How much of a game's success depends on the learning curve? Is ease of learning important, or is it the time and effort put into learning the intricacies of sophisticated systems that pulls a player in and keeps them playing for years? This week, Dalmarus takes a look at the volatile ride all players must face with the start of each new game.
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One of the things that has changed the most is the amount of hassle gamers are willing to put up with from a game. If it's too hard or confusing early on, chances are they'll walk away from it in short order, no matter how cool they've heard things get near the end of the game. Despite what the majority of numbers tell us, I don't think this concept is as written in stone as people like to believe it is.
Having been gaming since the days of UO and EQ...I agree with your various assessments. I always thought WoW was too easy - so I played it for about 7 days...Still, few games if any since or right before it have managed to hold my attention. SWGalaxies being the exception but that is more about Star Wars and less about the game and its development.
The thing is for me...either the market needs to reverse direction and increase its depth or change in other ways, or I am gone. I am not the same naive online gamer I was 10+ years ago...I have matured. I want the games I play to grown with me as well...or the MMOG market will lose me and possibly my demographic.
peace
__________________ “Guardians are the unassailable rock upon which the waves of battle break.” ~ King Conan
The biggest impact on MMOG learning curves has been the influx of casual gamers. Those of us who started out in UO and early EQ played those puppies like a job. No one played these games casually or even sensibly (sleep? I don't need no stinkin' sleep!). I've gone back to EQ with friends and watched new breed gamers flounder like a fish out of water when faced with things like old school corpse runs. EQ and UO took time to play and most of us who did play were happy to invest that time.
Now? I'll be honest. I'm all grown up and in my late 20s (okay..early 30s..shut up) and I have 2 jobs and a family. I just don't have time to play as much as I used to. This is the boat that most gamers now find themselves in and while going back to the hardcore game design might seem like a good idea, the audience is going to be limited.
Besides, the new breed gamers have used all their brain cells inventing Chuck Norris jokes so they may not be able to handle things like yelling for the guards when you get shanked at the bank by pick pockets.
one of the things to take into account is also the people who scream "nerf class X!!" and companies who listen. i wish more companies would just put the game there and let it be played AS INTENDED (of course that would require them to actually finish games before they launch them too), instead of having to rework a character because what seemed like it was working really well at one point is changed to something next to useless.
im personally all for more complexities, intricacies, and even difficulties in games. if it isn't challenging i don't find it fun.
the net removes alot of challenge too by having maps with bosses (or even full quest chains) marked on them and cookie cutter builds readily available. hopefully the next year of games will make such things useless by having things so random and open ended that what works for 1 person wont work for everyone.
I came to MMO's late so I started with the easy stuff. Frankly, I would love something a bit more challenging. I would love combat to feel like combat. There's no feeling of survival in the games I've been playing. Exploration should feel like you're exploring something unknown and potentially dangerous. I would love to feel like I can actually make a difference. Killing 10 orcs at such-and-such camp to "quell" the numbers does no such thing when you can watch them respawn in a minute.
That being said, I do have a problem with all of the stories of yesteryear gaming. I simply don't have time for it. If I was still in high school then maybe I could sit in a raid for 6+ hours or camp a monster for the entire day, but I'm not and I don't. I don't know the numbers on subscribers but I would imagine that most mmo'ers at this point are similar to me: busy adults.
It's a tough balance I suppose. I want a game that's challenging but I don't want a game that requires 40hrs/wk to really experience the content. A note to developers: I don't mind a learning curve if the rewards are there. If it's deep, complex, and rewarding then I'll play it. If it's deep, intricate, and boring I won't.
Somebody once described to me going through Eve's tutorial as fun "as sticking a fork up your own butt" , so upon hearing that, I had to of course try it. It took me 3 or 4 days to get through the tutorial (because like how was I supposed to know you can't log out in the middle of space-duh) and even after that I was pretty lost.
So once I got into a corp. with some nice people and did a few thousand missions is when you really started seeing the beautiful ships, the scenery was everywhere and the gae was absolutely wonderful, and I recommend it to anyone who wants something different from their mmo.
What I had missed however was the ability to walk and see other people. Sure you could "bump" their ship. But you were unable to see their avatar unless you clicked on it or had it enabled in chat. It made closeness kind of difficult.
So my point to all of this is even though it has all the diffculty that we all hope for, for me , there are other things I need as well.
Last edited by Fleaspawn; 01-05-2009 at 12:31 PM.
Reason: edited to not look so boxy and completely boreing
Quick note - being able to walk around on stations with an avatar is supposed to be in the works for EVE Online, so don't give up hope, hehe.
I'm in the same boat as the other old timers (and those tired of hearing about us, haha) in that I simply don't have a fraction of the time available to play that I used to back then.
I do like games with a decent challenge though. I'm one of those that doesn't care how long it takes to level up, just as long as I'm having fun along the way. Of course, that would mean at my current playing rate, I would have leveled from 1 to 50 in EQ1 in about 5 years, LOL
So what are the predictions for this years games in terms of the learning curve? Star Wars: TOR, Champion's Online, Star Trek Online (I hope!)?
I think they'll all learn from other lessons and make the intro pretty easy to get into. I'm hoping they still allow for some serious depth. With rumors that all of these will be available on consoles though, I have to admit the depth factor has me a little worried.
I have high hopes for SWTOR. I know everyone keeps going back to SWG as a comparison, but SWG had a magical thing sorta happening there before then NGE..yeah, lots of complaints from the "Wahhh!! I wanna be a Jedi" department, but hey, people were playing. They have a gold mine right there and they only need to tap it.
Up and coming games have an advantage. They've watched the post-WoW games launch and noted (hopefully) how they were received. There can be a balance struck between challenge and user friendliness that not only brings in the masses but also endears the veterans. It is just a matter of finding it.
A lot of what people have been asking for sounds a lot like what Guild Wars offers. Scenarios and missions usually last less than an hour each and while the game is very accessible, it's skill system has a lot of depth. I would love to play a game that was similar to guild wars but set in more of a persistent world, and offered a bit more in the way of endgame content / gear collection.
So uh... anyone wanna quit their job and help me make it?
The Learning Curve
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