Suggestion to devs for early game
Invisigoth247
USA Join Date: 2016-03-06 Member: 213934Members
USA Join Date: 2016-03-06 Member: 213934Members
I often watch people stream this game to help them out if they have questions. One thing I noticed is I have seen multiple players not know what to do with the fragments. They often think you are supposed to find a way to open them. I have told multiple people that they need to scan them with the scanner and they are all like "oh!". One guy even said he was swimming around for hours and didn't know that that was what the scanner was for.
Also, I have noticed that people don't know that you are supposed to break rock chunks to look for ore and other materials and also that different biomes have different materials. Many players may not be used to survival / crafting games and would not know to look for those things.
I know this is been lightly addressed in the early game with the little pop ups by limestone that say "break this", but I watched one guy stream the game and he didn't even notice it.
Maybe instead of the current visual indicators, have a small window pop up with a brief message saying something like "Find and break rock chunks to reveal materials" and have an arrow or line point to the limestone and highlight the chunk with a color. The player would have to click out of the pop up box in order for it to go away and have it only pop up on initial finding of the chunk. Something similar could be done for fragments, creepvine, etc.
Maybe the same could even be done when finding a new biome after the safe shallows such as the creepvine forest. Have a pop up box that says something like "explore new biomes to discover new materials" .
I think some kind of system like this would greatly improve the player initially and allow them to get a quick understanding of how the game works and speed up progression initially so they don't swim around for hours not knowing what they are supposed to be doing.
Also, I have noticed that people don't know that you are supposed to break rock chunks to look for ore and other materials and also that different biomes have different materials. Many players may not be used to survival / crafting games and would not know to look for those things.
I know this is been lightly addressed in the early game with the little pop ups by limestone that say "break this", but I watched one guy stream the game and he didn't even notice it.
Maybe instead of the current visual indicators, have a small window pop up with a brief message saying something like "Find and break rock chunks to reveal materials" and have an arrow or line point to the limestone and highlight the chunk with a color. The player would have to click out of the pop up box in order for it to go away and have it only pop up on initial finding of the chunk. Something similar could be done for fragments, creepvine, etc.
Maybe the same could even be done when finding a new biome after the safe shallows such as the creepvine forest. Have a pop up box that says something like "explore new biomes to discover new materials" .
I think some kind of system like this would greatly improve the player initially and allow them to get a quick understanding of how the game works and speed up progression initially so they don't swim around for hours not knowing what they are supposed to be doing.
Comments
Don't rob people of the wonderful experience of discovery.
What you're suggesting is everything that's wrong with games these days. Players want everything given to them without trying to figure it out themselves. If you implement such a tutorial system of immersion breaking pop-ups it should only be after quite some time, after the game has given you ample opportunity to figure it out on your own.
I don't believe for a second that anybody has not realised basically immediately that you are supposed to break nodes to get resources or understand pretty quickly after looking at the crafting menus that you need a scanner to, you know, scan stuff. I refuse to believe anybody is so inept, even if they've never played a similar game before.
And frankly if you can't work out such simple things you should probably turn your PC off before you try to put bread in the disk drive in an attempt to make toast.
Go on Twitch and watch people stream. You'd be amazed.
i often watch Streams as well, on steam. Yes, it takes new players some time to figure out basic behaviors sometimes but thats what you get for ''diving in'' (
We are in a gaming era that place at your disposal a few tools for you if you find yourself blocked in a game, Like Youtube ''lets plays'' and the likes , Wikis, reddits and so on...
Im of the ones that think that when you start a blind playthru in a game, you dont want to be hold by the hand for everything.
Once you try things and fail a few times, you get a feel for what you should be doing and what you shouldn't be doing.
For instance, when I first played Subnautica for the very first time, I figured you had to kill Stalkers to get their teeth. It would make sense right? Kill the fish, take their teeth. So I went all Monster Hunter on them and killed a few, and.... Well, it was a waste of time and energy and I almost got myself killed for absolutely nothing. I learned something that day, and haven't intentionally killed a stalker since (Sand Sharks and Biters, are another matter though). It wasn't until I observed the stalkers playing with the scrap metal that I discovered that they actually shed their teeth. I had to find that out myself, without the game directing me to that and telling me how to best play the game.
Ultimately, I feel the current 'tutorial' is mostly fine. It could be clarified a bit more, but it really shouldn't be directing you every step of the way either.
I agree with you but consider this for new players. Tools like lets plays and wikis are fine and an excellent source of information but some people also may not know about them or think that if they have to look up how to do something the game is too hard or boring.
I personally don't like my hand held either but some people may. I think just a few little hints like I suggested would be enough. Once I have told people about the resources and the scanner they are just fine after that, they begin the search for more fragments and new materials on their own at that point.
For those that do not want any help at all, there could be a check box when you start new game with the ability to turn hints on or off.
A checkbox would be great. For experienced players, I'm sure they wouldn't want to have the game flashing tutorial messages every time they start a new game, or for those who just want to go in completely blind on their first game.
I could agree that maybe better hints could be beneficial for new players. When they introduced the Farming update for instance, it wasnt very clear that you gather plant seeds by using the knife on the plants instead of picking them up so thats one mechanic that could be clarified
On the Limestones/sandstones deposit the message could be changed to something like: ''Break Limestone to gather ore'' instead of just ''Break Limestone'' .... some subtle things like that i will surely agree on
On the full on ''tutorial'' however, which would surely make the game easier/less confusing for new players, id sure hope they would allow us to disable a said tutorial if wished tho
I agree with you that people "should" be smart enough to figure all those things out by themself. But there are far too many who don't get it and get frustrated rather fast...a testament to our fast paced lives today I guess. Heads full of other stuff not enough concentration and so on.
