Tutorials to teach players how to play effectively

Note: Im sure there are many threads regarding this but despite the numerous searches I tried, I couldnt find one. With that said, here we go.

I know its been said before, but it would be greatly appreciated if SE would create some kind of "Tutorial System" to help players learn how to properly play their respective classes.

For example, last night I was in Dusk Vigil and I was queued with a Ninja. This ninja had no idea that he should be using Huton and instead just repeatedly cast Suiton. He also wasnt combo-ing his actions at all, so the monster was not receiving the DoTs from the combo-actions. I tried to help teach him, and he was polite and accepting of my advice, but he really had no clue. He'd gone through 40-some levels not knowing how to play his class at all and no else had bothered to teach him. I have seen this far too many times recently to count. Many players are not understanding how to play their job effectively and this isn't something the game teaches. Most of us learned to play better because we were yelled at by another dungeon runner. That negativity could be avoided if the game were to instruct players with solo tutorial dungeons similar to the upcoming "Stone, Sky, Sea".

The mentor system may also help with this, but it requires players to "seek" the assistance of others. In the case of that ninja, he didnt even know he was doing it wrong so he never thought to ask for "assistance." Having tutorial dungeons to teach players how, when or why they need to use certain actions or in what order to use them, would be a great help to both the player and anyone else they meet after the fact in a dungeon. Each class is different and new players may not realize the intricacies of their class. I think there should be several tiers of Tutorials implemented. For example one at level 30 when players gain their soul-crystal and really start getting into more intricate job play, and another at level 50 to ensure they understand the functions of their class.

The Stone, Sky, Sea may not be enough. Especially if its only implemented for high level players. Stone,Sky, Sea wont teach a person HOW to improve. It will only highlight that their DPS/Heals/Gear isnt up to snuff.

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Originally Posted by Vespar

Most of us learned to play better because we were yelled at by another dungeon runner.

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*cough*
And how did "they" learn...?

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Originally Posted by Zojha

*cough*
And how did "they" learn...?

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People yelling at other players and "instructing" them through aggression is not a very good learning method. It just makes people upset and deters new players from wanting to play. I wouldnt endorse this kind of "learning" to anyone. Unfortunately, Trial-by-fire as I like to call it, has been my experience with most older players trying to "teach" new players.

Some people are polite in trying to teach and dont immediately lash out when a player isnt playing right, but its unfortunately not commonplace. At least not in the dungeons I have been in that warranted it. The other side of this is that the new player lashes out at unwanted advice. If the game were to instruct players through tutorials we wouldnt have all this animosity and negativity in dungeons, and everyone would be the better for it, because we'd all have a good grasp on how to play. From there it would be up to the player to tweak and refine their basic job rotation.

Yelling at people is the worst way of teaching anyone. If you can even call it teaching?
Instead of teaching it depresses people and may even lead them to quit the game altogether.
Is it so hard to talk/give instructions to people normally?

Yelling is the sign of incompetent arrogant person you dont want.

Let they play the way they want. You are not the big boss of them. I love BLM that use just ice and single rotation. And love WHM that use clearic stance. I also love ninjas that use the rabbit. And monk's that use just combos. Or made a world just for casuals without the elitism. They are paying for the game and they deserve to have fun.

I swear these post always come off as people who just 'learned' how to play and now feel the need to validate that by making one of these regurgitated ass threads. Didn't SE just announce beginners hall? Training dummy trials and the mentor program?

Can we let this be implemented first now that we know it's officially incoming?

But its soo much fun to regurgitate my a.s XP

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Originally Posted by The_Greatest_Evil

Let they play the way they want. You are not the big boss of them. I love BLM that use just ice and single rotation. And love WHM that use clearic stance. I also love ninjas that use the rabbit. And monk's that use just combos. Or made a world just for casuals without the elitism. They are paying for the game and they deserve to have fun.

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I apologize if my OP came off as elitist to you. This thread wasnt meant to come off that way at all. I am by no means telling people how to play. I was asking the developers to help us create a method that instructs players on how to play, because a good chunk of newer players really don't know what their actions do or how to chain them. I was guilty of this too. Back when I first started as a BLM I used to just sit there and spam Fire 3 until I was out of mana, then cast Blizzard 3 to replenish it. It wasnt until someone in my relic Chimera-fight was nice enough to tell me about "Firestarter" and how to use it to get free Fire 3's. I had no idea. And I appreciated the insight. And I learned how to be an even more effective BLM from it because of the manner in which he started the conversation. He wasn't rude in the way he brought about the conversation either. He asked "Hey can I make a suggestion?" and things politely followed from there.

