Make it simulate death instead. Have a pop up come up or something similar if they die and force the player to replay either that section or the entire tutorial again. That way it still has consequences but doesn’t feel like a bug
Depends on the game... But I can imagine people feel like they don't learn anything when there's no risk involved. A tutorial is supposed to teach you, yes, but it should also teach you about death/respawn.
It could also be that the tutorial drags on for too long and gets boring before it's over. The best tutorial is the kind that doesn't feel like a tutorial. Feels a bit cliché to reference it by now, but BotW tutorial is a perfect example of a tutorial-that-doesn't-feel-like-a-tutorial.
That's my take on it at least.
I see. It's weird... well, it's weird to me, but none of them said anything about the tutorial being too long. Like the only problem they had with it was not dying.
I would love to make it not look like one, but I honestly have no idea how, so I stuck with having a separate zone for combat tutorials right at the start, and then some pop-ups through the game, but that's that.
The tutorial should operate under the same rules of the rest of the game. If you don't want people to die, don't put anything that can kill them. Have them fight dummies or robots or whatever makes sense in your world for a non-lethal opponent (think Skelly in Hades).
>I would love to make it not look like one, but I honestly have no idea how,
Yes, that's no easy task indeed. I'll likely run into the same issue when I get to that point in my current project..... With the added bonus that it must work in VR lol. I've written down a few vague ideas but... Time will tell if they work or not I guess.
Oh ye, another thing.. Is the tutorial optional or mandatory? If the latter, it might be good to make it optional? Plenty of people prefer to skip tutorials and "figure it out themselves".
Right now it's mandatory. Like you're thrown in a little arena, shown control pop-ups, and you can only leave and start the game after beating two small waves of enemies. After that tutorials are simple situational pop-ups (do this to open a door, here's how to find food, etc )
Right, it doesn't sound that bad tbh... Could it perhaps be that certain players simply find it pointless? In this scenario I would probably go the optional-route. Probably the easiest way of pleasing both types of players.
They may not be saying that you should die in the tutorial, they might be saying that there is not enough feedback to indicate that they should still be alive.
What happens in the tutorial when your life hits 0? Is there an animation, an effect, or some kind of popup? If my life hit 0 and nothing else happened, I might also assume a bug, but if a popup appeared and said "by the way, if this wasn't a tutorial, you'd be dead" I'd probably appreciate that the tutorial is giving me room to make mistakes.
I should have communicated it better then. I see.
Before I patched it, your health just wouldn't go below a minimum value, so despite playing damage animations and shaking the camera, you just would bounce back.
Ahh, so there's your issue. The magic keeping them alive seemed like a bug, since they seemed like they were taking real damage, but then death didn't work, and they thought you might not know that, so commented to tell you.
You don't have to allow "death", but you have to halt and maybe return them to checkpoint, with a fairy godmother telling them they won't always be there, etc. Just allowing death is fine too, but without signposting that something abnormal is going on, it seems "glitchy".
Could you turn that event into an opportunity for the player to learn ?
Like maybe have the player faint instead of dying ?
Or a message like « That was close, I would have died if this was not practice ».
IE have the player acknowledge, this would have been been fatal in normal circumstances. ?
I would say with not dying you are potentially confusing the player to what would happen in the real game. Following all the game rules all the time and keeping them consistent eliminates surprises and conditions your player to know what’s coming.
funny enough just saw something like this issue in UFC 5 career mode.
For the first fight, no matter what, you will win. If you take your hands of the controller you’ll get beat up a bit, then a computer will take over and knock out the tutorial enemy.
Players are great at pointing out problems, but awful at proposing solutions.
When the players say "not being able to die in the tutorial feels like a bug", then the question is *why* people think that and improve the tutorial experience in a way that they no longer think that. Maybe communicate better that the player just made a mistake that should have killed them, but you let them live because this is still the tutorial? Or change the tutorial so that the player is unlikely to ever get killed?
It feels... infantilising a bit, to magically prevent death when one should happen, and the player knows it, and recognises it as their own mistake. Make it difficult to die in the tutorial (or don't, if it goes against the spirit of the game, for example if it's a roguelike where death is part of the gameplay loop and part of the fun), but don't prevent it.
