Slashdot Log In
"Necessary Complexity" in Online Games
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sat Jan 03, 2009 03:27 AM
from the unnecessary-simplicity dept.
from the unnecessary-simplicity dept.
Massively is running a story about Google's short-lived virtual environment, Lively. The article examines why Lively shut down so quickly, and how its simplicity and its attempts at user-friendliness did more harm than good. Quoting:
"The idea here is that any interactive system has a certain amount of complexity, usually involving the number and type of tasks which can be performed. Obviously, it is detrimental if the interaction interface is more complicated than it needs to be. That just makes things harder. What's a little less obvious is that reducing the complexity of the interaction interface too far makes things harder as well. Either it makes it hard to perform the tasks, or it reduces the number of tasks which can be performed. ... ideally the interaction interface needs to be of an order of complexity that is coupled to the order of complexity of the number and type of possible tasks. If it rises above that or falls below that, performing tasks becomes harder. Performing tasks with an oversimplified interaction-interface is like trying to make coffee with one hand tied behind your back. Overcomplicating it is like trying to instruct five people to build a shed, when none of you have any language in common."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
The hey is Lively? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think one of the problems is I, even as an avid google user and surfer of /. and several many other sites did not even know about "Lively".
If they advertised this on google's main page, just think of the results? Maybe they had, but I never ever once saw an ad.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I just searched 'new lively,' and Google didn't return newlively.com until page 2.
I am not logged onto any Google services currently, and should be pretty much anonymous to their search pages.
It would seem that the advertising problem with this project is only getting worse.
Hold on a second... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think "complexity" and "having shit to do that is worth doing" are necessarily the same thing. Simplicity is good, simplicity is why we write those shell scripts instead of typing them out each and every time, I think the problem with Lively was that it had no point, no goal, it was just...pointless. In something like WoW, you have tasks, quests, missions, whatever you want to call them. You have goals, objectives, you have character development. Yet, it's all quite user friendly, I wouldn't call it a "complex" game at all.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What are the goals and objectives in Second Life then?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
From what I hear it's "getting virtually laid".
Which leads me to "it's not just that goals have to be achiveable, you also have to want to achive them to make the whole thing good"...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Showing off your clever sandbox creations. It's like a frustratingly simplified, slow version of lightwave hybridized with robocode and placed in a 3d chat environment.
I would say it's quite an improvement over robocode, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes and no (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, actually while it's not a "complex" game, it does kind of illustrate their point.
Think this: what if we took WoW and simplified it even _more_. Would it make it more fun, or, past a point, it actually turns it into a boring kiddie game? (At this point some guy who got bored of the endgame raids will want to butt in and say it was a boring game to start with. Bear with me for a bit, I'll get to that too.)
The easiest low-hangin-fruit example is SWG. Sony or the SWG team seem to have had an "OMG, Blizzard is making more money with simplistic games for retards" and proceeded to do the ill advised NGE. That's what the NGE did: over-simplified it. In a major way. Pet classes were gone. The complex and flexible skill system was gone and replaced by a linear level skill that was actually more simplistc than Blizzards (no talents, minimal skills, etc.) The races were simplified into all having the same stats and just different looks. The interface was over-simplified into a bad FPS interface. Etc. The game became a bad FPS with levels and, oh, maybe 10 skills/spells total you'd get by level 80. They actually lost most customers there. While some hung around begging for Sony to undo the stupidity (yeah, right), the number of active players at any given time had sunk like a lead duck. Heck, like a depleted uranium duck.
Or as an anecdote, there's this guy I know which plays a healer wherever he goes. That's the kind of character he likes to play. So he buys AOC at launch, and makes a healer. According to him, the fact that heals were PBAOE and he just needed to mash one button, actually made him cancel his subscription. He didn't even have to target a party member. Just mash the heal button. It got boring really fast.
Or let's get even further. There have been games so simplified that you could have played it with a gamepad. Needless to say, none got too many players, even if they survived.