Nowadays all I see is something akin to "WTF BRO, WHY ARENT YOU USING "insert X action here"? This isnt a very good way to initiate a conversation much less help someone learn how to play better.

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Originally Posted by Caitlinzulu

But its soo much fun to regurgitate my a.s XP

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As I said in my OP, I already apologized for not being able to find the previous threads on this and add my feedback that way. Sorry if its regurgitating an old topic. But its still relevant to players.

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Originally Posted by Vespar

I apologize if my OP came off as elitist to you.

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Don't engage trolls in conversation Vespar, it will only lead you down a dark path.

On topic though, I agree with Morbid. SE just announced a bunch of features to help new players learn the ropes, I think it's silly to ask for more until we see how those features turn out.

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Originally Posted by WellFooled

Don't engage trolls in conversation Vespar, it will only lead you down a dark path.

On topic though, I agree with Morbid. SE just announced a bunch of features to help new players learn the ropes, I think it's silly to ask for more until we see how those features turn out.

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I was unaware that something was in the works. Have they said how it will work or what exactly it will teach? Did they mention when it might be implemented (3.2?)

Ive been away for a while so Im out of the loop and I hadn't heard about it.

I apologize coming off a bit strong here but yes they just released a new Live Letter over the weekend. It has alot of info on what SE is doing to help players improve their gameplay.

The mentor system will help them. At last you was polite. But they have no fault too. The game doesn't teach correctly how to use your job. Many people come to lv 50 and can't do it well because no one never tell them. And of course that this person will not learn just on one dungeon. And them you come to 60 and everything that you learn changed. So people start from zero to 50-60. And the game should prepared at this lvs. So it's more a devs fault.
Newests lv50-60 just means one thing there ''You are not preapared !'' by Illidan. If they are not read this means that the lvs 1-49 50-59 don't server for nothing.

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Originally Posted by Morbid

I apologize coming off a bit strong here but yes they just released a new Live Letter over the weekend. It has alot of info on what SE is doing to help players improve their gameplay.

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I saw the live Letter but the only thing it mentioned in regards to this was "Stone, Sky, Sea". Which I took as being a high level DPS Check/parsing system without actually implementing a parser.
By the looks of it, it doesn't really instruct you on how to play or improve so much as it just reflects where your dmg/gear stands in relation to certain raid DPS checks. Or atleast that is the impression I got from the video. Mind you I dont speak Japanese well so I may have missed some stuff. Will have to wait for the full translation to know for sure.\

I did read over the mentor system, but I do have some concerns with it. It still relies on other players to teach. Which will be okay if the people doing the teaching are patient and kind I guess. The problem lies in the fact that some people are not like that. It also relies on the new player realizing that they may or may not be doing something correctly. Like in the example of the ninja I posted in my OP. But we'll see how it goes I guess.

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Originally Posted by Vespar

I was asking the developers to help us create a method that instructs players on how to play, because a good chunk of newer players really don't know what their actions do or how to chain them. I was guilty of this too. Back when I first started as a BLM I used to just sit there and spam Fire 3 until I was out of mana, then cast Blizzard 3 to replenish it. It wasnt until someone in my relic Chimera-fight was nice enough to tell me about "Firestarter" and how to use it to get free Fire 3's. I had no idea.

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Not everyone learned their jobs by other people instructing them....personally I learned some jobs by actually examining the job's toolkit (like reading the spell/ability information) so that I fully understand how to make use of my spells and abilities.

Everyone can actually teach themselves how to play a job decently without other player's help if they actually spend the time to try and read and understand the job they are trying to play. The game already fully explains the spells, abilities, and traits we obtain in the tooltips just some people aren't reading them.

They are already adding more stuff in terms of novice help with the new novice hall though so like others said you might as well wait for that to see how it goes.

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Originally Posted by Miste

Not everyone learned their jobs by other people instructing them....personally I learned some jobs by actually examining the job's toolkit (like reading the spell/ability information) so that I fully understand how to make use of my spells and abilities.

Everyone can actually teach themselves how to play a job decently without other player's help if they actually spend the time to try and read and understand the job they are trying to play. The game already fully explains the spells, abilities, and traits we obtain in the tooltips just some people aren't reading them.

They are already adding more stuff in terms of novice help with the new novice hall though so like others said you might as well wait for that to see how it goes.

