News: New Patch Notes - Test Server 13-06-13

[Malorn]

I mentioned this on FNO a few weeks back, but here's a quick recap now that you have the context of the tutorial and the map tutorial...

The map tutorial is a prototype for a more robust in-game help. The viewer is rather simple with just cycling pages, but if you imagine an index and some additional navigation tools there can be a lot more content in there and then it becomes more of a universal help browser. Then various help buttons in the UI are linked to the appropriate page in the browser. Adding additional pages, topics, and links is then fairly straightforward and more can be added over time. Simple and easy is important here, the fancier it gets the longer it takes and potentially the more confusing it can be. Simple and consistent.

That's where we'd like to go with it, so if concepts or topics are missing that you'd like to see, let me know and I can see about adding it in.

The big picture is that the interactive tutorial when you make a character teaches you the game fundamentals (with vehicles, generators, jump pads, turrets, shields coming Soon to that). When you're done with that you should know how to do the basic things in the game, capture facilities, switch classes, get vehicles, respawn, and instant action. With that you can get in and start having fun relatively quickly after starting a character.

Then to compliment that and support additional learning over time you have in-game help reference like the map tutorial. Now expand that to experience, certs, marketplace, loadouts, etc.

The idea is to allow players to discover the game and easily find help about the game concepts and the UI but to do so at their own pace. Trying to put too much information at a player in the tutorial will just be information overload. That's why the tutorial is fairly short, and more complicated concepts like how to read the map can be provided as reference for them to pick up on their own pace.

No promises on when (or if) any of that will get added in, but that's the general idea. The Map Tutorial is the first step to the in-game help manual side of things.