Among the Bartles types, I'm primarily an Explorer. Specifically, I enjoy exploring game mechanics. All my charts and spreadsheets for Travian were, in part, to figure out how the game mechanics manifested -- what was the most efficient way to goal X?
With a toy, people develop their own goals. Either they (incorrectly) perceive the game to have a goal that you are "supposed" to achieve, or they explicitly choose something to explore, or they do what they did in the previous similar game that they played. I'm going to explore each of these in turn.
Misperceived Goals
When players project a goal onto the toy, they become frustrated when they get to that goal and they aren't rewarded. The same thing can happen when they are playing a game and misperceive the goal. This is especially frustrating when the game did a poor job of communicating the goal. If it's only once the player has played towards the goal that they understand it then you've lost an opportunity to keep that player happy. (Unless your mechanic is confusing players, in which case you're developing a niche title, and rah for you. I'm not talking about small-market hardcore games.) And some players might get distracted along the way, but that's besides the point.
Challenge is important in games, but only in that it manifests as perceived challenge. Since it's unlikely for a game to be challenging but not seem so, the important point here is the contrapositive: a game that players perceive to be challenging but really isn't. Players succeed and think they're smart in doing so. In the case of our toy with misperceived goals, players find the game to be extremely challenging and themselves to be under par because they can't win. I don't like losing, even if it was a good fight. I prefer losing a good fight to winning on a coin flip (unless we're talking real money, in which case it's better to be lucky), but losing when it's an unfair fight weighted against me just makes me frustrated.
The root of such frustration is misplaced expectations. Manage your player's expectations. If you've built a toy, let the players know.
Choosing Exploration
Experienced explorers tend to know they're explorers. Maybe they haven't heard of the Bartles types, maybe they don't think of it that way, but when you sit them down in front of a toy (or game), they'll go to work taking it apart and figuring out its mechanics.
To them -- or, I should say, to us -- figuring it out is the game. We're curious. I've got a competitive side, and that manifests as wanting to know the rules. Since most games don't document themselves well that often means it's up to the players to figure out how to win, whether one strategy is better than another. In strategy games, this is, really, the point, but there's also a mechanical aspect to winning: just how effective are the various units? If you face two off in a fight, which one will win? Which is more cost-effective? These sorts of explorers are comfortable with math -- at least the basic algebra used to derive these effectiveness measures.
Other explorers want to figure out your AI -- do feints work? Can they draw the NPC troops into an ambush? A great many players fit into this type of explorer mold, and it's generally an explicit part of many games. For toys, of course, there's no goal to win, so exploring the AI in a toy is a chosen goal.
Trying to keep mechanics-explorers happy is a difficult process. The more successful your game, the more people will be trying to figure it out. There's so many people playing WoW, for example, that the only undiscovered rules are those for the rarest and most inaccessible of content. Even in complex-rule games like ATITD, there's enough people pounding at the formulas that a great many of them have been found. There's two things going for that game here, though: (1) many of the rules are still very complex, such that the basic formula is sufficiently obscure that it wouldn't have been discovered except for developer intervention, and (2) the player base is small enough that there's only a small group dedicated to exploring any given mechanic. Yet it's a great example for developers looking for ways to keep their mechanic-explorer playerbase happy.
Default Play
This is the catch-all category. "Default Play" is what happens when gamers are given a toy, and when games don't tell players what to do. Many players (probably most) aren't sufficiently sophisticated to figure out that your 'game' is actually a toy. The distinction itself is somewhat arcane. It's also aggravating when the developers themselves don't know (as is the case with Travian).
This mode of play is the less-offensive younger sister to the first option. I'm saying that players pursue a goal but only indirectly, through the actions that they expect that the game wants from them. Stick a score somewhere on the screen (such as accumulated dollars or gold, or city population, or whatnot) and that becomes the perceived goal: how high can you get that number?
Games like The Sims keep the player so busy in many day-to-day life choices that they might not even know what goals they are pursuing.
