Do developers insult gamers intelligence

richymcdermott

Playing through assassin creed 3 and going through the tutorial mode i am noticing More and more that tutorials are so basic i believe that they are insulting our intelligence That we cant comprehend That moving forward means holding the analog stick forward.

I believe even a person who never picked up a controller before knows how to at least move forward.

There should be an option to skip the bull**** and just jump into the story mode

kippy

richymcdermott wrote: »

Playing through assassin creed 3 and going through the tutorial mode i am noticing More and more that tutorials are so basic i believe that they are insulting our intelligence That we cant comprehend That moving forward means holding the analog stick forward.

I believe even a person who never picked up a controller before knows how to at least move forward.

There should be an option to skip the bull**** and just jump into the story mode

Those tutorials are designed with the American audience in mind.


(there usually is an option to skip)

Retr0gamer

So called game designers need to play super metroid:



Collecting the morph ball in Super Metroid. You drop down from the top but you can't exit from the top. Your only way out is through the bottom but it's too small to get through and there's a weird block in the way.

Oh what's this? The morph ball I just collected can make me small enough to get through the gap but there's that block in the way. Oh I can lay mines to get rid of the block in morph ball mode.

Number of players that are stumped and can't figure out how to use the morph ball power up: 0

Number of patronising tutorials full of text used: 0

krudler

"Hold on while we calibrate your suit, ok look left, now right, now up now down"

*achievement unlocked*

Fuuuuuuuu....

johnny_ultimate

Assassins Creed is the extreme end of the scale. What, ten hours of tutorial before the game finally opens up? Plus you know scattered tutorials for newish mechanics even after that. It's more than a little ridiculous.

I do miss the old days of separate tutorials in games like Deus Ex (think Half-Life had them too). Introducing you through the basic mechanics in an entirely optional, enclosed and controlled environment, without intruding on the game itself. Other games are much more elegant, like the Super Metroid example above - introducing new mechanics within the game itself through visual cues and carefully funneling level design. Really most of the best tutorials are the ones you never notice because they're so natural. There's also the minimalist, non-text cues of something like Journey that teach without breaking the diegesis of the gameworld.

Overheal

kippy wrote: »

Those tutorials are designed with the American audience in mind.

Based on what.

"Hold on while we calibrate your suit, ok look left, now right, now up now down"

Ah, Halo. Go back and play that again: when they tell you to look up, point your stick down, when they tell you to look down, point your stick down. The tutorial man will get confused and tell you to try it again (or he simply asks you if you want inverted or normal look controls), but thats the whole point of that exercise.

SeantheMan

Valve made Portal - not tutorials really in the first one.
Was just a progression and culmination of everything you had learned, teaching at its best.
(although in contrast they did have you "look up / look down / press W to move forward" etc)

I was angry and disappointed with some of my friends who stopped playing halfway through or near the start because they "couldn't figure out" what to do.

Overheal wrote: »

Based on what.

On ingnorance and racism, in thinking all Americans are idiots I'd guess.
Whereas if you listen to the Adrian Kennedy phoneshow for 2 minutes you will find that Irish people are the intellectual superiors.

muppetkiller

I don't believe they do...assassin creed series is targeted at the lower intelligence level gamer anyway, Sure isn't it the same bloody game each year re-skinned with new ways to jump and climb up a wall

Retr0gamer

krudler wrote: »

"Hold on while we calibrate your suit, ok look left, now right, now up now down"

*achievement unlocked*

Fuuuuuuuu....

The sad thing is that when it was first used in Halo it was a brilliantly intuitive way to check if you liked your controls inverted or not. Now it's used to see if you know how to use a joystick.

krudler

SeantheMan wrote: »

Valve made Portal - not tutorials really in the first one.
Was just a progression and culmination of everything you had learned, teaching at its best.
(although in contrast they did have you "look up / look down / press W to move forward" etc)

I was angry and disappointed with some of my friends who stopped playing halfway through or near the start because they "couldn't figure out" what to do.



On ingnorance and racism, in thinking all Americans are idiots I'd guess.
Whereas if you listen to the Adrian Kennedy phoneshow for 2 minutes you will find that Irish people are the intellectual superiors.

