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Games Entertainment

Setting a Learning Curve In MMOs 156

Posted by Soulskill from the approach-rat-kill-rat-loot-rat dept.
Ten Ton Hammer has an article looking at the learning curves of modern MMOs. Many of the more popular games, such as World of Warcraft, go to great lengths to make learning the game easy for new players. Others, such as EVE Online, have had success with a less forgiving introduction. But to what extent do the most fundamental game mechanics limit the more complex end-game play? "The current trend in MMOG's appears to be make the game so easy and interest-grabbing right out of the gate that even a person with the attention span of a monkey chewing on a flyswatter will be able to keep up and get into the swing of things. Depth of game mechanics is still possible with a system like this, but it needs to be introduced not only clearly, but later in the game, after a player has played enough to be hooked and is willing to put in some extra time to learn about the more intricate game mechanics available to them."
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Setting a Learning Curve In MMOs More

Setting a Learning Curve In MMOs

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  • Link to results of a similar study (Score:5, Informative)

    by FinchWorld ( 845331 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2009 @05:12AM (#26340537) Homepage
    Here you go [winterblink.com]

  • Eve Learning Curve (Score:5, Funny)

    by adavies42 ( 746183 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2009 @05:12AM (#26340541)
    famous eve learning curve graph [flickr.com]

  • I tried Eve... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by abigsmurf ( 919188 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2009 @05:25AM (#26340607)

    And didn't make it past the tutorial. It was long, boring and suffered from information overload. Couldn't be bothered with it all really. Also not a big fan of games that are 'ruled' by super guilds.

    I think the problem isn't so much the learning curve as giving players the motivation and chance to learn. Take WoW, you're eased into skills, the early instances don't require you to be especially knowledgable of what spec you should be for your role (as at that stage there's little variation in talents and equiptment). These instances even teach you the basics about how to group (not to N on stuff you can't use or gems, how to avoid wipes etc.) FFXI lets you solo for about 8 levels before it gets into the forced grouping, there's a relatively early quest that forces you to tour the major cities.

    There's nothing wrong with having complex MMOs but you've got to ease them into the various aspects of it one stage at a time. Even simple play mechanics can suffer if everything is forced on you at once. To use WoW again as an example, one of the critisisms of the new Death Knight class is that as you're given one at lv.55, you haven't been levelling with the class but have a huge number of abilities and loads of talent points. As people haven't learnt the class in that way, it can be surprisingly difficult to play it properly and people may not realise they've bad specs or itemisation until it's pointed out to them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by node159 ( 636992 )
      And I'd hardly call Eve a major success... I'd agree, the Eve intro was horrible and put me off, another customer lost.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Sobrique ( 543255 )
        In all fairness though, that tutorial is a good introduction to the game - if you don't get along with it, you won't enjoy EVE.

        • In all fairness though, that tutorial is a good introduction to the game - if you don't get along with it, you won't enjoy EVE.

          The problem with the tutorial is that it introduces you superficially (there can be no other way, actually) to all the games that are Eve. You sign up to be a combat pilot and the tutorial still teaches you about manufacturing and mining and trade and legume farming and whatever the hell else you can do in Eve (and there is *a lot* you can do). And because the tutorial touches on

          • Indeed. I would probably give Eve another go if a few things were done:

            An overhaul of the beginning of the game. A specific quest line for each major aspect of the game (basic flight, combat, mining, trading, crafting, etc), able to be completed independently (after flight of course) such that a combat player could ignore mining and trading.

            Add a customizable interface. The default interface is cluttered and ugly. I play WoW. I would probably not continue playing WoW if not for the custom interface add

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Shinobi ( 19308 )

              Quest lines? this is not WoW.

              WoW's UI? You mean that shit which reduces the need for player skill by automating so many things that you may just as well use a bot?

              Flight IS fun. It's not Star Wars. It's not Freelancer. If you want to play those games, go play those games. EVE focuses on a larger scale. Hell, we wish we could get rid of all the dopeheads who've gotten delusions of being Luke Skywalker from the game.

