【 tutorial 】 looking for feedback

[Turban]

hey,

i have started working on an introductory tutorial for the new players and the early version has been released. i would greatly appreciate player feedback from a new players perspective to filter out as much unnecessary information from the tutorial as possible.

the point of this tutorial is to be extremely simple to understand, the new players should not feel overwhelmed by all the information being thrown at their face. these players do not need to know any advanced game mechanics or tactics, or how to use certain special items, or all the uncommon commands (such as ?best and ?alarm) as those can be learnt on the fly.

rather, the tutorial should serve as a simplified educational trip to the game. they would learn the basics, and nothing more. we would rely on the players learning the rest through natural progression which is where the community steps in -- nothing is better and more fun than the help of a fellow player, or future friend, after all.

as to how this tutorial would work, the new players would be warped into the tutorial area (which would be within the current public arena(s)) as a non-bombing ship, preferably as a spider. the first part of the tutorial would be mandatory for all the new players where they are taught the shooting and movement controls. the second part of the tutorial would be slightly more advanced, explaining the user interface and chat interface to the players, but players who wish to jump into action would be given the option by teaching them how to warp. the third part would be about the main objectives in public, teaching them how to attach to a terrier et al, and briefly mentioning the other competitive leagues. the last part would be the mission statement of trench wars.

you can find the current version in ?go publictut -- but, its still very much a work-in-progress and subject to change.

below are some quick screen captures of the current version:

part one: movement, shooting, end of mandatory tutorial

part two: user interface (PID and radar)
part three: changing ships
part four: chat interface, attaching and changing arenas

part five: end of tutorial

part six: mission statement and end of tutorial again


UPDATES 5/28 -- removed safe zone explanation, increased size of starting area and made a better introduction stating the primary missions and what the zone has to offer, spaced things out, included help ticker / arena information, added all commands with their uses, and ships with short descriptions and original names.

UPDATE 6/5 -- new, cleaner version.

[Turban]

things to change:

- to prevent players from trolling, the safe zone needs to be unaccessible for the players (placed below) or removed completely as new players do not necessarily need to know about a safe zone. i want to minimize the amount of bot coding required to make this work.

what to add?

- how to attach (slightly-advanced) and more detailed explanation of the public and flagging ?
- briefly touching the competitive scene and leagues (other than public, which is competitive by itself as its a CTF type game) to get players interested ?
- mission statement of the zone, and explanation of each ship with their strengths and weaknesses ?

what to remove or simplify?

- filter out useless information

[Xog]

there's lots of ways to do it right and some subtle ways to fuck up the entire thing without wanting to, don't be hesitant to make a whole new one from scratch now that you've got one of them down

maybe use color-tinted tiles (same tile design, just a different color instead of grey) for different sections, so other players can say "refer to the green section" or "in the blue section you can see x y z" etc. would be a new dynamic imo

as for fixing it up yourself i'm sure you can go thru what you've already made and see what can be fixed

touch it up and give us another version (or two or three) and then let us choose which one is best :]

[Turban]

the problem with tileset suggestion, to a certain extend, is that we are using the public tileset and that limits us to two colors -- grey, and red. however i will definitely try to utilize these two colors in some way to make the tutorial look better and less boring. thanks!

it is definitely hard to find the right balance, for sure. i'm going to look into getting a friend or two of mine (with no prior experience in a top-down spaceship shooter like this) to check out the tutorial for extra feedback and opinions. at the moment i'm in the progress of making small quality-of-life improvements, but its definitely moving to the right direction .. i hope.

thanks.

[Turban]

as a non-tutorial related note:

a good tutorial is nearly not enough to make a good new player experience. the community needs to step up and behave, and we might take some drastic measures to "silence" some of the few troublemakers. it might seem extreme, but it would be for the better.

also, one of the better things that could happen on launch with the help of players and staff is managing several new player squads / teams in public, promoting the public competition and togetherness.

anyway, we should still first and foremost focus on public as the main competitive arena, promoting the capture the flag game type as the main objective for the players. the secondary leagues are not as important. we are already in the process of removing / reverting public to the old settings, with semi-removal of the !buy feature, and an announcement will be made about that soon.

