Hiding Depth

Is it worth hiding the depth of your game's systems from new players?

Many games--specifically, MMOs--have an almost completely consistent track record of making their mechanics start off incredibly simple. Many of them have interesting and complex mechanics, but, at the beginning of the game, they are consistently simple. Most MMOs start you off with one or two very basic combat abilities, and it takes quite a long time to unlock the complexity of your character.
There are, of course, valid reasons for doing this. It allows for players to be slowly immersed in complicated mechanics. It can make the game far less overwhelming for new players, potentially preventing them from being turned off by the complexity. It also allows for a clear feeling of progression, the mechanics of the game getting more complicated as you and your characters progresses. From a design standpoint, new abilities/mechanics are often some of the most anticipated and desirable rewards, so spreading them out over a long time could help insure that the player consistently has something to look forward to for a long period of time. But is it worth it?



In the MMO genre, at least, it's starting to seem like it's not. Let's take, for example, the recently released The Secret World. Personally, there is much that I love about the game, so it will be hard for me to avoid bias. The combat system in TSW, though by no means revolutionary, is done well and has a lot of interesting complexity. However, in the early stages of the game, none of this shows through.

In TSW, you can equip two different types of weapons and use up to 8 active skills and 8 passive skills from either weapon. Funcom did an incredible job of making many different combinations actually viable. There are plenty of ways that skills can synergize with each other, and it's possible to make almost any weapon combination effective.

In terms of actual combat, movement, timing, and adaptation are important to success. Unlike most games in the genre, all skills can be cast while moving, encouraging more movement and fluidity. Each weapon has its own type of resource, of which up to five can be built (some weapons build resources on yourself, some on a specific enemy target). Some abilities build resources and others consume them. Many 'builder' abilities build resources for both equipped weapons, creating an interesting counter-play between both weapons. The management and use of two different resource types creates a creative and varied flow to combat.

The Secret World's lovely ability wheel

The 8 equipable passive skills are far more interesting than what the term "passive" generally brings to mind in terms of RPGs. Rather than simply giving your character some sort of stat boost, passive skills can actually completely change the way that some of your skills work, or make skills work together that previous didn't (for example, one passive skill makes a certain builder apply a specific 'state' to an enemy, allowing you to more effectively use another skill that exploits that state).

All in all, TSW's combat allows for a whole lot of creativity from the player. I've spent hours just choosing which abilities to use in conjunction with each other and testing them out in The Crucible (a training area in London which lets you spend Ability Points on new skills and try them out without permanently committing to those abilities). Coming up with a combination that works well is rewarding, and it gives an incredible feeling of individuality. Rather than just being a Warrior or a Rogue or a Wizard that just knows how to use his abilities well, you are truly in charge or creating your own character.

However, it takes quite a long time to get to the point at which the complexity shines through, and it takes even more time to acquire enough stored up Ability Points to try out a significant amount of new abilities before purchasing them. As I followed the beta and release of the game, the most common negative feedback from new players was about the combat. Many called it boring and archaic, especially in contrast to the novelties and innovations that The Secret World contained elsewhere. Some of the blame for this can be placed upon bad visual feedback in combat, which has been acknowledged by the developers. I won't get too much into the importance of feedback here, but it has been a notable problem. Feedback issues can be fixed via animation, sound, and timing tweaks. The problem of perceived lack of depth, however, is not so easy to fix.

Players complained constantly about the boring and too-simple combat in the early stages of the game. Those who were enthralled enough by the game's other features or were simply patient enough to continue would eventually find that the combat becomes much more interesting and fun. However, since it can take up to tens of hours before the complexity of combat fully unfurls for the player, many players quit before they made it to that point. Players such as myself bellow cries of "it gets better!" to all these early deserters, some going so far as to insult the quitters for their lack of patience or reprimanding them for not expecting such a slow progression of complexity.

If only players could have this mentality

So what can be done about this issue? Some would say that it isn't an issue at all; patience is simply a requirement for the genre, and having to wait longer for rewards and progression makes the rewards more valuable. However, as more and more convenience and time-saving features start to creep into the genre in order to allow for more productive short periods of play, the expected patience of players has gone down. Some of this can be attributed to the dying novelty of the genre, both in the sense that players are less easily impressed and in the fact that most players are no longer new to the genre and have lots of experience with similar mechanics.

It's a difficult balance, as attempting to cater to initial player interest and long-term player retention simultaneously can be contradictory. Put too much up front, and players run out of significant long-term goals. Don't put enough up front, and players will get bored and quit before they're ever exposed to some of the more compelling aspects of the game.

Luckily, since I started writing this, Guild Wars 2 was released, providing a good point of comparison. In Guild Wars 2, your main active abilities are not determined by level. A player's first five active abilities are determined by the weapon that they have equipped. In order to avoid overwhelming new players, only one of these abilities is initially available, with subsequent abilities unlocking fairly quickly by using the weapon in combat.

This system allows the complexity of the combat to be revealed more quickly to the player. However, I've witnessed more than a few players discouraged by the fact that, fairly early on, they run out of exciting new combat abilities to unlock.

Interestingly enough, I've still witnessed players turned off in the first couple hours of gameplay by the perceived simplicity of the combat. With all this contradictory information, it's hard to come to a conclusion. Perhaps that means that the only real answer is to keep the player enthralled by other things long enough to keep them patient through the development of a complex combat system.