              As for skillpoints. Specialize. And, it's not WoW. A fairly new player who's learned the game

          • I have to chime in and recommend EVE University [eve-ivy.com] as the first corp to join once you've done your tutorial, had a quick putter around and are ready to really learn how to play the game. I have no affiliation with the corp, but know more than a few people The corp is 100% player run by experienced players who teach everything from PVP skills, ship fittings, industry, mining, missions, working as a team, etc. Their core purpose is to help noobs get in and up to speed, and will give you a huge leg up. I now fly

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by WCMI92 ( 592436 )

        "And I'd hardly call Eve a major success... I'd agree, the Eve intro was horrible and put me off, another customer lost."

        EVE is a major success. It's currently behind only WOW in the US/EU amongst full subscription MMORPGs. That is a distant second, but look at all the WOW clones the market's ONLY skills based non level based, non static class MMO is ahead of!

        EVE has in excess of 300,000 subscribers and this past weekend set a new concurrent player record of 45,000. That is even more amazing when you rea

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Endo13 ( 1000782 )

          Wrong. With any metric you go by, FFXI is well ahead of Eve. LOTRO and WAR also both have around the same or more subscribers as Eve. Given how many slices the high fantasy MMORPG pie is split into, it's amazing that there's so many doing so well compared to Eve.

    • Re:I tried Eve... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Loki_1929 ( 550940 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2009 @05:50AM (#26340715) Journal

      Something you wouldn't understand without having played it for a long time is that Eve actually does ease you into it.

      It has so much depth that if it eased you in at the kind of rate you're looking for, you'd still be learning basic mechanics when you've been playing for 2 years. It's a very unforgiving world in which you can experience loss like in no other game I've ever played, right down to the skills you've spent so much (real life) time training. It's a game where success or failure can depend on how quickly you can adapt to a radically changing environment with a vast array of competing counter-measures and strategies. Gaining a deep understanding of how everything stacks together and how to counter all kinds of various tactics and tools on the fly requires that you learn at an incredible rate constantly. And just when you think you're getting the hang of it, a new expansion comes out (at the rate of two per year) that vastly changes the balance of things such that new tactics and ideas emerge.

      Really, if you don't make it through the tutorial, Eve probably isn't the game for you. That's fine, as no game should try to be perfect for everyone as it will end up being poor for anyone. Eve is really for those who want to be constantly challenged in new and different ways by intelligent adversaries using skills and tools that work together in extremely complex ways. It has within it the ability to play as openly as any life simulator, but with far more danger than anything else I've seen before it.

      If the challenge of the tutorial turns you off, then the game itself will almost certainly turn you off as well. In that sense, I think the tutorial does a great job of both educating those who truly are interested in Eve's world view and in pushing away those who ultimately won't enjoy themselves anyway.

      • Re:I tried Eve... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ZombieWomble ( 893157 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2009 @06:12AM (#26340813)
        The problem I observed with the EVE tutorial is not that there's too much information, but rather that it's presented extremely poorly and that the tutorial is not particularly engaging.

        In particular, your second and third paragraph is typical of the response given by people when asked why they play EVE - the problem is, all of this interesting and exciting content doesn't seem to be represented at all in the tutorial.

        Instead the tutorial seems to mostly just cover simple game mechanics (and often in a very poor way - does the game direct you about how to actually get back to the newbie zone if you leave it yet? That seemed to be the most mystifying thing to most people when I checked EVE out) and then dumps you with vast amounts of text-based information describing all the systems that weren't actually addressed in the tutorial.

        While you may argue that this is good because it weeds out the weak people, it has the issue that a player checking it out for the trial will probably completely fail to notice all this wonderful complexity as it can look like just poor implementation unless there's someone supplementing the tutorial and encouraging you to persevere - which seems to be almost the definition of a poorly designed new user experience.

        • The interface as a whole doesn't lend itself to being intuitive so much as it lends itself to being highly available for quick access to an enormous amount of stuff on a moment's notice (particularly useful when you're under siege by a half dozen people and you're trying to wiggle your way out of it). The tutorial is really there as an introduction to the basic mechanics simply because there's no other way to learn them. While people in the "newbie" chat are extremely helpful for specific questions, asking

          • I didn't mean to suggest that a tutorial covering basic mechanics was unnecessary - on the contrary, it's quite essential given EVE has a fairly unique interface method. The issue I was pointing out was that most of these interesting mechanics are almost completely obscured - as you say, you need to check out writeups and the like to get a feel for what there actually is to do in the game.

