How many introductory levels does a pack need in your opinion?

[Strato Incendus]

Every time I work on a pack, I try to get a little creative with the first couple of levels. It's somewhat of an unspoken rule that the first levels should have some kind of tutorial character, except for very short packs which are deliberately only made for people who have played a lot of other content already, so they don't need to be taught stuff and you don't want to waste their time.

For the average Joe however, especially old lemmings players who might come into contact with NeoLemmix skills for the first time, introductory levels make sense.

For Paralems, I did the "revive original levels with new skills" thing.
For Pit Lems, I combined several skills into few levels, like teaching the destructive skills, then the creative skills, lethal skills, permanent skills, etc. Quickly however, it turned into "teaching the player certain tricks you can do with these skills".

Lemmings 3D had an own Practice rank below Fun, which you could just skip if you wanted to to.

And finally, the NeoLemmix introduction pack shows that effectively, you could spend an entire pack just teaching things to people, from mechanics to skills to objects to tricks... But I still wouldn't feel comfortable just pointing everyone to the introduction pack and leaving my own packs without a "learning curve" .

I'm thinking of teaching the skills pairwise in the next regular (i.e. non-gimmick ) pack I make... because single skill levels tend to be either ridiculously easy or insanely hard. After all, most skills don't have the extreme versatility a builder or a stoner have. And things like the cloner to a lot in combination with other skills, but next to nothing on their own.

So how many intro levels do you aim for with your packs, and more importantly: What do you like to teach the player (and what not)? Skills, objects, tricks and skill combinations?

[Flopsy]

SEB Lems had 3 introductory levels

I called them Crash Course, Crash Course II and Crash Course III

Crash Course III was a level made solely for the fencer skill introduction. Since the fencer was introduced late in SEB Lems's development.

Crash Course I and Crash Course II each use 8 of the other 16 skills so all of the skills are used throughout the 3 levels.
I also in these 2 levels make sure all of the skills need to be used.

I thought this would be good enough although some people have commented that the Crash Course levels are in fact harder than the rest of the Paradise rank!

[Ryemanni]

I don't make tutorial levels at all. I trust that the player has atleast basic knowledge how the game works before jumping straight into custom packs, or has played the NL introduction pack to learn about the new skills.

[Nessy]

Personally, I believe that the question of whether or not to include introductory levels comes down to personal taste. Some people might like to do tutorial levels in the traditional sense of doing a tutorial level for each skill, and some people might make a few tutorial levels with more than one skill "taught" in them (like Flopsy's Crash Course levels). On the other hand some people might not even bother with it and get straight to non-tutorial-like levels. Regardless, I believe that decision should be the creator's own decision. Some people might skip these tutorials levels, but just as many will play them as well. NeoLemmix gives the player that choice, and you also give the player the choice of whether or not they want to play those levels.

[Strato Incendus]

I'm mainly asking because, like Flopsy, I also had the impression that the "introductory levels" of Pit Lems were among the hardest levels of the rank . They weren't really supposed to be "tutorials", rather just "limiting the level to a specific kind of skill", like destructive / creative. But that's an idea that is especially useful at the beginning of the pack.

[Scotty]

Introductory as in specifically tutorial style levels, or as in "20 of everything levels which you then replay later with intended resources"?

I'm only mildly familiar with community content at this point, but from what i've seen, these kinda levels fall into one of those categories.

I think it's safe to assume that by this point, people searching for new Lemmings content will have played the original game. So there's no real point having a level showing how original builders or miners work for example.

With repeating levels i personally find it more interesting where level is presented in one specific initial way, then the second encounter is modified with additional steel or one-way walls (or something in that vein) to provide a new challenge or force a new solution rather than one a player might have found in their first playthrough with less limited resources. For example, there is a level in MD/Genesis Lemmings that is modified second time around with steel blockades that force a completely new approach (Fun16/Taxing2).

[namida]

I feel it depends on a few things:
- Are there any new things to teach, or is this just about easing people into the pack? In the latter case, I've recently started to prefer not doing this, which is why my newer packs (LPIV, LPV and especially LPO2) have less such levels, and put more emphasis on relatively-easy puzzles than X-of-everything levels. Likewise, if LPVI ever comes, I suspect it too will have very few, if any, X-of-everything type levels.
- Are we teaching something relevant to almost every level, or at least a large number of levels, such as a new skill? If so, introduce it as soon as possible. LPO's first 7 levels are like Orig's first 7, in that they each introduce one (or two) new skills and are easy levels to focus on the use of that skill. LPO2, which was the first pack to use the Fencer, introduced it on the second level, then the third level was an X-of-everything (one of only two X-of-everything levels in the pack, and the other was a somewhat gimmicky level) that included Fencers as one of the available skills.
- Or are we teaching something that'll show up from time to time but not too often, such as a new object? If so, it should still be introduced relatively early, but doesn't have to be right away. LPIII, which by far introduced the most new objects, spreads the new object tutorials throughout the first rank. Although on the other hand, LPIV which introduced (anti)splat pads and single-use traps, had the tutorials on the 2nd and 3rd levels.
- Or are we trying to teach a trick? I often don't do a tutorial for this at all, instead, it needs to be figured out in the level where it's actually relevant. With that being said, sometimes I do hint at this...

LPO2 spoilers

An example would be the Spiky level, "Don't Forget". This level uses - not necesserially teaches as such - a trick where a platformer is placed across a gap, then another platformer is placed across the gap slightly higher, so a basher can bash across the platform without stopping. The level title hints at that this trick may be used again in a later level - and indeed it is, in Sharp 17 "Broken Arrow", where it's much more well-hidden than in "Don't Forget".