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Why Does DE Have A Severe Aversion to Tips/Hints/Guides?????


Zeoran
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I've played an enormously large amount of games.  But I have never before played a game that gave absolutely ZERO tips/hints/guides on how to do things as this game does.  Latest examples: Fishing and mining in Fortuna.  Both of them are different from their POE cousins and while many will claim that they are intuitive, and they are, a simple 'first time' guide/hint system would have been severely appreciated.  I figured out the fishing mechanic easily.  But the mining was a bit more complicated.  I easily guessed that I wanted to stop the drill inside of the brackets, but what isn't clear is WHERE in the brackets is the best place?  Just inside, near the edge or the middle?  And what about times when there's the smaller stationary bracket?  I'm a highly intelligent person so I can figure this stuff out and can look up or ask people if I need confirmation of what I've already surmised, but it's just lazy that you don't provide ANY kind of "how to" system for new players on any of these mechanics you create.  

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I personally think that having too many hints and tips is a bit overwhelming and can feel like my hand is being held most of the way through. I think being able to figure out everything on my own feels rewarding and I feel knowledgeable when helping out other players who are going through the difficulties I have faced.

Taking Shovel Knight as an example. No tutorial, they just slowly introduce mechanics just to not suddenly drop you into something that will surprise you and leave you in an unfair death.

But in the case of mining, the goal is to stop it as close to the middle as possible within the brackets. I feel that trial and error sort of helped me understand that mechanic, since veins weren't too scarce to attempt a trial and error.

Warframe, in my opinion, does a good job in not choking too much information to the players and letting them find out on their own. This is a reason why the wiki page for warframe is so good compared to most other games.

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I agree that too many hints and tips is bad.  But here there are ***NO*** hints or tips.  Not even a "getting started" guide the first time you equip your new mining tool. I've never seen another game have absolutely ZERO instruction on how its mechanics work.  It shouldn't take a bunch of trial and error to figure something out.  This just seems lazy to me. 

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Son, do you even loading screen? There are tips and hints on every SINGLE loading screen in the game. There are tutorials in your foundry, in your arsenal and in the Codex. And did you sleep through Vor’s Prize? That was a hand holding quest from the word “go.” Furthermore, there is an option in audio settings that allows you to enable hints. Turn that on and Lotus will literally NOT stop telling you how to complete the mission. These things you ask for are already in the game. Just look for them. 

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"Son"???  I'm 46 years old.  I'm probably old enough to be your father.  And I've been gaming since it was invented.

Yes, there are 'mission' hints.  But I wasn't referring to how to complete missions.  I was referring to the mining/fishing mechanics.  And there are NO hints/guides for those.  Nothing in Vor's Prize teaches you how to mine in POE or fish.  Get a clue "son". 

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No, you're old enough to be my brother or cousin. But in regards to fishing/mining, what needs to be explained? Sometimes, trial and error are the best teachers. Find out what works and what doesn't and you grow a new wrinkle on your brain for having learned it. The wiki (warframe.wikia.com) is a great resource for learning stuff, so if you really want someone to teach you, go there. To be perfectly honest with you, Warframe is a breath of fresh air in an age where every other game has a tutorial every 5 minutes.

Metroid's "tutorials" were some of the best imo. They told you a TON while being as nonintrusive as possible. In Super Metroid, your tutorial for new items was "oh you found missles. This is how to use them" and the pop up is gone. Too many games today have annoying animated icons and other weird S#&$ that you have to dismiss all over the bloody screen. No. Stop that. Just let me play the damn game already. Stop pointing at my HUD, stop telling me what to do. Let me figure this out on my own. And for those who don't want to figure it out, well, they can check the strategy guide formally known as The Wiki.

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All you've done is throw out examples of opposite extremes.  I shouldn't need to consult the wiki (which doesn't exist for every game) to find out how a game mechanic works.  Sometimes a game mechanic is intuitive enough that no explanation or tutorial is needed.  But there are plenty of people who aren't as smart as you and may need a little help and the game should be providing it.  And considering this is the same game that has Ordis repeating the same 10 annoying phrases unless you turn his volume off (but then you won't hear him when it's actually important), it's a bit hypocritical to use that example.  

