Thoughts on the new tutorial

The tutorial shocks and awes new players, who DO NOT know that you can really just click brawl 4 times to complete it. Players who do know this fun fact have an option to skip it with no consequences.

Now, a new player wouldn't either read anything said in a tutorial anyway, or will read everything, tutorial, forum guides, ParagonWiki... In either case too much info in the tutorial is, well, pretty much pointless anyway.

In other words, the tutorial does most of the things it's supposed to do well enough.

The problem starts when you exit it. AtLLLLLAAAAAGGGGGGG Park. With grand total of 3 choices you can make, lag, Twinshot and her team of half-wits, lag, Find Ms. Liberty (Fort Trident) for extra confusion, lag lag, lag and lag.

Galaxy City was there for a reason. Yes, the reason could be easily forgotten after years of half-empty servers, but it was there. And yes, I understand that part of it was probably done in order to save on re-designing missions in two zones. Still, nuking, say, South Skyway for new tutorial would've been much less disruptive.

I understand the new direction for the tutorial and somewhat enjoyed it the first time I ran it, but I'd say I like it less than the original as far as repeat runs are concerned.
I especially enjoyed the Villain tutorial for flavor (I'm not complaining, but I will say that starting a character inside of jail and breaking out has got to be a unique scenario in mmorpgs! And it was one I thought was great!).

While I'm not a fan of how little the new tutorial covers important things that they could have handled quickly enough (enhancements and enhancement combining, just like the first tutorial... it did not take long!!)... I do think that some of the negatives against it are sometimes a bit overstated.
I mean, I do dislike the narrow corridor of the destroyed Galaxy City (and feel like such a typical, limited, zone path too greatly misrepresents this game... which I think makes a poor introduction).
I also feel like the fights carry too little significance and/or danger.
However, I don't think the first time fighting the GM is likely to invoke those feelings. And I am okay with the jets doing their thing.
Obviously they wanted something epic feeling, but without the real risk of new players getting defeated left and right and/or over and over. That's a difficult thing to pull off. And remember... these new players haven't been taught how to play the game yet...

Anyway...
I just wanted to comment about one more thing that I see mentioned now and then...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warkupo ... 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. ...

First off, I mean zero disrespect to you, as your post was very well said (perhaps, besides the one bit I quoted) and you made perfectly clear that you understand it's a difference of opinion and all.

I just wanted to comment on the fact that... we were all new players and new players are not some new species that we must change for or anything.
Some new players of old and new players... of new... would prefer the old tutorial (and, of course, some the new one, heehee).
That'll likely never change.
I guess I am just going to reconcile with the fact that we had the kind I preferred for 7 years and now we have the kind that some other players prefer.
Que sara!

I am not a fan of the new tutorial. And for many of the same reasons that have already been mentioned.

1. You aren't really taught much. Sure, the old tutorials were a bit slow and texty but, by the time you got clear of them, you had a fairly solid grounding in the basic mechanics of the game. The new version has little to no explanation of HOW to do any of the things you're being asked to do.

2. Why am I here again? The implication in the comic story is that I was a normal, average person who just happened to be in a building that collapsed and SUDDENLY I now have superpowers. Um, what? That almost feels like having a backstory arbitrarily imposed on a character. I know it isn't but there is that impression. Why don't I just get up and walk away from the whole thing and let those (very obviously) competant superheroes clean up the mess? In the old tutorials you got the impression that you had already made the choice of good or evil and this is where the real adventure begins.

3. The voiceover is not necessary. Mainly because it really doesn't tell you anything useful. Its just there the tell you to hurry up. Now, as an example of using a voiceover well, look at STO. In that tutorial, the voiceover is actually telling you HOW to do what it wants you to do, i.e. "press this button to make that happen" or "try this to see that."

4. It needs to cover more space. You have the entirety of a destroyed Galaxy City at your disposal... use it! Right now, the tutorial is little more than a 3 room mission map with a straight line path out. True the old tutorials weren't huge maps but you could explore them a bit and get a feel for running around before you actually had to DO anything.

I think I would prefer something of a hybrid between the new and the old. Keep with the new storyline in that you were in Galaxy city when it all went wrong, not as a victim, but for a reason all your own. Place the morality choice early on, something like a) try to assist the injured civilian on the ground or b)take his wallet and his valuables and leave him to his fate.
From that choice you get directed to a contact, say Coyote or Kalinda, who then gives you a short series of missions travelling about Galaxy completing objectives (and teaching the mechanics.) At the end of those you're given your level up and maybe a second morality choice (i.e. are you sure this is the life you want?)

From that point you're given the new mission contacts we have now in Atlas and Mercy and things progress from there.

The point of it all is to make sure the new player understands how to move, shoot, use inspirations and enhancements, find contacts and find missions. At this point, I do not think the tutorial does that well enough.

Actually, one other thought.



So when do we get to fight the Giant Shivan for *real*?

