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Harada explains why Tekken 7 has no tutorial (story mode replaced it)
- Thread starter Eolz
- Start date
The community has always shown they're great at making tutorials/sharing tech and stuff, I'm baffled no company has attempted put these together and make a hub in-game to share combos/tutorials/etc. I always learned best when learning with other people, but for veterans/newbies alike it's kinda annoying have to dig through forums/Tweets/Youtube for tech and tutorials...why not make it more accessible by making it in-game?
"Hey I found this new Ryu combo, here, you can view it as a trial within the game and you can slow it down, play it, attempt it, etc" Have ability to link to Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Make it kinda like a FGC Miiverse.
"Hey I found this new Ryu combo, here, you can view it as a trial within the game and you can slow it down, play it, attempt it, etc" Have ability to link to Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Make it kinda like a FGC Miiverse.
People are going to have to be clear about what they think the goal of a built-in fighting game tutorial should be. Should the tutorial simply be a clear and comprehensive explanation of the game's rules and mechanics or should it be geared towards making new players "competitive"?
I'm okay with games having the former and leaving the more in-depth things to the community and youtube videos. What is and isn't useful to know in order to play at a competitive level can change at any moment as players discover things and a game's meta evolves over time. I do think there are ways to more closely integrate community contributions and strategies into a game. Maybe a way for players to make and distribute annotated replays and trials?
I'm okay with games having the former and leaving the more in-depth things to the community and youtube videos. What is and isn't useful to know in order to play at a competitive level can change at any moment as players discover things and a game's meta evolves over time. I do think there are ways to more closely integrate community contributions and strategies into a game. Maybe a way for players to make and distribute annotated replays and trials?
I was just thinking that a great but hard to implement next-level tutorial feature would be a button you could press post match that would cause the game to review the last match, recognize certain events, and offer advice about them. This would be real work to implement and it would be imperfect, but even knowing that it sounds more useful than traditional tutorial modes.
Making it easy to give constructive feedback through replay annotation would also be a good idea, but youd need strict moderation.
Dark Ninja
Member
Harada: Should we spend money on the narrator and still drawings or a tutorial mode? Well capcom just got fucked cause they didn't have a story we have to stitch one together. Cut the tutorial mode, give me more silly customization items and neon clothing!
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
You should've looked in Tekken 7 threads at the time. It dominated discussion.
Chronospherics
Member
I think calling Guilty Gears story mode great is a little generous. It's clear a lot of effort went into it, but the writing is pretty appalling most of the time, and it Xrd's sequels didn't even get the full localisation treatment.
I also think you missed the point. He's saying "our analytics data shows that people don't play tutorial modes, so we put more focus into the story instead"
Which is a very fair argument. If their data showed that people weren't playing it, it makes sense to put less work into that feature. I mean it still has a training mode and lots of options, just not an explicit, in-depth tutorial.
I think this would make a lot of sense. The devs can't hope to keep up with the knowledge uncovered by hundreds of thousands of players, and the devs also don't want to shape how players play the game too much (for instance, they probably wouldn't want to teach plinking in SFIV, because it's quite a weird mechanical technique and likely not the original design intent). So instead, leveraging the community to spotlight videos tutorials would be a great way of teaching people how to play the game.
Uncharted 4 did a little of that, not a fighting game, but it had a live video player on its front page that would often focus on tip videos and things like that. Integrating fighting games more with their community seems like a good option.
Fighting games are always gonna require "homework" to fully understand because they're too mechanically complex.
This is not necessarily a design flaw. Sports sims are the same way.
The design challenge for fighting games is to have the depth slope not be too steep. There shouldn't be a 90 degree cliff separating the button mashing casual from the grand master.
I'm not sure how to do that in a fighting game either, though.
SixMachine
Member
Reasoning sounds kind of half ass. Sure you can spam EWGF in story mode and figure out it is a damn good move but that doesn't teach you the basics of the game. For example, I had to teach a friend his getup options off the ground and he beat story mode, because they don't tell you anywhere in the game. Even if you lab up, will a novice figure out what the difference between a mid and special mid is? It's not written anywhere in game. How about something like the low parry? I don't think someone new to the series would intuitively figure that one out, since the natural instinct is to press back from an attack rather forward at it and there is no mention such a mechanic even exists. Even if people don't play fight lab in TTT2, stuff like this should at least mention the game mechanics in the game, MVCI at least has the courtesy to do that.
