Expanding on NS2s need for a tutorial... or not
stickyboot
Join Date: 2004-01-29 Member: 25711Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2004-01-29 Member: 25711Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Is "NS2 is hard to learn" valid criticism?</div>It seems like one of the most common complaints against NS2 since its release, especially among reviewers, is that NS2 contains a lot of things to learn about, and that it lacks a tutorial to teach you about it all. I'm sure as a fairly experienced NS1 veteran, and alpha/beta participant, my views are a tad jaded, which is why I wanted to start a discussion about this with the community.
I disagree with the implications of the general statement “NS2 contains a lot of things to learn about, and that it lacks a tutorial to teach you about it allâ€.
NS2 does contain a lot of “things†to lean about. It's combining two very distinct types of play, into a unified experience (and happens to do so quite well if I do says so myself.) There is nothing wrong with this inherently, as this can provide a lot of depth to the game. This in and of itself, cannot be criticized as flawed game design. Some people may not be interested in a game with this many mechanics, but they can't use this as an argument against the game to claim its a un-justifiable flaw.
The reason it would not be valid to make the claim that complexity is a flaw of NS2 is that, fundamentally, NS2 is a simple game. Marines, shoot the aliens, kill the hive. Aliens, run around the map like crazy, bite the marines, and destroy their com station. Thats LITERALLY, all you need to focus on as a new player. Understanding how buffs and items stack isn't a necessity (DOTA anyone?). Full understanding of a tech tree isn't necessary. Hell, you don't even need to know your way around. You have a map. You don't even need to know the map, and if you don't know about that yet, just follow your team mates around. They will help you (more on that). Fundamentally, the game is simple, allowing you to learn as you go, and provides fun mechanics you can jump in on imediately. The only assumption is that the person is slightly familiar navigating a 3D environment, and is able to think about their abilities (attack range, run speed, size) in relation to that environment and its dangers in order to get better.
But what about the complexity that IS there you ask? This is where your team comes in. In order to succeed in NS2, the commander needs to cooperate with the troops, and the troops with the commander, as well as each other. Any other form of team relationship and organization is rapidly punished, as, you cant really do much by yourself, and yelling at others how much they suck at being a noob, just makes your team worse. You don't succeed unless you cooperate. This instills a VALUE system upon the players. It is within YOUR interest, that your team mates know what the ###### is up. So what happens? Team mates tell you what they need from you, and, in turn, you learn about the complexities of the game. When you are doing something silly, your team mates complain (Commander, do we REALLY need that 3rd sentry battery? I dont have weapons 1 yet!) The genius of this design is subtle, and rarely seen in other games. Your teammates are your best tutorial.
I have a theory, that if NS2 shipped a tutorial mode, that this criticism would have been left out of many reviews. But what would the value of such a scripted tutorial bring to the table? What if the tutorial unloaded every ability, stat and subtlety the game has to offer? The new player would slog through it, get bored, and probably sodder of too intimidated to play. Or ignore it and just play like everyone is doing now.
What do you think about this?
Tldr; The best tutorial is provided by interacting with your team mates, asking questions, and starting with mastering the basic mechanics of gameplay (movement and aiming), which most people should be able to do without being told to do so. A scripted tutorial would help fend of this common yet flawed criticism seen in early reviews, yet provide little value to players and waste valuable developer time. NS2's awesome game design requires players to interact and work with each other, thus providing a novel and infinitely more effective way of teaching the game to new players.
I disagree with the implications of the general statement “NS2 contains a lot of things to learn about, and that it lacks a tutorial to teach you about it allâ€.
NS2 does contain a lot of “things†to lean about. It's combining two very distinct types of play, into a unified experience (and happens to do so quite well if I do says so myself.) There is nothing wrong with this inherently, as this can provide a lot of depth to the game. This in and of itself, cannot be criticized as flawed game design. Some people may not be interested in a game with this many mechanics, but they can't use this as an argument against the game to claim its a un-justifiable flaw.
