Thoughts on the new tutorial

The only problem I have with the new tutorial is the fact that it sets you up to be let down if you have no prior experience with this game.

I was in Atlas and I overheard a group talking in local about wanting to see some cool things other than gangbangers, the 4 of them were all brand spanking new and had just hit level 8 on the same sewer trial team. They had all already picked up Fly so I offered to take them on a quick Giant Monster tour. I was already planning on showing my new sidekick the GM's so seemed like a good time.

We went to Croatoa first and I introduced them to Sally, then I asked them to wait by WarWitch. I found a safe spot to observe the Jack/Eochai battle and assembled the team, warning to 'not move'. They were awestruck by the fight, with all the witches lightning and all. We stood there for quite a while talking about the zone and what level they could come to it.

Then I led them to IP to pay Lusca a visit. I checked the top corner first and sure enough she was there. I neglected to warn them this time though and upon spotting the beast 3 of them charged her! After meeting them back at the Hosp and explaining that she requires a team to take down, we headed to Boomtown and tracked down Babb's.

I left them to 'play' around the skyscrapers as they were really enjoying the sensation of flying. Took a bit since he wanders but I located the big boy and assembled the team once more. After advising them to give it all they had, we attacked en masse. I knew we'd die but it'd also be the quickest way back to the door and no debt so...

After we're flattened I offer to run some missions with them. I grab a defeat boss radio and we all head to the mission. We go through without much trouble, few tips here and there regarding etiquette. One had picked Recall Friend and was 'playing' with it needlessly. Another was a Eng/Eng blaster who loved his KB and had no clue the... fallout.. his playstyle would cause on a real team. So I offered advice as we plowed through, having a great time! We get to terramis and arrest him with a quickness and the mission completes.
"Nicely done!" I announce to the team.
"Red con bosses are no pushovers." I continued.

"That's it?" One of them responds.

"Sweet I lev'd" another remarked.

"Wheres the reward window?" My friend asked.

We exited and I explained that the reward window is only for trials and TF's. explained a bit about what TF's are.

1 guy left and 1 of the others then asked...

"Can we get a mission to fight something big, like the tutorial and hydra thingy?"

Glancing up at the level 16 in my healthbar I pause for a moment, not knowing what to say.

"Yeah, I wanta fight somethin epic again!!" The other got excited.

I ended up explaining that those encounters are brand new and that, for the most part, missions and arcs/TF's are going to focus on more human sized enemies. The GM's I showed them and the higher level trials would be the only thing that could qualify as 'Epic' to them, after the intro they'd had.

The other 2 left at that point, with words of thanks and a final question about where to buy enhancements.

Standing there with my friend trying to think of what we should run, I decide to log into my level 38 and take him along on some HeroTips. Half way through the 1st mission he stands up after Resting and proclaims,
"This sucks, let go do a sewer trial!"

/Facepalm.

He's level 17 and all but 4 of those levels have been at the mouth of the Hydra...
I had to 'lie' to him at that point and tell him the sewer trial was really only meant to be ran 4 or 5 times on the same toon, that the rewards vs time spent started getting worse. He's freshly addicted to the game, so he was happy with my response. Still, it left a bad feeling in my gut.

The tutorial combined with the outta the gate Trial is a one two punch designed to WOW newcomers and returnees alike, sadly it also has the affect of letting down the newcomers once the find out the real game isn't made up of that kind of fast paced 'fun'.

I love Death from Below. It's a thrilling, quick and fun little trial. The Q makes forming one simple as pie. Sadly, I'm a 6 year vet, so I can understand what we've been given. New players can't.

From that little outing I learned that, for these 5 newbies, the tutorial and subsequent intro to the city, did very little to actually teach them anything. In the end all it really did was bring their expectations up to a level that the main content of the game can't support. Not sure how big an issue this may be in the long run, but that's my take on it.

In short (because we've had this thread before) the things I like about the new low level content:

• They way you chose your alignment
• The first mission arc and its nice use of phasing tech that allows you to clear Atlas of Arachnos
• Death from Below
• The character development in the Twinshot arcs

I've said it before but I'll say it again here. I find that the tutorial fails to teach anything to new players. Adding all the information about how to play the game to the Twinshot arcs comes way to late to be of use. Just spending 15 minutes in the help chat on Freedom should make it clear to anybody that brand new players coming into the game are having massive amounts of trouble figuring things out.

