Wow, That?s Complicated
- Thread starter Shamus Young
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I cringe at most MMO's interface now because the interface is not like WoW is. I went and try Guild Wars again because a mate was playing a couple months ago. It just pissed me off that I couldn't jump so I stopped playing. Funny thing is most advanced WoW players don't even use the default interface anymore, we got so many addons set to preferences that it even hard explaining to another player how you have it setup.
I know that. You know that. Shamus knows that.TheBaron87 said:
Despite this, a lot of people (mostly trolls) like to flame down anyone who asks any question about any thing. People see the trolls doing this, don't realize that the trolls are trolls just doing what they do, and thus think that it's not okay to ask questions.
You can post and repost and rerepost that explanation a million times over. The trolls will continue to be the people "who think that 'newbie' is a synonym for 'stupid'". It's just what they do. Explaining why what they're doing is wrong is kinda like trying to explain to your dog why you don't like him piddling on the carpet. It's better to just swat him with a newspaper and boot him in the back yard. It's just a shame that trolling isn't ever against any forum rules anywhere (technically it is, but mods are always lazy to do anything about anything but the most blatant examples of trolling).
*grin* Hehehe I got a kick out of your article.
It's true isn't it, after the years of mastering WoW I feel like I could learn pretty much anything... If I could be bothered to stop raiding.
AND HOLY F- ON A F- SANDWITCH DID YOU SEE THE RECENT PALADIN CHANGES!?!
We're using holy power instead now? ...is this a second resource or are we totally replacing mana. D:
If so thats. effing. AWESOME.
It's true isn't it, after the years of mastering WoW I feel like I could learn pretty much anything... If I could be bothered to stop raiding.
AND HOLY F- ON A F- SANDWITCH DID YOU SEE THE RECENT PALADIN CHANGES!?!
We're using holy power instead now? ...is this a second resource or are we totally replacing mana. D:
If so thats. effing. AWESOME.
The tutorial is certainly a step in the right direction. When i first started, i did a few quests, got lost, and ended up leaping from a zepplin because i realised we were flying over the place i needed to go.
I found WOW to complex, perhaps it's that i'm used to learning the games I play quite quickly, or that I wasn't doing anything fun for the first 2 hours but I just gave up and left. Thats twice now i've downloaded the trial and gone "ahhhhhh fuck it, time to shoot things"
It has been two years since I last touched WoW, and there is just no way that I would find the time again to play WoW, but damn. I still get enthousiastic and hyped up when I read something like this.
Obviously the idea of finding a buddy or joining a guild or even pulling up thottbot/wowhead never crossed your mind.Arcanz said:
I had NO problems getting help in wow. It may have been becuase I play healer classes, and if you are nice to healers, they will keep you topped off.
thats an amazing coincidence......Vhite said:
OT:
thanks shamus, now new MMO companies everywhere will just be throwing things together thinking they are right. Shamus just murdered MMOs for newbies.
I'm not going to lie, I used to be one of those guys that wouldn't help people because I thought it was so simple. Then after about 2 years of not playing ,I got to see the interface again and I was like "what in fuck was I thinking"
I still don't help people though. I just ignore them, because if I can figure it out, they can.
I still don't help people though. I just ignore them, because if I can figure it out, they can.
I second the fact that programming is less complicated than WoW on many levels. At least when I glance at code I can usually get a jist of what's going on pretty quickly. No matter how hard I stare at a WoW screen or video, I cannot figure out exactly what's happening, let alone find the proverbial Waldo that is 'fun'. I think it must be hidden behind the Bejeweled window.
In seriousness, I've never understood how any casuals like this game. They won't touch a modern-day controller and it's "too many buttons", but somehow they get into WoW, which often has about 30-80 buttons on screen at once, plus keyboard commands.
In seriousness, I've never understood how any casuals like this game. They won't touch a modern-day controller and it's "too many buttons", but somehow they get into WoW, which often has about 30-80 buttons on screen at once, plus keyboard commands.
Your reference to EVE in the article made me laugh even though I fell off the learning cliff (not curve) once before I finally figured it out.
As for WoW, I think what they have going for Cataclysm looks good so far in terms of newbie tutorials. IMO, it shouldn't be too easy.
As for WoW, I think what they have going for Cataclysm looks good so far in terms of newbie tutorials. IMO, it shouldn't be too easy.
A year? I started out back in 2005 and my warrior wasn't 60 until the realease of the burning crusade, or... 2 weeks after the release that is...Vhite said:
Speaking of tutorials
[sup] No, we wore not[/sup]
[sup]Shut up...[/sup]
[sup]You shut up![/sup]
Anyways. I'd say throwing people right into the mess would be a good thing. Or, they could been given an option to do so or have the regular start.
If this sounds a bit confusing... it is, just let me tell you.
Let's say for instance: you create you character, right after that a Friendly NPC comes running up to you and asks you if you could help her. You are to follow her so that you get the basic idea of movement. Then she shows you a farm and oh noes! A pig is eating the crops.
Basic mechanics of health and fighting is introduced.
Then she hands you a glass of milk and a cake. BAM, food and healing items are introduced. She then tells you to walk over to the starter zone again just so that you can hand in the quest.
Way points and Quests are introduced. When you get there you'll level up because of the xp given from the quest. The quest giver tells you to learn some abilities at the class trainer.