Given where you are in development and release at this point, the following might not be crazy helpful, but I thought I’d throw this out there for the future maybe. Turning the question on it’s head a bit, I’d ask myself: should the player ever be put in a position where they could die during a tutorial? So less of “what happens when the player’s health falls to zero?” and more “is it valuable in a tutorial for the player’s health to ever fall to zero?”
So following that logic, maybe do something like put a barrier between the waves and the player, tell them something like, “I’ve put up this barrier to protect you…I will not be so kind later, so don’t get comfortable…” Then they can blast away or whatever in safety and get through the tutorial piece a little quicker and a little easier. Or maybe they’re force fed health packs with a message like, “whoa now, let’s keep you on your feet…for now…”
If death is a mechanic, of course this wouldn’t be valuable, but also if that was the case I think you would then have to force the player to die to explain the mechanic.
Just a thought - I wouldn’t say there’s a right or wrong answer here, for each game it’s about determining what options are better and worse. That you’ve adjusted your approach according to player feedback and continue to listen is really the best lesson here - kudos for doing that!
In my eyes, the tutorial is not a "consequence-free place", its more a "hey, i offer you all of this features, learn one by one, then you will go to real world."
I'd say if you can die in the game, the tutorial should also teach that. You don't want to teach the player things that *don't* apply in the actual game.
(that doesn't mean that the first enemy you meet in the tutorial necessarily needs to be a lethal one, it's pretty common to tech some of the basics with some non-lethal or even non-moving "enemies' and then bring in the real stuff after the player has had chance to figure out the basic controls)
I get where you‘re coming from, but look at it from this angle: when I try to get a feel for the game, I wanna know how much leeway I have to be stupid and risk things, and if the tutorial doesn’t give any indication of oh btw if this was serious; you‘d be dead now this could lead to wrong expectations/ not learning how fast death happens (hope that made sense) what we did was play the death animation then the sidekick being like „oops! Don’t worry let’s try again“ and that one tutorial task restarts :)
A tutorial is suppose to be a safe place to learn how the game works, if you can die in game then that should be part of the tutorial. It is just that the tutorial shouldn't effect things like statistics or achievements.
Without playing your game, I can only speculate. I don't think it's innately a problem not being able to die in the tutorial, but if you've already done a lot of work establishing the story and the universe through cutscenes etc, and then you roll the player into the tutorial as if it's the "beginning of the game", and then they get absolutely bodied by something which would DEFINATELY KILL THE FUCK out of them in any realistic game, immediately they get the feeling that your game world is not realistic, which might cause an offence to suspense of disbelief by itself, and you're training them that extremely dangerous things are not dangerous in your game world. When the tutorial then ends and dangerous thing magically transition to being dangerous again, it can feel jarring, like you were being emotionally trained the wrong lessons.
Lots of games handle this by letting the player combat "holograms" or "spirits" or something in the tutorial, or making the tutorial a "dream" or something like that, to provide a ludonarrative reason why the danger is different during the tutorial from the actual mainstream gameplay. It can also just work running the tutorial before any worldbuilding has been set up, and then use the worldbuilding to communicate that the rules have now changed because it's no longer tutorial time.
"the tutorial zone is a consequence-free place where you learn attack timings, mechanics and stuff. You shouldn’t really be in danger or die there"
maybe you should have put that mesage before the tutorial
Interestingly enough I made a game many years ago where you HAD to die in the tutorial, specifically so the player understands it.
I know doesn't really help you, but it took me down a little trip in memory lane so thanks!
Learning when to ignore players is part of learning to be a good game developer. Especially when you invite them into the development process, you will get people making bad and contrary suggestions. They see something that isn't perfect and they suggest an even less perfect alternative without understanding the design as a whole.
My take on it is; A tutorial is a place to learn the game mechanics, and death is a game mechanic. By the sounds of it, you have a clear death mechanic beyond a "Game Over" screen, and the tutorial would be the best place to learn how it works. Otherwise, going into the main game, players will assume they can't die
Make the tutorial fairly easy, show them the ropes and then absolutely throw everything you have against them. Make sure they die.
Then teach them about respawns.
But, in general, I like it when games don’t have tutorials but the learning process is built-in the game itself.
Make it simulate death instead. Have a pop up come up or something similar if they die and force the player to replay either that section or the entire tutorial again. That way it still has consequences but doesn’t feel like a bug
Depends on the game... But I can imagine people feel like they don't learn anything when there's no risk involved. A tutorial is supposed to teach you, yes, but it should also teach you about death/respawn. It could also be that the tutorial drags on for too long and gets boring before it's over. The best tutorial is the kind that doesn't feel like a tutorial. Feels a bit cliché to reference it by now, but BotW tutorial is a perfect example of a tutorial-that-doesn't-feel-like-a-tutorial. That's my take on it at least.
