Howsabout something linked to the Easy Way Out logic method, where an obstacle, section, or entire tracks can get easier due to fault count climbing? That way LBs could show how the level difficult was for the majority of the run, that would give a gauge of where players levels are at while providing an incentive to improve but not restricting how far someone can get.
I loved the style of Evolution's license tests. It had a fun, interactive and engaging theme with its environment.
To make that a better experience and more enjoyable overall. Take away the pop-up tutorial when first approaching the checkpoint. Only when the rider has failed and reset to checkpoint be a reason for the assistance in helping by tutorial. Don't use a long sentences explaining the procedure. Instead simple arrow keys on controller inputs during the reset to checkpoint and allow a ghost demonstrate the perfect execution in real time. The player shouldn't have to be frozen at all during this, that is just frustrating.
If the freeze moments and the pop-ups don't occur when the rider isn't making a fault and needing to go back to the checkpoint, then the license test tracks surely can given a LB. (personal opinion but don't think these times should count on the Global LB because the purpose of the License Test is still a learning course, demonstrating techniques and is prioritized being a tutorial)
The course layout was absolutely beautiful. The spacing and layout itself could really be copied and reused. The skill sets were perfect for their difficulty types.
Here is a video that shows someone first learning this game. His reactions to certain things could really be taking into account.
Cheers
Can more be done with replays/ghosts to help demonstrate how to get past obstacles?
One of my other favourite games Titanfall 2 has a visible 'ghost' to help explain the movement system - on the first few levels it plays on a loop, on each area, showing players where/when to jump/wallrun/double jump to get past that particular part of the level.
What if when someone is stuck on a track a they could press a help button that would display a rider getting past that part of the track alongside button presses that could be slowed down/repeated. Would maybe help with timing of weight transfer/when to leave off the throttle etc.
Titanfall also had a couple of achievements that you got for improving your time on the tutorial level - a possible incentive for new players to try & ensure they actually learn the skills?
One of the key to become really good that nobody said is to know how to land on every type of situation. If you understand that you will know how to pass differents obstacle CONSECUTIVELY.
I'm probably unusual - on here - in that I've never completed an Extreme track so hopefully my opinion has some value, even if I am - so it looks - above average for the player base.I don't think I have the necessary fine motor skills these days.
Looking through the replies here and listening to the interview with Professor FatShady there are loads of great points raised.
I NEVER want to sit through a tutorial that stops me and makes me wait while it teaches me something. There are a few good suggestions here as to how that might be achieved: any player should be able to opt out; as RidingMower says, you could have a tutorial level that only actually stops and leads the player by the hand if they're struggling; I really like the idea of an in situ overlay that shows the player the correct technique when they fault multiple times or make a help selection - especially if this could apply anywhere in the game.
Turning the tutorial into a skill-game/challenge with a highscore table has potential but you'd have to be absolutely meticulous in making sure the highest scores are achieved by a 'proper' run how the tutorial was intended, not by mastering some unlikely exploit. Certainly there's much scope for tutorials that people might come back to if there are friends' scores to better. And how much better if a tutorial challenges you to make (say) three consecutive bunny hops and then shows you the distance for each one, total distance, offered real feedback as to where you're shifting your weight too early or late or whatever. Give me a chart showing my progress over repeated attempts. Some people like that stuff. So the goal changes from 'get to the end of this awful boring level' to 'master that technique'
And yeah, the tutorials don't really cover everything you need to be a great player. Where are we learning to feather the brake or make less-than-full leans? The extreme stuff like applying throttle and brakes to change the way the bike spins in the air (is that even a thing? I'm confused). The simplest thing, as discussed on the podcast and reiterated by I ShinFenix I: how best to land the damned bike. The game says on the back wheel, but that's it, I think. (Forgive me, it's been a while.) What if you're: landing on a downslope; landing on an upslope; landing from great height; landing with a lot of forward momentum or a little; various combinations of the above on smooth surfaces, rough surfaces, flat or curved surfaces, expansive ramps and really tight spots?
The replays are a fantastic way to learn but as has been said they can cause you to focus too hard on speed over everything. Maybe there could be recommended / curated / meticulously crafted replays for each track that show how to meticulously pick your way through a level without faulting, from one checkpoint to the next, in good time. These could even be the basis of an in situ tutorial system that can be called upon to help a player with any checkpoint.
Speaking as an average player... albeit one who has perhaps persisted more than most, the later levels do seem too hard. I read a review of Trials Fusion somewhere that said that once you get to the Hard levels, the game stops being fun. I wouldn't go that far (if you have to work for it, there's a greater sense of achievement), but perhaps there's too much emphasis on speed early on that leads to expectations that it will continue in the same vein. The depth of the in-game system is at once a strength and a barrier so the learning curve needs to be very closely managed. Would it be better to make the later levels shorter on average, so as to be less intimidating? (The level editor and multi-track tournaments provide for people who want a longer race.) Perhaps an 'easy' mode could provide 'stage' checkpoints at a few places on the track at which the player's time and faults can be recorded and returned to like a quickload, allowing them to approach the tough ones piecemeal.
Frustrating for me as an obsessive personality is the perception that there is narrative going on that I may never get to witness in its completeness. Without a boring time watching Let's Play videos, anyway.