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This is true. In my case though, Firestarter is a trait and not an ability you can cast. Which is why I missed it. I didnt even know I had it, so I didnt know I should be using its effects. BAck then I just thought that one BLM spell was stronger than the next so I just replaced them as I went. Knowing what I know now, has taught me to read and check up on these things everytime I gain a new level. But once again, newer players may not be anticipating this and may just generally not know to check ^^;

How I learned playing my job:
- Reading ability information.
- Searching online.
- Getting yelled at by experienced players.

When I get told that i'm not playing my job well, it hurts. But that doesn't put me down, it makes me learn from my mistakes and not do them again. Make sure to never get yelled at for that same reason ever again.

Not everyone is going to be 'okay' with getting told what to do by other players. But, they need to keep their mind open a little and accept that they've done something wrong. Don't go defence mood or yell back. Just accept it and fix it.

The art of learning to play well comes from both sides of the table.

People must be willing to teach as well as be willing to learn but unfortunately there are bad eggs on both of those sides that makes such a thing a lot harder.

But honestly i blame partly this problem on SE, everything in this game other then optional content such as extreme primals or raiding is face roll easy and offers no reason, no need and no motivation to ever become better since the few things you must do that actually requires coordination you can just hide alongside the other 7 players that will beat it for you.

What this game should have had from the beginning was a main story (and its dungeons) that became harder over time with more complex bosses so people would have had little choice but to become better and better.

But then again this is a casual game....

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Originally Posted by Devils_Lawyer

What this game should have had from the beginning was a main story (and its dungeons) that became harder over time with more complex bosses so people would have had little choice but to become better and better.

But then again this is a casual game....

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Saved yourself with that last line.

There is complexity, and an increase in difficulty in dungeon instances as you level. You just can't experience it more than once, after which it is less complex and less difficult, due to familiarity with mechanics.

I hope the Mentoring system works out, although I would guess only a few of the folks who complain on the forums about 'bad players' will contribute.

Only why to learn is for players to practice and practice some more,.
Try different rotations or talk to fellow players of the same class, use practice dummies, etc..
Fates is not at all the best way to learn rotations, like i know some must do.
I guess getting yelled at can either work or not to want to be better at a class but who wants to be yelled at.

If the system wasn't forced on people, it wouldn't change anything.
People, who want to improve find ways. It would reach some people who wan't to improve but are unable to find ways to do that, but in my opinion, the impact overall would be small.

I have to agree with a couple of other voices here. I've never had anyone tell me what to do on my job. I read my skills planned them out, looked at the effects, practiced my rotation on dummies till I had a good grasp of my hotbar placement and changed it up to make it more comfortable and easier to use.

But in all fairness not every player has years of MMO experience and can understand what to do based on just simply reading skills. Some effects aren't fully explained either and the way combo routes are laid out in tooltips isn't the best for a newer player to FF or MMO's in general. Players may not realize that they can hit an OGCD in the middle of the global CD. New players may not even know what a GCD exactly is.

While an experienced or adept player may be able to read something, comprehend mechanics, and put it into practice. The reality is that this isn't something every player can do. The mentor program should help. I'm personally leveling scholar just to meet the requirements for the mentor program to help people out (and maybe get some glamour in the process). Beyond that and the new dummies , I believe it was noted there would also be rotational specific challenges in the beginner hall to teach players how to DPS.

Hopefully with these tools coming together players can self learn and get help from outside sources if they need it.

A tutorial I don't think would be very helpful by itself. You can't exactly have a tutorial to explain how to do a rotation on every single job. But I think putting some things that we believe is common knowledge in the beginners hall such as, DoT,HoT,DPS,DD,tank,Heal,HPS,GCD,OGCD,ASPD,SKSPD,SPSPD,DET,CRIT,etc. the list goes on of things a newer or less experienced player may not ever know or understand without some sort of resource.

When I was new to MMO's I personally learned a lot of terms through research and the terminology section in the back of the FFXI strategy guide. I believe the beginners hall going over these terms is pretty much exactly what this game will need to allow the players to understand and put things into practice a lot better.

I think our issue comes from believing that if a guide shows you the perfect rotation that you should be able to do it directly from the guide. But if you never understand why it's a good or the best rotation, you'll have far less knowledge of the game itself. Knowledge and understanding of the game itself, it's combo system, it's hate system, why buffs and DoTs are important. These are things we don't always explain to new players. Especially in the limited time of a dungeon when we're trying to get our tome or items.

Understanding the why of something is just as important if not more so than understanding how to do something in the first place.

Most people learned by people yelling at them? I cant take this serious.

I figured most people learned by actually searching the internet and putting in time to look up what they were doing from someone who spent a lot of time figuring out a rotation. Instead of running dungeons hoping someone would tell them.

IDK, maybe im crazy.

