Gents I’ve gotten to the point these days where if a game has a tutorial, i will refuse to play it. I’ve discussed some things with like chatgpt on it and it’s response was basically “they’re optimizing for the biggest audience they can keep playing.”
This is a demographic issue. It’s like they’re trying to target people who don’t play games. Then it said “oh some people actually need those tutorials”. But it’s like - dude we learned this game without tutorials why do we need a tutorial.
Civilization 7 for instance. THE WHOLE GAME IS ONE BIG TUTORIAL. I couldn’t even make it past the first “turn” because of how annoyed i was. The UI has “what you should build here” on every tile but it takes up like 25% of my screen too. EVERY TIME YOU CLICK A TILE 25% OF YOUR SCREEN IS TAKEN UP.
I just don’t get it it’s like… developers are like - how can we really upset gamers??? I know!!! LET’S PUT LONG TUTORIALS IN IT!! LET’S RUIN THE USER INTERFACE.
You could ask - well… what’s the first thing that makes classic wow great? You are thrown in the world GOOD LUCK.
What makes Mario so great? Same thing.
Sonic the hedgehog…
Wow has some basic stuff but nothing crazy. I think they could make the PvE pre-nerf so there is a ton more required CC and violent punishment for failure to CC or breaking CC early.
Reason being is that CC should be required and damage from NPC should be player level or greater damage so that every fight is for your life.
This alone would eliminate most AOE focused play styles that are in my opinion vile.. Excluding mage, it’s ok when they do it.
Is anyone releasing new games like this in 2026? And if so, are they selling?
Civ 7 is simply trash.. regardless of tutorials.
But I get your point
We had printed manuals, which are obviously better than tutorials.
megabonk - no tutorial - massively successful.
Minecraft - no tutorial - massively successful.
figure it out… it’s a game. I have the option not to do the tutorial. FORCED tutorials is the problem.
Sure but if you’re good at figuring it out yourself, how did you not see in the Civ7 option menu the option to turn off tutorials?
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I did turn it off, then it proceeds to tell you what to do through-out the game.
Good try though!
The whole game is a tutorial.
There are a lot of players who really don’t enjoy being dropped in a sandbox with no direction, and if the game doesn’t tell them what to do they’ll stop playing
I watched a bunch of the Josh Strife Hayes “Worst MMO Ever” series, and one of the things that got repetitive about his analysis was that he always seemed annoyed that there wasn’t enough of a tutorial in the games. It’s probably his #2 complaint, ranking behind “it’s not great, it’s just fine”.
I don’t think it’s an invalid complaint, and I don’t think it has to do with being smart/dumb, good/bad, it’s just that some people want more predetermined structure in their gaming experience, and others just want to be turned loose.
I tend to lean towards the OP’s distaste for tutorials, and I’ve often said that I can have only limited engagement with a game if I can’t get lost in it, even if getting lost is frustrating sometimes. I start to lose interest when I feel like all I’m doing is following directions and painting by numbers.
I think you could argue that explicit tutorials are a design crutch, and that really great games have the tutorial built into the normal early-game experience so that it feels natural. I like how Classic WoW starts you off with like 2 abilities and then doles more out gradually and gives you time to experiment with them however you want.
Civ 7 was disappointing. I don’t know if I ever really gave it a fair shot. Maybe I’ll try it again someday. I found it to be annoyingly taxing on my PC, and I didn’t like what they did with the era transitions. Last time I had the itch to play Civ, I just went back to 6.
Tutorials in general are awful. The ones I hate the most are the ones that just constantly pop up novels on your screen. Then occasionally followed by “now do this specific thing and all your other stuff is disabled until you prove you can hit the B button”.
The best ones are tutorials you don’t realize you’re in, or ones that are basically a help menu if you get stuck but aren’t forced.
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Game tutorials are for games that fail to have intuitive systems or have too many systems.