As a fan of traditional arcade games, I have noticed this problem in mainstream reviews. You've got well-known reviewers on big sites crapping on games without the slightest understanding of how to approach the game (eg. credit feeding through a hard game and then complaining about it being only half an hour long, literally asking for more filler content (!) and so on). ...
lol
... My thoughts:
1) Motivate the players to put in the work to learn. Show them what the game is really about, show the cool stuff that is possible with the mechanics. This is hard to do but sometimes possible in-game, more straightforward to do out of game, and videos also work as advertising before the player gets the game. Frequently you'll need both skilled play and commentary in order to understand and appreciate what's happening. Juicing the game / Pavlovian feedback could help to invisibly motivate them even if they don't yet have any clue what they are "supposed" to do - make sure you have the sound, animation, etc. feedback reward players for trying to use the harder mechanics. This obviously only works on low level, not tactical or strategic level. In a multiplayer game, leverage social motivation (eg. Overwatch's "Play of the Game" system).
2) Do a better job at teaching the player to use the mechanics. Make them believe they can learn if they want to. Integrated into the level design, as separate tutorials, as demos/videos in game, as external videos (Youtube etc.). There's only one exception I can think of where it might not be possible to teach more - puzzle-ish games where figuring out the mechanics is a key part of the fun.
3) Don't stop the learning support at casual level. For instance, let players watch their own replays and see analysis data in a RTS game, and include very hard tutorials and challenges (with appropriate warnings...) in addition to just casual tutorials. ...
Some good points here. Thx! Yeah, showing the specific manovers, mechanics etc.
with some possible commentary on video sounds good. Sort of enticing the player
to pull these things off. Yet I don't think that teaching will help right from
the get-go, because teaching the player requires him/her to be patient enought
already. For an unknown indie game one may not willing to spend the time to
learn the better mechanics right from the get-go. So there needs to be a fine
transition leading the player to use the indented mechanics as you've indicated
(doing a better job teaching the player) -- sort of automatic or inclusive
teaching so to speak.
... Obviously if you want commercial success with a hard/complex game, you should consider accommodating the players who don't master the hard mechanics so they also have a good time. Depending on the design you can't always do much without compromising the original vision, but often you can do something. Let's say you have a fighting game and you some kind of reason to make the execution of some move/combo so hard that the weak or intermediate players can't do it at all. If the great players will still pull it off all of the time, why not give everybody else an alternative move/combo with similar function and 80% effectiveness with an easy input? The pros aren't ever going to use that so it doesn't affect their experience, but everybody else gets closer to the "real game" where that type of move is supposed to be an option.
The first sentence tells it all. So basically, if I can't accommodate the
average player, I have no rights to complain about if they drop the game like
it's hot. And if the mechanics is too hard to get by, initially, I have to
build another one leading to the intended one over time, I guess.
So how does it translate to what I've wrote in my previous post considering
WipEout and its weapon system? What could be a gradual/alternate system
leading the player to adopt the intended/strategic weapon gameplay? As I said,
the weapons (the whole system including the random pickups etc.) feels unfair,
if you play the weapons in isolation. Stated otherwise, how to adopt the
player to a non-linear gameplay (i.e. considering the global state and the
action of the NPCs) if (s)he starts out from linear (i.e. just shooting the
one in front)? Making the game easier doesn't work because it's just a scaling.
What I could imagine is making the pickups not so much random, i.e. making
them somewhat dependent on the current state/weapons of the one in front and
behind of you. So for example, say the one from behind of you has rockets
loaded and the one in front a bomb. Now while running over the next item pad
you may now likely get either a bomb, too, to defend the possible rockets
coming from behind, or get a machine gun to defend the bomb coming straight
into your face from the one in front of you. Hence, the weapon pickups will
adopt to the current state on the track giving you a weapon which can be
better utilized with respect to what happens around you making it feel less
unfair because you get what's needed for the situation at hand.
But now the system becomes a little bit biased. For, you can keep holding a
weapon with you now intentionally influencing the pickups of the one in front
and behind of you. This may becomes unfair. For, guess you're holding rockets
and the one in front of you gets some mines or a bomb to defend your rockets.
But what if the one in front of you wants to have rockets, too, to be able to
catch the one in front of him/her and not to defend your possible incoming
rockets? Hence, with you holding rockets, you are able to influence/bias the
pickups of others. Can be good or bad. Hmm, I think such a gameplay needs to
be tested a lot to not run into some emergent behavior leading to abusing the
system.
_/¯
