How accessible should the game be, and to whom (e.g. any person, any gamer, any FPS fan, etc.)?

As accessible as we can reasonably make it. Unfortunately, the best way to test this is to get somebody new to the game to have a look…

Anomalous wrote:

As accessible as we can reasonably make it.

I agree (and yes, there actually exist people that wouldn't) that accessibility is intrinsically good. The question then becomes, how do we define "reasonably"? This is actually important as it defines what demographic Unvanquished is intended for, which can inform a large number of other decisions. We can define this in terms of what we expect players to be familiar with before starting with Unvanquished (that is, what things Unvanquished's documentation and tutorials would not bother to cover):

• Tremulous (things like structures, stages, funds, or whatever ends up bearing a resemblence to Tremulous)

• Any Quake 3 engine game (Q3 physics quirks like bunnyhopping, etc.)

• Any first person shooter (mouse + WASD)

• Online multiplayer team games (communications skills, teamwork, online etiquette)

• Computer games in general (installation, configuration, etc.)

• etc.

We want to feel more strategic than the typical FPS game. There are far too many games out there where the main objective is to just go around and shoot people with the same common set of guns that have been carried over through many games for many years. Sometimes these games involve silly jumping tricks or other ways to gain speed. Nearly always you'll have goofy glowing effects everywhere and an announcer with a deep, masculine voice. Maybe you'll even come across a terrible map in which you're in a gigantic bedroom and you're thrown around by jump pads on mouse traps. Why is it that almost every single shooting game has one of these?

I think that in Unvanquished, we want to aim for a slightly older crowd with a much better attention span than what the typical FPS game is aimed at. Rather than junior high kids, we should aim for high school students at the very least, and preferably people in college. There should be a degree of thought put into each match. If you mindlessly go out and do things on your own, you should expect to be killed very easily. Being able to collaborate with others should be key. Through an emphasis on team cooperation, you already wipe out a whole demographic of spastic schoolchildren.

Kids don't just play mindless shooters, RTS games are popular among young people, too.

For public games, we shouldn't expect much more than basic knowledge of both multiplayer FPS and RTS games. Games such as Quake and CS are very easy to learn (and kids play them) but still very hard to master and highly competitve. "Easy to learn, hard to master" is also said to be Blizzard's main mantra. It's a recipe for success.

kharnov wrote:

Maybe you'll even come across a terrible map in which you're in a gigantic bedroom and you're thrown around by jump pads on mouse traps. Why is it that almost every single shooting game has one of these?

I feel with you. FPS games have them, RTS games don't. If our players play lolmaps we know that we are too much of an egoshooter and should add more strategic elements that mappers have to keep in mind (e.g. resource sites). It might be the fault of the playerbase but I think the issue is easier to fix if we think that it was our fault.

I feel a newbie should be able to compete on a relatively even field with a veteran. The veterans knowledge of the game and practice should be enough to set him aside from the newbie. His experience should not give him massively superior weapons in addition to his already superior twitchy skills. The problem for the newbie in tremulous was that after the first 2 minutes the deck starts to get stacked harder and harder against you and you are stuck with inferior equipment. It is hard to make a comeback against tyrants/battlesuits who are better than you.

If we go with the assumption that Unvanquished should be accessible as possible, then this question can be rephrased as what is the game responsible for teaching players? For example, if the game is intended for people familiar with Quake 3 derived games then the game wouldn't be responsible for teaching players how to strafe jump and bunnyhop, otherwise it would be.

The game should be responsible for teaching you how to properly construct a base, and then organize teams to go out and attack the enemy base. I feel that the base is essentially the integral component of our game, and it should be treated as such. Proper base construction should be emphasized above all else, but at the same time, it needs to be intuitive. You should not have to spend a great deal of time figuring out whether or not your tesla generator is going to be able to reach over another building. Likewise, the game should perhaps warn you of sub-optimal building styles. For instance, it can alter the coloration of your proposed buildable if it's too close to another one, but still allow you to build it anyway.

Basically, I feel that the best way to teach people is to work with incentives and disincentives. Thus, at all times, you feel like you're in control of what you're learning, while you're really being guided along by the invisible hands of game design.