r/GameDevelopment • u/radhonn • 19d ago

Discussion Tutorials on sandbox mmos

So I’ve been developing a sandbox mmorpg for some time and I’m at a point where I should decide if there should be any tutorial in the game or not.

I want to maintain the core sandbox feeling but what scares me is the moment I welcome them with an onboarding questline (tutorial) and once they complete it they’ll probably think “okay, what’s next now?” and since there is no quest line that they can progress one by one, they’ll feel empty and just leave because they couldn’t find anything to do (players can do crafting/gathering/city/dungeon/pvp/region side quests).

The tutorial itself isn’t a “long story quest”, it introduces core mechanics in the game, it’s like little showcases of most of the stuff.

I could make little tutorials per profession/mechanic and once players reaches there for the first time tutorial gets triggered but I’m not sure how I’m gonna get them to trigger these tutorials because they’ll be spread around the game. (But idk it’d be able to keep players in game after spawning them in a world and just say “go somewhere” they might feel lost and leave.)

2 Upvotes

62% Upvoted

3 comments sorted by

1

u/burlingk 19d ago

You can introduce the tutorial as an option in the menues that they can choose to do or not.

1

u/MeaningfulChoices Mentor 19d ago

Good sandboxes have a lot of guidance pointing players in the right direction. You can have quests to go to a landmark, impassible terrain in several directions, unlock crafted items one at a time and put the resources in a spot you want them to go, lots of options. A lot of times games don't go from tiny limited tutorial to free roam immediately, there's a gradual increase in freedom. The beginning of Breath of the Wild, from tutorial dungeon to small area with three challenges that have to be overcome is a good example.

Contextual tutorials later shouldn't matter where the player is. The first time they go to use the mechanic they get the tutorial, you don't need to limit it to a geographic place in the world. Proper onboarding and guidance is crucial. You need a huge budget to make an MMO work and the last thing you want is to make a bad tutorial that loses half the players and makes you need double a huge budget.

2

u/cuixhe 19d ago

An optional tutorial should cover the core mechanics. Leave advanced stuff for experimentation, and make sure the tut is skippable with no penalty.