This is called the wargame problem. New players are tasked with memorizing every special rule, stat, option, stratagem, weapon, and ability for every unit in their army plus their opponent’s. This either causes the game to end quickly as the new player is just outclassed by the more experienced opponent that has memorized everything, or the game slows to a crawl as the new player has to pour over every stat, ability, and interaction at every decision point to avoid walking into a trap. It’s also a game where both sides start at full strength with every unit on the board, exasperating the problem and front loading all the game info.
This is why I always burn out so quickly whenever I return to chess or yugioh. I can memorize the windows of interaction for the one or two combo decks in an mtg format but memorizing a dozen openings in chess or the windows of interaction for every meta relevant engine in yugioh is too much for me.
@@guksungan1267 Limited does not exist in YuGiOh, it used to wayyyyy back over 10 years ago now but at this point Forced Variance through a Draft format would require Konami to upend how they do sets and card design. YGO's Memory Problem is because of how often that knowelge changes, not just how much there is.
I was introduced to a playing card game called "Mao" that epitomizes this difference. You have to learn by playing because "The first rule of Mao is that you don't discuss the rules." It plays like Uno, but the people who know the rules penalize the people who don't know the rules by giving them cards. Then, if ever you win a round, you get to add a rule and the cycle continues. And without this step, it's just a memorization game. But, because players get to step into the role of game designer a little bit, there's layers to it. Once everyone knows the rules, it's a game of trying to come up with a new trigger for a rule, and paying attention to what's happening. It plays into human flaws, but has enough luck and player participation thrown in to make it a fun game for a camping trip.
I love Mao! Definitely a camping highlight trip when I was a kid. Of course being kids, the made rules were always incredibly ridiculous but somehow the people I played with never made a rule that was straight unfair (every new rule applied equally to every player).
I love Mao. Some people enjoy it just because they want to see the pain of new players failing to figure things out, but I just find the idea of like... trying to deduce rules and systems from within to be fun. If the game had no way to add more rules, there would be no point in playing once you learned everything.
A friend tried to have the rest of our friend group play Mao We all got fed up and started doing random shit like trading cards and just picking up the deck lol
I think it's worth noting that the issue with Chess is more technological than anything. Chess players in the 50s and 60s (i.e. "The Queens Gambit" era) didn't have immediate access to the best move in any given position, nor could they jam through thousands of tactics puzzles in a day with zero effort. In a post-Stockfish world, however, you can beat lots and lots of players simply by having consumed more Chess content on Twitch than they have.
I think this is why I value simple but deep games over complex games of any depth. Because you can arguably get more depth with less memorization and cognitive taxation with a simple game, like Go or Chess, than a complex one with so many moving parts that it ends up restraining itself.
When I look at Starcraft Broodwar, the memorization process took place while you enjoyed the campaign, a good story is like a good book. I always told people who wanted to learn the game that they should start with the campaign and afterwards I could help them. Afterwards there's different builds and strategies, actually way more than there are in Starcraft 2.
This video needs to be shown to every Yu-Gi-Oh player, about why the game is failing to attract and keep players. Not only is 90% of your strategy in the game knowing your own deck and the opponent's deck, and knowing exaxtly what sequence of cards you want to play and your opponent wants to play, the game makes it even harder and more painful making every card played and ability activated a decision point. In those decisions, usually there's 1 to 2 correct answers among 8+ possible options. Add to that the first turn advantage is so high, you might as well be playing rando-chess where you answer Yu-Gi-Oh trivia.
I don't think anyone disagrees but it's not up to the players to actually... do anything about this. Yugioh needs better rules or on boarding or set design and nothing the players have tried works. Konami has to do it
It would be so great to hear your guys talking more about Twilight Imperium. It is really interesting to me that it is a game that have so many "toxic" design elements (e.g. king making, races are 100% unbalanced, player elimination, extremely lengthy games, secret objectives, extremely random combats) and still (most) players have an awesome time playing it. Anecdotally, in the last time I played, ALL five players had a shot at winning in the final round.
I think there is a big overlap of this idea with the other ideas on min-maxing and optimizing the fun out of a game. The idea of having a wiki open to know all the stuff is one of the reasons I can't get into hardly any games anymore. The first time I was asked to make a decision in FTL like "Go try to save the outpost from being attacked or leave them?", I realized that just experiencing all the iterations to learn and try to remember everything...it was something fun but at the same time, there exists a database with all of this stuff already experienced by everyone else (or compiled on a wiki from players or even datamining). The "going through the motions" on my own to experience it all myself just doesn't sound that fun in context because something in my brain is constantly telling me that I'm wasting time because I can just look up the fastest way to "win".
What makes MTG interesting is say my opponent is in blue. I cast a spell while they have mana open. There are a billion counterspells in blue they could have. But do I really need to know every possible permutation of a counterspell to know whether or not I want to avoid having my spell countered? I would say no. The same can be said with boardwipes or kill spells. There are a lot of permutations but the "base" effect will be very similar in most cases. It's really only the truly novel cards (likely creatures, enchantments, and artifacts) to be afraid of. In those cases however you're talking Sorcery speed. So once you see the threat you can answer it even if you weren't trying to predict it before it arrived.
10:50 very good take. I hate game that obscure information intentionally or unintentionally. Tooltips have become so good by now, there really is no excuse not to have nested tooltips that explain the consequences of your actions. There is also a bunch of RPGs that have a similar problem, where the dialog options are written so weirdly, that you sometimes have a hard time knowing what will happen when you pick one. Being forced into "save-scumming" (stupid term to begin with) because of the game being really unclear about what the different buttons do is very frustrating.
I may be misinterpreting what you would consider memorization, but I feel like fighting game combos may be an example of it that has stood the test of time. Without an incredibly deep understanding of the game mechanics, most of which aren't even visible outside of practice modes, the only way to discover a combo is through trial and error or looking it up, and then once you find a combo you just have to memorize it in order to perform it in game. This certainly has a cost and makes it very difficult for new players to get into the genre, and I'm sure it's why games like SF6 added an alternate control scheme that can automatically execute some small combos, but from what I understand it's a mechanic that while it doesn't add depth, it adds a sense of achievement when you do successfully perform the combo. It becomes a very tangible feeling of progression of "I am getting better at this game," and I at least find that rewarding.
