Okay, okay so listen to me really carefully okay? I need you to - and get this, really concentrate - press the A button, that's the **A** button to jump. Okay? You know what jumping is right? it's a small bit of vertical movement propelled by the legs. Got that? You sure? Okay here's ten bossfights in a row good luck : www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames Did you get all that? Want me to explain it again? : twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Stanley knew that the door on his left would take him to a tutorial, while the door on his right would take him straight into the action, where he would surely be eaten by a shark because he didn't know how to open his inventory and equip the shark repellant charm.
Problem with tutorials like long running cutscenes that can't be skipped is they make a massive wall to the game. Pokemon constantly has a catching tutorial. You can fix this by just asking if they already know and move on for example Kh2 is probably one of the worst ones where the entire first part is a full on tutorial that makes replays so annoying when you already know all the mechanics
@@DaShikuXI yeah basically. They should give you extra PokeBalls if you watch it so it would give you something for wasting time. Honestly best tutorials are ones that don't feel like them where the early game is set up like one but the player figures it out on their own
I think the KH2 tutorial is more of a double-edged sword. It works well for an introduction and a setup for the climax of Roxas' journey. If it was shorter, it probably would have felt undercooked, and in my opinion, less effective. The big downside is that it's a chore on subsequent replays.
@@DaShikuXIat least scarlet and violet somewhat remedies that by making the catching tutorial be something you do yourself rather than watching another character slowly catch a pokemon And you get to keep or knock out the lechonk if you desire
IMO the worst is when it interrupts you or takes away your agency. I find it much better to give you the option to learn instead of forcing you to lean. Like in Metroid Prime you don't have to scan, but if you feel the need to you can scan enemies. Also many games are just too complex for no reason and constantly interrupt you with the next feature that gets introduced.
The "Hold up. Read!" prompts in any game are the worst, especially if they trigger in action. Some don't even have the decency to actually pause during that bullshit. And I usually like games that don't fully pause, just not for such reasons.
A lot of mobile RPGs for instance, just auto-path you through the tutorial section without giving the player the chance to act independently until that's done, that REALLY grinds my gears.
@@faylinnmystiquerose2224 I always hate that because I just autopilot through so I can actually play a videogame, but then I haven't actually learned anything once I get to be on my own, so it just wastes 5-10 minutes of time
@@faylinnmystiquerose2224yeah! The way they'll have like a full on circle with a hand pointing at the button, and I'm just like "your decorations are covering the interface! I can see there are at least five buttons on this display, I want to know what EACH of them is, yet I can't even make out the one you want me to click, because your finger is covering it!"
As someone who grew up reading manuals as a form of tutorial, I remember playing the first Starcraft and being blown away. It was so seamlessly integrated into the story that I thought "this is the future of tutorials". Thank you for breaking down the different ways that good developers take the time and care to use a variety of methods to teach game mechanics. It really can make or break a gaming experience, and is often so underappreciated.
If only more games took Xenoblade X's approach of handing you a 100-page user guide on its combat mechanics. Some real innovation right there! Jokes aside, the only tutorials that bother me noaways are (1) mandatory single-player tutorials for games I'm ready to jump into co-op, or (2) menu tutorials that force you into certain choices. What if I don't want that skill as my first level up?!
oh Got not Xeno X. Love the game but its 100 page tutorial doesnt even explain the core mechanics of stuff like the Overdrive system. Worse combat tutorial system ever imo. Went till the end of chapter 9 without understanding how TP and TP arts worked cause it just wasnt explained well.
I hate tutorials that try to teach me how to play video games instead of teaching me the specific games mechanics, like buddy I know how to walk and jump, teach me what all these ores do yk😂
@@Monkeyman-qt1sm Sadly, for some people, they are necessary. But the worst thing is that then those tutorial fail to teach me the actual controls i need, so i need to look in the keyboard settings to find the key i need to use to do a certain thing.
@@ckorp666 Wait, are other doom games written better? When I played Doom Eternal I expected cheesy power fantasy that played incredibly well because that was the game's reputation, and that's what I got? Are other Doom games like Halo?
@@ckorp666 I gotta say, as a vibes-first gamer too, I absolutely adored doom eternals over the top metal-cover look. It felt like what doom was to me, the story is OTT and I think that's a good thing, because it introduces so much.
Another important aspect is that a lot of learning tool can accidentally teach you the wrong lesson and ruin your experience. Early on in Fallout New Vegas I tried exploring and was immediacy and repeatedly killed for doing so. I internalized the lesson that "I am not supposed to explore" and the treated the game as linear and had a much worse time with the game for it.
The only rule in Fallout: New Vegas is don't go straight north. Avoid that area until you're strong. It's a Morrowind-like approach to exploration, rather than Skyrim-like. I enjoy that first part of the game, it is really built to minimize fast-traveling.
Omg I just started this game yesterday! I keep finding new and exciting ways to die, but I'm having such an amazing time! (Please no spoilers, it's a real treat to figure this all out organically.)
I love the binding of Isaac's way of discovering items but it kinda got out of hand as the game got more and more updates. The first time you pick an item like soy milk is so frustrating because it ruins your game but if you have enough knowledge of other items you know that it synergizes with a lot of items and can be even game breaking. The problem is that at first there were about 100 items and now there are more than 700 and it's impossible to remember them all. The game will have to evolve as it has done before with incorporating mods like bonus HUDs and charge bars into the main game
Had a great run, epic fetus out the gate blowing stuff up. (the one that drops missiles on a reticule) Then uh oh, curse of the blind! Considered skipping the item, it could be bad, I knew what it could be, the one thing that could ruin the build, but the odds are like 1/79 that it's actually that bad. So I pick up the '?' item anyways, what do you know, my suspicions were correct, it was Soy Milk! So now my epic fetus hits like a wet noodle and I just do no damage for the rest of the run.
The amount of items isn't the only problem, many items have effects that aren't visible immediately and don't affect stats, and many of those items are really bad and don't synergize with anything meaning most runs you're fighting not just difficult enemies but the game itself for some of the more difficult character post-its
It’s also a problem in that, from what I remember (played in 2015 mostly), there’s no name for the item until you pick it up. At least if I knew what it was I could quickly find it online and read what it does and make a decision. It would be annoying, but I’d have the option.
@@poppyfrancis7338 I think that is big part of the fun because at the start everything feels like a gamble but as you slowly learn what most of the items do you feel more and more like you've mastered the game until you reach the point where you know a lot of the item interactions and you can make use of the bad ones. It used to take maybe 50-100 hours to reach this point. Now it's upwards of 200 and unreasonable to expect someone to spend this much time in your game to feel at least competent when playing it.
I just don't feel like I have any choice in binding of Isaac so any "knowledge" is useless. The only thing I can do is pick any item because there's only one, use it, hope not to die. Also I'm complete noob which only sometimes clear the uppest level but I still don't really know how am I supposed to git gud at the game other than... Dodge everything.
One of my "favorite" tutorial moments was when Xenoblade 2 gave me a tutorial for a system, but that system required me to have a certain skill that I'd taken off Rex at the time, so I essentially brute forced my way through the fight. As I found out some 30+ hours later when I was consistently getting my ass handed to me by regular enemies way below my level, it turns out that the tutorial I brute forced was teaching me a very core mechanic that interacts with a huge chunk of the game's systems and I only found this out when I did something ELSE the game tutorialized a single time by accident and ended up on a wiki page, which actually taught me how to play the game. God, I love this game, but I'm so glad XC3's tutorials were a little more heavy handed, if at points a little patronizing
XC2's tutorials are notoriously horrible and that's part of WHY XC3's are so much better lol What mechanic are you talking about by the way? Now I'm curious which specific thing you had trouble with and what tangented into it-- Is it those damn field skills? LOL
@@Starfloofle Yeah, it was the Break and Topple tutorial. Now that I'm remembering it, I don't think I took Anchor Shot off Rex but rather Nia's Topple skill, but the result was mostly the same Also, to answer your other question, the whole element combo system with party members didn't really end up sticking in my memory after the tutorial, and it was only when I did it once on accident far later down the line that I thought "alright, I should probably actually learn how this game works" (but not after spending many hours searching for a tips page before realizing the game only produced them for questions like "How do I buy items from shops?" or "How do I change blades?")
the "classic gamer opinion of wanting to learn everything organically" might be closed-minded in the context of maximally efficient learning, but in a lot of games (note: not ones with especially complex systems), that tends to be the way i find the most fun, even if it means i'll be struggling more for longer. it's a matter of personal preference there.
@@bestaround3323 i can adapt to games that really require research, i just put it off until it's clear that it'd be more fun to involve research in my learning process.
I definitely agree with you here. I tend not to like or play games that require research on a wiki upfront before I actually get into it. I'm fine with research after a certain point, but I have to get to that point first or it just feels like work (or I'm worried about spoiling things since online research can often literally tell you everything). I don't mind a specific dedicated tutorial section before the game really starts though, as long as it isn't egregiously long.
I miss the experience of my first few hours playing games like stellaris or ck3 before I learned how all the mechanics worked so I was making mistakes and having a far more interesting time.
Completely agree. Learning stuff organically is very fun but it requires good design which is something not a lot of games can actually pull off. A lot of games just assume prior knowledge and call it a day.
Just Shapes and Beats has a pretty neat tutorial. It first lets you know what the objective is by encouraging the player to get the triangle from across the screen leading to another section where it is like the first section except this time there are pink bullets that can hurt you. You dodge them and get to the next section where it introduces the main mechanics of the game such pink bombs, lasers, pulses and the ability to dash through bullets, all without telling a single word. After learning all the mechanics, you reach to the final section of the tutorial, where basically you learn that the game doesnt pull its punches and reminds you what the term “bullet hell” is. Really great tutorial accompanied with some great music for a Rhythm bullet hell game
I do like how Guild Wars 2 integrated the official wiki into the game - through the chat box. Typing "/wiki" and what it is you want to search (or linking the item with alt+click) will pull up its page, or the search results on the wiki for it in your browser.
It's also a great way to direct newbies to that information through in-game chat. Instead of typing out a reply to a basic question, you can just tell them "type /wiki your item in chatbox". It makes them skip a couple steps that are part of research inertia, even if it's still in an external browser, and not an in-game encyclopedia.
In RuneScape It is the same. You can type /Wiki on the chat to search directly on the browser from ingame. And they also added a Wiki button to the side of the chat, which automatically adds the /Wiki and makes the feature more visible and accessible to less knowledged players
Another thing that is great at teaching is having things that sound 'cool' be effective. I noticed it especially in RPGs (including TTRPGs) with higher mechanical complexity and action games that allow complicated combos is that it really encourages exploration and learning if you see some (obvious) combo that seems cool and test it out, and... it's effective. Makes you instantly want to experiment more.
I really love Half-Life's tutorial. An obstacle course and gun training that is completely separate from the actual game, can be skipped or replayed whenever, and has a solid in world explanation and implementation. Another worthy mention, Plantet Crafter has it's controls displayed on the pause screen. For a survival game, where seconds count, it's great you don't need to hunt through options menus to get some basic info. One click, one screen, all neat.
For internet points: After the first strike damage step, the 8/8 with double strike and trample didn't need to deal any more damage to its blockers, so it dealt all 8 to you in the next damage step. You thought making your creatures indestructible would mean that the trampler couldn't get through.
To be fair, the tutorials are only meant to show you how to interact with the game. Getting good at it is up to you. What fun would it be if all the synergies and tactics were explained to you, even in the most efficient way possible? That's why quick time events are disliked just as commonly. They don't let you get good. They just make you click buttons on prompt while flashy things happen in background. If a game was to be taught perfectly and fully right from the start, it'd turn the entire game in a series of quick time events where you know precisely what to do and when. It's those empty spots of knowledge and skill is what makes playing games fun. At least so long they don't obscure a key ability of a player of course.