Portal 2 at least takes the piss out of the tutorial though, "...you just jumped there, fair enough".

What annoys me is that they dumb down long established franchises. Now ok not everyone will have played say Halo 1-3 and might get Halo 4 for christmas, or be young or a new player, fair enough, but there should be a "I've played this series before and know what I'm doing" option on any sequels that follow the same basic controls and layout of previous titles, some games do I think MGS has a "I've played this series before" or something when you start.

papajimsmooth

Its a consequence of making sequels. The more they make the wider the target audience becomes until your aiming at 3 year olds who need these tutorials

gizmo

Aye, Nintendo really did nail this back in the day. I've linked this before but in case anyone missed it, here's another example from the original Mario Bros.

Nowadays though you have vastly different types of people playing video games so I can see the need to offer a larger variety of tutorials. Separating them out from the main game in order to avoid frustrating veterans of a series is something which should most certainly be done though.

penev10

This sums up tutorials pretty well:
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/tutorials-101

Penn

krudler wrote: »

Portal 2 at least takes the piss out of the tutorial though, "...you just jumped there, fair enough".

I did laugh at Claptrap in the beginning of Borderlands 2:

"Well done! Your ability to walk short distances without dying will be Handsome Jack's Downfall!"

B.A._Baracus

I'd say there is an unofficial side to these tutorials.
Take Call of Duty, its not meant to be played by a 12 year old. But it does be and they know that.

CastorTroy

krudler wrote: »

Portal 2 at least takes the piss out of the tutorial though, "...you just jumped there, fair enough".

Yeah laughed at the remarks in that.
Prompt on screen: Press space to talk
*Press Space*
Shel jumps
Wheatly:"Okay I think you may be a bit brain damaged" or something along those lines.


Or just do what Nintendo did with Mario Galaxy 2 and include a tutorial dvd.

krudler

CastorTroy wrote: »

Yeah laughed at the remarks in that.
Prompt on screen: Press space to talk
*Press Space*
Shel jumps
Wheatly:"Okay I think you may be a bit brain damaged" or something along those lines.


Or just do what Nintendo did with Mario Galaxy 2 and include a tutorial dvd.

or do what New Super Mario Bros did and the game will just play itself :pac:

Long time gamers will know well how the basic mechanics of stuff works, there's only so many control types you can have after all. Back in the old days you were lumped into the game and unless you read the manual, tough, you're gonna get battered.

ShadowHearth

This comes in to my mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM

YEAH!!! I GET IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Overheal

IKR?! That was the best 20 minute rant I've ever sat down for, at least 5 separate times.

Grimebox

kippy wrote: »

Those tutorials are designed with the American audience in mind.


(there usually is an option to skip)

Ridiculous. Get off high horse etc.


Indy Game The Movie has some parts where the creators of Super Meat Boy teach the players how the game works without ever teaching them in a literal sense.

ShadowHearth

Overheal wrote: »

IKR?! That was the best 20 minute rant I've ever sat down for, at least 5 separate times.

he did a lot of very funny videos and he did made Metal gear awesome, but he is VERY good when it comes to stuff like this. i just would love him to do more Sequalities content.

NotorietyH

To paraphrase what Stan Lee says about comics, "Every game is someone's first game," Some tutorials are a bit excessive, but they're designed for people who it's their first time picking up a controller.

You might say ah but it's Assassin's Creed 3, who'd buy the third game in a series without playing the others? Not many, but a few people would. I know of a couple. The first Assassin's Creed game my nephew played was Brotherhood.

Grimebox

NotorietyH wrote: »

To paraphrase what Stan Lee says about comics, "Every game is someone's first game," Some tutorials are a bit excessive, but they're designed for people who it's their first time picking up a controller.

You might say ah but it's Assassin's Creed 3, who'd buy the third game in a series without playing the others? Not many, but a few people would. I know of a couple. The first Assassin's Creed game my nephew played was Brotherhood.

Half the fun of most games is figuring out what is going on. Maybe its a flaw in my character, but I get completely bored with something as soon as there isn't anything new to learn. Throw me in the deep end every time

K.O.Kiki

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (arcade) had a brilliant nugget.

