Tutorial - creating a new and updated one for beginning players

[Gabanus family]

The tutorials we currently have are well done, but incomplete on many cases and outdated on others and it's time to make a new one. I'll try to summarize the discussions within this first post to keep an updated perspective as we work towards creating a new one.

Outline of the tutorial:

[Victor C]

The tutorials we currently have are well done, but incomplete on many cases and outdated on others and it's time to make a new one. I'll try to summarize the discussions within this first post to keep an updated perspective as we work towards creating a new one.

Outline of the tutorial:

First thing is first, what is possibly to simply reuse, and what is necessary to replace? Reusing certain things can save time and effort and can then that effort and time can be used to focus on what we need.

One of the things I noticed is that voice in the tutorial is not exactly friendly. It's more nuetral with a hint of happiness. (Not the audio voice, as in, the way it sounds when read) We want our new players to feel welcomed and know that we are indeed a nice community and that we welcome them with open arms.

Another thing to take into consideration is that we want to come out tutorial participants interested, this is an important part of the text structure and mood in writing.


We need to discuss what needs to come first as well, in case the people do not finish the tutorial. As well as include information about estates, greetings, turn change, recruitment, hierarchy, and realm info.

The tutorial should be limited to where they have enough information to play with not many questions after.

[Gabanus family]

So myself I was thinking of an outline as something like this:

1) General explanation of BM, turn change, hierarchy, battle/war focused
2) Explanation of the left menu, part by part


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1) General explanation of BM



• 1.1) Turn based game every 12 hours (half a day except on Colonies which has 1 turn per day)
  
  • 1.1.1) Centered around hours, which you need for about any action and can only spend once. Max is 12 hours (16 for priests/adventurers) at one moment and you gain 8 per turn change).


• 1.2) Hierarchical game, based on community of nobles who can become everything with the following general division (knights - Lords - Dukes - Kings [banker/general/judge outside of this system forming the 'government' together with the King])
  
  
  • 1.2.1) Knights have an estate in a region and get income from that estate, which varies depending on the wealth of the region, the size of the estate and the tax settings set by the Lord. In turn they swear loyalty to the Lord of that region. A lord gets income from his region and a percentage from his knights and swears loyalty to a Duke. This Dukes gets a percentage of the Lord's income. The Dukes swears loyalty to a ruler (could be a King, or a different title) and pays a percentage of his taxes to the ruler. Each layer above the other is supposed to aid/protect the one below him in exchange of the percentage of tax. Each layer has the option of chosing someone else to either be their Lord, their Duke, or their Ruler (which means they will swear loyalty to a different realm alltogether).
  • 1.2.2) Nobles/dukes/lords group together to form realms.
  • 1.2.3) You are one noble and start as a knight (1 noble per island) and interact with other players who also have 1 noble on the island
  • 1.2.4) Different types of government where lords/dukes/government are either appointed or elected depending on the realm (actual realm governments no longer decide this as each realm can set the 'appoint/elect' options themselves).


• 1.3) Focused on war, battle and intrigue[l/i]
  
  
  • 1.3.1) The above mentioned realms and nobles position for power and expansion and often fight wars with each other.
  • 1.3.2) Each noble can recruit a unit of soldiers forming a unit
  • 1.3.3) With this unit you can join an army (appointed to one by your Lord) and then join battles against armies of other realms
  • 1.3.4) Once your unit is destroyed you can recruit new men only at the capital of your realm.
  • 1.3.5) With every battle you fight your noble gains honor and prestige. Certain government positions require a minimum prestige before you may run and having more honor and prestige also means you're allowed to command a larger unit of soldiers.

2) Going through the left menu of options


• 2.1) Messages
  
  
  • 2.1.1) Your way to communicate with the other nobles in your realm and in the region you're at, so sometimes also with enemies etc. (and later with nobles with whom you share memberships of guilds, religions etc) and for them to communicate with you.
  • 2.1.2) On the left side you can select a group to whom you wish to send a letter and on the right side you'll find the option to read your own messages (the ones you received and the ones you sent). If you received a letter or report, you will see a number appear behind "all messages" indicating how many new messages you have.


• 2.2) Politics
  
  
  • 2.2.1) Your portal to manage your estate (you can only leave it in search of another estate).
  • 2.2.2) If you become Lord you will get options here to set taxes for your region etc. You will not use this often.


