Usability for core games and Bloodborne’s first time experience

Usability for hardcore gamers
1. Usability is not about making games or even work easy
Bloodborne’s first player experience is matching the usual behavior of players and it feels good
1. Things core gamers do when they start a new game
2. Showing the options before the menu while caring for early immersion
It’s all about timing the actions right
Bloodborne’s clear cues and feedback conveys personality
Bloodborne’s character creation remains quite complicated
Bloodborne’s optional step by step tutorials empower players

Usability for hardcore gamers

Usability is about removing un-necessary actions to support a user’s activity. In games, this means reducing repetitive and boring tasks that don’t add value to the gameplay. Typically, while the gameplay loops include some difficulty, the interaction design of menus, controls and interfaces should be straightforward. Players need to focus on how to solve riddles, beat a boss or master a level, not struggle with menus or try to start up the game. Only few games like octodad can justify that struggling with movement is the fun part of the game. In most cases, it isn’t.

screenshot

Usability is not about making games or even work easy

A common misconception is that better usability makes games easier. This isn’t true. This belief is based on a misconception that in work environments, usability (and human factors) makes work as easy as possible. In fact, making a work situation efficient adn satisfactory also requires to provide the worker with some kind of challenge. Haven’t you ever felt so bored at work because you were performing long, repetitive, unchallenging tasks? To be efficient, an employee who experiences flow is more efficient that one who works in an uninteresting task with impossible perspectives. Personnally, I prefer to be snowed under at work rather than bored.

Bloodborne’s first player experience is matching the usual behavior of players and it feels good

Things core gamers do when they start a new game

We might spend hours to define core players before generalizing. It is not the point of this article. Let’s just define them as people who play a lot and never give up when facing a challenge, feeling motivated by getting their butt kicked as long as the game was fair and they can overcome it with improved real life skills. Those core gamers tend to have their favorite settings, in particular for controls, and typically go through a similar routine:

The start the game for the first time
They go to the options to check basic settings like brightness, camera inversion, game difficulty
They check out the controls layout to verify how to play before starting and select their favorite layout when possible
They often don’t need the tutorial because they already checked the controls before and know standard layouts, though they may need some hints to specific features for the game

When Bloodborne starts up, the player is asked to set up brightness, camera settings before even showing the menu. This answers to the observed behavior of players. The controls displayed are exactly the ones needed.

Hints are visible at a fixed position in the bottom of the screen. They are consistent with the interface, available when needed, but otherwise not intrusive.

The introduction cinematic then immerses the played in the game world. Subtitles are two colors and easily readable on top of the visuals. It provides a little teasing with context and emotion before proceeding to more settings.

It’s all about timing the actions right

Conveying cues for well timed actions

People reaction times vary depending upon the type of cue they recieve : visual or auditory. Getting the timing right requires to give clear information on the moment it can be performed. Depending upon the mastery level required and the type of interactions, cues for timings will be more or less evident.

Basic timings the player needs to learn are very clearly identified. For example, loading a heavy blow is defined both by an animation of the character, a visual and an audio sign telling the player that they’re ready to hit.

Getting the parry right requires more skill, but the cues are equally clear. They may not be as obvious. The player needs to learn the timings for each type of ennemy and each attack they can perform. It requires more time, but the consistency of the timings and signs used to convey the information – as subtle and precise as a good fighting game – allow this learning process.

Timing actions is critical …but their effects are generous

Bloodborne is a very demanding game. It is hard and punishing but fair. What players often overlook is that the game is also very nice to them, in some ways, and permissive.

While timings for attacks and parry need to be right, the invulnerability time when dodging (or rolling away from in the Soul series) attacks is quite generous.

Timing actions is critical …but targetting can be aproximative

The game also doesn’t bother players – unlike so many others – with perfect orientation towards items to be able to interact with them. If the player is close enough, he can use this lever or pick up that item, even if the character isn’t facing it properly.

Players can interact with items even when turning their back to them. And when two items are near each other, rather than forcing the player to move, it allows to easily switch between the two options using a clearly indicated input.

The same goes with the fighting system, where focusing on ennemies allows the player to focus on timing over targeting.

Bloodborne’s clear cues and feedback conveys personality

Identifying interactive objects : highlights and error messages

Players somtimes confuse natural lighting with iteraction cues but interactive items are easy to identify

Light effects are very effective to draw the player’s attention on objects. In Bloodborne, the lighting tends to attrack the player to decoration that isn’t interactive. It soon becomes easy to make the difference between “natural light” and actual items to pick up thanks to a shiny dot and a highlight in the dark that is active even without a torch.

