Nintendo has been good about leaving tutorials as optional, the only recent games that come to mind for me are Xenoblade 2 and Mario & Luigi: Brothership. They’re probably the lest offending company when it comes to tutorials, that’s why I’m still a customer of theirs.

This article makes me think of Arknights: Endfield, despite not being out yet. Its CBT2 is the very definition of egregious game design with constant tutorials. All its gameplay mechanics (battle, exploration, factory building, tower defense) are peppered with tutorials. Worse yet is how the tutorials are broken up into single screen windows that needlessly pop up when the game already forces you to read between single steps. It’s not even breaking the tutorials into chunks, the tutorials force you to read between actions, breaking the flow of the game.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha are its biggest target audience for it being a gacha/mobile game, and even if studies have shown younger people have poor attention spans, its copious utilization of tutorials is shockingly bad for a game slated to be released next month,

Nevermind the cringey and bloated dialogue when characters talk, the game constantly forces you into tutorials as you progress through CBT2. The tutorials are already bad enough during battle and the overworld, but it becomes especially egregious when building your factory.

Imagine a game brings up a window to explain a game mechanic, but turn that up to 11 so that it does this for Every. Single. Step. Place down a factory part? Tutorial window afterwards. Place down the belt? Put up another tutorial window. Complete the next step? Another tutorial window. It pads out the intro of the game in an unnecessary and unnatural way, I’m not surprised people have voiced their criticism for it during feedback.

If this is a sign games releasing in the future will take this to the extreme, I wonder if devs are even playing their own games before asking for feedback from players or releasing them to the market.

Just let us play the games, and give us a tutorial option that we can read through on our own time.

And yes there’s times game mechanics get complicated and require a mini tutorial but it doesn’t need to be in the form of walls of text.

So any limitation of freedom to play typically doesn’t make games better. Event triggered cutsceenes, endless dialogue or text click-through, “story modes” with extremely limited interaction, invisible walls, forced paths/strategies, etc.

Why not focus on free playing, when it’s games (exploration, learning on the fly, freedom of choice and strategy), not passive entertainment and mandatory stuff and forced paths/strategy?

I don’t think we need every game telling us how to move our character or the character. lol. It is a fine balance, if you ask me.

Therefore anything that sacrifices interaction and freedom, to force some stupid story on me or force me down a pre defined path is ruining games for me.

Freedom and interaction – that is, why it’s called “playing”, not “watching/listening/reading”, like in passive entertainment. Tutorials should also reflect that: help us enjoy our playing experience, not school us and force the games (often irrelevant) stories and background infos on us.
Just want to play.

It’s just another case which shows management doesnt play their own games and come from a different generation.

Early gaming before it became as accepted yes you needed the manual and tutorial. It wasn’t uncommon to see the same mechanic implemented with a very different control scheme and mechanic.

But I agree introduce it when its needed as part of using the mechanic rather than a wall of text I have no control over.

I cannot speak for all gamers, but I know this will resonate with a large section of the gamer community. I say it with some attempt at wit and humor. Hopefully it comes across as such. If not, may I suggest asking Santa for a funny bone.

Anyways…

We, the True Gamers you raised from childhood with your super marios and final fantasies and the Sonics, and legends of the Zeldas… we play games for the challenge, more or less. We play these games and more not to be held by the hand, told how to Hyah, or how to go fast, or save the princess of yet another castle. We can figure that out pretty easily. It is when ya’ll game devs start to get weird on us that we sometimes need the manual that mentions almost nothing usueful. That website full of know it alls who know nothing of use, except sometimes they do. Those manuals too. And your precious tutorials.meant for people who, frankly, should be doing something better with their time. Why?

Because gitting gud has never been just a Dark Souls meme. Dark Souls and Demon Souls prior to it, those were just more of the same we grew up with in the arcades and the blockbuster rentals.

We don’t need your stinkin tutorials. We are the ones everyone else goes to for help. We’re the ones fixing your games when they can be modded. Sometimes even when not.

So when you put these tutorials into your games, they tend to ignored by us. That manual? We set it aside for when someone else needs it. The game faqs, tips, tricks, full walkthroughs? We wrote them.

To point, I only have ever had a single brady games walkthrough in my entire life, and I got it simply because that game will sell better later on with it.

So. Game devs. Publishers. Indies galore alike. I ask one christmas miracle of you all.

Put the effort you put into tutorials, and funnel that time and effort into the rest of the game instead. The people who actually need that stuff can just play on beginner mode. Put that stuff there, where they need it. Frankly, I would prefer removing easy modes entirely, but we gotta give the “gitting gud still” players a bone sometimes.

The rest of us, we will appreciate that you have gotten out of our way, let go of our hand, and cut the apron strings so to speak. You made a masterpiece of your own liking. Now let us go enjoy it by making an absolute mockery of it by saving the princess yet again by launching ourselves with a time dilated tree towards the big bad castle with the pushover enemy that should have died about 4 entries ago. Right Navi?

Oh right, you took that tutorial away. Thankfully. And yet, we’ll always miss being told… hey listen.

Anyways. My 10 cents worth. Hope ya’ll enjoyed it. Merry christmas, happy new years, and remember that games sell better if they aren’t overpriced, which keeps you in business better than chasing the profit dragon like junkies.

Kooloo Limpah.

But to go further though I also hate objective markers and mandatory mini maps or compasses. Just let me explore and enjoy the scenery.