I wasn't advocating for a tutorial every 5 minutes or anything of the kind, but congratulations on taking my complaint to all of its extremes in a vague attempt to make your point.

Ps - I don't play games like this because I want to be "taught" through trial and error.  I play because I want to be entertained.  Unfortunately, free games like this require the grind system in order to make the "speed by platinum" system viable and that's a price we have to pay in order to play the game.  I'm fine with that.  But that doesn't mean I want to have to spend even more time learning HOW to grind or how to get the most out of my grind.  I wasn't asking for a 15-minute tutorial.  A simple pop-up or communication from Eudico or whoever saying "point your mining laser at the dots and aim to stop it in the middle of the bracket" would have been sufficient. And it would only have to be repeated ONCE.  

I'm completely lost as to how you think my request is so unreasonable. 

Edited by Zeoran
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It's just unnecessary, tbh. Blinking dots in any game has been "oh, I need to hit that spot," and a few times of trial and error with the brackets will teach you that the sweet spot is about halfway into the bracket. It's easy to pick up if you just try it a few times. Sorry, not everything needs a tutorial to clutter up the screen and annoy people with dismissing. Not when fiddling with the said feature will educate you just as quickly.

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I'm just gonna dump this here and call it a day:

Warframe's tutorials, or rather lack thereof, are awful. There are a lot of complicated systems in this game that have hidden tutorials that aren't obvious to start with, or just no tutorial at all. Even beyond fishing/mining (although a contextual style popup as described in the video for if someone is struggling wouldn't hurt anyone) things like the damage system, modding, etc. are only explained by pressing a non-distinct button that just says "tutorial" mixed in with all the buttons that look exactly the same, and things like Riven disposition aren't even explained ingame at all. This isn't even counting hidden information like where to get certain frames (which is very easy to fix with a simple line in the description of the base frame).

I will finish off by saying this: if any game makes you go to a wiki in order to understand it, then that game has failed the player

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If we already have a system which can turn hints on/off for players then we can just make that more comprehensive. Like he is saying make it provide hints for special actions or game mechanics, or just build an in game faq. That way ppl who want it can use it, ppl who don't (me) can ignore it. 

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I honestly think it's unreasonable to expect DE to understand their own game that well.

That's not a slam on them really; Steve's old Sunday Streams kinda showed us just how generally out of touch they are with their 6-years-of-spaghetti-code game. I don't think they could design useful tutorials even if they tried, and I mark that down largely to the nature of the beast rather than any fundamental incompetence on their part.

 

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1 hour ago, notlamprey said:

I honestly think it's unreasonable to expect DE to understand their own game that well.

That's not a slam on them really; Steve's old Sunday Streams kinda showed us just how generally out of touch they are with their 6-years-of-spaghetti-code game. I don't think they could design useful tutorials even if they tried, and I mark that down largely to the nature of the beast rather than any fundamental incompetence on their part.

 

Thats the cause of many problems too not just the lack of acceptable hints.

Whenever a balance decision borns i remember that they test everything in a dev only build where you have infinite energy and absurd stats like over 175% efficiency.

You cant understand your game if you dont play the same game as your players.

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I actually like the lack of descriptions ingame - finding out stuff on your own can also be rewarding.
If you can't find it out yourself, you can ask in chat / check the wiki / forum / YT or ask a MR20+ twitch streamer 😉

--> A side effect is that it makes the community more lively. It causes lots of discussions on many different platforms
and players can really help other players.

So, this may very well be done on purpose by DE. Old Marketing rule: all publicity is good publicity
(especially if it is discussions about improvements or tutorials on how stuff works or players helping players).

