to use?
6. How do I fly? Where is the pool powers?
7. Targeting, Assisting, Melee + Follow to find a target
8. Where is the dang help menu? Should I read it (yes!).
9. How do I invite, form teams, kick, SELECT A MISSION SO THE TEAM CAN SEE IT, abandon a mission, auto complete a mission, use /search & Find Member, set my "Looking for Team Flag".
10 Recap Ferry/Tram system

ok, that was a very off the cuff list of things to learn. I hope more are contributed.

Actually, there is a 'help' option under the Menu, they could probably overhaul that and add in a lot more to it. I've tried to use it as reference a couple times and it's just lacking (Though i forget what I was trying to look up).

more often than not I just go look up info on one of the wikis, but an in game reference would be nice.

You can complete the new 'tutorial' map (I'm not calling it a zone, ever) by clicking brawl 4 times. That's the absolute minimum you need to do, combat-wise. Just tag those 4 required Shivans and let the NPCs do everything else.

Epic? Pff.

Eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."