There's also the the problem I'd managed to put out of my mind - City of Heroes is garbage at preloading pretty much anything. The game tells you you've just loaded a zone by virtue of having finished the loading bar screen, but then you turn 15 degrees to the right and the game stalls so that it can... Load more of the zone. Then you turn around to look at where you just came from and the game freezes for 10 seconds while it loads what's in that direction.

Let me ask you this - what's the point of a zone loading bar if I'm going to be loading everything that's in the zone every time I take a step? And here's the thing - that's not all down to hardware performance. If I shove world details all the way up to 200% and let the game take the 10-15 seconds it needs to load the whole world around me, then jam World Details back down to 50% like it is on my laptop, then I can move about freely with no loading until I walk out of that big circle of stuff I forced the game to load, at which point it once again stalls and loads more stuff.

Look, my laptop isn't ****. It has a GeForce 7900GS video card, a Pentium Core Duo processor at around 1800 GHz per core and 4 GB of RAM. It's not a power rig, but it has more than enough memory to load more of the zone than the game is actually feeding to me. Once upon a time, I suggested that I be given an option to simply load an entire zone in RAM at zone loading so NOTHING had to be loaded on the fly. Bill Z Bubba ran some tests and found that the problem was down to hard drive to RAM transfer speed and discovered that this went away if he put the game on what I believe was a very expensive flash drive with very fast transfer speed.

Here's the thing: I have 4 GB of memory on this laptop. I'm pretty sure that I can load the whole game in memory if need be. Surely I can load A SINGLE ZONE in memory so I don't have to reload it every time I turn around, right? Because that's what keeps killing my friend - my laptop, that I have tested to be better than this in person, just keeps loading the zone as he's travelling, making his super jump and even regular sprint impossible to control as the game keeps freezing to load more stuff. Make it load everything at once. Even if it takes five minutes to load, if it becomes actually playable, it will have been worth it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I really feel that gameboy1234 has a good point concerning the need for more info outside the tutorial for those who want it. That has sizable merit and probably needs a full thread on its own.

Getting back to the idea of upgrading Galaxy's Last Stand, here's my ideas:

Make the map 3 times larger. Technically it would be making it twice as long with extra width but the net result would be 3X size. I think this is the one with the most merit since it covers multiple problems at the same time. It's less claustrophobic since it's literally larger, same with it feeling like it rushes you along since there's just more room. Geography can be altered so that it feels more like Galaxy City, a complaint I remember from open beta. Each individual set piece gets a chance to feel stronger since they get to stand out more. With that, your contribution feels stronger since it more genuinely feels like a section of the city isn't being covered as opposed to BAB and Sister Psyche being right there. Maybe even give them a bunch of speech options to reflect that.



Add a completely optional side area with a mini alignment objective. Your actions and inaction should be shown to matter and there should be more examples of what the meteor invasion causes. While it's a stated goal to reduce low level instances, phasing tech and creative map tricks introduced in I21 have shown ways to do instance styled missions without actual instances. Have a small side path that leads to a storefront with a prompt to either search for survivors or loot for supplies. The survivor option has you clear some debris (destructable object introduction) and meet generic injured civilian. Lead them to a small area with Flower Knight waiting where she says she should be able to get them out while you take on more Shivans. The looting option is more simple with just clearing debris and clicking a glowy but you'd be accompanied by Operative Jenkins who would joke about all the poor saps he passed to get to the goods. While neither action would officially affect alignment, they would help shape the player's experience. Plus, it would be fully optional so those who want to speed through the tutorial still can. I think this is the least important of the three ideas but it would still have an impact.



Replace the Vanguard airstrikes with a player manned laser cannon. The airstrikes take the final fight's control out of the player's hands but there does need to be a way to speed it up if someone is solo. A slowly charging cannon suits this purpose and should fit the goal of keeping the tutorial action packed. I was originally going to say it should be a Vanguard member watching over the cannon as it recharges but instead I think it should be Crey. Not only is this another way to give a shoutout to the original tutorial, it also is a starting move towards making them look good so the reveal of their evil in the late game has more weight. The cannon itself would do roughly 1/5 of the Giant Shivan's health per shot and would be activated like a simple glowie. The timer could be sped up slightly by using buffs/healing. This would be a rather overt way of throwing a bone to support classes due to the loss of the original instanced missions with Flower Knight/Operative Jenkins. It would also be a good way to subconsciously promote the value of buffs/debuffs.

