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General: IMGDC - The Newbie Experience
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
While attending the 2008 Indie MMO Developer's Conference in Minneapolis, Community Manager Laura Genender sat in on a panle discussing the importance of the newbie experience. In this report, she brings the thoughs of the panelsts and those of her own tot he table as she discusses this important element of game design.
The first ten minutes of your experience in a new MMO world are pivotal. The fate of your character (and subscription) rests on the back of you enjoying and understanding gameplay in those first 10 minutes; your continued interest and intrigue depend on the challenge and distinctiveness of the world and game systems. An MMO must be revealing enough to gain your interest, but secretive enough to make you log back in. It’s like some cybernetic courting dance of man and program.
So why the heck do so many newbie experiences suck?
This past weekend at the Indie MMO Game Developers Conference, I attended a panel featuring Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green, Meridian 59 designer and founder of Near Death Studios; Scott Hartsman, previous EQ2 maven now gone indie; Kelly ‘Ophelea’ Heckman, game journalism diva and now running Gamersinfo.net; and Jason Murdick, Product Developer for Simutronics Inc. This panel dealt with the all important topic of “Designing the New Player Experience.
Read the whole thing here.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
What percentage is an 'awful' turnover though?
I think the designers expect a fairly high turnover in the first few levels, I certainly have found a lot of people quitting after/during the early section after having got the grasp of the basic concepts of the game and decided if the game's the right game for them - although I'm speaking generally about games with a free trial on, it's a whole different percentage to games you have to purchase to try.
So, for a free trial game - what's a decent turnover rate?
10% Stay on, 20%? Surely you can't hope for more than that... there are a lot of different types of MMO out there, and not everyone likes all the types, flavours and focusses that each has - I'd say 5%-10% is probably a pretty good stay-on rate.
Respectively for a pay-to-try game, presumably a bigger percentage:
50% still seems pretty high for new players to the game to decide they like it, I'd say more like 30% here.
If however you mean a high percentage of people don't even *finish* the tutorial ... then in that case, the tutorial needs to be re-designed, to be faster, simpler, and probably more fun. (Tabula Rasa did this to me durign the late beta, for example - so frustrating and unclear I was confident by about 30 minutes that the game was just not well enough designed to be fun.)
I liked the article, thank you.
Blizzard introduced more people to the MMORPG experience than any other company in history. They didn't use a tutorial, just hints that pop up while playing.
Maybe it's not about tutorials or introduction levels. Maybe it's about well-designed UI and playable game mechanics.
Portal was a great game. But it was a gamer's game, not one meant to be anyone's first experience with a FPS as the article points out. WoW has many flaws, but easily introducing newcomers to the game's instinctive UI is not one of them.
It would be interesting to know how quickly Laura Geneder's mother could pick up playing WoW.
Maybe the tutorials aren't at fault, but developers who have forgotten that not all of their players have years of video game experience under their belts. Developers who think they are targeting a broad market but assume that 'everyone' should know about some particular game mechanic or system.
The panel described in the article may have completely missed the point telling developers that if they have horrible turn-over of low levels they should re-do their tutorial. Maybe if they're having horrible turn-over of low levels, they should re-do their entire game.
THey need to teach newbies how to play in a fun away and not something boring
We hear so many games gloating about the "easy to learn, hard to master" type of learning curves. Yet, there's only a few ones who can deliver that, and most of them have shallow game play.
It is possible to make a game that is easy to learn, and yet, with enough depths that you won't loose those who wants challenge in some point. I'm an indi developer myself, and currently working on a game for the XBLA. The learning curve play a huge role in our development process. To the point that anyone able to hold a mouse, should be able to play our game. All this without detracting the savy because as you scratch under the surface, you will discover tremendous game mechanics to find yourself drowning into options and customization. (It's a card/board game btw)
You just have to doze it well, and that's what beta test are for. Make sure you have all kinds of people joining your beta, so they represent a wide market instead of just the targeted audience. Targeting audiences is nothing more then admiting your limitation to please a wide area of gamers. It is for me, a "i give up to mediocrity" kind of plea. I'll say it again: Having a great game with depths, doesn't mean it should be unplayable for a newbie. And making an easy game to learn, doesn't mean it shouldn't challenge your brain and skills at some point.
All to say that this concept applies to "any" games. I really don't understand why a game would bother to launch if it can't be understood by everyone with an I.Q. above 90. Those developers are right about the first 10 minutes, and it's not just in a MMO but in pretty much any game. Microsoft is asking us to deliver an experience in the first 10 minutes that will make the player want to go up to 30, and after that, the end game should sell itself. In a MMO you can break this down in much more pieces, but it's the same result: As good as your end game may be, it's pointless if the first few hours are boring you to tears. (EvE) And as good and easy as your first hours/days can be, it's pointless if your end game suck ass. (WoW) So the next gen MMO will understand all of this, and will make it fun to play from the first 10 minutes, until they pull the plug on the game. Wether you are a gamer or a developer, you shouldn't shoot for anything less then that anyway.
Creativity : The ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods or interpretations; using originality, progressiveness, or imagination.
Again, having specific servers, some with casual labelled on them and where you gain XP a LOT faster would be very important. Some other servers to cater to each major gameplay.
