I think the tutorial is key. I recently picked up super street fighter 4 when it became a free download on xbox live and i can not for the life of me get into the game. I have absolutely no grasp of how to do anything properly and when i go online i get wrecked.
I learned how to do a ryu fireball, shoryuken and his supers and ultras. I played through the arcade mode and enjoyed that so I decided why not jump online? I honestly don't know whats going on. Theres guys hitting me with like combos into supers and shit and i'm getting really salty. I'm like fuck it this 'trial' mode should help me out.... Man was I wrong. I get to like the 8th challenge and it says something like high punch, medium punch, light kick. I spend 40 minutes trying to do this one thing only to find out theres a timing to it and i've wasted 40 minutes of my life mashing buttons trying to do this shit.
My gripe is that they can't even explain how to properly get started on street fighter. I had to go online to find out how to do these 'linkers', I had to go online just to learn how to do a move with M. Bison or Guile. I really enjoy the game aesthetically, the characters are pretty cool and the online is very crisp. However I just can't get into the game with the knowledge that i'll have to look up everything I want to learn online. I don't know what moves link and half these characters I don't even know how to do the bloody moves.
tl;dr A good tutorial helps the casual player learn the game and get into the game and learn how to play properly. Without a good tutorial, many players such as myself turn away from a game because the game makes absolutely no sense.
I totally agree, especially about the Street Fighter stuffs. I stopped playing SF with 2T because it was just too much to process at once with extremely high execution requirements and then the Turbo speed on top of it. I decided to get back into it with Ultra and I have no clue what's going on. The very first day, I hear about people releasing Red Focus kombos and I'm sitting in my living room going "WTF is Red Focus?" Trial mode is exactly that: TRIAL mode. Despite what Capcom says, it is NOT a tutorial mode. It will demonstrate what a character is capable of kombo-wise, but if you're looking for character basics and bnbs, go to youtube.
I had an interesting idea for a type of tutorial mode for fighters that actually based on Playstation All Stars of all games. It would start with the basics (how to move, specials, etc) and move on to spacing and zoning, and end with advanced techniques and kombos. Now the beauty of this mode that I am suggesting is that you are free to choose your character to practice with (I'm lookin at you MK9
) except for maybe some of the very specific advanced tech tutorials and there is 3 grades. The three grades would be:
1. Learn the skill vs a dummy that either does nothing or next to nothing as the situation requires.
2. Use the skill vs and intermediate bot.
3. Use the skill vs and expert bot.
To unlock the next topic, all you have to do is pass the first challenge in each tutorial which would also unlock the 2nd challenge which would in turn unlock the 3rd so that the player can choose when and which topic to practice at their leisure.
Very bare-bones Idea I know but I just came up with it and spewed it out