The problem with this path is that players might eventually grow bored. Not knowing what goal they are "supposed" to achieve, they wonder why they spend time in the game. This was a problem for me in ATITD, to some extent: I knew what I wanted to do (play with crossbreeding), but I didn't know how to get there. What was I supposed to do in the meantime? I knew I had to somehow level up, but it wasn't clear which way I should go to do that.
And hence the problem with open worlds: when players are allowed to go anywhere and do anything, they often find themselves puttering around a bit hoping they had some direction.
Conclusion
Explorers are a subset of the overall gaming market. A niche, if you will. Catering to them can be very rewarding for those explorers but leaves everyone else scratching their heads. A game like ATITD would, theoretically, be heaven to me, if it wasn't for the atrocious UI and the excruciating primary mechanic (i.e. waiting).
You can add some fun for explorers by hiding some game mechanics. Although this will frustrate some of your early-adopter Achievers, eventually the explorers show up and start mapping the territory. Most games have simple numeric systems somewhere; combat is an obvious place. In addition to basic math and stats, consider adding in ATITD-like mechanics: complex tradeskills or gathering results or world spawns that follow a formula that diligent players can unearth and profit from.
Above all, make sure to match player expectations. Let them know what they're getting into.
Showing posts with label explorers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label explorers. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Open Worlds III
Open Worlds III: When NPCs attack!
I think open worlds are compelling because they're immersive. They feel real. It really appeals to explorer-types, which is my main drive. (What's yours?)
I think creating an open world is a balance between two goals: (1) giving the player places to explore, neat things to see, and a chance to play with game mechanics on his own time, and (2) telling the player what to do next.
Any good game gives the player places to explore. Unless the game is timed in such a way that there's no save, and the player has no choice but to win or die, the player has a chance to run off and chase butterflies. I don't know of any game that doesn't give the player a chance to explore. Even in fighting games, the player can choose to not engage the opponent and spend some time jumping around or seeing what else is in the world. (Chances are there's not a whole lot; background animations maybe?)
Exploration isn't just running around and mapping. Explorers also like discovering and understanding game mechanics. They want to root out the math behind combat. They figure out how to min-max their characters. Yet this isn't part of being an open world, though. Complex game mechanics gives explorers extra goals, but it doesn't really make the world open.
An open world is non-linear. The key here is giving players options. Not only does the player not have to stay in Fooville to work on the main quest, but they also have something to do elsewhere in the world. The golden Ultimas (ie 4-7) had quests all over the world. In Mario World 64, there were places to go grab stars in each of the 'worlds'. In the Grand Theft Auto series, the player might have several independent quest chains they could pursue, or they could just run around and explore and map and try out mechanics. In all three, the player had not just the opportunity to go anywhere, but they also had something to do when they got there.
Just making random encounters and procedurally-generated dungeons to explore isn't enough. The 'something to do' should be game-relevant. Side quests and parallel quests are important here. If the player 'plays out' a region of the world in one session and then has no reason to return, the openness of the world loses its meaning. If you can go back to Trinsic but there's nothing to do there, then the choice of returning is meaningless. This ties into the next point:
With an open world, you get the economy of being able to re-use content; instead of the player only seeing your intricately built environment once, they get to run around inside it over and over. I think the biggest benefit here is that this makes balancing world richness easier. When parts of the world are made by different designers and/or at different times, some might wind up being more complex than others. Now that content is placed over the world in layers, I think it's easier to make that depth consistent.
The second pillar, the other end of the spectrum, is giving the player a goal. When you allow the player to go back to revisit content, you need to tell him he can do so. Tell him what he needs to do to advance the plot. If the player is lost in a big, open world with no idea of which of the billion NPCs in the world he needs to talk to, he'll probably become frustrated and stop playing. And return your game and tell his friends it sucks. Then not buy the sequel, that's for sure. (One way around this is to have several different threads that all point in the same direction; e.g. NPCs in each of your major cities might have their own independent quest to go talk to the next relevant guy. If the player completes one but then gets distracted, one of those other quests should send him back.)
