Tutorial talk

Ok, since there is much chatter about the tutorial I've created this thread to bundle all of it. Post all of your discussions, suggestions, problems here.
If you don't know what's this about: The next build will introduce a tutorial which helps you understand the basics of movement. Try it out for yourself by downloading the testbuild. But keep in mind: This may have some glitches and may crash from time to time.
And to quote MM:

So if you want to prevent being spoiled, play it for yourself first.

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I think I'll begin with reposting my latest post from the testbuild-thread and adding more stuff.

Problems/Bugs/Glitches found so far:
- You start with 220 of all ressources. You are not supposed to have any resources at the beginning. Because it's a movement tutorial and you don't need to build a single block to succeed.
- You always get your 220 ressources back at the outpost. That makes it easy to destroy the enemy structure with the catapult without mining.
- You can take a short cut when you fall down by just holding left while falling down the pit. You will reach one of the alleys.
- There's a bug here. Hold left and up and after some seconds you will glitch up the left wall. I think the issue here is that you sometimes can walk past such diagonal passages.
- There was no heart when the sign said so.
- All the drawing bridges stay in their "opened" state once you touch them. They don't close anymore when you move away. I don't know, maybe it's intended.

Suggestions to improve the experience:
- Because of one strange bug I spawned as a knight the first time I tried the tutorial. And as a knight I had no ground sight. That was no issue and was actually good so it could not reveal anything to me. Maybe consider removing it for the tutorial (at least this one).
- In the door-labyrinth it's quite hard to jump up a floor since the doors close to fast. It feels a bit glitchy. I know in the first version the doors stayed opened which made the jumping and the overall labyrinth much easier since you could see the whole at the same time. This reveling factor is gone now which makes it more challenging (which is good) but you should try to improve the door closing and opening. Maybe a wider range or something.
- The gold blocks which are hidden all over the map here and there originally had a purpose: In the original map they are thought to get mined to build outposts which serve as respawnpoints because there were no pre-built outposts. Since those blocks may distract the player (though looking nice and are a eyecandy) maybe consider removing some of them. Or maybe make them impossible to reach.
- I would suggest to add the possibility to add a "indestructibility-tag" to a block. What I mean: When you build a map in the mapeditor you could mark some blocks as indestructible. Why I'm suggesting this? This tutorial is for learning the movements. But since you can't build the whole map out of bedrock you have many blocks which the player can destroy and therefore may bring himself in a situation where the tutorial is impossible to finish. This tutorial is led/guided, it's no sandbox-map, you don't want the player to dig around wherever he wants to. By adding indestructibility to for example all of the red doors, the gold blocks, all the outposts, the catapult and some stone blocks (actually to all places where the player doesn't need to go to finish the tutorial) you could prevent that (while still having the nice look of different blocks) and increase the amount of players who finish this tutorial. Also I suggest to remove the capability to build anything on this tutorial. Don't even show the menu with the different blocks. Try everything so the player doesn't get distracted if he accidently presses the button and maybe builds something. At that moment he should focus on the new mechanics (the movement). And in the next tutorial you could say: "Mighty god Odin / King Arthur / whatever had mercy on you and gave you the possibility to build blocks and structures. He also gave you a stronger pickaxe which let's you destroy many blocks and mine ressources." And with that tutorial the mentioned restrictions would get removed then.

I wrote the following immediately after I finished the tutorial so forgive me my rapture. ;)

As for the tutorial I can only say: WOW (this is fucking capslock with bold text and three exclamation marks, biatch) You really keep on amazing me. That huge and very clever map must have taken you some time. What's really amazing here: You've just created a totally different gameplay for me! I can now imagine huge maps with clever puzzles and different enemies. I can imagine really hard climbing maps. Dude, I've just realized that KAG is not only online multiplayer. Single player offline maps and even coop (over the Internet) maps are possible. Like fighting together with one-two mates through dark caves killing spiders and zombies. Or climbing and jumping up huge towers. Who's fastest will win. Etc. etc. The (modding) possiblities! :O
The tutorial is fun as hell. Those clever placed drawbridges trap, the door-labyrinth, the many visual traps where you think "Hey, I could go this way!" and just discover that there is bedrock behind the door and you just feel like the author of that amazing map fooled you. And especially how well thought everything is. Being able to choose different ways to move to somewhere, always being able to return even if you just fell down a big trap. It's admirable how I always have in my mind "That's no random way here, the author thought of this one, it's not like I broke the boundaries, I think that was supposed to happen, this way was intended by the author". Wowowow! :O

 

Seriously...the tutorial also doesn't explain that the player will move left when you press (A). It only says "Use (A) and (D) to move" and everybody finds this out by him-/herself. Same with jumping: The tutorial doesn't explain that you have to press (A) or (D) together with (W) to jump left or right. There are certain things which people just realize on their own. Such as: "Oh, there's a ladder! I'm gonna walk on it. Hm... let's jump while I'm here on this long ladder. Oh, when I press (W) I move up! And I do remember that I can use (A) and (D) to move left and right. Hm...how about (S) to move down? Oh hey, it works! :)"

I don't think that will be an issue either. At that certain place there is no other way to go. The player sees dead ends everywhere. And: He isn't ment to go straight for it. That's one nice advantage of that tutorial: It forgives mistakes and let's you walk back and try again. The player will eventually see some strange blue brown thingy at the right and will just try to reach it. What else should he do?

