Either it didn’t teach you anything at all, or it taught you the most irrelevant parts of the game.
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Minecraft. Back when I started playing, it wouldn’t even tell you what recipes existed, yet gave you a 2x2/3x3 grid with hundreds of types of items/blocks to figure it out yourself.
Still one of my favorite games though.
Honestly a large part of my nostalgia was scouring the Minecraft wifi for updates and recipes.
Without external resources I would probably never have figured out what the 2x2 empty grid in my inventory was meant to be! I watched so many videos and read numerous wiki articles it could have been a college class.
I didn’t know stone pickaxes existed. So I always saved a iron pickaxe I got from a friend to mine iron.
The early builds had few enough things you could make that it wasn’t really that hard to intuitively figure out but in it’s current state it would be near impossible to figure out how to make some things without recipes to guide you.
like early alpha builds I think the only thing that would have tripped you up hard would be trying to make dynamite firestarter, or shears even then you could experiment for a while and figure it out.
I think the issue was it wasn’t clear what items were available to craft. If I had known that axes, pickaxes, shovels, etc. were all in the game then it might have been easier, but even making the crafting table (2x2 wood planks) wasn’t very intuitive. Honestly, there wasn’t much of a clear path forward with most of the recipes. Advancements and the recipe book later helped a lot, but it was pretty hard to play during beta and alpha without the wiki or a mod like TMI.
Then there’s redstone. I feel like even today, redstone is completely unexplained in the game, and while you can kind of figure it out on your own, many of the intricacies are left unexplained (repeater locking, timings, comparators, how redstone is passed/not passed through different kinds of blocks, gates, etc). Without taking some time to learn about digital logic and basic computer engineering concepts on your own, redstone is basically magic dust that does a thing when put in a specific configuration.
Also, being pedantic, but shears weren’t added until beta 1.7. Wool dropped from sheep before that. That being said, alpha had a lot of really weird mob drops (why did zombies drop feathers?) and there wasn’t much use for wool anyway beyond decorative purposes and hiding doorways with paintings until beds were added in beta 1.3.
Oh yeah, I forgot, it’s been a decade you used to literally just punch sheep and I vaguely recall when that update dropped. I recall eventually just looking stuff up, but a lot of it I figured out on my own first. Redstone is absolutely something that really needs an in game guide that the game completely lacks, nothing about it is intuitive at all, even if you know how digital logic works it behaves a little strangely.
I always played the game to build cool forts and castles so wool was definitely useful to me to make them look good.
zombies dropped feathers because the game didn’t have chickens until sometime after 2012 (0.3?) and you needed them for arrows alphas are just like that. The Rust alpha was similarly nonsensical.
I always thought part of the appeal was just discovering the world and how it works, but it’s so established at this point it’s better to just have a guide in game.
All Paradox Interactive games ever created 😂
The worst I had was Hearts Of Iron IV. I played a 2h tutorial only to not understand a single thing the real game threw at me afterwards…This I agree with. Stellaris is very confusing starting out and such a huge learning curve the tutorial just doesn’t cover.
Stellaris is far from the worst offender, and yet you’re still entirely right.
It’s not nearly as complex as it initially looks imo, but I also play with a million mods some of which make the game needlessly complicated so maybe the vanilla game just looks simple in comparison to me now lol
Also, the tutorial has suffered bitrot quite a lot. The game has seen many significant changes since release, but the tuturial was only partially updated to reflect them.
Yeah I think this is a big one for me.
I come back after a major patch or every 6 months and its all changed again! Which is good as it keeps it fresh, but the tutorial is very lacking on the changes.
Some Paradox games literally teach you how to play wrong, CKII being an example IIRC
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Thank god that’s changing tho. CK3 and (though to a lesser extent) Vicky 3 both have relatively decent tutorials.
The imbeded tooltips are a real godsend. I have no idea how I would wrap my head around Vicky 3 otherwise. The tutorial is still worthless tho.
I adore those games, and while I think they’ve made great strides with CKIII and Vicky 3, I agree that the tutorials are severely lacking.
