Salvage/Reprisal in the sequel

[WolfWhiteFire]

the mk 3 & 4 systems one or two jumps from your HW at the early game.

Having them only be close is great compared to what I experienced once, I was playing an X map with my homeworld on the end of an X, with 2 other planets on the edge connected (which I conquered). If I wanted to move into the X and past the first 3 planets I first needed to figure out how to crack a mk 4 planet blocking me. That was a pain, but I did it.

1. At the start, you can build fleetships and use your Ark. The only thing to do at this point is scout, build a fleet, and capture a system.
2. When you capture 2 systems, Starships unlock.
3. At AIP 75, Turrets unlock.

Hmmmmm, the starships thing maybe, though some players focus on starships so that would be inconvenient for them and not really lore-friendly. The turrets no way, by AIP 75 you should have some defenses set up, it would be ridiculous to not be able to start defending your planets well until you annoy the AI enough. Would also likely make the first few waves harder than many of the later ones, and it would also encourage people to annoy the AI as quickly as possible so they could start making defenses.

[Cyborg]

People played the tutorials in the blizzard games because there was actual plot. If the blizzard games were just a sequence of "here's what this means!" I'm sure it would be just as unsuccessful as AI war's tutorial.

What about a tutorial that sets the stage of the war?

[Squashyhex]

People played the tutorials in the blizzard games because there was actual plot. If the blizzard games were just a sequence of "here's what this means!" I'm sure it would be just as unsuccessful as AI war's tutorial.

What about a tutorial that sets the stage of the war?

Oooo, now there's an idea I like!

Rough idea:

1. Camera Controls and Movement (inc. wormholes):- Possibly have it set as the AIs have just turned on humanity, with the player in control of a small group of ships as they flee the massacre to some safe place/system?

2. Ship Production, Turret Building and Resources:- Your small fleet has reached temporary safety and has set up a small base (ARK). You start to produce your first ships and defences, and possibly get introduced to the basics of the HUD, if not in part 1?

3+ Techs, some Special Buildings, Scouting basics, Starship basics...etc:- You begin to explore around you and discover exactly how bad things are as you learn some of the other basics of the game?

Having a setup like this would allow new players to get introduced to some of the basic lore of the game, as well as many of the essential mechanics they will need to know about to play the campaign, though it might be a little time consuming to produce a tutorial of this scale, both from gameplay and lore perspective.

[kasnavada]

I'm not sure what the difficulty level names will be this time around, but for the equivalent of 7 I'd say the new salvage mechanic would be in full force on both sides. At 6, I'd say the AI would get roughly half the normal benefit, and at 5 I'd say it'd get none or almost none.

Hadn't thought of that earlier but I think it would help avoid newbies getting counter-steamrolled because of a mistake. Assuming 5 is the recommended first-game difficulty for people wanting to win.

Some way to gradually introduce mechanics would be great, but I don't see how it would fit in the normal campaign. If the player is willing to play the tutorials I'm sure we can take care of that (a huge part of the new work in the sequel is making good tutorials possible), but that leaves the huge chunk of players who totally skip those. Maybe they just get to lose?

Another idea would be to have every single captured planet provide a units / turret and so on. So, less at start, more capturables.

I'm personally not sure that limiting "too much" fits AI War either. That said, since we'll be able to "mod" the starting "options" & buildings... I believe it's possible to test that later.

[Tridus]

Hmmmmm, the starships thing maybe, though some players focus on starships so that would be inconvenient for them and not really lore-friendly.

Considering how starships are changing and the new fuel requirements, *can* you focus on starships when you only have one system?

There's no reason it can't be lore friendly now, even if it wasn't before, since fuel didn't exist before, and supporting a starship fleet could be harder now until you have the infrastructure to do it.

The turrets no way, by AIP 75 you should have some defenses set up, it would be ridiculous to not be able to start defending your planets well until you annoy the AI enough. Would also likely make the first few waves harder than many of the later ones, and it would also encourage people to annoy the AI as quickly as possible so they could start making defenses.

