Monthly Test-Play Session 2020-10-31

《Drifting : Weight of Feathers》

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UE4 Forum - Monthly Test-Play Session 2020-10-31

Konpeko!

In this week's update, I'd like to share some of the results I've gathered throughout the play-test session held yesterday (2020/10/30), please take a back seat (and a cup of coffee?) and enjoy my latest findings!

There are 3 major additions in the latest build of the tutorial level - a hollowed platform, a long corridor with a visual directional hint, a new feature that forces the player to perform the required action before progressing to the next section. Each of these new additions has been thoroughly tested yesterday and reveal some interesting observation on human behavior.

I've added a hollowed platform right after teaching players how to wall dash, the idea is to encourage players to utilize their newly learned skill and experience how it could make traversing on walls a lot more enjoyable and convenient. I deliberately made the gap between platforms deep enough and hope that players will intentionally want to avoid it - the resulting outcome is 50 - 50: some people make the effort to dash between platforms in order to proceed faster; some simply took the longer route and go through the bottom of the platform and up again, they seem to acknowledge the fact that they are doing it "wrong" but it did not bother them (maybe the penalty is not large enough? or the distance between gaps is too short for them to respond with the proper move?) so much to the point that they want to actively avoid it.

The directional hint I've added last week is probably the greatest achievement I made so far - people actually (finally!) learn how to throw sideward instead of throwing forward all the time! I've made a long corridor with a sphere spawned in the middle, two statues placed on either side of the wall - I was aiming for a visual setup where players will want to subconsciously throw the sphere without aiming their target. By carefully predicting the player's viewpoint, I place the two statues so that players could barely see their target, this in turns, causing the angle between forward throw and sphere traveling direction become so wide (near orthogonal) that throwing sideward (with a near parallel angle) seems to be the logical way of throwing it. To my surprise, this simple setup achieves a 100% success rate yesterday, all of the playtesters successfully perform one left throw and one right throw without my verbal assistance!   

There is one issue that kept bothering me since day 1 of the test-play session - no one ever bothered to read the short (no more than 7 words) hint shown in the middle of the screen. An apparent side effect of this issue is that people tend to use the moves they've already learned before trying new moves, no matter what the hint told them to do. I've attempted to turn the text hint into a gameplay hint by only allowing the player to proceed if they perform the requested move - no other moves could pass the lesson except the one they are asked to perform. To my surprise, for some incomprehensible reason, despite the game paused and explicitly told them to do a specific move, despite they've tried their old move and failed, again and again, they kept trying until I told them to look at the hint and try to do what the hint told them to do. This new feature I've added is an utter failure, it has absolutely no effect on altering players' behavior, I guess it's time for me to look for another alternative to solve this bothersome issue. :(

Just like developing a game, there are always ups and downs in playtesting, sometimes the new feature works; sometimes it doesn't. In retrospect, if I regard the whole process of me building the tutorial level for the first time in a meta sense, I am also "playing" a tutorial level - the goal of that tutorial level is to build a tutorial level that works for people who play my game for the first time - and clearly, I've been continually failing and failing for more than 6 months. Thinking back, I really shouldn't complain too much about people who are generous enough to help playtest my game. XD

That's all for this week!

Thank you for reading my weekly article, wish we all have a great and relaxing weekend! ヽ(ﾟ∀ﾟ)ﾉ