Think of doing the same to WoW. Heck, I can't even imagine what 4 skills to map on a gamepad's buttons for any hybrid or pet class. If you're, say, a paladin, between healing, seals, auras, etc, you don't even have a button for each _type_ to cycle through them. Shaman? You'd have one button for each element, so no way you'd still have as many totems as today, and that doesn't even leave you with a button for attacking. Warlock or hunter? Lemme see, 1 button for sending in the pet, 1 button to heal the pet, that leaves you with 2 buttons for your spells. You don't even have enough for the "unholy trinity" of Corruption, Curse Of Agony, and Immolate, that warlocks use since the low levels. You don't have enough room as it is, never mind more complex strategies with spells like Fear, drains, or even to make soul shards.
Would it make it better if we simplified it some more like that? Like heck it would. IMHO it would become a major bore.
And to get back to WoW and people bored of endgame raids, what's the #1 complaint? That it gets boring. And it's not just the repetition, but also that each class is pushed into some narrow role where most of its skills become useless. There are classes which can get through a raid with 1-2 spells total, e.g., any healer. It's not very exciting in the long run.
So to get this long rant anywhere near a conclusion: IMHO the secret of WoW isn't just "keep it simple", but that they hit a sweet spot between simplicity and still allowing lots of stuff to do. I.e., pretty much what the summary was saying.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I think Blizz already overstepped the oversimplification barrier with WoW's latest expansion. I get that impression from reading the boards.
Currently, the big craze on the boards I read (yours may vary) is the damage output of the damage dealer classes, and people complaining that they're being reduced to the damage they can possibly dish out. Personally, I see that as a sign that the threshold to "too simple" has been broken. When the only thing that defines "make or break" of an MMO raid is whether you ge
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
That's the new challenge? Every DPS worth their salt has been trying to maintain the perfect rotation since Molten Core. The sole objective of a DPS class is to do the maximum amount of damage possible in a
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not the new challenge. It's the only challenge left. With CC being pointless and aggro management a problem of the past, the only thing that DDs have to take care about anymore is to fire their skills in the right rotation. Something that a halfway decent script could do, and probably better due to millisecond precision.
The reason people wanted Pallies to tank is that they could do the AoE aggro routine everyone enjoys now, thus keeping the DDs from having to stop shooting, thus making the whole thing
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
* If you can shield slam, shield slam
* If you can't shield slam then revenge
* If you cant use revenge then devastate
* If you can't use devastate then thunderclap (move this to pt 2 if you have 2+ mobs on you)
DPS is more complicated if you want to actually min-max it instead of
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not even the class X vs. class Y "ZOMGWTF, nerf X" rants. Right now, there's an insanely huge thread about damagemeter (an addon that lets you see who dishes out how much damage), and that you don't get taken along if you can't deal at least X damage. Independent of class (actually, there is no "nerf class X" request that I'm aware of in the whole 20 page thread). It's all about "you gotta have equipment X", and that you need the drops of instance X to be taken along for instance X.
Now, tell me, how ar
Re: (Score:2)
That's not new, though (Score:3, Insightful)
While I understand what you're saying, it's not a new thing, and is exactly what I meant by the game getting oversimplified at the endgame end. At any rate, the exact complaint and situation existed even way back before the Burning Crusade. In fact, as soon as raid instances got put in the game.
That's just how a tiered endgame grind works. That's what makes it tiered. To get into T2, your DPS/healing-per-sec/mitigation must be this high, and they won't be unless you farmed the T1 set. That's how the devs ma
Re: (Score:2)
Personally, I found the game actually rather interesting pre-BC, but then, I never played DD classes. Healers had to manage mana and spell cast times, you had to actually know when to use a long time heal or when a quick flashheal was in order, all the while considering your aggro and being prepared to detaunt when necessary. Tanking was actually a challenge with an utter lack of area-aggro skills, you had to know just how much you have to spit at each mob to keep them from turning their eye on the healer.
T
Mapping twelve actions on a D-pad (Score:2)
I can't even imagine what 4 skills to map on a gamepad's buttons for any hybrid or pet class.
With a typical console controller (Xbox 360, Wii Classic, or Dual Shock series), you get a directional pad, left and right analog sticks, four face buttons, and four shoulder buttons. This allows up to twelve actions out of the box (face + shoulder + D-pad), plus camera control on the right stick if needed. This is something you have to think about even on the PC if you want to be able to sell premium subscriptions that allow split screen.
That's not my point, though (Score:2)
1. Actually, I'm not even going to argue with you there, because we're making completely different points.
You're saying that a game could be made for a gamepad. Well, probably.
