In-Game or Video Tutorial - Teach Before They Troll

This is by no means a new topic, but thus far I haven't seen much progress on this front. PoE has complex and sometimes counter-intuitive mechanics that can cause new or uninformed players a lot of frustration (here's a recent thread on armour). So far, the stance on an in-game tutorial seems to be "Go read the forum or wiki", "Ask in Global", "Figure it out, duh" or simply "*shrug* go back and play D3/WoW, DUH".

My take is that it'd be better to help players learn the game BEFORE they get mad because their level 30/40/50 char gets one-shot when they'd stacked armour plus granite flasks without enough health. PoE shouldn't be losing players because it had failed in-game to help them learn how to play well.

The level of tutorial could be as simple as a loading screen tip (fast and easy to implement). It could cover topics like these (from this thread by Whiteboy):

Passives: allocating, refunding, classes
Skills: sockets, links, supports (how they interact)
Vendors
Currency
Defense: energy shield, armor, evasion
Flasks
Hotbars: changing skills
Character Screen: how to find your DPS, defense, etc.


A "laboratory" setting that gives players access to a default high-level character, weapons, armour and skill gems and "caged" mobs to experiment with would be ideal. I think a high-level char is necessary so that players can easily see the effects of :

say 20k points of armour vs a 1k physical damage blow;

evasion when it's one big mob and many small ones;

support gems and linked items;

keystones like Chaos inoculation;

It's a tall order to do this before open beta, so what I'm thinking is for some community-minded players with YouTube know-how to create video tutorials. I'd be happy to help but I don't even know how to stream/record on-screen stuff.

What do you guys think?

(other tutorial requests I've found 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. There is a need for this!)

tutorials are good because some mechanics are really weird to understand, like EE. i would of never guessed how EE worked if it wasnt for the forum.


altho instead of a tutorial everything could just be better explained ingame, with simple tooltips (currently) and advanced tooltips that tell you specific numbers and mechanics.

Good choice in creating this, and I appreciate the civility of the post.

As i stated in the last thread a simple "path of exile" search on Youtube can result in some how-to videos or lets play videos:



I addition, with my experience being in live streaming and not in youtube recording the only help i can officially offer is in my twitch stream found in my sig.

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vampirekid13 wrote:

tutorials are good because some mechanics are really weird to understand, like EE. i would of never guessed how EE worked if it wasnt for the forum.


altho instead of a tutorial everything could just be better explained ingame, with simple tooltips (currently) and advanced tooltips that tell you specific numbers and mechanics.

EE is pretty simple to understand. It says everything that is needed to be said on the tooltip. When you do elemental damage it gains protection to that and losses protection to the others. Not to sound like a dick, but that is some pretty basic information to be given.

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Asmoday1232 wrote:

EE is pretty simple to understand. It says everything that is needed to be said on the tooltip. When you do elemental damage it gains protection to that and losses protection to the others. Not to sound like a dick, but that is some pretty basic information to be given.

A lot of peoples confusion with EE is in that they think there is a single attack hit priority of ele dmg. the tool tip dose not explain the full effects of the skill and there is nothing wrong about finding it confusing.

This thread is about posting helpful learned experiences not telling people that their confusions are not valid.

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BeyondAnyTherapy wrote:

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Asmoday1232 wrote:

EE is pretty simple to understand. It says everything that is needed to be said on the tooltip. When you do elemental damage it gains protection to that and losses protection to the others. Not to sound like a dick, but that is some pretty basic information to be given.

A lot of peoples confusion with EE is in that they think there is a single attack hit priority of ele dmg. the tool tip dose not explain the full effects of the skill and there is nothing wrong about finding it confusing.

This thread is about posting helpful learned experiences not telling people that their confusions are not valid.

There is a single attack hit priority tho.
When I attack it calculates all that damage as a single attack and will them prioritize the other damage from other player / attacks.

If your attack does fire and cold damage then having EE say your attacks raise the reistance to your type of element attack and lower the other(s) is still pretty basic. I am doing fire and cold, so now they are buffed to fire and cold meaning my lightning will hit for more the first attack.

