Battle Tutorials

When I play games I ignore the tutorials. Personal preference, because if I can't figure out how it works on my own i'm unlikely to use it. But most battle systems are pretty easy to grasp (I'm talking regular, rpg battles, where your either in a battle screen and can choose your actions, or on map where you sort of mash buttons until you figure out what works. Ii don't tend to play other types of games.)

So for me, making a battle tutorial is hard. I mean, how do you explain something like that? Normally I wouldn't bother, but for my Iindie Game I need to make a tutorial, which got me thinking, how do people normally go about that? When you yourself know exactly how your battle system works, how do you put that into a coherant explanation.

For me, I was thinking of having a pop up window when the player chooses a skill types to explain. eg;

"Guns, Moderate Damage, Enemy Stun 10-40%, Using these skills may increase the Alert Level"

"Knife, Low Damage, Enemy Stun 5-25%, Using these skills will not increase the Alert Llevel"

"Grenande, High Damage, Enemy stun 20-100%, Using these skills may increase the Alert Level"

"Tazer, Moderate Damage, Enemy Stun 30-90%, Using these skills will not increase the Alert Level"

that way, once the player has chosen each skill type at leaset once they've had the run down on what those skills can do.

But what do you do to make a battle tutorial? Do you force the player to choose only one option before allowing them to move to the next one, do you provide a brief explanation of how things work? Do you have a "tutorial house/person" who explains how everything works to the player?

Let loose the beast.

I think there are many ways to do. There is always the battle that is set aside and guides you through the systems, pretty much locking in the player's choices. There are games that just give you text as new mechanics become available to use. I prefer this, as is my preference with just about everything (story, backgrounds, ect) that everyone is not info dumped all in one sitting. So, I prefer to introduce explanations of mechanics as they are able to be used. I'm not going to explain what x and y do if you can't even do it until you get x party member or y weapon later in the game.

I also once had a professor tell me, "Never memorize something you can look up in a book." Basically I make this point because you may not need to mention something (or more than once) if you can include some information in the text of spells, weapons, ect, 

I apologize if this is the rambling of someone who just woke up!

For my newly started project, I am using tutorial scrolls which introduce things as they are needed.  Once you find them (almost impossible to miss, I hope), they are added to your inventory so that you can check them again later.  This will probably be most useful for things like an explanation of what different states do, but I think it has to be all or none.

I think that the best way to teach a person how to do combat in your game is definitely by showing. It should be like any other mechanic introduced in the game. You give them a space where they either must learn to do something or they can't continue. For example, say you want to teach the player about elemental affinities, and how strengths and weaknesses work in your game. If you are in a battle and fleeing is disabled, and the enemy has high HP and they keep healing themselves back to full health if you use the normal attack, then the player will never win. But this design forces them to realize that they have to find the enemy's weaknesses, which is, for example, fire, and then use that spell to kill the enemy. You've just taught the player (in a semi-safe environment) to use fire against grass enemies.

The idea of a game is that it should test vital skills of any human being. You're teaching them just like you're teaching in a classroom. "Fire burns grass". So without having to tell them anything through a wall of text that they will probably never read, you're showing them through practical "levels" or battles, that this is how the world works.

Very many people say, "show, don't tell" but that's because it's true. Players shouldn't have to have their hand held.

What a lot of modern games tend to forget is that the simplest of mechanics need not be explained.  For example, a drop-down menu of "Attack, Magic, Items, Defend, and Escape" is fairly straightforward.  Anyone who's played an RPG is familiar with these commands, and even those who have never touched a video game in their life will figure them out by the end of their first battle.  

When you look at the earliest video games, in-game tutorials are almost never present.  At best you'll get a screen with a breakdown of the controls, and any other instructions would be found in the printed manual.  This was of course in a time when space on the cartridge / floppy disc was so precious that programming in a tutorial would mean less actual gameplay.  In modern times, there is so much space on a disc that this isn't really an issue, but I mention this because we've gone for serveral years without tutorials.  After all, when you first played Super Mario Bros, did you need a Toad to appear and tell you how to stomp on enemies?

That said, I think a tutorial should be minimalist  .  A breakdown of any features and commands that aren't "standard" should be provided (such as the secondary effects of guns, knives, grenades, etc), but you shouldn't hold the player's hand or force any actions.  it is ultimately up to the player to figure out how to best handle enemies.

Most importantly, a tutorial should be skippable. This is a mistake that even many corporate and commercial games make.  A veteran player should never need to endure the tutorial just to replay the game.  A good tutorial is easily accessible, perhaps even before jumping into the story, but should always be completely optional.  

Start out with the basic stuff. As mentioned by some people above, it's much more reasonable to teach the player one thing at a time. Let them learn how to handle the most basic battle first and then introduce each mechanic bit by bit over the course of the game when those become relevant. One of the things I greatly dislike about tutorials in many games (especially triple A games) is that they often try to teach you every game mechanic in the first 20 minutes, half of which you'll forget by the time the tutorial is over. I think it's just nicer to gradually phase the player into the game.

How you prefer to introduce each mechanic might depend on the game or your personal preference. The way I like to go on about it the most is to have tutorial tips be woven into the story or character dialogue, as opposed to a pop up coming up and saying "Press X to attack" etc. I just think it makes it more immersive if the developer does not directly interact with the player.