I have received an alarming amount of complaints from randoms I have played with recently about how awful the tutorial is and how one can only learn the game through the slim chance of being taught by a veteran. I've mentioned a comprehensive video tutorial that would be shown after a player loads for the first time to teach it all and get it out of the way, yet still remaining on YouTube to go and look at later. In all seriousness, the amount of players who have permanently quit the game because of how inaccessible it is, is a major problem. Accessibility is one of the most important things in keeping a player actually playing. Frankly, I wouldn't play a game that I had no idea how to play while I was getting wrecked every single match by people who do. In fact, that even makes it harder to learn, because getting thrown in the deep end can sometimes be overwhelming and rage inducing in many individuals.
Players have told me that the tutorials don't go into the slightest detail about how to actually be a gunner or an engineer, and barely teach the important mechanics. Personally, I haven't played through it, but from the fact that every new player in multiple lobbies agreed that a video commentary tutorial would be 1000% better seems to be a good reason to change things. There's no point advertising a community and tournaments to people who hate the game because it's hard to learn and thus play. The majority of people who play the game and will continue to already are aware of how badass the community and tourneys are or aren't the kind to indulge in that stuff, while the rest don't care 'cause they'll quit in a couple weeks at best. Steam sales will get a quick cash boost, but won't keep people. Deals with YouTubers will do the same. People will play for a laugh like their favourite YouTubers, but won't actually learn the game and will put it down once their YouTubers go onto something else.
Popularity comes from people recommending the game, and that requires people to keep playing it enough to really like.
So, my suggestion which I've pitched to some randoms is a set of video tutorials, going through each mechanic in a simplified way, such as character loadouts and effective ship builds and weapon/damage types and class roles ect. ect. which they've all agreed would be much better. This could be done by when a player first loads the game or clicks the tutorial tab, an in game window pops up with a bunch of videos with titles like, "ship customisation and loadouts", "basic gunning", "advanced gunning", "weapons types", "tips and tricks", "piloting 101" and so on a so forth in such a manner. I'm aware that videos already exist on the site, but they are outdated, unpolished and could use more than one person to spice it up, and preferably people with proven ingame experience and knowledge, with a backstreet vocabulary who regularly play times, such as many of the CAs and competitive players will already have. as much as I love you guys at Muse and obviously you have the knowledge, I don't think a dev is quite right, as you might not get as much play time and down to earth communication with a variety of players as some of the community gets.
The important thing to remember is that alot of new players will not go to the website or check the forum, because the can't be bothered. Now I'm not in favour of dumbing down the community to accompany newbies, and I'm not asking for any of you to change your attitude, you all do a fantastic job as CAs, but I believe that no amount of helping people in game and organising novice matches and dropping tips can do as much for the lazy world we live in as a video that they can watch and take in without having to do anything.
I am perfectly willing myself to volunteer for doing one or two of the voice overs for these things, or having auditions and whatnot, but it needs to be quick, yet comprehensive for each section, without being monotonous, with edited together clips ingame of relevant things to what's being said. oh, and quality of sound is important. it'll feel tacky and boring if the speaker's got static and stuff. By the way, this'll make your jobs easier as when a player says "i'm new, need helpz pl0x" you can just say "watch the tutorials, they'll explain it" rather than "join novice matches" which probably won't help too much for 70%, or "i'll help you out ingame" which takes time and leaves other players on their own, as apparently, recommending the tutorial won't help
Thank you for reading, I'm open to suggestions and feedback as always ^^
tl;dr: video tutorials, help the newbies
(this is just a copypaste of a post i made somewhere else, wasn't aware of this thread ^^)