I would think that satisfaction comes more so from skill of execution than skill of memorization. Also, the rock paper scissors mechanics alleviate problems from a pure memory game.
Combos contain a bit of memorization in that you're not likely to figure out your highest damage combo in the middle of a match. But they're more complex than just memorization, I'd say in two essential ways. One: Just knowing the inputs isn't enough. You have to practice the execution of a combo. That isn't just being able to nail it from the same starting position in training mode every time. That's also accounting for different hit confirms, spacing, screen position, counterhits, anti airs, etc. Player expression emerges from where players decide a standard bnb is enough and where they choose to practice a more specialized combo that may only work in specific scenarios, or from how difficult a combo they're willing to implement in their gameplay. If you drop the optimal combo 20% of the time then it's often going to be a better decision to do a slightly worse one, but you also have the option of practicing the optimal combo to be more consistent. Execution gives rise to a lot of complexity. Meanwhile, in a strategy game, memorizing something generally means you just know the correct play and there's no reason to do anything else. Two: Even supposing you've memorized every combo and can execute them flawlessly, the decision of which one to use isn't clear cut. You haven't memorized the definitive, correct solution. You've just developed one of many tools available to you. Combos can be optimized for damage, stun, meter gain, corner carry, oki, etc. In selecting a combo, you're choosing to prioritize some of these things over others. I'd make the argument that as fighting games have eased up on execution with increasingly generous cancel windows and longer input buffers, they've deliberately made this part of the game more complex with additional resources like SF6's drive gauge.
You make a good point about discovery being part of progression. In fighting games, the real time element makes this different than turn based strategy. I would lean on the side of providing a list of all combo moves and leaning on execution for the sense of progression rather than having some players who know the moves. Otherwise your new players won’t stand a chance.
@@distractionmakersThankfully most modern fighting games compensate for this in many ways. Most of them have combo trials, aka "here are some sample combos and room to practice them." They will also have alternate control schemes, along with characters that reward combo execution and memorization more or less. Some games, like Blazblue for example, are aware that their 30 hit combos are very intimidating compared to the much shorter ones in sf, and will compensate by giving universal tools to most characters (i.e., in blazblue, ABCD, aka pressing the buttons in order, is a combo on almost every single character. Its not optimal but it gets you playing the game quickly). I think sometimes combos are a heavily overstated problem in fighting games, I get why they can be intimidating, but also a lot of the time theyre the easiest to recognize element of skill, which overshadows all the other elements of actual depth in the game. I personally am a diamond sf6 player and my combos are absolute garbage, I learned the bare minimum I needed in 30 mins (admittedly this would take longer for other people) and immediately jumped into ranked to learn the stuff I actually cared about learning.
I think fighting games are a perfect example of this. Take anyone brand new to fighting games and put them against even the average intermediate player. They are not playing the same game. The intermediate player will win almost every single time. There are so many little things to learn and memorize from frame data to neutral to optimal punishes and combos that the knowledge gap is way too wide. But once you know all of the techniques and options and systems, a lot of top players wind up complaining that the games fall down to pretty much glorified rock-paper-scissors. That's reductive, but it's not that far from the truth at the highest levels of play.
Same thing goes for MOBAs. It takes a _long_ time to understand how the dozens of champions work, what all the items do, and what items to buy for which champions in different situations.
This problem compounds with mechanical skill in video games. When your game has too much to memorize up front, the players who have played longer have both the advantage of memory _and_ the advantage of mechanical skill. It makes the barrier to entry scale even faster. It's a big part of what makes fighting games and mobas feel so hard to learn. You're against players who understand the matchup against all of the 20+ characters, have memorized the optimal combos or item builds for every situation, and have the execution skills of someone with months or years of practice. With the internet being what it is, this information is figured out in the first couple months of the game. A player coming in 6 months after a game launches is at a massive disadvantage unless the game has managed to maintain a steady influx of other new players.
It looks like the thing that happens in RTS's and MMORpg's, or any kind of game that has an "endgame". In some cases one can argue that the "endgame" is the game and the full campaing or questlines that you did as playing the game to level up to level cap or whatever is the learning experience, where you are exposed to the mechanics and to several possible strategies you can use later on or where you found the archetype or build you want to play, and so on. Also classic roguelikes play with the idea of memorization when they randomize everything and the first time (on that run) you encounter a scroll or a potion you can't tell if it is a healing potion or a poison one, because they change colors and nicknames. Also I think that instead of memorization one can say in some games that you have a feel of wonder or discovery when you encounter a new mechanic or rule or strategy you didn't knew before, even when that discovery means you lost this game to a rival (Mark Rosewater related that experience on a recent episode of his podcast). I mean there is an aspect of games that is profoudly connected to learning, from kids or animals playing with their companions in order to "train" habilities needed for survival to great scholars discussing abstract concepts where one is trying to defeat his oppositor with words and arguments. What I am saying is that even the "memory" part is not just a memory game because sometimes it connects concepts, mechanics and lore in a game in a meaningful way.
I think this is why I find the combat in M&L brothership engaging despite its simplicity and repetitiveness . When you encounter a new type of enemy, it’s a learning task because each enemy does relatively little damage, but if you don’t learn the counter you get death by a thousand cuts. Then when you encounter a higher level version of that enemy later in the game, you know they counter but it becomes a test of dexterity/consistency because missing a single counter will result in taking a big chunk of damage
I can't imagine anyone trying to get into League of Legends nowadays. There is just so much stuff to know and if you don't know it all, you get berated by everyone on your team (especially because the people you're initially paired with are likely previously banned toxic players on lower level new accounts). It's pretty gross. And even if a new player can slog their way to be able to play Ranked games, now there's a whole new level of entry imo. I know all the "Silver players" are absolutely terrible in relation to Diamond players, and Diamond players are absolutely terrible in relation to Challenger players, but people playing in Silver are MUCH better and more knowledgeable than they were 5-10 years ago. I just don't know how anyone new joins the game at this point.