            To clarify the newbie zone issue I mentioned (I did a bit of research to jog my memory, it's the "Deadspace training co

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jo_ham ( 604554 )

            The one thing they really do need to change about the tutorial is the invention step - when you have to make a character named "Villiard Wheels" that you can link to in rookie chat, whose bio page has a step by step instruction list to be able to do that part of the tutorial, then it's too advanced at that stage of the game.

            While you can get use to it pretty quickly, the invention/research/manufacturing system can be a little daunting at first, especially if you've only been playing for an hour or so and al

          • The interface makes sense in general, but some of it could use fine tuning to reduce the occasions where you are stuck without a hint. For instance, when doing remote research with POSes there are some non-obvious restrictions on where the materials are stored (BPOs may stay on a remote station, additional materials like data sheets must be brought to the POS lab). Those situations could use a bit more in the way of helpful messages why something does not work.

            About the "newbie zones", there are a few syste

      • Re:I tried Eve... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Endo13 ( 1000782 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2009 @11:43AM (#26343161)

        Something you wouldn't understand without having played it for a long time is that Eve actually does ease you into it.

        So basically, you have to have played it for a long time to really understand the tutorial? Yeah, I know that's not what you meant, but it's still effectively what you're saying. Either way, the tutorial sucks. Period.

        It has so much depth that if it eased you in at the kind of rate you're looking for, you'd still be learning basic mechanics when you've been playing for 2 years. It's a very unforgiving world in which you can experience loss like in no other game I've ever played, right down to the skills you've spent so much (real life) time training. It's a game where success or failure can depend on how quickly you can adapt to a radically changing environment with a vast array of competing counter-measures and strategies. Gaining a deep understanding of how everything stacks together and how to counter all kinds of various tactics and tools on the fly requires that you learn at an incredible rate constantly. And just when you think you're getting the hang of it, a new expansion comes out (at the rate of two per year) that vastly changes the balance of things such that new tactics and ideas emerge.

        Not really "depth". Mostly just complexity and change for the sake of complexity and change. Which is great, for the small niche group of people that really get off on that kind of thing.

        Really, if you don't make it through the tutorial, Eve probably isn't the game for you.

        No doubt. But then, that means Eve just isn't for very many people, which means their ROI for the game is a lot less than it could have been. Which is basically the whole point of TFA. Sucks for them, but it doesn't really matter to me one way or another. There's plenty of other better MMOs to play.

        That's fine, as no game should try to be perfect for everyone as it will end up being poor for anyone. Eve is really for those who want to be constantly challenged in new and different ways by intelligent adversaries using skills and tools that work together in extremely complex ways. It has within it the ability to play as openly as any life simulator, but with far more danger than anything else I've seen before it.

        You're right, there's definitely not going to be a game that's going to be perfect for everyone, but it's definitely possible to make a game that's a lot more fun and appealing to a lot more people than Eve is. (There's about 11.5 million WoW players right now who could give you some insight on that.) And it's also possible to change the first stages of *any* game to make it a lot more fun and appealing to newcomers, enticing them to stay on and thereby increasing your playerbase without changing a damn thing in the last stages of the game. Eve just fails at it, that's all.

        If the challenge of the tutorial turns you off, then the game itself will almost certainly turn you off as well. In that sense, I think the tutorial does a great job of both educating those who truly are interested in Eve's world view and in pushing away those who ultimately won't enjoy themselves anyway.

