I don’t have a problem with complex, ambitious games. I have a problem with complex, ambitious games that don’t put the effort in making the player learn it in an amenable fashion.
Sure, bad UI and tutorials are a barrier to learning a new game concept. Still, even with the best UI and the most careful tutorials, significantly different concepts can take WORK to truly understand. Work that I sometimes don’t feeling like investing, depending on other things in my life.
It’s easy to have a good UI if it’s conveying the same information as hundreds of other games. Even a bad UI is fine if it’s a bad UI that everyone already knows.
That said, a lot of the learning curve in a game like EU4 isn’t the truly different concepts (though there are some of those), but just a huge number of small, special-purpose game mechanics.
I’ll learn a complex game any day (although, the older I get, the less I feel that way). But, if the complex game is also hidden behind a garbage interface, I just can’t get past it.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is kind of obnoxiously complex. But, somehow, they’ve fit all of the necessary information on the screen. I love that game.
LOGIstiCAL is also complex, but navigating that interface is a nonintuitive nightmare. I want to like it, but I have a hard time with it.
I do have a goal that I want to learn one ridiculously complex game in my lifetime, interface be damned. Dominions 5, or one of the Paradox games, or some crazy wargame. Something. I know I don’t have room in my life or my mind for multiple games like that, but one seems like a good thing to tackle.
Oh I forgot about Dom 4. Yeah, I tried that a year or so back and just bounced right off it, even with the help of some fine folks here. I found it incredibly fiddly, unwieldy and overwhelming.
I think “That game looks like learning Klingon” should enter the gaming lexicon for all time now.
For anyone that watches my videos or streams, it’s no big surprise, but I love figuring out new interfaces and games.
My approach to Klingon:
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I start simple - the warrior/assault rifle version of whatever I am playing. That way I have some sort of benchmark. It also helps me get over the analysis-paralysis of optimizing where to start.
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Documentation - I love having good resources on hand, especially written ones. I am usually the one printing manuals so I can read them in my spare time. Something about having a physical object helps me anchor my thinking and learn new things.
I agree there’s a tipping point though. If everything is a punt to YouTube/Wikis then why bother?
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Streaming is also a way for me to learn from my betters. That helped me with They are Billions
No matter how complex a game may seem at first, I’ve found just spending some time with it dissolves that into something I can click with if I give a solid effort. I’ve found, however, that watching a Let’s Play from someone online that knows what they are doing really alleviates almost all my confusion. As such, I don’t feel like this has been an issue for me for years, and actually I’ve found some games I just delight in that I’d have never touched say 5 or 6 years ago!
I don’t play as many crazy complex strategy and 4X games as I used to, but I can tell you one thing that I’ll drop like a sack of hot pianos: a bad control scheme. I’ve lived through enough of that crap - the crazy flying controls of Gunvalkyrie, the tank controls of the early Resident Evils, the weird handle-like-a-truck third person controls of most Rockstar games, plus the Witcher 3. And I just don’t have the patience for it anymore.
Wow! This topic triggers me! I agree so much with most of the comments here, in particular, AI War, Kerbal Space Program, and nearly all Paradox games. I’m pretty sure I’ve stated before that if I “NEED” to watch a YouTube video or read a Wiki article just to understand how to play your game, you have FAILED! I’m very happy for those who have the time to spend learning such things, but I do not, and I question the value of spending said time learning how to play a game. Games should be fun and easy to learn to play. Personally, my time spent “learning” to play some games have most definitely NOT been worth the effort; AI War, and Europa Universalis 4 come to mind. These are only some examples, but this has made me very much apposed to even trying new games that seem to have that dreaded “high-learning-curve”.
I give Kerbal Space Program credit for at least giving you a taste of what it’s like in the tutorial. You build a simple rocket and shoot it off and see how far up it goes. It’s enough for me to know that learning how to play will be worth it. In Crusader Kings 2, I start it up and I’m immediately overwhelmed by all kinds of information that I can’t even begin to understand.
Antichamber. I debated getting it for a while. I read non-spoiler explanations. So I finally pulled the trigger. After a while I started reading spoilers. Eventually I walked away. I was more annoyed at myself than the ‘game’. I felt like my mind was too crystallized to wrap around it. A fault of age, no doubt.
How do you feel when a new game looks like Klingon to you?
Absolutely fantastic.
Usually…
Seriously though, I love learning new interfaces. I’m still trying to wrap my head around Europa Universalis IV and Crusader Kings II, but for some reason had no issue with LOGistICAL.
That cracked me up.
My backlog is littered with games like this. Star Ruler 2, Distant Worlds Universe, etc.
At this point in life I’m all about the “easy to learn hard to master” games.
This is how I am. I’ll just sit down and start trying to play.
If it starts making sense I’ll usually snowball into knowing how to play just fine, eventually. If things have no consistency, make no sense, or very important things seem to be intentionally left off tool tips (difficulty via obscurity) I have less patience.
Now that I fully understand the Endless Space 2 interface I’m really enjoying it, and I didn’t mind the time it took me to learn it as much as I thought it would (mostly because once I got past the restrictive weird beginner tutorial that wasn’t like a normal tutorial the game really opened up). Lots of amazing information presented in unique ways I wish other developers would use (Firaxis).