You gotta just start with an easy country. The CK2 community used to call Ireland “Tutorial Island” since it was low key and a good place to learn the mechanics, same with Spain in EU, or Belgium in Vicky.
About what Hearts of Iron? I tried that game once (3 or 4, don’t remember) and basically gave up when the tutorial ended and I still had no idea how to do anything.
Don’t get me wrong, I love most of them, but the learning curve is very steep and the tutorials in most of their games just suck…
I still don’t know how to play hearts of iron IV. I’d love to learn but I’m a trial by fire learner. It’s really hard for me to make it through a 2hr YouTube tutorial with monotonous robot voices.
Warframe explains very little of its systems, and what it explains is generally poorly done. Upgrading and optimizing your abilities, acquiring proper mods and frames, how the levelling system actually works, generally anything that isn’t “shoot at enemy until it dies” needs to be taught by another player or read upon.
Came here to say this. The new player experience is an awesome upgrade in terms of getting people into the world and narrative, but you’re still thrown into an ocean of systems and content without a map. If you’re not following a guide or piecing things together from the wiki it’s very easy to get totally overwhelmed.
The game that comes to mind is Dark Souls. They teach you the bare bones of the controls and that’s it.
Nothing about where to go, what stats to level up, ways to defeat specific enemies, what spells/elemental attacks to use, etc.
I had to Google a lot of things in the beginning.
I still don’t know what the fuck the intended use of Resistance is
A trap for the unwary.
I think the numbers that go up when you level resistance were supposed to go up more than they do.
Umm was it supposed to help you “resist” getting poisoned or cursed? 🤨
Elden ring was my first “souls like” game and it was also an open world game too. For a gamer who wasn’t accustomed to these kinds of games, it was a totally different experience for me.
Elden ring I think is still much more accessible for a newcomer. If you try Dark Souls 1, you’ll realize that the difficulty of the game also learns pretty hard into more tedious aspects.
Getting cursed in Dark Souls 1 means you’re HP is capped to half until you find the cure, as an example.
I always figured this was an intentional part of the design philosophy. The game lets players write and read one- or two-sentence strategy guides anywhere in the world. I took the hint and figured they wanted me to look up strategy guides.
Kerbal Space Program.
Basically “do rocket science without instructions”.
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1356/
I can’t believe no one said Crusader Kings 2 nor Dwarf Fortress yet. The tutorial in CK II is so bad, it somehow makes thing more confusing, it is much better to just start a game in an easy location like Ireland and learn the game by yourself.
Dwarf Fortress has a tutorial nowadays, but I started playing it many years ago when you had no choice but to alt-tab to the wiki and figure out things on your own.
When I first played CK2 I had a revolt before the tutorial had taught me how to fight a war.
The tutorial in CK II is so bad
You can’t just talk that way about Ireland.
I think when I first played CK2 there was no tutorial.
2 of my favorites of all time. Final Fantasy VIII and Morrowind.
Final Fantasy VIII, to my knowledge, never once tells you that enemy levels scale. This wouldn’t be a problem if you never grinded fights (for exp, AP, items, etc). I think the intention was that you would never need to grind so you never would (the game is actually super easy). But people do grind, and you can level up very quickly if you want to.
Morrowind just drops you into the world, for better or worse. There are some prompts to familiarize you to menus. But that’s it. Most of the basic functions are self explainable. Except fatigue. Fatigue affects everything you do. And you won’t realize that it’s the reason whatever you’re trying to do isn’t working. Most players get frustrated and quit because they can’t hit anything with their weapon, not realizing it’s because their stamina bar is drained.
Morrowind was on another level compared to modern open world games. Map markers? Nah, fuck you. You get old world directions like “follow the road south east out of town and take a left at the fork then turn right at the crazy broken Dwarven machine and you should find the dungeon my brother went exploring”.