I agree with everything Zamuel just said, to the point where I'm not even sure if I have anything to add. Making the map physically bigger is a good way to showcase the enormity of the situation, and has the potential for some interesting locations. Why not, for instance, take us through the interior of a ruined building? I don't expect to see a nice vista of the wider-scale devastation since NOT remaking all of Galaxy City was kind of the point, but come on, now! Take us through a few of the more interesting landmarks? Send us to Hero Corps HQ for some reason, pass us near that large statue of Galaxy Girl, send us into a partially collapsed tunnel and out of a leaning building on the other end. Because right now the tutorial is all of one street, and not even a very long one. Think of Breakout - it's a prison, then sewers, then a prison yard, then a tower interior.

Also, I like having these small side objectives, like store looters. Really, anything to give us something more to DO is good, because the tutorial feels so completely hands-off. Send me to fend off store looters, send me to pull people from a burning building, send me to protect a building where a Shivan meteor has crashed into the basement, and in general send me through a few more set-piece encounters. Right now, it's one fairly unremarkable street, then one fairly unremarkable hole, then BUY FROM OUR STORE! On my fourth... Fifth pass through the tutorial, I was kind of goofing off, and for the FIRST time I actually saw where a large meteorite had slammed into the ground, dug a trench and smashed into the foundations of a nearby building. That's exactly what I'm talking about, but it took me disregarding my instructions to see it, because the game simply runs me past all the cool stuff.

And, no, the Giant Shivan isn't so much of the cool stuff. Speaking of which, I actually don't think there needs to be this much of a change to encounter - Vanguard Jets are fine. But make US call them. For instance, give us a stationary target painter somewhere around the zone and then spawn Shivans around it. Just a few. So we have to kill the Shivans around the painter, then click it, that summons the Vanguard jets, then more Shivans spawn around the zone, you have to take them down, then you're told the jets are ready for another pass, but more Shivans have spawned around the target painter, and you repeat the whole process, say, three times. Instantly, this is a much better event, because... Well, it doesn't play itself. At the same time, you don't really need that much new art to accomplish it.

Honestly, while the world of the Tutorial is legitimately beautiful, there just doesn't seem to have been much care put into what we actually do in it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You do make a good point that the cannon idea may be too complex. Still, the whole point is that whatever the change is needs to make the player feel like they are in charge.

While I must admit, part of me does agree with some of the feedback here and some of the ideas proposed are nice, I do have to wonder WHERE WERE THESE COMMENTS BACK IN BETA?

Edit: In light of the comments of others I RETRACT THE PREVIOUS STATEMENT.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow City of Heroes is a game about freedom of expression and variety of experiences far more so than it is about representing any one theme, topic or genre.

I made a new character last night, and was like, "I should try the tutorial again to reaquaint myself with it and all the comments everyone made in that thread... NAAAAAAH."

--NT

I very much enjoy the new tutorial. It's a major step up from the hero version, and seems less role-play intrusive than the villain version.

One thing I think a few people in this thread are overlooking is that a new player isn't going to want to spend the first 30 minutes of their brand new game having every mechanic of the game explained to him before he can actually start having fun.

The original hero tutorial was, at least to me, incredibly boring. You slowly plod your way from NPC to NPC to hear them drone on about game mechanics, beat up a few minions, then enter a drab hotel to beat up a few more minions. Yes, everything was explained, but I'm so glazed over by the end of the tutorial that I didn't really pay attention to anything that I was just supposed to digest.

The new tutorial is much more exciting with an event taking place that actually has some imperative to it. I am informed of basic game mechanics of how to play, and then set loose to do that in an environment that is actually exciting to be in. Once the 'tutorial' is over you are sent to Paragon or the Rogue Isle's to continue to play around while the back story of the game and less crucial game mechanics are explained to you. Ultimately this works out better than the original tutorial because I'm playing, I'm happy, and I'm not bored to death so I'm actually paying attention to the information the game is trying to relay.

Oh Samuel, how I missed you~

Why do you assume that my ability to have an experience different from yours is some indication that I simply wasn't paying attention to you? You are not such a lyrical wordsmith that the world cannot pass by your paragraphs without conforming to your opinion. You aren't that persuasive.