Personally, and I emphasise that this is as an average player, knowing that it may not go down so well with the Ninjas out there, I'd rather see a single-player campaign that didn't get so hard, but with all the wonderful inventive, sometimes squirrel-based optional goals - and more - that only a true master of the game could achieve. I found TF's abundance of inventive sidequests to be a very impressive and entertaining addition to the game, even if many of them seem improbably difficult to me. The fact that a track that can be completed easily by me on a Panda is nearly impossible (by me) on a Rabbit also suggests that vehicle-specific achievements and score-tables might allow the more Ninja-y to continue to differentiate themselves. At present, people will focus on the vehicle that gets to the finish fastest. What if there were a Rabbit-specific score table?
I'll probably have more unwelcome ideas later.![]()
I think the idea earlier in the thread about rivals is a great idea. It's handled brilliantly in Forza Horizon, and really satisfying. Every time you beat the track, you get given currency, and asked to beat a rival that is n% (I'm not sure the actual value they use) ahead of you (a rival being any player who's posted a time online, as opposed to just people on your friends lists). It's very compulsive, and an enjoyable way to encourage people to start speedrunning, and show them lines and techniques they haven't seen before, as they get better.
I think the big thing missed out on tutorials in trials is about rider position. It's often overlooked, and when I'm talking friends through extreme tracks, it's body position that really makes the difference to their capacity to beat a track.
Adding back the ability to watch a replay during a run would be useful as well. I see the basic passing of tracks as a technical hurdle to overcome. If after say 10 minutes, they game could offer a user the ability to watch the track be completed, then they can see what passing a particular obstacles looks like. For some players, this may take some of the 'magic' out of beating a track though.
In regards to us players being in the 1%, I'd like to advocate making maximum use of the tracks you do have in the game. Once a player has beaten the basic game, and put some times on the static tournaments (hint hint), unlocked the ability to play the 'ninja' or 'after dark' versions of existing tracks would be really cool. They don't all have to be ninja, tbh, you'd probably start at medium or hard and ramp up. Maybe not all tracks have a harder version, but it would add an insane amount of longevity, without having to completely redo the scenery and racing line for a track. You'd be making the most of the tracks in the game. I really like the in-game ninja tracks, and Oso's version of the Cold Storage as a ninja track was really fun.
As an aside, you could look at how climbing approaches technical difficulties. The website TheCrag, every climb has a page, and users can post info on how they completed it, certain moves to watch out for, and other 'beta' that helped them complete the climb. It generates a sense of community, and lets the best climbs be rated so that others know where the classic or 5 star routes are.
why not just put a link in the menu to fat shadys youtube channel? He does a great job with tutorials.
The game already offers racing against ghosts, which could be improved to become useful for learning purposes. The basic idea is not having to watch replays separately to see how others are approaching the track, but to have a helpful reference while playing, so:
- Add options how to display the ghost: Just the name tag as it is now (not helpful for that purpose), the nasty white multiplayer ghost (I find them rather confusing), and new better ways of display, like the actual rider skin you'd see in the replay, but with less and less opacity the closer you are to each other. Something like that or whatever you can come up with.
- Add more options what ghost(s) to display by default: Next guy on the global leaderboards, someone with a 1% better time, #1 best time, someone based on a "rival" system as others suggested already (and I totally agree with them) etc.
- Add the option not to let the ghost disappear in the distance once they have been faster on the first few obstacles, but allow automatically resetting their progress to your own at every checkpoint (not only when resetting to the checkpoint yourself, but also when you trigger it during a 0f run of course), so you can always see ghosts on the same obstacle that you are currently facing.
- Provide useful defaults for these options and mention the feature in a tutorial, so new players will actually be tempted to use it for improving their skills.
And of course: Integrate the Professor right into the game. It took me 3 Trials games before I progressed from hard to extreme tracks (I'm probably not the most patient gamer...), and the main reason I ever did was stumbling into FatShady's Youtube channel after completing HD, Evo and Fusion up to "hard" and still faulting out on "Eye of the Storm".
As obvious as the need to integrate SwampBalls into the editor.
Personally, I find that if a game's tutorial options include a bunch of videos, on YouTube or whatever, it feels like a bit of a cop-out. Better than nothing at all, though.Originally Posted by Tomahog UK Go to original post
I'm sure it doesn't need me to say it, but if you want feedback as to why more than 50% of people who paid for the game didn't complete all the medium levels, the '1%-ers' might not be the best people to ask...![]()
Actual pondering more on it, maybe people don't get past the medium levels because they get the wrong impression of the game early on.
To begin with, all the courses seem like rollercoaster tracks. Maybe there needs to be earlier emphasis on technical challenges.
I'm reminded of a TV show from my youth, 'Kick Start', which aired on the BBC through most of the 80's. That was about real life trials biking, pitting contestants against each other in timed trials. You can read more about it on wikipedia or see various YouTube examples of it such as this one. As you'd expect, failures on obstacles meant 20 second penalties rather than horrible disfiguring death.
So I wonder if the game's later courses would be more palatable to the average player if the expectation of technical trickery were introduced sooner and more prominently. Perhaps the early courses could be divided between speed ones, technical and hybrid, with hybrid obviously dominating later on. You could slow people down by having sections where the player is obliged to pause for three seconds or whatever on a platform or take a penalty. Balancing a bike in game is much easier than in real life so maybe demand an on-the-spot two second wheelie or endo or stay-in-place-on-a slope to open the way ahead. (My balance isn't great; two seconds sounds like a long time for me.)
Then there's the question of whether you could allow players (perhaps in 'easy mode') to bypass a checkpoint in return for a fault and time penalty. (Might also encourage builders to put more checckpoints in.)