♪ Bugle horn call ♪
Every time you play a new game, there's gonna be some
learning you have to do before you can really understand
the game's mechanics, but there's a very thick line
between a game trying way too much to tell you how to play,
and not trying to tell you at all.
I really hate it when the first two hours of the game
is just tutorial. I get it, your game has some complexity
to it, but I want to be able to jump into the core of the action
without having to read a 30-page briefing of what to expect,
how to handle it,
what to do,
where to go,
how to feel,
what to see,
what to eat --
-- But !
There's something I hate even more than that:
something I hate more than phonies, the color magenta,
titles that end with e-quest-clamations,
and my own voice combined --
It's this trend in online games where they don't try
at all to teach new players how to play.
Like, I get that they're supposed to learn through experience,
but I like it when games let you progress at your own pace.
I like games that respect your ability to seek information,
and not shove it in your face. I had never played a
Dark Souls in my life, but when I jumped into the third one,
it did a pretty radical job of teaching me
the mechanics without forcing me to play through a virtual
Simon Says to know how to play it.
If you want to know how to do shit, you just
run over the messages and read 'em.
BAM!
You're done.
I'm not talking about these games though;
I'm talking about games that flat out don't give you
the information at all.
Or at least they do, and it's really cryptic and hard to understand.
Team Fortress 2, a title that I hold closer to my heart
than anything else in the world,
is a repugnant example of this.
TF2 doesn't make any effort at all,
any effort at all,
to teach new players how the mechanics of their world works.
When you first get the game,
your first instinct is to just join a game,
because well, it's the first thing you see when you open a menu.
Once you do that,
and you find a game,
and you join it,
you're put onto the "Pick Class" menu,
and let's pretend I'm a new player.
Right now,
I have no clue what the fuck's goin' on.
We've got 0 medics,
too many specialist supports,
not enough power classes like heavy or demo,
but none of that information is shown to new players.
Instead, all they know is what classes their team already has,
and mind you, they have no clue what any of these classes really do.
So now you've got to blindly choose a class
based on what their description tells you about them,
but each description is extremely brief,
and only paints enough of a picture
to give you a vague understanding of their role.
So now you've chosen a class,
and you've chosen it at random,
mind you, because this early in,
you're not gonna know what the concept of team composition
or crucial picks is.
The game doesn't tell you that a healer is needed,
or that you've got too many of something,
so you pick a class based on whoever has the cutest head shot,
and then you're thrown into a game,
without a clue of how to play it,
no explanation of how your weapons work,
no explanation of what your job is,
you're just tossed in and told
FIGHT !
Now hear me out here,
I get that when you play shooters,
it's inherently the player's responsibility
to teach themselves how to play it,
'cause it's not like a single player game
where you've got all the time in the world
to listen to drones go on and on about controls,
but that's not really an excuse to make zero effort to do so.
When a player has zero ways to learn the basics of a game,
they're gonna have a rough time trying to actually enjoy it,
because they're spending way more time
trying to figure out what they're doing
than they are actually playing it.
HOLD IT !
Hahaha, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,
I was wrong all along.
They actually do have a tutorial.
Four classes.
And it's not
EVEN
FUNCTIONAL !
I'm serious man,
I can't even start the training,
and I have no idea why.
It just doesn't work.
Googling it shows that Training has been bug-ridden for years,
but let's say this is somehow only a bug affecting me.
Even with access to the tutorial,
it barely teaches you the fundamentals of the game.
You learn how to jump,
crouch,
switch your weapons,
which sounds like enough,
but keep in mind there's
hundreds upon hundreds of factors and mechanics
in the game that aren't even so much
as skimmed through it.
Don't even get me started on how
this information is only available in the tutorial,
and isn't able to be checked when you're in an actual game.
But it's alright,
because there's one other way to learn about the mechanics of the game.
One system that could completely undo
the fabric of all my arguments,
a system that is accurately relaying information to the player,
and that system is...
Loading Tips.
You heard me.
This itty-bitty shitty right here
is your best source of information as a player.
These tips aren't available as a
viewable option per class on the loadout screen,
they aren't organized or categorized,
just random tips you can skim through
on your stats page or in the loading screen.
WHY ?
The system is fine as, like, a side addition to your already well-explained game,
but they use it like it's their primary
source to learn new things you otherwise might not have known.
And because there's no organization
you have to spam through it if you wanna find tips
specifically about a class that you're interested in.
And even if,
if, theoretically, you manage to get far into the game
with virtually zero knowledge of how to play it,
and you learned all the basics,
you're still left shit out of luck on learning
all the deeper core mechanics of the game:
airstrafing,
c-tapping,
crouch jumping,
backpedal speed,
damage ramp-up,
random crits trickstabbing dominations crit heals the spy's hitbox
the syringe gun trimping market gardening rocket jumping the neon annihilator the force-a-nature flame mojo pushing to last
[etc]
--I didn't even know what the fuck a Dead Ringer was,
till I yelled at somebody for hacking their respawn,
and they told me about achievement items!
Yeah!
Achievement items!
That's right!
Because this game has
UNLOCKABLE WEAPONS !
So now, you've got to learn what another hundred-something items do,
and you aren't even given them for free!
You have to unlock them,
craft 'em,
trade for 'em,
buy 'em!
It's stupid.
Items like the Sandwich or the Ubersaw are so vital,
you almost can't even play competitively without owning them,
and yet new players won't have access to them,
until they've clocked in like 100 hours in the game.