This is the problem I tapped into when I came back into Modern after years as an 8-rack player. So much cognitive load remembering cards (I started writing them down), and proactively disrupting the oppo’s gameplan while keeping into account eventual topdecks. All while getting used to new cards as I got back along with MH2.
This is exactly why I burned out of one of my favorite competitive card games (Netrunner) back in 2016 or so. A lot of the skill in Netrunner is being able to predict the opponent's move based on hidden information, and without memorizing all the cards, I felt like I was at a disadvantage against the players who did. I keep wanting to get back into Netrunner and they actually made a new starter set specifically for learning the game and practicing building decks, and I'm actually excited to try it! I just have to find people who are willing to play it and build decks out of it with me without destroying me (or me destroying them) haha.
GoT has a solution I adopted to the board game im developing: At any moment, including at the start of a battle, each player can see the oponents hand. This way, there is no advantage for players who memorize all the cards of each house/faction.
One consequence of this is how much time (and potentially choice paralysis) this adds to the game for new players. Now they have to look at their hand AND the other player's hand when deciding a play. I also thought about adding this element to one of my designs, but ultimately thought it was a net negative for new player experience.
@@zigeif777 I don't know how familiar you are with GoT, but just in case: Each player controls a house. Each house has 7 different battle card. On a battle, each player chooses one card in secret, then both reveal, do what the card says and after that, whoever has more force wins the battle. Without being able to look at the opponent's hand, players that memorized the cards would have a HUGE advantage. So instead of forcing every player to memorize all the cards of each house, just let players look at the opponents hands. PS: You could also give a list of the cards to each player instead of that. But then players would need to constantly check the discard pile or have to memorize wich cards each player already used.
Might as well play with face up hands to save time, but either way unless certain mechanics can top deck effects you're going to run into good players knowing they won / lost long before the game actually ends. Hidden information is a blessing not a curse but can you link me a ruleset this sounds like it could be fun.
@clarkecreates There is no deck. You have 7 unique battle cards at the start of the game specific for your house/faction. When you use all, you get them back.
RPS is a bad example for this. It only appears to be a good design, since you have only 3 possible things your opp can do. Imagine it instead being a game of 100000001 different moves each beating and losing to 50000000 moves respectivly. And just as in RPS your opp has free choice each round. That is basically a shot in the dark. There is no rule that limits the possible choices so nothing to go by while making your own choice.
I am surprised you guys didn’t bring up Lorcana. It has a huge memorization problem in that you aren’t allowed to take game notes in tournaments. Between what cards are inked and trying memorize what’s in the opponents hand when you get to look at it, memory plays a huge part in picking up the last percentage points in a match.
This conversation makes me think a lot of fighting games and the mental stack and the arguments for fighting games having a level of complexity to obscure that depth. yes, there is just a wall of learning characters, their combo routes, their special move inputs and the properties of both their specials and normals and how that goes into the matchup, and the fighting game you are playing during discovery vs. the fighting game you are playing at mastery are fundamentally two different games, BUT! where that complexity becomes depth is when that knowledge level is understood by both opponents and that RPS can properly be established. There is inherant risk to going for a special move even if you have it committed to muscle memory because there is time you are spending to do the inputs, information you are giving to your opponent to help them inform their imperfect information that they make their decisions with... and that battle of real time chess where people have to make their decisions at that wild pace fighting games move at is so peak.
This is the biggest difference between FTL and ITB. They are both great but ITB is a better game imo because it doesn't rely on memory. The game happily will tell you whatever you want to know because the core game play is so strong it doesn't have to obfuscate anything.
Ive been talking to a friend about this. It made me realize why games like Brass are so liked. Before i played it, i thought it was likely overhyped and being in the #1 spot in BGG was a fluke (dont get me wrong, it doesnt mean its the BEST GAME EVER but it helps contextualize). Much to my chagrin, after playing it, i understood the hype. The decision tree is actually super small and theres really not much memorization, but the strategic depth is incredible. I think many game creators add complexity in an attempt to add depth, but the foundations of their game design just dont allow for it, leading to many red herrings, and the “correct” decisions that you have to memorize, as you guys put it. In effect, it all comes down to the Queen problem again, they just make it harder to find the Queen, but once you do, thats all ypu really need
I find myself thinking that so much of ARK, the dinosaur survival game, but for player input and RNG is just memory issues. Like there's an entire website/app for want to tame a Rex? Look in this area. For a level 150 you'll need this many tranquilizer shots, and this much time and resources to make it through the entire taming process. Or like base dino stats for breeding purposes are somewhat obscured. But can be guessed at from an app on tame. Just put some of this in the actual UI. And without requireing advanced items in the tech trees.
You guys ever play Starcraft? Im curious on your thoughts on a game like that. Many people say there really isnt much strategy in RTS and its all mechanics
They bring up Starcraft once in awhile so I'd say yes. Also that's a slight misunderstanding of what people are saying. Their argument is that RTS games like Starcraft are mainly strategic in the early days of the meta, when people are learning the game and exploring ideas. But after X years, the strategic part becomes more solved, people's macro ability rise above a certain level, and the game shifts less from a game of unknowns and surprises to a game of mechanical skill as the defining measure of victory. That the variety of strategies become narrower and pure mechanical skill far outweighs strategic nuance or creativity. Which we can objectively see in SC1 and SC2 meta.