SatelliteOfLove
Member
Still sold tons.
Hollow threats and demands don't feed the bulldog when it comes to Fighter sales.
There is no pattern.
Hollow threats and demands don't feed the bulldog when it comes to Fighter sales.
There is no pattern.
Neo_MG90
Member
"Alright brew, just be cool and you will perform a combo that is sick as AF."
I would pay for a tutorial like that.
Shifty
Member
The tech isn't there yet. They'd need to develop a training AI that can talk mad shit first.
ElBoxyBrown
Banned
learning certain mechanics is one thing. Having that info stay with you is another. I picked Josie cuz with her small move set you could easily break down Tekken's fundamentals.
I personally don't feel the need to unlock stuff anymore. Maybe a cheesy cutscene but overall I'm good. Fighting games don't do that anymore and it's not what attracts me to them. But then again I'm somewhat invested in the FGC scene so my priorities with what I want out of a fighter have changed.
Kaleinc
Banned
If they made a fighting game with only one motion - dp, and one button - k would you find me some noobs who could consistently play this one motion stuff from both sides without 'homework'. Actually scratch that - let's go with hcf only.
No, the reason is nobody cares about Tekken.
Powered by Nvidia hairworks
Have you ever heard of Persona 4 Arena?
That fine, but they can't complain if the fighter doesn't sale to a wider audience. I think the gulf between the FGC and people that just want to play fighting games is so wide that trying to please both is a recipe to failure
Glitter and Gold
Banned
You can't.
Games like Mario can do that because there's only like 3 options in Mario. This is how the often praised MMX intro level works to. It teaches you by presenting an obstacle in which only one of those options allows you to progress and in the process you learn how it works.
Fighting games can't work like that because not only are there too many options, but solutions to certain situations aren't defined by the developer. How players use tools is up to the players, who can sometimes find multiple solutions to the same situation that the developers never intended nor could imagine. There's no way to teach people that.
Okay, so, this is a personal and somewhat complex web of nonsense involving a highly unstable individual I was friends and briefly FWBs with, but I can only assume there will be a never-ending clusterfuck on gaf now until the end of time, which inevitably involves you guys and gals on the mod team in some way, so I'm an open book here. The woman in question ended up being completely psychotic and held a grudge against me after a bizarre love triangle situation developed a few years ago between me, her, and another girl (the other girl I ended up in a long-term relationship with shortly thereafter). This NOLA story she apparently just put up on social media is a delusion of a deeply disturbed person who had a total psychological breakdown as a result of me and the other girl getting together, because she (phew, yeah...) became obsessively infatuated with the other girl (she's bi) on sight when the three of us met up. I wanted to just stay friends with the girl making the accusation and made it super super clear ahead of time that me and the other girl were interested in each other romantically and that could play out as such when we met up. Supposedly this was not a problem for her from accusation, but in reality she uhhh wanted me to die painfully after seeing me and the other girl interact. Plus she became infatuated with the other girl simultaneously to this (she's bi), which created the aforementioned bizarre love triangle that ended up causing her to implode and have an apparently very intense and long-lasting grudge. The whole story about how that love triangle thing played out is, frankly, nuts and scary, and involves this girl bringing us to a compound of dangerous scientology spinoff cultists on that same trip, who roofied us, attempted to recruit/scam me and attempted to abduct/rape the girl I ended up dating, in what was a fucking scary situation that resulted in me and the other girl and the rest of my friend circle never speaking to this girl from the accusation again.
Glitter and Gold
Banned
Yeah.
I think the problem is tutorials are treated as just a game mode. People are "completing" them, but not really learning or retaining anything from the experience that they can actually apply to the real game.
ArcSys games have tutorials where they do sort of explain things in depth, but at the end of they day they're just interactive wiki dumps. Players aren't retaining information presented like that with just one run through the modes.
E_Darkness
Member
With Tekken I'm not surprised. There's so much better tutorials online. Hell Tekken fundamentals don't changed too much so you can easily use T6/Tag 2 online/video tutorials to help learn Tekken.
Plus Tekken/3D fighters just have a lot to learn, an actual tutorial mode would have to be super in depth.
