being a little absolutist eh?
Well, like I said, the point of this particular tutorial isn’t to teach combos. It’s to teach that combos exist and how a player would go about finding ways to do combos such as gatlings (5HS 6HS HS), links (6HS 6P), and movement modifiers (things to do after a wall stick). Help break a combo system down for a beginning player instead of just giving them something like FP FP FP in a challenge mode and letting the player sort that out.
Visual notifications of certain properties of moves don’t have to be blatant, they can be extremely subtle, but the point is to have something to look out for in repeated matchups. The little white rings indicating invulnerability are extremely easy to miss if you’re not looking for them, but they serve as great indicators of invulnerability. Thus this problem:
Can be solved by having two versions of the DP display the little white rings show up if someone throws something at the character during the invulnerability, and not having them show up in other cases. It also solves the fakeout problem if the purpose of one version having invulnerability and the other not is to simply bluff recovery timings or something because it won’t show the information until the other player attempts to contest the move.
Ideally, this information would be presented during a match itself. But if its truly the case that providing even the slightest of information like this isn’t possible without cluttering the interface or clashing with aesthetics or interrupting gameplay (which I highly doubt due to having successful examples already existing in BB for example), why couldn’t it be implemented in replay videos? Just record a match, and then run it through a replay function that annotates whatever a player is specifically looking for. Airborne or grounded, high/low/unblockable, high/low crush, super armor, things of that nature. It might even be possible to show frame advantage by doing something like having both characters glow blue during neutral, glow red when attacking, and glow green while in blockstun. This way, if someone does something like SFIV Sakura’s EX Tatsu with its +4 frames on block, the player that’s blocking will learn by watching the replay that it’s probably not a good idea to press a button afterwards.
Nothing worth doing is easy.
except eating and sex
edit: and playing
edit2: and walks on the beach
BlazBlue tutorials do just that, to the T, and people still complain about it.
Same with Skullgirls, if straight up forces you understand the mechanics.
Also, holy shit Xes and that Eva guy how are you guys on SRK and no so little, understand so little about fighting games?
Holy shit.
Tutorial’s aren’t really the answer, especially compared to clarity.
“Teaching you how a game is played in a controlled environment isn’t the way how to teach someone how to play a game”.
Xes.
I…Don’t even, dude.
Plenty of games simply have too many fucking mechanics to be present on the screen at once.
What about tekken, tekken does a pretty great job of telling you what’s a high, low, mid, low crush, high crush, one grab, two grab, simply with color coding, yet it is a game you need to understand with more than just empirical evidence.(Or it would take fucking FOREVER to figure out what punishes what.)
Not on a basic level, not really. This goes back to an early point I had in this thread. We’re so enveloped in high level information that we think its necessary to play the games.
Do you need to know all the proper punishes to play low level tekken? Death fist says no! Just like you don’t need to even know what links are to play most of these games at a basic level. (edit: for example, you can enjoy the hell out of SF2 or even SF4 with only the basic knowledge of doing a few specials and jumpkick>trip)
Maybe I'm coming from a different angle because I learned naturally in the arcades. A Usenet faq was a really big deal in the mid-90s and most people never had a chance to even see one.
And yet, people loved and got good at so many different games, without even a hint of a tutorial. I put this to two things:
[LIST=1]
[*]the games weren't helplessly overburdened with slop mechanics
[*]people had no idea of what they didn't know until they were already used to and engaged in the games.
[/LIST]
Last thought: If a game has too many mechanics to effectively communicate on the screen, then somebody fucked up in designing it. A hugely important skill is *knowing what you don't actually need*.Tutorial lessons are not as binding as play. They only help with basic interaction (step tutorials) and with invested players (detailed instruction). There’s a big donut hole of people who are interested in the game but do not learn through instruction, only by doing. The Tekken Tag 2 tutorial is much better than most because it gamifies the process of learning and consistently rewards the player.
Really though, why does increased and improved feedback offend you so much? Would showing a player that a move avoids low attacks, or that it can be cancelled, or having a unified language for invulnerability, somehow diminish the playing experience for others?
As an aside, the hostility in this discussion is honestly astounding. There is no reason to be so angry when discussing visual feedback in video games.
Here is a Bold cancel tutorial video
[media=youtube]dM7xtVF1jfc[/media]
Explain to me how you visually represent a move that is cancelled so fast that you don’t see it. But heres where it gets crazy, you aren’t even asking for a visual cue of just the cancel you want the players to visually know exactly what happened. Even if you have a marker for the fact that there was a cancel how do you indicate visually which move was cancelled when that move NEVER CAME OUT.
To Lithuan, or whatever your name is, no offense, I just don’t feel like scrolling up to look at your name.
To answer your question, it’s annoying.
It’s so fucking annoying, the most annoying thing ever is to be told what you already know, or worse yet, what you SHOULD ALREADY KNOW.
What’s with you “new developer game” types and thinking everything has to be spoon into mouth?
What happened to “figure it out for yourselves”, what happened to “putting the work in”?
What happened to people who make video mainstream video games and people who play them?
[media=youtube]8FpigqfcvlM[/media]
The first 5 minutes are for Lithuan, Eva, and Xes.
And to respond to Xes’ reply.
I grew up in arcades playing fighting games too, your point?
You probably played something like ST or something right?
Are you going to fucking tell me you learned negative edging naturally?
Kara cancelling?
Did you? I didn’t, someone had to tell me that outside of an arcade after researching that shit.
