Status bar / tutorial

[Hypersomniac]

The game should have some kind of textbox which tells the player what it is supposed to do.

This way newcomers wouldn't disappointed.

This text box could be :

• showed after a certain time of inaction.
• under the creature queue to be obvious.
• disabled with an option in the settings menu.

[DreadKnight]

Dota2 forces players to undergo a tutorial campaign, which was damn annoying as I did that in "Dota 2 Test" entry from Steam and the next day there was the proper "Dota 2" added, which forced me to undergo the tutorial again, 15 min lost.

Ideally there game would be so intuitive that there shouldn't be the need for a tutorial mode. Most testers did just fine when playing the game with me, but I guess it helped a lot for them to not go first and to constantly see my cursor to figure out easier what was to be done since we played via desktop sharing. When we'll have some sort of online matchmaking (for ladder mode perhaps), newer players shouldn't be first as part of the whole algorithm. In the near future I'll start testing again with new players and some of the ones before to observe if they're performing even better now.

Time and testing will tell when stuff is hard to figure out. I kinda like the idea of "showed after a certain time of inaction" and will see about that, kinda reminds me of oldschool beat'em'up games like Double Dragon or Final Fight where you had a hand showing up with some text saying "Go Left" in case you where confused or to remind you time was passing out.

[DreadKnight]

Ok, seems we kinda need a tutorial. A lot of people don't quite know how to play it since they never played Heroes of Might and Magic anyway. And I remember when I first seen that game myself at an internet cafe while someone else was playing it, it did seemed cool but at the same time confusing and scary as well because I didn't had a clue on how it was played, luckily a good buddy of mine was nearby and offered to teach me, which he did and I'm grateful even today.

Options for tutorial:

• have a "Tutorial" button in the pre-match config, at the left of the current "Start" button (rename that to "Play"?)
• trigger tutorial when people click the passive ability or an unusable one since it's what noobs often do :D
• have a non-intrusive "First time?" button for each player showed during first turn or round only

Clicking those would start a narrative, teaching the player about how the game works while showing things in action. The main topics could be:

• the goal of the game
• current player and unit
• unit queue and ordering
• abilities and targeting
• skipping or delaying turn

The game could auto play itself for a bit while showcasing things and then rewind itself back to where it was provided the tutorial was started during a match.

[DreadKnight]

The "surrender" button should most likely be a tutorial / help button at first, since you can't surrender right away anyway.