RTS games are a bit interesting. For one thing, 'strategy' is really the wrong word for them. They're mostly about tactics and logistics. Strategy is just a convenient catch all for people who don't know the distinctions. Though there is Some strategy to it. The thing is, there are layers to how it all plays out. When everyone's just starting out and has no clue about anything, there's a bit of clever strategic decision making to be had. Then players start Memorising things, learning all the information there is to learn about what is and isn't optimal, what doesn't and doesn't work, what decisions are and aren't sensible at which part of the game... and it's not who came up with the clever strategy or did a cool thing that wins, it's whoever builds things in the optimal order as dictated by how the game, and (where applicable) their faction works. There aren't any real decisions to be made once you've figured that out... until multiple, or all, players have figured it out, at which point you hit the next layer: Whoever clicks fastest wins. To the point where pro players will just click constantly even when not clicking ON anything so as to be sure that when they Are clicking on something they'll click as fast as possible... and in some games they'll just constantly send new move orders to the same units as a result... which lets them optimise pathing for best movement speed or to prevent things clumping up or whatever is optimal at the time (particularly useful in games with bad path finding), or to engage in tactical shenanigans (in age of empires: ranged cavalry doing what they did historically: riding into range at speed, firing, then riding away before the enemy can move forward to enage them, repeat until the enemy is dead... or drawn entirely out of position so the rest of the army can win a fight without whatever unit was sent after the ranged cavalry being involved) Thing is, there's a cap on that past which it stops mattering too. The game can only accept meaningful input so fast, the human body caps out, and also everyone reaches sufficiently similar levels that it's not really mattering anymore. At which point actual strategy, and decision making, and clever tricks, and figuring out what your opponent will do based on who you opponent is (and what faction they're playing) and the specific nature of the map and all that sort of thing start actually being relevant and you can start doing clever and interesting things, rather than only the Optimal thing, again and it will actually be meaningfully impactful. Functionally, RTS games are only really fun when either no one knows what they're doing or everyone involved has essentially mastered it.
@@SenkaZver SC2 yes to some degree, though that has more to do with design decisions like 6->12 workers and some unit designs affecting design for the entire race (the Sentry basically made all Protoss units worse in SC2 compared with their BW counterparts). In BW I'd argue this is not true, due to map design and the mechanical execution being so high. The limited economy in BW also means that your decisions do matter, and we see new strategies crop up all the time and older strategies being brought back in. The level of surprise and catching people off guard, abusing "standard" knowledge to do something weird that works, happens far more in BW than SC2. As someone mentioned, BW players have been playing the game for a LONG time, and Remastered definitely helped with some of the micro execution, so the mechanical skill level of everyone is so high that tactics and decision making often come back into being significantly important to winning games.
It's not exactly the same, but I'm generally in favor of small knowledge/execution checks at the beginning of a players journey so they can feel some quick improvement and possibly get hooked. It's one of the successes of motion inputs in fighting games or the entirety of Tekken's character design. Getting knowledge-checked doesn't necessarily feel good, but there's joy in exploring, and finding a small set of viable answers to a situation.
This epitomizes the all famous phrase “players will optimize the fun out of games”. Its why i have no interest in playing something like multiplayer civ. I really dont have the time to memorize the meta
Where would you put "knowledge of potential future events"? The events could be perfectly explained when they show up, but knowing what could show up is still knowledge you have to memorize.
It’s definitely possible. Build orders are extremely important and new players don’t even understand they exist. If we look at the evolution of the genre, MOBAs remove this element for the most part.
I hate chess. The better player always wins, which makes wins feel hollow and losses feel pointless. Games where you are supposed to get better for your own personal growth aren’t two player for a reason. There’s no creativity, there’s no randomness, there’s no strategy, just an objectively correct choice that you either know or you don’t. I do not understand why it was ever popular or why it’s such a big thing with some teenagers now. Entirely random games also suck (see Snakes & Ladders), but entirely memory based games aren’t better, they’re just more complex.
@@Azeria Any game with a luck element is ultimately just a dice roll. There's no strategy (c). "Games where you are supposed to get better for your own personal growth" are a competition, where the one who trains more and executes their moves better wins. Games based on luck provide little to no agency to the players, so there's no real competition there. This includes ALL card games, however fun they may be.
@@FluffySpikeM Nope, randomness can help create strategy because the game cannot play out the same way over and over again. I mentioned entirely random games in my comment. Poker for example is not an entirely random game, but the fact that it relies on randomness is what makes it interesting in the first place.
@@Azeria Nope the nope. Randomness can create excitement and a sense of novelty, but it has nothing to do with strategy. Strategy is about recognizing patterns and making meaningful choices. Which means you need to know your alternatives and be able to optimize. Being interesting and being strategic are different things. Poker or Magic can be interesting, but because of the luck factor they cannot be fully strategic. Complaining that "The better player always wins" in a strategy game is simply ludicrous.
The WarioWare analogy is pretty thin. You neglected to incorporate the fact that interacting with the various silly scenarios is a key part of the game. Simply reducing the experience to "figure out the objective", then "react to achieve the objective faster than your opponent" fundamentally excludes the core emotive reasons behind why those games are developed with that type of gameplay.
Cribbage is the example that immediately comes to mind where memorization is the game. If you just kept the rule card in front of you it's essentially chutes and ladders.
Chutes and ladders doesn't have any decision points compared to cribbage where what you throw and the order you play your cards affects who wins. Looking at the rules should always be allowed.
Magic is exactly the example of a complex game with very little depth. Both at the beginner level and at pro level it comes down to matchup and luck of the draw. Strategic back and forth only happens in the middle between beginners and pros. You could also say Mtg is about metagaming, but then the game is won by either gathering statistics on what people play or wild-guessing about the meta.
Also, disagree completely on the partial information bit. The deepest strategy game overall is probably Go - a game with full information, with an enormous number of choices in every move. It also happens to be not purely an exercise in memorization, but a combination of tactical memorization with strategic insight. Whoever sees the board better wins. It's dynamic pattern recognition. I would say rock-paper-scissors is not a strategy game at all.
This is called the wargame problem. New players are tasked with memorizing every special rule, stat, option, stratagem, weapon, and ability for every unit in their army plus their opponent’s. This either causes the game to end quickly as the new player is just outclassed by the more experienced opponent that has memorized everything, or the game slows to a crawl as the new player has to pour over every stat, ability, and interaction at every decision point to avoid walking into a trap.
It’s also a game where both sides start at full strength with every unit on the board, exasperating the problem and front loading all the game info.
This is why I always burn out so quickly whenever I return to chess or yugioh. I can memorize the windows of interaction for the one or two combo decks in an mtg format but memorizing a dozen openings in chess or the windows of interaction for every meta relevant engine in yugioh is too much for me.
I wonder if forced variance as in chess960 or draft (does yugioh have draft like mtg?) would essentially solve that issue
@@guksungan1267 Limited does not exist in YuGiOh, it used to wayyyyy back over 10 years ago now but at this point Forced Variance through a Draft format would require Konami to upend how they do sets and card design. YGO's Memory Problem is because of how often that knowelge changes, not just how much there is.