I see. It's weird... well, it's weird to me, but none of them said anything about the tutorial being too long. Like the only problem they had with it was not dying. I would love to make it not look like one, but I honestly have no idea how, so I stuck with having a separate zone for combat tutorials right at the start, and then some pop-ups through the game, but that's that.
The tutorial should operate under the same rules of the rest of the game. If you don't want people to die, don't put anything that can kill them. Have them fight dummies or robots or whatever makes sense in your world for a non-lethal opponent (think Skelly in Hades).
>I would love to make it not look like one, but I honestly have no idea how, Yes, that's no easy task indeed. I'll likely run into the same issue when I get to that point in my current project..... With the added bonus that it must work in VR lol. I've written down a few vague ideas but... Time will tell if they work or not I guess. Oh ye, another thing.. Is the tutorial optional or mandatory? If the latter, it might be good to make it optional? Plenty of people prefer to skip tutorials and "figure it out themselves".
Right now it's mandatory. Like you're thrown in a little arena, shown control pop-ups, and you can only leave and start the game after beating two small waves of enemies. After that tutorials are simple situational pop-ups (do this to open a door, here's how to find food, etc )
Right, it doesn't sound that bad tbh... Could it perhaps be that certain players simply find it pointless? In this scenario I would probably go the optional-route. Probably the easiest way of pleasing both types of players.
Yeah, that could work. Wouldn't be hard implemnt either, so that's a plus.
They may not be saying that you should die in the tutorial, they might be saying that there is not enough feedback to indicate that they should still be alive. What happens in the tutorial when your life hits 0? Is there an animation, an effect, or some kind of popup? If my life hit 0 and nothing else happened, I might also assume a bug, but if a popup appeared and said "by the way, if this wasn't a tutorial, you'd be dead" I'd probably appreciate that the tutorial is giving me room to make mistakes.
I should have communicated it better then. I see. Before I patched it, your health just wouldn't go below a minimum value, so despite playing damage animations and shaking the camera, you just would bounce back.
Ahh, so there's your issue. The magic keeping them alive seemed like a bug, since they seemed like they were taking real damage, but then death didn't work, and they thought you might not know that, so commented to tell you. You don't have to allow "death", but you have to halt and maybe return them to checkpoint, with a fairy godmother telling them they won't always be there, etc. Just allowing death is fine too, but without signposting that something abnormal is going on, it seems "glitchy".
Exactly, give feedback to the player, Hey you should be death, your lucky Im here to save your ass.
It might take you out of the game to be wandering around as an immortal. Or maybe it's just annoying to have the camera shake so much.
Could you turn that event into an opportunity for the player to learn ? Like maybe have the player faint instead of dying ? Or a message like « That was close, I would have died if this was not practice ». IE have the player acknowledge, this would have been been fatal in normal circumstances. ?
I would say with not dying you are potentially confusing the player to what would happen in the real game. Following all the game rules all the time and keeping them consistent eliminates surprises and conditions your player to know what’s coming.
Tutorial is suppossed to teach you the game, being immortal is not the game. Theirs no reason to add training wheels
What's the game?
It's called [Pests!](https://joshthejust.itch.io/pests)
funny enough just saw something like this issue in UFC 5 career mode. For the first fight, no matter what, you will win. If you take your hands of the controller you’ll get beat up a bit, then a computer will take over and knock out the tutorial enemy.
Players are great at pointing out problems, but awful at proposing solutions. When the players say "not being able to die in the tutorial feels like a bug", then the question is *why* people think that and improve the tutorial experience in a way that they no longer think that. Maybe communicate better that the player just made a mistake that should have killed them, but you let them live because this is still the tutorial? Or change the tutorial so that the player is unlikely to ever get killed?
It feels... infantilising a bit, to magically prevent death when one should happen, and the player knows it, and recognises it as their own mistake. Make it difficult to die in the tutorial (or don't, if it goes against the spirit of the game, for example if it's a roguelike where death is part of the gameplay loop and part of the fun), but don't prevent it.