[Wormhole Surfer]

It's too bad most ships in your zone won't be able to use half of these options/specials no matter how much they green. That's where TW dissapoints me, and where TW falls short to the potential of Subspace.

[Turban]

it is true that we strayed away from one of the integral parts of the game, greening and powering up your ship. however that is necessarily not a bad thing for our zone. what we have at hand is both a blessing and a curse, depending from which angle you look at it.

while i'm of the opinion that having a public design where you can slowly upgrade your ship to a more powerful one is a decent one as it gives the player a sense of accomplishmen. it is a good feeling to see your ship gradually evolve from a weakened state to a much stronger one, but unfortunately that does not come without flaws.

it is true that the aforementioned design makes for a fast paced, and at times, more exciting gameplay experience for both the new and season players alike, but in return you will have a less balanced public with a steep learning curve and large skill disparity among all the players. the skill disparity was not an issue back in the day as there used to be (not sure if this mentality still exists) a negging culture where players were encouraged to fight other ships comparable to their current strength, and bounty was used as the primary way of identifying these strong ships with the help of your radar.

however, at the expense of dropping that feature from our public arena, we have achieved a very skill oriented and balanced public experience for all the players while eliminating most of the random factors. there is very little one needs to learn about our zone to get started as the simplicity is one of our biggest selling points, along with the rather linear gameplay and clear objectives. we have a learning curve that starts easy, and gradually becomes more challenging and advanced, thus making it ideal for the new players. these players do not have to focus on learning multiple different terms, game mechanics, items and weapon types, et al, allowing them to focus on the gameplay itself. this type of public will be appealing to certain types of gamers who prefer a simple (yet hard to master) gameplay with balanced settings while the standard public deing of upgrades, randomness and chaos of other zones will be appealing to the other gamers.

either way both types of public are competitive and promote different aspects of the game. it is hard to tell which is the better design in the long run.

[Turban]

if anyone is feeling creative, it could be nice to have a short description of each ship, explaining their strengths, weaknesses and role.

the end credits will go to DSB for the idea as stated in a different thread as an act of common courtesy.

[roxxkatt]

It's too bad most ships in your zone won't be able to use half of these options/specials no matter how much they green. That's where TW dissapoints me, and where TW falls short to the potential of Subspace.

u could throw this image in a lvz and put it nearby to the spawn point on the map, and/or attaching it to a !cmd as a screenobject, and/or display it when player flies over a certain region

[Turban]

minor updates due to feedback.

- increased the starting zone size and added the primary objectives (and what the zone has to offer) to the introduction.
- made the mandatory tutorial area grey, and the optional tutorial area red (tile changes)
- spaced things out to be easier to read (less heavy for the players to read)
- added the player list (F2) and arena menu parts
- added (thanks to wormhole surfer for the idea) a quick runthrough of the keys and commands to the end as reminder
- pictures of all the eight ships, and instrutions on how to change ships. short descriptions and original ship names included.




could include pictures of items to that one, or keep it simplified.







drawing a blank now on what to add, aside from a mission statement (to the end), credits, and some quality improvements with words of encouragement.

[Rab]

I really like this, the sooner we use it the better

[Turban]

screenshots for those who can't bother to log in, section by section:

introduction to the game and learning movement controls

shooting, weapons and combat

user interface and end of mandatory tutorial

chat interface (information, public, chat, squad and private)

chat interface (help menu, arenas, basic commands)

player list, using the ticker, arena list

changing ships, all the common commands in a keyboard layout

[2pac]

screenshots for those who can't bother to log in, section by section:

introduction to the game and learning movement controls

shooting, weapons and combat

user interface and end of mandatory tutorial

chat interface (information, public, chat, squad and private)

chat interface (help menu, arenas, basic commands)

player list, using the ticker, arena list

changing ships, all the common commands in a keyboard layout

nice job u need anythin else let me know, but yeah bro i like the names of the ships, yamakazi sounds badass

[Jessup]

Nice work Turban. Looks great. Just want to let you know to add a (s) to the ?help line for moderators sentence .. It says "this command send a message to online moderators" and it should be "sends" with a (s). Nit picky I know heheh but this is nice and should be very helpful as a tutorial.

[midoent]

how about adding a bot that the new player can kill. It doesn't have to move around. Things going boom is what makes this game fun.