Bad Tutorials

[Exterminas]

Yesterday "Endless Space" was on sale at the steam store, so I bought me that delicious space sim! I have been having a lot of fun with it so far, but one thing really bothers me about the game: The tutorial.

It happens in the form of some huge walls of text, that plop up, whenever you click anything. And it couldn't have been more useless at helping me learn the game. Actually, a better tutorial would have been, if the game told me: This is like Civ V, only in space!

In many ways this tutorial, or the lack of one, is a great example of how many great games get ruined by lack of a decent tutorial. Take Crusader Kings 2 as an example, I spent 300 hours of the last year with that game and I love it! ... But about 100 of those hours have been spent figuring things out. Don't get me wrong, I love figuring things out! But a lot of people don't. A game like CK2 could have been a MUCH greater commercial success if they had put more effort into the tutorial.

But of course, there is the other side of the spectrum as well:
Star Wars, Heart of the Swarm, took the libertiy of having a three-mission-tutorial to explain to me basic elements of an RTS, that have been unchanged for the past twenty years. I mean, yeah, those things should probably be written down somewhere for the five people in the world, that picked up Starcraft but NEVER EVER played an RTS before. But do you need to tie them into the main gameplay?
If I buy a can of peas, I don't get the two-hour PBS-Special on how to open the thing, before they let me take it home.

Remember the days when games used to have Manuals? My copy of World of Warcraft came with a manual, that was thick enough to beat a goat to death with.
But of course today manuals are no longer made, because of... reasons? I guess. Of course there are games, that still have manuals, mostly pdfs, that can be downloaded. But usually the games with manuals are not the games, that need one. (Noteable exception: Civilization 5, which has a great digital manual)

But overall it seems to me like all the money, that the Devs saved on manuals did not go into (smart) tutorial design, but instead into profit. Which is kind of odd, considering how much a game's accesability seems to be valued today.

Please share your own tales of Tutorials!
What game did you find in sore need of a Tutorial?
Which game did not need a Tutorial at all?

 

[Anathrax]

I think a ton of you will agree that the original Driver on PS1 had a GARBAGE tutorial that taught you nothing. I never played that game thanks to that legendary piece of piss.

 

[XMark]

It seems a lot of people who have played Dark Souls complain about things not being told to them in the tutorial, when in fact they were told during the tutorial. So maybe they should have made it so that the intro area forces you to use moves like running jumps to get to the next section, and more than once to make it stick.

 

[Scrustle]

In most modern games tutorials aren't a problem. They're done much better and games are generally more intuitive now anyway.

I'm currently playing Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, and I was expecting it to have an awful tutorial since I always hear about how those games never explain anything. But I haven't really had that problem at all. The internet has helped of course, but the game does seem to be explaining things more or less okay. It's very text-heavy and there's a lot to take in, but it does it at a very slow pace, so it doesn't feel like I'm being flooded in information that I can't understand.

I have played plenty games with bad tutorials though. Many bad RPGs are guilty of this. Explaining things way before you have the context to understand what it all means, and way before you'll even be able to, so you forget how to do it before you even get a chance to. Sometimes they use jargon for things they don't explain either.

E.Y.E did that too. It swamps you with information right at the start and expects you to build a character and choose all your skills before you even know what they do. The fact that the game is often in badly translated, broken English doesn't help either.

Probably the best tutorial levels of any game are from the God of War games. I only played the first, but I hear the others follow in a similar fashion of jumping right in to the action, but explaining things very clearly and in a very practical way, and ending with a huge impressive boss fight.

 

[RJ 17]

One thing that I'll say against Bioshock is the fact that every time you load in your game (at least this happened to me) it would always give me the same hints/tutorials I've already seen. "Use Possess on vending machines", "Aim down the sights with the right-stick button, return to regular aim by pressing it again", "You're low on salts, find some more" or "you're low on health, find a health kit"...stuff like that.

Granted, you can turn off ALL hints/tutorials, still, it was a minor nuisance.