Voila, training skills is introduced.
You use some of the money given by the quest giver to buy the abilities in question and there is the money and merchant thing completed.
Abd then it goes on like that forever, but when you're done with it you'll instantly go to level 15 and from there on it's random dungeons and happi happi fun fun.
No argument here. I started MMOs with EverQuest, and had a few friends who were already players. So we had the benifit of multiple people banging our head against stuff til we figured it out. Having previos RPG vanilla experience helps some. But that's not something a game designer should be counting on.
The people who ramble on about easymode, and newbs are usually the people who do absolutley nothing of complexity in the MMO without reading up on the strat. Your top guilds and beta players usually do the real experimentation, everyone else reads the strat and practices executing it. That's no diffrent than a tutorial and, aside from the horendous timesink, I think most MMOs fail to provide a compelling experience for two reasons.
Player attitude: I'm a do-nothing nobody in real life, but I'm a rockstar here. I will make sure everyone knows how beneath me they are, and treat every question, even those not directed at me, as an opportunity to belittle somone.
Now this is not the MMO devs fault. But they can, and often do, make it worse by listening to the top 10& of the player base(progression wise) when tweaking/expanding the game.
Secondly, Unintuitive: Now slow down, I don't mean the clicking and pressing number keys for attacks. I mean the underlying system. I've never played WoW but in everquest there is a stat called Armor Class, or AC. Most single player RPGs will have an easy to understand armor system. Essentially for every 1 point of armor you have, x number of damage is mitigated. In everquest the effectiveness of a particular AC value takes hours of parsing log files, and then once you do, you see that what you have is not a linear progression but a damn near undulating curve. Pile on top of that the mystical "softcap". A point where the game mechanics themselves will let you increase the given stat, we'll stay with AC, however you are getting extremely diminished returns. Often this is not even "intentionally" coded into the game, but rather it is a result of odities in the mathmatic functions, given certain values. Even then, with this knowledge I still felt like I was "winging it" on picking an optimal minmax, between AC and my other stats... and lets take notice of the fact that all that, was for just one stat.
Piled on top of that one are so many more... How much cold resist does it take to shrug off the ice dragons AoE? How much will +10 agility increase my avoidance rate? The game will tell you none of this. In order to explain the stats as they are they would have to shatter the hell out of your roleplaying sense and take you where the game really is, spreadsheetland. Parsers and spreadsheets don't sound very adventurous to me. I've done it... I'm obsessive like that, but it doesnt make it good game design. I'd be a bit embarassed to show you the documentation on my PC for my pokemon team, and berry planting sites, and breeding strategy.
Players like me have something wrong with us, I think where i break out of the downward spiral is I have not turned my quirky willingness to accept the need for disecting a game with third party tools(isn't that kinda cheating?) into a fealing of superiority to those who refuse to put up with that shit. What I do circumvents shortcommings of game design, this is not something a game designer should be betting the farm on.
The people who ramble on about easymode, and newbs are usually the people who do absolutley nothing of complexity in the MMO without reading up on the strat. Your top guilds and beta players usually do the real experimentation, everyone else reads the strat and practices executing it. That's no diffrent than a tutorial and, aside from the horendous timesink, I think most MMOs fail to provide a compelling experience for two reasons.
Player attitude: I'm a do-nothing nobody in real life, but I'm a rockstar here. I will make sure everyone knows how beneath me they are, and treat every question, even those not directed at me, as an opportunity to belittle somone.
Now this is not the MMO devs fault. But they can, and often do, make it worse by listening to the top 10& of the player base(progression wise) when tweaking/expanding the game.
Secondly, Unintuitive: Now slow down, I don't mean the clicking and pressing number keys for attacks. I mean the underlying system. I've never played WoW but in everquest there is a stat called Armor Class, or AC. Most single player RPGs will have an easy to understand armor system. Essentially for every 1 point of armor you have, x number of damage is mitigated. In everquest the effectiveness of a particular AC value takes hours of parsing log files, and then once you do, you see that what you have is not a linear progression but a damn near undulating curve. Pile on top of that the mystical "softcap". A point where the game mechanics themselves will let you increase the given stat, we'll stay with AC, however you are getting extremely diminished returns. Often this is not even "intentionally" coded into the game, but rather it is a result of odities in the mathmatic functions, given certain values. Even then, with this knowledge I still felt like I was "winging it" on picking an optimal minmax, between AC and my other stats... and lets take notice of the fact that all that, was for just one stat.
Piled on top of that one are so many more... How much cold resist does it take to shrug off the ice dragons AoE? How much will +10 agility increase my avoidance rate? The game will tell you none of this. In order to explain the stats as they are they would have to shatter the hell out of your roleplaying sense and take you where the game really is, spreadsheetland. Parsers and spreadsheets don't sound very adventurous to me. I've done it... I'm obsessive like that, but it doesnt make it good game design. I'd be a bit embarassed to show you the documentation on my PC for my pokemon team, and berry planting sites, and breeding strategy.
Players like me have something wrong with us, I think where i break out of the downward spiral is I have not turned my quirky willingness to accept the need for disecting a game with third party tools(isn't that kinda cheating?) into a fealing of superiority to those who refuse to put up with that shit. What I do circumvents shortcommings of game design, this is not something a game designer should be betting the farm on.