You mentioned it regarding Discovery, but part of the reason Outer Wilds is so good (no spoilers here!) is because of how it integrates all of these concepts. The game's opening area offers a sequence of optional Research-like tutorial camps. You go along a path from A to Z to start your journey; however, along the way are diagetic attractions/distractions that the player can choose to engage with, each of which introduce characters, inform worldbuilding, and/or provide a safe and interactive gameplay element with which to Discover (!) a given mechanic (with a few contextual button prompts displayed as-needed). The entire path functions as one big, optional tutorial. Meanwhile, in the game proper, you have easy access to an optional environment at any time that likewise gives you a secure and risk-free way of experimenting with any of the game's mechanics or mysteries (Research/Discovery), and any information gleaned there is automatically recorded for the player just like when that safety net isn't present (Research). Finally, the game's puzzles are themselves ever-escalating forms of Acclimation: all of the final puzzles are ultimately just things that build upon previously derived knowledge and thus naturally progress toward and revolve around the player improving their mental model of not only how the game plays, but also how the story, gameplay, and worldbuilding all intertwine.
Yet many players skip the tutorial to get to the ship as fast as they can, explore randomly, then do not understand the puzzles (especially the ones involving ghost matter)
@@frankcl1 yeah that's the one spoiler I'd say is worth it just tell people to talk to everyone read everything and interact with everything in the starting area. also don't be afraid to come back to refresh on mechanics.
I love the concept of learning how to play certain games by just playing easier more introductory versions of those games. That has never really crossed my mind before. Great video!
I loved the way tears of the kingdom did its tutorial. You are forced to learn the basics, and actually use them in the starting island. But as you continue playing the game, it slowly teaches you more important things by showing you enemies using them. And every single shrine in the game is actually teaching you something, you might have already learned it somewhere else, and most can be finished in an unintended way, but they are there and designed to teach you something new each time.
honestly, my main grip with (unskippable) tutorials is that i tend to replay same game multiple times. like imagine that in total war games you spend every first 10 minutes in clicking through a tutorial on how to move your army and build your city, i'd ragequit on my 2nd campaign. (also ah, those dark old days when the lost god prologue was the best part of warhammer 3, before immortal empires came out...) i especially have problems with unskippable tutorials in rpgs, bcos those are games meant to be played multiple times. and for example dragon age origins had a good idea about it, they made multiple different origins, so that you can experience cool new backstory of your character, even if you don't need a tutorial on how to actually play. but for whatever reason they gave up on this very good idea and in da2 and inquisition you're back to slogging through the exact same sequence every time before you can get to the cool open world aspect. i can see the same issue with baldur's gate 3 tbh, but at least they had the decency to made that part pretty quick, bcos i bet it's going to get old fast.
Best tutorial is learning the game by playing it. A good first quest or level 1 really gives you simply the basics you need to get far later on. Having more details in mechanics can be a nice side objective for the player to learn, and a chance for them to decide what they want to master next. More complex games need to know how to start small, but give you enough notes to plan your big game. Civilization is a great example in this.
14:53 Speaking of, Firaxis was surprised so many people still had Jane Kelly in Operation Leviathan. Which is interesting when you think about how the only two soldiers to show personality in game from the previous one EU/EW, Zhang and Annette, gave you achievements for doing Final Mission stuff with them. Firaxis noted that, and made Jane Kelly have unique dialogue when interacting with the Chosen.
One interesting way that Magic uses acclimation is with keywords such as Raid. Raid gives your cards a little boost if you have attacked and often requires you to play cards after you have attacked. This solves two problems: first it teaches new players to be aggressive and attack with their creatures, something new players are often unwilling to do. More importantly it teaches the value of using your second main phase. Many new players forget that they can play cards after they attack so having a mechanic that rewards you for doing exactly that helps players learn skills that they need for higher levels of play.
Shout out to Xenoblade 2 for having ages of tutorials that are really really bad. Like, the tutorial actively teaches you that one of the best mechanics in the game, pouch items, are useless because it gives you ones that are in the tutorial. Similarly, it never tells you about stutter stepping, using the fact that moving cancels your attack chain to pull if rabid and weak attacks to help build your special gauge. It also never tells you what different blades or even weapon types are good at, you just have to figure it out on your own. Mythra is insanely good if you boost her critical hit chance, but the game never tells you that. Heck, the game doesn't even have descriptions of what the stats do despite the fact that they're named pretty deceptively.
Xenoblade 2 tutorials weren't that bad. If you needed to be sponnfed how to set up mythra when her tree makes it clear what she is best at you have a larger issue than the game's lackluster tutorials. The game doesn't need to tell you everything. 2 not talking about stutter step is because the mechanic was unintentional at first. Pouch items are made clear how important they are in its tutorial and if you played BOC you would realize how helpful the pouch item you were given at first was. Also stats are not named deceptively lol. Luck is luck, Dex relates to accuracy of attacks, auto attack is just your base damage, crit isz crit. Was 2 your first RPG or something. I can't comprehend being super confused by 2's simplistic mechanics or pointless fluff interactions.
Personally, I like figuring out builds myself, so not being told about Mythra's crit focus didn't bother me. What I do mind about XC2's tutorials though, is how they handled aggro management compared to XC1. In XC1, you started with Reyn and Shulk, tank and position-based DPS. From the very first fight, you are encouraged to be on the move and time your back and side slashes with Reyn's taunts. The game immediately gives you the tools to work with the aggro system it just told you about. Meanwhile, XC2 starts you off alone and when you finally get Nia (because Jin is too OP to really teach much), she's a healer (meaning she pulls aggro like crazy) while Rex can only divert aggro, which gets Nia killed. Meaning instead of being able to learn how to use it by using it, you are basically a victim of the aggro system until you get two tank characters in a row. It slows the combat down tremendously at the start and doesn't teach as much as it could have. I know it's super nitpicky, but XC1 did that so well, it's frustrating. To me, that hands-on approach to aggro in XC1 was the thing that immediately got me hooked and invested into the combat, even when the art selection was limited.
@@dave9515XC2 tutorials were one of the worst I've ever seen in any video games, and this is coming from someone who otherwise really loved the game. It throws a bunch of stuff at you (such as the chain attacks) that you cannot actually execute at this point yet, and by the time you will actually _have to_ use it in order to progress around twenty hours later, you will likely have forgotten about it.
Personal Opinion; of course it doesn't teach you stutter step, that's not how the game is supposed to be played, that's an exploit players discovered. I don't blame anyone for using it though (I do too) since the base attack speed is unreasonably slow
Skill issue. As someone who doesn't like 2 much you can start using cahin attacks as soon as its introduced. The only bad mechanic is teh gotcha. Game tells you everything it needs to for the players to learn and grow on their own which is significantly better than the slog that 3 is with all the tutorials it has. 2 tells you how chain attacks work and expects the player is smart enough to start utilizing all the introduced mechanics. 2 really was a lot of people's first rpg's clearly cause there are more complex mmo's and turnbased rpg's out there than blade. YOu would be lost learning saga 3 mech combat i bet. XC2 tutorials did a good enough job explaining its stuff.@@daniel_361
I actually really like the twilight princess intro. It feels weirdly relaxing to simply wander around the village for a bit before kicking off the main story. That and the music is iconic.
You and me both. A lot of folks criticize Twilight Princess for having a "slow and boring" start. They ask, "when do I get to the fun part?" Not realizing the fun starts from minute one if you just put yourself in Link's shoes and let the game say what it needs to say before all hell breaks loose.
@grammarmaid mhm, now it was like the kingdom hearts 1 opening I'd probably agree, but nah, it's like 20 minutes of relaxing country boy activities and that's pretty relaxing. I should know, I am one lol
@@jeremycaswell I think the KH1 opening is fine, too. But I get what you're saying. Both prologues last roughly the same amount of play time, but Twilight Princess is much more organic and, uh, easier to digest, we'll say. Haha.
@@grammarmaid they do? Huh, I guess time flies lol. Personally I always had a problem remembering where everything was for the KH opening, so it takes me a bit longer
I'm way happier to find this channel than i should be. It just feels so good to find a channel with good understanding and explanation of game mechanics, medium sized videos and just the right amount of diagrams, "animations" and explanation with gameplay to keep your eyes occupied to not be bored, process the tips and warnings and have fun. Bonus points for no shorts! I hope you get the recognition you deserve soon. Edit: i keep watching and it keeps getting better! Little subtle jokes and gags with stopping subtitles making them even more comedic.
one thing I think is important to mention is that there are things that just can't be tutorialized no matter how hard you try, primarily things related to the human aspect of competitive games. In something like competitive Pokemon for example, you can learn the chances of your opponent's gengar dying if they try to switch out from your tyranitar's pursuit by calcing it, but you can't learn the chances of them actually switching out instead of staying in and using hypnosis, destiny bond or focus blast, in any other way than by just playing and picking up on people's habits. Sometimes people just don't realize that no matter how good the tutorial is they're still gonna get run over in a competitive setting if their opponent is better and hands-on experience is a requirement to learn certain things, it sucks that a lot of people bounce off competitive games for this reason even though it's normal
Yeah, some things especially in any form of multiplayer games related to other players just, can't be explained. People are random as hell a lot of the time, and if not, they will each have different pattern of thought when faced with something. For example let's say an RTS game. You just can't know wether your opponent will do the most standard build orders and play in a predictable way or suddenly shove a lategame unit up your arse soon after a round started after stealthly speedrunning it.
Also the "meta" can change every patch notes, making any possible tutorial useless every period of time. Not even the dev can predict what will be best practices after a patch.
Prime example of why I find the majority of competitive games (or modes in otherwise single player games) completely impenetrable and un-fun to play. Meta strategy is like learning a completely different language that goes against everything the normal game has taught you. It's severe cognitive dissonance and feels bad. But to each their own -- some things are simply not going to appeal to some people and that's normal.
I'd say dark souls 2 (not scholar) has my favorite tutorial section. Completely optional, pretty quick, rewarding enough to be worth going through on replay, and teaches the big important rules: like basic combat, back stabs, how to avoid projectiles, managing small groups, if an enemy is too strong go down a different path, and let's you trans your gender if you return to fight the hard guys when your stronger (you can also get a ladle as a weapon) All great features without being required or over bearing.
@QuintessentialWalrus the last section requires a branch to access, there are tougher enemies, and if you light all the sconces i think there is a secret invasion. Not bad additions for what scholar is suposed to be (essentially zelda master mode/quest or legendary in halo, it should be played after you have already completed the game once or twice, its not the intended base experience.) but I think it is also worse as a first time tutorial because of that.
Really surprised you made it through that whole video without once mentioning Fallout: New Vegas, a game that I feel executes all three of the tactics you talked about flawlessly.
Idk, I feel like the game manages some stuff well whole fails completely at others. Whats the most anecdotal evidence I can present? How many people know how to play Caravan? ... But somewhat ironic jokes aside, I think the character building system is something of a failure. How many people have leveled Charisma only to find out it's basically a dump stat that isn't used in dialogue much at all, only really affecting companion stats and the minor base increases to barter and speech? The fact that one gets no indication on the availability of feats until after they're available? Hell, you have no clue you can do different melee moves in VATS while above a certain skill level and there's nothing to hint it! Your first playthrough might as well be blind in regards to your character's specific role and playstyle because so many things are not communicated properly, imo.
@@thosebloodybadgers8499 it's been a while since I booted up New Vegas, but don't you get the option to reset your stats after leaving Goodsprings? That way you set your stats, find out that Charisma is actually not as useful as you'd think, and then you can respec?
@@taliyeth Sure, but does that fix the actual issue or is it more of a bandaid? Doesnt change the issue of properly conveying information, just makes the ensuing problems less punishing for the player, way I see it.
