I’ve noticed with recent free-to-play games that I tend to just skip watching videos, skip reading instruction schpiel, skip pre-game cutscenes, skip tutorial levels and just cut to the meat and veg of actual gameplay because it stops me pre-judging too much and also just delay me getting into game where I can usually tell within the first few minutes if there are any major bugbears (design, control, performance, etc.) that would make the game unplayable for me.
I think it was Planetside 2 that recently had a pretty nice tutorial level which let you learn by doing rather than stopping you every 5 seconds to give instructions. So I think a really good tutorial (think actual gameplay vs bots instead of shooting range type) that has an objective of each type that only you can do, some transitions between objectives that require crouch jump to get over, a guy in a tower that can only be taken out by a sniper, 5 guys standing together that would be perfect for a grenade, etc. with some subtle hints that don’t pause the game and don’t force you to do it a certain way, just suggest something new that the player might not know yet, and most importantly it shouldn’t feel like a tutorial/training but real gameplay.
Alternatively just you could do a similar thing, except just throw the player into a real game, but that could be way too off-putting due to skill curve. Of course this could be mitigated by matching making new players together, however after release are there really always going to be lots of new players that start playing at exactly the same time? Which is why I think a tutorial that feels real would be a better way to go.
Of course if a game succeeds in holding my interest then I usually go back and then watch all the stuff I initially skipped.
