Most people quit games before tutorial | with Callum Upton
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
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Most of us quit after purchasing the game on steam. Most of us are fooling ourselves in our midlife crisis fog that we’ll have the time to try it out, but we never do.
I have 70% of the games i bought on sale, that ive never touched at all….
Okay this is kinda true...
However there's a difference between "not playing the game" and quiting like 10 minutes in 😅
Those Steam sales are the real predatory sales XD I get so many and end up on RuneScape in the end every time
@@SyntheticFuture I've bought games in the past on a whim. Never got to playing them until a year later. Loaded them up and then realised that it wasn't the game I thought it was, and simply quit because I didn't have the time/inclination to continue playing some play style that I don't enjoy. This is especially true of bundled games. I don't really enjoy FPS games, but they get bundled with video cards quite often. Usually I'll just load them up, just to see, and think, meh, don't care, and uninstall again.
500 games in my Steam Library, played about 30.
"You need to tell someone the context and reason behind their actions, not just the actions themselves"
Anytime I've ever trained someone at work (be it when I worked retail, manufacturing, or clerical) this 100% always resulted in better trained and cordial workers than just telling someone "oh do this because that's the way we do it". If someone knows *why* inventory is sorted like it is, then they'll realize why it's important to do it right the first time. If someone knows *why* attaching all these relevant receipts or documents to an e-mail makes everything run smoother, then they'll know they need to do it and they'll train *themselves* to do it right the first time.
If you harp on someone to close a side door when they take their smoke break, they'll roll their eyes. If you tell them that coyotes have gotten into the warehouse before because of it they'll be more willing to shut the door behind them.
I'm always surprised how often in training you'll hear "that's just how we do it" which is pretty much the worst reasoning.
I've had to make many mistakes in my work to figure out the "why" which is exceptionally frustrating because then you need to fix your mistakes that could have easily be avoided if someone had explained the process better.
Also understanding a process leads to better diagnosis and more efficient troubleshooting because you can use the end point to backtrack to a cause (in your example that would be 'there are coyotes in the building, usually that happens when someone leaves the side door open to go smoking. I should sk the people that smoke if any of them forgot to close the door').
@@SyntheticFuture and it also helps so you don't try to "fix" problems without knowing the context behind why it wasn't fixed yet, sometimes there is an external variable that makes that the only viable way to do it, but it isn't evident to new comers and they will have the reasonable temptation to make things better
@@SyntheticFuture When I was doing my post-grand in com sci and was a programming tutor for the 1st years
jsut how we do it, was a problem from some of the students that were taught at school
When I asked why did you do this, the answer was because thats how I was told to do it. Then when I asked but why? They couldnt answer why.
Their teacher was 100% but the students didnt know why
Yes, this is so important for me when I start learning how to do something. If the person who is teaching doesn’t explain EXACTLY HOW and EXACTLY WHY, I will not retain the information. It might sound like babying, but it is so necessary for me and many others to remain engaged.
that coyotes thing is very specific lol
I'm so pleasantly surprised to see that on steam at least 24.8% of players cleared the first playthrough of Elden Ring (Ranni's ending). Funny enough the regular ending is only at 17.8%.
Ironically but expectedly, players don’t want to just do the regular ending on their first play through if they can avoid it. And Elden Ring being as massive as it is with so many hardcore players, by the time people are a middling way through, hardcore players have already made guides on how to get the alternate paths so other players can diverge.
@@Clorgisclorg Nah. I ended up with Ranni's ending without any guides. Ranni is best girl and I think most people will just end up doing her quest because it's a cool quest with cool characters and it's tied into the main quest anyway.
The fextralife elden ring wiki's Game Progression guide gives you little hints about Ranni's quest and since people like me used the guide (you can diss me for that) it just kinda adds to the spectacle of ranni's ending being more popular than the default
I ended up getting all achievements after 200 hours, I hunted them shits down like a motherfucker. First and only game I've ever 100% done the achievements on. There will never be another game like it.
@@Static-EN- I used a guide as well, although i started out not, its a little convoluted to get her ending what with talking to the doll in specific places after all
When I worked on Hawken for consoles, we had 43% of people quit in the tutorial because they couldn't navigate down to the 'deploy' button and select it. As part of a retention effort, we spawned players in automatically to their first match so they would get the first time user hints that appeared after that point.
It's insane, but accurate. Tutorial/FTUX is a big deal.
Never played Hawken, but after googling it I must say it looks pretty damn good.
Congrats on working for that project.
Honestly, I think one of the main reasons why Fighting Games seem so intimidating to newcomers is the absolutely DREADFUL job they make at on-boarding.
I kid you not, most devs assume that players already know that "walking back is how you block" , "there are two types of blocking (standing/crouching) but there are three types of attacks (high/medium/low)" and "grabs beat blocking, but in _some_ games you cannot grab crouching opponents".
Tekken, one of the largest fighting games with some of the most difficult mechanics, doesn't have a tutorial at all!
It is FUCKING MENTAL!!!
@@BknMoonStudios i think the only Fighting game i ever played that had a decent tutorial was "Brutal: Paws of fury".
@@BknMoonStudios Something like that "in some games you cannot grab crouching opponents" hit me when starting up Metal Gear Rising after playing NeiR Auomata. I thought it's the same dev and the same kind of game, and I was used to dodging attacks, but in MGR there is no dodge, but a timed block.
So even in the same type of game, things can be different. Not only in such action games but also in fighting games, FPS, RTS, RPG and basically everything else.
Simiar enough that some skills are transferable, but not everything is the same.
I loved Hawken on ps4 I think it was one of the first games I got into on it. Nice work.
God I remember Hawken. Absolutely loved that game! Damn shame what ended up happening with it.
More on point with your actual comment, it will never cease to surprise me what little shifts in a UI can utterly change player retention or experience. Those earliest minutes of a game really can define whether it earns a healthy player base or not.
(admittedly, whether it *keeps* it is another story - but one step at a time!)
The "why"" point is a really good one. Nothing is worse in the genres of games I play where the tutorial just tells you how to move the camera and build some things, but the fundamental "why" is left untouched and the mechanics are not inherently intuitive so I'm stuck trying to figure out why this thing won't work or what effects changing that slider might have and feedback from the actual game is very poor. It just makes everything feel random, feel like my inputs have very little direct impact on what is happening in the game.
Yeah i think that kind of shit happens with every sandbox game. Or games with sandbox elements that arent based on heavy tutorialization of everything (which is what devs who suck at making tutorials think is good)
"We just don't want games to hold your hand!" says the person with 45 wiki tabs open to figure out how to make a pair of shoes in the game.
@@ProfiteerProphet its pretty obvious when the devs give up explaining shit in the game when the community makes their wiki anyway.
@@635574 Like, I will admit I'm an avid user of wikis, like, I play warframe for fuck's sake, but a game should still teach you how to play it. If you're going for a wiki to figure out how a basic mechanic works, that means the devs failed in teaching it.
yup, i prefer when a game just have a quest, like minecraft, that says make food, instead of the ones that say collect this this and this, and do this before you even realize why you need to do the thing
I have some of the old Fallen Earth achievements on my steam account which were basically 'walk to the second town' and similar, yet theyre rare achievements because it didn't manage to get a long term playerbase through steam.
True, honestly I quit like 10 minutes after the tutorial.
@@SethJV I can definitely understand. I played it a fair bit back then (even down to getting my own interceptor crafted entirely by me) and I could easily see why a lot of people wouldn't have gotten into it. Josh's 'WME?' is a good display of how it is now, but back then not having things like VIP made crafting take so much longer and so on, due to being capped at 3 slots.
