Okay, so this is one I've been thinking about, and that hasn't really been mentioned here. Which is the need for better tutorials, and possibly ones of a specific type.
One thing I have heard MANY times from people that are interested in the game is that the game just looks too daunting, it looks "hard" because of complexity, and they heard somewhere that it barely explains itself. They have the assumption that it's way beyond their ability to handle. Even those that have bought the game often say that they've only really tried it once, got bloody baffled by it, and didn't go back to it because of the sheer time required to learn even the basics to the point where they can REALLY use those basics. Even I had this issue... I bought the game, but it was about 2 years before it "clicked" and I finally really dove into it. And even then, it was like learning Dwarf Fortress all over again due to the lack of explanations. And Dwarf Fortress took me 50 freaking tutorial videos to learn. 50.
With this new one, I think that really, REALLY needs to not be the case.
One huge problem with the original tutorial is that after a certain time it just sort of.... cuts off. Abruptly. It teaches a little bit about the game, in a slightly confusing way, and then it just says "Okay, well, have fun, try not to die!". It doesn't really help the player learn anything beyond the absolute most basic concepts. And considering the style of the thing, even if it did, it'd probably make them that much more confusing.
And really, making the game easier to get into is certainly important for sales, as many people have mentioned. But usually all that's mentioned alongside this is the interface, but my thoughts are that the interface means a whole lot of nothing if the player cant even understand the mechanics whatsoever. If they feel too overwhelmed by the sheer number of unlearned things.
So I'm making this topic here to see what some of you might think about the way the tutorials were, and how you personally learned the game, and what your experience was of it.
For me, that super abrupt cut-off at the end of it was just... very jarring. It left me with a sense of "Okay, I SORT of know what to do in a general sense, but there's so many advanced things that are baffling, and the AI isn't even putting up a fight right now... how am I supposed to even really grasp what the basics can be used for in a real fight with it?". The reason why I was able to learn the game in the end is because by that point, I'd already learned Dwarf Fortress, and became thusly very determined about AI War. I figured... I learned DF, SURELY I can learn this game, and I'm bloody well going to. But we all know that a great many players will simply give up before they reach that point or come anywhere near it. A lot of games these days, even very simple ones, will go to extreme lengths to explain EVERYTHING. Even things like "how to jump" in a platformer. I don't think it needs to be dumbed down THAT much, but you get the idea. Hell, even in Starward Rogue, where a lot of things are frankly self-explanatory, I watched players get confused by simple things over and over and over and over and over that seemed like they should be REALLY obvious with just the tiniest bit of experimentation. Which is another thing: Players tend not to experiment much these days, when learning the basics of a particular mechanic or game element. They EXPECT that element to be shown off and explained to them, regardless of what it is.
My thoughts are that not only does this need to have an expanded and more streamlined tutorial, but it needs to have more than one (and yes, I know that technically what is there is divided into multiple pieces, but to me they're all part of one single tutorial that's all about the basics). For example, have another tutorial that's kinda similar to the first, but EXPANDS upon those basics, partly by putting the player into a game where the AI is actually going to DO stuff. Show the player how these basics might be applied in truly dangerous situations. Have other separate ones that can help them learn some of the advanced units and mechanics. Things like, say, hacking, are going to confuse the hell out of people, even if you make the interface better or streamline the mechanic. Even when I'd learned the game and really started in on it, something like hacking took me quite awhile to really "grasp". It's very different from other things in the game, and it was quite hard to get even a basic understanding of how to even approach it, or what some of the strategic ramifications might be from it. I know to some of you these things might seem obvious, but I'm going into this myself because I'm *not* an expert at this type of game. I had a hard time with it, and many others will as well, so something that might seem pretty easy might actually not be.
And then there's other things... explaining some of the more confusing units in the game (of which there are many) and showing the player some situations that show off how useful those things can be would help too. Even after quite a large number of hours in the game, there's still some things that I frankly find kinda baffling, in a "what the hell do I DO with this thing? What is it for?" manner. Keep in mind also that while yes, there can be strategy guides and such for a game like this, a lot of players absolutely expect to find this info inside the game itself. They don't want to have to look elsewhere. There was a time when people would have expected to have to do that, but those days are long since over.
I know this sort of thing could be quite a bit of effort, but again, I think it's important. For any sort of product, game or otherwise, you increase the possible userbase by making the product as easy to mentally grasp as possible. Right now, not only AI War but Arcen games in general simply do not do this.
But anyway, I'm curious to see what some of you guys experienced while learning this particular game. Many of you are likely to have had very different experiences than I did, I'd bet. But whatever those experiences are, they might provide some useful insight.
