The New Tutorial is Excellent
TychoCelchuuu
Anememone Join Date: 2002-03-23 Member: 345Members
Anememone Join Date: 2002-03-23 Member: 345Members
I just played the tutorial and it's really good. It's a great mix of basic information + keeping it very short so that people can jump right into the game. I wish the person talking sounded more enthusiastic/excited/whatever and there are a few tiny issues but other than that it's basically perfect. I also like how my name is in the bot name pool so that new players will begin by killing me 
Great job UWE! Now it's on us to get the word out to people who bought NS2 but gave it up because it's too complicated - there's a tutorial in the game now.
Great job UWE! Now it's on us to get the word out to people who bought NS2 but gave it up because it's too complicated - there's a tutorial in the game now.
Comments
LOOK AT IT JUMP AND SPIT
Anyway, great tutorial. Good work.
The tutorial voice has a constant high-pitched noise in it, that could have been easily tuned down in post production, and in some of the clips you can hear background noise, people, etc. An easy "psychological" way to make the "lo-fi" voice be more acceptable for players is to simply introduce yourself in the beginning as dev/playtester/whatever - this will create the context of "a buddy explaining stuff to you" instead of "in-universe tutorial" and thus making the Skype-ish sound quality feel appropiate. (It also underlines the - in general - friendly and supportive community)
The tutorial itself gives descent introduction to the most basic FPS mechanics of the game, however I feel like the whole RTS aspect of the game is barely scratched. I don't mean the commander mode itself, but the underlying gameplay mechanics. Securing resources and killing enemy RTs is crucial. I also missed an explaination on what TRes and PRes are, how to gain them and who can use them for what (I know it's hard to find a balance between explaining every little detail and "you got res, here buy a shotgun"). I'm not too sure about the player being invincible. While I can see that dying to aim-biting frenzy-bots is not very motivating, having the player die at least once would give an opportunity to explain the spawn mechanisms (and also explain why eggs/IPs are pririty targets when raiding an enemy base). It's important players know that when they die they will lose their lifeforms/equipment, too.
I also had a look at the new hint-videos. While the topics and the corresponding video sequences are almost all very good and useful, the voice overs sadly are not as good as I had hoped. Voice acting - even if it's "only" reading a scentence or two - is not easy. Good voice actors are hard to come by. In this case the voice itself is ok (not great, but ok. A bit nasal, sounds like the VA had a little cold), but the accentuation is completely off in a lot of cases. The emphasis sound artificial and do not mimic natural speech, the voice goes up in the voice-over when, in a normal conversation, it would go down, etc. etc. This is a common problem we experience at our company, too, when we have to use employees to record dubs for videos, etc. A lot of peole switch into some sort of "acting" speech that just sounds artificial and, to put it bluntly, amateurish. Is it a good efford? Definitly! Is it on par with professional/commercial voice acting? Sadly not, by a long stretch.
(BUT: will it help players understand the game better? I think it will. And that is a big plus in my book. But when you work with this stuff, you just tend to notice all those flaws...)
The bot gorge is better then 95% of the gorges i run across in pubs.
Thumbs up.
With these things, there's always a trade off between length and content. More content is obviously desirable, but more content also leads to a longer tutorial, and then it becomes harder to maintain interest. I'd rather people get through the whole tutorial, learning the essential basics, than not getting through it at all. So the trick is, how can you take one part of the tutorial and make it teach MORE things, rather than just adding another part? If you guys have any thoughts, that'd be much appreciated.
As for wall jumping, I disagree that it's essential beginner knowledge. However, in the future, we may add some single player "challenge modes", such as, get from Cafeteria to Generator in less than 30 seconds or something. And maybe you get an achievement for it too
As far as the tip vids, it would be too costly to hire a voice actor to do all of those, and it would also make them much harder to change later, when gameplay has made some of them obsolete. We just have to accept that these are not going to sound as professional as commercial voice acting, but we believe they still do the job they are intended for, without being too amateurish.
There is definitely explanations as to what Pres is and how to gain it and what you can do with it. We've had people testing the tutorial out who had never played NS2, and we've tried to emphasize as much as we could, but invariably there is always something that someone misses on their first play through.