Plus Tekken/3D fighters just have a lot to learn, an actual tutorial mode would have to be super in depth.
FG also cant work like Zelda and Mario since level design is non existent. You always face another person and either walk/dash towards them or walk back. Any other game can have tailored made levels that eases people in how the game works.
CaptainLoveline
Member
Next he should explain why T7 is incredibly shittier to play and has less content/characters compared to TTT2.
MikeBreezy92
Member
You know damn well why TTT2 has more characters than T7.
Anyways, this is one of the few times Harada may have a point. I never saw how tutorials really add to anything in an age where a nice practice mode and YouTube can get you much farther than any tutorial mode will.
The latter actually requires effort and a want to learn the game which actually means you're gonna progress, tutorials always end up as check lists at the end of the day and info doesn't stick the way it should.
Isn't T7 more well-received than Tag2?
MightyKAC
Member
I Wanna Be The Guy
U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
It is? But.....why? It has orders of magnitudes worse content, and Tag 2 having a tutorial worth a damn made the core gameplay easier to get in to in Tag 2 as well.
MikeBreezy92
Member
Idk maybe it's the gameplay and direct story mode people enjoy more than anything in TTT2. Just a thought.
I hate defending T7s shortcomings but some of this stuff is obvious if you were around during TTT2
MightyKAC
Member
Tag 2's main draw was also one of its main flaws, learning 2 different characters as well as there interactions with specific situations and then swapping them on the fly turned out to be a tough ask for all but the most hard core. Also T7 is a much more forgiving game than Tag 2 was. Players without a lot of legacy knowledge had a much better chance to compete against those that had it.
And to top it all off, T7 is a MUCH better game to watch for spectators than pretty much any other Tekken before IT thanks to Rage Arts / Drives and slo mo finishes.
I'm with you guys in wishing there was a tutorial mode. I feel like it's exclusion was more for time and budgetary reasons than Harada is letting on.
Did I miss the talking points memo from Capcom trying to explain why Tekken 7 should be lambasted for similar faults Street Fighter 5 had? Bunch of people in this thread bringing up the same points and uh... there's a big difference between a game launching with 16 characters and almost no single player content and launching with 35 characters and a few single player modes. I have no issue with anyone not liking the single player offerings in Tekken 7, but there's still a big difference between how the two games launched.
(And for anyone who wants a bunch of unlockable characters, go run a big fighting game event and then tell me that's a good idea. It's a giant pain in the ass for offline play and I'm glad most fighting game developers have done away with it.)
...the problem is that doing all of that is a lot of work for both the developer and even the player trying to learn all of that.
Ultimately, the only people who really engage with such in-depth tutorial content are the people who would be driven enough to learn the game to begin with. Fighting games need to get better about onboarding and retaining newer players, but I don't think a huge info dump like the ArcSys games is that much of a help.
(We're also going to get another example of this when Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st] gets released in the US, as that game has a rather long and involved tutorial and challenge mode.)
I'm not going to claim that T7 is just bursting with content, but I don't think there's a huge difference between it and TTT2.
Do you want to bother explain why/how T7 plays "incredibly shitty" compared to TTT2 or are you just going to drop a baseless hot take? I could see why some diehard Tekken players would rather have TTT2 (TTT2's combo system is wild and has very loose movement) but I really do think most of the system changes made from TTT2 to T7 are for the better.
(And for anyone who wants a bunch of unlockable characters, go run a big fighting game event and then tell me that's a good idea. It's a giant pain in the ass for offline play and I'm glad most fighting game developers have done away with it.)
I think a thorough tutorial can actually do a decent job of showing people the game's rules and what they should be doing, in a general sense. If you went through all of the various training and tutorial modes in VF4:Evo's PS2 port along with the adventure mode, you're going to have a decent idea of how the core mechanics work along with several core skills (such as juggles, hit confirms, punishing, how throw breaks work, various defensive OSs, etc.). You're not going to win Nationals with that but at that point you have more than enough to work with to play real opponents and be able to do stuff.
...the problem is that doing all of that is a lot of work for both the developer and even the player trying to learn all of that.
