[Colonol Dekker]

And discovery has freespace ships? I don't see any and I've been playing it some time now.

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,55971.msg1152630.html#msg1152630

Ok, maybe not Discovery, but heres some proof

[headdie]

The "teach as you go" form of tutorial has been a welcome development over the past several years.

Try writing an FS2 campaign that allows you learn as you go and you'll soon see why didn't do it that way.

Learn as you go works well in FPSs or other genres where you can easily control the action. In FS2 you could very quickly get the player out of their depth doing that.

FS1 was the start of the whole learn as you go, if you remember after doing the first few training missions you then got introduced later to shields and countermeasures  in the "Advanced" training to get your advanced wings and the same goes in FS2.  the problem with the system compared to modern games is the delivery i dont think a mid mission system would fit into the universe and the current system does the trick is to make it more interesting e.g. to maintain canon have the (I presume) AI instructor replaced by a character in a linked simulator then you could give the instructor pilot some personality, even change the gender if you want.  I think more would be needed to make it more interesting but i haven't though that far ahead

[karajorma]

You got introduced to shields later because they were only added as story elements later on. It was much the same with aspect seekers.

And even then you still had to do a tutorial mission.

[Woolie Wool]

No i mean the fast paced gameplay storyline sytle but non linear, then after that open multiplayer.

Like Mr. Vowel said, I don't think you can have fast paced and open-ended gaming in the same box. RPGs quite honestly about grinding. Whether your grinding by whacking monsters and getting XP, or whether you're grinding by mining some asteroids or hauling cargo here and there basically you spend a lot of time essentially "levelling up". There's nothing fast paced about that.



And quite honestly, what is there to do in the Freespace universe anyway?? Despite the frequency of pirates in 3rd party campaigns, I don't think most peace time adventures are going to see a lot of action. So what will the player be doing?? When there's no war going on they're just going to be flying around doing jack all and when the war does start then it's going to be mission after mission. So . . .

Generally if an RPG requires you to grind significantly rather than gain the levels you need just by playing through the quests, it's considered bad RPG design.

And if you avoid monster encounters and then complain about how you have to grind so much, then, well, you're doing it wrong.

[Woolie Wool]

You got introduced to shields later because they were only added as story elements later on. It was much the same with aspect seekers.

And even then you still had to do a tutorial mission.

A completely unnecessary tutorial mission. All you need to do is equip the player with only Rockeye-type missions for the first mission where basic flight controls are introduced, and in the second mission allow aspect seekers and include a popup explaining how to lock and fire them. Whether the player passes the mission or not can be the "test". Most of these concepts--shields, missile locking, afterburner control---take 10 seconds at most to fully explain.

[Mongoose]

And quite honestly, what is there to do in the Freespace universe anyway?? Despite the frequency of pirates in 3rd party campaigns, I don't think most peace time adventures are going to see a lot of action. So what will the player be doing?? When there's no war going on they're just going to be flying around doing jack all and when the war does start then it's going to be mission after mission. So . . .

You'd presumably be stuck as a traffic cop, a la the first mission of Destiny of Peace.  Somehow, I don't think a whole campaign's worth of that would go over too well.

[Blue Lion]

You got introduced to shields later because they were only added as story elements later on. It was much the same with aspect seekers.

And even then you still had to do a tutorial mission.

A completely unnecessary tutorial mission. All you need to do is equip the player with only Rockeye-type missions for the first mission where basic flight controls are introduced, and in the second mission allow aspect seekers and include a popup explaining how to lock and fire them. Whether the player passes the mission or not can be the "test". Most of these concepts--shields, missile locking, afterburner control---take 10 seconds at most to fully explain.

Why would you give a pilot a new tech and then just let them figure it out?

"If they die, they didn't learn it very well."

[Woolie Wool]

Because this is a game, not real life. Game players would rather fight real opponents in a real battle than target drones in some stupid simulator module overseen by an instructor whose voice makes Ben Stein seem lively by comparison. If you want a completely accurate reflection of military life, go enlist and enjoy the terrible food, possibility of violent death, and PTSD. They don't even have to be very difficult opponents, it just has to feel like a true battle.

[Blue Lion]

Because this is a game, not real life. Game players would rather fight real opponents in a real battle than target drones in some stupid simulator module overseen by an instructor whose voice makes Ben Stein seem lively by comparison. If you want a completely accurate reflection of military life, go enlist and enjoy the terrible food, possibility of violent death, and PTSD. They don't even have to be very difficult opponents, it just has to feel like a true battle.

I'm a real player and I rather enjoy the quick tutorials instead of a jarring addition of new tech that everyone uses now and just assumes I know as well. A tutorial is... what? a few minutes in a long game?

It would be really weird, to me anyways, if on one mission shields just showed up with all the keys accompanying them.