Considering fallen earth gripped me so hard into the faction warfare and later areas and building my first hard to craft vehicle.. I wonder how I got it so wrong to play and love that game with how hated it was :p
Honestly I had just wish they balanced the mutations out and made them all viable.
it was very hostile to new players, including wanting you to log off soon after starting so you could do crafting or something? I just remember it telling me "oh it'll take 20 hours to make arrows, but you can be doing anything else during this time!" like crafting is fermentation or something
I quit that game quite early on, same thing with... Xsyon or what it was called. Which is rather sad since both games could have been so much more.
Fun fact about white orchard.
In the games files, the region folder is literally called "tutorial village" :D Seeing that while trying to make a mod just cracked me up all the way.
Hades has one of the best beginnings/tutorials I've played. Not an MMO and it's a fairly simple game, but it really teaches you how to play with really subtle prompts. The one I think of is once you're damaged you'll be looking around for a way to heal obviously, but Zag will say something like "Wish I could heal but I gotta press on" to let you know it's not the type of game where you'll be easily healing. There's a bunch of little things like this and as someone who is bad at video games in general, Hades made me a better player.
Meanwhile I started the mobile game Dislyte a couple days ago and I hate that first hour of a mobile game so much
Hades is an incredible game on its own merits, but its also probably the best intro to rouge-lites/rouge-likes arounds. Its an intrinsically harder genre with a habit of not telling new players about things they really need to know. I think its the fact that even when you die and reset your run the story still progresses a little, unlike most of the genre where losing a run just walls off any progression. Thats what keeps new people playing even after a bunch of deaths and they get into the rouge-like mindset.
Hidden tutorials in games are my favorite thing to point out and criticize because they show if game developers understand how to seamlessly merge teaching aspects into gameplay and level design. Unfortunately, this method tends to backfire if done just ever so slightly wrong, especially if you can't skip early sections after the first playthrough.
Imo the into of portal 2 is worse than 1 cause of that tram ride cinemtuatic unskippability.
What's best is to add shortcuts that only an experienced player would spot. Perhaps even implement mechanics which are only taught later.
Or ways to run through the tutorial area without being stopped.
Even the good old "learn how to crouch and jump" that usually involves the game showing a text box and often some NPC telling you to do it, can be sped through by simply doing it. But a locked door that only opens once the tutorial dialog is finished is bad form.
Don't stop the player if they're already in the know. If they know how to do all the stuff, let them be able to go past.
When I think of hidden tutorials I think of super metroid I has visual tutorials if u notice but it doesn't stop and tell u how
That's why I liked PSO2. You could skip the tutorial. Not only that, but other Tutorial stuff was taught through Side Quests and gave you some rewards. So no reason not to do some, even if experienced
Warcraft 3 when it released 20 years ago had the Tutorial basically in form of a short prologue campaign. So it told the story while teaching the basics. And yes this is the best form of Tutorial.
Man, that White Orchard... The moment you get to Velen, you see how huge the *actual* game map now is and you then realize it's all been a tutorial - man, what a fuzzy feeling that was! I've been had, but in a good way :D
And it's just so good! You literally get to try your hand at everything the game has to offer - use both types of swords, try out signs, potions/food, you fight a large monster, you fight a bunch of humans in a group, you discover some sign shrines, do a couple of different types of quest, gather materials, you craft some armor and potions... By the time you're out in Velen - you're completely ready! It's amazing.
I feel the White Orchard map is not only a great hidden tutorial, but also a perfect example of how a demo would work. Basically a vertical slice of the game that can be freely explored and teaches the basics on the systems.
An important nuance to this, especially on Steam, is that often achievements are added later and you don't automaticly unlock the achievements when they are implemented.
Could be a huge playerbase of active players who are all past the tutorial, tutorial achievement gets added, but none of them are going through the tutorial again et voila, very oddly low % of people completing the tutorial achievement.
Also another factor is the performance of the game. I remember I got Horizon Zero Dawn for PC, but my old processor was just not up to the task. Was like 10FPS, and was not worth playing even the tutorial. Didn't touch it for a couple years until I finally built a new gaming rig. I imagine that can cause a lot of High-spec requirement games to have low user achievement percentages, people just buy things that they're computer could not handle. Less of a problem on consoles, but I can also see people leave if the game is a buggy mess on launch.
I bought witcher 3 at release and my pc couldn't handle the game at mid settings, only low. steam gave me my money back in 10 minutes. wouldn't underestimate how many people do it like I do
i just checked the statistics on Steam:
only HALF of the players who got the "skyrim special edition" from steam have the "reach level 5" achievement!
i heard that it disables achievements IF you activate any mods, but...
oh, and only 11.3% have the "dragonslayer" achievement. i THINK that's what you win by completing the main story quest!
@@ericb3157 That is a good example. I've been playing Skyrim since rather close after release and it took me 6 years to get the main quest done. And only because I set it as a goal to do it. And the things with mods adds to that. Most of my play is modded. That only makes the game better.
And then obviously over 100 games that I haven't even started yet. And since steam counts everyone who owns a game (not everyone who has it installed or started) as player for the achievement statistics....
@@ericb3157 I actually find it surprising that some 11% of players have actually gone through the entire main quest of a Bethesda game without any mods... Remember, the unofficial patches already are mods...
Real special operations almost always involve lots of rehearsals, sometimes with very intricate mock-ups. For instance, when I used to fly around the range near Hurlburt Field in Florida 10-20 years ago, you could still see some of the remains of the "fake" POW camps that were used to rehearse for the actual Son Tay Raid in North Vietnam back in 1970. Later on, I found out that that same airfield (Hurlburt Field) was also used as one of the bases where they rehearsed the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo. So it absolutely makes sense for a first person shooter based on actual SOF units to make the tutorial a rehearsal mission.
This is what Cod4 did essentially. The tutorial was a raid rehearsal for the first mission.
Also shows why CoD 4 was so good. Obviously everyone talks nostalgic about the multiplayer, but the singleplayer campaign was also really good. It didn't go crazy over the top like later games.
Oh, and the Nuketown MP map is also a real thing. Well not the map itself, but the idea of building a mockup in the desert, then nuking it.
And a couple years ago I remmember the US military searching for "middle eastern looking people" for a mockup scenario for Afghanistan/Iraq that play the locals.
Very eloquently put. I can imagine Josh was a great teacher! I wished more people would teach why and not how
Really brought me back to my animation lessons where i was taught how to record reference for a scene, but not why, so it just ame off as an exercise, not as a part of the process, so for the longest time, I just didn't use reference for anything.
I honestly don't mind it when games have a specific tutorial area, rather than a hidden tutorial. A common problem I have with "hidden" tutorials is that the start is usually super visible, but it's not clear when it ends, so you never get that sense of "alright, this is the real game now" and it just feels like you're in a really fucking long tutorial.
Longest tutorial I ever played was 4 hours long and I still had roughly 12 more hours of tutorial left... I only did 4 hours of it then quit, left a steam review saying the tutorial is too long and you can't skip it which means you are locked out of the other content... (roughly 90% of the game)
The game was Called "Crush" and it certainly Crushed my will to play the game...
A developer responded to my review saying that you "Quickly level up and can switch out of the Newbie channel(tutorial channel) anytime you want"
To which I pointed out that was not true as you need to be level 25 to leave the Newbie channel and the tutorial ends when you reach level 25 and after 4 hours I was only still level 10, which is not quick.
I had a creative writing professor back in college who drove it home that your first page, your first paragraph and even your first sentence have to be good because there are thousands of books on the shelf and if you don't grab the reader's attention immediately then you're too late. Hell, he even had us do an assignment or two on developing first sentences. There's a lot of games out there need to learn the same thing.
Yup, that is what I think every time a new f2p MMO comes out. "Why should I play this one? What does this game have, that I want to play it? There are hundreds of other f2p MMOs that I could play instead."