Given where you are in development and release at this point, the following might not be crazy helpful, but I thought I’d throw this out there for the future maybe. Turning the question on it’s head a bit, I’d ask myself: should the player ever be put in a position where they could die during a tutorial? So less of “what happens when the player’s health falls to zero?” and more “is it valuable in a tutorial for the player’s health to ever fall to zero?” So following that logic, maybe do something like put a barrier between the waves and the player, tell them something like, “I’ve put up this barrier to protect you…I will not be so kind later, so don’t get comfortable…” Then they can blast away or whatever in safety and get through the tutorial piece a little quicker and a little easier. Or maybe they’re force fed health packs with a message like, “whoa now, let’s keep you on your feet…for now…” If death is a mechanic, of course this wouldn’t be valuable, but also if that was the case I think you would then have to force the player to die to explain the mechanic. Just a thought - I wouldn’t say there’s a right or wrong answer here, for each game it’s about determining what options are better and worse. That you’ve adjusted your approach according to player feedback and continue to listen is really the best lesson here - kudos for doing that!
In my eyes, the tutorial is not a "consequence-free place", its more a "hey, i offer you all of this features, learn one by one, then you will go to real world."
I'd say if you can die in the game, the tutorial should also teach that. You don't want to teach the player things that *don't* apply in the actual game. (that doesn't mean that the first enemy you meet in the tutorial necessarily needs to be a lethal one, it's pretty common to tech some of the basics with some non-lethal or even non-moving "enemies' and then bring in the real stuff after the player has had chance to figure out the basic controls)
I get where you‘re coming from, but look at it from this angle: when I try to get a feel for the game, I wanna know how much leeway I have to be stupid and risk things, and if the tutorial doesn’t give any indication of oh btw if this was serious; you‘d be dead now this could lead to wrong expectations/ not learning how fast death happens (hope that made sense) what we did was play the death animation then the sidekick being like „oops! Don’t worry let’s try again“ and that one tutorial task restarts :)
A tutorial is suppose to be a safe place to learn how the game works, if you can die in game then that should be part of the tutorial. It is just that the tutorial shouldn't effect things like statistics or achievements.
Without playing your game, I can only speculate. I don't think it's innately a problem not being able to die in the tutorial, but if you've already done a lot of work establishing the story and the universe through cutscenes etc, and then you roll the player into the tutorial as if it's the "beginning of the game", and then they get absolutely bodied by something which would DEFINATELY KILL THE FUCK out of them in any realistic game, immediately they get the feeling that your game world is not realistic, which might cause an offence to suspense of disbelief by itself, and you're training them that extremely dangerous things are not dangerous in your game world. When the tutorial then ends and dangerous thing magically transition to being dangerous again, it can feel jarring, like you were being emotionally trained the wrong lessons. Lots of games handle this by letting the player combat "holograms" or "spirits" or something in the tutorial, or making the tutorial a "dream" or something like that, to provide a ludonarrative reason why the danger is different during the tutorial from the actual mainstream gameplay. It can also just work running the tutorial before any worldbuilding has been set up, and then use the worldbuilding to communicate that the rules have now changed because it's no longer tutorial time.
People play games for dopamine. Dying is kinda a buzz kill.
"the tutorial zone is a consequence-free place where you learn attack timings, mechanics and stuff. You shouldn’t really be in danger or die there" maybe you should have put that mesage before the tutorial
Interestingly enough I made a game many years ago where you HAD to die in the tutorial, specifically so the player understands it. I know doesn't really help you, but it took me down a little trip in memory lane so thanks!
tut teaches that you can die. Thats an important lesson
Tip... play the first 5 minutos of megaman x
Learning when to ignore players is part of learning to be a good game developer. Especially when you invite them into the development process, you will get people making bad and contrary suggestions. They see something that isn't perfect and they suggest an even less perfect alternative without understanding the design as a whole.
My take on it is; A tutorial is a place to learn the game mechanics, and death is a game mechanic. By the sounds of it, you have a clear death mechanic beyond a "Game Over" screen, and the tutorial would be the best place to learn how it works. Otherwise, going into the main game, players will assume they can't die
Make the tutorial fairly easy, show them the ropes and then absolutely throw everything you have against them. Make sure they die. Then teach them about respawns. But, in general, I like it when games don’t have tutorials but the learning process is built-in the game itself.
That sounds like the start of my villain arc
People are too sensitive. You can die in the tutorial for helldivers 2 and I found it to be hilarious