How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate?

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Isgrimnur
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How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate?

Post by Isgrimnur »

This is an offshoot of a GT thread about changing gaming habits, which I'm sure will be bandied about here as well.

How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate in your games today? Are you willing to read the (now PDF :hawk: ) manuals to learn things? Are you willing to keep plugging away at a difficult mission? Or are you prone to dropping a game that requires what you would consider too much effort to master (Dark Souls >kof<)

Personally, I'm working on being more willing to put in effort after most of my gaming reached a consolization level where I couldn't be bothered to take a different tack on things. I've been playing Shadowrun, which is my first long-term foray into turn-based combat since Planescape Torment back in the day, which I never finished.

Also, I bought a new flightstick, which is tasked with Star Citizen, but I also want to dive back into the world of military flight sims and enjoy some long-flight bombing runs and some yank-and-bank dogfighting, including learning more about radar search modes, and learning what all those buttons do.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by coopasonic »

It really depends on interest level of the material and style of game play. If I like the theme and style I will put in a great deal of effort to learn the game. There are certain boxes that, when checked, I am all in, at least until I burn out.

Turn Based Tactical Combat is at the top of the list. RPG-esque character progression is right below it.

On the other hand I have learned it doesn't matter how cool the game might be in other ways, if it's a 2D platformer, I'm probably not going last more than an hour. I think Blackthorne is the last 2D platformer I finished.

I don't mind challenging, but if it is too challenging without providing other things I am looking for, I am out. As a grown up with grown up responsibilities, there is too little game time to spend it frustrated without being appropriately rewarded.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by wonderpug »

Muuuch less tolerant of learning curves than I used to be. Actually, I think it's more that I'm less willing to having a long stretch of a boring "figure things out" phase before I get to any fun stuff.

Europa Universalis IV is a good example. I think I'd really really like the game if I got into it, but from what I've read I would need to play it for hours and hours just to wrap my head around the mechanics enough to enjoy what I'm doing.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by Cylus Maxii »

I'm also in the genre-dependent camp. I will invest many hours into figuring out an RPG that has complex crafting, classes and skills. I might spend many hours on learning the flight characteristics of something like Star Citizen but probably not that many on a technical driving game. Though I might do so if it were a bit more forgiving and story-driven like GTA. I will re-try missions many times if I love the gameplay, setting and story - but not at all if the difficulty is arbitrary and requires a twitch-level hand-eye coordination that I no longer have. It really depends a lot on my investment into the game setting and story.

I love turn-based tactical games like X-COM but I don't have the patience for a micro-managing the economics, politics and resources in a broad and deep strategy game. I do enough spreadsheets and budgeting at work. I am probably burned-out for life on 4x space games - I keep wanting to like them but just can't get in to them. I think the "been there, done that" factor is too high; and then the micro-management seals the coffin. I seem to have a higher tolerance for learning curves with sandbox builder games.

I guess I'm a mixed bag. I don't mind difficulty if I'm having fun.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by El Guapo »

Pretty much any learning curve is fine as long as the game is playable and fun at the start. CK2 is a good example - it took awhile to learn, but it was fun even while I was muddling around not really knowing what I was doing (and it's fun to do things like, "hey, let's give that option a try. Hoooo boy, not that then."). Alpha Centauri's another good example - there's tons of depth, but it's also playable and fun even before you get to the nuanced parts of the game.

By contrast I sat down to do a playthrough of the Blackbeard board game, spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out the manual and charts, couldn't really get anywhere, and shelved the game more or less indefinitely.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by El Guapo »

wonderpug wrote:Muuuch less tolerant of learning curves than I used to be. Actually, I think it's more that I'm less willing to having a long stretch of a boring "figure things out" phase before I get to any fun stuff.

Europa Universalis IV is a good example. I think I'd really really like the game if I got into it, but from what I've read I would need to play it for hours and hours just to wrap my head around the mechanics enough to enjoy what I'm doing.
FWIW while I haven't played EU IV, I played previous entries in the series, and found them enjoyable (like CK2) even before I knew what I was doing. You just have to be willing to plow ahead and try things even if you don't have much of a clue as to how they are likely to play out.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by LordMortis »

Isgrimnur wrote:How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate in your games today? Are you willing to read the (now PDF :hawk: ) manuals to learn things? Are you willing to keep plugging away at a difficult mission? Or are you prone to dropping a game that requires what you would consider too much effort to master (Dark Souls >kof<)
I love an organized and well presented read of game mechanics and design and often find myself looking for a wiki on games, tutorials, and such and to better understand the sorts of games I play.