There is memorization in games like MTG. You need to know what opponents may play, the effects, the costs.
I was introduced to a playing card game called "Mao" that epitomizes this difference. You have to learn by playing because "The first rule of Mao is that you don't discuss the rules."
It plays like Uno, but the people who know the rules penalize the people who don't know the rules by giving them cards.
Then, if ever you win a round, you get to add a rule and the cycle continues. And without this step, it's just a memorization game. But, because players get to step into the role of game designer a little bit, there's layers to it. Once everyone knows the rules, it's a game of trying to come up with a new trigger for a rule, and paying attention to what's happening. It plays into human flaws, but has enough luck and player participation thrown in to make it a fun game for a camping trip.
Classic
I love Mao! Definitely a camping highlight trip when I was a kid. Of course being kids, the made rules were always incredibly ridiculous but somehow the people I played with never made a rule that was straight unfair (every new rule applied equally to every player).
I love Mao. Some people enjoy it just because they want to see the pain of new players failing to figure things out, but I just find the idea of like... trying to deduce rules and systems from within to be fun. If the game had no way to add more rules, there would be no point in playing once you learned everything.
A friend tried to have the rest of our friend group play Mao
We all got fed up and started doing random shit like trading cards and just picking up the deck lol
Penalty: explaining the rules.
I think it's worth noting that the issue with Chess is more technological than anything. Chess players in the 50s and 60s (i.e. "The Queens Gambit" era) didn't have immediate access to the best move in any given position, nor could they jam through thousands of tactics puzzles in a day with zero effort. In a post-Stockfish world, however, you can beat lots and lots of players simply by having consumed more Chess content on Twitch than they have.
The internet definitely made this problem more clear.
Wow Wario Ware was a really good analogy this is why you're the professionals
I think this is why I value simple but deep games over complex games of any depth. Because you can arguably get more depth with less memorization and cognitive taxation with a simple game, like Go or Chess, than a complex one with so many moving parts that it ends up restraining itself.
When I look at Starcraft Broodwar, the memorization process took place while you enjoyed the campaign, a good story is like a good book. I always told people who wanted to learn the game that they should start with the campaign and afterwards I could help them.
Afterwards there's different builds and strategies, actually way more than there are in Starcraft 2.
Timmy VS Spike: A timeless struggle
This video needs to be shown to every Yu-Gi-Oh player, about why the game is failing to attract and keep players.
Not only is 90% of your strategy in the game knowing your own deck and the opponent's deck, and knowing exaxtly what sequence of cards you want to play and your opponent wants to play, the game makes it even harder and more painful making every card played and ability activated a decision point. In those decisions, usually there's 1 to 2 correct answers among 8+ possible options.
Add to that the first turn advantage is so high, you might as well be playing rando-chess where you answer Yu-Gi-Oh trivia.
I don't think anyone disagrees but it's not up to the players to actually... do anything about this. Yugioh needs better rules or on boarding or set design and nothing the players have tried works. Konami has to do it
Fr most of the battle happens before the match has begun
It would be so great to hear your guys talking more about Twilight Imperium. It is really interesting to me that it is a game that have so many "toxic" design elements (e.g. king making, races are 100% unbalanced, player elimination, extremely lengthy games, secret objectives, extremely random combats) and still (most) players have an awesome time playing it. Anecdotally, in the last time I played, ALL five players had a shot at winning in the final round.
We’ll have to play it more before talking about it.
I think there is a big overlap of this idea with the other ideas on min-maxing and optimizing the fun out of a game. The idea of having a wiki open to know all the stuff is one of the reasons I can't get into hardly any games anymore. The first time I was asked to make a decision in FTL like "Go try to save the outpost from being attacked or leave them?", I realized that just experiencing all the iterations to learn and try to remember everything...it was something fun but at the same time, there exists a database with all of this stuff already experienced by everyone else (or compiled on a wiki from players or even datamining). The "going through the motions" on my own to experience it all myself just doesn't sound that fun in context because something in my brain is constantly telling me that I'm wasting time because I can just look up the fastest way to "win".
I can't believe y'all made a video about memorization in games and said precisely zero words about Scrabble.
What makes MTG interesting is say my opponent is in blue. I cast a spell while they have mana open. There are a billion counterspells in blue they could have. But do I really need to know every possible permutation of a counterspell to know whether or not I want to avoid having my spell countered? I would say no. The same can be said with boardwipes or kill spells. There are a lot of permutations but the "base" effect will be very similar in most cases. It's really only the truly novel cards (likely creatures, enchantments, and artifacts) to be afraid of. In those cases however you're talking Sorcery speed. So once you see the threat you can answer it even if you weren't trying to predict it before it arrived.
10:50 very good take. I hate game that obscure information intentionally or unintentionally. Tooltips have become so good by now, there really is no excuse not to have nested tooltips that explain the consequences of your actions. There is also a bunch of RPGs that have a similar problem, where the dialog options are written so weirdly, that you sometimes have a hard time knowing what will happen when you pick one. Being forced into "save-scumming" (stupid term to begin with) because of the game being really unclear about what the different buttons do is very frustrating.
I may be misinterpreting what you would consider memorization, but I feel like fighting game combos may be an example of it that has stood the test of time. Without an incredibly deep understanding of the game mechanics, most of which aren't even visible outside of practice modes, the only way to discover a combo is through trial and error or looking it up, and then once you find a combo you just have to memorize it in order to perform it in game. This certainly has a cost and makes it very difficult for new players to get into the genre, and I'm sure it's why games like SF6 added an alternate control scheme that can automatically execute some small combos, but from what I understand it's a mechanic that while it doesn't add depth, it adds a sense of achievement when you do successfully perform the combo. It becomes a very tangible feeling of progression of "I am getting better at this game," and I at least find that rewarding.
I would think that satisfaction comes more so from skill of execution than skill of memorization.
Also, the rock paper scissors mechanics alleviate problems from a pure memory game.
Combos contain a bit of memorization in that you're not likely to figure out your highest damage combo in the middle of a match. But they're more complex than just memorization, I'd say in two essential ways.