I'm surprised you didn't mention XC3's tutorial marathon, "You want to take one step forward? Well too bad, equip a bracelet. Oh but first we need to teach you how to open the menu, and how to open the accessory menu, and how to--" "We need to teach you the very in-depth mechanic of leveling up. So click on Noah, now.... move the joystick to select the next level. Okay, great! Now do this tutorial two more times!" Anyway, great video as always
On the one hand, XC3'S tutorials can definitely be patronizing at times On the other hand, compared to how cryptic and at points negatively helpful XC2's tutorials were, it felt like a genuine breath of fresh air
at least it isn't like xcx's complete lack of good tutorials, where you have to look in the hard to find in-game manual to work out half of the main mechanics, like overdrive (still kinda sucks though)(i like the whole xc series a lot) :]
X's method was the best because the game didn't stop gameplay for 2-4 hours of playtime telling you to equip x thing make y thing run by the enemy to auto attack. XC3 is not fun to replay from that alone but beyond that its really enjoyable. X is the only tutorials i honestly liked since they didn't shove easy to figure out info in your face 24/7 also most of 2's tutorials were overall acceptable. You shouldn't need the game telling you how you should equip your characters or what some self explanatory stats mean.@@ashkemena
A tutorial is a long form hand holding tip. It can be abrasive, a creative introduction, or the thing that primes you for the actual experience. All are good in their own ways I think, but knowing what feels best for your player is going to help a lot. In conjunction with laying out tutorials in hidden places, and putting in abrasive tips, you can create a dynamic intro to learn segment wherever players first encounter something while giving them the fallback they need when they are lost on how to play. It's all about the combined effects returning your goal of a competent and joy filled player.
Hey thank you so much for the shout out! I've been watching your work since somewhere around your 10th or 11th video based on scrolling back through. As a computer scientist and designer I have found your work on game design always to be enlightening and valuable, and as an essayist always enjoyed your editing and script writing, so it means a lot to hear you enjoyed the Matrix video and that you rewatched it. I always want my work to be rewatchable so its very validating 💜 Also just want to say that while writing about a big piece on Undertale, once I had nailed down all that I primarily wanted to say, I went through and watched basically every essay on Undertale that I could find on UA-cam, and that yours is one of my favourite pieces discussing the game.
Wow - I had no idea you'd been watching for so long! I've been a fan of yours ever since your tron legacy vid and I always find you're great at bringing up angles and perspectives I've not even considered before - seriously, keep up the great work!
Tunic is such a gorgeous game. I bought it for the cute fox and finished it all, enjoying every moment of it. And the art of the guide book is so pretty, you just can't look away from it even before the large scale puzzle reveals itself. It's the only game that made me use pen and paper for notes and I loved it. Only thing left for me is to learn its language which I wish to do without help, but I regretfully lack the time to sit on it.
Something I wish was done more is giving some advanced objective to skip the tutorial instead of a simple button press or making it Un skippable entirely. That way it makes sure we aren't just assuming we know (because we played that genre before or are just that full of ourselves) while not making us slog through it again if we really do already know how to play.
it’s like how super secret unlockables or the hint that they are there can sometimes be easily spotted by anyone, but only players later in the game with more knowledge and/or experience will actually know how to or be able to get there, like how FEZ hides a lot of its codes in plain sight even in earlier levels
@@haydenlee8332 I think the secret exists in New Super Mario Bros. U id a good example. It has a lot of hidden flagpoles in its levels that allow you to skip certain parts of the world. If you’re really good, you can find two secret exists in the grass and water worlds that link up and allow you to skip to the jungle, effectively skipping half of the game’s map.
At first when I saw this I couldn't think about any type of tutorial I hate, but then I remembered. I dislike these strategy games tutorials that lock all your buttons and options except one thing. The ones where you are supposed to place a building and can only do so at a specific spot. It's so weird. I actually prefer the often hated text dump tutorials because I'm used to that from boardgames.
6:47 I think this is also just a really effective way to build good puzzles. You start with an "aha" moment to build the puzzle around right away, and it's likely to be particularly satisfying because your knowledge of the game meaningfully improves once you've solved it.
Thank you for bringing up Manic Miners, I played RRs a bunch when i was younger and ive tried going back to it and was a bit rough, but really nice to see theres a remake. Can't wait to try it out.
I think one of the best feelings in Tunic was one those few particular moments when the game tells you exactly what to do, and then once you do exactly as it tells you, gives you the straightforward knowledge of how to apply that information in a meaningful way. mad props to the game for leaving the keys to one of its core puzzling mechanics behind a door that requires engaging all the major gameplay skill challenges the game has beforehand.
The "Press Enter to demonstrate your ability to read" tutorial from FC3: Blood Dragon should have made the cut, smh. I commented this at the start of the video now edited at the end, well done Adam.
That mention of Rock Raiders just unlocked a hidden memory for me. LOVED it when playing at an old friend's place for me, gonna try it for myself in the coming weeks! THANK YOU!
I'm gonna be honest I actually LOVE to have multiple wiki pages and forum discussions open when playing a game if that game offers enough depth aside from the basic tutorial. It makes me feel like a nerdy expert. I love feeling like a nerdy expert.
I also tend to have wiki pages etc open when I play a lot of games, because I enjoy the process of, and the results of (tbh mostly the results of), the minmaxing/exploits I can achieve with that exploration into mechanical depth. Feeling like a nerdy expert, and/or an OP minmaxer, is fun to me. That said, I enjoy it more when it's optional (or, well, that's what Cookie Clicker's endgame is like, so late game refinement works too), rather than an obligatory method for learning core mechanics.
Kirby usually does a great job with the tutorial because the very first level often gatekeeps you from progressing until you learn the basic mechanic or at the very least makes it more difficult For example Kirby can jump like 3 blocks high... and he can fly.... the devs put a cliff that's 4 blocks high so you can't jump over And while this is extremely basic controls, Kirby only really NEEDS basic controls to be beaten
Tutorial pitch for a horror game: Given the option from someone else to refresh yourself with a manual. If you refuse the manual, then the person that was going to give you a refresher anyways (for their peice of mind or whatnot), gets suddenly killed and you get to react immediately to the content of the game.
In just about every single one of your videos, I find myself checking the description to add a game to my wishlist. Thank you so much for using such a broad array of games in your example footage, and ESPECIALLY for listing all of them! It rocks! Sometimes I joke to myself that I watch your videos just for the game recs. Thank you!!!
Structuring games like college classes where you have the beginner friendly introductory 101 games and then moving on to more advanced games as you pick up the skills to play them is a pretty interesting idea. I think it would be cool to see someone attempt a website that lays out a video game course to follow for advanced games.
I can't express enough how wonderful this video is at explaining different forms of teaching in games! I love that you classified them into distinct categories, and I whole-heartedly agree that the best form of education is by combining them all. The same applies for academic education, too! So much research went into this video, thank you for sharing!!
The issue i have with tutorials is that they also have a way of having you develop a pattern. You find yourself playing a certain way because its what you were taught or if its an open world you finish the detailed tutorial, used to having instructions, step out into the world and say " what the hell am i supposed to do now? "
20:45 Yes! To an extent I can understand people's gripes with tutorials, particularly ones that constantly halt the experience to show you a powerpoint presentation on concepts you've probably seen a million times before, but it always irritates me when I see people completely disregard tutorials only to find that they really could have used it later on. Sure there's an argument to be made that if there's something so complex it can't be learned intuitively, then maybe it should be refined so that one may do so. A fair criticism in some cases, but in others you could just take a minute or two to learn something and go from there, using words and/or diagrams/informative clips in place of an entire stage dedicated to slowly laying foundation, allowing the player to get right into the parts where the game is meant to shine as these concepts come together. Every single game I've ever played, I have always treated as if it might have something new to teach me, because very often do you find that one minor thing works a little differently to how it might in another game, or a method of control might be made clearer if you just take just a few seconds to actually read the thing. There is no downside to being open to receiving new information like that. If a tutorial is mostly redundant, you can just speed through those parts. In addition, one is likely to earlier become more acquainted with the nuanced differences of how one game plays as opposed to another by going over fundamentals like that.
ULTRAKILL is pretty good with it's learning system. Short tutorial to tell the player the broad strokes, then telling them about each weapon as they progress, this also goes for the game telling you about sanded enemies when you encounter them, or teaching you about dash jumping when you need it. The rest is up to the player to learn on their own be it research or figuring it out on your own (synergies, movement mechanics, weapon mechanics, etc).
A few of the boss fights in that game also act as like, natural gates to the rest of the game since ya can't really progress until you learn something that's vital to it. Like uh, spoilers I guess but V2 teaches you to keep moving and avoid taking damage, Gabriel teaches you to pay attention to what your enemy is doing for tells, and the Cerebus uh...i'm sure they taught something, but it might've been something I already knew, so I didn't pick up on it. The other two bosses tho, I was dumb and wasn't already doing those things before. Allows the devs to move forward with the knowledge that you probably know to do this now, so they can more harshly punish you for not doing so, ramping the difficulty up without as much risk.
@@Sornicus Yeah, that's more or less for other people reading tho. I've gotten spoiled on a lot of shit bc people just assume everyone reading a comment chain has fully completed everything, even if they're talking about like, Elden Ring on a Dragon Age video or something.
17:35 I've wanted to play Lego Rock Raiders for a long while now, after fond memories from my childhood, but I found it impossible to run on modern PCs. This is exactly what I needed. Thanks Adam!
My personal preference is to have a (single play) campaign which slowly introduces you to new stuff and really has you play around, learn and appreciate each new mechanic. I think that's why many Metroidvanias are so appealing, because whenever you gain a new ability it can really feel like a gamechanger. Or old RTS games like C&C where you got introduced to a new unit every other mission or so, where that new unit will be key, and then have a few missions without a new unit, but plenty of opportunity to experiment with your latest unit and see how it fits into your playstyle. Yugioh Legacy of the Duelist is also an amazing game for introducing someone to the card game, because the story campaign follows the story of the anime and restricts you to cards which were relevant and existent at that time. So you start of doing really basic plays, tributing monsters for higher level ones, using equip-spells and such, learning how the stats of monsters work. Then you learn more about how the effects of monsters are more important than their raw stats and how powerful special summons are. Then the different types of extra deck summons like Synchro, XYZ, Pendulum and Link are introduced, each with a full dedicated story campaign that has you learn the ins and outs of it. Master Duel is the game to play for Yugioh, but Legacy of the Duelist is the best introduction.
I really like Genshin Impact’s way of introducing new open-world mechanics - whenever you come across something new, a button will pop up saying you’ve gained an entry in your guide book. Whenever you’re ready to try the new thing, you open the book, read the tutorial, and try it out. Or you can just try it without opening the book at all. For things like combat there are more traditional required tutorials, but for the open world I like this style a lot because it lets me take things at my own pace while still having access to a basic guide if needed.
I think the thing with video game tutorials is that I want some way to seek out the information if I feel like I'm running into a wall. I think the best kind of tutorial for (most) games is the ones that let me stumble and figure things out through experimentation. If I run up to a wall, or I'm having difficulty with a particular type of thing, let me seek it out. But if you stop me to tell me every little thing before I have a chance to learn for myself, I hate that. Pikmin 3, for example, having NEVER played a pikmin game before in my life, I figured out a majority of my controls or what was needed of me purely by experimenting with buttons. Seeing what I can or can't do while it tries to give me the SAME TUTORIAL TWICE. I don't need to know how to use the dog again! I already did that before when you forced me to see things I could figure out on my own. The tutorial boss didn't even get a chance to attack before the game told me exactly what I needed to do. Let me figure it out! Let me stumble, let me fail, let me learn myself. When you start telling me what I should or shouldn't be doing and interrupt my own learning to do so, it becomes rather frustrating. It's different if I choose to seek out that information.
I thought I was the only person who ever played Lego Rock Raiders. I’m so happy to know there was at least one other person who enjoyed that game as much as I did!
The first two acts of BG3 feel like a good example of acclimation, since they both feature large open spaces without many NPCs to find all at once. Once you get to the city of Baldur's Gate in Act III, there's suddenly so much to do every 5 ft., and I can imagine how overwhelming that would be if you didn't have the first two Acts teaching you how to pace yourself. It still feels overwhelming, actually...
I think this video lacks some definition of terms. You mention alternatives to tutorials, and then go on to describe what I think of as tutorials (just good types of tutorials).
I'm only 90 seconds in and i just gotta say, using a remix of RuneScape's old tutorial soundtrack (Newbie Melody) for your background music was a brilliant inclusion. Blast from the past!
I've been following you for quite a while now. I just want to say that while i normally agree with you on most things... this is SPOT ON. I've been thinking about this for a while but i couldn't exactly describe the different aspects of the learning methods you described. Thank you.