They don't see a players first time through the game as the "first sentence." They see their pitch to investors as the first sentence. Game devs often make the middle of the game first or at least a "vertical slice" level which has a smattering of all the weapons/spells/mechanics. That is the vertical slice they use in demos or show to investors or at games conferences to show off a little bit of everything they have. They then have to create the start of the game where you "build up" your collection of mechanics and then finally the end of the game where they use all their knowledge over the course of the game to finish fleshing out the game.
So basically the start of many games is designed as an afterthought to get you to the "good levels" and then the ending... lets be real, they ran out of money and rushed the end of the game so they were never allowed to finish developing the mechanics into something more. Some games get around this by having the player "start" the game with everything unlocked and then either "flashback" to before or just take away all your mechanics and force you to re-unlock them.
And this is why I like the recent changes to FF14, having effective solo mode for MSQ dungeons.
Not 100% but the AI does well enough to give you a basic understanding of mechanics
The bosses are much better at micro teaching as well. They'll start with a light version of their main mechanic and then go into the full version. Teaching you how the first mechanic works and then ramping it up. But it only really starts doing this Shadowbringers forward. Stormblood had bits of it and everything prior was kind of a "good luck" situation. But people are correct in the chat, XIV is starting to fix some of the older game design to be more current. Which is really nice for new players.
Yeah the refresh they've done with the earlier into 'tutorial' stage has made it so much better. They're working on doing what Josh was talking about too - definitely have room to improve, but still loads better than a year or two ago.
About the dungeon anxiety thing. I have to give some praise to the FFXIV community for being so willing to work with players rather than screech at them. I got to Paglth'an on the main scenario recently and was struggling with the first boss's electric attack. After dying twice to it, I just said in party chat, "Okay. What am I doing wrong here?" and the tank replied with "Oh! You're the new player in here? It's simple. You tether your marker to the edge of the arena to not take the hit." I thanked him and carried the rest of the fight out with little effort, and apologized to the healer for being an idiot.
They were pretty damn supportive. They took some time to give brief mechanic rundowns for the other two bosses. By brief I mean "Watch the cannons in the back" for the second boss, and "Watch out for the AoEs" against the third boss. Literally all I needed to know. If I could have given a commendation to all of them, I would have. They didn't get mad at me for messing up, and could tell I was able to figure things out well enough with just the few words they gave me.
Kind enough to explain, but not so insulting to spell everything out.
One time I was doing a leveling roulette as a tank, it was like 2 or 3 am and I was really really sleepy, so kept messing up over and over... Add that to the fact that the healer was a new player as well and we made the dungeon last like 3x more than usual...
And it really surprised me that the other players were like "it's okay man, you're doing great!" and "You don't need to impress me lol"... It was not even a low level/first time clear, and it was still very peaceful
I literally fall asleep when I'm given large amounts of info without context, whether it's a game, a movie, or an article. My brain just suspends if it's not being stimulated.
Something that I have always strived toward as a game developer is the method used by the Bungie-era Halo games. Essentially, make the opening as simple and easy to follow as possible, give the player all the knowledge they need to succeed in that opening, and then later the scope and gameplay veriety increase, while the core mechanics in that opening will still be used all the way through the experience. Pillar of Autumn, Cairo Station, Sierra 117, and Winter Contingency are almost nobody's favorite levels, but they set the stage beautifully for the rest of their respective games, but I'm willing to bet that Halo, Outskirts, Crow's Nest, or ONI: Sword Base is more than a few people's favorite level.
"I was a teacher for a long time' Well that explains it. Since discovering Josh I've always thought that he really has a strong grasp on how educating someone works. The first video that got me into his stuff was his explanation on how to get the fire cape in OSRS, and it was simple so easy to follow and answered all my questions before I could ask them, that I stuck around for his other content.
Maybe that's the key, game companies should contract teachers to help them build their tutorial levels.
@@devinhoyt2935 Most teachers are definitely not like Josh lmao
@@thechugg4372 Unfortunately because I was never a child, I apparently don't know that.
FF14 integrating dungeons and raids through the whole questline is almost certainly why its such a friendly community. You are pushed through any anxiety early and often, and the people in the random queue see the marker indicating that you are new and know that you cant be expected to know everything yet and have the opportunity to help.
This is one thing I really appreciate about Skyrim's hidden tutorial. Not the scripted intro dungeon, but the tutorial on how stats work. When you use skills, you see a pop-up saying that skill leveled up. Now you know the name of the skill and what actions it applies to. When you go look at the perk screen, you can choose to unlock a single perk of any skill. Well you know what skills you've been using, and every starter perk is a simple and significant benefit to that skill, though not an exciting one. Once you unlock that perk, you can later unlock more from that same tree, which add more benefits, but also more mechanics. You choose which mechanics to unlock, and once they're added, it's on you to utilise them. There's no tutorial beyond the perk description on how to use them, but by the point you unlock them, you likely already know what they do.
Nowhere in-game are the stats outright explained to the player. For an RPG that is a bit surprising, considering how many of them use the medium of text dump or RTFM to communicate how things work. I think this is a big part of why Skyrim got its reputation of being simplistic for an RPG, it's one of the easiest RPGs to pick up and play ever made. Aspects of gameplay that would need an explanation were removed or combined into other features.
And the stats reflect that. 69% of players reached level 10. It's still a drop from the 78% of players that reached level 5, but that's a 69% retention rate for the first few hours of the game.
Note, I'm using the original 2011 version for achievements here, since the Special Edition's are much lower for various reasons, like the big one that using mods disables achievements.
cyberpunk tried that, but the actions you do to level up skills make no sense, and some skills are just painful to level up
@@devforfun5618 I think it's deceptively difficult to make an RPG system work well without written explanations of how mechanics work, or else we'd see it more often.
@@saffral the main thing about it is to use actions that are common and you dont need to go out of your way to do, unless it is something like magic, but even then using clairvoyance was really a basic and constant use of magic for me in skyrim, for conjuration it was soul trap, for restoration it is healing hand, all low cost spells that you will use a lot even without the leveling system
A game you probably haven't heard of but "Project Gorgon" has a really good tutorial that forces you to think a lot. You're basically thrown on a deserted island and you have to figure out what's happening and how to leave my looking around and figuring it out, and by doing so, you learn all the basic game mechanics.
One thing that's also insanely important is the move from tutorial to regular game.
There are so many games where the turorial is either good or at least passable but the switch to regular game is just jaaring.
"I want to gather berries, break rocks and cut down a million trees for the first 30-50 hours in a game." - said almost no one ever
I do
Part of the problem with FFXIV is that they pruned abilities from the game due to changing design aspirations at end game (with each successive expansion), which leaves the early game feeling comparatively barren.
Not only that, but a lot of the older mechanics for various fights are either completely untelegraphed, or don't have consistent markers for whatever the mechanic is. Even for newer content, there are a lot of types of mechanics that aren't really "explained" very well from within the game itself. This leads to newer players often seeing things for the very first time without knowing what to do at all - they've never done the fights, plus the markers are sometimes completely new.
A lot of players have been advocated for a "Hall of the Intermediate" that is similar to the Hall of the Novice, which would actually teach players about different mechanics.
@@AeriFyrein I mean. They redid most of the early dungeons in ffxiv last patch (6.1)… so they all now have consistent mechanics, and are introduced in a way that allows people to learn without killing them instantly
I’m not gunna argue with the fact that the skill sets at low level are a bit shit, but the dungeons are genuinely improved.
@@FirelighttheKing Oh, no doubt, the dungeons they reworked are all great. However, they didn't redo *all* the dungeons, nor did they rework any of the trials, raids, or anything like that - the alliance raids are actually quite notorious for having very strange mechanic markers. Also, that was only stuff in ARR that was reworked - HW and beyond still have tons of the same issues. I know those are still planned to be revised, so that should help with some of those dungeons and whatnot. Things did get a fair bit more consistent in Shadowbringers, but I'd say my point overall still stands.