512 Special and 512 Guard

Apparently the designers of Street Fighter II wanted to expose players to the fighters' special moves as a way to entice newcomers into digging deeper and mastering complex controls. To this end, they programmed a 1-in-512 possibility of standard button presses converting instantly into special moves. Of course, if character isn't in a position to attack, the input is ignored as usual. Furthermore, normal moves can not be interrupted in this manner, so mashing rapid-fire weak attacks won't work. Oddly enough, there's also a 1-in-512 chance of blocking an oncoming attack, even without holding any defensive direction. Both 1/512 idiosyncrasies are exclusive to WW, having been eliminated by CE.

(via SonicHurricane.com)

ancapailldorcha

Final Fantasy XIII is a particularly horrific offender that springs to mind. Final Fantasy VII did a great job by setting up 2 tutorial rooms that you could visit if you wanted to.

dreamers75

I want to play Mega man X again.

If thats what this is about it worked.

ED E

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

I'd say there is an unofficial side to these tutorials.
Take Call of Duty, its not meant to be played by a 12 year old. But it does be and they know that.

Nah, its designed for 12 year olds.

Grimebox

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

I'd say there is an unofficial side to these tutorials.
Take Call of Duty, its not meant to be played by a 12 year old. But it does be and they know that.

Retr0gamer

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Final Fantasy VII did a great job by setting up 2 tutorial rooms that you could visit if you wanted to.

Yeah, they did such a wonderful job that I missed both the first time I played through the game and beat it the first time without even realising I could equip accessories. Thankfully the game was easy.

Canis Lupus

Mortal Kombat games where the special moves were hidden. Half the fun when new was figuring out a new move the other person didn't know about. Great fun.

Retr0gamer

Canis Lupus wrote: »

Mortal Kombat games where the special moves were hidden. Half the fun when new was figuring out a new move the other person didn't know about. Great fun.

Pro-tip: Unless it was fatalities, they were all in the manual.

snausages

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

Final Fantasy XIII is a particularly horrific offender that springs to mind. Final Fantasy VII did a great job by setting up 2 tutorial rooms that you could visit if you wanted to.

And then FFVIII came along with one of the most atrocious, inelegant tutorial systems ever made. Yes, even worse than FFXIII (okay, not really. But you get my point).

Anyway, I think it's absurd that games like Assassin's Creed Brotherhood need child-friendly tutorials. They're adult games ffs!

NotorietyH

snausages wrote: »

Anyway, I think it's absurd that games like Assassin's Creed Brotherhood need child-friendly tutorials. They're adult games ffs!

Plenty of adults have never played a console game too. It's nothing to do with age, it's experience of playing games. I have a friend who's around 27 who hadn't played video games since the PS1 days and I was trying to get him to play portal and it took him ages to get used to looking around with the right analogue stick, learning how much pressure to apply and all that, most of the time he would swing wildly in every direction and found it impossible to centre the view for ages, he won't even go near a faster paced game or something like Assassin's Creed at the moment, so he'd very much need the tutorial. Again you're looking at it from the point of view of someone who's played a lot of video games from a young age and maybe all your friends have too, which is fine for you to not like the tutorials, but to say they're not needed is the wrong assumption and missing the point of the tutorials I think.

snausages

NotorietyH wrote: »

Plenty of adults have never played a console game too. It's nothing to do with age, it's experience of playing games. I have a friend who's around 27 who hadn't played video games since the PS1 days and I was trying to get him to play portal and it took him ages to get used to looking around with the right analogue stick, learning how much pressure to apply and all that, most of the time he would swing wildly in every direction and found it impossible to centre the view for ages, he won't even go near a faster paced game or something like Assassin's Creed at the moment, so he'd very much need the tutorial. Again you're looking at it from the point of view of someone who's played a lot of video games from a young age and maybe all your friends have too, which is fine for you to not like the tutorials, but to say they're not needed is the wrong assumption and missing the point of the tutorials I think.