"And that means that different people will respond to it in different ways. By increasingly emphasising just one form of communication, not only are [schools] leaving out people who don't have the patience or comprehension skills for [lectures], they're also, ironically, not teaching us how to learn. And making us resent [education] as a result. The only way to fix this issue is to look beyond direct instruction, and spot all the other ways that we can potentially learn from [teachers], deliberately or not." This passage just. It so perfectly encapsulates one of my most major gripes with the way we teach children? Next to grading and obedience training. Just. Insisting there's a proper way to learn and building a system incapable of helping students actually learn the ways that benefit them.
i'm so glad i finally got around to watching this! SUCH a good and helpful breakdown of the strengths / weaknesses of different kinds of tutorials, their necessary ubiquity, etc. i also love that you left an entire section for "community resources" because that's such a huge aspect of modern gaming. if you ever decide to make a part 2, i would love to hear your thoughts on how certain tutorials are better suited for specific genres or gameplay mechanics. for example, narrative or art-driven games tend to have invisible (subtle? interwoven? implicit?) tutorials which fall into the categories of acclimation / discovery, versus action or strategy-driven games tend to have more explicit instructions upfront. and then some of the most memorable games take the info you'd been learning the entire time to cleverly subvert your expectations as a method of engagement or storytelling. in short, i really like that your conclusion is that games with good tutorials always have multiple sources of knowledge. i also really like that you talk about game literacy without actually calling it literacy. fantastic.
Another thing that frustrates me is how there’s usually only 1 tutorial for every type of player. If you’ve never played a game in the genre before you’ll need the tutorial to explain a lot more than the person who’s got dozens of games under his belt already. The first person may end up lacking information while the other has to have familliar concepts explained to him over and over and over again.
Some games have multiple tutorials ranging from basic to advanced concepts/mechanics, a new player can start from 0 and a veteran can skip the stuff that he already knows. Still, one tutorial to rule them all is very difficult for games with a decent complexity. Different people learn differently, a tutorial might work great for one but not so much for another.
The thing is, I'm not sure it's really fair for every game developer to have to anticipate players of every possible skill-level. In the same way it's not fair for every writer to have to anticipate readers of every possible skill-level. Some books are written for experienced readers. And some games are made for experienced players. Not every game is going to be for everyone, nor should they be. If you're just starting out, there are plenty of lightweight, easy games out there to get comfortable with, and build gaming literacy with.
@@tbotalpha8133 They don't have to, but it makes their game more accessible to a larger, less experienced, audience, from which the developers only stand to gain. If the game is hard and the player lacks in skill, its fine, but at least a tutorial will make sure that a newer players knows what is happening or what they should do to improve. On a tangential note, your comment stands as a good argument against customizable difficulty.
@@adisca2k Artists can choose to cater to whatever audience they want. They can exclude whoever they want. If creating the art that fits their vision means alienating certain audiences, and they're fine with that, then it's their prerogative to do so.
@@tbotalpha8133 But this is not about creating the art itself, it is about easing people into it. Let's say that an artist has a painting with details that only a trained eye would spot. The tutorial is just the artist saying what people should look for (points of interest, special techniques used, meaningful symbols), so that even a more casual art enjoyer can appreciate their work for all (or at least most) of its worth. He doesn't have to, nor should he, compromise the details or complexity to appeal to the casual enjoyer, only give them some pointers. Isn't this something desirable for most artists?
Thanks for the in-depth look at Mario 1-1. I hadn't thought of its jump- teaching ability, but now I see how that can be useful for a first- time player!
Amazing. I never expected to see a Map Men reference at 11:37. I can still hear the song in my head. Map map map men men. I should have expected you'd love obscure humorous educational content.
Something I really like is that Ni No Kuni Wrath of the White Witch had all its tutorials in the Wizard's Companion, a book/menu that you could open at any time and read as much as you wanted, with simple subcategories to help you find whatever information you're looking for. Unfortunately it did also have normal tell-you-the-mechanics tutorials in the course of gameplay that made the book's introductions redundant, since it is a kid's game and can't reasonably expect everyone to take a half-hour break from playing the story to read an optional book cover-to-cover, or to retain all of that info for however many hours before a particular mechanic is available. Despite that, I thought it was pretty cool already knowing the stuff that was being explained because I'd listened to Mr. Drippy and read the book like he said to, and it was always useful to go back to the book when picking the game back up after a while of not playing. I think the telling stone also has a lot of tutorially information, but his is actually tutorially in its delivery rather than being written as a wizard's textbook, so I only use him for the creature compendium.
when he mentions Warframe, as someone with 250hrs in it, he is not wrong, you need the wiki to find where to get stuff, especially if you want to farm mods instead of trading for them
And the tutorial kind of srews you up, when I started I was asked to pic one of three weapons mid-mission, with no explanation of what they do or how they worked beforehand, thinking I'll be able to test and switch to the one I liked the most; Nope, the one you pick is the only one you get, if you want another you'll have to farm for it, it was kind of a letdown.
im glad you mentioned Stardew valley and how its essentially built to be a game you need to research for. I didn't know how fun it could be to start a specialised farm where I plan the whole thing in advance until I started playing Stardew
I quite like the intro to Twilight Princess. From a story-telling perspective it let's you exist in Link's boring every day life and it gives you a great baseline from which he grows as well as establishing what you're actually trying to save. The low stakes of the gameplay are reflected of the low stakes of the story at that point.
I think Sekiro's tutorial area is actually really good, where you have to sneak through an area, then fight your eay out once you get your sword. It never feels bad on a repeat playthrough because it's really a condensed version of the two core gameplay modes. The game really just needs to chill with the popups
i like to think that as long as you can learn the core mechanics of a game without a wiki, needing one for all the details is fine! sure, figuring out which stardew npc likes what without the wiki is a pretty harrowing experience, but the game did tell you how to gift an item in the first place. you can just wing it if you want to! similar to minecraft where it guides you through basic controls, and you can do whatever after that.
7:28 ...but Super Metroid does indeed tell you that you can blast that tube. It just doesn't whack you over the head with it. By the time you get to Maridia, you've been through that tube a few times. You probably remember it, because it's a unique and memorable location. As you're traversing Maridia along the intended path - which is what you're probably doing on your first playthrough - you finally come across a second one...but it's blown apart, hinting that the glass tubes are destructible. Not long after, you find yourself dropped into the original tube. Put two and two together, and... I know this works, because that's exactly how I figured it out on my first playthrough. And it didn't take me long at all to figure out. Super Metroid gives you all the clues here, and leaves it up to you, the player, to put them together to figure it out.
I just want to thank you overall for great in-depth content, as a junior designer learning a lot from youtube your content is certainly out there with the best channels and is helping me a lot with progressing my career. Cheers mate, much love!
I had no idea Manic Miners existed! As a kid I love Lego Rock Raiders but I had the PlayStation title which showed PC screenshots on the back but was essentially a completely different game & I was always disappointed. Going to be playing Manic Miners now! Thanks for the info! ♥
I like how Danganronpa handles tutorials by basically doing what every other tutorial does except it tries to be funny. The humor does make the tutorial less annoying and it actually did get a few chuckles out of me.
Tutorials that are hated are very explicit and made for a specific person, where if you learn faster or slower you're either getting frustrated because of the slowness or left hanging because you needed more time to learn and practice and it usually doesn't plan for the different ways people learn. Personally I learn by doing so having a box of text telling me what X does is just getting in the way of me trying to do the thing by pressing all the buttons. Difference is when a certain button combination is required to perform a certain action. But then a combo list I can access through the start screen helps me more than having blocks of text swish by while I'm still learning the buttons
I think it's really funny to hear people talk about archdragon peak. I've heard a lot about how frustrating it was to even find in the first place but I kinda stumbled into it on accident
I have found a useful formula for games with expansive inter-dependent mechanics (Paradox games): 📺start by watching let's-plays (to second-hand Acclimatize while getting some depth) 📖then play with a side of wiki (Research).
Honestly, forget tutorials. I just want an in-game manual with a search function. I've played so many mobile MMO games that teach you a mechanic once in the very early game (when you barely have any resources to even be able to use the mechanic in the first place) then later on, when I'm getting my ass handed to, I can't find any resources that could explain that mechanic to me again. Also item drops. I need a bestiary that list item drops. I've currently been stuck on a single quest for months because it requires a single item and all fan-made resources claim that a single enemy drops it, yet I haven't gotten it at all, for months.
Tutorials have a rough job. Not only teach you how to play but in a way that don't mess with the set up of the story, most games introduce a lot of different concepts story-wise and if that is not reflected onto the mechanics it can feel like you're in a classroom learning history and maths at the same time
It's really bad especially if a game sets a mood and tries to immerse you, only to give you a pop up with a wall of text out of the game's context every bloody minute.
Learning is fun and it's very frustrating when you aren't given the ability to learn effectively. A very important topic that no one video can encapsulate!
Or what about games that not only teach you nothing and massively important concepts are very easy to miss? Thinking of Path of Exile's distinction between the words "more" and "increased"
I hate tutorials sometimes for a lot of reasons. 1. I already know what the tutorial is trying to teach me. 2. I can easily figure out myself what the tutorial is trying to teach me. 3. The tutorial is trying to teach me something that doesn't seem relevant right now or goes too in depth. 4. The tutorial is too vague. Basically I hate tutorials because a lot of times they "aren't targeted to me". They're for other people. To make a good tutorial requires you to make it work for any player, new or experienced, regular or coming back, hard-core or casual. I think a good tutorial should be "optional" while also allowing the player to go back to it at any point and going as in depth as the player wants...
i think another reason that jumping section in Portal works is because there's only a handful of places you can put your portal, but the later levels that use that mechanic let you put portals in way more areas - kind of forcing you to learn that it's a mechanic rather than clicking things that the tutorial points out and going "i guess that's a thing" before immediately forgetting about it.
Okay, okay so listen to me really carefully okay? I need you to - and get this, really concentrate - press the A button, that's the **A** button to jump. Okay? You know what jumping is right? it's a small bit of vertical movement propelled by the legs. Got that? You sure? Okay here's ten bossfights in a row good luck : www.patreon.com/ArchitectofGames
Did you get all that? Want me to explain it again? : twitter.com/Thefearalcarrot
Genius. And evil. I like it.
i thought i heard tunics ost in this video! of all the game osts you chose, i think it fits best with this type of video given how tunic works
instruction unclear, I did half an A press instead
My brain read this in the voice of Wheatley.
Instructions not clear, can you go slower please?
Stanley knew that the door on his left would take him to a tutorial, while the door on his right would take him straight into the action, where he would surely be eaten by a shark because he didn't know how to open his inventory and equip the shark repellant charm.
Oh, no no no, you can't -- did you just unplug the tutorial? Now that wasn't supposed to be a choice. How did you do that?
can we please make Stanleyposting a permanent thing, please?
Skip
@@ziwuri please
Is that actual narrator dialogue from a promo or something? It sounds exactly like something from the game, but I’m 95% sure it’s not.
Problem with tutorials like long running cutscenes that can't be skipped is they make a massive wall to the game. Pokemon constantly has a catching tutorial. You can fix this by just asking if they already know and move on for example
Kh2 is probably one of the worst ones where the entire first part is a full on tutorial that makes replays so annoying when you already know all the mechanics
@@DaShikuXI yeah basically. They should give you extra PokeBalls if you watch it so it would give you something for wasting time.
Honestly best tutorials are ones that don't feel like them where the early game is set up like one but the player figures it out on their own
I don't mind the KH2 intro, actually. Probably because I like Roxas as a character and I genuinely think his story is very tragic.
I think the KH2 tutorial is more of a double-edged sword. It works well for an introduction and a setup for the climax of Roxas' journey. If it was shorter, it probably would have felt undercooked, and in my opinion, less effective. The big downside is that it's a chore on subsequent replays.
@@DaShikuXIat least scarlet and violet somewhat remedies that by making the catching tutorial be something you do yourself rather than watching another character slowly catch a pokemon
And you get to keep or knock out the lechonk if you desire
I think this is unavoidable in games made for children. If they let you skip the tutorial, kids would do it and then not know how to play.