 

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First off, Amen to GeoffFromAccounting's  post.  If the game forces you to use a wiki at all, something's wrong with the game.  Personally, I think DE is just being lazy.  The wiki exists and has nearly all the information you need.  And I've found the Tenno community to be very generous, forgiving and kind.  But that doesn't excuse DE's gross mistake.

The game needs to be designed for EVERYONE.  There are people who like to play games who don't have the same level of intuitive ability that many of you do or even I do.  I didn't start this thread because I personally have had problems.  But I've been playing games forever and I saw a glaring and huge error and felt it was necessary to point it out.  The release of Fortuna with it's new mechanics that, again, have no explanation behind them whatsoever is just wrong.  I could easily extend this beyond just fishing/mining.  The only level of help the game gives is in completing mission objectives.  And in the case of Kuva farming, it doesn't even do that.  I still only have a textbook understanding of how to play in a Kuva Siphon match.  

I don't care what DE's excuse is, this needs to be fixed and it's NEVER too late.

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It's true that tips/hints aren't supported well enough, though I'd say the game is simple enough to learn the basics firsthand.

However, if players go out of their way to write a great guide, tutorial or just a summary of hints, no effort is put into conserving it. That's why quality builds and meta playstyles are rare, even among veterans. "Common sense" is entirely misleading in this community as many accepted ideas are dead wrong, and comparison difficult.

I'd say the solution here lies in quality community management, not so much in-game reading material. If people want to learn, let them come to the official forums (yes that's a decentralization burn towards Reddit ?). A guides subforum would be a good solution, as long as there are some mythbusters around to keep bad guide-writers in check.

 

Also a nod to @GeoffFromAccounting. Having a "required reading wiki" for your game means failure as a dev. The same goes for warframe.market, which shows that Trade chat is unacceptable, and wfbuilder which shows that build sharing is a highly desired feature.

Third party websites shouldn't be required, ever. It's shameful, really.

Edited by Gessie00
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On 2018-11-17 at 11:36 AM, slyd84 said:

I actually like the lack of descriptions ingame - finding out stuff on your own can also be rewarding.

On 2018-11-17 at 11:36 AM, slyd84 said:

If you can't find it out yourself, you can ask in chat / check the wiki / forum / YT or ask a MR20+ twitch streamer 😉

Thats nice and all but the first one can only happen if the said information is ingame while if you reach the second line your game has already failed.

 

A simple example would be nekros soul punch aoe range, a data whats soo hidden ingame its still not on the wiki OR even better theres also the information of how effective is mirage eclipse ingame because it is dependant on enviromental lightning a stat what you cant find.

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I find it fascinating that in this thread, it's being recognized that DE also has a terrible trading system that actually punishes players for trading.  Because I posted a separate thread about that very topic and I'm getting lambasted for my belief that the current trading system is too restrictive.  And putting an in-game "tax" on trading just comes across as ridiculously greedy to me on DE's part.  Same with the crazy restrictions.  My son plays an Excalibur exclusively and there was an alert a while ago for a Pendragon helmet that I was sure he'd love. But he was at school and couldn't do the alert, but I could and did.  But I couldn't trade the blueprint to him. And despite there being a "helmet" section of the trading options, I couldn't trade it with him either, because nothing you've actually built in your foundry can be traded.  It's a bloody COSMETIC item.  It's not going to break the game allowing me to trade it to him.  

There are so many instances where it just looks like DE took the lazy/easy way out of doing something that they should have done as developers. 

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@Zeoran I am definitely agreed on this.. Some simple tutorial guides or tips would be nice for some new players.. 

@Kromatia I partly agreed to your saying because most of us here are the same kind of "more than casual" players like you... We can figure out stuffs through our experience in years of multi-genre gaming and find it as an achievement.. 

However there are also other types of casual gamers which are really lazy to think or "easier to submit to failure".

I've invited 3 of my friends to play Warframe and only one make it through the early phase. 2 of my friends simply bail out without making into MR2... The said they dont't know what to do after the first tutorial mission.. And they are those casual but lazy gamers. They dont like to alt-tab and wiki something they dont know. 