 

[karma9308]

I know of two examples that actually tie in with your example OP: Europa Universalis 3 and Hearts of Iron 3. Both of these games are fantastic, I've owned EU3 for only a month (I'd like to take the time to take wombat for the gift of it!!) and I've logged close to 100 hours already. Since I loved EU3 so much, I bought Hearts of Iron 3 when Steam had it on sale for $6 two weeks ago. Already I've logged about 70 hours into it.

The problem with both games? The tutorial for both was just a bunch of "here's a button it does this, what does this mean? Figure it out!" I watched a let's play of both games to figure out how to play, and now that I have figured it out I love it! But if the tutorial was a bit more involved and had a bit more of a tutorial instead of mocking Hitler the entire time, I could have gotten into it sooner. Sadly, both games and Crusader Kings 2, are Paradox games. It seems to me it's a case of the designers not knowing what needs to be taught. Of course, they could have such a crap tutorial to encourage more people to figure it out for themselves or to help keep the game a niche title. Either way, the tutorials need improving.

 

[Pink Gregory]

Interestingly, I had no problems with the Endless Space tutorials.

Sure it wasn't exactly smoothly implemented, but I don't reckon the game's really all that complicated to learn with a bit of skim reading; really the most complicated part is understanding all the various faction traits, especially when it goes into percentages.

If they used that approach for a Paradox Grand Strategy game, however...

 

[Bad Jim]

The worst tutorial I can remember is the infamous archer tutorial in the original Shogun : Total War. It was supposed to demonstrate the effectiveness of high ground by having your archers raining down death on a group of spearmen as they slowly climbed toward you. But the spearmen would make it up the hill anyway and kill you all.

 

[hermes]

In general, fighting games have the worst tutorials of all genres. The only way to jump into a fighting game and be decent at it is if you played several other fighting games before and know the archetypes. Single player mode simply sends you down against AI controlled opponents, with no progression ramp; and tutorial modes are, for the most part, simply replacing opponents with punching bags and leaving you on your own.

Not to mention nothing in the offline could count as preparation for versus/online... I have beaten fighting games in the hardest difficulty without using continues, only to get my ass handed to me every single time I go online.

 

[CloudAtlas]

In most modern games tutorials aren't a problem. They're done much better and games are generally more intuitive now anyway.

That, or there are no dedicated tutorials anymore - and everything's explained more or less organically during the first minutes. Which is good. I hate tutorials.

 

[Maximum Bert]

In general, fighting games have the worst tutorials of all genres. The only way to jump into a fighting game and be decent at it is if you played several other fighting games before and know the archetypes. Single player mode simply sends you down against AI controlled opponents, with no progression ramp; and tutorial modes are, for the most part, simply replacing opponents with punching bags and leaving you on your own.

Not to mention nothing in the offline could count as preparation for versus/online... I have beaten fighting games in the hardest difficulty without using continues, only to get my ass handed to me every single time I go online.

Yes so much this some have had half decent ones such as Skullgirls and VF4 Evolution off the top of my head but most are absolutely dire going from move left move right next part punch and kick yes now you can push buttons hurray next do a special ok next simple combo ok next even harder combo but it dosent tell you that it only works if you link the moves not chain them and whats the difference between a link and a chain well thats a secret, ok next part do this complicated set of actions involving mini dashes between each move to stay in range and buffering of moves which have to be performed via the secret shortcut techniques in order for it to combo properly.

Yeah they are terrible most dont even teach fundamentals properly or at all, usually you are on your own these games seem for the most part to want to make themselves as inaccessible as possible which is a shame. I hear the witcher 2 has a bad tutorial but I dont know I havent got around to playing it yet but I will.

 

[Rickin10]

Assassin's Creed 3 was one long, bad tutorial.

 

[spartandude]

The Crusader Kings II tutorial isnt so much bad as it is actually broken. there are several points where it will disable buttons but wont proceed until you click on them... but they are disabled. Seriously its stupid and in such a complicated game it is terrible.