IMO the worst is when it interrupts you or takes away your agency. I find it much better to give you the option to learn instead of forcing you to lean. Like in Metroid Prime you don't have to scan, but if you feel the need to you can scan enemies. Also many games are just too complex for no reason and constantly interrupt you with the next feature that gets introduced.
The "Hold up. Read!" prompts in any game are the worst, especially if they trigger in action. Some don't even have the decency to actually pause during that bullshit. And I usually like games that don't fully pause, just not for such reasons.
A lot of mobile RPGs for instance, just auto-path you through the tutorial section without giving the player the chance to act independently until that's done, that REALLY grinds my gears.
@@faylinnmystiquerose2224 I always hate that because I just autopilot through so I can actually play a videogame, but then I haven't actually learned anything once I get to be on my own, so it just wastes 5-10 minutes of time
The worst examples are tutorials that force you to spend currency or use finite resources or make big decisions with no option to sidestep or skip it.
@@faylinnmystiquerose2224yeah! The way they'll have like a full on circle with a hand pointing at the button, and I'm just like "your decorations are covering the interface! I can see there are at least five buttons on this display, I want to know what EACH of them is, yet I can't even make out the one you want me to click, because your finger is covering it!"
As someone who grew up reading manuals as a form of tutorial, I remember playing the first Starcraft and being blown away. It was so seamlessly integrated into the story that I thought "this is the future of tutorials". Thank you for breaking down the different ways that good developers take the time and care to use a variety of methods to teach game mechanics. It really can make or break a gaming experience, and is often so underappreciated.
If only more games took Xenoblade X's approach of handing you a 100-page user guide on its combat mechanics. Some real innovation right there!
Jokes aside, the only tutorials that bother me noaways are (1) mandatory single-player tutorials for games I'm ready to jump into co-op, or (2) menu tutorials that force you into certain choices. What if I don't want that skill as my first level up?!
Are we talking about Children of Morta? Because I just heard Children of Morta
oh Got not Xeno X. Love the game but its 100 page tutorial doesnt even explain the core mechanics of stuff like the Overdrive system. Worse combat tutorial system ever imo. Went till the end of chapter 9 without understanding how TP and TP arts worked cause it just wasnt explained well.
I remember struggling to understand how they explained Overdrive in the manual. You had one job, game! 😂
Yeah, I really had no idea how the Overdrive worked in XCX until I watched a video by the UA-camr Enel, going into the mechanics.
To be honest I hate tutorials because most developers just stick a text box on your screen and call it a day
I hate tutorials that try to teach me how to play video games instead of teaching me the specific games mechanics, like buddy I know how to walk and jump, teach me what all these ores do yk😂
@@Monkeyman-qt1sm Sadly, for some people, they are necessary. But the worst thing is that then those tutorial fail to teach me the actual controls i need, so i need to look in the keyboard settings to find the key i need to use to do a certain thing.
@@ckorp666 Wait, are other doom games written better? When I played Doom Eternal I expected cheesy power fantasy that played incredibly well because that was the game's reputation, and that's what I got? Are other Doom games like Halo?
@@ckorp666 I gotta say, as a vibes-first gamer too, I absolutely adored doom eternals over the top metal-cover look. It felt like what doom was to me, the story is OTT and I think that's a good thing, because it introduces so much.
OMOCHAO
Another important aspect is that a lot of learning tool can accidentally teach you the wrong lesson and ruin your experience. Early on in Fallout New Vegas I tried exploring and was immediacy and repeatedly killed for doing so. I internalized the lesson that "I am not supposed to explore" and the treated the game as linear and had a much worse time with the game for it.
Was it the Cazadores?
@@SheepUndefined It looked like a big weird cat
The only rule in Fallout: New Vegas is don't go straight north. Avoid that area until you're strong. It's a Morrowind-like approach to exploration, rather than Skyrim-like. I enjoy that first part of the game, it is really built to minimize fast-traveling.
@@worthasandwichsounds like a deathclaw. Sorry you had that experience.
@@SongokuJidai It was a weird cat thing with a weird big mouth that attacked after I went too far off the path to loot a raider that I killed.
Shout-out to Rain World for teaching you how to jump and then basically telling you to go screw yourself lmao
Genuinely love that game
Here's a food chain. There you are at the botom of it. Have fun.
exactly lol@@kaksspl
Wow wow, it also teaches you to pick up things first! At that point the rest is already obvious of course.
Omg I just started this game yesterday! I keep finding new and exciting ways to die, but I'm having such an amazing time! (Please no spoilers, it's a real treat to figure this all out organically.)
Honestly makes me so happy to hear about so many new people getting into Rain World recently. Best of luck, friend! :D@@WolfyRagnarok
I love the binding of Isaac's way of discovering items but it kinda got out of hand as the game got more and more updates. The first time you pick an item like soy milk is so frustrating because it ruins your game but if you have enough knowledge of other items you know that it synergizes with a lot of items and can be even game breaking. The problem is that at first there were about 100 items and now there are more than 700 and it's impossible to remember them all. The game will have to evolve as it has done before with incorporating mods like bonus HUDs and charge bars into the main game
Had a great run, epic fetus out the gate blowing stuff up. (the one that drops missiles on a reticule)
Then uh oh, curse of the blind! Considered skipping the item, it could be bad, I knew what it could be, the one thing that could ruin the build, but the odds are like 1/79 that it's actually that bad.
So I pick up the '?' item anyways, what do you know, my suspicions were correct, it was Soy Milk! So now my epic fetus hits like a wet noodle and I just do no damage for the rest of the run.
The amount of items isn't the only problem, many items have effects that aren't visible immediately and don't affect stats, and many of those items are really bad and don't synergize with anything meaning most runs you're fighting not just difficult enemies but the game itself for some of the more difficult character post-its
It’s also a problem in that, from what I remember (played in 2015 mostly), there’s no name for the item until you pick it up. At least if I knew what it was I could quickly find it online and read what it does and make a decision. It would be annoying, but I’d have the option.
@@poppyfrancis7338 I think that is big part of the fun because at the start everything feels like a gamble but as you slowly learn what most of the items do you feel more and more like you've mastered the game until you reach the point where you know a lot of the item interactions and you can make use of the bad ones. It used to take maybe 50-100 hours to reach this point. Now it's upwards of 200 and unreasonable to expect someone to spend this much time in your game to feel at least competent when playing it.
I just don't feel like I have any choice in binding of Isaac so any "knowledge" is useless. The only thing I can do is pick any item because there's only one, use it, hope not to die. Also I'm complete noob which only sometimes clear the uppest level but I still don't really know how am I supposed to git gud at the game other than... Dodge everything.
One of my "favorite" tutorial moments was when Xenoblade 2 gave me a tutorial for a system, but that system required me to have a certain skill that I'd taken off Rex at the time, so I essentially brute forced my way through the fight.
As I found out some 30+ hours later when I was consistently getting my ass handed to me by regular enemies way below my level, it turns out that the tutorial I brute forced was teaching me a very core mechanic that interacts with a huge chunk of the game's systems and I only found this out when I did something ELSE the game tutorialized a single time by accident and ended up on a wiki page, which actually taught me how to play the game.
God, I love this game, but I'm so glad XC3's tutorials were a little more heavy handed, if at points a little patronizing
XC2's tutorials are notoriously horrible and that's part of WHY XC3's are so much better lol
What mechanic are you talking about by the way? Now I'm curious which specific thing you had trouble with and what tangented into it-- Is it those damn field skills? LOL
Like my cousins getting stuck on demyx in kh2 because he never equipped skills
@@StarfloofleAlso certainly Break/Topple, because they probably removed Anchor Shot from Rex
@@agromchung Oh fuck that's GOT to be what it is, oh NO, that's awful LOL
@@Starfloofle Yeah, it was the Break and Topple tutorial.
Now that I'm remembering it, I don't think I took Anchor Shot off Rex but rather Nia's Topple skill, but the result was mostly the same
Also, to answer your other question, the whole element combo system with party members didn't really end up sticking in my memory after the tutorial, and it was only when I did it once on accident far later down the line that I thought "alright, I should probably actually learn how this game works" (but not after spending many hours searching for a tips page before realizing the game only produced them for questions like "How do I buy items from shops?" or "How do I change blades?")
the "classic gamer opinion of wanting to learn everything organically" might be closed-minded in the context of maximally efficient learning, but in a lot of games (note: not ones with especially complex systems), that tends to be the way i find the most fun, even if it means i'll be struggling more for longer. it's a matter of personal preference there.
Some games will curb stomp you if you don't get real familiar with the mechanics real quick lol.
@@bestaround3323 i can adapt to games that really require research, i just put it off until it's clear that it'd be more fun to involve research in my learning process.
I definitely agree with you here. I tend not to like or play games that require research on a wiki upfront before I actually get into it. I'm fine with research after a certain point, but I have to get to that point first or it just feels like work (or I'm worried about spoiling things since online research can often literally tell you everything). I don't mind a specific dedicated tutorial section before the game really starts though, as long as it isn't egregiously long.
I miss the experience of my first few hours playing games like stellaris or ck3 before I learned how all the mechanics worked so I was making mistakes and having a far more interesting time.
Completely agree. Learning stuff organically is very fun but it requires good design which is something not a lot of games can actually pull off. A lot of games just assume prior knowledge and call it a day.
Love the Map Men reference, another of my favourite channels. Jay and Mark are great :)
Just Shapes and Beats has a pretty neat tutorial.
It first lets you know what the objective is by encouraging the player to get the triangle from across the screen leading to another section where it is like the first section except this time there are pink bullets that can hurt you. You dodge them and get to the next section where it introduces the main mechanics of the game such pink bombs, lasers, pulses and the ability to dash through bullets, all without telling a single word. After learning all the mechanics, you reach to the final section of the tutorial, where basically you learn that the game doesnt pull its punches and reminds you what the term “bullet hell” is. Really great tutorial accompanied with some great music for a Rhythm bullet hell game
I do like how Guild Wars 2 integrated the official wiki into the game - through the chat box. Typing "/wiki" and what it is you want to search (or linking the item with alt+click) will pull up its page, or the search results on the wiki for it in your browser.
It's also a great way to direct newbies to that information through in-game chat. Instead of typing out a reply to a basic question, you can just tell them "type /wiki your item in chatbox". It makes them skip a couple steps that are part of research inertia, even if it's still in an external browser, and not an in-game encyclopedia.
In RuneScape It is the same. You can type /Wiki on the chat to search directly on the browser from ingame. And they also added a Wiki button to the side of the chat, which automatically adds the /Wiki and makes the feature more visible and accessible to less knowledged players
Another thing that is great at teaching is having things that sound 'cool' be effective.
I noticed it especially in RPGs (including TTRPGs) with higher mechanical complexity and action games that allow complicated combos is that it really encourages exploration and learning if you see some (obvious) combo that seems cool and test it out, and... it's effective.
Makes you instantly want to experiment more.
I really love Half-Life's tutorial. An obstacle course and gun training that is completely separate from the actual game, can be skipped or replayed whenever, and has a solid in world explanation and implementation.
Another worthy mention, Plantet Crafter has it's controls displayed on the pause screen. For a survival game, where seconds count, it's great you don't need to hunt through options menus to get some basic info. One click, one screen, all neat.
For internet points: After the first strike damage step, the 8/8 with double strike and trample didn't need to deal any more damage to its blockers, so it dealt all 8 to you in the next damage step. You thought making your creatures indestructible would mean that the trampler couldn't get through.
To be fair, the tutorials are only meant to show you how to interact with the game. Getting good at it is up to you. What fun would it be if all the synergies and tactics were explained to you, even in the most efficient way possible? That's why quick time events are disliked just as commonly. They don't let you get good. They just make you click buttons on prompt while flashy things happen in background. If a game was to be taught perfectly and fully right from the start, it'd turn the entire game in a series of quick time events where you know precisely what to do and when. It's those empty spots of knowledge and skill is what makes playing games fun. At least so long they don't obscure a key ability of a player of course.
You mentioned it regarding Discovery, but part of the reason Outer Wilds is so good (no spoilers here!) is because of how it integrates all of these concepts.