[Woolie Wool]

No, intrinsic technologies like shields will always be there (why do you HAVE to learn how to equalize shields right away anyway), but there's no reason not to restrict things like aspect-seeking missiles, which are already restricted at the start of both of the FreeSpace games. So at the start of the first mission with aspect seekers you get a brief popup screen instructing you to wait for the circle to go over the enemy and go BEEEP before launching the fancy new missile, instead of making you sit through a training mission plinking Amazons. Introducing new concepts to players on the fly has become the standard for video games nowadays for a reason.

You don't need a whole series of training missions. The first squadron of enemy bombers that show up can be accompanied by an instruction to target their bombs and shoot them down. The first use of aspect seeking missiles can be accompanied by a popup explaining how to acquire aspect lock. You can teach things to players using a popup screen in seconds that would require minutes in a training mission. And once the player has learned the ropes, he can go into the option screen and disable the tutorials. You learn the concept through a brief explanation, and then learn the physical part of the skill through the challenge that comes after. What would be a long and boring diversion is blended into a real mission, providing a better experience.

[Blue Lion]

No, intrinsic technologies like shields will always be there, but there's no reason not to restrict things like aspect-seeking missiles, which are already restricted at the start of both of the FreeSpace games. So at the start of the first mission with aspect seekers you get a brief popup screen instructing you to wait for the circle to go over the enemy and go BEEEP before launching the fancy new missile, instead of making you sit through a training mission plinking Amazons.

So a tutorial mission then? Only this one "counts"?

Are you asking for all tutorials to be removed? Or simply the ones later on? The tutorial missions are at most a few minutes, and you can skip them? I'm just not sure what the entire purpose would be. You want a break in realism for what? A few extra seconds saved?

[Woolie Wool]

Break in realism? This is a game with space fighters flying around WWII style shooting pew-pew laser guns at each other. When you introduce the skills in actual combat, there's some actual stakes involved to make it exciting. Simon Says with spaceships is not exciting no matter how you dress it up. There's no need to spend 20 minutes doing artificial exercises that don't have any importance in the actual conflict when you can combine learning a skill with the thrill of an actual conflict.

I think any dedicated training missions should be pared down to the absolute minimum and new skills be introduced to the player gradually through a series of brief tutorial screens and battle sequences emphasizing the new skill. The bomb shooting scene in the Perseus training missions in FS2 is not exciting. If, halfway through the first mission, a wing of enemy bombers show up and you have to stop them, that's exciting. The ten-second break from being in the cockpit is well worth the added excitement of it being a real fight against real enemies who are really out to get you and your mothership. I once had the idea of a potential FS2 sequel first mission that was almost entirely devoted to teaching the player the gameplay mechanics, but in the context of a massive fleet engagement between GTVA and Earth forces rather than a sterile training simulator module (this would be horrifyingly difficult to script in FRED2, but having an entirely new engine and mission format would make it easier).

If you were in an action game where one of the game mechanics was going down zip lines, would you rather go to some blatantly artificial obstacle course with some droning moron explaining the ins and outs of zip lines, or run across a zip line in your normal gameplay, be told about it by a brief screen/voiceover/wisecracking sidekick and then have to grab onto the zip line and ride it down? The same could apply to any sort of game, really. FreeSpace is not Il-2 Sturmovik on the hardest difficulty level, you don't need to take a damn class to figure it out.

[karajorma]

Yeah you do. FS2 can be very intimidating to new players when they are presented with a screen full of keys.

Introducing combat mechanics during actual combat usually results in them being missed and the player not knowing how to use that mechanic. I've played plenty of games where the in-game tutorial was lax with its explanation and I only figured out how to do something much later on.

Your comments about an instructor are pretty silly anyway because you will have to include a simple tutorial of some sort anyway just so the player knows how to fly the ship and target things. So you're not talking about whether or not to have an instructor, simply how much of the instructor you have.

[QuantumDelta]

Can I jump in and stomp all over woolie's argument? .....no?
Oh well never mind then.

- Honestly, Woolie, if you think you know /anything/ about flying in FS2, you should come play a few games with some of the multi pilots.
During PXOs haydays a not too unrealistic recommended requirement for joining our games was "complete the single player game on insane with out having to retry a mission once."

This game has tiers and tiers of skill levels - that from the way you're talking I'm SURE you don't know most even exist.

Yet, through good fredding (and a lot of playtesting and balancing) most of these skills could be put into tutorials.
The initial tutorials do this in a way that also introduces the pilot to the universe, the lowly grunt, in FS1 this turns into a remarkable transformation of JESUS ONE, and in FS2 this continues more smoothly as an ever growing cog in the galactic war machine (well until you get skilled enough to start breaking missions because the designers didn't even imagine players could be as good as they got).
Most above-average in complexity games have tutorials like this, FS' is one of the better flowing and constructed ones.
Whilst, sure you could speed up the gaps between the trainers messages a tiny bit in places most of it is fine, it's just modern players being window lickers that makes it an issue.
If you had all the weapons and ships available to you at the start of the campaign as you do at the end, there would be very little sense of progression beyond the scope and scale of the missions slowly getting bigger.
....Which doesn't lead to as much a climactic ending as current, so the holding back of aspect seekers and some advanced ship stuff which is covered in later training isn't too bad either.
And, for people who have done it before, as was mentioned above, there's a skip button.
But I honestly wouldn't recommend anyone skip the training first time round - it's what I tell everyone I introduce the game to;
"DO NOT SKIP THE TRAINING, YOU WILL REGRET IT LATER."
And if you want to sit there and explain it to them first time around taking 10 seconds to do it, fine good for you, you do that and have them skip the training, see how much of it sinks in and how naturally they progress compared to the people who did fly the training and told you to fob off

[Woolie Wool]

Yeah you do. FS2 can be very intimidating to new players when they are presented with a screen full of keys.

