So turns out I had a few things to say about each Tutorial as they currently stand. To this point I have tried not to read everyone else's posts before doing mine (ok, I read a little bit), so I may be repeating others thoughts.
Gunner Beginner Tutorial
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1. The gunner has a spanner instead of a wrench. It's a minor point but I'd prefer that the gunner is introduced with equipment that should be using in real games, but at least it's not a mallet (or worse).
2. After firing the first shot the gunner is asked to hit R to reload, but exhausting the clip moves you to the next instruction. Consider waiting until the player has either changed ammo or hit the R button while the clip is not full until the player progresses to the next instruction.
3. The player is directed to the side gun of the pyramidion. This is probably just out of convienience but gunners should be introduced to gunning by directing them where they will spend most of their time: the top right of the Pyramidion. They need to learn where their captain wants them to be.
4. The Artemis is used to demonstrate how to take down both the hull armor and the balloon of a target dummy here, and it does it in 2 shots of each. Again, I think this is setting up unrealistic expectations that you can just point any gun at any component. Please consider switching the gunner to a different gun to destroy the balloon.
I know this is just a basic tutorial but I think you should give new players exposure guns at a station that a gunner will use, not the side gune of a pyra. Since doing this tutorial I noticed that the Beginner engineer is top and bottom deck of the pyra. Top deck for gunner please!
Gunner Advanced Training
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1. Still on side guns of pyra!!! These are the guns of the main engi unless you have a sniper side.
2. Magically going through all the guns, this is pretty cool. I think I'll be recommending this training a bit. Honestly though, I wish it did all the guns.
3. you probably don't get enough time on each weapon, some dummies are spawned move after a while so you have nothing to shoot at.
4. Target dummy for hades moves left
At least make the dummy for the hades move right so the player can see the target and their previous shots projectiles
5. Gatling gun goes through these ammo types: heavy clip: not anymore, charged: maybe: lochnagar: wtf
6. I think it needs pointing out again: we are teaching new players to use lochnagar in the gatling gun!
6. oh at some point my tool changed to a mallet. I'm guessing this is a bug.
7. for the mortar Tute burst, greased and lesmok are good but I think the dummy should be spawned further away for lesmok because you don't get a sense that it reaches further from this.
8. Merc rounds: incendiary: wot, heatsink: nice, heavy clip: lol. Again dummies are spawned too close, and by now there is a ton of dummies banging into each other.
9. After all this, I think the training here should be split up into short range / long range tutorials or have a firing range where you can try _all_ the guns at different ranges.
Engineer Beginner
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Maybe it is just me but this was a bit frustrating. Unlike the gunner tutorial where things went by really quickly, this was very repetitive. I had to repair a gun from half health 5 times, then rebuild something else 5 or 6 times, it didn't feel like I was progressing.
Engineer Advanced
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1. strange that it explains wrench/mallet/spanner without actually using them - this may be bugged.
2. Then gives you a extinguisher/chemspray/buff (lol) and advanced Engineer training is basically 'buff everything!'
3. By "buff everything" I am excluding some of the engines. You are only told to buff the left engine! this results in a hard to steer ship.
4. This tutorial gives a false impression that the previous tutes loadout (mallet/spanner/extinguisher) is for beginners and the buff hammer loadout is for experts. Worse, in advanced you are given a extingisher/chemsparay/buff loadout. What!?
5. Unfortunately there is no mechanic to teach chem spray (even the current achievements teach you to be reactive with chem spray rather than proactive)
6. Ignoring chem, you should teach the 2 most common loadouts, mallet/spanner/extinguisher and wrench/buff/extinguisher. Teach the pros/cons of those loadouts. e.g. teach mallet/spanner/extinguisher then teach the risk/reward of reducing the amount of repair tools by adding buff.
Pilot Beginner
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Broken. I flew to the destination and it didn't register. One of the rolling clouds broke everything and I was imobile. There was no AI here to help and just me with a spanner. I quit this tutorial out of frustration, not knowing how to finish it. In summary: broken.
Pilot Advanced
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Going through the pilot tools is ok I guess (no spyglass or range finder
). At the end it described the functionality of F2 and F3 but again there was no AI, so I think this part of the tutorial is broken.
Thoughts
=======
How do we teach people what ammo to use when patches are changing the effectiveness of them (e.g. heavy isn't as relevant anymore for the gatling gun)? Rather than shooting at target dummies at near point blank range, I would rather some sort of firing range with different distances and allow the player as much time on each gun to fire at all distances.
A fundamental of this game is crew composition and crew dynamic. e.g. for the Pyramidion which is used throughout these tutorials you need a pilot, gunner on top right gun, gungineer taking care of the balloon on top left gun and main engi on bottom deck. If you had new players buy a 4 pack and do the tutorials together or separately, they should have these concepts down. OK, this reminds me, some of these tutorials you could have others join and some you could not with the error in chat: "Failed to join match: target user is not in a match."
On reflection of matches I have played with newer players, I do remember seeing new gunners wander aimlessly around a pyramidion and even players putting incendiary in mercs (I play on a lot of merc/artimes mobulas) so I do wonder if the current tutorials are teaching new players bad habits.
BTW, I typed this up in markdown format (because I hate bbcode) but I can't really be bothered converting it to bbcode
. On the plus side, markdown is totally readable in plain text!