Excellent article, but as the years have gone by, its not just the person new to MMO's that can be tripped up.
I remember playing WOW (after 4 years of DAOC, Lineage 1/2 and COH) and actually leveling my 2nd character, a dwarf priest after successfully leveling a paladin to 60.
So I'm in the early 30's and resting after a tough fight with raptors, and recovering my mana by drinking something so I could then cast on myself and heal up my damage.
It was my 12 year old son who said...Dad, you kniow you can eat food and drinik a drink and heal up both attributes at the same time.
What? I had never considered even trying that until he mentioned it. Doh.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Before I played my first mmorpg I read the manual. Shocking, I know.
Again - I offer you two products. One is so intuitive that no manual is needed. (Like my iPhone - I could use every feature on that thing without a manual. So can most 8 year olds. Wonder why it sells so well?)
The other product requires a manual to understand and begin using.
Which product do you think will become more popular? Do people enjoy having to read complex manuals in order to start having fun, in general?
Even AC1 back in 1999 had some instructions on how to play. They also let you skip the training area so experienced players wouldn't have to repeat stuff they already knew. I can't imagine how a complete novice would have managed STO, as even I, with over 10 years of MMO play, found some things confusing at first.
I think most MMOs assume that a new player is not also a new computer user, which will generally be true. Or if they are, they will probably have an experienced user with them to coach them. While its important to make sure that any game features that are unusual are well understood by players, there are diminishing returns to spending a lot of time on developing tutorials. These are something that most players will only need to experience once, so spending time on things that will help retain players is generally more cost-effective as long as the intro is adaquate.
I don't know about tutorials... Personally, I think they're useless. People just skip through them anyways.
But what I do think that needs to happen is they need to tailor a starting experience that will by definition teach you everything.
My brother started playing WoW a while ago, and it's amazing, he went through almost the exact same steps in this article. I was amazed that he almost finished the starting zone and never used ANY ability at all other than autoattack.
What they should have done is set it up that you start in a room, and in order to leave the room, you have to walk over to a quest-giver and get a quest. If the user did that, then you know he knows how to move and talk to NPCs.
Then there should be some special mob that does no damage, but cannot be killed unless you use a special attack on it. So that if a user finished that, then you know he can use special attacks.
Then maybe a similar mob that does damage, and can only be killed by say a level3 attack, which you can only get from a trainer. So if the user passes that, then you know that he knows about training his abilities.
I don't know about tutorials... Personally, I think they're useless. People just skip through them anyways. But what I do think that needs to happen is they need to tailor a starting experience that will by definition teach you everything. My brother started playing WoW a while ago, and it's amazing, he went through almost the exact same steps in this article. I was amazed that he almost finished the starting zone and never used ANY ability at all other than autoattack. What they should have done is set it up that you start in a room, and in order to leave the room, you have to walk over to a quest-giver and get a quest. If the user did that, then you know he knows how to move and talk to NPCs. Then there should be some special mob that does no damage, but cannot be killed unless you use a special attack on it. So that if a user finished that, then you know he can use special attacks. Then maybe a similar mob that does damage, and can only be killed by say a level3 attack, which you can only get from a trainer. So if the user passes that, then you know that he knows about training his abilities. etc etc etc...
I don't skip through tutorials; I find them useful. The one in Fallen Earth is excellent and gives some nice starting gear.
Before I played my first mmorpg I read the manual. Shocking, I know.
Again - I offer you two products. One is so intuitive that no manual is needed. (Like my iPhone - I could use every feature on that thing without a manual. So can most 8 year olds. Wonder why it sells so well?)
The other product requires a manual to understand and begin using.
Which product do you think will become more popular? Do people enjoy having to read complex manuals in order to start having fun, in general?
Reading the manual gives you a head start even in the most user friendly game, because a good game offers way more possibilities then can be grasped intuitively. People who do not read the manual learn to play the game, but even when it involves not much effort you will not find what you are not looking for (because you don't need it to play the game) and therefor may be at an disadvantage, especially in mmorpg's. A good starter/learning area may help, but will not be much more exciting than reading the manual when you want to learn all aspect of the game and therefore need to remain there for a long time, wondering when the fun will begin. In other words: you have a point, but not relevant to what I said.
Excellent article! Every MMORPG designer in existence should read this article and commit it to memory.
Ideally, this is how every MMORPG developer should test not just their starting area but their UI in general.
I think this became a problem because MMORPG developers have relied on the community do their jobs. The community has been expected to somehow figure out the mechanics and teach them to others. This is the developer's job.
Cryptic is a perfect example of developers who don't think they need to bother explaining anything to players. As only one example, in STO you have to make racial ability choices for your character before you've even enter the game world. How is anyone supposed to know what skills they should pick at that point?
Scrabble has been around for decades. It is a very successful game. And every single Scrabble game STILL comes with instructions on how to play it even after all these years. MMORPG developers like Cryptic need to think about that.