Even back then, Vsav and ST had all this shit that you couldn’t just figure out in an arcade, your rose tinted glasses are blinding you.
I think a legless, asexual, robot who lacks the ability to eat or play would find all of those activities difficult sir. You can’t make such large generalizations.
What I am saying is…
http://www.gameosaurus.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/blazblue-screen.jpg
Here is an old screen of BB, here you see the barrier meter, “special meter”, combo meter, damage for the combo, lifebar, time bar, and character’s portraits.
In this game, it tells you when an opponent or yourself bursts, rapid cancels, throws, misses a broken throw, when you are hit with an overhead, or a low, and even shows you a visual indication of when an opponent alpha counters and is in negative penalty.
What else could anyone possibly want?
And guess what, it’s all explained in the tutorial.
You are shown the ropes, even given a challenge mode to get a feel of what a character’s combos should look like, and then thrust out into the world, as you should be.
I’d want less bloat 
There’s a point at which there’s just too much shit to process efficiently, and blaz is kind of there.
Still, to some degree Arc would have to be agreeing with me (or me with them). Look at all the goddamn effort they put into clearly communicating things!
They know that things being arcane and incomprehensible is a turnoff.
I'll stick to my point though,** clear rules clearly expressed** are many times more important than a tutorial which a good number of users will skip anyways.The player probably wouldn’t need to know which move was cancelled after the move was cancelled, just that there are moves that can be cancelled and that are cancels are indicated by a flash or particle effect. If a player sees a simple cancel, akin to the old c.mk->fireball results in a flash, then they will see that flash occurring when other cancels are done, so they connect the dots and see what can be cancelled and what cannot.
It’s a challenge, and it might look terrible, but it’s something that should (and is) be explored. Modern games are much better at delivering feedback than the games of yore. Some are certainly better than others (MK does a better job than SF at illustrating how combos work, for example). There’s still quite a bit of work to be done, and because there’s a fine line between providing data and overwhelming the new player, missteps will be made.
Then we’re done. If you don’t even have the courtesy to scroll up to cut and paste my name, I’m not going to speak with you. Rudeness for its own sake doesn’t impress me.
Everyone says that about BB, but it’s just unfounded.
Just because you feel that way, doesn’t make it so.
I’m trying to have an debate here, but you nor Lithuan are giving any meat, substance.
It’s these weird “oohs” and “aahs” and “waits” that make you look like you don’t know how games, let alone fighting games work.
Vsav sure didn’t tell you when you got hit with an overhead, or a low, yet it’s fine correct?
We don’t need more hand holding, if you want people to understand shit, I can dig that, and that’s what robust tutorials like SG and BB and P4 are for.
They do it well, but there are many things you just can’t learn through simply playing, those games aren’t those games, there is no fighting game out like that because it’s crazy, with all the crazy shit in ST now, not even in that game, you need to know your shit.
Also, Lithuan if you want to discredit the rest of my post because you’re too butthurt that my browser was acting funny, then, that’s cool, I guess.
This is honestly the number one rule.
One should be able to play ANY game be it fighting, shooting or whatever and be able to learn the mechanics through play, preferably without being obnoxious about it(HEY! LOOK AT THIS BIG TUTORIAL WINDOW! OPEN IT UP NOW!)
If at any point you need to go to an external source or actually have to STOP playing the actual game in order to figure out WHY something happened then the game didn’t explain that mechanic very well.
You know how in Mario Kart your lead to believe that the faster your car the faster you’ll move ahead of everyone?
You know how in Mario Kart you’ll be 50KM ahead of your opponent only to skid a wall and have the AI somehow whizz pass you only to find out that this is actually a mechanic DESIGNED into the game? That’s not a layer of difficulty, it’s just the game being inconsistent with it’s rules.
missed this in spam.
Some stuff I picked up somewhere or other (probably largely from other people playing), other stuff, I didn’t know much later, but… (and here’s the important part) I loved the games anyways despite not knowing about these things.
In fact, that’s kind of central to the point I was making.
There’s all this crap you think you ‘need’ to know to play, that simply wasn’t known back then, and fighting games were more alive and popular than they ever have been since.
So, I’ll say it again: “A clear system clearly expressed is worth much much more than a tutorial”.
Edit: And honestly VS isn’t fine, at least looking at it as a designer. The game is super fun, but it’s a huge steaming confusing mess.
Also, and finally, What is the point of a FG? Wading through tutorials and rote 1p practice in order to master these arcane (how I love that word) systems, or playing against, and hopefully beating the tar out of, another player?
More playing less practice.
Then you just weren’t playing the game right, homie.
My arcades knew how to unlock Roll, why Red Venom caused, fights, so on, and so forth.
And you’re just tricking yourself.
You DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT ALL THIS SHIT in the past (like kara cancelling, pianoing, negative edging), so of course you didn’t care what you didn’t know existed.
If there wasn’t a robust training mode in BB, you wouldn’t know about half of the shit you think you’re complaining about, so just close your eyes and press buttons, you’d pretty much get the same effect you did in the past.
What about Vsav, you learned about instant overheads and shit the hard way right, did you know that Bulleta’s pressure game was stupid in the arcades, did you know about Zabel’s crouching forward? Did you know about certain character’s corner option selects with throw?
No, but you still had fun, right, imagine all that information day one, would you still have fun, or would you be complaining the same thing with BB?
I’m too impatient to do tutorial mode when picking up a new game. I just start pressing buttons and figure it out from there.