Even then, I'm not sure you can also really say that the game "teaches" what to do for mechanics. You learn through experience, sure, but until you actually do experience a given type of mechanic, very few of the markers are actively *explained* within the game.
Things are definitely better, and it'll be helpful to brand new players, but that doesn't mean a *lot* more couldn't be done to make everything more consistent.
@@AeriFyrein I think they already dumbed the game down a lot so I don't think they should try to make anything easier, it's already easy as it goes if you're not doing Savage or Ultimate
@@forte8227 It's not a matter of "dumbing down" the game. It's about making the game more consistent, and teaching players how to do things properly. There is a rather big difference. Hell, by actually teaching players, they could actually make the game more complex, since they would then have the expectation that players *should* know what to do.
the problem with the mmo design is not that they give you options too late to make it fun, but that they dont make the troubleshooting in the start when you dont have that many options fun.
this reminds me of final fantasy 5, one of my favorites, where you start using the freelancer class, which by end game will be the most powerfull one, but at the start doesnt really have much to offer, and that works well enough as its a basic ff game, until you unlock the first crystal and that open stuff up, it teaches the player everything, without really forcing them out, it just feels natural both storywise as well as gameplaywise.
I vibe heavily with dungeons being a part of the MMO experience from the start in particular! The longer I have to wait to access dungeons, or the more I hear the community say not to do them/wait, the less interested I am in your game. I want group content, and I don't mean zergs hitting overworld bosses!!
Portal was used by a tutor of mine when I was studying game development as a #1 example of an insanely good game in regards of tutorial as it's mainly using human intuition and signs associated with it.
Take for example a red button, most people's minds would instantly think to go and press it, however they can.
Later you have a really big red button, which you can stand on, and oh.. what's that? a box in the room? let me throw it on there!
Its also a famous story that during the development process, no one could solve the companion cube puzzle. Because no one was taking the cube with them. So they added a heart and special features to make it special. NOW you take it with you!
Theres also a point later on in Portal where you can skip a large-ish section of a room if not the entire thing by using fling mechanics either just taught to the player or found out by messing around with the mechanics of Portal, and they state in their dev voice overs that they left that in because whilst it wasn't something they thought the player would do, it happened during playtests and they loved it.
Putting new players into a simulated dungeon or raid with mediocre NPCs should be the baseline for MMOs now. A safe environment to learn your place for end game content. Regardless of whatever systems are at the end that players can go deep in the paint on or not, all players should be allowed the most basic understanding of what you can do at the end of the game, and they should be informed to those basics shortly after they join.
I agree, it really sucks how you are expected to spoil yourself through a video guide before doing raids, in no other online games are we expected to do that, I never watched someone hunt a monster in Monster Hunter before doing it myself but it's the norm for MMOs.
Hades had an amazing tutorial. You're playing the game within 60 secs of pressing start.
And you're basically just doing the simplest version of a run. Then each run after you die you get an extra drop of complexity added.
Every run feels like a new expansion has been added.
in addition to bad games, I think there's more than a few people like myself who have bought Humble bundles or their monthly format for so long that we've built our libraries up to hundreds if not over thousands of games that we start, see if we want to keep playing now, or come back to later. I've definitely contributed to this percentage for these reasons more than for games being crap. I tend to trust reviewer warnings, and never buy on day one anymore.
5:55 from the moment a teacher told me in school "just believe its true so we can move on with the explanation" my brain would appear out of the blue and go: AHA! NOW THAT IS BULLSHIT, LOOK AT THAT BUTTERFLY OUTSIDE, ISNT THAT SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING?
honestly that bit where josh talks about WHY as a teacher...bro this hits home, there is no way im getting motivated about something that has no purpose or reason for it
Breath of the Wild's Great Plateau is another great hidden tutorial. I was playing it on my friend's switch before I bought it just to try the game, and it never once occured to me that the Plateau was designed to teach you how to play, while still allowing for emergent gameplay. Can't survive on the cold mountain? You can either get warm clothes from an old man or cook food to give you cold resistance. The game gives you a goal without telling you what to do.
there was an achievement, cant remember the game its from, but there was an achievement for starting the game literally pressing start on the main menu and it had 95% of people have this achievement
how do 5% of those players not even do that, to buy a game start loading it but then never pressing start game
I've recently bought Sekiro and GTA 5 on sale and have yet to touch them. Nearly the same with other games I bought on sale over the past year or so. Almost no time into Nier Automata, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, the list goes on. Too busy playing the main games I'm into, namely Sea of Thieves currently, just basically gave up on Dead by Daylight after over 2000 hours because the game and community is swirling down the toilet bowl.
Might be a game bug, and the game crashed out, and they never bothered to try to load it up again after that.
you just don't play it, i got watch dogs 2 unopened since epic gifted it and that's why, if they had a open the start menu achievement, i would be one of those who don't have it
Not sure if this counts, because Runescape is free, but I downloaded Runescape thinking I'd try it out sometime since I like those kinds of games. I have yet to click play.
@@Drimirin I did the same for Witcher 3. I bought it, now i have all 3 games.
So far, i've only played and finished Witcher 1. I played a few mins of Witcher 2 and then haven't touched it [not because it's bad, other games just grab my attention] and i haven't even installed Witcher 3.
Part of the problem with doing that in MMOs (and some other more freeform games) is the ever changing meta of how players will dictate "how to play the game". I can remember early on in vanilla GW2 where Soldier's (power/toughness/vitality) gear was all the rage because the dungeons were considered brutal and going with more offensive stats on your gear was considered crazy... until players discovered corner stacking (where they pull mobs just around a corner and let them trickle in, all the players are on top of each other and burst down what ever rounds the corner). Then, Berserker's (power/crit/crit chance) gear took the top spot, since the theorists determined that produced the highest damage of all the sets (unless you were a necromancer or other class with a lot of dot abilities who took condition damage stat gear). So, if the devs made the tutorial just on ability use then threw new players in a dungeon, it wouldn't be sufficient to train them on how other players would expect them to run the dungeon. Same thing happens in FFXIV with healers expected to spam their damage ability and tanks expected to pull wall to wall. Multiplayer games with a more rapidly changing meta, like LoL, have an even steeper issue on training new players what is expected of each lane position (now that that is a thing - it wasn't very early on).
I have dungeon anxiety when it comes to tanking. It's mostly because my first MMO with a threat system was WoW TBC and I got traumatized by it. Throughout the leveling dungeons you struggled to maintain aggro against your dps and healer. The game never told you that certain abilities will generate more threat than others. Anyone besides a tank didn't understand the threat system one bit and always blamed the tank for losing threat, meanwhile they're targeting mobs not even in the pulled group.
WoW's playerbase took me away from tanking for years. It was in FFXIV's 2nd expansion or so that i decided to try again and it turns out it was FAR less insane than WoW and its playerbase led me to believe.
Yeah, I remember healing in WoW when I played a bit. I eventually stopped playing because so many people just had the expectation that you’d know exactly what to do for every dungeon. Like it was nearly impossible to just properly enjoy a first-time experience running a dungeon since everyone was speed-running that shit.
FF14 is just so much more chill. You get the occasional assholes (which I speculate are mostly ex-WoW players), but there’s definitely an understanding that new players won’t know every single mob pull and boss mechanic their first time playing.
honestly i have not seen that behavior ANYWHERE BUT on wow. Every other mmo has a playerbase that understands that tanks have to practice...or maybe i was just VEEEERY lucky
@@AzureRoxe its actually annoying to see those people, they are always like "man I don't feel comfortable with big pulls". I mean, who cares, just go for it, if we fail we try again, its actually faster to fail than to do small pulls, if you don't know how to space your mitigations I'm here to teach you. but no, they don't try, its as if they are afraid of failing and get judged, its sad to watch.