You shouldn't pretend like every newbie is dumb as fuck and has no imagination. And btw: A perfect tutorial actually should have no text at all. Only the game and the player thrown right into it. Learning by doing. That's the prime. No manual, no helpfile can compete with a gameplay experience right from the beginning which every player understands. And this tutorial does it very well imo. It starts with only telling the basics. Three keys to move around. Pressing right mouse button to destroy the dirt blocks. And that's all. The player is all set to save and rule the world. At that moment the tutorial stops telling the player more stuff because getting something told is much less fun than experiencing it and acting by oneself. Now he has to climb and jump up that huge pit again. What a challenge!
But what has actually happend here? The game made you feel like you could master this step by yourself. The game(maker) trusts you. And at the same time he challenges you: "You have to climb here! Be careful, we will meet again up there!" That strengthens the will of the player to continue playing. He feels like he isn't really playing a tutorial which teaches him new moves. He actually already experiences the game itself. He is already playing. And that's what the whole time happens in the tutorial and that's why I like it so much. The creator behind it has built it very cleverly.

That's where our opinions split. Because after I played that tutorial I have to say that the gameplay experience I just had is (almost) equal and maybe for some players even more fun than a 32-player war match. And it has a totally different atmosphere.
I don't know in which direction the game will evolve (and if singleplayer is even an option) but I can really imagine multiplayer and singleplayer as both equally satisfying experiences. Just imagine many many more of such maps which are designed like the tutorial. Think of a singleplayer campaign. Think of climb maps. Think of online co-op matches where you play together with some mates, rescuing a princess, fighting a horde of bisons/zombies, climbing up a challenging map, whatever. The possibilities are endless. :)

 

You're treating this as a single player campaign. This is a tutorial.

In short. If you're told A and D is movement, noone will derp and think "So what's jump then? H?" they'll know it's the WSAD system. That's not my issue. There is just a lot of faith put into the player to actually discern what some objects are even though they're never explained, and to even find out what they do even though some mandatory areas (like the door maze) are actually hard to see unless you're LOOKING for a door. This is not the same as working out that A and D for left and right means WSAD movement control. I'll admit moving down on a ladder isn't hard to work out, but only that.

If you ask me, any tutorial should be there to teach you about the game and how to play. If you want this self discovery stuff, by all means, put it at the start of a single player campaign. Just don't call it a tutorial. Most people will see the multiplayer action and want to get involved straight away. They'll come on this tutorial and find themselves having to jump about on endless blocks "Can we get to the multiplayer now?" and move around till they run into something that just so happens to open up, but he doesn't know what it is "What's that? What IS that?" it's then never told to them (Seriously I would have been less pissed off if it had a sign saying "That was a door you just found out you could walk through")

The best means of compromise would be to put a quickstart tutorial with just you walking through a simpler version of the map with more information, despite the fact I think this is what a tutorial should do. Then have the current version as the longer version not called quickstart. Because we obviously have different opinions, I still think a lot of people will react similarly to me (new people), and yes there are probably a lot who think similarly to you (I like the game trusting me)

EDIT:

Even MM said it "I shouldn't even call this a tutorial." I love it, only if it's not a tutorial. Make it a single player experience.

 

Hm...I don't know...maybe I'm wrong. But look at the screenshot again: That's the first time you encounter a door. At this phase you already jumped a lot around the map. So you obviously know how to climb up and down small cliffs, do precise jumps, etc. When you reach this area you do what you've done before: You're moving around trying to reach another room or some sign or whatever. So you walk through every alley and eventually find out there are dead ends everywhere. So what you do as a gamer? I can even say: What you do as a human in a such a situation? You scan the area. You check if you have maybe missed something. And since you can't move up again, this area is really small. So I can't really think that a player won't find that door (even if he doesn't know at that certain moment that this is a door). After he found it, he will try to reach it. So he jumps over there and suddenly he can move further. Which should tell him the fact that this blue thing was a barrier which disappeared when he touched it. And while he moves further he notices that this barrier suddenly appears again behind him. I don't think it's too hard to understand now that this barrier is actually a door. And even if not: The player understands the mechanics behind it at that point. May he call it whatever he wants.
Maybe we'll have more people reporting here that they're stuck in the tutorial at this point. Then just add a small sign and whatever. But I doubt that.