Not to forget the fact that most games nowadays have a decent tutorial which explains at least all the basics, so you don't have to figure out anything. But normaly you could turn those off if you like to figure stuff out for yourself.
But since there are people who do things like:
Try to dry their pets in a microwave oven.
A guy that folded aluminium foil round his "wee wee" with two little pointy tips just to insert it into a wall socket.
Another guy that thought it was a good idea to stop a fast running ceiling fan with his unprotected head.
Or the famous story about the lady that accidently poured steaming hot coffee in her lap wondering why it burned her skin badly. That's where the "Contents are hot" label comes from afaik.
There are many more stories of incredible stupid behavior...we always have to compensate for the 1% of humankind (Percentage was just guessed by me could be lower or higher I don't know) that just is really stupid. That is why we have speed limits and we have/need so many laws permitting stuff, because there are always some who are too stupid to act with some "common sense" and those few ruined it for the rest of us.
Off topic here, but please, PLEASE let's stop spreading untrue/unfair versions of this story. Here's the link to some facts.
Of course I understand what you're saying, but we're talking about video games... not something life threatening like speeding.
The fools will always be fools unless we teach them otherwise, and the best way to teach anybody anything is from experience.
That is for me also true for a good tutorial and a bad tutorial. A good one manages to capture the players attention and shows him the game mechanics that are needed to have fun in an intuitive not too brash way. A bad one tries the same but just does not manage to teach a new player the needed mechanics.
Sure we could always tell a new player to look up the Wiki or watch some videos/lets plays to find out how it works. But I think that is not the way a game should work. It's like learning to drive. You do it yourself but you get hints along the way from your teacher/parents to guide you till you got the basics right. You still will learn everytime you drive even after you got your license but your basic skills where earned with help.
SN has a decent tutorial that just needs a few tweaks here and there to become a good tutorial. Just add the option to disable it and you are good to go if you don't want to get hints or are already a veteran survivor who knows his way around the depths.
We're not talking about something potentially dangerous like driving or having to learn to be a doctor before, you know, chopping people up to cure them.
We're talking about playing a game. And a survival game at that. Tutorials are fine in certain genres, but not this one.
I am biased, I come from the older generation who started playing games before tutorials became so pervasive and annoying. I come from a group of people who are fed up with everything being spoon fed to us and can't understand why people don't seem to enjoy discovering things for themselves.
You can justify both sides of the argument, at the end of the day, and frankly if there's just an option to turn off tutorials altogether it's a great start and something that more games need.
But really, I don't care enough about the issue to give a damn beyond this.
It's when pointless stuff starts to take developer time up that I take issue. And in my opinion, this game already has too much tutorial.
"Here, try to survive in this brutal, beautiful world we've created.
But first allow us to tell you everything you need to know because God forbid you actually have to think for yourself."
I am not as much as I am for a bigger tutorial, but more for a guide (optional ofcourse!)
Some people don't like searching through all the information available, so that's fine.
So you swim around, gathering some resources, eating fish (I feel like this is stuff you can easily discover yourself), but how the hell do you advance?
You notice the stuff you can do is just too few - you must be missing 'recipes'
You swim for hours to find stuff - Hey you find a fragment! cool. Let's look at it.. hmm nope, okay let's interact with it. What? You can't?
Why can't I bring them to home (because I've heard of a thing called a scanner!)?
This isn't darksouls - and that feeling is frustrating to a group of people. They still don't know the sea yet, so they'll again have to spent 20-30 minutes to find where it was, after getting a fragment.. after noticing you can't bring something literally 10 times as small as scrap.
I am all for not explaining the entire game, it shouldn't teach you what everything is and what everything does. It should teach you what you should know as someone on a big ship. What your equipment is etc. And explain basic stuff that;s counterintuitive (like having a scanner on you at all times, because you cant bring pocketsized stuff home)
Isn't that all literally "press button to collect"? I don't think we need more instructions for that. If I remember correctly your PDA even informs you about what those things are good. On the mushrooms I think it really says that you can use them to make batteries, or was that just in the encyclopedia?
I think the only thing we might need is one message from your PDA in the beginning that your blueprints were corrupted and you need to scan damaged tech and the environment to reconstruct those blueprints.
But I remember also that those old games had large manuals some even 100+ pages thick and it was not funny reading through them to learn how to play. One game in particular I remember that was so complex back then, that you needed to read through the manual and remember it to actually be able to play the game sucessfully. The game was "M1 tank platoon". You could not win a match if you did not read the manual carefully.
Nowadays they use the technology to teach you to play ingame, which imo is way more fun then just reading a manual. But hey I am not trying to convince you that todays way is the only way. I just like to remind you that not everything back in the day was good when it comes to gaming.
My favourite manual was for Cutthroats, it had lots of piratical facts in the back, really helped to trigger my love of history.
And some of us didn't bother to read them anyway. It's not like Cannon Fodder or Monkey Island needed you to read anything.
And neither does Dwarf Fortress or Paradox games, though it certainly helps.
I don't know, I guess this simply comes down to personal preference. There's not really a correct or "right" answer.
As long as we're not forced into tutorials and being treated condescendingly, then it's fine with me.
Because it's only when my intelligence feels insulted that I get upset with tutorials. That's the nucleus of the problem.