        Not necessarily. Or are you trying to say the rest of the game sucks as badly as the tutorial? Because it's very possible for a tutorial to be very shitty and the game to be a lot more appealing later. For a great example, see City of Heroes/Villains. The game is interesting for about 5 minutes, and quickly becomes very frustrating - until you start getting your better powers and enhancements at about level 20 or so. Then it starts to get fun. LOTS of fun. But not many players stick around that long, because the first 10-15 levels are mostly a lesson in frustration. I'd *HOPE* Eve's failure is mostly the same, only magnified. Because quite honestly, of games I've tried that enjoyed any kind of real popularity, the Eve tutorial was easily the worst 15 minutes I've spent.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by pilot1 ( 610480 ) *

          Because it's very possible for a tutorial to be very shitty and the game to be a lot more appealing later. For a great example, see City of Heroes/Villains. The game is interesting for about 5 minutes, and quickly becomes very frustrating - until you start getting your better powers and enhancements at about level 20 or so. Then it starts to get fun. LOTS of fun. But not many players stick around that long, because the first 10-15 levels are mostly a lesson in frustration. I'd *HOPE* Eve's failure is mostly the same, only magnified. Because quite honestly, of games I've tried that enjoyed any kind of real popularity, the Eve tutorial was easily the worst 15 minutes I've spent.

          This. Eve's tutorial is bad. It seems to be meant to jam a lot of information down your throat, most of which is not particularly useful for a new player. I'm constantly amazed that Eve has the number of players that it has, because I don't understand how they get past the tutorial and first few weeks.

          That said, it's an incredibly fun and rewarding game once you get to the point where you can actually play. By playing, I mean PVP. Missions, mining, and ratting (killing NPC pirates) are only there to grind f

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by brkello ( 642429 )
        I really don't get this. Eve isn't any more complex than WoW. It just has an extremely poor user interface that takes a long tutorial to explain. Yeah, there is more potential loss. But when it comes down to it, you hit F1, F2, F3, F4, F5, F6. Combat is extremely simplistic. PvE barely exists.

        People like to think Eve takes a degree to understand and they pat themselves on the back for being able to play it. It just takes a little more reading and is a lot less fun than other MMOs. I have gone back

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Walkingshark ( 711886 )

          I find myself in the same boat. I want to like EVE, but for me the endless amounts of travel time to do anything in the game is a huge turnoff. Its the same reason I stopped playing Counter strike as well... too much time spent waiting to play, not enough time actually actively doing something (other than clicking "ok now warp me to the next waypoint so I can watch my ship slowly glide into the warp gate and do all this again 7 more times). And I know there are some kind of waypoint files you can get from p

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by brkello ( 642429 )
        You guys give yourselves way too much credit. Basic mechanics after 2 years? Give me a break. The game isn't all that deep. You read the forums to learn how to fit your ship, you run boring PvE mission to get more ISK to get bigger ships and run higher level boring PvE missions. PvP is mostly shooting up people who make a wrong turn or running around in vastly superior numbers. Expansions offer very very little new content. They might change that people can't abuse nano's anymore, but that is hardly
    • One has to point out to those criticizing the DK class, however, that they don't actually get their abilities and talent points without several hours of death knight-centric game play. It's no substitute for hundreds of hours of play time, but it's not a bad compromise for all that.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by fitten ( 521191 )

      The biggest thing about Eve that people I've talked to don't like is that they can't 'fly their ship'. Eve is not a space flight simulator.

      The biggest thing about Eve that no other game has is that the vast majority of the 'game' is player generated content, in effect. Nobody talks about how fun it was last night to grind that Guristas Extravaganza mission for the 1000th time. What they talk about is the 500 vs. 500 fleet battle in some system that resulted in 20 lost capital ships for one side or the ot

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Endo13 ( 1000782 )

        What they talk about is the 500 vs. 500 fleet battle in some system that resulted in 20 lost capital ships for one side or the other and the winners took sovereignity of the system when the smoke cleared.

        And the main reason they talk about it after it happens is because it happens so rarely, and 98% of their time is spent grinding materials to make those ships. AMIRITE?

      • The biggest thing about Eve that people I've talked to don't like is that they can't 'fly their ship'. Eve is not a space flight simulator.

        I'll admit that this was a major letdown for me. I'm a private pilot IRL so I get my flying fix there, but you just can't play Luke Skywalker too well (or safely) in a Cessna. I really want(ed) a combat MMO where I can jump into my ship, go out and do the things that you can do in EVE, but I want to be able to take the stick and fly the thing. Kinda like the old Privateer game series. Heck the EVE designers have said before that they were inspired by the old game Elite, which I also played way back when

      • The only thing really requiring a player to log in is if you make money in the game by running missions. If you have an industrialist, you can make money while not logged in (buy materials and sell your player-made goods on the market while you're offline). You also advance your character even when not logged in.

