The current tutorial is severely outdated and needs a complete overhaul.

[polar lodge]

This year, OffWorld has run multiple sales, and I’ve had to deal with waves of new players every month or two. For a mechanically complex, hardcore game like Squad, the existing tutorial is not only obsolete but also actively unfriendly to newcomers. Here are the critical issues:

1.No proper introduction to Squad’s gunplay mechanics.
Squad’s gunplay—especially recoil control and bullet dispersion—differs significantly from mainstream FPS titles (COD, Battlefield, CS2, ARMA). New players coming from other shooters are often confused by Squad’s weapon stabilization system. We need a fully interactive tutorial to teach these mechanics effectively.

2.Shallow explanations of core mechanics.

Key systems like IFF (Identify Friend/Foe) and vehicle damage models are buried in static text or images, placed where most new players overlook them. Worse, revisiting these tutorials requires replaying the entire guide—a terrible UX decision. These must be replaced with hands-on, interactive lessons.

3.Missing practical combat skills.

The tutorial fails to teach basic survival tactics: cover usage, movement paths, or suppression discipline. I’ve lost count of newbies making suicidal mistakes—spraying LMGs blindly (and getting headshot), smoking their own position (allowing enemy grenadiers to rush), etc. We don’t need to teach everything, but we must stop players from killing themselves through ignorance.

4.No advanced gameplay guidance.

Right now, improvement relies entirely on community-made guides. If players don’t seek external resources, they hit skill ceilings fast. At minimum, integrate in-game links to high-quality tutorials (e.g., Karmakut’s guides).

5.Tutorial skippability is a mistake.

For a hardcore game like Squad, allowing players to skip the tutorial is design malpractice. High learning curves are inevitable, and letting clueless players into matches ruins the experience for everyone. Last week, I met a newbie who asked, “How do I deploy?” and “How do I change kits?”—because they skipped the tutorial. Make it mandatory

6.Basic military knowledge gaps.

Back in 2017 (A9 era), most Squad players came from ARMA or PR2 and understood fundamentals. Now, we see players calling IFVs “tanks” or misreporting enemy positions—catastrophic in a teamwork-heavy FPS. A brief primer on vehicle identification and tactical comms is essential.

7.No explanation of Unit differences.

New players blindly follow votes without understanding Unit loadouts (e.g., Mechanized’s tracked IFVs vs. Motorized’s wheeled speed). The voting screen’s info button ("i") is underused. Add a quick-reference guide accessible outside voting—explaining Unit types (Air Assault, Armored, Light Infantry, etc.), their vehicle/FOB specializations, and why you’d pick one over another.

[dreamy prawn]

Yes yes yesssss

[hasty scroll]

also no armor tutorial

[heady cosmos]

There needs to be at more in-depth and direct tutorials for each role and or weapon platforms as well as a more in-depth general tutorial, it's crazy the amount of times i've seen squad leaders not know how to do simple things or HATs not know how to use RPG ranging or what arming distance is.

TBH, i'm willing to be pretty authoritarian with it and not let them do anything related to that role until they do the corresponding tutorial or to let them play until they do the basic one. because to the tutorials credit, many of these things are taught within it, it just seems no one does it.
If someone doesn't know how to place a radio, rally, or how to make a fireteam then they shouldn't even be able to make a squad.

And I don't mind teaching people when they want to learn more in depth, but you can only help those who want to help themselves, if they rush bull headedly and make a squad without playing the tutorial than there's just too much to teach them before staging phase ends.

that is if they even ask for help before staging phase ends, too many times have i had a squad lead get 10 min into the match and he types "im new how do i place rally" and he types because he doesn't know which button to push to speak. At that point you cant even tell them how to promote someone because they don't even understand the menu.

around this point they give up and rage quit from it being too much complexity at once because there's no safety nets preventing them from taking that complex role in the first place.

It's not even that the tutorial is necessarily bad and doesn't touch on the things mentioned (3,6), but that people don't seem to care to spend the time there to learn and that there's not enough of it to make it harder to gloss over as a new player.

At minimum make more in depth tutorial that's required

I mean hell the #1 most common advice to new players is to join a squad and play rifleman or medic specifically because it's good to learn with no stress of responsibility and because everyone understands how annoying it is having a new player make a squad as the first thing they do.