Then the main story quest giver tells me to “come back after two moons have passed” to continue… I thought that meant two MONTHS. Left the dude at level like 3 or 4 and came back a walking God of death because I nearly completed all guilds side quests in 2 months… Learned years later he just wanted me to wait 2 fucking days.
That explains a lot of things! I couldn’t get into Morrowind for this very reason
I don’t have an exact answer, but there are a lot of games that you need the wiki up on your second monitor for. Their tutorials teach you the basic controls, but nothing about what you’re supposed to do or anything like that.
I feel it’s kinda lazy on the developer’s side and leave it to the community to do their job. You see a 5-10 min video on youtube explaining everything, yet the developer couldn’t do that?
Having your tutorial be a 10 minute video would be a bad tutorial
I get what you’re saying but there are ways to implement it in the gameplay with prompts, descriptions and dialogue.
I love a lot of the games I’m criticizing, but sometimes they go too far. I’ll pick up the fart machine 3000 and the description will just say “Butt Fart Pfffft Toot Toot” and I’m just kinda left like wtf and i have to close the game and go into the wiki to see what the hell i just picked up and if its worth the inventory space
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines tutorial was a good 30 minutes for me the first time I played it. Luckily they give you an option to skip it in subsequent playthroughs, but it covers pretty much everything you need to know for gameplay imo.
Yes, but that’s interactive. I don’t have an issue with longer interactive tutorials, more “sit here and watch a video” style.
That’s how I feel about most farming sim games like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley technically does give you a lot of the wiki information through the books and by talking to the NPCs, it’s just a whole lot easier and less time consuming to use the wiki
Mario & Luigi: Dream Team Bros, because the tutorials never stop. Even 20 hours into the game, it will explain which button to press in exhausting detail every single time. Gave up the game due to this.
On the opposite side, ΔV: Rings of Saturn. The tutorial does a really bad job of explaining the (very unusual) controls of the game. Worse, you can accidentally leave the area during the tutorial, which cancels the tutorial altogether so you have to restart the game. That happened to me twice. Third time was the charm though, and I did enjoy the game afterwards.
Hollow Knight is an excellent game with no tutorial whatsoever.
When you start a new game the ways you aren’t supposed to go are guarded by armored bugs you can’t kill, or a large guard who can one hit you. This teaches the player that generally if it’s bigger than you it will kill you.
After wandering aimlessly enough, because the game does not show you where to go, the only way to proceed is by challenging the False Knight boss, who is much bigger than you.
Sunset Overdrive.
Tutorial: Go from point A to point B.
Dies.
Dies.
Dies.Failed to tell you the game operates under “ground is lava” rules. You are to go from point A to point B without touching the ground.
So many I can’t even narrow down a specific one. Many new titles have tutorials that go over generic bullshit like how to move and aim and then don’t tell you how to do anything that’s actually unique to the game itself. I hate that shit.
Really hate having a tutorial objective of “put the goober in the jibjab” but then it doesn’t explain what the fuck either of those things are, and it’s not obvious by just looking at the situation.
Oh, The Ascent did this. Tells you to hack something early on; does not tell you how this is achieved. Everything up to that point was walk up to thing and press A/X. To hack you have to HOLD A/X. But it doesn’t say that. I had to look it up online. Which is stupid.
Dark Souls also. But… It’s hard to be mad at that one, since being vague is literally purposeful game design with those. 🤷🏻♂️
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That’s exactly how the original worked too, other than the manual.
Though manuals in those days were more lore than tutorial.
Most if not all game prior to like 2000 didn’t give you tutorials. I guess they were in the booklet that came with the game so not in the game.
Super Mario Bros on NES starting point is the best. Simple and allowed people to die repeatedly to learn what the game is about.
Elite: Dangerous (pre-Horizons DLC). They teach you how to fly forward and maybe auto-dock.
Funny, thinking back to that tutorial they teach you a couple of mechanics (like rebooting your ship) that are almost never used in game. OTOH, there are, what, 300 different bindings in the game now?
I found the Odyssey tutorial was frustratingly opaque as to how the entire new UI worked.
