Setting a Learning Curve In MMOs

Ten Ton Hammer has an article looking at the learning curves of modern MMOs. Many of the more popular games, such as World of Warcraft, go to great lengths to make learning the game easy for new players. Others, such as EVE Online, have had success with a less forgiving introduction. But to what extent do the most fundamental game mechanics limit the more complex end-game play? "The current trend in MMOG's appears to be make the game so easy and interest-grabbing right out of the gate that even a person with the attention span of a monkey chewing on a flyswatter will be able to keep up and get into the swing of things. Depth of game mechanics is still possible with a system like this, but it needs to be introduced not only clearly, but later in the game, after a player has played enough to be hooked and is willing to put in some extra time to learn about the more intricate game mechanics available to them."

Comments

Emo-tears, for one

[Wee]

Why would people ever stick about when about the only fun in the game is griefing and counter-griefing is beyond me, but eh. To each his own.

And overcoming long odds in a battle. And finding that needle-in-a-haystack logoffski cheating bastard. And playing market games. And exploring. And, yeah, for running around being a pest or throwing weight around, or whatever. As well as the social aspect of it. I know most of my corp in real life, so it's good to hang out.

It's not purely about griefing, but there is a lot of it. There's can flipping and high-sec ganking and all that. But mostly, for me, it's about running around trying to get into an epic fight.

In the three years I've been playing it, I've had some experiences in Eve -- real physical reactions -- that movies, TV, games, have all failed to produce. It's a very visceral experience, because you aren't just losing pixels in an internet spaceships game. You're losing time and effort, like it's being taken from the real world. I suppose that why people take it so seriously. There's been more than a few times my heart's racing, head's pounding, sweat coming down your brow. And my experiences in this regard are not unique.

But in the end, causing epic emo-rage does have a mighty strong appeal to a lot of people, myself included. It doesn't happen often, but it's a strange feeling that comes over you when it's there. For example, not too long ago I was flying around in 0.0 with a buddy, just bored, looking for ratters or a fight or whatever. A new-ish character in a frigate comes through a gate on the other side of the system. It's an obvious alt, given his corp. Buddy asks if we want to take it. Of course! Frigates and shuttles are like pinatas, small and easy to crack open, but you never know what good stuff might fall out of them.

So he fools about with it over at his gate, and it manages to get away to the other gate in the the system, where I had been. I'd jumped through while the frig was in warp, and burned it back to the gate, waiting for it to pop through. Sure enough, gate fire and there it is. A zealot against a condor doesn't make for a long fight. I'm surprised I even got a lock before he could warp off, but I got the pod, too. Not a good pilot. And if he'd been smart, he'd have seen me leave local as I jumped out and surmised what was happening. But instead of safe up and log out in the previous system, he got spooked and panicked. Too bad, so sad. It's like they say: The lessons you pay for are the ones you learn.

Normally, we'd pop the wreck, no traces and all that. But I figured I'd have a look inside. (An old friend had found a few billion in BPOs in a shuttle some months back, so I got in the habit of checking even small wrecks.) Lo and behold, what do we have here? Some high grade implants, couple T2 items, a bunch of POS-related skill books, and some BPOs -- mostly ammo and weapons but if you squint you can see the Orca BPO sitting amidst the pile.

I think we pulled around 3 billion for all the stuff that we managed to get out of there (we had some folks in his main's corp hot on our tail, and had to dodge two other camps). But the best part? Oh, the emo-tears. Tiny fists were shaking with mighty force at the cruel injustices of the Eve universe. I had some of the most hilariously angry evemails I'd ever read. I mean, the guy was pissed at me. Like, personally. My response was along the lines of "Don't run 3 billion through 0.0 unscouted and you won't have losses like that" but that only egged him on. I guess everyone in that area has a pact with everyone else, except we weren't part of the deal, being interloping evil pirates and all. Oops, his bad. We weren't blue to him, so why would he think he was blue to us? What made him think we were there for anything but shooting at people? Yeah, so it wasn't a fair fight, not in the slightest, he was right about that. But that doesn't mean I particularly care.

We got promises