Fair enough, but I never said that tutorials were not needed. I'm just annoyed that a great part of games these days is taken up with explaining the most basic of things that can more easily be taught outside of the main game. There are more graceful ways to introduce players to the game's mechanics than 10 hour long introductions. Portal introduced new elements in every test chamber, the tutorial segment and the game itself were seamlessly merged together. Deus Ex put all its tutorial stuff in a separate option on the start-up menu. If you had to go through the practice mode every time you started up a new game it would be a pain. It just would be nice to have an option to skip most of this stuff

The abundance of context sensitive cues on HUDs annoys me as well. To it's credit AC usually lets you disable all of them. Other games don't though.

ancapailldorcha

snausages wrote: »

And then FFVIII came along with one of the most atrocious, inelegant tutorial systems ever made. Yes, even worse than FFXIII (okay, not really. But you get my point).

Anyway, I think it's absurd that games like Assassin's Creed Brotherhood need child-friendly tutorials. They're adult games ffs!

Never had a problem with FFVIII's myself. The junction system needed explaining and all the tutorials were both skippable and accessible at any time in the game's menu.

Canis Lupus

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Pro-tip: Unless it was fatalities, they were all in the manual.

I distinctly remember either 2 or 3 did not include special moves.

Edit: just looked at a manual. Only included 2 special moves a character. Left others to be discovered.

Grimebox

Considering you are reading and discussing this on a games forum on the internet, absolutely zero percent of us are the target audience for these tutorials

Agricola

Its just a case of being accessible to the widest audience. The more "noobs" that can pick up a game and be able to play it, the better it is for the dev/publisher.

Im not too bothered about it. A good game is one thats easy to pick up but difficult to master. If a game has a dopey tutorial that doesnt last too long, I dont mind as long as it eventually goes on to become something that is interesting and requires a bit of skill to complete.

NotorietyH

snausages wrote: »

Deus Ex put all its tutorial stuff in a separate option on the start-up menu. If you had to go through the practice mode every time you started up a new game it would be a pain. It just would be nice to have an option to skip most of this stuff

The abundance of context sensitive cues on HUDs annoys me as well. To it's credit AC usually lets you disable all of them. Other games don't though.

Yeah I'd be all for a skippable tutorial, would be the best of both worlds. Assassin's Creed 3's tutorial does seem excessively long, the trouble with them is they usually try to tie in the story into the tutorial too so it stops them making them skippable. Even having it as an option for a second playthrough would be something.

CastorTroy

I suppose it's as frustrating to gamers as the movie industry is to movie fans these days by insisting on PG rated sequels to 18 rated movies but I'll mention no Die Hards.

CruelCoin

richymcdermott wrote: »

Playing through assassin creed 3 and going through the tutorial mode i am noticing More and more that tutorials are so basic i believe that they are insulting our intelligence That we cant comprehend That moving forward means holding the analog stick forward.

I believe even a person who never picked up a controller before knows how to at least move forward.

There should be an option to skip the bull**** and just jump into the story mode

Games like the Call of Duty series are insulting. Mindless rollercoaster visual overload, where graphics is meant to replace genuine story and meaningfull choice.

gizmo

CruelCoin wrote: »

Games like the Call of Duty series are insulting. Mindless rollercoaster visual overload, where graphics is meant to replace genuine story and meaningfull choice.

Insulting to who?

ancapailldorcha

CruelCoin wrote: »

Games like the Call of Duty series are insulting. Mindless rollercoaster visual overload, where graphics is meant to replace genuine story and meaningfull choice.

If that's what people want. I hope you don't buy them.

CruelCoin

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

If that's what people want. I hope you don't buy them.

Its no better than sitting on your couch dribbling in front of the tv, and some mind-numbing ****ing game show.

I do buy them, but only for the multiplayer which up untill the black ops series was quite good.

gizmo

CruelCoin wrote: »

Its no better than sitting on your couch dribbling in front of the tv, and some mind-numbing ****ing game show.

I do buy them, but only for the multiplayer which up untill the black ops series was quite good.

And what about the people who would have referred to the multiplayer in the post-MW CoD games in a similar manner to which you've described above?

Grimebox

gizmo wrote: »

And what about the people who would have referred to the multiplayer in the post-MW CoD games in a similar manner to which you've described above?

I'd call them snobs

Overheal

Halo games don't give you meaningful choices either, and they recycled some of their levels quite a lot.

Still considered one of the best console series of all time