I finally did some more work on the tutorial. Some people pointed to me that it should really be more friendly to new players and I hope that the changes I’ve made will help to retain new players a bit longer.

Will it work? Is it enough? We’ll see. Can I do more? Probably and I surely will.

Here’s a short story of the tutorial in Golemizer since release:

Version 1

No tutorial at all. I think there was a sign telling players to talk to NPCs to train skills and that was it. The first players were hardcore to get through this but again if exploration is not something you like, even with a good tutorial Golemizer might just not be for you.

Version 2

I added a bunch of NPCs in the immigration office (where players were first appearing when creating an account) that were telling players random stuff about a lot of things. There just was too much info and we all know that most players won’t read anything so it didn’t really help.

Version 3

I added the Tutorial Island which gets players through some very basic quests to teach them how to get started in Golemizer. Not very original I know but it provided a way to new players to safely experiment with crafting, combat and skills learning. Since most players are chatting in the global channel new players were never alone.

I added a message warning all players in Golemizer that a new players just created an account. It just says “Welcome to XXXX who joined Golemizer!”. Some veterans used this warning to try to chat new players and help them which really was a nice thing.

Version 4

This is the new version of the tutorial. The Tutorial Island is still there but there are now bouncing arrows showing to players what they must do next. A player that decides to not read anything should still be able to get through the tutorial just by following the arrows. In fact if you can’t get pass the tutorial with these than Golemzer is really not for you anyway.

Here are some screenshots (click for full size):

Yes, I should have done that before. Then again if one day I release a 3D version of Golemizer some will tell me that I should have done so right from the start. There’s always so much to do with so little time that it’s not always easy to meet the expectations of everyone.

Of course this upgrade is really more for me than for new players. I want more players to play Golemizer so I’m hoping that by improving the tutorial a bit it will help to achieve my goal. Surely I can do even more but hey …

I also added more support for left-click. You can now left-click to target monsters, talk to quest givers, enter houses, enter dungeons, mine rocks automatically and so on. I might have missed some spots though but I’ll make sure to allow left-click as much as possible (it’s not always possible unless I do major interface changes).

Now even if the tutorial is now more friendly Golemizer still remains a deep rich game that can be hard to understand. I can keep making the experience better but if you’re not willing to learn anything I cannot help here.

For example as much EVE Online have done work on their tutorial it still remains a very complicated game with a lot of menus, small fonts and such. Making the game dumber would just not work as it’s not the point. WoW is that game. Of course EVE Online doesn’t have WoW numbers but they are doing quite well that way. Same for Golemizer. I don’t want EVE Online numbers and I’m sure it can do very well even if it’s not as easy to play as WoW.

(I also finally fixed the mail settings on the blog so that might be useful somehow)

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