Introducing combat mechanics during actual combat usually results in them being missed and the player not knowing how to use that mechanic. I've played plenty of games where the in-game tutorial was lax with its explanation and I only figured out how to do something much later on.

Your comments about an instructor are pretty silly anyway because you will have to include a simple tutorial of some sort anyway just so the player knows how to fly the ship and target things. So you're not talking about whether or not to have an instructor, simply how much of the instructor you have.

Well in this case the "instructor" would be a brief popup screen that explains the basics of something, rather than the mind-numbingly, soul-crushing, unbelievably dull voiceovers from the TSM modules, who is easily the worst training instructor dude in any game I've ever played.

As for the screen full of keys, how many of them are mostly redundant targeting keys like "target target's target" or "target cargo" or things the player doesn't need to know right away, like shield and energy management (hell, why not just add an option for automatic management?). The player only really needs to know the following controls in the first few missions:

Basic flight controls: yaw, pitch, roll, throttle.
Matching speed: Just hit Alt-M and be done with it.
Basic targeting: T, H, F, E, R, and B. Alt-H could be a menu option instead.
Afterburners
Primary and secondary weapon triggers. Put the cross over the circle and shoot.
Bank switching

That's it. The rest can be explained in later missions. The first mission could be carefully scripted to start with basic ship movement and introduce more mechanics one at a time providing a largely scripted pitched battle to add drama.

Can I jump in and stomp all over woolie's argument? .....no?
Oh well never mind then.

- Honestly, Woolie, if you think you know /anything/ about flying in FS2, you should come play a few games with some of the multi pilots.
During PXOs haydays a not too unrealistic recommended requirement for joining our games was "complete the single player game on insane with out having to retry a mission once."

Are you seriously expecting a set of tutorials for the single player game to prepare people for high-level multiplayer play? Forget about it! Getting good enough for high level multiplayer play takes dedication, practice, and lots and lots and lots of deaths even in the simplest games. No introductory tutorial can ever prepare you for skilled human opponents. No tutorial should even try. High-level multiplayer evolves over a game's lifecycle, and the transition to skilled multiplayer play is a matter for the community, as the game people play online two years after the game ships will be rather different from the game the developers first envisioned. Just look at Doom. A very simple game, right? You could learn it in five minutes, right? Most of the techniques used by modern Deathmatch players did not exist until 1995 or even 1996. Many of the levels can be seriously broken by players because Id Software never envisioned half the things players figured out how to do.

If FreeSpace 3 shipped with a detailed multiplayer tutorial, it would be largely obsolete in six months. Why bother? The game itself only needs to teach the player how to get by in the single player campaign on Medium and below. Teaching the player to be a video game version of Max Jenius is unnecessary and may even be counterproductive as player strategies and "metagame" evolve.

[Akalabeth Angel]

I actually thought that the training missions in FS2 are a little incomplete. They take like 5 minutes but barely tell you anything. There's a bunch of targetting buttons for example that I never use because I was never taught them as far as I know.

[Woolie Wool]

And when you look at these unused targeting buttons, how many of them do you ever think you needed to play the original FreeSpace 2 campaign on Hard or below?

[Mongoose]

There are quite a few useful targeting functions that never come up in the training missions.  Target turret in reticle, 'V', is a particularly useful one when trying to take out a particular beam cannon; otherwise, you're left mashing 'K' until the correct turret pops up.

[Woolie Wool]

There's a difference between "useful" and "necessary to complete the original game". If you really want to get good, you have to be dedicated to getting good, and if you're dedicated you can study the really obscure targeting controls yourself, read the manual (does anyone read the manual anymore? Maybe they need to start making them with pretty illustrations and fancy paper again. MechWarrior 2's manual was more entertaining than any TSM module), read online play guides. Never mind that FS3 would invariably come out on a console, and for the console the obscurer targeting controls are, as the least important controls, the first thing that will be axed to fit the controls on a gamepad so the whole issue is moot.

[Akalabeth Angel]

The only thing truely necessary is the trigger and the throttle.

Personally, I wouldn't mind knowing a few more. Like isn't there a button that lets you target fighters attacking a friendly ship? I've never bothered to figure that one out but I would like to and it's pretty essentially. Assuming there is one, I know there was one for Xwing/tie fighter