Having spent many hours last night with my friend on a sloop, we were doing missions and had our reaper flag raised.
We were attacked many times by sloops, all with no ship skins and all the pirates were dressed in the standard clothing, one pair even come back 4 times to be sent to a watery grave. It seemed not one of these crews had the slightest idea in ship preservation and it took very little time or effort to sink them. I even started to feel a bit sorry for them and was trying to advise them to try repairing the ship a little more.
I know this game is a sandbox and you make your own journey, and we have all had to learn the lessons of a Pirate's life the hard way.
But i can't help but to wonder if some little tutorial for new players would be of use. We want new players to stay and play SOT after all.
Give them a little help to start their adventures.
Does this game need a Tutorial?
This game, believe it or not, actually does have a tutorial - when you first start a new pirate and wake up in the tavern, it shows you how to do various things. That said, it is pretty lackluster, and I would agree in saying that it doesn't show you enough. I think they should simply expand on what they already have.
i don't think it needs some longer tutorial. I'd say the basic gameplay mechanics are very well done and self explanatory.
Like ship damage. You get hit, you hear water. you obviously go look, even if you hear it for the first time. Oh look a hole. While looking at the hole the game even tells you that you need a plank to repair it. And since there are barrels with planks painted on them, it's not hard to figure out where to get them. etc...
Certainly is an idea.
The Devs to maybe put together maybe a series of updated videos. (on Current gameplay/ & style) ?- Explaining basic Mechanics ( your character, sailing, basic PVP/PVE )
- Explaining the factions ( inc. the Bilge Rats )
- You get the idea....
I have enjoyed discovering much of this by myself, but as the game is a different beast from launch, it might be an idea to help the 'noob' up to speed.
I can see it being helpful.However, starting off & knowing little seems a part of the immersion too me... so I'm in two minds.
If the Dev's don't do it.... someone here might take up the challenge, we have some pretty talented members.
It could be something that might be better coming from the community.I personally enjoyed the being thrown in the deep end aspect of the game at the beginning. As for me it got me to get involved in the social side of the game a little more.
My first session I knew nothing so I was being taught what to do by other players, and I think just that alone puts a very interesting spin on game styles and gameplay.One example is when I was taught how to play it was by a crew who didn’t use the anchor, we was all sails and that was that. So that got engrained in my head and ended up becoming my style.
Yet I have met others who will only use the anchor as that is how they where taught by a different crew.
So to me that already adds variety to how people are being taught. I don’t think it was necessarily a planned thing but for me I feel it fits the game to be honest.Obviously if you are a slooper that might make things a little different aha.
@letslipthedogs said in Does this game need a Tutorial?:
It's a Pirate game sink, sink, sink all ships PVP all the time it's a pirate game SINK SINK ALL!!!!!!!!!!!! LFG was down to under 80 groups the other night. Better figure something out Rare before you sink.
I find this statement about LFG so funny because I know most people only use that when desperate. After they meet people they get along with and have similar playing styles with, they stop using those groups as they now have friends they can ask directly, want to sail the seas? I personally have only used LFG a couple of times. Have not needed to in quite some time because I found friends that compliment my playing style. So why use LFG and end up with people that I might not get along with, or that have the exact same strengths and weaknesses as I do.
@letslipthedogs said in Does this game need a Tutorial?:
@nofears-fun Destiny 2 had 1500 groups last night they all must be losers like me.
BTW I've meet some very cool peeps on LGF groups.
@letslipthedogs Not saying losers at all man, just saying, for a game like SoT, when game play lasts hours at a time, you want to sail with people you are familiar with and that compliment your game play style. That is all. I am not at all familiar with Destiny. Is it a shooter game where game play lasts a 15-30 minutes each session? or is it similar to SoT where you are in a single game session for hours on end?
@letslipthedogs said in Does this game need a Tutorial?:
@letslipthedogs said in Does this game need a Tutorial?:
@nofears-fun Destiny 2 had 1500 groups last night they all must be losers like me.
BTW I've meet some very cool peeps on LGF groups.
Me too, as I said, I did it a couple of times, became friends with the peeps I got along with, and don't need the LFG groups anymore as my friends list is always full of people in SoT.
@nofears-fun I am in a great clan, What I am trying to say is that when I started playing SOT there were over 400 lfg groups nightly. Its down to under 80 not a good sign M8. That's all.
@needsmokes said in Does this game need a Tutorial?:
Having spent many hours last night with my friend on a sloop, we were doing missions and had our reaper flag raised.
We were attacked many times by sloops, all with no ship skins and all the pirates were dressed in the standard clothing, one pair even come back 4 times to be sent to a watery grave. It seemed not one of these crews had the slightest idea in ship preservation and it took very little time or effort to sink them. I even started to feel a bit sorry for them and was trying to advise them to try repairing the ship a little more.
I know this game is a sandbox and you make your own journey, and we have all had to learn the lessons of a Pirate's life the hard way.
But i can't help but to wonder if some little tutorial for new players would be of use. We want new players to stay and play SOT after all.
