General Discussion

While attending the 2008 Indie MMO Developer's Conference in Minneapolis, Community Manager Laura Genender sat in on a panle discussing the importance of the newbie experience. In this report, she brings the thoughs of the panelsts and those of her own tot he table as she discusses this important element of game design.

The first ten minutes of your experience in a new MMO world are pivotal. The fate of your character (and subscription) rests on the back of you enjoying and understanding gameplay in those first 10 minutes; your continued interest and intrigue depend on the challenge and distinctiveness of the world and game systems. An MMO must be revealing enough to gain your interest, but secretive enough to make you log back in. It’s like some cybernetic courting dance of man and program.

So why the heck do so many newbie experiences suck?

This past weekend at the Indie MMO Game Developers Conference, I attended a panel featuring Brian ‘Psychochild’ Green, Meridian 59 designer and founder of Near Death Studios; Scott Hartsman, previous EQ2 maven now gone indie; Kelly ‘Ophelea’ Heckman, game journalism diva and now running Gamersinfo.net; and Jason Murdick, Product Developer for Simutronics Inc. This panel dealt with the all important topic of “Designing the New Player Experience.

Read the whole thing here.

What percentage is an 'awful' turnover though?

I think the designers expect a fairly high turnover in the first few levels, I certainly have found a lot of people quitting after/during the early section after having got the grasp of the basic concepts of the game and decided if the game's the right game for them - although I'm speaking generally about games with a free trial on, it's a whole different percentage to games you have to purchase to try.

So, for a free trial game - what's a decent turnover rate?

10% Stay on, 20%? Surely you can't hope for more than that... there are a lot of different types of MMO out there, and not everyone likes all the types, flavours and focusses that each has - I'd say 5%-10% is probably a pretty good stay-on rate.

Respectively for a pay-to-try game, presumably a bigger percentage:

50% still seems pretty high for new players to the game to decide they like it, I'd say more like 30% here.

If however you mean a high percentage of people don't even *finish* the tutorial ... then in that case, the tutorial needs to be re-designed, to be faster, simpler, and probably more fun. (Tabula Rasa did this to me durign the late beta, for example - so frustrating and unclear I was confident by about 30 minutes that the game was just not well enough designed to be fun.)

I liked the article, thank you.

Blizzard introduced more people to the MMORPG experience than any other company in history.  They didn't use a tutorial, just hints that pop up while playing.  

Maybe it's not about tutorials or introduction levels.   Maybe it's about well-designed UI and playable game mechanics.   

Portal was a great game.   But it was a gamer's game, not one meant to be anyone's first experience with a FPS as the article points out.     WoW has many flaws, but easily introducing newcomers to the game's instinctive UI is not one of them. 

It would be interesting to know how quickly Laura Geneder's mother could pick up playing WoW.

Maybe the tutorials aren't at fault, but developers who have forgotten that not all of their players have years of video game experience under their belts.     Developers who think they are targeting a broad market but assume that 'everyone' should know about some particular game mechanic or system. 

The panel described in the article may have completely missed the point telling developers that if they have horrible turn-over of low levels they should re-do their tutorial.   Maybe if they're having horrible turn-over of low levels, they should re-do their entire game.

WoW is, truly, pablum for the masses as far as MMOs are concerned.  It's easy to pick up for N00bs, non-threatening, progression is simple and it's fun.  By far, the vast majority of WoW players are casual -- they don't raid much (if at all) nor do they engage in PvP.  In fact, they don't play much compared to the hardcore crowd, but their monthly fee is the same. 

What scares the hell out of Mark Jacobs, Paul Barnett and all the folks at EA Mythic (I'll insert the FunCom crew here as well since it applies equally to Age of Conan) is the fact that Warhammer On Line and Age of Conan are PvP centric so in all reality the chances of drawing 10 million players worldwide for either game is slim to none and for success, they *have* to draw the casual player to their games.

I know I'll get flames from the hardcore, old school MMO / PvP players on this, but N00bs, as was alluded to in this well written article, must be catered to for a game to go from boutique kiche to global.

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THey need to teach newbies how to play in a fun away and not something boring

We hear so many games gloating about the "easy to learn, hard to master" type of learning curves. Yet, there's only a few ones who can deliver that, and most of them have shallow game play.

It is possible to make a game that is easy to learn, and yet, with enough depths that you won't loose those who wants challenge in some point. I'm an indi developer myself, and currently working on a game for the XBLA. The learning curve play a huge role in our development process. To the point that anyone able to hold a mouse, should be able to play our game. All this without detracting the savy because as you scratch under the surface, you will discover tremendous game mechanics to find yourself drowning into options and customization. (It's a card/board game btw)

You just have to doze it well, and that's what beta test are for. Make sure you have all kinds of people joining your beta, so they represent a wide market instead of just the targeted audience. Targeting audiences is nothing more then admiting your limitation to please a wide area of gamers. It is for me, a "i give up to mediocrity" kind of plea. I'll say it again: Having a great game with depths, doesn't mean it should be unplayable for a newbie. And making an easy game to learn, doesn't mean it shouldn't challenge your brain and skills at some point.

All to say that this concept applies to "any" games. I really don't understand why a game would bother to launch if it can't be understood by everyone with an I.Q. above 90. Those developers are right about the first 10 minutes, and it's not just in a MMO but in pretty much any game. Microsoft is asking us to deliver an experience in the first 10 minutes that will make the player want to go up to 30, and after that, the end game should sell itself. In a MMO you can break this down in much more pieces, but it's the same result: As good as your end game may be, it's pointless if the first few hours are boring you to tears. (EvE) And as good and easy as your first hours/days can be, it's pointless if your end game suck ass. (WoW) So the next gen MMO will understand all of this, and will make it fun to play from the first 10 minutes, until they pull the plug on the game. Wether you are a gamer or a developer, you shouldn't shoot for anything less then that anyway.

Again, having specific servers, some with casual labelled on them and where you gain XP a LOT faster would be very important.  Some other servers to cater to each major gameplay.

The days of the 1 server where everyone is forced into FFA PvP, full looting...these days are gone.  You can have 1 such server, but you need many variations, and yes, you do need a casual server.  Someone reach max level in 1 day on this server?  Good for them.  I ain't playing there.

Originally posted by Alienovrlord

Blizzard introduced more people to the MMORPG experience than any other company in histor