Salem

Saugglocke wrote:The current tutorial is not intuitive, too difficult, too long, has annoying sound overlays (in case you were too fast) AND YOUR PROGRESS ISN'T SAVED! It even manages to frustrate players before they even started. Short: It's crap. The narrator is ok, though. If there wouldn't be the thermal problem, I'm convinced it would be way nicer to be dropped into the wilderness with no clue at all.

+1, I like the idea. Basically it allows inexperienced players to get going as it was before the thermal update.

PS: In my opinion a tutorial is important, but it needs to be very easy, self-explanatory, somewhat interesting and it should be OPTIONAL, as in every game...

were you one of the people who played the tutorial for hours thinking it was the real game?

Dallane wrote:were you one of the people who played the tutorial for hours thinking it was the real game?

Oh boy I really want to see someone do a let's play and get stuck in the tutorial

Paradoxyc wrote:

Dallane wrote:were you one of the people who played the tutorial for hours thinking it was the real game?

Oh boy I really want to see someone do a let's play and get stuck in the tutorial

Tutorial so good you never want to leave - salemthegame.com

Saugglocke wrote:The current tutorial is not intuitive, too difficult, too long, has annoying sound overlays (in case you were too fast) AND YOUR PROGRESS ISN'T SAVED! It even manages to frustrate players before they even started. Short: It's crap. The narrator is ok, though. If there wouldn't be the thermal problem, I'm convinced it would be way nicer to be dropped into the wilderness with no clue at all.

The current tutorial tells you how to do everything you need to get started in as clear a manner as we could come up with. If you had a hard time, maybe you should have slowed down and listened and read the popups. But if you were going that quickly, you probably weren't having too much trouble figuring it out so it must have been fairly intuitive for you.

Your progress isn't saved because the tutorial is a no-risk area where you can build your character up with absolutely no chance of harm coming to it. Salem, though, is all about risking your character. Even Providence isn't entirely safe. We didn't want players to just hang out in the tutorial for days while never actually getting into the real game. So, when you leave, you're either going out into the real Salem, or you're starting over. If you do get erased, the tutorial is short enough that it might be slightly annoying, but not a big inconvenience to do the tasks again.

TotalyMeow wrote:The current tutorial tells you how to do everything you need to get started in as clear a manner as we could come up with. If you had a hard time, maybe you should have slowed down and listened and read the popups. But if you were going that quickly, you probably weren't having too much trouble figuring it out so it must have been fairly intuitive for you.

Your progress isn't saved because the tutorial is a no-risk area where you can build your character up with absolutely no chance of harm coming to it. Salem, though, is all about risking your character. Even Providence isn't entirely safe. We didn't want players to just hang out in the tutorial for days while never actually getting into the real game. So, when you leave, you're either going out into the real Salem, or you're starting over. If you do get erased, the tutorial is short enough that it might be slightly annoying, but not a big inconvenience to do the tasks again.

Well, I just played through the tutorial again. I didn't get any popups, neither did I get a warning regarding the cold. Maybe some Java issue?

The problem with the sound overlay is, some things are easy to achieve and you're sometimes too fast. And then you're missing out some important information due to the sound overlay. Made a bug report about it already, and I still remember your workaround.

In my opinion a tutorial should guide you through the basic mechanics of the game, hence you should show the player how it is done exactly by an example. The tutorial could also be split up in several parts and it should be optional. As I don't have those fancy popups, here's what came to my mind without them.

Currently: Pick a tree and somehow get some nuts.
In my opinion better: Some arrows showing you a tree, you need to select and obtain the nuts by forcing the player to right click and select the action from the menu. AFAIK this is the default style of all tutorials for games you need to pay.

Currently: Find any food you like and do some gluttony session... to level up some humours, that are never explained.
Maybe better: Give the player the four different berry/nut types and show how to get into gluttony mode and level up each humour explicitly with a small introduction what each humour is good for. And afterwards one example where the player has to eat two items to level up. Just to get the concept.

Here what came to my mind, while I played through it.

• Camera view in the beginning.
• Which door? Mark it maybe.
• Hickory nut: How to forage hickory nuts and how to feed nubs? Controls?
• How to catch a tumbleweed? Getting stuck all the time... Missing: Hint regarding the Mini-Map.
• How do you craft and study items? Where to get those items?
• How do you build? I got everything in my inventory, like it is with crafting. Missing: Keyboard-Shortcut to put everything in at once + warning about inheritance problem.
• Missing: How to equip stuff?
• Missing: How to do gluttony? Tutorial just tells you get some food and eat as much as possible to increase humours. Say something how to turn on gluttony mode.
• Missing: Explanation of controls
• Missing: Explanation of Mini-Map
• Missing: Some hints about a good starting spot
• Missing: Explanation of the interface

Just some thoughts from my side.

Popups only happen once per account. We assume you know what you're doing after the first time and don't want to annoy you with extra interruptions when you can just go read the popup in the Help menu if you need a refresher.

Dallane wrote:

Saugglocke wrote:The current tutorial is not intuitive, too difficult, too long, has annoying sound overlays (in case you were too fast) AND YOUR PROGRESS ISN'T SAVED! It even manages to frustrate players before they even started. Short: It's crap. The narrator is ok, though. If there wouldn't be the thermal problem, I'm convinced it would be way nicer to be dropped into the wilderness with no clue at all.

+1, I like the idea. Basically it allows inexperienced players to get going as it was before the thermal update.

PS: In my opinion a tutorial is important, but it needs to be very easy, self-explanatory, somewhat interesting and it should be OPTIONAL, as in every game...

were you one of the people who played the tutorial for hours thinking it was the real game?

My tutorial character's scalp is higher than Insiq's