I'm sorry but these 'tutorials' missed the mark. Fullscreen text or image overlays are not the way to go.
I get that they're reusing old assets or something and they were really easy to implement, but gods, man - they're awful. And worse, they're skippable! No one is going to read these. For the same reason no one is going to read information dalen puts on the wiki - in lieu of actual, contextual actions or indicators ingame for stuff that quite arguably should be visible ingame. So even if you were to make them unskippable, they'd be a nuisance.
See below:
You know what someone is going to do when they see these? They're going to see the full-screen popup and they're going to uncheck the box and never look at them again.
Do not continue this direction with tutorials.
Put in the actual effort to make a contextual hints system that
rewards the player for doing actions.
Take for example early games from the PS1/N64 era - they may place a level design in a way that you gradually learn all actions possible. Take that a step further and contextually encourage players to do that, and in an MMO sense, reward them for doing that.
When I imagined QOL, it was not this. This isn't QOL; this is a waste of dev time that will be skipped by new players by using the checkbox that says "Show Tutorials" in the bottom center of the screen because it covers your whole screen and is bloody annoying.
We have plenty control over the UI, hell, even have it channel 9 driven. Don't do fullscreen, skippable tutorials.
Something as simple as introducing an introduction quest that is auto-granted at specific levels, can be abandoned if you don't want to do it, and teaches you the same thing this tutorial is.
Something that says, "Queue for a scenario" and you go to an NPC that teaches you about a scenario, and while at the NPC for the scenario, your next quest objective is to look at the minimap, look for a specific icon (flash it, if you need to), and queue.
Hell, even tell the player that they'll be queued for a scenario in 10 seconds after accepting a dialogue option via one of those popups (The ones for group invites, etc) and they'll be able to see the icon doing something it didn't do before. That will teach them where the scenario queue button is.
Then, give them say, a set number of currency after participating in a scenario and they turn in the quest. Then instruct them to go to a merchant nearby the questgiver to buy some RVR potions. Teach them that they're off of a cooldown compared to standard potions. Introduce them to the concept of AP potions and why they're useful. Have them use an AP pot while at 0 action points to teach them that they can flee and drink liquid courage to continue the fight a little longer.
In short:
"Talk to NPC Name. Read your minimap to find NPC Name. If you need the full map, press M."
That's about the extent of the attention span a new player will have for reading. Everything else should be visual and contextually visual at that.
You will lose them in these crucial moments if you pop up a full screen window with information, as they will simply uncheck the box, thinking they are smarter, and then your whole system is gone.
WAR is not a game about reading. It's a game about performing actions that make you feel as though you are part of their world, and part of the class fantasy. This misses the mark and then some. We're in 2022. We're not in the 2008 Mythic/Bioware era of games anymore.
Some additional viewing from one of Max and I's favorite YouTube guy, Josh Strife Hayes, where he tells you to do the exact opposite of what you've done if you want to attract and retain new players. Highly insightful, link below:
Click here to watch on YouTube