I drop a game when when the research gets too deep or there is no research to be had when I feel stuck because I don't understand a game mechanic. I don't tend to drop a game due to dexterity difficulty because I don't play much in the way of dexterity based games. I was even saddened when I purchased Sunless Sea only to find out it uses a real time WASD system.

As to a real learning curve. I find that I can get pretty obsessiveness with looking for help which how I ended up a gaming site in the first place. The only recent game in memory to break me has been Kerbal Space Program. The writing on the game was too far above my head. The youtube videos probably eventually got above my head as well when combined with the need for 3D keyboard movement controls. I think in the end, I still watched about 60 hours of Scott Manly story telling play by plays. He's an interesting space historian even if his physics descriptions leave me in the cold.

Which reminds me. I won't go very far to mod a game. If that's part of the learning curve for enjoyment then it seems I'm out pretty quickly.
El Guapo wrote:
wonderpug wrote:Muuuch less tolerant of learning curves than I used to be. Actually, I think it's more that I'm less willing to having a long stretch of a boring "figure things out" phase before I get to any fun stuff.

Europa Universalis IV is a good example. I think I'd really really like the game if I got into it, but from what I've read I would need to play it for hours and hours just to wrap my head around the mechanics enough to enjoy what I'm doing.
FWIW while I haven't played EU IV, I played previous entries in the series, and found them enjoyable (like CK2) even before I knew what I was doing. You just have to be willing to plow ahead and try things even if you don't have much of a clue as to how they are likely to play out.
I find myself incredibly patient (or impatient really) with false starts. So I find myself hours into a game like CK and realize I'm missing a whole dynamic and start all over. And then repeat again a few hours later and then again... and again...
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by Chaz »

I don't mind a complex game with a difficult curve, as long as I'm not wrestling with super basic stuff, and I can wring some enjoyment out of it. Having at least one obvious element that I can easily figure out and grasp while trying to work out everything else is also pretty mandatory for me. That can be something as basic as a storyline, really.

Two recent examples. First, Crusader Kings 2. That game is super dense, and has a really lousy tutorial. However, what it's also got is a lot of information baked into the interface. I got used to clicking around the menus and reading tooltips, which enabled me to slowly put the various pieces together to figure out what was going on. The game didn't hand me the information piecemeal like a Zelda game, but put it all in there and allowed me to figure it out on my own.

By contrast, I also tried Terraria. That game dumps you into the world, then doesn't give you any information at all. Even the most basic controls are pretty well hidden. The game is largely about building and crafting, yet it didn't make it clear at all how you do either of those things. I eventually managed to figure out how to put up walls, so I built a room around myself. Then I tried to put a door in a wall, but couldn't manage to take down a section of the wall to put the door in, so I was trapped. That got me to uninstall the game. It seems like the game was essentially telling me that I should go read a wiki to learn how to do anything. That's incredibly unfriendly to the player, and it put me right off.

So for me, there's a stark difference between a game like CK2 that says "the information is all here, and you can absorb it at your own speed," and Terraria that says "welcome to the game, now you'd better alt-tab out to a wiki to try and figure out how to do anything." If my first impression is that I can't really do anything without leaving the game, you've failed.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by LordMortis »

Chaz wrote:So for me, there's a stark difference between a game like CK2 that says "the information is all here, and you can absorb it at your own speed," and Terraria that says "welcome to the game, now you'd better alt-tab out to a wiki to try and figure out how to do anything." If my first impression is that I can't really do anything without leaving the game, you've failed.
That's something I really dislike but it's something I also tend to trooper through. It goes something like:

First I'd like a real and thorough manual (and I don't want to pay extra for it)
In absence of a real manual I want thorough tutorial.
In absence of that I want an interface with a help for everything.
In absence of that I want an electronic manual and now I'm to the point where I'm annoyed because I don't want to stop the game while I'm playing to view your manual.
In absence of that I want a 3rd party wiki and a walkthrough and by now I'm consciously marking strikes against the developers for future purchases because they can't be bothered to detail their own game but rather leave that up to google and the masses.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by Smoove_B »

That's weird that you picked Terraria and Crusader Kings, as I had exactly the opposite impressions. CK was way too dense for me, I think I tried playing it for about 2 hours and then gave up. Meanwhile, I have like 15+ hours in Terraria. I'm not a hardcore player by any means, but I enjoyed tinkering around with the crafting basics, digging into mountains and just exploring. I felt like there was enough there for me to just play in a very simple way or I could go crazy and start going after bosses or tunneling deep into the ground.