One: Just knowing the inputs isn't enough. You have to practice the execution of a combo. That isn't just being able to nail it from the same starting position in training mode every time. That's also accounting for different hit confirms, spacing, screen position, counterhits, anti airs, etc. Player expression emerges from where players decide a standard bnb is enough and where they choose to practice a more specialized combo that may only work in specific scenarios, or from how difficult a combo they're willing to implement in their gameplay. If you drop the optimal combo 20% of the time then it's often going to be a better decision to do a slightly worse one, but you also have the option of practicing the optimal combo to be more consistent. Execution gives rise to a lot of complexity. Meanwhile, in a strategy game, memorizing something generally means you just know the correct play and there's no reason to do anything else.
Two: Even supposing you've memorized every combo and can execute them flawlessly, the decision of which one to use isn't clear cut. You haven't memorized the definitive, correct solution. You've just developed one of many tools available to you. Combos can be optimized for damage, stun, meter gain, corner carry, oki, etc. In selecting a combo, you're choosing to prioritize some of these things over others. I'd make the argument that as fighting games have eased up on execution with increasingly generous cancel windows and longer input buffers, they've deliberately made this part of the game more complex with additional resources like SF6's drive gauge.
You make a good point about discovery being part of progression. In fighting games, the real time element makes this different than turn based strategy. I would lean on the side of providing a list of all combo moves and leaning on execution for the sense of progression rather than having some players who know the moves. Otherwise your new players won’t stand a chance.
@@distractionmakersThankfully most modern fighting games compensate for this in many ways. Most of them have combo trials, aka "here are some sample combos and room to practice them." They will also have alternate control schemes, along with characters that reward combo execution and memorization more or less. Some games, like Blazblue for example, are aware that their 30 hit combos are very intimidating compared to the much shorter ones in sf, and will compensate by giving universal tools to most characters (i.e., in blazblue, ABCD, aka pressing the buttons in order, is a combo on almost every single character. Its not optimal but it gets you playing the game quickly).
I think sometimes combos are a heavily overstated problem in fighting games, I get why they can be intimidating, but also a lot of the time theyre the easiest to recognize element of skill, which overshadows all the other elements of actual depth in the game. I personally am a diamond sf6 player and my combos are absolute garbage, I learned the bare minimum I needed in 30 mins (admittedly this would take longer for other people) and immediately jumped into ranked to learn the stuff I actually cared about learning.
I think fighting games are a perfect example of this. Take anyone brand new to fighting games and put them against even the average intermediate player. They are not playing the same game. The intermediate player will win almost every single time. There are so many little things to learn and memorize from frame data to neutral to optimal punishes and combos that the knowledge gap is way too wide.
But once you know all of the techniques and options and systems, a lot of top players wind up complaining that the games fall down to pretty much glorified rock-paper-scissors. That's reductive, but it's not that far from the truth at the highest levels of play.
Same thing goes for MOBAs. It takes a _long_ time to understand how the dozens of champions work, what all the items do, and what items to buy for which champions in different situations.
Can't believe you got through this whole episode without mentioning chess and it's deep memorization curve
This problem compounds with mechanical skill in video games. When your game has too much to memorize up front, the players who have played longer have both the advantage of memory _and_ the advantage of mechanical skill. It makes the barrier to entry scale even faster.
It's a big part of what makes fighting games and mobas feel so hard to learn. You're against players who understand the matchup against all of the 20+ characters, have memorized the optimal combos or item builds for every situation, and have the execution skills of someone with months or years of practice. With the internet being what it is, this information is figured out in the first couple months of the game. A player coming in 6 months after a game launches is at a massive disadvantage unless the game has managed to maintain a steady influx of other new players.
It looks like the thing that happens in RTS's and MMORpg's, or any kind of game that has an "endgame". In some cases one can argue that the "endgame" is the game and the full campaing or questlines that you did as playing the game to level up to level cap or whatever is the learning experience, where you are exposed to the mechanics and to several possible strategies you can use later on or where you found the archetype or build you want to play, and so on. Also classic roguelikes play with the idea of memorization when they randomize everything and the first time (on that run) you encounter a scroll or a potion you can't tell if it is a healing potion or a poison one, because they change colors and nicknames. Also I think that instead of memorization one can say in some games that you have a feel of wonder or discovery when you encounter a new mechanic or rule or strategy you didn't knew before, even when that discovery means you lost this game to a rival (Mark Rosewater related that experience on a recent episode of his podcast). I mean there is an aspect of games that is profoudly connected to learning, from kids or animals playing with their companions in order to "train" habilities needed for survival to great scholars discussing abstract concepts where one is trying to defeat his oppositor with words and arguments. What I am saying is that even the "memory" part is not just a memory game because sometimes it connects concepts, mechanics and lore in a game in a meaningful way.
I think this is why I find the combat in M&L brothership engaging despite its simplicity and repetitiveness . When you encounter a new type of enemy, it’s a learning task because each enemy does relatively little damage, but if you don’t learn the counter you get death by a thousand cuts. Then when you encounter a higher level version of that enemy later in the game, you know they counter but it becomes a test of dexterity/consistency because missing a single counter will result in taking a big chunk of damage
I can't imagine anyone trying to get into League of Legends nowadays. There is just so much stuff to know and if you don't know it all, you get berated by everyone on your team (especially because the people you're initially paired with are likely previously banned toxic players on lower level new accounts). It's pretty gross. And even if a new player can slog their way to be able to play Ranked games, now there's a whole new level of entry imo. I know all the "Silver players" are absolutely terrible in relation to Diamond players, and Diamond players are absolutely terrible in relation to Challenger players, but people playing in Silver are MUCH better and more knowledgeable than they were 5-10 years ago. I just don't know how anyone new joins the game at this point.
This is the problem I tapped into when I came back into Modern after years as an 8-rack player. So much cognitive load remembering cards (I started writing them down), and proactively disrupting the oppo’s gameplan while keeping into account eventual topdecks.
All while getting used to new cards as I got back along with MH2.