I would question the idea that you can pick up everything on the iphone by 'intuition'. Surveys have shown that most people do not know the full functionality of any hand held device. Regardless of it being a cell/mobile, hand held PC, whatever. They certainly think they can get by without reading the manual, but rarely can. Having said that, you are not going to miss what you don't know is there.
I don't know about tutorials... Personally, I think they're useless. People just skip through them anyways. But what I do think that needs to happen is they need to tailor a starting experience that will by definition teach you everything. My brother started playing WoW a while ago, and it's amazing, he went through almost the exact same steps in this article. I was amazed that he almost finished the starting zone and never used ANY ability at all other than autoattack. What they should have done is set it up that you start in a room, and in order to leave the room, you have to walk over to a quest-giver and get a quest. If the user did that, then you know he knows how to move and talk to NPCs. Then there should be some special mob that does no damage, but cannot be killed unless you use a special attack on it. So that if a user finished that, then you know he can use special attacks. Then maybe a similar mob that does damage, and can only be killed by say a level3 attack, which you can only get from a trainer. So if the user passes that, then you know that he knows about training his abilities. etc etc etc...
Tutorials as they are now, are indeed useless. What needs to be done is very NPC guided tutorials (with voice acting which you can not skip). What you propose might be a bit frustrating, but is spot on. Perhaps an active pause for a beginner area as well.
Oh and... any game which has a such complete tutorial should really have an option to skip the whole tutorial.
Originally posted by nethaniah
Seriously Farmville? Yeah I think it's great. In a World where half our population is dying of hunger the more fortunate half is spending their time harvesting food that doesn't exist.
Had to register just because of this article alone! Have a question even though I think I know the answer, was a trial account right? Because then it makes sense, every game I have ever played the first thing I look at is the manual, that is where it teaches you to use your skills, and how to learn new ones, the trial or starter area in any mmorpg(must say rpg otherwise mmo just doesn't cut it) I have ever played failed to really illustrate this. Exceptions maybe to lotro, they actually tell you in one of the starter quests to go to target dummy and hit x skill in order to advance, but even then that whole area can be skipped!
I remember my first mmorpg, like so many here it was EQ1, my brother got me into it, have always played rpg's before so it wasn't anything to me to know that I should be reading the information to know what to do, my biggest problem back then was the camera angle and learning how the hell to change it lol. Otherwise things could be beating on you from behind and you would never know it. Games these days are pretty tame compared to ole EQ1, many people just don't understand how easy they have it nowadays. Today people are in a rush to do y before they do x, when x is what they are needing to do, they forgo the manual, they skip the tutorial section or just close out the pop ups(because lets be real here, they are very annoying). I can understand her not knowing what to do because of not being a rpg player, people forget that WoW was meant as a mmorpg and just throw out that its an mmo, its not an mmo, its an mmorpg which means you need to read! Even though WoW has done pretty much everything to go away from the rpg aspect of the game much to my dismay /sigh.
I helped my dad get into WoW, he did pretty good on his own, always read everything that popped up, still had to show him some things, but he did great, got to around 40+ before he just couldn't play anymore because of sickness. So I understand the whole point of someone never playing these type of games and the learning curve for it. WoW for this type of experiment is not really a good way to get them into it, it is far easier than any of its predecessor's but that doesn't mean it makes learning something that is basically an evolution of EQ1 any easier. People need to remember that the development team basically all came from EQ, that started it anyway, so basically it is an advancement of that game.
Comments
Excellent article, but as the years have gone by, its not just the person new to MMO's that can be tripped up.
I remember playing WOW (after 4 years of DAOC, Lineage 1/2 and COH) and actually leveling my 2nd character, a dwarf priest after successfully leveling a paladin to 60.
So I'm in the early 30's and resting after a tough fight with raptors, and recovering my mana by drinking something so I could then cast on myself and heal up my damage.
It was my 12 year old son who said...Dad, you kniow you can eat food and drinik a drink and heal up both attributes at the same time.
What? I had never considered even trying that until he mentioned it. Doh.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Again - I offer you two products. One is so intuitive that no manual is needed. (Like my iPhone - I could use every feature on that thing without a manual. So can most 8 year olds. Wonder why it sells so well?)
The other product requires a manual to understand and begin using.
Which product do you think will become more popular? Do people enjoy having to read complex manuals in order to start having fun, in general?
Even AC1 back in 1999 had some instructions on how to play. They also let you skip the training area so experienced players wouldn't have to repeat stuff they already knew. I can't imagine how a complete novice would have managed STO, as even I, with over 10 years of MMO play, found some things confusing at first.
I think most MMOs assume that a new player is not also a new computer user, which will generally be true. Or if they are, they will probably have an experienced user with them to coach them. While its important to make sure that any game features that are unusual are well understood by players, there are diminishing returns to spending a lot of time on developing tutorials. These are something that most players will only need to experience once, so spending time on things that will help retain players is generally more cost-effective as long as the intro is adaquate.
Great read, had me cracking up a few times.
