Learning a new raid boss

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about why learning a new boss fight has become a simple task for many World of Warcraft players.

One thing that always amazes me is a raid’s ability to learn and memorize the key characteristics and mechanics of a new raid boss within just a week. Raids are groups of people who teamed up in a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) in order to collaboratively tackle the most challenging foes that mostly can be found in so-called raid instances.

Last week, „The Nighthold“, a new raid instance, opened in World of Warcraft and challenges players with 10 new boss fights of which each features a unique set of game mechanics. In addition, World of Warcraft, in the current version 7.1.5, offers raids the option to choose between three different difficulty levels: normal, heroic and mythic. While the raid size can scale from 10 to 30 players on normal and heroic, a mythic raid must consist of 20 players. Also, higher difficulty levels can add additional game mechanics to boss fights in order to make them more challenging.

For instance, the „Star Augur Etraeus“ boss features 25 different game mechanics on normal, 28 game mechanics on heroic, and 34 game mechanics on mythic difficulty. Of course, not all of the game mechanics are important for every player, but it is still critical to be aware of all of them in order to master a boss fight.

Currently, I am a member of a relatively casual raid that assembles twice a week for the purpose of experiencing the game’s content without having the clear ambition of beating the highest difficulty. During the first week, we managed to defeat 7 of the 10 bosses and were about to learn the 8th boss as the second raid evening came to an end. Now, in the second week since the release of The Nighthold, we managed to defeat all of the 8 bosses we saw in the first week during our first raid evening. That is quite an improvement!

The reason for this good improvement probably is twofold: on the one hand, most raid bosses reuse already known game mechanics; on the other hand, many good video guides got released and explain the boss fight mechanics in details. Although Blizzard Entertainment, the developers of World of Warcraft, try to challenge players with unique boss fights, most of the game mechanics can be reduced to a few main principles: do not stand in damage causing effects, eliminate additional enemies that join a boss fight as soon as possible, react accordingly when the boss applies a certain negative effect to you or a fellow raid member. Hence, instead of acquiring completely new knowledge, players are only required to generalize the game mechanics used in order to learn a new encounter. It only becomes difficult when a short reaction time is required as this is a human ability that has to be trained separately.

Also, in order to get a good basic understanding of a boss fight, many players watch video guides that explain a raid encounter in details thus providing them with all the knowledge needed before personally seeing the boss for the first time. However, this approach is a bit strange as it takes away most of the challenge of playing World of Warcraft.

In the end, learning a new boss fight rarely requires the acquisition of new knowledge. Instead, learning a new encounter requires players to apply their World of Warcraft experience gained over their whole gametime in order to classify the game mechanics. Therefore, learning new encounters is more of an iterative learning process that starts in the moment when a player starts playing the game for the first time.

Unobtrusive Tutorials

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about different ways how games introduce new players into the gameplay without breaking the immersion.

Most of the current computer games start with a tutorial or at least provide a tutorial as an option in the game’s main menu. A tutorial explains new players the general gameplay and introduces them into the game controls in order to facilitate the start of a new game. In general, a tutorial is a well structured small mission that provides players with clear instructions and clear goals. For instance, at the start of a First Person Shooter (FPS), players receive accurate instructions about the movement controls and subsequently are required to perform a small task, such as running up a hill or collecting an item, during which they can practice using the controls.

RimWorld informs players about game mechanics with small text boxes.

Unfortunately, most tutorials break the immersion of a game as they heavily restrict a player, use a high amount of text to convey the information and often are not directly tied into the rest of the gameplay. However, there are also very good exceptions that inform the players about the game mechanics without actually forcing them to perform a certain activity. The colony simulator RimWorld, for example, displays small text boxes with information when the player has reached a certain point or encountered a particular problem. Players then can read those information in order to learn more about the relevant game mechanics or just ignore them. This way, the game introduces the players to the gameplay without actually forcing them to perform a certain activity.

Astroneer unobtrusively informs players about important game mechanics.

Alternatively, some games almost ignore the player and only display tiny bits of information the player has to know in order to progress with the game. For instance, Astroneer, a space exploration as well as building game, only displays the key binding activating a certain game mechanic when the player has reached a certain point for the very first time. During the gameplay, players need to gather different resources using a so-called Terrain Tool which can be activated by pressing ‚Q‘. As soon as a new player approaches a patch of resources for the very first time, the game just informs the player about the tool without actually explaining how to operate it. This allows the player to activate this game mechanic and subsequently to try it out on their own thus learning the game controls on the fly. Moreover, Astroneer displays buttons on machines or vehicles when a certain activity can be performed without directly explaining what the button does. This again allows players to observe the functionality of the game mechanics and to learn the gameplay from scratch. In the end, Astroneer’s tutorial is hardly noticeable by the players as it does not break the immersion and allows players to continuously play the game.

As a conclusion, tutorials are important as they inform players about game controls they can only guess. However, it is important that the information are presented in a very unobtrusive way in order to avoid breaking the immersion and allowing players to learn the gameplay from scratch which can even result in a rewarding feeling as it gives players the impression of having discovered something on their own.

Borders of borderless open worlds

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the necessity of implementing believable world borders in order to avoid breaking a game’s immersion.

Increasing the immersion of a computer game can often be achieved by allowing players to freely explore the virtual worlds. Open world games do not force the players to move in a particular direction by only providing a linear path through the game world. Instead, those games enable players to wander around and even reach places that have no direct connection to the narration. Naturally, depending on the type of the game, players are still guided by quests and other game goals that, on completion, advance the game’s story, but between those tasks, players are free to explore the game world on their own. This approach gives players the feeling of freedom thus greatly increasing the immersion of the game.

However, open world games, unless they rely on a procedurally generated terrain, are not endless virtual worlds. At some point, a player will reach the end of the virtual environment when constantly travelling in the same direction. In order to avoid breaking the immersion of the game when the player reaches the end of the world, game developers need to implement believable world borders that match the setting of the game. For instance, in a post-apocalyptic world a world border can be implemented by designing an area that is highly contaminated and kills the player within a short amount of time. Other prominent solutions are high mountains, blocked roads or deep water which can not be crossed by the players.

Unfortunately, there are also games that intend to provide the players with immersive environments but fail at achieving this due to bad implementations of a world border. The probably most disappointing and immersion breaking approach is to implement invisible walls. Once a players reaches such a wall, he can not proceed any more in the desired direction and just stops moving. Other bad solutions are when the player instantly dies or gets teleported back to a place inside of the game world.

The latter approach is used in DiRT Rally which is not directly an open world game but tries to provide the players with an authentic environment. Due to the nature of rallying, a player easily can slide off the roads and hence needs a way to return back to it in order to continue with a rally stage. Unfortunately, DiRT Rally uses an unpredictable way of forcing the players back to the roads. In general, players have 15 seconds to return back to the road before getting reset. This already can become frustrating when the player almost has reached the road again and suddenly finds himself in a completely different position. However, at some places the game instantly resets the player although the 15 seconds have not passed yet. Those moments then result in a high degree of frustration as it completely breaks the immersion of the game. A better solution would be to not constrain the players with time limits and instant resets. Instead, players should be able to find their way back to the road – the maps still could have a border in form of impassable terrain – and only be required to manually reset their cars when they are completely stuck. This would greatly increase the immersion, especially as the stages must be completed within a given amount of time (15minutes for short stages and 30 minutes for long stages).

As a conclusion, implementing an authentic and immersive world not only requires the design of a good virtual environments but also demands the implementation of believable world borders.