Complexity: troublesome? Now the thread should make sense D:

[gataka]

This game is complex and suffers from it.
I'll skip the examples; too obvious talk2hand

No really :U

...Apparently that was a bad idea, so let's try some:

Ring's power:

1. The weighed levels of your rings will determine your OCL.
   
2. Your OCL will then affect the power of your rings by nerfing outliers ( RED ).
   
3. The power of damaging rings will further be buffed or nerfed depending on the target's level ( Shift ).
   
4. The power of buffing and healing rings will be nerfed/adjusted to the target's level IF you're targeting someone other than yourself (no name for this AFAIK) (details shaky: haven't played with this one in a while)
   
5. Point 2 to 4 do not apply to the rings that don't change with levels.
   
6. I won't cover stats.

End result: the idea of more levels = more power is always sorta true but with a lot of buts.

You can ignore all these, most do I guess, partly because most are invisible, and play the game fine.
However, it'll cause trouble because your perception of rings is incomplete, affecting your ability to level up and pick rings and stuff.

XtremEx: Dude pushes is Wish ring to CL10.0, is OCL going from X to CL5.0, thinking:

"I'll freakin'heal'em to an higher plane of existence" emotion_donotwant
( and get a fancy big animation too : D )

Just to end up with a ring that at best works like a CL7.0ish, but really only performs at ~5.0 because that's what the people he's playing with are. But he won't notice.

He'll probably ask about the animation.

At least his stats did grow. That's anything but straightforward.
Note that the devs can't ignore these, making sure they're working and balanced properly, and that's work.

Ghi:

As long as you are active, you will gain passive buffs of increasing power in a certain cyclic order.

These will be more or less active depending on how many people are around you or when was the last time you've been around people or in a town like Barton

Not too bad, but for a secondary and still embryonic system that ultimately you can't do much about that's a lot of mechanics. It's there growing like grass and you can enjoy its warmth when it's glowing like sun, but you'll be perfectly fine ignoring it.

You could run after the sun, it's not really worth it :U

Why keep this? Would we really be better of if it were complete?
Another not so straightforward system to teach and maintain?

Drops:

• First proportionnaly adjusted by how much damage your crew has done.
  
• Then twisted by individual's Luck.
  
• Finally honed by each nerf status (50K or 160K/3 days or 160K/donor, your choice, resets at 0:00 GMT :U )
  
• Don't forget conning and its "Fairer Fight = More Get" instead of the usual "More Risk = More Get"
  ....I'm just not sure where it goes in the chain =.=
  
• Note that quests rewards, events's, and chests & co don't follow all these rules.
  (And there's leader opens... ok that's a lie. Now think about why people can get a way with it)
  
• ???
  
• ...Profit?

srs bzns pals.

Huh.
...I'm somehow making all this sound simple. Isn't and I'd usually confuse the hell out of people too ¯(o_O)/¯

Since I'm failing at this and it already has taken way too much time >.> I'll cut the chase.
There's a lot more, think of not so obvious stuff and all these exceptions.
Just take a look at DMS, questions asked in the forum, the answers given.
Throw in the glitches for giggles.

When you cumulate all these odd rules, odd cases, straped on fixes the game ends up being a busy mess.
Design ain't clean, in other words. And I believe that's hurtful.

So, devs, broad and fuzzy advice, if fantasy strikes you to change stuff someday:

Avoid adding complexity or exceptions.
Try and remove some.

Do youz agree?

[Environmental Unity]

I definitely think adding examples would help. sweatdrop

[Definitive Destiny]

The game is not that hard. It is tedious, but not that hard, since it is so repetitive.

















I've been Darkwired

[Berryfarmer]

Complexity in zOMG? I'd like to know your examples. It's pretty straightforward and easy to teach, but that's my opinion.

I can't really debate more until I know which things in particular you find complex.

To quote from another game I'm fond of, "It's only as complex as you make it on yourself."

