Hello! This past weekend, I was playing OTC when my friend, an older gentleman who's played World of Warcraft and several other PC games on-and-off for the past 20 years saw it and wanted to learn how to play.
In my former life, I was a senior game designer at Riot Games / Blizzard Entertainment and one of those responsibilities was to observe new players interacting with the game from scratch to observe the hiccups and points of confusion where player get lost. While this is no substitute for a video recording, here's the notes:
His First Experience:
- Within moments of opening the JOJI tutorial and completing the text boxes, John bumped his mouse
- This caused the camera to shoot off to the top right corner.
- The result was that he spent about 5 minutes attempting to click on the Iron/Aluminum radar icons that appear in the fog of war
- Assuming he was controlling the game wrongly, he then began spamming the "Claim" button
I held back from stepping in until asked. At which point, he turned and asked: "Why doesn't this game play like it does when you play it?"
Directing him to move his cursor around the screen edges, he then rapidly dragged it to the opposite side.
It became clear very quickly, that camera control was a moderate to high obstacle for him. This happens to be a trend among novice RTS players in general - and was an issue on Starcraft 2, Diablo, HotS and League of Legends as well.
Second Stage:
Once the camera controls were explained and he moved the mouse more carefully...
- The mine icons appeared next to the Aluminum/Iron resource readouts on the left
- However, the initial appearance was occluded by the "NEW RESOURCE" pop-up
- Watching his eyes, I noticed that he glanced up, saw the pop-ups then didn't see the "Mine" icons underneath
- Next, his eyes were drawn to the "New Claim" button.
- Being bright, white and very visible, he began clicking on it and attempting to claim more tiles
- Next, he moused over the "Build an Aluminum Mine" quest progress tracker, looking for help
- At this point, he asked me what he was doing wrong.
- I directed him to the "Mine" button next to the resource
- He then responded, "Why would I click a button that's darkened out?"
Third Stage:
Once building a mine was understood, he was easily able to map the Mine -> Blocks idea. But made a curious statement:
- "Why are the lines of the resource going to my enemies base?"
- "When do I get to put my own base down?"
A quick explanation that it *was* his based seemed to help clear-up things for him.
- Two mines were built - first iron, then aluminum
- He then got impatient and wanted to build more things
- He then clicked on "Metal Mine" again...
- Which caused the game to pause
- The result was that he waited several minutes before asking me what he had to do to send the Aluminum Shipment.
- Showed him how to unpause the game and he continued.
Fourth Stage:
The alternate resources were well-explained and easily understood. When the resources were added to the UI again, again the NEW RESOURCE blocked the "Elemental Quarry" icon. This caused a repeat of the same issue as in stage 2.
- Once the resources were being harvested, he was instructed to build power - no problem.
- Then an electronics facility
- He elected to build the electronics facility halfway across the map
- Not sure why
- Then he spent about 10 minutes waiting, as the resources were ferried around the map
- Similarly, he waited till it reached 20 when the tutorial demanded 2.
- At this point, he was annoyed the electronics progress wasn't happening and built a 2nd electronics facility
- About this same time, the original shipment finished and the tutorial completed
In Summary:
- The camera bounds allowed him to completely lose sight of his base at the beginning of the tutorial
- The loss of context meant he was trying to "claim" fog of war icons
- The awareness of the robotics facility being his was missed.
- The new Metal Mine / Quarry icons being darkened caused him to miss the cue
- The Claim icon being constantly Bright White meant he put a lot of attention on it
- Attempting to build new structures paused the game, but he could never build due to "You require authorization"
- Paused game prevented aluminum shipments
- New Resource pop-up occluded vision of the new building buttons
- He constructed electronics far from the base, delaying overall build time
After this session, I explained all of the issues to him and he was able to play the Maisie Song tutorial almost flawlessly. (Some minor confusion about when to buy/sell resources)
Suggestions:
- Darken the "Claims Remaining" button in the tutorial
- Brighten the "New Building" buttons
- Constraint the camera so the Robotics Facility is always visible on the screen for Tutorial (Locked or rubber bandy camera instead?)
- Don't pause the game in Tutorial 1 and 2
- Shift the "New Resource" indicators right so they don't obfuscate the Mine/Quarry buttons
Hope this session helps your development,
-Alex Brazie
aka Xelnath