I don't know about tutorials... Personally, I think they're useless. People just skip through them anyways.
But what I do think that needs to happen is they need to tailor a starting experience that will by definition teach you everything.
My brother started playing WoW a while ago, and it's amazing, he went through almost the exact same steps in this article. I was amazed that he almost finished the starting zone and never used ANY ability at all other than autoattack.
What they should have done is set it up that you start in a room, and in order to leave the room, you have to walk over to a quest-giver and get a quest. If the user did that, then you know he knows how to move and talk to NPCs.
Then there should be some special mob that does no damage, but cannot be killed unless you use a special attack on it. So that if a user finished that, then you know he can use special attacks.
Then maybe a similar mob that does damage, and can only be killed by say a level3 attack, which you can only get from a trainer. So if the user passes that, then you know that he knows about training his abilities.
etc etc etc...
I don't skip through tutorials; I find them useful. The one in Fallen Earth is excellent and gives some nice starting gear.
If it needs a manual, there must be something wrong with the game, it needs a bit of dumb down polish.
Again - I offer you two products. One is so intuitive that no manual is needed. (Like my iPhone - I could use every feature on that thing without a manual. So can most 8 year olds. Wonder why it sells so well?)
The other product requires a manual to understand and begin using.
Which product do you think will become more popular? Do people enjoy having to read complex manuals in order to start having fun, in general?
Reading the manual gives you a head start even in the most user friendly game, because a good game offers way more possibilities then can be grasped intuitively. People who do not read the manual learn to play the game, but even when it involves not much effort you will not find what you are not looking for (because you don't need it to play the game) and therefor may be at an disadvantage, especially in mmorpg's. A good starter/learning area may help, but will not be much more exciting than reading the manual when you want to learn all aspect of the game and therefore need to remain there for a long time, wondering when the fun will begin. In other words: you have a point, but not relevant to what I said.
--
Delanor
Excellent article! Every MMORPG designer in existence should read this article and commit it to memory.
Ideally, this is how every MMORPG developer should test not just their starting area but their UI in general.
I think this became a problem because MMORPG developers have relied on the community do their jobs. The community has been expected to somehow figure out the mechanics and teach them to others. This is the developer's job.
Cryptic is a perfect example of developers who don't think they need to bother explaining anything to players. As only one example, in STO you have to make racial ability choices for your character before you've even enter the game world. How is anyone supposed to know what skills they should pick at that point?
Scrabble has been around for decades. It is a very successful game. And every single Scrabble game STILL comes with instructions on how to play it even after all these years. MMORPG developers like Cryptic need to think about that.
I would question the idea that you can pick up everything on the iphone by 'intuition'. Surveys have shown that most people do not know the full functionality of any hand held device. Regardless of it being a cell/mobile, hand held PC, whatever. They certainly think they can get by without reading the manual, but rarely can. Having said that, you are not going to miss what you don't know is there.
Tutorials as they are now, are indeed useless. What needs to be done is very NPC guided tutorials (with voice acting which you can not skip). What you propose might be a bit frustrating, but is spot on. Perhaps an active pause for a beginner area as well.
Oh and... any game which has a such complete tutorial should really have an option to skip the whole tutorial.
Had to register just because of this article alone! Have a question even though I think I know the answer, was a trial account right? Because then it makes sense, every game I have ever played the first thing I look at is the manual, that is where it teaches you to use your skills, and how to learn new ones, the trial or starter area in any mmorpg(must say rpg otherwise mmo just doesn't cut it) I have ever played failed to really illustrate this. Exceptions maybe to lotro, they actually tell you in one of the starter quests to go to target dummy and hit x skill in order to advance, but even then that whole area can be skipped!
I remember my first mmorpg, like so many here it was EQ1, my brother got me into it, have always played rpg's before so it wasn't anything to me to know that I should be reading the information to know what to do, my biggest problem back then was the camera angle and learning how the hell to change it lol. Otherwise things could be beating on you from behind and you would never know it. Games these days are pretty tame compared to ole EQ1, many people just don't understand how easy they have it nowadays. Today people are in a rush to do y before they do x, when x is what they are needing to do, they forgo the manual, they skip the tutorial section or just close out the pop ups(because lets be real here, they are very annoying). I can understand her not knowing what to do because of not being a rpg player, people forget that WoW was meant as a mmorpg and just throw out that its an mmo, its not an mmo, its an mmorpg which means you need to read! Even though WoW has done pretty much everything to go away from the rpg aspect of the game much to my dismay /sigh.
I helped my dad get into WoW, he did pretty good on his own, always read everything that popped up, still had to show him some things, but he did great, got to around 40+ before he just couldn't play anymore because of sickness. So I understand the whole point of someone never playing these type of games and the learning curve for it. WoW for this type of experiment is not really a good way to get them into it, it is far easier than any of its predecessor's but that doesn't mean it makes learning something that is basically an evolution of EQ1 any easier. People need to remember that the development team basically all came from EQ, that started it anyway, so basically it is an advancement of that game.