October 8th, 2022
I just posted this on the discussion board “Thaddeus”:
The most important question you raise is one that EVERY other commentator has raised: you want more immediate feedback. Feedback is crucial to successful interaction, whether it be with a game, a word processor, or any other piece of software. But what is the ideal focus of feedback? The rule, which holds in every application of which I can imagine, is for feedback to be immediate and complete. Can you imagine a word processor posting a warning that "You misspelled a word a few paragraphs back." Even worse, can you imagine it declaring that it wouldn't tell you WHICH word was misspelled?
Yet there are good arguments in the other direction. Imagine a shooter that tells you as you enter a new level "Don't even THINK about entering this level unless you have at least six grenades. And remember, there's a purple monster hiding behind the truck on the right." That's going too far, but it is technically feedback on your decision to enter the level.
Even more specific feedback can be unwelcome. "You can't kill the green monster with your machine gun -- only a rocket will finish him." would certainly help, but wouldn't you prefer to figure that out on your own?
What if the shooter gave you the feedback at the end of the level. "Well, sonny, you did a good job at first, but you wasted far too much ammo on the pink monster, and you wasted too much time crossing the chasm." Is that preferable?
How do we figure the ideal immediacy and degree of detail of feedback? It is trite to observe that the answer depends upon the design and the player. I think that the best metric is the size of the lesson to be communicated. If, in a shooter, eight bullets do as much damage as one grenade, that's something that the player should learn by observation, but the player's observations must be direct enough to enable the player to draw the correct conclusion. Even then, the player does not learn by a pop-up message declaring "Eight bullets do as much damage as one grenade." Instead, the player sees the effects of the weapons and figures out the relationship -- from EXPERIENCE.
A bigger, more abstract lesson should require more experience to grasp. In Civilization, for example, the player learns that investment in research yields technologies that are advantageous. But that lesson is not communicated in a single turn. The player must experiment over the course of several games to figure out the significance of science.
Now, the value of scientific research is suggested by a number of indicators, and even at the very outset of the game, the player gets some feedback showing the value of research. By contrast, the player in LMD is completely at sea as to how to proceed. It is quickly apparent that the player must somehow turn back the Saxons, but Merlin doesn't seem to care much about the Saxons. What in the world is Merlin up to? And how is one to handle Merlin? There's no clearcut strategy to use with Merlin. The choices between the options one is given in the Merlin dialogues are maddeningly difficult.
Yet there really is a consistency in those dialogues. They are about wisdom, and wisdom is not something that you learn in a freshman course ("Wisdom 101"). I'm going over them carefully, making small adjustments and additions. I have a few ideas for some more Merlin dialogues.
Lastly, I will mention one of my most trite adages: "The shadow defines the light". You learn as much from your mistakes as you learn from your successes. LMD is designed to let you walk down the wrong path -- many wrong paths -- so that you can better understand the significance of the right path.
The purpose of LMD is not to help you "win". It is to help you learn.