I've found that my tolerance for learning new *systems* is limited. The closer a game is to Civilization, the more I understand it. I've tried numerous other 4x games, but if the system has too many layers, I'm out.

I totally agree on the platformers. I'd say 80% of them aren't for me.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by Chaz »

See, I'm okay with troopering through a steep learning curve, and even with going off to a third party site to find information, as long as I've got the incentive to do so. Have I been enjoying the basics of the game and now I'm interested in learning more advanced gameplay things? Yup, I'll go check out a wiki or forum because I want more enjoyment.

Did I just boot the game up and have the game immediately throw up a wall by not telling me anything, not give me a manual, and essentially require me to go somewhere else to figure it out? Nope, done, because you haven't given me any enjoyment yet, and you're already asking me to put in the legwork to try and extract any, with no guarantee that I'll like it after I've figured out the basics.

I was about to say that I'm holding video games to different standards than board games, where I have to read a manual before I get to have fun with the game, but then I realized that the game provides the manual, so that's part of the game (also expected with a board game). Terraria would be like buying a board game with all the pieces mixed up in the box, but then having to go search forums to figure out the rules. No bueno.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by Ralph-Wiggum »

Back in the day when I only got one game every few months, I would spend as long as it took to figure something out. But now my tolerance has gotten pretty low. With so many available games for cheap and so little time to play them, I'll move on pretty quickly if I can't figure something out within the first hour or so.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by wonderpug »

Chaz wrote:Did I just boot the game up and have the game immediately throw up a wall by not telling me anything, not give me a manual, and essentially require me to go somewhere else to figure it out? Nope, done, because you haven't given me any enjoyment yet, and you're already asking me to put in the legwork to try and extract any, with no guarantee that I'll like it after I've figured out the basics.
You know, thinking about it more I think this is more what I've lost my patience for. If I'm having fun from the get-go and learning more and more as I progress, super. I'll even be happy with a learning curve that never ends as long as I'm having fun the whole way through.

But if I fail the game because of something you didn't teach me yet (or well enough)? Or I had the right idea about how to do something but I wasn't doing it in the hyper-specific way you wanted me to do it? Or I wanted to do something seemingly simple and it took me 30 minutes of searching message boards to figure out how to do it? Uninstall, move on. I just no longer have the free time for any game that "gets better after the first 10 hours."
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by LawBeefaroni »

I generally have much less patience than I used to (an effect of having much less gaming time). If a game just dumps me in an expects me to figure things out on my own, I usually skip it.

But if a game presents information in an entertaining way, while I play along, I have a lot of tolerance for learning. I've also somehow acquired a high capacity for difficult platforming. I played through all of Glare and Guacamelee, 2 games I never would have stuck with even a few years ago. I think because the challenge of sitting down for 20 minutes to pass one jumping puzzle is sized just right for a single sitting. There's a clear end goal and it grants a certain level of satisfaction when achieved.



What I've found I don't do so well with is the re-learning curve. I loved Dishonored. I recently acquired highly reviewed DLC for it. But I haven't been able to bring myself to play it for fear of having to relearn all the controls and weapons and powers. The first playthough, they emerged organically. With DLC I think I'm going to have to remember how to use them (which I can't) or play through the first few levels again (which I don't want to do for all the exposition).
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by Teggy »

Chaz wrote: By contrast, I also tried Terraria. That game dumps you into the world, then doesn't give you any information at all. Even the most basic controls are pretty well hidden.
I played the Vita version and it had a tutorial as its own start menu item, was that new?
Spoiler:
it still bored me to tears :sleeping-sleeping:
I hate it when I play old games and they don't give you a tutorial. Those devs were lazy.
Spoiler:
I'm only half joking
As far as difficulty it depends. If it is easily learned controls but difficult content I may give it a shot for a while, unless it is just stupid-hard like super meat boy. Learning long combos is kind of out too - I gave up very quickly on Devil May Cry 1 when I couldn't beat like the first boss. Gave up pretty early on Bayonetta as well. If it is complex controls it's probably not a game I am terribly interested in anyway as I am more drawn to story-based games. I've never gotten anywhere with Civ, 4x games, deep sim games, etc.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by El Guapo »

Smoove_B wrote:That's weird that you picked Terraria and Crusader Kings, as I had exactly the opposite impressions. CK was way too dense for me, I think I tried playing it for about 2 hours and then gave up. Meanwhile, I have like 15+ hours in Terraria. I'm not a hardcore player by any means, but I enjoyed tinkering around with the crafting basics, digging into mountains and just exploring. I felt like there was enough there for me to just play in a very simple way or I could go crazy and start going after bosses or tunneling deep into the ground.