@@danilooliveira6580 Ever considered that the "careful" MMORPG players just might be... you know... _roleplaying?_ Dying is not something a roleplayer just shrugs off...
NieR replicant had a great start, you did the leveling part reaally really fast, like you get level up after level up after level up while doing combat and using new skill u get later on. then the game start back at level 1 and its the normal speed. so in the tutorial you have lore, combat, and a tutorial during that combat. all this with an epic ost.
this is great for players that played the games that happen before nier replicant, knowing more about the lore, but also new players that go in blindly.
also.... no yellew paint
EVE Online has a newish tutorial, from 2-3 years ago. You have paths, active meaningful short term rewarded choice, you can focus on one path of progress them all, and you get decent knowledge and in-game rewards for your time
Btw the game "The Witness" is a massive hidden tutorial from start to finish. There is no "now you got all the variables" it constantly adds new ones without ever explaining anything explicitly.
I remember a review titled "A great game that you shouldn't play", which really brings all the great things out.
Well thanks for making me feel like a weird outlier I guess 😅
I've never dropped a game early on. I've never put a book away after a chapter or two, or stopped watching a show I've started with the intent to finish. I'm so fucking selective with the media I consume that if I decide to invest my time and money into a game, I know beforehand that I'll absolutely love it. That kind of mindset can't be THAT rare? I'd assume the rest of the 30% who keep playing are like me x)
That said, of course you guys are right about the first impression being important. If 70% of people decide whether to invest more time into this particular game (or piece of media in general) based on their first impression, that's a gigantic part of the potential playerbase that is otherwise lost.
I'm with you, for all forms of media *except* video games. There are quite a few games that I've bounced off of early & hard, usually for either tech issues/bugs, or sudden difficulty spike, or the game forcing me to do X too often [when I want to do Y]. I'll play until I'm no longer having fun, which could be anywhere from 2 hours/first-session to months' worth of playtime. Completion is reserved for that rare winner's circle of all-time favorite games.
There are TV shows & book series I've quit before the end, but usually that's due to the quality tanking, not lack of interest on my part.
We who consume videos and other things like that are very few indeed, sometimes las than 10% of a game is people like us
i think a lot of people just get games as a cope then have 200 games in their backlog
Only 200?
White Orchard is hands down, one of the best tutorial areas of all time. Regardless of whether you like the game or not, there is no denying that they did tutorials right.
What's funny is when the free "start the game" or "press a button" achievements don't even have 100%
3:25 until it’s finished talking about the NPC tank is my favorite part.
I've played since Runescape since "Classic" and RS2 "Troll invasion tutorial" was the best tutorial runescape ever had. it was a great introduction for new players. It told them about the different combat styles, gave a little story to hook you in and >actually mentioned quests< and gave you some goals to work towards. Now RS3 has tutorial island back. and actually lies to you about the mechanics. it wasn't updated for the mining and smithing update, and never mentions combat abilities or combat triangle. it even asks you to cast a spell that doesn't exist anymore.
After getting off the island, i've had people say to me "what do i even do in this game?" because they felt completely lost.
Granted there's another tutorial in Taverly which at least doesn't lie to you. But it doesn't give them a good grasp on setting goals or what to do in the game.
I like the path FF14 recently took, were you can now do the first few dungeons with AI. There is only a few of them, but its in the early lvls. It helps you get familiar with your class in dungeons. You can still opt to play it with other players as it gives you the option, but that is great to ease people into dungeons, especially in FF14 were there are a ton of dungeons you need to do to progress the main quest line.
That said, FF14 has a very friendly community. I come from WoW, when you join random players there in a dungeon it's always a mess. You have a DPS charge off to god knows where and pulls all the mobs on their way before the tank was even loaded into the dungeon and buffs were applied. Then wipes everyone from the get go and yells "You all suck!". You got tanks that completely ignore healers who shout "I HAVE NO MANA PLEASE GIVE ME A BREAK" and just pull huge groups, just to shout at the healer what incompetent fool he/she is for not healing them. You are new to a dungeon? No one will bother explaining, they just rush and if you do it wrong you get yelled at or people rage quit the dungeon after just one wipe, instead of explaining what to do. Heck some even just quit the group as soon as you say "Hey all, sorry I'm new to this one". There is no sense of community in that game anymore, and that feels weird cause I made RL friends in other countries, that I even visited, thanks to Hogger and dungeons in WoW, people I wouldn't have met had I not joined up a random group or asked for their help, but these day's WoW is anything but a community driven game.
In FF14 I joined a dungeon as tank, I never done the dungeons, I was new to my tank role and FF14 in general. I had completely forgotten to do my class quest lines for about 3 or so class quests. I enter the dungeon, the game tells there is a new player to it so everyone knows and you get a bonus I believe. So I told him "Hey all, sorry I'm new to this dungeon and as tank, please bare with me". The response? "No problems, we will explain what to do at the bosses", and when someone noticed I didn't use certian skills they said "Hey, if you use skill x you will have a easyer time pulling" and I was like "I don't have skill x?" and them "O, go do your class quests after this run, it will make your life as tank so much more easy!". No yelling that I was a freaking noob that shouldn't be playing, no rage quiting, everyone was polite and helpful. Time and time again.
If you fear dungeons in MMO's, go play FF14, the people will get you over your fear and the dungeons aren't very long either most of the time, so in 10 maybe 15 minutes you are out again, but learned a lot.
WHYYYY!!!!!! THANK YOU.
People in my life get frustrated when I ask WHY something is done that way etc. and it's simply so I can get a better grasp on what you're showing me. if I have a narrative of why something is done that way, I won't forget either.
I obviously can't talk about ALL games, but those where I looked at the achievements (and where I am also missing them) were mostly for games that didn't have the achievements yet when a majority of the audience played. E.g. I had 400 hours in Terraria and didn't have the first achievement of chopping a tree (which is the first thing you do)
if people were wondering why blue and orange in Portal, those are mainly the cold/warm colors which helps colorblind people without having to go in the options to activate anything.
I like what you said. When showing someone how to do something new, explain/teach them why you are doing something. Excellent point.
This is why I liked the requirement back in WoW: WoD where you needed to get at least silver proving grounds to queue for random heroic dungeons for that respective role. The only issue for me was you had to do it on every character and role even though the achievements are account wide. The proving grounds teaches you basic mechanics tied to that role. For example the tank challenges focuses on threat generation, maintaining threat, snap taunting (as in an enemy will intentionally reset their aggro table) and finally enemy and player positioning. These teach you the fundamental mechanics.
I still struggle to understand why blizzard removed it in Legion.
I think it's because ppl complained about it and said it was unfair that blizzard was putting a gate between them and content or something to that effect.
By the time WildStar went free to play it was the first MMO that actually did the early player experience well and started teaching you group pve mechanics super early.
What actually happened to that game? I remember it looking really fun.
@@HappyBeezerStudios Didnt have enough players because of wow being so popular at the time, they had to close the servers because they didnt make profit. Loved that game though, underrated
Call of Duty 4 understood this. I knew nothing about it and never played any Call of Duty beforehand. Then i played the first ten minutes on my fathers pc when he got it and i went out to buy it immediately and played through countless times and still paly the multiplayer. That first mission slapped harder than any other openning i have experienced in any game in the past 25 years.
I would actually love to see them try to do a tutorial for tick manipulation. I think it could be really hilarious trying to explain how the game's networking functions and how to exploit it especially with the small bits of variance that can happen.
I got into World of Warcraft a few months ago and I remember I didn’t know if it was a tutorial or my first adventure and when I got out of it and got onto the main game I realized it was both it was my first adventure and the tutorial and I think it did a good job because I’m still here
Plague Tale - Innocence, is a great tutorial-less game as well..
Like The Witcher 3, and Portal it uses the tutorial section to BOTH "teach the player the basics of the game", while "easing the player into the story through doing."