The days of the 1 server where everyone is forced into FFA PvP, full looting...these days are gone. You can have 1 such server, but you need many variations, and yes, you do need a casual server. Someone reach max level in 1 day on this server? Good for them. I ain't playing there.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
great article, and so true...if the tutorial sux it can put you off continuing to play...it's just a case of finding the right balance of fun and information the is relevent to the game...too much information can make it dull, you little and you walk off feeling none the wiser!
You guys mention WoW's popularity several times and forget to point out one of the most important reasons for it's popularity. Yes, the UI made it much easier for a new player to jump in. However, the Warcraft franchise had a fairly large following, and it was many of these players that were drawn in in the first place. The UI may have kept them there, but it was the name that brought them.
As for PvP being anti-casual, I partly agree. PvP can be extremely fun if you are evenly matched, or even slightly overmatched. Unfortunately this game type attracts some really unsavoury personality types, and it is these individuals that you want to keep away from your player base as they will grief them away. The best way to do this is somehow match skill sets and keep the basement dwellers away from the casuals.
My first MMO was Lord of the Rings Online. I didn't even really play computer games (unless you want to call Solitare and Sim city games). Their tutorial did a great job of teaching me to play. 7 months later a friend suggested I try out Perfect World, a free MMO. I tried and dropped out in about 3 hours because I found it so hard to understand. Then I particiapted in Open Beta of Pirates of the Burning Seas and after that had both enough time and the wherewithall to return to Perfect World and figure it out. Now I play a lot of different free MMOs (I figure paying for one - LoTRO is enough) and I have to admit that most of the time I STILL miss the lack of tutorials. There always seems to be something that I can't figure out - but then I'm not the typical gamer either, maybe its a factor of age (53) or sex (female), I don't know but I definitely can't figure out games as fast as some of my younger (male) friends. Unfortunately most of my female friends aren't playing the games.
Thank you for the article.
My newbie experience in RFonline was horrible. I had no idea how to do anything and the parts of the tutorial I didn't understand, I couldn't redo. The community was pretty awful too. Worst part was that I paid full price for the game then misplaced it for a year. By the time I installed it, the price dropped by more than half. I tried the game and had no idea on how to do anything beyond moving around and killing random creatures. I canceled my account the same day and the company still charged me an extra month.
Games need to be better designed for newcomers and casual gamers. That includes everything from the game itself, the manual (yes, some of us read it), the tutorial and beyond. Help should always be available and easy to find. As the game changes, the online version of the manual needs to change with it.
Casual gamers outnumber hardcore gamers. Game companies will have to address both. They have to work harder on the "easy to learn, hard to master". It will lead to a higher retention rate to justify the extra investment.
I don't think I'll play EVE Online because it's PvP focused. (Nothing against PvP gamers, I just don't like it.) But from what I hear, they did a good job and if I did want to try a PvP game, that would be my first choice because of their tutorials.
It is possible. Companies just have to think more long term.
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Her experience however would be relevant to this discussion. She never play anything before, except online pokers. She never know what to expect from an MMO. Her sense of control is so bad that she fell off cliffs and hill slopes and die just walking around the starting town of a gnome wizard in WoW. Something we as "normal" MMO players won't imagine possible.
But does that drove her off the game? NO. She was having her best laugh as a chasing mob forced her off the cliff and she died. She was very happy figuring out how to kill a level 1 mob. She was amazed when she finally solved a quest on her own when I was not at her side. Will a player be frustrated if the early quests got him/her killed? NO. The early or first day excitement should be there, all the game needs to do is NOT to kill off that excitement by something totally repelling. Griefing, harassment, bugs, crazy UIs, there are many ways to kill off the early excitement, but a few failed quests need not.
Why did my GF gave up on WoW soon after? Very bad incidence from Blizz. But that is another story.
Fantastic article!
It truly is disheartening for a gamer, especially a new gamer, to spend their time (if not their money) getting ready for a new MMO experience only to find that the game they were so excited to play just moments ago is, in reality, a mess of design flaws with a catchy title tacked on.
One of the big reasons I believe World of Warcraft enjoyed so much success at launch is that it was not rushed through its development. Blizzard, more than any other developer, understands the importance of releasing a polished finished product, and that's exactly what they did with WoW. granted, WoW had its problems at first, but they were not nearly as critical as some of its predecessors.
My first MMO experience came 9 years ago with the launch of EverQuest. I'm sure there's a few people here who can make the same claim and can remember, as I do, how sloppy the execution was. Before the first wave of patches started going, EQ was a mess of graphical anomalies and pathing issues. Boats would dump their passengers in the middle of the Ocean of Tears with no warning. Just looting a specific item or clicking on a particular target could result in a game crashing error. As a newbie, these sorts of issues can be frustrating enough to discourage playing the game ever again.
Now, in all fairness to EverQuest, it was one of the first of a budding generation of MMORPGs to gain truly widespread popularity. At the time of its release, despite its flaws, EverQuest was still considered a fantastic game by players and critics alike because it was such a new and unique experience. We've come a LONG way since EverQuest though, my friends, and yet we're still seeing developers debut their games well before they're ready. It's tough enough being a newcomer to a new game, especially an MMO, but it's twice as difficult when the game itself is plagued top to bottom with serious bugs.
But does that drove her off the game? NO. She was having her best laugh as a chasing mob forced her off the cliff and she died. She was very happy figuring out how to kill a level 1 mob. ...
Nice comments. Thanks both of you, Jirel and Orthedos.