        So it's a kind of predecessor to ProgressQuest ?-)

      • So complex a spreadsheet can do it!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Sj0 ( 472011 )

      It takes all kinds, I guess.

      I haven't played Eve, but WoW does NOT represent a good learning curve, at least for me. I played for a few day-long sessions (enough to finish any single-player game on the market, experience shows), and I found myself playing an incredibly boring game where I fought easy enemies until I became strong enough to move to the next area to fight new easy enemies ad infinitum.

      I'm told that the game gets interesting when you max out your character. What sort of boring, lifeless person

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Reapy ( 688651 )

        Not every game is for everyone. If you don't like the early levels of wow, but think the gameplay in general is for you, try another class. If you still don't like it, stop playing! I enjoy wow for the game mechanics of killing things as my class. I find it fun to auto attack things, watching damage numbers scroll by, while hitting abilities to do more damage. I enjoy when it gets out of hand and you end up fighgint 2 or 3 guys and living through it. That's fun and relaxing for me. So I play a bunch.

        If you

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Sj0 ( 472011 )

          Wait...I'm not sure if your post is satire or not...

          Anyway, I'm not an idiot. Of course I stopped playing. 200/yr or so to keep up with the expansions and pay the monthly fee is enough to pay the taxes&fees on a trip abroad. Given the choice between having money to do something I want to do, and spending money to do something that feels like work, I'd have to be an obsessive compulsive to keep doing it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Endo13 ( 1000782 )

      Well said, and all true.

      I also tried Eve and didn't get past the tutorial. The first big turnoff was finding out that I didn't actually have a character, only a ship. Sorry, space-based games have never really been a favorite of mine, and to play a game as a "ship" just wasn't very appealing. But that aside, it also didn't take me long to realize that I would be spending a LOT of time by myself, and that when I did run into other players, most likely the first thing that would happen is I would get stopped

      • First off, they're actually adding the ability to get out and walk around in stations. It's a new component to the game and it's not out yet, but there are videos of doing it. It's supposed to add an additional element to the game, but personally I'm all about the spaceships anyhow - to me, character profile pictures are just a way to recognize my corpmates at a glance.

        Second, if you think EVE is a lonely game, you're doing it wrong. If you've been in the game for whole months without joining a corporation,

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Endo13 ( 1000782 )

          First off, they're actually adding the ability to get out and walk around in stations. It's a new component to the game and it's not out yet, but there are videos of doing it. It's supposed to add an additional element to the game, but personally I'm all about the spaceships anyhow - to me, character profile pictures are just a way to recognize my corpmates at a glance.

          Good for them. Too little, waaaay too late.

          Second, if you think EVE is a lonely game, you're doing it wrong. If you've been in the game for whole months without joining a corporation, well... jeez, even the tutorial stresses how important corps are in EVE. Whether for help with getting on top of the game, support in small-scale PvP, getting into the real military actions that make EVE so much fun (from my perspective), of just social interaction... corps are where it's at, man. There are plenty that will recruit you right after you finish your trial, and some even before that.

          When I play an MMOG, I like it to be at least *somewhat* social right from the start. That means, when I first log in on my first character I like to see at least one or two other people running around preferably right away, but definitely within the first hour or two. So tell me, how likely is that to be the case in Eve by now?

          It also helps to have an experienced player, preferably one already in a corp, help you get started. Not only will you save time and earn more money, but you'll have somebody to vouch for you with regards to corporate admission.

          Right. So basically, in the end what it boils down to is if you *really* want to join the game and have fun now, you have to know someone a

          • Keep trying... (Score:2, Informative)

            by StErroneous ( 1447093 )

            Good for them. Too little, waaaay too late.

            EVE's population graph has been growing strongly since launch, and still is.

            When I play an MMOG, I like it to be at least *somewhat* social right from the start. That means, when I first log in on my first character I like to see at least one or two other people running around preferably right away, but definitely within the first hour or two. So tell me, how likely is that to be the case in Eve by now?

            Look at the window called Local and say "hi" - you'll be talking to everyone in your current starter solar system. If they ask for help, meet them outside station in their noobship, join their fleet and warp into the mission with them.