The game's opening area offers a sequence of optional Research-like tutorial camps. You go along a path from A to Z to start your journey; however, along the way are diagetic attractions/distractions that the player can choose to engage with, each of which introduce characters, inform worldbuilding, and/or provide a safe and interactive gameplay element with which to Discover (!) a given mechanic (with a few contextual button prompts displayed as-needed). The entire path functions as one big, optional tutorial.
Meanwhile, in the game proper, you have easy access to an optional environment at any time that likewise gives you a secure and risk-free way of experimenting with any of the game's mechanics or mysteries (Research/Discovery), and any information gleaned there is automatically recorded for the player just like when that safety net isn't present (Research). Finally, the game's puzzles are themselves ever-escalating forms of Acclimation: all of the final puzzles are ultimately just things that build upon previously derived knowledge and thus naturally progress toward and revolve around the player improving their mental model of not only how the game plays, but also how the story, gameplay, and worldbuilding all intertwine.
Yet many players skip the tutorial to get to the ship as fast as they can, explore randomly, then do not understand the puzzles (especially the ones involving ghost matter)
@@frankcl1 yeah that's the one spoiler I'd say is worth it just tell people to talk to everyone read everything and interact with everything in the starting area. also don't be afraid to come back to refresh on mechanics.
I love the concept of learning how to play certain games by just playing easier more introductory versions of those games. That has never really crossed my mind before. Great video!
I loved the way tears of the kingdom did its tutorial. You are forced to learn the basics, and actually use them in the starting island. But as you continue playing the game, it slowly teaches you more important things by showing you enemies using them. And every single shrine in the game is actually teaching you something, you might have already learned it somewhere else, and most can be finished in an unintended way, but they are there and designed to teach you something new each time.
honestly, my main grip with (unskippable) tutorials is that i tend to replay same game multiple times. like imagine that in total war games you spend every first 10 minutes in clicking through a tutorial on how to move your army and build your city, i'd ragequit on my 2nd campaign. (also ah, those dark old days when the lost god prologue was the best part of warhammer 3, before immortal empires came out...)
i especially have problems with unskippable tutorials in rpgs, bcos those are games meant to be played multiple times. and for example dragon age origins had a good idea about it, they made multiple different origins, so that you can experience cool new backstory of your character, even if you don't need a tutorial on how to actually play. but for whatever reason they gave up on this very good idea and in da2 and inquisition you're back to slogging through the exact same sequence every time before you can get to the cool open world aspect. i can see the same issue with baldur's gate 3 tbh, but at least they had the decency to made that part pretty quick, bcos i bet it's going to get old fast.
Best tutorial is learning the game by playing it. A good first quest or level 1 really gives you simply the basics you need to get far later on.
Having more details in mechanics can be a nice side objective for the player to learn, and a chance for them to decide what they want to master next.
More complex games need to know how to start small, but give you enough notes to plan your big game. Civilization is a great example in this.
14:53 Speaking of, Firaxis was surprised so many people still had Jane Kelly in Operation Leviathan. Which is interesting when you think about how the only two soldiers to show personality in game from the previous one EU/EW, Zhang and Annette, gave you achievements for doing Final Mission stuff with them. Firaxis noted that, and made Jane Kelly have unique dialogue when interacting with the Chosen.
One interesting way that Magic uses acclimation is with keywords such as Raid. Raid gives your cards a little boost if you have attacked and often requires you to play cards after you have attacked. This solves two problems: first it teaches new players to be aggressive and attack with their creatures, something new players are often unwilling to do. More importantly it teaches the value of using your second main phase. Many new players forget that they can play cards after they attack so having a mechanic that rewards you for doing exactly that helps players learn skills that they need for higher levels of play.
Shout out to Xenoblade 2 for having ages of tutorials that are really really bad. Like, the tutorial actively teaches you that one of the best mechanics in the game, pouch items, are useless because it gives you ones that are in the tutorial. Similarly, it never tells you about stutter stepping, using the fact that moving cancels your attack chain to pull if rabid and weak attacks to help build your special gauge. It also never tells you what different blades or even weapon types are good at, you just have to figure it out on your own. Mythra is insanely good if you boost her critical hit chance, but the game never tells you that. Heck, the game doesn't even have descriptions of what the stats do despite the fact that they're named pretty deceptively.
Xenoblade 2 tutorials weren't that bad. If you needed to be sponnfed how to set up mythra when her tree makes it clear what she is best at you have a larger issue than the game's lackluster tutorials. The game doesn't need to tell you everything. 2 not talking about stutter step is because the mechanic was unintentional at first. Pouch items are made clear how important they are in its tutorial and if you played BOC you would realize how helpful the pouch item you were given at first was. Also stats are not named deceptively lol. Luck is luck, Dex relates to accuracy of attacks, auto attack is just your base damage, crit isz crit. Was 2 your first RPG or something. I can't comprehend being super confused by 2's simplistic mechanics or pointless fluff interactions.
Personally, I like figuring out builds myself, so not being told about Mythra's crit focus didn't bother me.
What I do mind about XC2's tutorials though, is how they handled aggro management compared to XC1. In XC1, you started with Reyn and Shulk, tank and position-based DPS. From the very first fight, you are encouraged to be on the move and time your back and side slashes with Reyn's taunts. The game immediately gives you the tools to work with the aggro system it just told you about. Meanwhile, XC2 starts you off alone and when you finally get Nia (because Jin is too OP to really teach much), she's a healer (meaning she pulls aggro like crazy) while Rex can only divert aggro, which gets Nia killed. Meaning instead of being able to learn how to use it by using it, you are basically a victim of the aggro system until you get two tank characters in a row. It slows the combat down tremendously at the start and doesn't teach as much as it could have.
I know it's super nitpicky, but XC1 did that so well, it's frustrating. To me, that hands-on approach to aggro in XC1 was the thing that immediately got me hooked and invested into the combat, even when the art selection was limited.
@@dave9515XC2 tutorials were one of the worst I've ever seen in any video games, and this is coming from someone who otherwise really loved the game. It throws a bunch of stuff at you (such as the chain attacks) that you cannot actually execute at this point yet, and by the time you will actually _have to_ use it in order to progress around twenty hours later, you will likely have forgotten about it.
Personal Opinion; of course it doesn't teach you stutter step, that's not how the game is supposed to be played, that's an exploit players discovered. I don't blame anyone for using it though (I do too) since the base attack speed is unreasonably slow
Skill issue. As someone who doesn't like 2 much you can start using cahin attacks as soon as its introduced. The only bad mechanic is teh gotcha. Game tells you everything it needs to for the players to learn and grow on their own which is significantly better than the slog that 3 is with all the tutorials it has. 2 tells you how chain attacks work and expects the player is smart enough to start utilizing all the introduced mechanics. 2 really was a lot of people's first rpg's clearly cause there are more complex mmo's and turnbased rpg's out there than blade. YOu would be lost learning saga 3 mech combat i bet. XC2 tutorials did a good enough job explaining its stuff.@@daniel_361
I actually really like the twilight princess intro. It feels weirdly relaxing to simply wander around the village for a bit before kicking off the main story. That and the music is iconic.
You and me both. A lot of folks criticize Twilight Princess for having a "slow and boring" start. They ask, "when do I get to the fun part?" Not realizing the fun starts from minute one if you just put yourself in Link's shoes and let the game say what it needs to say before all hell breaks loose.
@grammarmaid mhm, now it was like the kingdom hearts 1 opening I'd probably agree, but nah, it's like 20 minutes of relaxing country boy activities and that's pretty relaxing. I should know, I am one lol
@@jeremycaswell I think the KH1 opening is fine, too. But I get what you're saying. Both prologues last roughly the same amount of play time, but Twilight Princess is much more organic and, uh, easier to digest, we'll say. Haha.
@@grammarmaid they do? Huh, I guess time flies lol. Personally I always had a problem remembering where everything was for the KH opening, so it takes me a bit longer
I'm way happier to find this channel than i should be. It just feels so good to find a channel with good understanding and explanation of game mechanics, medium sized videos and just the right amount of diagrams, "animations" and explanation with gameplay to keep your eyes occupied to not be bored, process the tips and warnings and have fun. Bonus points for no shorts! I hope you get the recognition you deserve soon.
Edit: i keep watching and it keeps getting better! Little subtle jokes and gags with stopping subtitles making them even more comedic.
one thing I think is important to mention is that there are things that just can't be tutorialized no matter how hard you try, primarily things related to the human aspect of competitive games. In something like competitive Pokemon for example, you can learn the chances of your opponent's gengar dying if they try to switch out from your tyranitar's pursuit by calcing it, but you can't learn the chances of them actually switching out instead of staying in and using hypnosis, destiny bond or focus blast, in any other way than by just playing and picking up on people's habits. Sometimes people just don't realize that no matter how good the tutorial is they're still gonna get run over in a competitive setting if their opponent is better and hands-on experience is a requirement to learn certain things, it sucks that a lot of people bounce off competitive games for this reason even though it's normal
Yeah, some things especially in any form of multiplayer games related to other players just, can't be explained. People are random as hell a lot of the time, and if not, they will each have different pattern of thought when faced with something.
For example let's say an RTS game. You just can't know wether your opponent will do the most standard build orders and play in a predictable way or suddenly shove a lategame unit up your arse soon after a round started after stealthly speedrunning it.
Also the "meta" can change every patch notes, making any possible tutorial useless every period of time. Not even the dev can predict what will be best practices after a patch.
Prime example of why I find the majority of competitive games (or modes in otherwise single player games) completely impenetrable and un-fun to play. Meta strategy is like learning a completely different language that goes against everything the normal game has taught you. It's severe cognitive dissonance and feels bad. But to each their own -- some things are simply not going to appeal to some people and that's normal.
I'd say dark souls 2 (not scholar) has my favorite tutorial section. Completely optional, pretty quick, rewarding enough to be worth going through on replay, and teaches the big important rules: like basic combat, back stabs, how to avoid projectiles, managing small groups, if an enemy is too strong go down a different path, and let's you trans your gender if you return to fight the hard guys when your stronger (you can also get a ladle as a weapon)
All great features without being required or over bearing.
There's a reason Elden Ring basically copies it verbatim. DS3 does it pretty well too, but it's not as optional.
Transing your gender as the reward for getting good is pretty cool
@@AeonKnigh432 lol I've been playing FROM games since the 90's and man
King's Field's "tutorial" was a brutal joke
Why the original specifically and not SOTFS? I don't remember hearing about any big changes made to the tutorial section in the re-release.
@QuintessentialWalrus the last section requires a branch to access, there are tougher enemies, and if you light all the sconces i think there is a secret invasion. Not bad additions for what scholar is suposed to be (essentially zelda master mode/quest or legendary in halo, it should be played after you have already completed the game once or twice, its not the intended base experience.) but I think it is also worse as a first time tutorial because of that.
Really surprised you made it through that whole video without once mentioning Fallout: New Vegas, a game that I feel executes all three of the tactics you talked about flawlessly.
It fails, though, at executing the player...
@@GerackSerackI mean, technically, Benny was the one who failed to execute the player
Idk, I feel like the game manages some stuff well whole fails completely at others.
Whats the most anecdotal evidence I can present? How many people know how to play Caravan?
...
But somewhat ironic jokes aside, I think the character building system is something of a failure.
How many people have leveled Charisma only to find out it's basically a dump stat that isn't used in dialogue much at all, only really affecting companion stats and the minor base increases to barter and speech? The fact that one gets no indication on the availability of feats until after they're available? Hell, you have no clue you can do different melee moves in VATS while above a certain skill level and there's nothing to hint it!
Your first playthrough might as well be blind in regards to your character's specific role and playstyle because so many things are not communicated properly, imo.
@@thosebloodybadgers8499 it's been a while since I booted up New Vegas, but don't you get the option to reset your stats after leaving Goodsprings? That way you set your stats, find out that Charisma is actually not as useful as you'd think, and then you can respec?
@@taliyeth Sure, but does that fix the actual issue or is it more of a bandaid?
Doesnt change the issue of properly conveying information, just makes the ensuing problems less punishing for the player, way I see it.