Not really sure how anyone can put it another way for someone to understand it.

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Asmoday1232 wrote:

There is a single attack hit priority tho.
When I attack it calculates all that damage as a single attack and will them prioritize the other damage from other player / attacks.

If your attack does fire and cold damage then having EE say your attacks raise the reistance to your type of element attack and lower the other(s) is still pretty basic. I am doing fire and cold, so now they are buffed to fire and cold meaning my lightning will hit for more the first attack.

Not really sure how anyone can put it another way for someone to understand it.

And does it say any of that added information in the tool tip? No you either learn that by reading the mechanics or asking. All I am saying is don't stifle people's intalect by telling them what they should or should not know. There is no wrong question, it's like me expecting you to automatically know how to do limits of functions with just x sin x / x

I still dont understand how to use it and how it works and I have seen videos of people using it AND explanations... I just stay away from it because it scares me through being highly confusing and when I do maps with it, it seems to have little to no effect.

BeyondAnyTherapy: Thanks! I've glanced through the videos on Youtube through the link. On the first page, I spotted one video on the first page with "mechanics" in the title. Unfortunately, while there are lots of videos I don't see organization to it, some of them are out of date (usable still, I guess).

Suggestion: Something along the lines of GGG's video on how Premium Tabs works, posted or otherwise approved by GGG would go a long way. Of course, subtitles or a voice-over would be nice. Otherwise, it could be fan-subbed.

Asmoday1232: Yes, I agree that if you take time to think about what a tooltip says, you can usually work out how a mechanic works. But take Metronomy's very honest feedback about his confusion with this keystone - and he's no noob.

I'm sure there're veterans who've answered LOTS of questions in global chat. Could videos be made so that they don't have to type and retype things like "press C and click on the defences tab to look at your elemental resistances"?

A ten-second video would answer HUNDREDS of those questions - and making it in-game (tutorial/loadingscreen/tooltip) would enlighten THOUSANDS more that they should be asking that questions - "What are my current resistances?"

Suggestion: Topics that are FAQ or Frequently Misunderstood should be prioritized, especially basic mechanics like how armour, evasion and ES work.

Yes, the tooltips do help. But there's nothing like an actual play-tutorial to let newcomers say "Ohhhhh I got it, that's a neat way to do things". I do not always agree with their choices but I do appreciate the thought GGG's put into the game design. I hope this thread results in either an in-game tutorial, or some sort of organized video collection at least to SHOW newcomers what's what.

TLDR version: PoE shouldn't be losing players because it had failed in-game to help them learn how to play well.

Bump cause I think it's important.

Krip's basically covered quite a lot of this stuff lecture-style here (there's a one-post thread on this, sorry to the OP can't find it now):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j5a_voG6K4&list=UUeBMccz-PDZf6OB4aV6a3eA&index=2

We SO need an in-game tutorial covering this. Where you can learn the mechanics before learning you've spent 2 weeks of gaming barking up the wrong side of the skill tree.

Remember how we LOVED teachers talking at the class for hours at a time? And how often we asked our classmates what the heck he/she was talking about? Now recall the first time you did some experiment in the lab and saw a pH indicator change colour. THAT's the stuff that stays with you. No offence to Krip (hey, he's doing everyone a service by sharing), but an in-game tutorial/tips really needs to be there.

Suggestions for loading screen tips:

1. Have tips show during game-loading screen. Some rigs will have super fast zoning times.
2. Increase the number of lines allowed for loading screen tips - that way they can accommodate:
3. Three (3) lines about effects of elemental crits and statuses.
4. How armour works (120 points of armour to reduce 10 damage to 5 damage?)
5. How evasion works (chance to evade hit, chance to evade crit)

Willing Youtuber wanted:

Still hoping for someone with youtube skills to take interest. I can help with subbing (in English only). That means that a silent video just pointing out the stats and demonstrating their effects would do - it'd be much easier to get people to contribute subs for other languages.