This partially why I have a hard time getting into 4x games. The tutorials are usually very lacking or insanely boring for such complex games. I don't mind the idea of having to go through the game a few times to learn how to play well, but when I open up the research tree and see hundreds of poorly-explained options and realize that it is going to be dozens if not hundreds of hours to learn the ins and outs of the game and how to have a good time, I usually give up pretty quickly at that point.
Never underestimate the power of misclicks. Then that desperate scramble to end the noise. I literally swear at my phone several times a day due to accidentally starting videos.
As for TV shows, the number of times where you have to push through bad content to get to the good stuff. In some shows, I don't see a way around world-building. It takes time to craft a wide and rich universe. It's often more of a book thing but I've long been a fan of the sci-fi space operas. I'm very much looking forward to getting around to the new Dune series soon, but it's in the back catalogue. On the other hand, GoT managed it well in the early seasons, to achieve solid world-building by showing very interesting scenes along the way telling the story of the individual people and having that reflect on the larger factions they serve. So it is possible to do both. That said book two introduces whole new factions previously barely mentioned if at all so pacing is clearly important.
It's almost hilarious but Peter F Hamilton's possibly most famous series, or one of them at least, The Reality Dysfunction starts with 2 obtuse and thoroughly mind-numbing chapters in what is one of the greatest sci-fi books of all time. No offence to TNG but if one was just matching storytelling that book (The Reality Dysfunction) makes the best episode look like the first play written and directed by pre-schoolers in comparison, and for the record, I highly rate TNG in general when it comes to creative storytelling. For any inspired to read it feel free to skip the first few chapters on the Voidhawks as even 3 books and 3000 pages later I only remember it for skipping it. For me, the series will always start when the mismatched settlers arrive and strike out for their new colony. This really should be a game or at least a series by now.
Another series that is heavy with lore and with enough content that even in my early 40's I may not live to see the whole story told is the new series on Amazon, Robert Jordans Wheel of Time. I am amazed at how much I forgot about this series, and also how much I still remember. 20+ factions fighting for power using every method tactic and trick and raw power available. Often battles have 4 or 5 sides fighting for and against each other and sides can turn mid-fight. Sometimes the objectives of one side will force them to switch sides, and just as easily it can be switched back. For example in their version of the Anikin dilemma, certain allies are happy to kill their chosen one if it looks like at any time he might be lured to what could be seen as the dark side, rather than risk him turning traitor. Other allies would follow to the end. Other allies would just embrace the killing for killing's sake, and some are peaceful at all costs and would not raise a hand even in their own defence.
Damnit this got me started on book talk, so I'll just mention two more.
Steel World of 'The Undying Mercineries series' needs to be a game already.
"In the twentieth century, Earth sent probes, transmissions and welcoming messages to the stars. Unfortunately, someone noticed.
The Galactics arrived with their battle fleet in 2052. Rather than being exterminated under a barrage of hell-burners, Earth joined their vast Empire. Swearing allegiance to our distant alien overlords wasn’t the only requirement for survival. We also had to have something of value to trade, something that neighbouring planets would pay their hard-earned credits to buy. As most of the local worlds were too civilized to have a proper army, the only valuable service Earth could provide came in the form of soldiers…someone had to do their dirty work for them, their fighting and dying."
And The Synchronicity War Series by Dietmar Wehr would also make a great Homeworld style space sim.
"Have you ever just stopped watching a tv show after the first one or two episodes when there's a hundred?"
I swear that's a jab a one piece and I love it
Honestly, it happens to me on youtube too.
If I don't like the voice of the person talking, I can be out after five seconds.
The "why" is so important and that can translate all the way from early game to end game. For example when learning a new raid or dungeon, knowing "why" you are moving to the left instead of to the right for a specific attack can make a world of difference in how well someone understands a mechanic.
Metal Gear Rising has an amazing tutorial; you literally fight a Metal Gear with a sword and win while awesome music plays in the background. I don't think a tutorial has ever felt so badass
Remember - switching to your pistol is always faster than reloading.
you two are some of my favorite creators and are both far more educational than some of the classes I've taken. also fun watches anytime I have the time to sit down and watch at length. Keep up the good work!
i just wish hidden tutorials could be skiped on a second play, when you know it is a tutorial, but even when the tutorial quest can be ignored the tutorial rewards are the best early equipment so you still have to do it
Either that or a way to speed through them. The most annoying thing about unskippable tutorials is when you can't speedrun through them. When the game won't open a door until the NPC has finished their huge speech and stuff like that.
RUclips analytics are probably heavily skewed by the fact that videos play without clicking on them now... I've "watched" a video 3 times in a row that I never payed attention to because I walked away from my computer for 10 minutes.
At this point I just want more Josh + Callum content. They could honestly talk about whatever they want and I'll like it.
I think people are reading the achievement percentages in a simplistic way. I buy packs of 12 games from Humble Store (monthly or normal bundles) if they have 2 or 3 games that interest me. Each bundle has 9 or 10 games that I'll activate in Steam without any intention to touch them. Doesn't mean they're bad games, they are just genres that don't interest me.
There is a basic sequence to teaching a new concept: Present, Practice, Produce, or PPP (don't laugh).
First you Present the concept to the learner, demonstrate to them what they need to do, maybe a few simple tasks for them to replicate what they learned.
Then you give them some harder, still controlled tasks, a few variations to let them apply or Practice the skills they just acquired.
Then you let them Produce their own ideas. Give them open-ended tasks and let them explore and use their own intuition plus their new skills to solve the problem.
The modern warfare tutorial was amazing because I barely even consciously realized it was a tutorial.
It was a working part of the story, the characters still had their little quips and one-liners, and it didn't **stop everything** to make me do a particular thing.
Alot of the people that quit that early in a tv show or game will give you a very vague as hell answer too like *"I just didn't like it"* .
I always assumed the low numbers were caused by almost nobody actually ever playing the games they purchased, since I remember a Digimon PS4 game that has an achievement for receiving your first Digimon and that happens after the opening cutscene and walking like 10 steps, so basically you just have to turn on the game.
Honestly have no idea if the total amount of players the achievements tab takes the percentage from are the total number of users who bought them or those who actually at least accessed/installed the game. Would love for some extra info on that
One of my favorite tutorials is a hidden one in 1st gen Pokemon games. When you first get to Viridian City the pokemart does not have any potions for sale. Because then you'll go to the pokemon center. And once you realize you can go to the pokemon center for free, you will never use potions in towns. You will use them when you can't get to the pokemon center. And you'll never forget it either.
Similarly, the very first NPC you talk to gives you stuff, to train you to talk to NPCs.
In gw2 there's a type of end game content called fractals which are like mini dungeons that focus more on mechanics and less in your team comp. The last one called Sunqua Peak is often referred to as "The Raid Fractal" because of how intense it can get. I ran it recently with a full squad of people who have never run it and one other dude who did but apparently didn't know the mechanics stating it was "too hard." and dipped. Naturally this scared the newbies and I assured it wasn't hard, just unforgiving if you don't know the mechanics. I broke down all the important whipe mechanics for them and the 1 dude who was running fractals for the first time that day never died once. We cleared it first try.