I'm surprised you didn't mention XC3's tutorial marathon, "You want to take one step forward? Well too bad, equip a bracelet. Oh but first we need to teach you how to open the menu, and how to open the accessory menu, and how to--" "We need to teach you the very in-depth mechanic of leveling up. So click on Noah, now.... move the joystick to select the next level. Okay, great! Now do this tutorial two more times!"
Anyway, great video as always
On the one hand, XC3'S tutorials can definitely be patronizing at times
On the other hand, compared to how cryptic and at points negatively helpful XC2's tutorials were, it felt like a genuine breath of fresh air
at least it isn't like xcx's complete lack of good tutorials, where you have to look in the hard to find in-game manual to work out half of the main mechanics, like overdrive (still kinda sucks though)(i like the whole xc series a lot) :]
X's method was the best because the game didn't stop gameplay for 2-4 hours of playtime telling you to equip x thing make y thing run by the enemy to auto attack. XC3 is not fun to replay from that alone but beyond that its really enjoyable. X is the only tutorials i honestly liked since they didn't shove easy to figure out info in your face 24/7 also most of 2's tutorials were overall acceptable. You shouldn't need the game telling you how you should equip your characters or what some self explanatory stats mean.@@ashkemena
I do really like X, still (realising that sounded like it's not one of my favourite games, it is)
A tutorial is a long form hand holding tip. It can be abrasive, a creative introduction, or the thing that primes you for the actual experience. All are good in their own ways I think, but knowing what feels best for your player is going to help a lot. In conjunction with laying out tutorials in hidden places, and putting in abrasive tips, you can create a dynamic intro to learn segment wherever players first encounter something while giving them the fallback they need when they are lost on how to play. It's all about the combined effects returning your goal of a competent and joy filled player.
Hey thank you so much for the shout out! I've been watching your work since somewhere around your 10th or 11th video based on scrolling back through. As a computer scientist and designer I have found your work on game design always to be enlightening and valuable, and as an essayist always enjoyed your editing and script writing, so it means a lot to hear you enjoyed the Matrix video and that you rewatched it. I always want my work to be rewatchable so its very validating 💜
Also just want to say that while writing about a big piece on Undertale, once I had nailed down all that I primarily wanted to say, I went through and watched basically every essay on Undertale that I could find on UA-cam, and that yours is one of my favourite pieces discussing the game.
Wow - I had no idea you'd been watching for so long! I've been a fan of yours ever since your tron legacy vid and I always find you're great at bringing up angles and perspectives I've not even considered before - seriously, keep up the great work!
@@ArchitectofGames Thank you! I guess we both found eachothers work very early on thats so cool.
Tunic is such a gorgeous game. I bought it for the cute fox and finished it all, enjoying every moment of it. And the art of the guide book is so pretty, you just can't look away from it even before the large scale puzzle reveals itself. It's the only game that made me use pen and paper for notes and I loved it. Only thing left for me is to learn its language which I wish to do without help, but I regretfully lack the time to sit on it.
Something I wish was done more is giving some advanced objective to skip the tutorial instead of a simple button press or making it Un skippable entirely.
That way it makes sure we aren't just assuming we know (because we played that genre before or are just that full of ourselves) while not making us slog through it again if we really do already know how to play.
it’s like how super secret unlockables or the hint that they are there can sometimes be easily spotted by anyone, but only players later in the game with more knowledge and/or experience will actually know how to or be able to get there, like how FEZ hides a lot of its codes in plain sight even in earlier levels
this is actually pretty clever.
Implementing it would not be as simple, depending on the type of game
@@haydenlee8332 I think the secret exists in New Super Mario Bros. U id a good example. It has a lot of hidden flagpoles in its levels that allow you to skip certain parts of the world. If you’re really good, you can find two secret exists in the grass and water worlds that link up and allow you to skip to the jungle, effectively skipping half of the game’s map.
Paradox have taught me that trial and error is the best tutorial is so funny to try new things and see what sticks
At first when I saw this I couldn't think about any type of tutorial I hate, but then I remembered. I dislike these strategy games tutorials that lock all your buttons and options except one thing. The ones where you are supposed to place a building and can only do so at a specific spot. It's so weird. I actually prefer the often hated text dump tutorials because I'm used to that from boardgames.
6:47 I think this is also just a really effective way to build good puzzles. You start with an "aha" moment to build the puzzle around right away, and it's likely to be particularly satisfying because your knowledge of the game meaningfully improves once you've solved it.
Thank you for bringing up Manic Miners, I played RRs a bunch when i was younger and ive tried going back to it and was a bit rough, but really nice to see theres a remake. Can't wait to try it out.
My experience with games become so much better when I started taking paper notes and drawing my own maps and stuff.
You should play La-Mulana, you'd love it
Seconding the La-Mulana recommendation. It's THE game for paper notes.
I think one of the best feelings in Tunic was one those few particular moments when the game tells you exactly what to do, and then once you do exactly as it tells you, gives you the straightforward knowledge of how to apply that information in a meaningful way.
mad props to the game for leaving the keys to one of its core puzzling mechanics behind a door that requires engaging all the major gameplay skill challenges the game has beforehand.
The "Press Enter to demonstrate your ability to read" tutorial from FC3: Blood Dragon should have made the cut, smh.
I commented this at the start of the video now edited at the end, well done Adam.
That mention of Rock Raiders just unlocked a hidden memory for me.
LOVED it when playing at an old friend's place for me, gonna try it for myself in the coming weeks!
THANK YOU!
I'm gonna be honest I actually LOVE to have multiple wiki pages and forum discussions open when playing a game if that game offers enough depth aside from the basic tutorial. It makes me feel like a nerdy expert. I love feeling like a nerdy expert.
I also tend to have wiki pages etc open when I play a lot of games, because I enjoy the process of, and the results of (tbh mostly the results of), the minmaxing/exploits I can achieve with that exploration into mechanical depth. Feeling like a nerdy expert, and/or an OP minmaxer, is fun to me.
That said, I enjoy it more when it's optional (or, well, that's what Cookie Clicker's endgame is like, so late game refinement works too), rather than an obligatory method for learning core mechanics.
Kirby usually does a great job with the tutorial because the very first level often gatekeeps you from progressing until you learn the basic mechanic or at the very least makes it more difficult
For example Kirby can jump like 3 blocks high... and he can fly.... the devs put a cliff that's 4 blocks high so you can't jump over
And while this is extremely basic controls, Kirby only really NEEDS basic controls to be beaten
Tutorial pitch for a horror game:
Given the option from someone else to refresh yourself with a manual. If you refuse the manual, then the person that was going to give you a refresher anyways (for their peice of mind or whatnot), gets suddenly killed and you get to react immediately to the content of the game.
In just about every single one of your videos, I find myself checking the description to add a game to my wishlist. Thank you so much for using such a broad array of games in your example footage, and ESPECIALLY for listing all of them! It rocks! Sometimes I joke to myself that I watch your videos just for the game recs. Thank you!!!
Structuring games like college classes where you have the beginner friendly introductory 101 games and then moving on to more advanced games as you pick up the skills to play them is a pretty interesting idea. I think it would be cool to see someone attempt a website that lays out a video game course to follow for advanced games.
I quickly skip every tutorial pop-up. An hour later "oh fuck..."
Rock Raiders ! I didn't think I would hear from that game in a video essay like yours. It was also my first RTS
I can't express enough how wonderful this video is at explaining different forms of teaching in games! I love that you classified them into distinct categories, and I whole-heartedly agree that the best form of education is by combining them all. The same applies for academic education, too! So much research went into this video, thank you for sharing!!
The issue i have with tutorials is that they also have a way of having you develop a pattern. You find yourself playing a certain way because its what you were taught or if its an open world you finish the detailed tutorial, used to having instructions, step out into the world and say " what the hell am i supposed to do now? "
20:45 Yes! To an extent I can understand people's gripes with tutorials, particularly ones that constantly halt the experience to show you a powerpoint presentation on concepts you've probably seen a million times before, but it always irritates me when I see people completely disregard tutorials only to find that they really could have used it later on. Sure there's an argument to be made that if there's something so complex it can't be learned intuitively, then maybe it should be refined so that one may do so. A fair criticism in some cases, but in others you could just take a minute or two to learn something and go from there, using words and/or diagrams/informative clips in place of an entire stage dedicated to slowly laying foundation, allowing the player to get right into the parts where the game is meant to shine as these concepts come together.
Every single game I've ever played, I have always treated as if it might have something new to teach me, because very often do you find that one minor thing works a little differently to how it might in another game, or a method of control might be made clearer if you just take just a few seconds to actually read the thing. There is no downside to being open to receiving new information like that. If a tutorial is mostly redundant, you can just speed through those parts. In addition, one is likely to earlier become more acquainted with the nuanced differences of how one game plays as opposed to another by going over fundamentals like that.
ULTRAKILL is pretty good with it's learning system. Short tutorial to tell the player the broad strokes, then telling them about each weapon as they progress, this also goes for the game telling you about sanded enemies when you encounter them, or teaching you about dash jumping when you need it. The rest is up to the player to learn on their own be it research or figuring it out on your own (synergies, movement mechanics, weapon mechanics, etc).
A few of the boss fights in that game also act as like, natural gates to the rest of the game since ya can't really progress until you learn something that's vital to it.
Like uh, spoilers I guess but V2 teaches you to keep moving and avoid taking damage, Gabriel teaches you to pay attention to what your enemy is doing for tells, and the Cerebus uh...i'm sure they taught something, but it might've been something I already knew, so I didn't pick up on it. The other two bosses tho, I was dumb and wasn't already doing those things before.
Allows the devs to move forward with the knowledge that you probably know to do this now, so they can more harshly punish you for not doing so, ramping the difficulty up without as much risk.
@@SheepUndefined no worries I already beat ULTRAKILL so no spoilers
@@Sornicus Yeah, that's more or less for other people reading tho. I've gotten spoiled on a lot of shit bc people just assume everyone reading a comment chain has fully completed everything, even if they're talking about like, Elden Ring on a Dragon Age video or something.
17:35 I've wanted to play Lego Rock Raiders for a long while now, after fond memories from my childhood, but I found it impossible to run on modern PCs. This is exactly what I needed. Thanks Adam!
My personal preference is to have a (single play) campaign which slowly introduces you to new stuff and really has you play around, learn and appreciate each new mechanic.
I think that's why many Metroidvanias are so appealing, because whenever you gain a new ability it can really feel like a gamechanger.
Or old RTS games like C&C where you got introduced to a new unit every other mission or so, where that new unit will be key, and then have a few missions without a new unit, but plenty of opportunity to experiment with your latest unit and see how it fits into your playstyle.
Yugioh Legacy of the Duelist is also an amazing game for introducing someone to the card game, because the story campaign follows the story of the anime and restricts you to cards which were relevant and existent at that time. So you start of doing really basic plays, tributing monsters for higher level ones, using equip-spells and such, learning how the stats of monsters work. Then you learn more about how the effects of monsters are more important than their raw stats and how powerful special summons are. Then the different types of extra deck summons like Synchro, XYZ, Pendulum and Link are introduced, each with a full dedicated story campaign that has you learn the ins and outs of it.
Master Duel is the game to play for Yugioh, but Legacy of the Duelist is the best introduction.
I don't know why I was surprised to see Manic Miners referenced here, but I'm glad I didn't need to point it out when you mentioned Rock Raiders!
I really like Genshin Impact’s way of introducing new open-world mechanics - whenever you come across something new, a button will pop up saying you’ve gained an entry in your guide book. Whenever you’re ready to try the new thing, you open the book, read the tutorial, and try it out. Or you can just try it without opening the book at all. For things like combat there are more traditional required tutorials, but for the open world I like this style a lot because it lets me take things at my own pace while still having access to a basic guide if needed.
I think the thing with video game tutorials is that I want some way to seek out the information if I feel like I'm running into a wall. I think the best kind of tutorial for (most) games is the ones that let me stumble and figure things out through experimentation. If I run up to a wall, or I'm having difficulty with a particular type of thing, let me seek it out. But if you stop me to tell me every little thing before I have a chance to learn for myself, I hate that.