This is the first mmo I have ever played and I learned from friends and reading tool tips. Once I had a good grasp of things I offered and have walked through many dungeons with FC mates to help teach them. I had leveled all classes to 50 so I was able to understand the different view points. If people wanted more in depth help on classes I wasn't good at I sent them to friends who had a better grasp. I look forward to the mentor program!

Coming from other MMO's, the part I found the most confusing was the use of the word 'potency' on skill tips.

The 2nd biggest confusing thing was how DoTs are worded, Damage over 18 seconds, Potency: 35. Ok.. so it does 2 potency per second, am I missing something? It's very unclear that it means it does 35 potency whenever the server ticks which happens to be every 3 seconds, and is not related to when you apply the dot.

Another major concern is how Astral Fire/Umbral Ice affect your potency's. I think this information should be on the tooltips (Potency: X, Astral Fire I Potency: Y: etc etc.)

Tutorials of how to play? OK, I think this should be easy. After your class quests and story through about level 20, the basics should be clear - though the level sync on low level dungeons is not strong enough, so players might not have got a good grasp of things due to being rushed or dragged through dungeons by others chasing bonus tomes. Stronger level sync would help greatly since it would return things to something approaching they way it was when the 1st wave of players played this stuff, it was all new and we had to learn together. Level sync initially appeared to be something that would manage that trick, but it's clear as day now that it's not strict enough, especially later on in the level 50 content.

Once the main story get's kicking, and you get to your 1st job quest, you start on the dungeons that ratchet up the learning curve (or at least they used to when we all ran in level appropriate gear...). So, onto that tutorial of how to play your role, job, class etc...

Try the following strictly level sync'd leveling dungeons, specifically Haukke Manor, Brayflox Longstop, Cutters Cry, Sunken Temple of Qarn, Stone Vigil, Dzemael Darkhold and best of all Arum Vale. Throw in strictly Sync'd hard mode Ifrite, Garuda and Titan, plus WP, AK & PS, and you have a complete set that takes you through your job's paces from level 30 through 50. They cover so many aspects of play, role and mechanic.

Unfortunately since 'everyone' over gears everything, new players are carried through all of this content like so much baggage by high level players looking for extra tomes from Duty Roulette. Mechanics are ignored, bosses are burned and primary roles are blended or ignored.

Baically the game through level 50 is a long tutorial, and has been described as such by Yoshi himself. Sadly though the ineffectiveness of level and ilvl sync greatly reduces the tutorial value of this content.

http://imgur.com/x5rfTzf

If people don't do their job quests, how can you expect them to do anything else, no matter how it can improve their gameplay?

Can still see their name :p

I learned by reading my skills, caring about my contribution to the party dynamic, and wanting to do my best.

The mentor system and Newb hall will help those that do really want to do better...

But I feel most of the 'bad' players are those that just don't care, and no amount of tutorials, yelling, or mentoring, will ever make them better.

I think raiding is the only real tutorial we have.

For instance. I started this game as a White Mage and I wasn't gonna raid, it scared me healing. I picked up Monk with the same stance on raiding and a friend I met pushed me to try raiding, and I thought Monk was fun so I took the plunge. I was SO terrible you have no idea, I did NOT know how to play Monk effectively. Luckily unlike crappy Alexander, the DPS check isn't so much that you give up, we did eventually progress and I'd say I learned enough(pre-HW of course) besides Fracture during Turn 9 to play the class right. And hell, I didn't wanna play Monk right! Those positionals were soo intimidating at first, I literally gave it the finger, but I learned anyway because I was raiding and it was necessary.

Go raid! Put your skills to the test, put yourself in the situation where you MUST get better and seek out advice and watch yourself progress throughout your raid career.

Read.The.Live.Letter.

Edit: Including quote from letter so I don't feel like a jerk.

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The Hall of the Novice
Players will be able to train in two ways: training for each role and training which doesn’t involve roles. Training unrelated to roles, such as dodging area of effect attacks, will be available right before entering Sastasha. After this, players will be able to start training for each role which has about seven tasks each. By completing all the training, players will be awarded with level 15 equipment. There will be a specific building for this, and inside you’ll find books which will explain terms such as “DoTs”.

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I'm not saying it's perfect, but this basic knolage and the mentor system should teach jobs perfectly.

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Originally Posted by Vespar

I was unaware that something was in the works. Have they said how it will work or what exactly it will teach? Did they mention when it might be implemented (3.2?)

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In addition to the Mentor system and Stone, Sky, Sea there was talk of a Beginner Hall. Though its possible that was combined with Stone, Sea, Sky.