As somebody who has 75 hundred (7500) goddamn hours in the game,
the idea of not knowing what a weapon is, is pretty funny.
As someone with 7.5 hours in the game,
it's probably kind of aggravating,
and confusing,
and dumb.
So let's compare this to another game:
Overwatch!
[Booing]
[Booing] Oh, boo fuckin' hoo!
Overwatch has a functional tutorial to teach you the basics of the game.
It also gives you a handy menu you can open at any time
to see exactly what your abilities are and how to use them.
And if you're not sure of what hero to play, ' game has that covered too.
It tells everybody on your team what the composition is missing,
or what it might do well having more of.
This makes it easy to pick a hero if you're not sure what the game calls for.
This is all pretty inviting to new players.
The game might take more time to get used to
than standard shooters because of all the unique abilities and heroes,
but the game at least tries to make it as smooth as possible of a transition.
So like, let me make an example:
My older brother who has no extensive knowledge of the outside core shooters and titles,
like Tony Hawk's
Madden
NFL NBA 2K17
18
20 PGA Tour 08
& Knuckles.
Basically, dude's hooked on Overwatch now.
'Started playing on my account.
And even though he was going against Master Rank players in Quickplay,
he still liked the concept of the game.
When he moved on to a fresh account,
he started climbing in rank already,
because he gets to progress at his own rank,
facing players of his own level,
he can view information whenever he needs it.
That's a good introduction to a game!
TF2 doesn't even have a ranking system:
in Casual there is pretty much no MMR,
leading to 12v12 clusterfucks of the top two players on the scoreboard
being Gods, and the bottom 98% being people ranging from
"frequently plays", to "just installed it three minutes ago'.
Matchmaking in TF2 is also a COMPLETE joke!
Ranks are meaningless,
there are zero placement matches,
and even if you're the highest rank in the goddamn game,
you'll still get paired up against and with new players.
Imagine if we made Little League kids play seriously in the Major League.
That's pretty much what competitive TF2 is right now.
So what does this all have to do with learning curves?
The point I'm getting at here,
is that TF2 has an extremely steep learning curve,
takes almost no steps to teach the player how to progress as an individual.
Overwatch has a comparatively smaller learning curve,
but does a *way* better job of making it easy to understand.
If you're bad at Overwatch, it's because you probably still need to get comfortable with the game,
and maybe develop some better gamesense.
If you're bad at TF2,
nobody can even blame you!
Because unless you sift through dozens of guides and videos
amassed by the competitive community,
which all get outdated after every weapon and class rebalance,
you won't have any way to know how to actually improve as a player.
TF2 is like if we forced kids to assemble their toys like factory workers,
before they were allowed to play with them.
It doesn't make sense!
And don't tell me the game being old is an excuse --
It gets updated every other week,
and has an active development team,
while staying top 5 on Steam at all times.
I don't expect them to be able to explain every single weapon,
and every engine-exploit-turned-stable-feature in the game,
but even the most basic mechanics like hitting F6
to open a menu that tells you what your current items are capable of doing
would fill such an essential hole that the game's currently empty of.
I like to think part of this is why the game is struggling so much to break back into relevancy.
It's hard to make you game popular, when no-one really quite knows how it's meant to be played.
Anyways, let me take a minute here to clarify something:
good learning curves are not equatable with skill ceilings.
Overwatch gets its easy learning curve by dumbing down mechanics
and making it as baby proof as possible.
Complex maneuvers are boiled down to hitting a key,
and there are significantly less mechanics that factor into
an individual's ability to comprehend the game.
TF2 is hard to master,
but that isn't inherently bad, because objectively,
TF2 requires a lot more individual skill,
to succeed as a team.
The issue is, the game does a bad job of preparing players to fill in their role on the team.
and part of this isn't just because they don't spoonfeed
you instructions on how to abuse engine features,
it's because there's no established global ruleset.
The closest thing to one is Matchmaking,
which limits you to six players, but has
zero class limits,
zero weapon bans,
and nobody even plays that shit anyways,
so obviously nobody takes the feature seriously in a
sense that it's what TF2's future is gonna be.
And I don't think that's because players are close-minded or stupid,
and don't get me wrong,
they're very close-minded and stupid,
but that's not why they hate Competitive.
They hate *this* Competitive,
because it sucks.
Ignoring the fact that, like I said, Valve takes no effort to teach players their game,
the game is also not balanced competitively.
At least, not without community tweaks.
There are weapons which become borderline overpowered in the right hands,
there are also items that are borderline direct downgrades,
but players use them anyways because they don't realize it.
My point is, it's a bit of a fixer-upper.
♪ Background music ♪
TF2 would be a fuckin' awesome e-sport if Valve took
the proper steps of fixing up the game, in both rebalancing it
as well as opening the gates for new players to get familiar with it.
It has more creativity, soul, and personality than
any other shooter I've ever seen,
and that includes Overwatch!
Overwatch has mountains of personality, but it doesn't have the touch Valve titles have
from their on-point writing and ability to make games fun at their core.
In fact, all comparisons between the two games I've made here
are purely to highlight the high points and low points of each game.
It's not even to directly compare them.
Overall, I just think TF2 will struggle to find itself back at a high point
of relevancy ever again, unless it manages to really outdo itself
on improving.
And I mean, as long as they don't pull some stupid shit
like taking an entire half a year to put out the first rebalance update after
the matchmaking release, I think things might actually turn out alright.
OH GODDAMN --
♪ Outro music in the description ♪