Mine is merely to illustrate an (over-the-top) over-simplification and its effects it would have on a game. So my contrived example uses a gamepad with only 4 buttons for the skills and, let's say, the shoulder buttons to cycle through enemies and respectively friendlies (e.g., if you need to heal them.) Can you make WoW as fun on tha
Re: (Score:2)
I've played both console MMORPG's, FFXI and EQOA, they handle the control issues slightly differently.
EQOA uses the circle button for skills and spells. Circle always casts the active skill on the active target. The active skills are stored in 2 skill bars holding 5 skills each which are controlled with the d-pad. IIRC you cycle between targets with one of the shoulder buttons. Pet control is handled via the quick chat interface. EQOA could use another skill bar since, as a Cleric, I found myself cyclin
Re: (Score:2)
You could simplify WoW down to a joystick and two buttons.
Warrior needs food, badly.
Elf has been eating all the food lately!
-
PlayStation Home (Score:3, Insightful)
Lively was an excellent example... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of a very well built piece of software (after they fixed the lack of caching) that did nothing new or interesting, aside from let some University Conveners try and impress the female students in their subject.
It looked to me like someone at Google wanted to create a 3D graphically-enhanced version of IRC, isn't that what IMVU [imvu.com] already did?
I mean jeez, WoW players were doing that (in addition to maintaining their virginity) WAY back...
Article is Not Well Thought-Out (Score:3, Interesting)
The argument's flawed. Lively had a simple interface and it failed, so let's blame it on the simple interface!
Given _a_ program, there is a direct relationship between the simplicity of the interface and quality. In the set of all programs that allows for the same set of interactions, the program with the simplest interface wins.
The problem with Lively is that its set of interactions was not large enough. Its problem was not the interface that delivers these interactions. It's like saying the monitor isn't working when your program doesn't compile.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that you reach a point where you can't simplify the interface without reducing the set of interactions.
If you have a graphics editing program that can save in more than one format, the interface needs to include a way of choosing. A car with an auto box has a simpler interface (one less pedal), but reduced functionality (can't heel and toe).
Re:Interface vs actions (Score:2)
You can have the same interactions. But the interface command sequence grows longer.
A chess clock I know has one button you press seventeen times in something resembling morse code to set every feature it has, but it has a lot of features!
Spore suffers from the same problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
...in that it's been reduced to such a simple game that there's nothing to do. It's a simulation game without any simulation.
Any game that touts a "simulation" of an entire galaxy that doesn't even let carnivores and herbivores interact on planet surfaces has gotten nearly everything wrong.
Maxis's previous game SimLife had more complex systems interacting than Spore does. And Sim Life came out in 1993.
The most interesting games, to me, are the ones that have multiple systems that interact with each other with simple, but easily combine-able mechanics. Simcity's a good example... traffic effects land value which effects what goes on the land which effects your tax revenue, and so on. Those kinds of games offer tons of replayibility, because you're constantly changing systems that affect other systems.
Anyways, just my two cents. Spore might be popular, but it was my biggest gaming disappointment in half a decade.
Hrm, didn't Tobold just say something similar? (Score:2)
http://tobolds.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
Tobold: January 02, 10:40am
Massively: January 02, 3:00pm
Ancient Gaming Noob's 2009 prediction of the Tobold Cult are on target!
Which is why... (Score:2)
What's a little less obvious is that reducing the complexity of the interaction interface too far makes things harder as well. Either it makes it hard to perform the tasks, or it reduces the number of tasks which can be performed. ... ideally the interaction interface needs to be of an order of complexity that is coupled to the order of complexity of the number and type of possible tasks.
Which is why some of us don't buy the marketing notion that a GUI makes a computer easy to use.
Maybe if you only actually use it to do a few simple things, but if you want to harness the full power of a computer you need a command line... or a program language.
1997 Called, It Wants Its Software Back (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe if it had features (i.e. stuff you can do) it would have gone somewhere. Blaming its failure on a lack of complexity is like blaming a box of tissues for failing as a refrigerator because it only has one little slot to put things in. What it called an open beta, I'd call a pre-alpha tech demo. There was simply nothing there.
Oh, and it was about as user-friendly as the power button on the dome-shaped iMacs (a white button with a white icon on it, perfectly flush with the white surface of the unit, on the back of the unit... without a user manual -- I was at a friend's -- it literally took me hours to find).