For great game development you need to have clear communication between all the stake holders. Player, system engineer, designers, etc. You need to have someone in the gaps that can translate the inputs and outputs from each of the stakeholders. In the case of the button training, someone knows why you have to push the button. But the input was not translated properly and a stakeholder was left to fend for themselves, so the tutorial does something important in an impractical manner for players. I would put money on that being the case. It's why games have producers, they're that translation layer between the inputs and outputs.
i never stopped watching a tv show after one or two episodes, but i did stop watching a tv show after 20 minutes.
the massive drop within first 20 seconds of the video seems natural to me, many people just click out of curiosity and realize they're either not interested, or not right now in the mood for that specific video/creator. i do it too, often even to channels i watch regularly, sometimes i start the video, and within 20 seconds realize i'm currently not in the mood for that guy, or that topic, so i close it.
i think it's same with the games, for me, within first 20 minutes is where I see enough of the game to decide whether i'm interested or not.
also, I rarely finish games. for me the weird thing is the mentality of people who NEED to finish games, even when they've already stopped having fun. i only play games while they're fun for me, and when they stop being fun for me, I just stop, regardless of how far I got, or how close to the end I am.
when I was younger, I literally didn't realize for years that games have ends, or that they're designed with the assumption that someone's going to go through the whole game =D
As opposed to the schools I went to, when I asked "why are we doing it this way", and the schoolteacher said "Do it this way or you fail, that's why."
i'm not the smartest lad because when josh mentioned the cod4 tutorial i honestly didn't realize the tutorial was a mockup of the first level and it just blew my mind lmao
Even Final Fantasy 14 took me 3 attempts until it finally stuck with me. The ARR content wasn't bad, but it wasn't at times good enough to keep me around to endure it. I have spoken with some sprouts who felt the same about it recently. You really need to tell them, without spoiling too much, that they will immediately know when the story really gets through... at the very last MSQ before Heavensward
This is what they need to focus on nowadays, since the later story is almost like your playing a whole different game then the start and beyond amazing.. and the first classic portion is kind of a snooze fest now
I just finished the entire MSQ in some 240 hours. I am sort of only whelmed by it.
ARR was just : A beast tribe is summoning a primal. Punch it. Repeat a dozen times or so.
Heavensward : Actually a good story.
Stormblood : Kinda boring with a lot of stupid characters.
Shadowbringers : Actually a good story with a nice finale. If a bit too long for my taste.
Endwalker : Way over the top anime that had me not care at all. Also had me asking why i am doing this thing right now instead of that other thing which seems a lot more important.
Otherwise the main problem i have with the game is that it consists entirely of dungeons. Everything is dungeons? Main story = 3 hour cutscene, then dungeon, then cutscene, then dungeon.
Leveling? Run dungeons.
Gear? Run dungeons.
Let the oven on? Run dungeons.
It gets really, really dull. Especially if you are just dead for half the dungeon anyway because the game doesn't explain the particular mechanics of a dungeon, ever. Also, quicktime events. Why. In some cases i needed 3 or 4 attempts to get through the clickspam, much to the frustration of everyone in the party.
And now that i have no main quest left to do, i don't know what to do at all.
@@kajarslibrary5404 yeah, ff14 is massively overhyped. This is coming from someone who has been playing the game for 5+ years now. Endwalker is also a sad, convoluted mess of a story. Sadly I think the game is spiraling down into a pretty bad place right now, but that isn't even going to matter for a new player who won't stick around for the "endgame" or later expansions, because I'd say 60-70% of the games story is abysmal and boring and uninspired, with flat, unchanging characters. Seriously, this may not feel as bad for a new player, but we've had the same characters stick with us for like 7 years now.
And when they supposedly finally wrapped up their big story arc, the new one just starts with the same boring characters... And the gameplay is getting more and more boring. Used to be, dungeons could be less focused on being interesting because the job gameplay was somewhat complex and was at least engaging to participate in, but nowadays most jobs just play very similarly and aren't even a little challenging.
Oh, and little tip for the quicktime events, you don't need to click. You can just press buttons on your keyboard. As far as I know, the game doesn't explain this to you anywhere.
@@kajarslibrary5404 crafting, mount farming, relic farming, raiding, pvp
@@noarmsnolife6665 '60-70% of the games story is abysmal and boring and uninspired, with flat, unchanging characters'
Tell me you've skipped most of the dialogue and haven't done Coils without telling me you've skipped most of the dialogue and haven't done Coils.
I'm sure a lot of people have played Global Agenda.
That tutorial was legendary.
I remember making another character just to relive it.
Subnautica, a underwater survival and exploration game, has an achievement for "Getting Your Feet Wet" which you get just for jumping into water. Somehow, only 83.5% of players on steam actually got the achievement. Nearly 20% of players haven't even played the game.
Most of my MMO experience comes from WoW, retail endgame is a different game entirely from the journey there, nothing hurts and you can only die if you pull way more than you should have. I have friends who avoid all group content because of the compounding punitive mechanics that exist at max level. You have your boss abilities that hurt your character, and then the social aspect that hurts you mentally as a player. Playing alone does nothing to challenge you in a meaningful capacity, your rotation doesn't matter, you don't have to know enemy spells. It also doesn't prepare you for the potential toxicity levels you get subjected to if your mistakes negatively impact others. Getting told to jump off a bridge because you stood in something harmful isn't exactly stellar human interaction
They made anything that ain't max level stupidly easy because they want everyone at max level and doing raids.
@@cancerino666 my point is that the game does not teach you how to play properly at endgame until you're there, by angry party members yelling at you to download the right addons, to study a class guide on a third party website and to imprint years of experience into your brain to get on their level of game knowledge and understanding. WoW is such a legacy game at this point that being new makes you a burden in the eyes of your allies
@@blargh559 Thats a straight up bullshit. As you level up you get more and more skills and by playing and reading descriptions you can easilly understand how everything is supposed to work. Not even mentioning that expansion or two ago there were literally a tab which told you how to play your class. Sure tanking may be little harder to understand but no one forces you to do that from level one.
There is a learning curve that allows you to understand basics of the game and it doesnt even require a lot of effort. You have leveling up, dungeons, then heroic dungeons, then mythic dungeons or raids on diffrent difficulties. If you dont play more seriously (doing normal/heroic raids or high rank dungeons) you dont even have to interact with people too much and even if you make mistakes they wont care.There are many guilds that are friendly to new players which can help you learn how to play better, there are countless number of materials online that can help you understand the game. Seriously WoW is imo one of the most friendly MMO's to the new players in existence so this post sound like a exaggeration.
Thing is, playing a new MMO is not much different in this day&age as any decently populated one has its share of info pages "teaching" you how you're supposed to play...
Either you are among the first of the first to clear all content or chances ard high atleast someone in your group is using guides from the forerunners and not few of those try to press other groupmembers to do the same...
There's quite a few steam games where I'm already severely put-off in the 1st 5-10 minutes. Maybe 1/3 of games give me that impression, keep in mind the average price I pay for games on steam is maybe $7-$10.
Being surprised to the mmo players that stuck through with it saying "yeah but it gets good" is just surprising to me. Why? Because you're talking to the statistic that DID stick through it, of course they want the beginning to be better. I'd say an extreme minority would say "nothing needs to change.". Those MMO players you're talking to? They say "Yeah, but to me it got really good so I stuck with it". They can only share their experience.
Example for an FFXIV player saying "yeah but it gets good", couldn't handle Warframe and say "I wasn't enjoying it" in the beginning. They are the minority that stuck through in one, and the majority who let go in the other. They won't neccessarily sit and ponder on their starting experience in FFXIV. How often do you think anyone does?
Personally, I have over 16 000 hours in FFXIV, and even though I've made 4-5 alts playing through the start of the game, those hours are what? A maximum of 200 if I'm being incredibly generous? That's about 1% of my entire time playing the game. It's probably a lot less, an insane amount less. I would guess that leveling through ARR the first time took me 40 hours.
Right now, progressing in one fight of FFXIV, I've almost spent 40 hours. On that one thing. I think I remember those a lot better than those first 40 hours I experienced over 7 years ago. It gets good is true. I liked the simplicity of the bad and didn't mind it when I first played it, and I got experiences on the way. I can't ever experience of truly understand the new player perspective how it is today versus back then, if it's easier to get into or harder, if it is faster and less steady or slow and tedious. I understand all the mechanics and it is just busywork if I go back now. There's nothing for me to explore, enjoy or get excited about since I know most if not all of it. Then it's just me doing it for the sake of doing it. I can just say "Yeah man, the beginning can kinda suck but it gets good if you push through it". But the reason why you don't see many people commenting otherwise is because they went along and just played something else that caught their interest.