I've found that my tolerance for learning new *systems* is limited. The closer a game is to Civilization, the more I understand it. I've tried numerous other 4x games, but if the system has too many layers, I'm out.

I totally agree on the platformers. I'd say 80% of them aren't for me.
What I found with CK2 is that it's pretty easy to do stuff - just click on who or what you want to interact with and it'll put up a list of ways to interact with them. If a particular option is greyed out, you just hover the mouse over it and it'll tell you what pre-conditions you are not meeting (like, for declaring war "must be independent" might be checked, but "need a valid casus belli" might be X'd out).

So to me at least the game made it easy to do things - the learning curve was involved in "doing them well". That's pretty much what I'm looking for in terms of making the learning curve manageable.

Of course, if you're not comfortable with your initial efforts being laughable and incomplete in hindsight (like LM, apparently), I can see how the CK2 learning curve would be a problem.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by Isgrimnur »

I treat CKII like Dwarf Fortress. I'm going to fail. It's a given, but I will learn in the process, and use that in the next go round.

My issue with CKII is that it seems to be a bit too passive of a game for me. That doesn't stop me from buying the DLC when it's on sale, however.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by Lassr »

A well organized pdf manual will help me go through the trouble of learning a game that i am not familiar with. My learning curve tolerance is much lower these days though as my gaming time is precious. If it is a game I am really wanting to play then I am more tolerant, if it is a game I got for cheap during a Steam sale and it doesn't play like I think and the manual layout makes it hard to find quick info then it gets dumped.

If the game play is intuitive and I just need to lookup tidbits about rules then I am willing to start and restart a few times to get the gist of the game.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by Cylus Maxii »

My tolerance for learning curves must be higher than I thought. I bought Monster Hunter for the iPad and am really liking it (though I did buy a controller; can't wait for it to get here..). This game is old school hard!
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by JSHAW »

Anarchy Online.
Dumped not once, but twice.

The grind to level up to higher levels was difficult, because I was playing solo and not with a group. When I'd go down to the subway levels I'd kill
one or two creatures and would get over run and mobbed, die, get thrown back into the city where I'd have to proceed on foot back to the subway
to do it all again. There were probably tips and tricks I could have asked people about, but I didn't want to be the needy noob with 10,0000 questions
on how to get all that cool gear I was seeing in the game.

The Matrix Online - learned the game through the school of hard knocks, was willing to put up with the learning curve because I was starting to
see how my improvement in the game was letting me get past more levels as long as I didn't overstay my welcome in one spot for too long.

Star Trek Online - I bought a lifetime membership, just logged in last week after leaving the game for a year. Was suprised at an improved look
to the game, but playing solo not ready to get back to grinding out my Romulan in order to fly a Shinzon style bird of prey. Being a Star Trek fan I
was willing to put up with the learning curve, because getting to the higher levels meant getting the better cooler looking ships. Learning curve wasn't
hard, just the constant grind until Admiral for mulitple characters.

Back in my early days of gaming, as well as now if I can't learn the basics of the game within 1-2 hours I generally am not going to
continue with the game. If it's really difficult from the start it will generally not get much play. The game get's reboxed and goes in the collection
as "maybe someday I will revisit it if I'm in the mood".

I guess I'm willing to tolerate alot if the payoff is worth the hassle.
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by Harkonis »

I was that guy who always read the manual before playing a game. I always went into a game knowing how to play and was annoyed when they made me run through the steps to learn everything anyway. I think most people don't read the manual (or I wouldn't get so many questions from friends for the Harkopedia).

I do hate when a game has nothing I can read to learn how to play without actually playing though. I no longer have the patience for the exploration of what you can do (like in Minecraft for example, I don't want to figure out recipes, I want to know recipes and then just do them) This has definitely changed for me. I used to love that stuff, like in Asceron's call or whatever, the way you discovered magic was fun.

My biggest issues with learning curves now are that if a game has a steep one, I'll be playing alone and I vastly prefer multiplayer these days. Maybe I just need smarter friends ;P
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Re: How much of a learning curve are you willing to tolerate

Post by Jeff V »

I've had the same problem for the past 4 years now...

1. Start up new game
2. Negotiate whatever start up is involved with anticipation
3. Hit a snag, stare at the screen in befuddlement, and ponder researching the answer.
4. Decide I haven't the time nor desire to put up with this shit and fire up another game of Civ 5.
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