It really is -- I actually think VF4:Evo's training, tutorial and challenge mode actually hurt the series in the long run, as it was around then when the game really got its reputation for being hyper-technical. It's no more technical than any other solid fighting game (such as Tekken or Guilty Gear), but the home version of VF4:Evo made this apparent in a way that no fighting game did before (or since, really).
Ultimately, the only people who really engage with such in-depth tutorial content are the people who would be driven enough to learn the game to begin with. Fighting games need to get better about onboarding and retaining newer players, but I don't think a huge info dump like the ArcSys games is that much of a help.
(We're also going to get another example of this when Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st] gets released in the US, as that game has a rather long and involved tutorial and challenge mode.)
Does TTT2 really have magnitudes of more content? Where? In the endings? (That must have cost a pretty penny to make and typically just get watched on Youtube?) The characters? (TTT2's roster is bloated as all hell with all of the clones) Fight Lab? (Fight Lab was a rather poor tutorial/single player experience, IMO.)
I'm not going to claim that T7 is just bursting with content, but I don't think there's a huge difference between it and TTT2.
Uh
Do you want to bother explain why/how T7 plays "incredibly shitty" compared to TTT2 or are you just going to drop a baseless hot take? I could see why some diehard Tekken players would rather have TTT2 (TTT2's combo system is wild and has very loose movement) but I really do think most of the system changes made from TTT2 to T7 are for the better.
It's always going to be work to some extent, but the key is making the learning stage organic enough where it doesn't necessarily feel like work.
VF4's mode is still the king for this because it knew not to overwhelm the players (as good as Rev 2's tutorial is, it is still one hell of an info dump that's still going to turn away some players on the fence), and knew when to be like "just play the game; dick around in the single player stuff, do whatever, we'll drop the tips at appropriate points and everything will fall into place as you play."
Retention has always been a big issue for casual FG folks, so of course you would need incentives to keep them around to just play, if not to ease them onto online.
That's easier said than done, I totally get that. But in Tekken 7, you wouldn't even know how to fucking get up off the ground properly if you stuck solely with what the game tells you (or doesn't tell you). They would have been better off just including a tutorial section to direct links to Aris's videos for all the effort they put into story being any semblance of a tutorial.
I'm curious how the new Under Night handled it's tutorial.
Thomasorus
Member
Professor Beef
Banned
Pretty sure Lawbreakers has a bigger install base
Eolz
Member
Pretty sure you're wrong.
The Real Reason There's No Tutorial Mode:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JELbKdsDihU
SG's install base is literally more than 10 times bigger on steam! Even SG's daily user base is bigger!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JELbKdsDihU
SG's install base is literally more than 10 times bigger on steam! Even SG's daily user base is bigger!
Azure Dream
Member
How about a coaching mode, akin to TF2?
SeeNoWeevil
Member
Tekken not only did absolutely nothing to teach new players but it didn't even come with a manual on PS4 detailing all the systems. I've played Tekken before but I still couldn't remember all the different wakeup options etc. I had to go trawling the internet for old TTT2/T6 guides (the community hasn't documented T7 yet).
Getting kinda tired of companies relying on the userbase to document their games/create some replacement for the paper manuals.
Getting kinda tired of companies relying on the userbase to document their games/create some replacement for the paper manuals.
lucebuce12
Member
In regards to the bolded, there is a fuckton of info out there on how to play this game, including in the OT here on GAF. If you haven't been able to find anything, then I seriously have to question how hard you were looking.
I just opened up youtube and typed "avoidingthepuddle tekken 7 floor" and got this on the first page:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-PDc20Jezg
There is no shortage of information out there right now for this game. Namco Bandai had Markman hook people up for providing tutorials, so you can find tons of character specific guides out there, while Aris' channel explains a bunch of general mechanics.
Hell, I myself have been uploading my streams where I go through a characters whole movelist and explain how the moves work, and when they should be used, like this one for Gigas.
SeeNoWeevil
Member
I don't want a collection of assorted videos scattered over different sources. I'm speaking of wikis, system documentation, glossary etc (basically what would be in a manual). All the big sites stop at TTT2 or 6 with T7 sections full of essentially 'TODO'. Is a lot of it the same as TTT2. Probably, I don't know because it's not written anywhere. So yes, there is a shortage of documentation. Day 1 was even worse, there was next to nothing. This is on the developers though, they can't keep leaving it to the community to save a buck.