Then you have the influencer, checking out the start of the game, and can actually give a genuine helpful comment on the new player experience. Like Josh. Most players who play the game can't ever have that. Most players probably won't even fully understand all critiques because it's naturally so beyond them. Many times people joining in later or getting into something that's already established will have another experience and critiques most active playes won't understand. They are important and valuable. But you can't ever expect someone who's already passed the hurdle ages ago to resonate that deeply with the critique. Is that critique really... for them? I want FFXIV's start to get better for sure, I love that people can enjoy the game as smoothly as possible. But in the grand scheme of things for what I do, does that really resonate with me? No, not really. Because I'm already playing, I'm already past that. The critique is FOR the developers, FOR the new players. It's not for us. We can spread the word, and agree. But our experience will always be "it can be rough early on yes but it gets better". Because every single player who got through and stuck with it had that experience, everyone else already left. Are you really that surprised?
Its been clear to me for years as I am stuck with warframe that theres a dramatic difference between devs that are good at explaining things and those who suck at it. On top of this any improvements also take time to design and implement where they should have always been. Likely part of a bigger rework and that shit tends to snowball.
one thing in dnd I find cool to do with new players is a session zero. and for us a session zero is where you get someone to DM for the new player a solo adventure that will become their backstory. The premise is that all dnd fighters are in some way extraordinary people so if you start a player in a scenario where they are an ordinary person, how do they get to the point where they are extraordinary. what choices are they making in their lives what skills do they need for that life. it definitely takes a bit more time to do but the end result is the player having a character that they actually understand. their backstory isn't something they've thought up and barely remember, it's something they've half experienced the skills are no longer whatever they happened to have picked from a list they're skills their character has picked up over the years to survive, we know how they learnt them. playing their life in fast forward like this also manages to help make decisions on things that are hard to make up on the spot, people you have relationships with, do you talk to your family ect.
I get the point of suggesting prayer switching tutorial by level 3-4, but those prayers don’t unlock until you’re many, many hours into the game in the first place unless you binge train it from the start. There should be a tutorial boss or something around when they’re unlocked, imo.
I feel like most game tutorials should have an end game amazing character that you do a piece of end game level content with so you experience what it's like and then you're given a "ok here's what you need to know to get there" situation.
*Cough* Symphony of the Night.
There are many reasons why some people never got through even launching the game, and/or the tutorials.
You see a metrics, and try to find a reason, but reality is much more complicated than just "it need a better tutorial", or "you need a really really really good first impression".
Yes, you are right, those are important, but they are not the only reason why someone doesn't have those achievements.
Speaking only from my own experience, being able to play video games since 1994 essentially, being the owner of 250+ games, there are some I never played, and some I barely touched, and the reasons are so much more varied than bad first impression or bad tutorials.
I'll also let you know that i'm the kind of player that enjoy experimenting by themselves and compare the experience with other users, I also especially like wikis and similar tool condensating vital information available *when I need them* rather than having to go through a tutorial, or being constantly interrupted for being taught about new mechanics.
But to list some reasons :
- Bought a cheap bundle because it had one game I really wanted and it was cheaper this way, ending with 4 other games I never played because I know about them, and they are not my type of game at all.
- Bought a misleading game, that promoted a genre I like a lot, ending up being a totally different genre with some of what I wanted sprinkled here and there.
- Bought a game I played a lot, under it's pirated version. But I played the game already so I never play it again, or will eventually, but not now. Just giving the devs respect now I can financially afford those.
- Played the game before they put in the achievements, and I don't give a single f*ck about those.
- Overwhelmed by the tutorial
- Underwhelmed by the mechanics
- Overwhelmed by the skill ceiling
- Just didn't like the game, sometimes, tastes & sh*t.
I could probably go on and add some more, but that's already too much of a wall text and time for a comment.
Nice discussion you had here with Callum, would probably enjoy talking with both of you.
The reason behind actions to take is the most crucial part of tutorials. It makes my "how to play Europa Universalis 4" lectures 5 hours long but if I just tell them click boost stability, get more men, get rid of your horse unit, get a free company mercenaries, do a spy network to 20 or 25, ideally more to claim every bit of land you can, declare war, get all of that good shit and sign a piece deal then what the hell are they gonna get from that? What does stability affect? How do I know I need more men? Why would I get rid of the horse unit? How do mercenaries work? WTF is a spy network? Wdym by claiming land? Do I get the land when I occupy it? How do peace deals work? Why can't I claim everything? There is SO MUCH knowledge to unpack in order to make people understand why they're doing things; they'll never learn if I just tell them what's the best course of action.
important to note: some games launch without achievements and add them in later. I have low % achievements in ftl because I went back and played it again years and years later, and the achievements I'd gotten in the game unlocked on steam. But for newer games with achievements on day 1, yeah, if it's not specifically a ragegame or something handed out got free that most people never launch, it could probably do with a better first 10 minutes of the game
On steam it's perfectly understandable, I have hundreds of games that I never at all installed, I bought them on sales and never had the time to enjoy them all
On the note of handholding is also the opening of menus without the player interaction so it'll tell you something but not where it is and it skips a step
First impression is so important, no matter how good the game is, but bad tutorial will waste all of that good contents into the trashcan easily.
Example (in my opinion): No Man Sky
The game is wonderful now, but I still can't play it pass the first toturial because it got so confusing so quickly, you get toxic all the time make you feel panic, then the game tell you to keep collecting this and that, you have no idea what to collect because the tutorial planet has toxic thing that kill you overtime, it cause panic and quit time.
The "Why" thing is a big part of why it took me ages to finish Dark Souls, but due to narrative rather than mechanics. I don't enjoy souls gameplay all that much so when I hit a wall, becasue I had no real motivation to overcome the challenges I just dropped the game for months and only eventually came back and finished it months later when I'd watched dozen of lore videos and finally had some context and motivation, even if most of that motivation was "Put these poor bastards out of their misery."
A great free mobile game that just floored with with the tutorial is Armory & Machine (the first one). It just straight up doesn't show you things you're not ready for at the start, so when new things pop up you take your own initiative to check it out! For example, when you research workers it doesn't tell you what they do. Instead, after you build one new buttons show up on the main page and previously locked out data gets revealed.
Tutorial by curiosity lol
I like how in Zone of the Enders, you do the classic fall-into-a-robot-and-now-you-have-to-fight, and because you just got behind the controls and the enemy is right in front of you, there is no time for a tutorial and there isn't.
Now the single enemy is weak enough to be dispatched with random button presses, but it really gave the feeling of "I don't know what I'm doing" which is what the player character also thought.
(The following actual tutorial was very standard and nothing to talk about)
It was probably not until a hundred hours into Witcher 3 that I realized that White Orchard was one giant tutorial. It was a huge epiphany.
It's worth noting something else about achievements on Steam. There are a lot of games that drop trading cards. Many people will get the games, run them for a couple of hours to get the cards, and then abandon them. This means that they're entered into the statistics of people who played the games without actually getting any achievements. I've noticed that most of the time, when I compare a game with trading cards to one without, the one without has a far higher percentage of people who finished basic achievements.
Of course, that doesn't make the points in this video invalid. It's just another factor to account for.
I definitely agree with the method of teaching mentioned here. One of my best teachers was a mathematics one in college. He would outline how to solve each type of equation, and if someone said, "I don't understand," he would show a different method. He could keep doing this until finding one the student did understand. I was always impressed with that, and how he detailed why each method worked. It's a rare and important skill to have.
I enjoyed hearing the insights in this video! =)