Accessibility, Part 2: Setting up and delivering user expectations

Reading back over my posts, I've realized I've completely glossed over a major reason games are played: Expectation.

To explain what I mean, let me put up a hypothetical situation;

If you encounter a boss randomly and it dies to one swing, you feel surprised, but not necessarily happy about it. If you had instead spent the last 20 hours upgrading your character and then it dies to one swing, would you feel happier?

My personal hypothesis is that the latter would be a more satisfying experience. Why? It conforms to what the player expects to happen.

What if instead, that boss randomly killed you in one blow? That would feel particularly bad. But if instead, the boss bellowed and screamed for a minute while "charging" power ridiculously and then killed you in a gigantic blow, how would that feel?

To look at the individual event that make up games is a bit shortsighted. One instead must walk the careful line with setting up player expectations without treating them like complete idiots.

Tradition

Tradition is, perhaps, the most powerful force you can use to set up player expectations. It also tends to be why people don't adopt other gaming systems easily.

For example, take this complaint about the MMO Dofus:

"For the entire time I played, no weapons or armor dropped from any monster. I wish this game wasn't so boring."

While the complaint is a valid one, I would wager that the real brunt of the complaint is simply because Dofus does not adhere to traditional expectations when it comes to items. Imagine if you were accustomed to weapons or armors dropping every once in a while from monsters, and suddenly encountering a game where all you obtained were randomly miscellaneous items, like in Dofus.

It is in fact, impossibly difficult to find items in Dofus. Combine this with random statistics and perfect items in Dofus are rare finds. However, the design of Dofus is that any item in the game, including the rarest items in the game, can be crafted from generic monster drops and rare monster drops. It is not a requirement to have any piece of gear drop. If you want that mushroom hat, all one must do is collect 30 mushrooms, guarenteed if you kill 30 mushrooms!

However, this is unlike normal games. And thus the complaint arises: 'I've spent hours killing mushrooms, and all I have is 100 mushrooms and no mushroom gear!'

Solution: Set up player expectations early. In Dofus, this would be greatly aided by having the player craft his first set of gear, or have some sort of generic craft system. If they had made their crafting system more obvious from the beginning, this sort of complaint would arise fairly rarely.

Understanding the System

The second major way to set up player expectation is hinged around making the player understand the underlying system. As explained before, the human brain is geared towards linear understanding. Exponentials and radical divergences from linear patterns are not easily understood.

For example, if I raise my attack power from 50 to 100, I should expect that my attack power doubles or increases by 100%. If instead, attack power was a logarithmic function, my attack power would only increase about log (2) or 40%. This violates player expectations. Imagine if the player had spent a great deal of time upgrading his gear and doubling his listed attack power, only to find out that the net return is only a fraction of what he gains.

This would be a major punch to the gut of any player attempting to understand the system.

If your system is complex in any way at all, you must set up a general explanation so the player will understand how the system works. The goal is to change player expectation to what your system will produce.

Therefore, in the above case, a simple tool-tip that explains how attack power works whenever the player has his cursor over attack power would go quite a bit towards weighing relative worth of equipment and abilities.

Visual Impact

Visual expectation are probably the most natural system that we can comprehend. In short, the more visually interesting an object is (size, flashiness, colors), the more impact it should have on the game. If you want a a major reason why adventure games are no longer seen in this world, it's because they violate this rule time and time again. The amount of time searching for the one item that will change the world which HAPPENS TO BE 3 PIXELS WIDE. Visual impact: Almost none. Game Impact: The entire missing piece to the puzzle.

Things that look small and unimportant should NOT have a major impact on the current situation. Conversely, things that look large and important should have a major impact on the current situation. Unless the player has been properly trained to look for small specific cues, you cannot expect that the player will understand that 'the tiny cute bunny' is actually a harbinger of death. Likewise, if the screen is filled with impressive nuclear explosions that do absolutely nothing, the effect is impossible to ignore and visually confusing.

You must always work to bring visual impact with actual impact, as this follows what players will expect. In the event that you wish to hide or brag things, you must first alter player expectations accordingly, perhaps by hinting of small things or setting up the scenario before hand.

Why bother?

Violating player expectation always carries some negative impact for the player. Either they will be frustrated at the experience, or they will not have the potential joy or the correct reaction. If the expectation is violated in a negative sense, then the player will feel frustrated. If the expectation is violated in a positive surprising sense, the player will be surprised but not necessarily as happy as he would be if it fulfilled his expectation.