Remember, we're talking about cutting things down so newbies don't start at the first minute with an overwhelming array of options. Newbies can easily defend against the first couple of waves with their fleet, because the fleetships and Ark's defenses should be able to handle early waves without much issue if the difficulty curve is anything like it was in Classic.

What should a new player be doing when they first start playing? I'm pretty sure the answer is "build cheap fleet ships to get a mobile force", so that should be up front and center. Tanking the economy by building every turret you can in your home system before you bulid any ships is doable, but given how much it slows the early game down, probably not what a newbie should be doing. We also don't want them waiting 20 minutes before any action happens.

Advanced players could probably just have a switch to turn those limits off and start with everything again. Diablo 3 does something like that, where players are guided into picking different kinds of skills by the UI grouping them and only letting you pick one from each group. That way you always get a generator, primary spender, support ability, etc (depending on the class). Advanced players turn on Elective Mode, the restrictions go away, and you can do whatever you want. But by time you know to do that, you also know how the game works.

Also, it was labelled as "very hypothetical" for a reason.

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, a "prologue" section that doubles as a lore intro and an incremental tutorial is probably a better bet than trying to gate mechanics in the main game itself.

Basically cover the events from just before the Battle of Sol to when you recover the Ark and escape with it. Plenty of room in there for something like "camera controls" => "unit controls" => "trivial combat" => "basic construction" => "basic production" => "basic combat" => "interplanetary travel", etc. Possibly working up to the equivalent of the intermediate tutorial (tutorial campaign) in Classic, but with the goal being to find the Ark, repair it, and get to the exit point.

It'd be a fair bit of work. To be perfectly frank I'm designing the tutorial scripting engine so y'all can do a lot of the heavy lifting over the years of writing stuff that actually explains how to play well (I've never actually been very good at the game); potentially that could also work here if it seems that this more intensive approach is best.

Somehow this turned into a "Tutorials in the sequel" thread, but I don't suppose that's all bad

[Tridus]

People played the tutorials in the blizzard games because there was actual plot. If the blizzard games were just a sequence of "here's what this means!" I'm sure it would be just as unsuccessful as AI war's tutorial.

What about a tutorial that sets the stage of the war?

Blizzard's "tutorials" also include most of the campaign. They're adding new stuff constantly in Starcraft 2's campaign, and you don't get your full toolbox until well into it. It's a lengthy process of gradual introduction of stuff until everything is available.

Of course, Blizzard doesn't make sandbox-y games, so the comparison is a bit different. But they consistently use the "add new stuff as you play" approach over the "throw everything under the sun at you on turn 1" approach. Overwatch is kind of the exception, but you're not expected to know how to play every character out of the box (nor do you need to). The tutorial is effectively "how to use the controls" and the most basic functions only, rather than trying to explain the other stuff. They do that part over the course of several missions.

Tutorials that try to do too much tend to fail because they try to do too much.

[kasnavada]

Yea, a "prologue" section that doubles as a lore intro and an incremental tutorial is probably a better bet than trying to gate mechanics in the main game itself.

Basically cover the events from just before the Battle of Sol to when you recover the Ark and escape with it. Plenty of room in there for something like "camera controls" => "unit controls" => "trivial combat" => "basic construction" => "basic production" => "basic combat" => "interplanetary travel", etc. Possibly working up to the equivalent of the intermediate tutorial (tutorial campaign) in Classic, but with the goal being to find the Ark, repair it, and get to the exit point.

It'd be a fair bit of work. To be perfectly frank I'm designing the tutorial scripting engine so y'all can do a lot of the heavy lifting over the years of writing stuff that actually explains how to play well (I've never actually been very good at the game); potentially that could also work here if it seems that this more intensive approach is best.

That sounds good enough to me.

[Squashyhex]

Yea, a "prologue" section that doubles as a lore intro and an incremental tutorial is probably a better bet than trying to gate mechanics in the main game itself.

Basically cover the events from just before the Battle of Sol to when you recover the Ark and escape with it. Plenty of room in there for something like "camera controls" => "unit controls" => "trivial combat" => "basic construction" => "basic production" => "basic combat" => "interplanetary travel", etc. Possibly working up to the equivalent of the intermediate tutorial (tutorial campaign) in Classic, but with the goal being to find the Ark, repair it, and get to the exit point.