We understand that Skulk wall jumping seems like a basic mechanic to add to the tutorial, but it really isn't. A player can play as a skulk and still do pretty well without fully utilizing that skill, and believe me, there is more then enough basic core elements to the game that players are already overwhelmed by, without going much deeper. It also complicated the tutorial quite a bit. We would have to set it up to adequately explain how to do it, track the player and give them the proper feedback when they pull it off, so they know they were successful. It adds a lot of time to the programming side, and potentially adds a lot of trial and error time for the player playing the tutorial, as they attempt to do the movement successfully, and can just end up frustrating them. In no way are these meant to turn a novice into a fully experienced NS2 player, they are just there to get them over that initial hurdle, and all of the additional in game tip videos, evolve videos, and other hints, are meant to help guide them in the more advanced mechanics.
[Edit - darn, Steve managed to post right as I was righting this up, and much more succinctly, too. Ah well.]
Well, what's wrong with another part? Label it as "advanced tutorial", so newbies don't have a bad feeling when they start playing without watching it first.
Too much work? Outsource it! The community can make something up for sure
ACHIEVEMENTS! gimme gimme gimme!
edit: Some of them should be pretty darn hard. Like, only 1% of the playerbase should end up with them^^
You should make a notification on game start for new players though, urging them to play the turorial. Should they skip it, just add a notification saying "See you in an hour then, noob" or something like that.
I'm not sure if I just haven't been noticed to see the tutorial though.
About the advanced mechanics:
You don't have to put it into the interactive tutorial.
You practically just have to make the parkour / challange mode that you mentioned and add a small video in the beginning of someone showing how it should be done. OR you don't make an actually video, but use the record functionality of ns2 and "just play the video" as your own viewpoint. Like someone is controlling your actor.
In both cases the buttons pressed need to be shown to players, so they can get an idea of what they should be doing.
Can't say that I agree with that wall jumping is not a "basic mechanic". I've seen so many new players gets frustrated because they feel they can't get close to the marines at all. At the very least I think it should be mentioned in the tutorial that there are other movement mechanics that can increase your speed as a skulk.
The tutorial overall is excellent though, very well executed. The only minor problem I had when running through it was that I went through the wrong vent at the "Find the vent entrance to the East" part. Obviously my fault, but I can see that part being a bit confusing to new players who never seen the map before.
Thank god I can cross this sentence out from the mantra I've been praying to every new players after every sale (that is, if they play the tutorial
With the "move through the vent to the east of you" part for aliens I couldn't tell which of the two vents it was talking about, and then ended up going in the wrong side in stability XD
I definitely agree that if a tutorial is too long then the player loses interest. I do appreciate the nod at the end towards sandbox mode but I do stand by the opinion that a basic commander tutorial is needed. Just having sandbox isn't really enough because the player doesn't know what to prioritize constructing in the early game and jumping into a pub game usually results in people getting mad at them. Quite often I see new comms just rushing for sentries when they should be focusing on RTs, phase and upgrades. The comm tutorial doesn't even have to be compulsory inside of the tutorial itself but optional. I'm not a programmer so I have no idea how to implement it but my idea is just having it optional at the end.
Have a simple message after the main tutorial we just did, something like this - "Thank you for completing the basic tutorial of Natural Selection 2. There is an additional tutorial that will teach you how to play as the commander. Please step through the marine/alien waypoint if you would like to continue or you can leave the tutorial. You can jump into a public match, practice vs bots, check out the sandbox mode or learn more about the game through our video tutorials."
That's my little bit of feedback/recommendation. I love the tutorial as a player that advocates a smoother experience for new players, it will help them a lot more now and is a significant improvement over what we currently have. Great job!
I still killed the first one with my welder
See above:
First of all. The tutorials are damn good! And this brings me to the quoted sentences. They are not boring. They are fun! They are some kind of single player experience you never had in NS2. More is better!
I do agree, that you don't need to add it in the same tutorial. But to make more tutorials like "Skulk Movement Tutorial" or the challenges you mentioned would be perfect!
Some critic at the end: Would it be possible to add bots to both teams after the tutorial ended that simply run to the enemy base and fight each other / the CC; Hive and also respawn? I found the end of the tutorial dissatisfying. After learning the basics I want to bring that CC down and want to see "aliens won".
Maybe even give the player an indefinite amount of p-res so he can try all classes multiple times?
Edit: Oh! And Wall-Jumping IS a basic mechanic. All those ground skulks are getting seriously frustrated when they can't get even near that marine. Let them at least know how to move fast will give them enough momentum to get a kill here and there. Learning how to evade properly would be advanced.