[WideEyed]

Environmental Unity

I definitely think adding examples would help. sweatdrop

What she said.
I've never been a gamer, so I'm a lousy example, but even I was able to figure out the basics on my own, and anything I couldn't figure out, was easily explained in one of the Guides or by asking here in the z!F, so I'm probably not understanding the question.

[Loki_Dragon]

examples would be very helpful else your topic is too complicated

[gataka]

Ok. I'll add some x D

[Red Kutai]

I think the hangup occuring on the word "complexity" has to do with expectations - normally if something is "complex", we assume it has lots of facets or considerations involved. zOMG!'s issue isn't that it has a lot of facets, though, but that so many of them are just completely arbitrary. You can lower the impression of complexity within a system by having obvious relationships between elements - zOMG!, however, largely fails to do this, meaning that its impressional complexity is relatively high for system of its objective complexity.

...I'm not sure that was any clearer. redface

The point is, I wouldn't necessarily say that removing facets is integral - what I'd really advise is to adjust focus to allow for fewer 'core' facets, from which players can logically derive the game's other elements. Furthermore, you'd want to make those 'core' facets as natural as possible, to further lower the barrier-to-entry. Nonetheless, I do feel like I understand where you're coming from... 3nodding

[Starshine]

Things I find difficult to teach are:

Rage ranks if they have no idea.
(Some never even notices the rage bar, a simple change to interface labelling it as the rage bar would be effective)

Suppressing if they have no idea.
(I had someone refuse because they thought it was permanent.)

Difference between buffs, crowd control, aoes, debuffs and heals. So many think wish is a buff that it's not funny anymore.

A comprehensive in game help would be useful too.

[Nanodeath]

If the game were simpler, I'd probly quit? xd

Not sure I get ya. confused

There are a lot of things that are poorly explained though.. a loot.

[Res Integra]

If people think clicking a mouse is complex, I don't know how they live their lives. emotion_eyebrow

[Falbal]

Complex? Lol.

[Silk Kanishk]

DMP is too complex! gonk

Or is it that systems in zOMG! that arren't immediately apparent might come of as complex such as rage ranks, ghi, ring sets, etc. 3nodding

[Red Kutai]

Hashtable

If the game were simpler, I'd probly quit? xd

That's the logical equivalent of saying "If my dinner were less expensive, I wouldn't eat it." whee

Complexity is a cost, not an advantage. It's something that is added inadvertently while trying to make a game more interesting, but actually stands to impede players' ability to enjoy a game. It's important that, in adding features to a game, one adds those features which most increase the enjoyability, while minimising the increase in complexity. And as gataka points out, features that are adding more complexity than they're worth should be revised or removed. In the same way that you expect your restauranteur not to use ingredients that are unnecessarily expensive, game designers should not use components that are unnecessarily complex.

While I understand that zOMG! may not be too 'expensive' for you, considering its nature as an 'entry-level' MMO, minimising that barrier-to-entry is really important. I don't think that gataka is really talking about making the game less interesting - rather, that the current complexity isn't worth what we get for it, and that we should be looking for more efficient ways to generate roughly the same results...

[Nanodeath]

Red Kutai

Hashtable

If the game were simpler, I'd probly quit? xd

That's the logical equivalent of saying "If my dinner were less expensive, I wouldn't eat it." whee

Complexity is a cost, not an advantage. It's something that is added inadvertently while trying to make a game more interesting, but actually stands to impede players' ability to enjoy a game. It's important that, in adding features to a game, one adds those features which most increase the enjoyability, while minimising the increase in complexity. And as gataka points out, features that are adding more complexity than they're worth should be revised or removed. In the same way that you expect your restauranteur not to use ingredients that are unnecessarily expensive, game designers should not use components that are unnecessarily complex.

While I understand that zOMG! may not be too 'expensive' for you, considering its nature as an 'entry-level' MMO, minimising that barrier-to-entry is really important. I don't think that gataka is really talking about making the game less interesting - rather, that the current complexity isn't worth what we get for it, and that we should be looking for more efficient ways to generate roughly the same results...

What can I say, rich people don't like cheap food. xd
I would have to see examples to make a judgement on that one. whee