If there are more tutorial / guides into the Warframe system, i guess DE will get more customers and money because a lot of lazy but rich players will join in the fun...

Maybe you can say that... "Hey if you dont like it dont play it, this game not for you"... BUT from DE or a business perspective, it's a failure because you failed to attract everyone........

Edited by WSPY
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Those are valid points, @WSPY, but then again not everyone is going to like every single game on the market. DE knows this and many other businesses know not everyone will buy into a certain product. Target audiences are a point in marketing for a reason. That reason is to narrow down your marketing strategy from "let's include everyone and only generate possibly 5% profit" to "let's only include these people who are more likely to buy our product and generate possibly 50% profit." The same is true in gaming. Do you want to include a ton of tutorials that alienate your already existing player base because now they don't want to deal with dismissing this, that and the other dialog on screen? Or do you want to keep chugging along with the player base you have and maybe attract in one or two extra casual players?

It's the difference between 5% profits and 50% profits. I concede that some more advanced systems could use a tutorial. Perhaps stick it in the codex with the other tutorials, or perhaps stick it in the menu of the NPCs that handle that kind of system (Sumbaat in Cetus for mining, Smokefinger in Fortuna, etc.). But I am a firm believer in keep it out of the way. Don't throw it in a pop up in the middle of doing said action. If it's in the NPC's menu, I feel that could work to satisfy both sides of the argument. As far as people not knowing what to do after the first tutorial quest, that is actually on them. There's a star map with blinking nodes. Explore your ship. Explore the map. It's not THAT hard to figure out where to go from there. If you NEED to have a tutorial after the tutorial to get through the next tutorial, then you probably should go back to games that hold your hand.

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15 hours ago, Zeoran said:

I find it fascinating that in this thread, it's being recognized that DE also has a terrible trading system that actually punishes players for trading.  Because I posted a separate thread about that very topic and I'm getting lambasted for my belief that the current trading system is too restrictive.  And putting an in-game "tax" on trading just comes across as ridiculously greedy to me on DE's part.  Same with the crazy restrictions.  My son plays an Excalibur exclusively and there was an alert a while ago for a Pendragon helmet that I was sure he'd love. But he was at school and couldn't do the alert, but I could and did.  But I couldn't trade the blueprint to him. And despite there being a "helmet" section of the trading options, I couldn't trade it with him either, because nothing you've actually built in your foundry can be traded.  It's a bloody COSMETIC item.  It's not going to break the game allowing me to trade it to him.  

There are so many instances where it just looks like DE took the lazy/easy way out of doing something that they should have done as developers. 

I agree that the credit tax in trading is absolutely ridiculous. It was never a good idea to begin with, and it's not a good idea now. I also wish they would allow you to trade resources, as many of us older players have so many orokin cells and alloy plate that we'd love to get rid of them in some way shape or form. Even if it's just selling them to the "market" for credits.

On the note about trading helmets: that was implemented when they removed the arcane helmet stats but left the helmets already built/purchased in the game. If you own an arcane helmet (ex. arcane Pendragon helmet), then you can trade that. You cannot, however, trade the standard versions with no stats and the blueprints are not tradeable either. This is another shortcoming on the trading system imo. Blueprints of all kinds should be allowed to be traded as long as the person receiving the item is of the appropriate mastery rank. At current time, only blueprints for Primed weapons, warframes and sentinels can be traded and only the crafting components for the primed items in question. Warframes are special in that once you build the piece using the blueprint, that can no longer be traded.

TL;DR: Trading needs an overhaul. Remove the trade tax, make nonprimed Warframe blueprints tradeable, make non-arcane helmets and their blueprints tradeable and allow us to either trade resources to other players or at minimum sell them for credits in the "market."

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Does codex console "Guide" doesnt not work? Mission objectives always getting reminded by Lotus.

 

Resources location require wiki or around the Excavator's icon on the Navigation Console.

 

Weapons or warframe that require kuva should be locked until player have finished War Within.

Edited by XenMaster
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