Pikmin 3, for example, having NEVER played a pikmin game before in my life, I figured out a majority of my controls or what was needed of me purely by experimenting with buttons. Seeing what I can or can't do while it tries to give me the SAME TUTORIAL TWICE. I don't need to know how to use the dog again! I already did that before when you forced me to see things I could figure out on my own. The tutorial boss didn't even get a chance to attack before the game told me exactly what I needed to do. Let me figure it out!
Let me stumble, let me fail, let me learn myself. When you start telling me what I should or shouldn't be doing and interrupt my own learning to do so, it becomes rather frustrating. It's different if I choose to seek out that information.
I thought I was the only person who ever played Lego Rock Raiders. I’m so happy to know there was at least one other person who enjoyed that game as much as I did!
The first two acts of BG3 feel like a good example of acclimation, since they both feature large open spaces without many NPCs to find all at once. Once you get to the city of Baldur's Gate in Act III, there's suddenly so much to do every 5 ft., and I can imagine how overwhelming that would be if you didn't have the first two Acts teaching you how to pace yourself. It still feels overwhelming, actually...
I think this video lacks some definition of terms. You mention alternatives to tutorials, and then go on to describe what I think of as tutorials (just good types of tutorials).
It was all for the acronym
I'm only 90 seconds in and i just gotta say, using a remix of RuneScape's old tutorial soundtrack (Newbie Melody) for your background music was a brilliant inclusion. Blast from the past!
I've been following you for quite a while now. I just want to say that while i normally agree with you on most things... this is SPOT ON. I've been thinking about this for a while but i couldn't exactly describe the different aspects of the learning methods you described.
Thank you.
"And that means that different people will respond to it in different ways. By increasingly emphasising just one form of communication, not only are [schools] leaving out people who don't have the patience or comprehension skills for [lectures], they're also, ironically, not teaching us how to learn. And making us resent [education] as a result. The only way to fix this issue is to look beyond direct instruction, and spot all the other ways that we can potentially learn from [teachers], deliberately or not."
This passage just. It so perfectly encapsulates one of my most major gripes with the way we teach children? Next to grading and obedience training. Just. Insisting there's a proper way to learn and building a system incapable of helping students actually learn the ways that benefit them.
i'm so glad i finally got around to watching this! SUCH a good and helpful breakdown of the strengths / weaknesses of different kinds of tutorials, their necessary ubiquity, etc. i also love that you left an entire section for "community resources" because that's such a huge aspect of modern gaming.
if you ever decide to make a part 2, i would love to hear your thoughts on how certain tutorials are better suited for specific genres or gameplay mechanics. for example, narrative or art-driven games tend to have invisible (subtle? interwoven? implicit?) tutorials which fall into the categories of acclimation / discovery, versus action or strategy-driven games tend to have more explicit instructions upfront. and then some of the most memorable games take the info you'd been learning the entire time to cleverly subvert your expectations as a method of engagement or storytelling.
in short, i really like that your conclusion is that games with good tutorials always have multiple sources of knowledge. i also really like that you talk about game literacy without actually calling it literacy. fantastic.
Another thing that frustrates me is how there’s usually only 1 tutorial for every type of player.
If you’ve never played a game in the genre before you’ll need the tutorial to explain a lot more than the person who’s got dozens of games under his belt already.
The first person may end up lacking information while the other has to have familliar concepts explained to him over and over and over again.
Some games have multiple tutorials ranging from basic to advanced concepts/mechanics, a new player can start from 0 and a veteran can skip the stuff that he already knows.
Still, one tutorial to rule them all is very difficult for games with a decent complexity. Different people learn differently, a tutorial might work great for one but not so much for another.
The thing is, I'm not sure it's really fair for every game developer to have to anticipate players of every possible skill-level. In the same way it's not fair for every writer to have to anticipate readers of every possible skill-level. Some books are written for experienced readers. And some games are made for experienced players. Not every game is going to be for everyone, nor should they be. If you're just starting out, there are plenty of lightweight, easy games out there to get comfortable with, and build gaming literacy with.
@@tbotalpha8133 They don't have to, but it makes their game more accessible to a larger, less experienced, audience, from which the developers only stand to gain. If the game is hard and the player lacks in skill, its fine, but at least a tutorial will make sure that a newer players knows what is happening or what they should do to improve.
On a tangential note, your comment stands as a good argument against customizable difficulty.
@@adisca2k Artists can choose to cater to whatever audience they want. They can exclude whoever they want. If creating the art that fits their vision means alienating certain audiences, and they're fine with that, then it's their prerogative to do so.
@@tbotalpha8133 But this is not about creating the art itself, it is about easing people into it.
Let's say that an artist has a painting with details that only a trained eye would spot. The tutorial is just the artist saying what people should look for (points of interest, special techniques used, meaningful symbols), so that even a more casual art enjoyer can appreciate their work for all (or at least most) of its worth. He doesn't have to, nor should he, compromise the details or complexity to appeal to the casual enjoyer, only give them some pointers. Isn't this something desirable for most artists?
Thanks for the in-depth look at Mario 1-1. I hadn't thought of its jump- teaching ability, but now I see how that can be useful for a first- time player!
Amazing. I never expected to see a Map Men reference at 11:37. I can still hear the song in my head. Map map map men men. I should have expected you'd love obscure humorous educational content.
Something I really like is that Ni No Kuni Wrath of the White Witch had all its tutorials in the Wizard's Companion, a book/menu that you could open at any time and read as much as you wanted, with simple subcategories to help you find whatever information you're looking for. Unfortunately it did also have normal tell-you-the-mechanics tutorials in the course of gameplay that made the book's introductions redundant, since it is a kid's game and can't reasonably expect everyone to take a half-hour break from playing the story to read an optional book cover-to-cover, or to retain all of that info for however many hours before a particular mechanic is available. Despite that, I thought it was pretty cool already knowing the stuff that was being explained because I'd listened to Mr. Drippy and read the book like he said to, and it was always useful to go back to the book when picking the game back up after a while of not playing.
I think the telling stone also has a lot of tutorially information, but his is actually tutorially in its delivery rather than being written as a wizard's textbook, so I only use him for the creature compendium.
when he mentions Warframe, as someone with 250hrs in it, he is not wrong, you need the wiki to find where to get stuff, especially if you want to farm mods instead of trading for them
And the tutorial kind of srews you up, when I started I was asked to pic one of three weapons mid-mission, with no explanation of what they do or how they worked beforehand, thinking I'll be able to test and switch to the one I liked the most; Nope, the one you pick is the only one you get, if you want another you'll have to farm for it, it was kind of a letdown.
im glad you mentioned Stardew valley and how its essentially built to be a game you need to research for. I didn't know how fun it could be to start a specialised farm where I plan the whole thing in advance until I started playing Stardew
I quite like the intro to Twilight Princess.
From a story-telling perspective it let's you exist in Link's boring every day life and it gives you a great baseline from which he grows as well as establishing what you're actually trying to save. The low stakes of the gameplay are reflected of the low stakes of the story at that point.
0:45 That "activate Jamali" reference... beautiful.
Love your script here, as always! Also really love the images you chose at 2:49!
I think Sekiro's tutorial area is actually really good, where you have to sneak through an area, then fight your eay out once you get your sword. It never feels bad on a repeat playthrough because it's really a condensed version of the two core gameplay modes. The game really just needs to chill with the popups
ok I did not expect to hear you talk about lego rock raider. that thing is a really fond childhood memory
i like to think that as long as you can learn the core mechanics of a game without a wiki, needing one for all the details is fine! sure, figuring out which stardew npc likes what without the wiki is a pretty harrowing experience, but the game did tell you how to gift an item in the first place. you can just wing it if you want to! similar to minecraft where it guides you through basic controls, and you can do whatever after that.
7:28 ...but Super Metroid does indeed tell you that you can blast that tube. It just doesn't whack you over the head with it.
By the time you get to Maridia, you've been through that tube a few times. You probably remember it, because it's a unique and memorable location. As you're traversing Maridia along the intended path - which is what you're probably doing on your first playthrough - you finally come across a second one...but it's blown apart, hinting that the glass tubes are destructible. Not long after, you find yourself dropped into the original tube. Put two and two together, and...
I know this works, because that's exactly how I figured it out on my first playthrough. And it didn't take me long at all to figure out. Super Metroid gives you all the clues here, and leaves it up to you, the player, to put them together to figure it out.
I just want to thank you overall for great in-depth content, as a junior designer learning a lot from youtube your content is certainly out there with the best channels and is helping me a lot with progressing my career. Cheers mate, much love!
19:38 obtuse is usually used to describe people. opaque is maybe a better word here
I had no idea Manic Miners existed! As a kid I love Lego Rock Raiders but I had the PlayStation title which showed PC screenshots on the back but was essentially a completely different game & I was always disappointed. Going to be playing Manic Miners now! Thanks for the info! ♥
I like how Danganronpa handles tutorials by basically doing what every other tutorial does except it tries to be funny. The humor does make the tutorial less annoying and it actually did get a few chuckles out of me.
Tutorials that are hated are very explicit and made for a specific person, where if you learn faster or slower you're either getting frustrated because of the slowness or left hanging because you needed more time to learn and practice and it usually doesn't plan for the different ways people learn. Personally I learn by doing so having a box of text telling me what X does is just getting in the way of me trying to do the thing by pressing all the buttons. Difference is when a certain button combination is required to perform a certain action. But then a combo list I can access through the start screen helps me more than having blocks of text swish by while I'm still learning the buttons
I think it's really funny to hear people talk about archdragon peak. I've heard a lot about how frustrating it was to even find in the first place but I kinda stumbled into it on accident
I have found a useful formula for games with expansive inter-dependent mechanics (Paradox games):
📺start by watching let's-plays (to second-hand Acclimatize while getting some depth)
📖then play with a side of wiki (Research).
i was here, listening to tutorials, and them you dropped rock raiders at me
i had to stop INSTANTLY and play
thank you sir
i laughed really hard at that cow crafting recipe. well done subtile joke :)
Yay Rock Raiders mention! Special place in my heart for that game.
OMG I love the Rock Raiders callout. I just picked up Manic Miners and I'm loving the shit out of it.
Honestly, forget tutorials. I just want an in-game manual with a search function. I've played so many mobile MMO games that teach you a mechanic once in the very early game (when you barely have any resources to even be able to use the mechanic in the first place) then later on, when I'm getting my ass handed to, I can't find any resources that could explain that mechanic to me again. Also item drops. I need a bestiary that list item drops. I've currently been stuck on a single quest for months because it requires a single item and all fan-made resources claim that a single enemy drops it, yet I haven't gotten it at all, for months.
Tutorials have a rough job. Not only teach you how to play but in a way that don't mess with the set up of the story, most games introduce a lot of different concepts story-wise and if that is not reflected onto the mechanics it can feel like you're in a classroom learning history and maths at the same time
It's really bad especially if a game sets a mood and tries to immerse you, only to give you a pop up with a wall of text out of the game's context every bloody minute.
Half this channel's videos are about tutorials and i love it
Learning is fun and it's very frustrating when you aren't given the ability to learn effectively. A very important topic that no one video can encapsulate!
Or what about games that not only teach you nothing and massively important concepts are very easy to miss? Thinking of Path of Exile's distinction between the words "more" and "increased"
Drat! Drat! And double drat!
I hate tutorials sometimes for a lot of reasons.
1. I already know what the tutorial is trying to teach me.
2. I can easily figure out myself what the tutorial is trying to teach me.
3. The tutorial is trying to teach me something that doesn't seem relevant right now or goes too in depth.
4. The tutorial is too vague.
Basically I hate tutorials because a lot of times they "aren't targeted to me". They're for other people.
To make a good tutorial requires you to make it work for any player, new or experienced, regular or coming back, hard-core or casual.
I think a good tutorial should be "optional" while also allowing the player to go back to it at any point and going as in depth as the player wants...
i think another reason that jumping section in Portal works is because there's only a handful of places you can put your portal, but the later levels that use that mechanic let you put portals in way more areas - kind of forcing you to learn that it's a mechanic rather than clicking things that the tutorial points out and going "i guess that's a thing" before immediately forgetting about it.
That was some really sweet editing on 7:25