It'd be a fair bit of work. To be perfectly frank I'm designing the tutorial scripting engine so y'all can do a lot of the heavy lifting over the years of writing stuff that actually explains how to play well (I've never actually been very good at the game); potentially that could also work here if it seems that this more intensive approach is best.

This sounds awesome. I love loreful tutorials, as opposed to, say, the AIWC one Its totally skippable if you already know the mechanics, but has a narrative to avoid just being a "This is how you do this and this" tutorial.

Somehow this turned into a "Tutorials in the sequel" thread, but I don't suppose that's all bad

Still informative, right?

[MaxAstro]

Actually, the idea of limiting the player's options until certain early progression points sounds ~incredibly~ good.  The biggest complexity in AI War, in my option, is the first five minutes of the game: You are handed four dozen options, and you really have no idea what any of them do or what you really need, and by the time you have read through half of them oh crap it says ships are attacking me and I haven't built anything yet (my very first game of AI War right there...).

Starting the player off with nothing they can really do except build fleet ships and scout, and then unlocking everything else piece by piece at early progression goals... that would work really well.  I am not just speaking theoretically here, either; consider X-Com (1 and 2) and, for those who have played this rather obscure game, FortressCraft.  The tutorial is not a button you click on separate from the main game to do at your leisure; when you start a new game, the campaign starts with the tutorial and then the tutorial seamlessly transitions into the "real" game.

Also important: There is a "skip tutorial" button.

I really think something similar could massively reduce the barrier to entry of new players.

You could also kinda follow Binding of Isaac's lead, with having certain in game achievements unlock new out of game features.  That would help with how overwhelming the lobby is.  Or maybe just, the very first time a player enters the lobby, it tries to start them on a simple-settings game.  NOT, I should mention, a short standalone tutorial.  That is, I think, where a lot of tutorials fail in RTS games - they feel like a chore because after you finish them, you have to start the game over from the beginning again to play the "real" game.

I skip tutorials in most games, but both X-Com games got me to play through the tutorial by making it part of the actual game, instead of something I have to independantly pursue.  If the tutorial pulled another note from XCom's playbook and introduced some lore/storyline at the same time, that would be even better.

[Cyborg]

Actually, the idea of limiting the player's options until certain early progression points sounds ~incredibly~ good. 

No. No rails. CSGs remain optional.

[Tridus]

Actually, the idea of limiting the player's options until certain early progression points sounds ~incredibly~ good.  The biggest complexity in AI War, in my option, is the first five minutes of the game: You are handed four dozen options, and you really have no idea what any of them do or what you really need, and by the time you have read through half of them oh crap it says ships are attacking me and I haven't built anything yet (my very first game of AI War right there...).

Yep. This is the exact problem. You get thrown into the deep end with a dizzying array of things you can do, most of which you shouldn't be doing yet. You need experience to tell the difference between those, which is one of the reasons why most games don't give you the entire toolbox in your first five seconds playing.

You mentioned XCOM, and XCOM 2's tutorial is great. But it's teaching you about the basics. It doesn't teach you how to use advanced class abilities, because it doesn't have to. You don't have access to them yet. That frees the tutorial up to have to talk about fewer things. You get that stuff later, by which time you should feel comfortable with the basics.

[keith.lamothe]

No. No rails. CSGs remain optional.

Don't worry, CSGs are not coming back.

Mechanic-gating in the main campaign is also not the answer. Tutorials people actually want to play are far more promising.

[WolfWhiteFire]

A sort of story based campaign tutorial might be a good way to do it, though it would take more resources than to just program a regular tutorial.

[MaxAstro]

Convincing people that they want to play the tutorial is going to be the hardest challenge, since many people are going to come in with the default assumption that they don't.

EDIT: And to clarify I'm not advocating that the gating mechanic should apply every time a new game is started; there absolutely needs to be a "skip the tutorial" checkbox on the menu.  I just feel like the tutorial should be opt-out instead of opt-in.