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An interesting read on usability (from Gamasutra.com)
Ikkei
Member Posts: 169
Usability Breakthroughs: Four Techniques To Improve Your Game
link: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/6130/usability_breakthroughs_four_.php
"[Torque's Eric Preisz and two Full Sail usability center PhDs offer four techniques to help make your game more accessible -- even if you don't have access to a giant lab and dozens of focus testers for feedback.]
"Usability is a crucial factor when attempting to reach large, diverse audiences with a game. A commonly stated rule-of-thumb is that if your player doesn't understand the basics of your interface in two minutes, they'll stop playing your game. Therefore, good usability is critical to game success.
"When it comes to designing usable games, it is critical not only to understand how your target audience experiences your game, but also how other groups of individuals not in your target audience will react to a product (professionals call these "core" and "fringe" users). [...]"
--
I think this is good food for thought in the ongoing debates about FF XIV, DF, and general usability issues with MMOs--a rather complicated and technical genre of video game by design.
Comments
The article is very right!
I am epxerienced and needed a day to understand how FF XIV works and there is nearly no good help ingame in the beta that tells you really what to do.
Example is when you do your first fight and you are told to switch to combat mode but you are not told how.......very inaccessible!
New and inexperienced gamers get a bad first impression here b4 the game has even a chance to catch them...
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
Indeed, Seffren!
I took a class on usability in the local community university. I didn't like it much, because usabilty experts basically work like this:
Your users are stupid, stupid people. Impatient morons who should not be expected to do anything but reach for the very first option on the screen that looks likely to them to get what they want done.
Seriously, that's basically the rule of thumb they grind into you if you're attempting to learn to make usable interfaces. We had a course book for the class, it was titled, "Don't Make Me Think."
I didn't like the course because it bothered me philosophically. Part of it was because I wanted to be a game designer, and games are supposed to make you think, basically if you lead the player around by the nose constantly, they're not even playing the game anymore so much as following instructions. It also bothered me because, what kind of society do we live in where we're supposed to encourage people not to think? In the end, my conclusion is this: if the user is an idiot, I don't think it's a good idea to empower them, I'd rather encourage them to give up their idiotic ways by forcing them to do a bit of thinking every once in awhile.
Besides, I don't think Final Fantasy XIV is strictly speaking a casual game. They've tried to make some concessions to make things easier for casual participants, true. However, the larger bulk of the game is still very hard, it's no walk in the park, it's a game intended to appeal to core gamers. That being the case, perhaps the usability goal is being met for Final Fantasy XIV.
Designers must understand that some users need to be lead into the gameplay and like with childs giving them slowly more and more initiative and responsibility for their actions.
If the barrier is to big no one can climb over it, so game designers have to teach the player to climb starting with the 1 feet hill up to the mount everest in the end !
"Torquemada... do not implore him for compassion. Torquemada... do not beg him for forgiveness. Torquemada... do not ask him for mercy. Let's face it, you can't Torquemada anything!"
MWO Music Video - What does the Mech say: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF6HYNqCDLI
Johnny Cash - The Man Comes Around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0x2iwK0BKM
Square Enix should have copied World of Warcrafts user interface because it's the best there is but nooo they had to do it their own way and it's gonna hurt the sales of Final Fantasy XIV because of it.
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
Yeah, that approach worked great for Warhammer Online.
Wait, no it didn't.
You must be shitting me.
Hey everyone WAR bombed because it copied the interface from WoW geldonyetich said so it must be true.
/facepalm
Don't get into game development since you would make horrible games.
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
Oh, it wasn't me who said it. It was the people who do this shit for a living.
Copy the interface, you copy the way the game is played. Copy the way the game is played, you're copying a significant amount of the gameplay. The GUI is inseperable from the greater bulk of the gameplay. You're basically aspiring to be a WoW killer.
After so many good games have tried and failed, it's been determined this just doesn't work: if people want to play WoW, they'll play WoW. Final Fantasy XIV has a better chance at succeeding because it's different from WoW than it does because of its similarities.
Why do you insist that making an interface hard to handle is equal to letting people use their brains, that it requires more intellect? (Makes you hardcore).
I can say about myself I posess a sufficient amount of intelect, but when I go to a website and the menu structure is fubar, and it takes me to long to figure out where the information is located that I need, then I'm out.
Does that make me an idiot? Does that make me intellectually retarded? No, it doesn't. It tells us that with the latest evolutions in technology, the generations of user interfaces of websites that got better, faster and more intuitive, we got used to a specific manner of getting to the info fast. Spending to much time on a website figuring out how it works to get to the info, is a bad thing, it is something of the past. Now we want to direct or time and attention to the info itself, or getting to other info asap.
We want the info to be hardcore ... not the interface to get to it!
Why re-invent the wheel? Make the wheel better yes, but don't start with a Square
again.
You just made me cry.
You better not venture into business sphere if you think that forcing your customers into something is a way how to make money.
Tears of joy or tears of sadness?
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
Tears of pain really ... Geldon's last post made me run my head into the wall.
Yeah that guy has no clue and he wants to become a game developer... god help us all.
All those memories will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.
I just started perpetuum online. OMG I literally had to be taught how to pay by somebody ingame lol. I tend to stick around in games longer when I understand HOW to play. I stuck it out with perpetuum cuz i have a weakness for mech games.
Back on topic. Ya man qft :P
True, I'd rather make good games than sell out, and this is something that would confuse a buisinessman like (from what I've heard of him) Bobby Kotick.