            When I pass through the starter systems (generally to pick up skill books) there'll be anything from five to thirty players in there, many are new pilots. Not only is EVE's population growing steadily,

    • Not a MMO, but I really enjoy the Half-Life games because Valve teaches you the various things to do while playing the game. Their philosophy is geared towards teaching players and rewarding them accordingly. I plugged in Twilight Princess for the Wii and found it frustrating that from the outset, I had no idea what all my buttons did.

  • I'm sick of small curves (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PhrostyMcByte ( 589271 ) <phrosty@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 06, 2009 @05:26AM (#26340617) Homepage

    I'm getting quite sick of games with small learning curves - the ones who's mechanics you can master in less than a month without any special instruction. The ones that become a game of who went deeper into the dungeon for the better armor, who buys the more expensive weapon, who can snap-aim better (which takes skill, but is not a particularly interesting one). Give me something rewarding, where I can be playing a year or two later and still improving my skill. Items are cool, but after a while they don't cut it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by node159 ( 636992 )

      You know I think I found THE game for you!

      Its called 'The Big Blue Room', also known as IRL.

      The graphics are absolutely amazing, its completely open ended yet has a finishing goal, amazing how they got that to work.

      Its a total challenge, especially when your trying to mix gear upgrades with achievements.

      You should try it some time, you might be pleasantly surprised.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by wisty ( 1335733 )

        I tried it, but my avatar rolled too many 1s, and they won't give me another :(

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by node159 ( 636992 )

        "(Score:-1, Troll)"

        Ohh come on! Get a funny bone, or maybe go outside of your parents basement for a change :P

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Don853 ( 978535 )
        Wait, what's the finishing goal? Die with the biggest pile? Die with the most STDs? Spawn the most children? Technological singularity? Completing some religious storyline?
    • Ever tried Nethack?

    • Re:I'm sick of small curves (Score:5, Insightful)

      by wisty ( 1335733 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2009 @06:27AM (#26340865)

      Learning to code? Learning a musical instrument? Martial arts? Latin dancing? Anything with a 2 year learning code is a hobby (or a job), not a game.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pjt33 ( 739471 )

        All of your examples will take an average person at least two years to learn to do well, and there'll still be plenty to learn after that.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by AdamWeeden ( 678591 )
        BINGO. A great example of this (for me) is Guitar Hero. I started playing last year and had fun on Easy and Medium. When I got to Hard it was such a steep jump for me that I would get booed off on a song 20% of the way through that I could play nearly perfectly or perfectly on Medium. So I was left with a choice. Do I spend my time trying to get better or do I invest my time more wisely? I chose the latter and decided to take up real guitar. This is not to say that games aren't fun and spending time p

    • Re:I'm sick of small curves (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sir Lollerskates ( 1446145 ) on Tuesday January 06, 2009 @08:10AM (#26341373)

      I think you're doing it wrong, and here's why. In the interest of full disclosure, I play WoW, Counter-Strike, and QuakeWorld. Also, I can't understand EVE (but I tried).

      I'm getting quite sick of games with small learning curves - the ones who's mechanics you can master in less than a month without any special instruction.

      Depending on your definition of "mechanics", mastering them should be quite easy in less than a month. For example, one can learn the mechanics of Chess, in a day or so. The rules aren't particularly complicated, but to reach any level of interesting play, it can take years.

      My point is that the mechanics *should* be simple. When they're complex, you end up with EVE; and I think there's a general consensus that EVE is impossible for outsiders to comprehend enough to appreciate, let alone play for themselves. I've tried playing it, and my experience is that the game is completely inaccessible to those with anything but a dedicated interest in playing EVE. My guess would be that most EVE players are probably close friends with other EVE players, or they would never have been able to overcome the learning curve (or lack thereof) in the first place.

      If you have a chance to watch the Portal "Director's Commentary", they explain precisely how the learning curve was developed for that game, and the rationale behind it based on feedback testing.

      The ones that become a game of who went deeper into the dungeon for the better armor, who buys the more expensive weapon, who can snap-aim better (which takes skill, but is not a particularly interesting one).