Not showing success vs. showing failure

When grabbing an item, the successful action would be confirmed with a line of text and icon showing what was picked up. Only not showing this feedback would probably not be enough for the player to realise it didn’t work out, and that it’s normal. They might think that the input wasn’t taken in account properly, or he’s not close enough to the hypothetical item they try to pick up.

The feedback to show the successful item pick up appears in the player’s peripheral vision as an animation. The motion and change draws the attention of the player, who can confirm the success of his actions even without looking directly at the feedback. Players are looking more at their characters and immediate surroundings, interest points in the environment, and at the interface only when they are gathering information.

In the case of Bloodborne, they often pick up items and wonder what it was after they “automatically” closed the dialog, then check what the item was in their inventory if they want to know it.

When no item is picked up, there is no animation to draw the player’s attention on the lack of item picked up in the interface. Using a similar display to inform the player that no item was picked up might even be counter productive, since the player doesn’t look at the content, but only reacts to the fact the message is displayed.

Conveying error messages through character animations

When players try to interact with something that is judt part of the background, or try to loot something where there isn’t anything, there isn’t a clear error message. Instead, the character will display a different animation. The character looks surprised not to find something to grab and put in their pocket.

The animation conveys the information that there wasn’t an item efficiently while granting personality to the player character. At the same time, the player knows his input was taken in acconut but will not have the effect he expected.

Not only it is immersive and clear, but it presents the information where the player’s attention is. Using a slightly different animation to show the player character is kind of disappointed or confused – players give it the meaning they want – the point is, they get that there was nothing to grab, and it’s not just a mistake or even a slip.

In battle, this could get annoying though. The animation is rather long and may cost the few seconds required for a well timed dodging. I haven’t seen players complain about it though.

Players comment on the camera but they can’t pin point what bothers them

It shocked a couple of players, but seemed natural to others. When moving towards the side of the screen, the camera shows you less in front of the player character. It drags behind you could say, where a couple of players expected the camera to show them what’s ahead. The camera does not allow the players to clearly know in advance what’s ahead of them and anticipate what is going to happen. Basically, when running towards one edge of the screen, the player character is actually closer to the edge he runs towards than the one he runs from.

While noticed at first, even the players who complained about it in the first place slowly accepted it as normal. The thing about the camera is that it create unease, because it strengthens the sense of danger and risk when moving quickly forward, encouraging the player to slow down and be more cautious at first. Player who briefly complained about the camera in Bloodborne made the same comment about Dark Souls 3, mentionning it was not like that before, while it had exactly the same behaviour.

Bloodborne’s character creation remains quite complicated

Customizing the character’s appearance doesn’t really match the player’s logic

Character creation screens are usually complex. The one of Bloodborne is also complicated.

Despite generally implementing usable features and shortcuts for players, the character creation screen is somehow awkward. The screens are very cluttered with many different unrelated settings. Some things are grouped together, others separated. For example, I’ve seen players get really annoyed by face presets changing the skin color of their character.

Advanced options are sometimes difficult to locate

The structure of the menu is not very intuitive. The depth in menus at which content can be found also varies awkwardly. While it does somehow make sense, players fail to notice some advanced settings they are looking for. The logic of the menu is different from their expectations.

Even when they found options and want to edit their choices, they need to search again. It doesn’t really encourage players to make advanced changes, despite it being a screen where most players I’ve seen try the game spend hours.

Choices are difficult when you’re not certain of their exact impact

The appearance can also be difficult to decide on with clothing on. You don’t get the details of the character’s features. Players don’t know what is due to the cloth and what is due to the choices they make. The head size in particular was hard to figure out for some players I’ve watched play.

The gender issue

Worst of all, some basic features like changing the gender require 5 inputs to be carried out. It is one of the first choices, and it’s good it’s there, but it makes it confusing that you have to first select the gender, then chose the one you want, confirm, then validate your choice.

Since there are only two choices, it could have been a switch with a simple confirmation dialog. Keeping both a male and female set-up to let the player experiment without loosing his configuration would be even better.

I am curious why it was implemented that way. Maybe too few people tried to switch between genders to compare character options, so it wasn’t considered an issue. Maybe it was too late to take in account feedback or too complicated to change the whole editor for this “small” change. I saw mostly women want to try this, also in other RPGs or adventure games. Maybe it’s specific to women, and if they aren’t part of the target audience, then nobody cared to add the feature for them. Or there were more important issues to fix and improvements to make that were directly impacting the gameplay vs. the character creation.