They took the fun out of it. That's all. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why games of any kind fun is because fundamentally humans enjoy learning. If you remove the complexity from a game or quasi-game in terms of the interface, tasks and challenges presented you a simple removing things that are enjoyable.
In the case of complexity alone, you are removing depth. But from what I found with lively it was so stripped bare it had NOTHING.
I'm all for making things accessible to people who are not so quick to figure things out, or perhaps just have a low tolerance for wasting time fighting a confusing interface. Dumbing down is what you do in lieu of designing the interface properly in the first place and in this case Lively was just plain Dumb(tm) right off the bat. Lets making a carefull distinction here: dumbing down implies there was once a smart idea at all.
Come on Google, do something like lively, with interesting physics sandbox and it's google earth and twitter and gtalk all mashed up and linked to my GPS and webcam so my avatar can walk around the world in real time as I do. I'll send you my job application.
Re:Um (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Assuming that wasn't just a joke: Lugaru fails because you've got 1 context sensitive attack button and it's like trying to play Assassin's Creed with your feet, ArmA fails because they've got 8 different types of unexplained movement and more control bindings than mechwarrior games and it's just straight up fucking nuts.
Re:Been there, done that (Score:5, Insightful)
The KDE4 guys too, please...
Also, kindly remind them that "different" isn't always "better", or "more intuitive", or "revolutionary". Sometimes it's just annoyingly unfamiliar, for no good reason.
Parent
Re:Been there, done that (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Revolutionary for no reason (Score:2)
See Microsoft's work in this area in 2007.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Better yet, online games need to stop being total grind fests. Why haven't more MMO's done that yet?
Simple. Because it's insanely hard to create enough actual content to keep up with players' demands.
Take a look at a typical first-person shooter. It has an considerable amount of content, but because the gameplay is designed to whisk the player through the environment once (maybe twice in parts), and fairly quickly at that, you end up at 6 to 14 hours as a pretty typical game length. Even then, you're still going to run into a lot of "repeater" content, such as the same types of enemies, similar looking
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
There's just no practical way to give players enough original content to satiate their demands, and hold their interest for long periods of time. So, advancement through the game is deliberately slowed.
They should hire Chinese gold farmers to play NPCs.
Re: (Score:2)
Fifteen dolla. Me love you long time. Me so horny. [youtube.com]
-
Re: (Score:2)
There are games out there where the gameplay mechanics alone can provide countless hours of replayability. Super Mario Kart, Starcraft, Command & Conquer, Guitar Hero, Sim City, etc. all offer this. It's trickier on the MMO end of things, but mid-scale online multiplayer games have done it in the past with large-scale mission-based
Re: (Score:2)
The third possible solution is to use emergent behavior AI to build a gameworld that practically runs itself. Goblins are getting hungry, so they start raiding the nearby town. Nearby town gets defensive, and starts adding quests to kill goblins. Goblins eventually either die out or move on. NPC wizard walking through his enchanted wood randomly finds an artifact that drives him mad, and he starts raising skeletal minions and so forth to protect his tower. The abomination needs to be wiped out, so the Natur
Re: (Score:2)
Which is why emergent behavior and AI needs to take a huge leap forward to make MMOs really fun. I'm actually working on building a virtual ecology using genetic algorithms to generate AI decision trees at the moment. First it's just getting mobs to find food and eat it. Then it's adding in an aggressive mob that will eat the first set of mobs if it can find them. After that, it's simply adding in a mating pr
Re:Tabula Rasa (Score:2)
..is free until the end of February. It's a great game.
Re: (Score:2)
Pick one.
I haven't really played much in the 'good free' category, personally...
Re: (Score:2)
I have been playing the same mud since 1992, it is still around and still free.
There are a dozen or so zones I have never even explored in addition to the several dozen I have.
I won't spam the address here, but if you are willing to take the time to script a mud client with aliases and triggers to eliminate the hours of mad-dash typing that classic mudding required, you could end up with a new addictive time-sink.
Re:Windows getting harder (Score:2)
Paul Thurrott just did a rant on this.
Re:Google Chrome (Score:2)
Why can't there be multiple front ends to the same back end set of features? The "dumbed down" thing will serve a business purpose. It's now really the era of "simple interface - advanced interface".