Ok, I have to agree with you on this one. Still it is a tutorial (quoting Wikipedia: "A tutorial is one method of transferring knowledge", "a tutorial seeks to teach by example and supply the information to complete a certain task") but I know understand that it goes a bit too far and over time slowly (and for me almost unnoticedly, and that's the part I like about it) transforms into some sort of singleplayer experience. I also do understand that most people will eventually get to know KAG through some video/image which shows the multiplayer-action and therefore don't want a tutorial which just tell them how to move but still takes quite a while.

That's a good idea. The current movement tutorial could be the start of a singleplayer campaign or something like that. The quickstart-map should be much shorter (only one small jumping parkour room which is not too hard) and should also introduce other features like mining, building and maybe fighting.

I could imagine the following sequence of learning on the quickstart-map (still think of it as a tunnel-like tutorial system where you are guided and walk from sign to sign, at best from left to right and not too much vertical play):

• you start as "builder":
  - introducing basic movement
  - digging/mining blocks (get to know all the natural blocks; force the player to dig at least six gold blocks by blocking his way to the next sign)
  - placing some buildable blocks (build "ladder" to move up a hill; build a tiny one-way wall with "stone" and "ladder")
  - understanding gravity (arrive at a small enemy wall; dig it down and make it collapse)
  - building an outpost (you already have enough gold; maybe need to cut a bit more wood; tell the player that an outpost is a respawnpoint)
  - securing the outpost (build a small room around it with "stone", "wall" and "door"; dig a small pit in front of it and use "drawbridge" and "spikes"; the player now knows all of the blocks (gold bulion will possibly get removed again so I don't care about it here))
  - building and using an catapult (on the roof of the room; shoot with it and destroy one small enemy wall which blocks your way)[/*]
• you go to the outpost and change to "archer":
  - cutting trees for arrows
  - shooting some arrows (aim and shoot at certain marked points on the map; at one point tell the player to get one of his arrows back)
  - arriving at an enemy outpost (shoot some arrows at the enemy wall to create an arrow ladder and use it)
  - taking over the outpost[/*]
• at this outpost you change to "knight":
  - introducing the sword (no bots yet so text-only)
  - using the bomb (right next to the taken over outpost is an enemy catapult; destroy it with a bomb; if you miss restock at the outpost)
  - arriving at the enemy base (walk onto a enemy drawbridge and fall down; hold the shield down to secure you from the spikes)
  - infiltrating it (destroy some spikes with the sword; use your sword to destroy some blocks (not too many))
  - getting the flag and escaping with it (get the flag from the enemy tent; walk back with it to your first outpost (the one you built yourself))[/*]
• at the outpost you change back to "builder":
  - bringing back the flag to the tent (on your way you may get blocked by your tiny one-way wall you've built at the very beginning and maybe some of your mining holes; use "ladder" to cross them (that's why the player changed back to the builder); arrive at your tent with the enemy flag)[/*]
• the end[/*]

The advantage of the approach above is that the player gets intruduced to almost all of the different gameplay features one by one and in an order which makes sense and usually also will be the same on the online matches later. It lets the player experience as many actions as possible.
Also I tried to reduce text-only instructions to a minimum. Which means: Actual fighting and teamplay is hard to simulate in the quickstart. There are no bots (yet), so we can't fight and actually kill anyone in the quickstart. And we can't show the other features of the knight's shield (pushing teammates and enemies; helping teammates up from the ground and from the top). So these should either be omitted (and referred to the wiki for more information) or text-only instructions.

Puh...that took some time (and some exhausting imagination process :P). What you think about it? If you do it as tight as possible I think you could still call it quickstart.

 

I really like this and think this is the sort of way to go for a tutorial. That way anyone not interested in single player experiences can do this and jump straight into multiplayer with some knowledge in their pocket. Nice job coming up with it. Hopefully when bots are added a more fulfilling tutorial can be made to include teammates and enemies. To be honest it wouldn't be too hard to perhaps script bots to do specific stuff, rather than be combat literate, specifically for the tutorial.

 

Wow. This tutorial is amazing. AMBIENT SOUNDS?! Are you freaking kidding me? Awesome. And I have said it before MM, your taste in music is superb. Loving the piano.

When I went up high and heard the wind I half expected my builder to be blown off of the high platforms! XD

I hope that the map editor will evolve along with this game, and we'll be able to build our own quests and add our own text boxes, sounds, music, assets, etc... :}

 

I just spit out the water i was drinking all over my computer when i read your post, Thorn.