      But not true. At the highest levels of play, all people are geared similarly with armor and weapons, and they can all aim. It's already assumed at being at a high level of play. Competitive WoW players already have their full sets. Competitive Quake players have insanely good aim. That's why, when you reach that level of play, you no longer have to worry about armor or aim. It's built-in. Check out the discussions going on over at the Elitist Jerks [elitistjerks.com] forums for WoW. Or go watch some QuakeWorld videos [qwdrama.com]. Or if you have the patience to setup nQuake, go download it and watch some QuakeWorld demos [challenge-tv.com] .. or Quake3 for that matter.

      Sure, you might find cases where the winner is decided by having a super rare WoW-drop, or where someone's lightning gun or rail gun is what wins the match based on exceptionally good aim. But for the most part, it becomes a game of strategy.

      MMO's are very big into number-crunching, like the kind you'll find at Elitist Jerks. FPS's are very big into demo watching and strategy. Keep in mind, however, that it's only at very high levels of play that you'll see this.

      The good games, in my opinion, are easy enough for anyone to pick up, but complex enough that only the most dedicated can reach the highest levels of play. WoW does this very well. Quake is too inaccessible, and suffers from a lack of players (even bad ones) as a consequence. Counter-strike has a different problem, where the game isn't very good at high levels of play, but it is very accessible. The FPS is difficult to get right in a way that doesn't alienate newbies or pros. EVE is an enigma in the sense that it even survives at all. (Someone feel free to explain this to me.)

      Give me something rewarding, where I can be playing a year or two later and still improving my skill. Items are cool, but after a while they don't cut it.

      And that's why there's a casual gaming market. You're asking that a game neither be too hard that you can't pick it up nor too easy that it doesn't feel rewarding. You should pick a game that has both a large enough following that skill makes a difference at the end-game stages, while it is accessib

      • EVE survives for the same reason Ultima Online initially thrived; completly unrestricted player-player interaction. One can cooperate,incorporate,etc... but also murder,loot, grief, etc to his or her heart's content, something most "pubbie-friendly" games today shy away from (in order to entice the casual gamers)

        • UO didn't initially thrive because of the unrestricted player-player interaction. It intially survived because it was the only game out there that most people had heard of.

          The reasons you state are the reasons it died. People went to play EQ, which had a lot longer character growth curve, required grouping for most stuff, and was basically devoid of PvP.

          Sorry, but a game where you can max a toon out in 3 days won't survive for long. Add in rampant botting, and it was doomed to fail.

          • Sorry, but a game where you can max a toon out in 3 days won't survive for long. Add in rampant botting, and it was doomed to fail.

            Yes, of course, this would be why UO is still alive now! Don't believe it? Check it out for yourself at UO.com [uo.com] and stop spouting rubbish.

            UO did allow a characters skills be to maxed out in a relatively quick time compared to other games - but I can tell you right now that a freshly maxed out player pitted against a character who has been maxed out for a few months was a non contest. UO was one of the rare games that relied almost totally on player skill when it came to combat rather than game mechanics

      • If you want me to kick your ass in Quake to prove the point, I can... provided you can get it installed, configure the game properly, and figure out how to join a server. Then after I beat you flawlessly, I can invite someone else to beat me flawlessly, and you'll be left with an appreciation of how wide the skill range can be.

        Funny you should mention that, because I run a Custom-TF server [phoenixlabs.org] - come drop by sometime. I didn't say these games don't exist, just that there aren't enough of them. Being a fellow

  • But to what extent do the most fundamental game mechanics limit the more complex end-game play?

    None. Follow me here. They're correlating complexity with difficulty and the 2 often do seem to go together, but what complexity really goes with is time it takes to learn. If complexity is broken up into its smallest pieces, the difficulty only comes with unclear presentation, presenting too many pieces at once, or presentation when there is no motivation to learn.

    I'm in the education profession and I used to be addicted to MMOs, including a lot of WoW (but luckily got out just before WotlK). Learning

    • The point about breaking things down that you make is valid, but I think you've picked a bad example in your last paragraph - explaining algebra via geometry is not teaching by breaking things down, but teaching by analogy - which is sometimes a good idea, sometimes not.

      The reason is that everybody's brains are wired differently, so what's intuitive to one person is merely confusing to another.