Some players really like being given a direction. It's essential for Achievers. I think all players benefit from having a clear goal to pursue. I think this is a key part of the appeal of class-based systems: tell the player what the measuring stick is. Give the player a clear understanding of the rules in your world. Help them fit in by telling them how your world works.
Linear games might get this wrong, if they don't tell the player what the current goal is. The player might be stuck in one location (it's a linear game, on rails), but not know what it is he needs to do to move on. The player needs to know what to do, not just where to go.
These two pillars don't form a continuum. It's similar to the Libertarian argument: there's really two axes here. You want to make sure the player knows how to move the game along, but at the same time provide him flexibility in what he does next. A great game doesn't need linearity; it needs to avoid leaving the player in a vacuum.
I think open worlds are compelling because they're immersive. They feel real. It really appeals to explorer-types, which is my main drive. (What's yours?)
I think creating an open world is a balance between two goals: (1) giving the player places to explore, neat things to see, and a chance to play with game mechanics on his own time, and (2) telling the player what to do next.
Any good game gives the player places to explore. Unless the game is timed in such a way that there's no save, and the player has no choice but to win or die, the player has a chance to run off and chase butterflies. I don't know of any game that doesn't give the player a chance to explore. Even in fighting games, the player can choose to not engage the opponent and spend some time jumping around or seeing what else is in the world. (Chances are there's not a whole lot; background animations maybe?)
Exploration isn't just running around and mapping. Explorers also like discovering and understanding game mechanics. They want to root out the math behind combat. They figure out how to min-max their characters. Yet this isn't part of being an open world, though. Complex game mechanics gives explorers extra goals, but it doesn't really make the world open.
An open world is non-linear. The key here is giving players options. Not only does the player not have to stay in Fooville to work on the main quest, but they also have something to do elsewhere in the world. The golden Ultimas (ie 4-7) had quests all over the world. In Mario World 64, there were places to go grab stars in each of the 'worlds'. In the Grand Theft Auto series, the player might have several independent quest chains they could pursue, or they could just run around and explore and map and try out mechanics. In all three, the player had not just the opportunity to go anywhere, but they also had something to do when they got there.
Just making random encounters and procedurally-generated dungeons to explore isn't enough. The 'something to do' should be game-relevant. Side quests and parallel quests are important here. If the player 'plays out' a region of the world in one session and then has no reason to return, the openness of the world loses its meaning. If you can go back to Trinsic but there's nothing to do there, then the choice of returning is meaningless. This ties into the next point:
With an open world, you get the economy of being able to re-use content; instead of the player only seeing your intricately built environment once, they get to run around inside it over and over. I think the biggest benefit here is that this makes balancing world richness easier. When parts of the world are made by different designers and/or at different times, some might wind up being more complex than others. Now that content is placed over the world in layers, I think it's easier to make that depth consistent.
The second pillar, the other end of the spectrum, is giving the player a goal. When you allow the player to go back to revisit content, you need to tell him he can do so. Tell him what he needs to do to advance the plot. If the player is lost in a big, open world with no idea of which of the billion NPCs in the world he needs to talk to, he'll probably become frustrated and stop playing. And return your game and tell his friends it sucks. Then not buy the sequel, that's for sure. (One way around this is to have several different threads that all point in the same direction; e.g. NPCs in each of your major cities might have their own independent quest to go talk to the next relevant guy. If the player completes one but then gets distracted, one of those other quests should send him back.)
Some players really like being given a direction. It's essential for Achievers. I think all players benefit from having a clear goal to pursue. I think this is a key part of the appeal of class-based systems: tell the player what the measuring stick is. Give the player a clear understanding of the rules in your world. Help them fit in by telling them how your world works.
Linear games might get this wrong, if they don't tell the player what the current goal is. The player might be stuck in one location (it's a linear game, on rails), but not know what it is he needs to do to move on. The player needs to know what to do, not just where to go.
These two pillars don't form a continuum. It's similar to the Libertarian argument: there's really two axes here. You want to make sure the player knows how to move the game along, but at the same time provide him flexibility in what he does next. A great game doesn't need linearity; it needs to avoid leaving the player in a vacuum.
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