The reason it would not be valid to make the claim that complexity is a flaw of NS2 is that, fundamentally, NS2 is a simple game. Marines, shoot the aliens, kill the hive. Aliens, run around the map like crazy, bite the marines, and destroy their com station. Thats LITERALLY, all you need to focus on as a new player. Understanding how buffs and items stack isn't a necessity (DOTA anyone?). Full understanding of a tech tree isn't necessary. Hell, you don't even need to know your way around. You have a map. You don't even need to know the map, and if you don't know about that yet, just follow your team mates around. They will help you (more on that). Fundamentally, the game is simple, allowing you to learn as you go, and provides fun mechanics you can jump in on imediately. The only assumption is that the person is slightly familiar navigating a 3D environment, and is able to think about their abilities (attack range, run speed, size) in relation to that environment and its dangers in order to get better.
But what about the complexity that IS there you ask? This is where your team comes in. In order to succeed in NS2, the commander needs to cooperate with the troops, and the troops with the commander, as well as each other. Any other form of team relationship and organization is rapidly punished, as, you cant really do much by yourself, and yelling at others how much they suck at being a noob, just makes your team worse. You don't succeed unless you cooperate. This instills a VALUE system upon the players. It is within YOUR interest, that your team mates know what the ###### is up. So what happens? Team mates tell you what they need from you, and, in turn, you learn about the complexities of the game. When you are doing something silly, your team mates complain (Commander, do we REALLY need that 3rd sentry battery? I dont have weapons 1 yet!) The genius of this design is subtle, and rarely seen in other games. Your teammates are your best tutorial.
I have a theory, that if NS2 shipped a tutorial mode, that this criticism would have been left out of many reviews. But what would the value of such a scripted tutorial bring to the table? What if the tutorial unloaded every ability, stat and subtlety the game has to offer? The new player would slog through it, get bored, and probably sodder of too intimidated to play. Or ignore it and just play like everyone is doing now.
What do you think about this?
Tldr; The best tutorial is provided by interacting with your team mates, asking questions, and starting with mastering the basic mechanics of gameplay (movement and aiming), which most people should be able to do without being told to do so. A scripted tutorial would help fend of this common yet flawed criticism seen in early reviews, yet provide little value to players and waste valuable developer time. NS2's awesome game design requires players to interact and work with each other, thus providing a novel and infinitely more effective way of teaching the game to new players.
Comments
Any easier and the game would play itself.
I guess with all the ###### modern military shooters with 1 corridor map design and 50 cutscenes and scripted events every level, some "modern day" FPS gamers and reviewers expect just that.
Playing comm might be hard, playing aliens can be a bit tricky, but marines? Just no.
Besides, there is already the Green check-mark system that works just as well as a tutorial. All you need to do is experiment, listen to your teammates, and have an intelligence level higher than your shoe size.
Even playing Commander can be fine to pick up and learn, especially if you've already played Starcraft or other RTS. You just gotta apply what you learned as a footsoldier to the command chair, and learn from other commanders' example.
Creating a tutorial would be a waste of UWE's time. A person who can't figure this game out from the get-go probably isn't going to stick around even with a tutorial.
Other things, like learning movement and targeting strategies is difficult, there's definite skill there, but I don't think there needs to be an in game tutorial for it, that's the kind of thing that is better researched externally. For many players it's fun to figure that stuff out organically.
The mechanical skills of commanding on the other hand. How to drop structures, what order to drop structures (loosely) and how to med marines what not, those should DEFINITELY have an in game tutorial.
The final category of things, skills like wall jumping, lerk flight, fade blink... I kind of feel they're unique and unintuitive enough that there should be an ingame tutorial for getting people started on those things. However, the advanced techniques cannot be taught over video. Obviously they will require a lot of practice, and that's ok.
So yes, NS2 is a game that rewards skill heavily and punishes inadequacy greatly. Some of this can be fixed with tutorial, other stuff just requires practice. Anyone claiming NS2 is an easy game to learn however isn't quite all together. I can take quite a bit of time and effort before you start feeling like you're really pulling your weight on your team. It's not senselessly unintuitive and impenetrable like DayZ or DwarfFortress is however.
I've played for only 35 hours total now, and I picked this game up faster than League of Legends. Way faster. In LoL, it took me almost 300 games (that's on avg. 150 hours) to fully understand how the game was meant to be played.
However, an in-game tutorial, sort of like step-by-step missions, on how to play this game, would probably immensely help newcomers. Aswell as make it more fun to learn the game rather than watching videos after video.