The tutorial is not 'the game' either, it is the tutorial; It is meant to teach you the mechanics of the game, and I believe it does a much better job at doing this with it's more simplified explanations that are drawn out over a period of game play than the original tutorial which simply dumped all the information upon you, and then told you to go beat up some homeless people.

Your point about not *having* to fight anything is a stupid argument anyway. Nobody in the tutorial is standing around waiting for the missile strike to tear everything asunder, they are fighting the enemies. The missile strike is entirely there for players who are still learning the game (you know, because it's a tutorial?) and need to be moved through the tutorial rather than stuck on some artificial battle that is supposed to serve as enlightenment, not challenge. I'm kind of surprised you didn't recognize this. Rest assured though, most people are killing the enemies, not just sitting on their hands waiting for the NPC to do it.

My opinion:

The first time I played through I found the setting exciting and having to fight a giant monster even more so. I didn't feel that I was insignificant or anything, I felt I was really helping the effort to fight the shivans. I was then disappointed when I was sent to Atlas Park, because I really wanted to have the chance to continue the fight.

The previous tutorial had always been unexciting, and in that sense it was a good introduction to the low levels. When I originally started playing the game what I felt throughout the low levels was that I wasn't a superhero. I was a squishy running around on foot fighting street punks and often trying to avoid them to survive. The new tutorial is a better fit for new low level content, which makes the hero feel more important and useful, and is more interesting.

For me, an important aspect of a tutorial and beginning area is to get me excited about the game. Learning enough of the basics to get by is typically not that hard for me, but getting excited enough about the game to stay is the problem, especially these days with multiple free MMO's vying for attention. DDO's tutorial really made me want to play it (when it went free; the original turned me off). CO's tutorial and low levels didn't (that was before going free, I don't know how it's now). I think that these days if CoH had the old tutorial and low level content I would have gone elsewhere quite quickly.

By the way, I think the giant monster fight reflects well fighting a giant monster in-game. You are always insignificant, and you can stay out of it and still see the monster beaten, assuming there are enough others fighting, but you still feel your contribution is important. That's what I felt there. It doesn't matter if in reality it's NPC attacks which kill it, the feeling for me was the same.


The main downside for me with this tutorial is that it doesn't fit all characters. It doesn't make sense for all or even most characters, both heroes and in particular villains, to be in Galaxy City at that specific time to experience this. The previous tutorials made more sense in this respect. I could go through them with multiple characters, get some rewards and a level, without feeling that they weren't a fit for the characters.

I think the new tutorial is a good beginning of a story - it's dramatic, visually exciting, more pleasurable to play through for me than the prior tutorial, and over quickly. I can see a lot of good stories beginning there. So far, I've been having fun creating characters whose story begins (or begins again) with the bombardment of Galaxy City. When I stop having fun with that, I'll not run the tutorial anymore, as is still an option.

I'll admit that the old tutorial was a better introduction to the realities of the game than the new one is, for better or for worse. Punch some dudes outside. Punch some dudes in an office that makes no architectural sense. Run around a lot. But if you had the choice, why start people off with the game at its least interesting when you can start them off with the game at its most exciting? As I asked a friend who was considering rolling a new character in the days immediately prior to Freedom, "Do you want to beat up sick people in a landfill, or do you want to fight a giant alien monster while everything explodes?"

I have a preference. Yours may differ.

(Is it good at teaching you how to play the game? No. City of Heroes is and always has been terrible at teaching players how to play, and I'm not surprised they still don't get it. Part of the blame lies with the fact that the game is not designed to be teachable; if anything, it is deliberately designed to be unfathomable. And part of the blame lies with the fact that when you ask someone who is paid to know everything about something to teach you about that thing, it is very hard for them to remember what it is like not to know about that thing. Teaching well is not an easy skill. But I digress.)

Actually the praetorian tutorial is pretty spot on, both as a tutorial and a fun little intro level. it only takes about 10-15 minutes the very first run and introduces a lot of mechanics in a quick, precise, and informative manner.

I honestly don't see how they can make something like that (for all of Praetoria's other ills) and then put out something like the new tutorial which really teaches very little and some of the most important elements, like enhancements and trainers, are introduced well after they should be via the Twinshot/Graves overlong mega-tutorial arcs.