Give them a little help to start their adventures.I just looked up stuff on youtube
@needsmokes my five year old when playing on his own knew if there was a whole, he had to patch it. It was fun watching him pick things up on his own without any coaching.
I don't think it is that complicated. It is different from other game mechanics.
The biggest learning curve is for a new player learning they have to bail the water and throw it out of the ship.Last night, my friends ships were full. I ended up with a Rrrrrandy, which is a name we give randoms that spawn on our ships and appear to be new. Inside joke that we have a bit of fun with until they act like part of the crew. Rrrrrandy, listen to your captain. Rrrrandy raise the anchor!
Anyway, he was cool and asked all kinds of questions. We sailed for two hours on what felt like a tutorial. He was thankful and I said no problem, someone did the same for me and I’m just paying it forward. I’d like to think this is the norm of how prates learn the game.
@needsmokes the only tutorial this game needs is a crew willing to help new players starting and sharing their knowledge.
And there's a lot of experienced people willing to do it.
So, we're fine I think.
All kinds of replies on this it seems.
We muddled through but being less familiar with games of the kind it took a while to pick up on some of the subtlties like water noises when its raining after hitting rocks. Those things we learned. The fighting skills like blocking, lunging etc simply didn't work out and trying to recall in the heat of the moment made the process worse as by that time we were dead at best or the ship was respawning... So for us it would have been nice to have some technique training areas like Assassins Creed to help. We never met anyone willing to use ingame chat really let alone help.
@stratcat51 To me that sounds like an awesome experience. Would you really like to trade that 'learning-by-doing' process in for a tutorial you do once? - I'm curious. Do you think it would help you to remember to i.e. block in those dicy 100%-CPU/brain-workload-situations?
Figuring out how to sail efficiently for me was one of those 'things' you wish you could do for the first time again and I wouldn't like to see this experience replaced by a tutorial but I'm looking forward to know how you see it.
@needsmokes it doesnt need a full blown tutorial imo. for the most part players teach each other at least in my case.
@letslipthedogs said in Does this game need a Tutorial?:
@nofears-fun I am in a great clan, What I am trying to say is that when I started playing SOT there were over 400 lfg groups nightly. Its down to under 80 not a good sign M8. That's all.
And all I am saying is that while sure, player base is probably down, a lot of the reasons LFG are down are because people have moved to various clans or groups and look for people to fill boats there, or like me, they simply no longer need the LFG because they found people they play with more consistently. I see people say that the smaller LFG means the player base is down dramatically when I don't believe that to be true. I believe that a lot of other factors play into it. I do agree the overall player base is probably down, but I don't think it is as dramatic as some say.
While I like the immersion this game provides, I worry that there are some aspects some new players might never learn or learn in a wrong way. For example, I played in the closed alpha and never knew about many of the advanced sword techniques, like the running slash or sword dodge, until months after release. This put me at a distinct disadvantage and made it less fun as a result. That said, when someone finally showed me, it blew my mind that I didn't know about it before - and it all could have been mitigated with a proper tutorial.
Many various views thanks.
I was just curious about this.
It's ok saying players teach players, and it's great so many have had this experience, but sadly, the reality for many other new randoms joining a crew it is a case of being locked in a brig within minutes, and being left there, often being mocked etc. (This was mine and a few friends first experience of joining a galleon for the first few times) Back then i didn't have a mic or a bloody clue what i was doing. But it made me play solo lots and become master of a sloop and the seas. I'm sure many just thought differently and went off to download another game on game pass to play.
This thread is just providing some food for thought.
I love this game and want it to succeed and be around for many years to come.
So any little thing to help new players a little bit can never be a bad thing.We didn't cope with the pvp fighting side and as @Galactic-Geek was saying I totally understand their point as I am sure there are loads of techniques we don't even know about.
In assassins creed the player soon has a base where they can go to and adjust play settings. In SoT that could be comparee to the ship, so the Armoury lets you change weapons. The difference is that in AC the player could access training rooms and choose techniques to learn.
For SoT, for pvp - swordsmanship, cannon training, powder barrel training
Sailing - Sail adjustment with wind, intp wind, helmsmanship in storms, through rock paths.
Player - swimming, using lunge or dive tech, jumping turning etc.
Personally I find pvp very tricky where you can't see and peripheral vision is so restricted. There are also sound cues that could be learnt through these processes many I probably don't know.
Sure some things may be intuitive but the translation to using a game controller to perform them isn't and not all games use the same controller actions for similar moves.
Thats how I'd see something delivered but its not the only way and my game knowledge is limited.
For those of you who think the combat mechanics in this game are simple, you are wrong. Click here to see just how deep it can get. For those of you who already know about the link, I've updated it to include a new combat technique called Bite This! that I think you might find interesting.
Its nice for a change that game developers aren't treating us like idiots. I am fine with no tutorial. The game does a great job of showing rather then telling. Sails not billowing? Maybe we should rotate them. Wavy lines in the sky? Probably wind and we should move sail accordingly. Ship not moving? Maybe our anchors down.