• 2.3) Travel
  
  
  • 2.3.1) Here you can travel from one region to another
  • 2.3.2) Travel is calculated by the game at every turn change and to reach your destination you need to have enough hours in your time pool, so spend your hours wisely
  • 2.3.3) The time it takes to get there is indicated on the page below the region name.
  • 2.3.4) You can only travel 1 region per turn, even if you have the hours to travel over multiple regions


• 2.4) Actions
  
  
  • 2.4.1) Here you see all the different things you can do with your noble that are not related to their unit (troop of soldiers), or their estate.
  • 2.4.2) Different type of regions will have different type of actions available to them. Some have temples you can visit, cities have banks where you can change bonds for gold and vice versa. Generally speaking you'll have more options in cities than elsewhere.


• 2.5) Orders
  
  
  • 2.5.1) Here you see all the things you can do with your unit, group of soldiers
  • 2.5.2) You can only recruit new soldiers in the capital city of your realm (not all cities, or other regions)
  • 2.5.3) Most of these actions cost either gold, time or both.
  • 2.5.4) Paraphernalia are extras you can/should buy for your men. There are banners which keeps your on the battlefield longer (break less quickly), scouts to see if a neighbouring region is safe, or has enemy troops in them, healers to heal your wounded men after a battle, carts to increase your travel times when you have wounded soldiers and a few more. If you're uncertain on what's best to get in the beginning, just send a letter to the realm asking for advise.

2.6) Command (don't think newer players have this one?)

[Wimpie]

Just for the record because many people did not know there were tutorials:

http://battlemaster.org/basics.php

On this page 2 tutorials can be found. Written by different persons and on different times.

http://battlemaster.org/tutorial-1/
http://battlemaster.org/tutorial-2/

[Wimpie]

So myself I was thinking of an outline as something like this:

1) General explanation of BM, turn change, hyarchie, battle/war focused
2) Explanation of the left menu, part by part

...

Since we'll want to have a tutorial with fancy looking screenshots and all, I think we would need to rethink your first part to more briefly explain what BM is about so we can show them with screen shots as well.

[Zakilevo]

The problem is this is a text based game meaning screenshots can't be fancy looking. It will never be. What kind of fancy screenshots can there be when it will also be full of texts?

[Zaros]

An advy tutorial is lacking.

[Gabanus family]

An advy tutorial is lacking.

If you wish to write the outline for one, be my guest, but I'm afraid my knowledge of the advy game is far too lacking to do so. Therefore I'll focus my efforts here on improving and updating the 'normal' tutorial.

[Zaros]

How should I go about making an advy tutorial?

If you wish to write the outline for one, be my guest, but I'm afraid my knowledge of the advy game is far too lacking to do so. Therefore I'll focus my efforts here on improving and updating the 'normal' tutorial.

[Gabanus family]

How should I go about making an advy tutorial?

Step one would be similar as I did above. Outline what information is crucial to understand it and order that information. Better not include every single detail, but rather the core, what's needed to understand when you wish to play it.

Once that's done, we can see how to turn that into a tutorial of some kind.

[Wimpie]

This thread was created to have a little traction on this topic and really configure the tutorial.

Please have a look at the two existing tutorials. The updated ones can be similar or a totally new concept.

What we need to do first, as Gabanus posted, is an outline of what we will be showing/telling. We need to agree on this that all the basics are in here and remove any details that are not needed in a basic tutorial. The same can be done for an adventurer. But know that the adventurer game is only available for players who already play for 30 days. It's also less appealing for new players (hence the waiting period) because it might just turn their interest in the game off. It's more of a sidetrack for once you got the hang of the game.

[JeVondair]

This is what I send to all the new players in Xavax to help them find their feet
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Greater_Xavax/Welcome

[Zaros]

This is what I send to all the new players in Xavax to help them find their feet
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Greater_Xavax/Welcome

That's pretty useful.

[Wimpie]

Well we should all helpl together and make something useful. Maybe Jevondair can ask the new players in Xavax if they have even read the tutorials and if so, what they thought about it? What they lack?

I'm also in favour of sending the new players a message (to their first character perhaps, or just a popup on their userdetails screen) with the links to the tutorials. Right now, they're pretty hidden maybe.

[Wimpie]

Maybe someone with a bit of spare time could just create something?

At this moment, I don't feel like I know what new players are searching for.

Any takers?