First impressions and overall polish

[stgatilov]

9 hours ago, duzenko said:

I'd still think that Training mission needs to have an objective.

Isn't it too large to provide an objective? It is probably possible to say "find every weapon and tool", but such objective might be hard to finish and is boring since it has no plot behind it.

When I was playing it, I put myself an objective "look behind every door in starting room to get familiar with features". Later I realized that there are whole sections of the maps which I did not see

[duzenko]

3 hours ago, stgatilov said:

Isn't it too large to provide an objective? It is probably possible to say "find every weapon and tool", but such objective might be hard to finish and is boring since it has no plot behind it.

When I was playing it, I put myself an objective "look behind every door in starting room to get familiar with features". Later I realized that there are whole sections of the maps which I did not see

Every door in starting location could have an optional triggered objective

[Anderson]

Totally agreed with everyone. Lack of a proper tutorial is the worst thing to happen to newcomers. Imagine if this is the first time ever that you play a video game. Of course, "The Dark Mod" already made a leap forward when a tutorial exists in the first place. There are numerous open-source/indie games that have no tutorial whatsoever. "This War of Mine", "Don't Starve" definitely suffered from that.

Fallout 2's temple of trials was a horrible tutorial, despite the game getting better after that. In this context, German city builder, management, strategy games are so unpopular IMHO. "Cultures", "Anno", "The Guild", "Patrician" and others. They are timeless. But they are overlooked because there's way too much to learn, the path finding requires so much micromanagement. Their inherent value is endless. Or those Swedish grand strategies such as "Europa Universalis", "Crusader Kings", "Victoria", "Hearts of Iron". At least the old ones - overwhelming for many people. It's like starting with rocket science.

To recapitulate. The worst thing a game tutorial can do is:

1. A tutorial that utterly fails to teach you how to play the game, sending you screaming for the nearest Wikia or guide book.

2. A very lengthy, completely unnecessary tutorial that you cannot skip every time you start a new game.

I have faith "The Dark Mod" suffers from none of these.

 

Notwithstanding there are many things to improve, even in the existing tutorial. For instance, laconic voice-overs such as in the original Thief games would be welcome. Deus Ex games had decent tutorials, when the player wasn't loaded with reading right away. But neither should the training mission kick you out when you're done. For its scale, maybe even "Papers, Please" had a good tutorial because it introduced each gadget gradually, day by day. Nothing was too sudden.

Ideally the tutorial must be closer to something like Portal where it was fused seamlessly into the overall narrative of the introductory campaign.

We can't just speculate that everybody who find "The Dark Mod" knows how to play it. Neither that they know the premise.

Edited April 13, 2020 by Anderson