Building the wrong character class : why it was okay in the Souls series but not in Bloodborne

After deciding the physical features, the player still needs to decide his build. Typically in RPGs, players will decide their class and use skill points according to what they expect their play style will be like. Unlike RPGs, Bloodborne – and the soul series – have a strong emphasis on exploration. Not everything is made clear from the start so the player can enjoy the discovery. Earning the information to understand the game is part of the fun in Bloodborne.

Players don’t mind making the wrong decisions…

Every player I’ve watched trying a game in the souls series has re-rolled their character after 10 to 20 hours of gameplay. They had the wrong build and didn’t like the play style they had. Some of them tried the “naked” guy for fun, then went back to the start to experience a slightly lower challenge. A couple did the contrary.

One decided they wanted to use a different weapon and thought their previous investments in skills were all wrong.

In Demon and Dark souls 1 & 2. Players did have vague information to build their characters. They did sometimes re-roll their character after experiencing the gameplay. But they never complained about lacking information to make the right choices. They complained about the choices they made not being what they want after all, but the choices were on them and completely voluntary.

…they mind being punished for making uninformed decisions.

Some information is not fun to try to guess when playing for the first time. In bloodborne, the player creates his character with no clue about what the “bloodtinge” means and how it is going to influence the game. The player also sees “blood echoes” and doesn’t get the idea. When they played the souls series before, they don’t expect to start with “souls” to spend.

Unlike in the other souls, players complained to me while creating their character that they lacked some information to make decisions about the choices in statistics. When they realise they need to re-roll, they blame it on the game if they feel they didn’t have enough information to make their own mistakes.

The wording can also be confusing at times. For example, some players wondered about terms like “Endurance” and “Stamina”, which are really similar.

Bloodborne’s optional step by step tutorials empower players

Optional tutorials give everything away…

Default tutorials for offline players are scattered accross the place. They attrack the player’s attention through animations that add to the ambiance of the game. Bloodbornes tutorials are fully integrated and add to the experience rather than disrupting it.

When the player is near a tutorial message, it will take more importance. The player will see which control to use to interact and never has to think about what to do or how to do something, they will always find the information nearby. Players only need to decide what they want to do or not, explore the game, its mecanics and figure out how to progress.

The messages used for tutorials are also the ones crafted to communicate online. So while teaching the game to the player and encouraging exploration, the tutorials also train players to interact with each other. When they discover how to write messages, read and vote for other player’s messages, they already know how the mecanics work.

…but players are in control of the experience they enjoy most

Tutorials require an interaction to read them. They can be completely skipped, but they can hardly be missed. It is possible to play the game for the first time and never open a tutorial dialog, or only when stuck. A player could be kind of stuck because of not reading a tutorial. But they could not be stuck by accident. It will be a decision from the player not to read the nearby message that even tells him what to do next. It is easy to fix the issue if it happens, because the player made a conscious decision, not a mistake.

The tutorial texts are clearly written. They are contextual and only appear when they make sense, so they are also never confusing. They can not be read at an inappropriate moment. Players only need to ask to be held by the hand and taken to the next step. Even traps and solutions are “spoiled” so that the player knows what to expect from the game.

Players can decide to struggle or explore by themselves if that’s what they like, or to follow the guide and take the tour. Even with the first fights this is the case. Unlike many other games, Bloodborne (and the souls series) give player control over when the first fights start.

It leaves space for setting the mood and allows the player to get scared first, or rush into the action. As a result, the game adapts well to different play styles. The player can experience different approaches freely, like sneaking, frontal attacks, dodging. Only if he fails will he get the tutorial, and even then, he can go through it quickly, enjoying only the storytelling aspects of it.

Even later in the game, though less so in Bloodborne than in dark Souls 1 and Demon souls, players find various path adapting to their preferences : exploring first, beating bosses as they come or even farming a little to get that upgrade. The next step is always obvious. The player knows where to go (though this is not true only for Dark Souls 2). Thing is, he can always decide to explore everything else first, or go straight for it.

Players who complain about being taken by the hand too much love to take by the hand other players

Playing online adds a whole other level of help, between players. Trolls do exist and try to trick players into doing something stupid. They use messages like “jump” to trick people into suicide. However the pre-defined messages are great for interesting communication while blocking out the violence that custom text could generate.

Even better, the couple of trolls usually find their messages voted down, and players are globally nice to each other, mostly giving away (too much) valuable information to get through the game.

Though the souls games provide room for PVP and confrontational fun, it is equally likely to “meet” friendly faces and experience the same feelings of being akin and mutually helpful as one might in thatgamecompany’s Journey. I’ve seen more than one player stay offline for fair of being spoiled by the nice attentions of other players.

Réalités Parallèles