It would probably help if you'd actually start by replying to the messages you quoted instead of the ones you imagined you read. If nothing else, it'd make me feel my efforts replying feel worth it.
I didn't write the interface was "hard to handle," I wrote that the game is "very hard" referring to the balance of fighting monsters and whatnot. Granted, the Interface is hard to handle, it has some GUI lag, but I'm not supporting that here and hope they eliminate it soon. Rather, I support the idea that the interface can be different.
Then you go off on a big tangent about how you're pleanty smart and so you don't need to learn how to use an new interface. Does not compute, but hey, I can't argue with it'd be be nice if you could get what you want without having to learn anything new. At most, I could perhaps argue that there is an advantage to setting the bar of entry at people who are willing to invest effort into the game rather than expect it to entertain them without giving anything back.
So, lets see what you two gave me to work with over the past few messages:
You must be shitting me. Hey everyone WAR bombed because it copied the interface from WoW geldonyetich said so it must be true.
You just made me cry.
Tears of joy or tears of sadness?
Tears of pain really ... Geldon's last post made me run my head into the wall.
Yeah that guy has no clue and he wants to become a game developer... god help us all.
Well, that's... very nice. Listen, clearly you two are really fine, upstanding gentlemen, and I can tell you really hit it off, so I'm going to.. work the other side of the room... for a bit. You guys have fun.
I personally don't have a problem with the differences in the UI compared to the other games out there, there was a bit of a learning curve but I got over it.
Could there be more information about it and how it works? Absolutely. Theres a control map posted on the beta site and I would figure it should be included in the manual for the retail copy (hopefully I'm right on this).
I think with games copying the UI the problem is for a lot of people they log in" go hey its just like (insert game title here)", it looks the same, it plays the same and then after a little while of playing they start to realize its not the game they thought they were playing.
To copy the interface would beg comparison to that other game and when they realize its different they would become alienated with the game itself.
Sorry for the edit reread some of the posts, I agree with Geld on this one for FFXIV they would probably have a better chance of succeeding with the current UI as it is.
None of us have seen the box w/ the game manual inside. It is quite possible, even likely given the console-ish nature of the game that all will be revealed when the wrapper is removed!
(Of course, even if the manual is 100 pages long and full of every command in the game, people will be screaming that things are hard to use and there is no 'explanation'.)
Laterz.
WoW is a solid game, but the UI is hands down the worst I've ever used. It's the ONLY MMO out of the 20 or so I've played over the past 13 years where I downloaded a UI addon. FFXIV's is garbage, but don't ask them to swap crap for crap.
Joined - July 2004
I think a lot of the frustration with FFXIV UI isn't strictly it's design but it's unresponsiveness. I think I understood the interface, but just found it slow and overly tedious (menu depths).
How many posts were to the effect "I told it to cast and it didn't", so the user knew what they were doing. The game didn't respond as expected though (due to lag?)
I found Darkfall's interface infuriating, but I understood it. Equip sword, prepare to attack, attack. (FFXIV streamlined it..if you aren't switching jobs)
Another thing is understanding the Why. Sure I know how to repair a piece of equipment. But, why do I have to do 6 or so commands to do it(multiplied by amount of equipment to repair)
Drop the next-gen marketing and people will argue if the game itself has merit.
I went to Full Sail and I have coded a few interfaces. There are some very old and unchanging design philosophies around interface design that will always hold true. The basis is keep the interface as shallow and minimal as possible. The thing is you guys are comparing a Console + PC game where they did not adjust the UI for the PC. Plain and simple, no deep reasoning or philosophy. We don't know why other than them claiming keeping the experience uniform on all platforms.
It should be obvious why a UI that works for consoles will be cumbersome for those on PC using a keyboard/mouse combo. The menus in a console have to be nested with one entry point branching out into a tree where with a PC every menu can be reduced to being 1 action deep with an entry point for each mapped to a key.
The only thing SE can do if they want a uniform experience and an unaltered UI is to provide a keymapping portion inside their FFXIV Config external application and allow a number of mapping shortcuts to individual menu items. This may be what happens.
SE knows how to make solid UI's for Console games and the Console is for the most part limited to a controller. This is their lowest common denominator. They have provided a way to play with keyboard and mouse within this UI, but I am sure it is not out there for them to think that many PC users especially in their country use a controller. It is a good UI for a console MMO, but the PC GUI will never be as good as a game designed purely for PC.
It's a valid point saying that MMOs should be different than wow to be sucessfull. Every company and their mother tried to backwards-engineer the wow formular and EVERYONE failed miserably, because backwardsengineering isn't as simple as it seems. I completely agree with that.
However, IF it's different it better be at least as good, if not better than wow in it's own way. FF XIVs is way worse to a degree that you'll begin to question the professionality of the Designers involved. Sure FF XIV is "different" but that doesn't matter as long as it is so bad.
On a second note: "easyness" in Interface design doesn't mean "dumb" or "for the retarded". The opposite is true. Everone can come up with clunky and complicated menues and Interfacestructure in minutes but it takes a talented professional to design an easy to use Interface which gets the same jobs done. It's like mathmatics: The simpler the formular, the more elegant the equation. The most groundbreaking formulars in mathmatics and physics are extremely simple in design. That doesn't mean that they are simple to achieve, the opposite is true, it's just the endresult which is simple, meaning it is elegant. Same thing with interface design.
Good game = high sales
Just my 2 cents...