This is exactly why I burned out of one of my favorite competitive card games (Netrunner) back in 2016 or so. A lot of the skill in Netrunner is being able to predict the opponent's move based on hidden information, and without memorizing all the cards, I felt like I was at a disadvantage against the players who did. I keep wanting to get back into Netrunner and they actually made a new starter set specifically for learning the game and practicing building decks, and I'm actually excited to try it! I just have to find people who are willing to play it and build decks out of it with me without destroying me (or me destroying them) haha.
GoT has a solution I adopted to the board game im developing:
At any moment, including at the start of a battle, each player can see the oponents hand. This way, there is no advantage for players who memorize all the cards of each house/faction.
One consequence of this is how much time (and potentially choice paralysis) this adds to the game for new players. Now they have to look at their hand AND the other player's hand when deciding a play. I also thought about adding this element to one of my designs, but ultimately thought it was a net negative for new player experience.
@@zigeif777 I don't know how familiar you are with GoT, but just in case:
Each player controls a house. Each house has 7 different battle card. On a battle, each player chooses one card in secret, then both reveal, do what the card says and after that, whoever has more force wins the battle.
Without being able to look at the opponent's hand, players that memorized the cards would have a HUGE advantage. So instead of forcing every player to memorize all the cards of each house, just let players look at the opponents hands.
PS: You could also give a list of the cards to each player instead of that. But then players would need to constantly check the discard pile or have to memorize wich cards each player already used.
Might as well play with face up hands to save time, but either way unless certain mechanics can top deck effects you're going to run into good players knowing they won / lost long before the game actually ends.
Hidden information is a blessing not a curse but can you link me a ruleset this sounds like it could be fun.
@clarkecreates There is no deck. You have 7 unique battle cards at the start of the game specific for your house/faction. When you use all, you get them back.
RPS is a bad example for this. It only appears to be a good design, since you have only 3 possible things your opp can do. Imagine it instead being a game of 100000001 different moves each beating and losing to 50000000 moves respectivly. And just as in RPS your opp has free choice each round. That is basically a shot in the dark. There is no rule that limits the possible choices so nothing to go by while making your own choice.
I am surprised you guys didn’t bring up Lorcana. It has a huge memorization problem in that you aren’t allowed to take game notes in tournaments. Between what cards are inked and trying memorize what’s in the opponents hand when you get to look at it, memory plays a huge part in picking up the last percentage points in a match.
Great point. That aspect of Lorcana is very frustrating.
shallow games reward memory and deep games reward decisions
I think deep games reward insight. Games that reward a few decisions are sort of medium depth. Imo.
@ I like the word insight. encapsulates a little more than decisions
This conversation makes me think a lot of fighting games and the mental stack and the arguments for fighting games having a level of complexity to obscure that depth. yes, there is just a wall of learning characters, their combo routes, their special move inputs and the properties of both their specials and normals and how that goes into the matchup, and the fighting game you are playing during discovery vs. the fighting game you are playing at mastery are fundamentally two different games, BUT!
where that complexity becomes depth is when that knowledge level is understood by both opponents and that RPS can properly be established. There is inherant risk to going for a special move even if you have it committed to muscle memory because there is time you are spending to do the inputs, information you are giving to your opponent to help them inform their imperfect information that they make their decisions with... and that battle of real time chess where people have to make their decisions at that wild pace fighting games move at is so peak.
Does the video seem blurry to people, even on 1080p?
No. You're going blind. Seek help.
Try setting the resolution to something else, I have a similar issue when the connection is temporarily spotty
It is, sorry! I forgot to fix the focus.
This is the biggest difference between FTL and ITB. They are both great but ITB is a better game imo because it doesn't rely on memory. The game happily will tell you whatever you want to know because the core game play is so strong it doesn't have to obfuscate anything.
Ive been talking to a friend about this. It made me realize why games like Brass are so liked. Before i played it, i thought it was likely overhyped and being in the #1 spot in BGG was a fluke (dont get me wrong, it doesnt mean its the BEST GAME EVER but it helps contextualize). Much to my chagrin, after playing it, i understood the hype. The decision tree is actually super small and theres really not much memorization, but the strategic depth is incredible.
I think many game creators add complexity in an attempt to add depth, but the foundations of their game design just dont allow for it, leading to many red herrings, and the “correct” decisions that you have to memorize, as you guys put it.
In effect, it all comes down to the Queen problem again, they just make it harder to find the Queen, but once you do, thats all ypu really need
💯 I like “Hide the Queen” as an alternative name for this haha
I find myself thinking that so much of ARK, the dinosaur survival game, but for player input and RNG is just memory issues. Like there's an entire website/app for want to tame a Rex? Look in this area. For a level 150 you'll need this many tranquilizer shots, and this much time and resources to make it through the entire taming process. Or like base dino stats for breeding purposes are somewhat obscured. But can be guessed at from an app on tame. Just put some of this in the actual UI. And without requireing advanced items in the tech trees.
You guys ever play Starcraft? Im curious on your thoughts on a game like that.
Many people say there really isnt much strategy in RTS and its all mechanics
Yeah and those people are wrong lol
They bring up Starcraft once in awhile so I'd say yes.
Also that's a slight misunderstanding of what people are saying. Their argument is that RTS games like Starcraft are mainly strategic in the early days of the meta, when people are learning the game and exploring ideas. But after X years, the strategic part becomes more solved, people's macro ability rise above a certain level, and the game shifts less from a game of unknowns and surprises to a game of mechanical skill as the defining measure of victory. That the variety of strategies become narrower and pure mechanical skill far outweighs strategic nuance or creativity.
Which we can objectively see in SC1 and SC2 meta.
RTS games are a bit interesting. For one thing, 'strategy' is really the wrong word for them. They're mostly about tactics and logistics. Strategy is just a convenient catch all for people who don't know the distinctions. Though there is Some strategy to it.
The thing is, there are layers to how it all plays out.