      I was taught algebra the 'old way', purely as a way of manipulating symbols, and you know what - it works great as

      • First of all, let me say I was taught in the same traditional method as you were. And I believe you and I have extremely clear ways of thinking. And that we, as we are now, can or may reach our highest mental ability possible. What childhood developmental psychologists study, is what is the most effective way to get there. In other words, the means, and not the ends.

        However, it is not an analogy. I also probably would have thought it was an analogy a few years ago, if you asked me. But arithmetic, geo

      • I agree completely, though I'm the opposite of you. Every intuition I ever had about algebra was wrong. Every. Single. One. And the system isn't designed to give you any concrete applications: the word problems are just reading exercises wrapped around a symbol problem with only one solution.

        Geometry, on the other hand, I found to be trivially easy. Likewise linear algebra: that was the only class I've ever been in where every first impression intuition I had was absolutely correct...It was all concrete to

    • But in an MMO sense. WoW did this very well, imo - you can start, and click a button or two, and gain levels immediately. Literally. My 7 yr old can make a hunter and master the basics easily.

      Get to L80 and run a raid dungeon, and you'll find a bunch of adults trying out reasonably complex strategies, practicing timing and pacing, installing complex modification to the UI, in order to overcome challenges.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vux984 ( 928602 )

      WoW does a very good job at teaching most of its game, but if you look closely, it doesn't guide players through a few things; for example talent builds and rotations. And this is where it's very easy to see and divide crap players with people that have spent time on forums learning about their class. People on countless sites (like elitist jerks for example) had volumes of arguments, spreadsheets, graphs, etc devoted to these things. Although any high level character can easily get by in almost every aspec

  • its how easy it is to play well, specifically w.r.t pvp, i dont want to join a game and straight away start getting 'pwnd' by everyone else before ive had a chance to figure out the controls, but that needs to be weighed up against having it so easy to play well that theres no challenge
    • It seems a lot of single player RTS campaigns these days are basically tutorials for multiplayer. They slowly introduce new units and situations until the last board when you use all of them. Next step is multiplayer =P

  • If you really want your head to explode, try Ultima Online - more than 10 years of updates, events, rule revisions and tweaks gives it one of the scariest learning curves I've seen. If you've never played it before and tackle it without a tutor or guild, even a year into playing you can find yourself still researching commands, mechanics, subsystems, clever house art tricks, long-lost passwords to secret areas and the origins of obscure items.

    There's a real sense of accomplishment for "learning stuff", but

  • I know it's not an online game but it is an rpg and similar in many respects. This is a genre I've never gotten into before due to the learning curve. I normally stick to run and gun shooters like Halo, Gears, etc. Fallout 3 starts off with a nice tutorial that doesn't seem like just a tutorial. You don't have someone saying look up, look down, look left, now right like in some games. It starts with the story, with your birth, and then you have to do simple stuff that progresses the story and teaches you th

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dan667 ( 564390 )
      I found the beginning tutorial to be quite out of place from the game and confining. (you promise me super mutants and big guns and this is what you start me out with?) And VATS seemed quite clunky and tacked on to me.
  • Remember the profession system in SWG? One look at this indecipherable table with no explanation whatsoever convinced me to give up after a mere twenty minutes of playing. And don't get me started on the total absence of money drops (at least in the newbie area where I was stuck...)

    • Remember the profession system in SWG? One look at this indecipherable table with no explanation whatsoever convinced me to give up after a mere twenty minutes of playing. And don't get me started on the total absence of money drops (at least in the newbie area where I was stuck...)
      Reply to This

      Im not sure what you were doing, but the learning curve for SWG was realitevly easy, the profession system was simple enough, you got points, put points into whatevet profession you wanted until you run out. You coul

      • two and a half professions, actually.

        It allowed people to tailor their characters to what they wanted, and how they played. When it began, it was your character, and your story. Now it's been dumbed down to 9 classes so players can be 'luke skywalker', 'lando calrissian', 'boba fett', etc...

        SOE SUCKS! John Smedley, and Julio Torres of Lucasarts can both go fuck themselves.

    • It's been dumbed down considerably for you lowest common denominator people.

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