Wow, been a while since I have been here, Sarge and I finally came back to CoH with the release of Freedoma nd quickly decided we did not like loosing everything for the free so we went VIP. Anyhow, we both made new characters last night just to see the new Zone and try out one of the new power sets, when I first loaded in I was almost in awe, this was galaxy, this was the safe haven we went to when we did not want to do Atlas, its.. destroyed!

That was it for my awe, small, quick, not immersive, though I did like the Shivan fight, it reminded me of the old street brawls with the giants, it all went by so quick that by the time we were done I was left going huh.. well that was dissapointing.

So many points have been made about this that I will not rehash them, but it could of been so much more epic to draw out that feeling of awe I had when I first logged into a destroyed Galaxy.

This is my sad face...

now despite my unresearched previous statement, I will say I can agree with a lot of it.

While Sam's point can be responded with "there it's only as uninvolved as you let it be", it would be nice to have something that makes you feel like your playing a roll in this world shaking event.
Let us bust up the meteors (it worked in the Ouro arc), put in downed civilians surrounded by spawns we can save, have random stores with a glowie inside thaty we can 'loot' for cash or supplies!

What if instead of a hero like blue spectrum, we got a soldier who we either let die or help out and completion of either gives us a Target Painter temp power TO CALL THE AIR STRIKES OURSELVES! Think of how awesome that would be?

Oh, and I love the proposal for a bigger map with more familiar landmarks, that's a major problem I do have with the new tutorial. Because they both revamped Galaxy AND destroyed it at the same time, I have not much of a way to measure just how much of this familiar place am I looking at being wrecked, and don't tell me 'new players won't notice' they'll can go to the Galaxy City echo and see what doesn't add up!
Whew I play the tutorial, it feels less like Galaxy has been attacked and more like some strange new city zone I've never heard of, and no, the 'Galaxy Girl' statue in the background of the Giant Shivan battle does not help when despite how nice the story for Galaxy Girl is, her statue is one of a hundreds more copy and paste landmarks found in any part of blue or redside.

But, despite what we may ask or want, it's already been done, they didn't listen back in beta and I can't imagine the devs doing anything now. Just like the CoT pack or the removal of the Vanguard backpacks, I can't help but just see in my mind that the Devs often just see player comments, critiques, or remarks, put on a pair of sunglasses, and say: "Deal with it."

And perhaps the toughest part is, even if we do just deal with it, even if the devs do take this to mind for the next implementation, the next update's going is going to be it's own thing that no amount of heeding words of the past will help with and thus a new can of worms gets opened.
So what can either players or developers do? Throw up our hands and slam the game against the wall and pretend it never existed? Spend the time and resources on basically revamping content maybe a month old tops?
In hindsight, it seems like a painful catch 22 situation with no victory for either player or developer.

It's a good thing I've cast aside my old dream of becoming a videogame developer because I think my heart would quickly break.

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.

It's inconsistant both in and of itself.

The simple gameplay problem of never dying, the lack of any decent objetive beyond what we learned from Mario way back on the NES (run in one direction, jump, hit things) and the location itself being manufactured so dramatically different to the actual Galaxy City.

A little while ago a thread was brought up about the Twinshot arc's return visit to Galaxy and the best part is it WAS Galaxy. That same NE segment of streets with proper battle damage where various meteors had struck except that all the buildings mentioned as 'gone' had literally vanished from existence. Now while the hospital location can only be gleened properly through demo editing; you can easily see the AE building location adjacent to the Arena which has a replacement high-rise much the same as the one that replaced the Hospital.

Later I saw this link about "Telling Stories" and while it's not about architecture it is about retcons and revamps. One of the replies goes on to state:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

I'm going to say something else on the voices...
i have a weakness for voice acting and would love to see more of it in the future... If I could record from my place, I'd love to audition for some voice roles for paragon studios. Oh! Oh! And if only we could get some quality voice actors doing some rolls in the game like Johnny Young Bosch or Tara Strong.
I guess they don't come cheap but I can dream, right?
I think I'll do just that.
/em sleep
Mmmm... Yes, Christopher Lee Nemesis, tell me all about your plan while Morgan Freeman Sefu Tendaji and Samuel L Jackson Dark Watcher berate you as a fool...

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.

Looking at some things, Galaxy's Last Stand and the two tutorial arcs have a seemingly noble game design goal--teach people but show instead of tell so it feels more immersive. At face value this is good and the concept should be applauded, especially with adding things like voiceovers. The argument is that it didn't actually work since it honestly isn't as overt as it should be and misses out on some of the rather useful pictorial options from Outbreak/Breakout. They actually have an image pointing to a tray with an enhancement the pictures with slotting/combining. While I'll admit that Outbreak had way too much text, what some of it actually was happened to be vital. I find it interesting that the recent Massively article has somewhat similar thoughts to things discussed here.

Something else of interest is that people pick things up differently. Some people may not need more than a small primer while others may need something more direct. What would be good is if there was a followup tutorial that was a point blank, unashamed, direct tutorial that while possibly immersion breaking it would quite bluntly point things out in simple terms.