When everyone's just starting out and has no clue about anything, there's a bit of clever strategic decision making to be had. Then players start Memorising things, learning all the information there is to learn about what is and isn't optimal, what doesn't and doesn't work, what decisions are and aren't sensible at which part of the game... and it's not who came up with the clever strategy or did a cool thing that wins, it's whoever builds things in the optimal order as dictated by how the game, and (where applicable) their faction works. There aren't any real decisions to be made once you've figured that out... until multiple, or all, players have figured it out, at which point you hit the next layer:
Whoever clicks fastest wins. To the point where pro players will just click constantly even when not clicking ON anything so as to be sure that when they Are clicking on something they'll click as fast as possible... and in some games they'll just constantly send new move orders to the same units as a result... which lets them optimise pathing for best movement speed or to prevent things clumping up or whatever is optimal at the time (particularly useful in games with bad path finding), or to engage in tactical shenanigans (in age of empires: ranged cavalry doing what they did historically: riding into range at speed, firing, then riding away before the enemy can move forward to enage them, repeat until the enemy is dead... or drawn entirely out of position so the rest of the army can win a fight without whatever unit was sent after the ranged cavalry being involved)
Thing is, there's a cap on that past which it stops mattering too. The game can only accept meaningful input so fast, the human body caps out, and also everyone reaches sufficiently similar levels that it's not really mattering anymore.
At which point actual strategy, and decision making, and clever tricks, and figuring out what your opponent will do based on who you opponent is (and what faction they're playing) and the specific nature of the map and all that sort of thing start actually being relevant and you can start doing clever and interesting things, rather than only the Optimal thing, again and it will actually be meaningfully impactful.
Functionally, RTS games are only really fun when either no one knows what they're doing or everyone involved has essentially mastered it.
Love StarCraft and agree with what others have commented.
@@SenkaZver SC2 yes to some degree, though that has more to do with design decisions like 6->12 workers and some unit designs affecting design for the entire race (the Sentry basically made all Protoss units worse in SC2 compared with their BW counterparts).
In BW I'd argue this is not true, due to map design and the mechanical execution being so high. The limited economy in BW also means that your decisions do matter, and we see new strategies crop up all the time and older strategies being brought back in. The level of surprise and catching people off guard, abusing "standard" knowledge to do something weird that works, happens far more in BW than SC2.
As someone mentioned, BW players have been playing the game for a LONG time, and Remastered definitely helped with some of the micro execution, so the mechanical skill level of everyone is so high that tactics and decision making often come back into being significantly important to winning games.
Very important distinctions!
It's not exactly the same, but I'm generally in favor of small knowledge/execution checks at the beginning of a players journey so they can feel some quick improvement and possibly get hooked.
It's one of the successes of motion inputs in fighting games or the entirety of Tekken's character design. Getting knowledge-checked doesn't necessarily feel good, but there's joy in exploring, and finding a small set of viable answers to a situation.
This epitomizes the all famous phrase “players will optimize the fun out of games”.
Its why i have no interest in playing something like multiplayer civ. I really dont have the time to memorize the meta
Where would you put "knowledge of potential future events"? The events could be perfectly explained when they show up, but knowing what could show up is still knowledge you have to memorize.
Love twilight imperium. Played it more times than i can count.
How does this affect RTS games like Starcraft? And is it this memorisation problem that led to the fall of RTS as a mainstream genre?
It’s definitely possible. Build orders are extremely important and new players don’t even understand they exist. If we look at the evolution of the genre, MOBAs remove this element for the most part.
Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock! 🖖
Exactly 😆
I hate chess. The better player always wins, which makes wins feel hollow and losses feel pointless. Games where you are supposed to get better for your own personal growth aren’t two player for a reason. There’s no creativity, there’s no randomness, there’s no strategy, just an objectively correct choice that you either know or you don’t. I do not understand why it was ever popular or why it’s such a big thing with some teenagers now.
Entirely random games also suck (see Snakes & Ladders), but entirely memory based games aren’t better, they’re just more complex.
love chess for all the reason you hate it. to each their own?
@@tommullings9912 it’s just not a game, it’s a memory test
@@Azeria Any game with a luck element is ultimately just a dice roll. There's no strategy (c). "Games where you are supposed to get better for your own personal growth" are a competition, where the one who trains more and executes their moves better wins.
Games based on luck provide little to no agency to the players, so there's no real competition there. This includes ALL card games, however fun they may be.
@@FluffySpikeM Nope, randomness can help create strategy because the game cannot play out the same way over and over again. I mentioned entirely random games in my comment. Poker for example is not an entirely random game, but the fact that it relies on randomness is what makes it interesting in the first place.
@@Azeria Nope the nope. Randomness can create excitement and a sense of novelty, but it has nothing to do with strategy. Strategy is about recognizing patterns and making meaningful choices. Which means you need to know your alternatives and be able to optimize.
Being interesting and being strategic are different things. Poker or Magic can be interesting, but because of the luck factor they cannot be fully strategic.
Complaining that "The better player always wins" in a strategy game is simply ludicrous.
Shoutout Bobby Fischer
So, rock paper scissors lizard spock?
The WarioWare analogy is pretty thin. You neglected to incorporate the fact that interacting with the various silly scenarios is a key part of the game.
Simply reducing the experience to "figure out the objective", then "react to achieve the objective faster than your opponent" fundamentally excludes the core emotive reasons behind why those games are developed with that type of gameplay.
i think warioware games are considered "micro games"
Cribbage is the example that immediately comes to mind where memorization is the game. If you just kept the rule card in front of you it's essentially chutes and ladders.
I disagree since there is still a lot of risk vs reward places in the game especially in a 2 player game
Comparing Cribbage to chutes and ladders is a terrible example.
@3joeylindsey how
Chutes and ladders doesn't have any decision points compared to cribbage where what you throw and the order you play your cards affects who wins. Looking at the rules should always be allowed.
@@styxsksu it's possible I was taught cribbage wrong
Magic is exactly the example of a complex game with very little depth. Both at the beginner level and at pro level it comes down to matchup and luck of the draw. Strategic back and forth only happens in the middle between beginners and pros. You could also say Mtg is about metagaming, but then the game is won by either gathering statistics on what people play or wild-guessing about the meta.
Also, disagree completely on the partial information bit. The deepest strategy game overall is probably Go - a game with full information, with an enormous number of choices in every move. It also happens to be not purely an exercise in memorization, but a combination of tactical memorization with strategic insight. Whoever sees the board better wins. It's dynamic pattern recognition.
I would say rock-paper-scissors is not a strategy game at all.