Trials Garage Update #4: Difficulty
Greetings Riders,
Many of you in these forums already have a pretty good handle on Trials gameplay and mechanics. Most of you have probably completed all the in-game tracks. I’m sure more than a few of you have platinum medals on the extreme tracks. Some of you are probably so good at Trials by now that you are seeking out custom creations that up the ante on the difficulty spectrum. For those of us who’ve been playing Trials for a long time it can be easy to forget how hard this game is for new players but for millions of Trials players the struggle is very real. Another thing many of us who are longtime Trials players forget is that we don’t represent the average Trials player in fact we are very far from it. To see where we truly fall on the scale of Trials players let’s look at a few stats.
Less than half of all Fusion players (41.6%) have completed all of the medium events in the base game which demonstrates pretty clearly that the average Trials player already struggles some on Medium tracks. Moving on to Hard tracks the drop off is even more pronounced. Around 15% of Trials Fusion players have completed all the hard events. Finally there’s extreme, the tracks those in the ninja community scoff at as too easy. Only 2.4% of players have completed the extreme tracks through Inferno 4. This means that if you’ve completed all extreme tracks, it doesn’t matter with what time or how many faults, you are well within the top 3% of Trials players globally. If you are leaderboard chasing on these tracks and improving times it’s pretty safe to say you are a Trials One Percenter.
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*Note: These stats were taken before our Games with Gold promotion on Xbox One
We started with these stats for two reasons. First is to highlight how far removed many of us are from the average Trials player. Second is to show how important improving the learning curve is to the future of Trials. If 85% of players are dropping off before completing the main game at least part of the problem could be that they are not getting the knowledge they need to improve.
When we talk about improving the difficulty curve we are not talking about making the game easier. We know that the hard and extreme tracks are the real meat of the game for core players and an important part of the experience. What we want to do is give players the resources they need to overcome the challenge that is Trials. With that in mind let’s take a look back at how this concept has developed over the past few Trials games.
We don’t have to go back far before we get to a Trials game without in-game help. Trials HD didn’t have tutorials, tracks simply got harder and harder as you progressed through the game. If a player in Trials HD started to struggle they either had to seek out help outside of the game or simply stick with it and practice, practice, practice.
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In Trials Evolution we made our first attempt to ease the difficulty curve for new players by introducing license tests. These tests were essentially tracks that introduced new obstacles types that would appear in the next set of tracks. These tests included pop-ups with basic instructions on how to complete the maneuvers required. The obstacles themselves were fairly easy versions of what would be coming in the next tier of tracks and as a result it was possible to complete these tests without actually picking up the new skills needed
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Next was Trials Fusion. Fusion kept a license test structure similar to Trials Evolution but these new tests, called "Training Programs", introduced narration to help describe the obstacles and skills needed to pass them. While this did help, it was still possible to complete these tests without learning the skills they were intended to teach. The perception of these levels was that they were just a gate, something that was required to pass to unlock new levels. As a result, players tended to go through them as quickly as possible and never return.
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That brings us back to the present and the question at hand is “how can we improve this further?” In discussing the last two games we’ve already identified two weaknesses with the license tests. First one would be that the tests are a bit too easy so they can be passed without learning the skills. Second would be the lack of repetition. Players have no incentive to return to license tests to improve.
There is also a pretty big challenge that we touch upon in our latest Trials Garage Radio Podcast. It’s impossible to create a one size fits all solution. Some players really want that extra help and instruction while others prefer to figure things out themselves. This adds a whole new layer to the discussion where we want to give players more in depth instruction but we don’t want to make it too overbearing for players who don’t want it. Hear about that and a lot more as we speak with Professor FatShady of the University of Trials in this month’s Trials Garage Radio Podcast.
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Now that we’ve discussed what we’ve done so far and some of the challenges we face, let’s take a look at a few ideas we’ve discussed to improve.
One idea is making tutorials more like skill games including scoring and leaderboards. Instead of a simple pass or fail, players could be scored based on their performance and compete with friends on leaderboards. This would give players a better idea of how well they’ve done and provide more incentive to return to these tutorials and improve these core skills.
Another idea is more focused tutorials that can be spread out to the appropriate points in the career mode. These could be something like the training tracks you sometimes see on Track Central. Instead of a “hard” tutorial that tries to cover all hard skills, there could be separate tutorials for skills like bunny hop, steep hill climbs, transitions, etc. These could be distributed throughout the career progression so that, for example, the bunny hop tutorial comes before the first track where you will need the bunny hop to proceed. Of course something like this would need to be balanced so that there aren’t too many tutorials.
The instructions given through dialogue in Fusion were a step in the right direction but were not as effective as intended. Another advantage to breaking tutorials down to individual skills is that they can start with an optional demonstration of the skill. Again let’s look at the bunny hop as an example, instead of just hearing a short description of what a bunny hop is and how to do it, the player could also see a bunny hop being performed with on screen button inputs similar to what you’d see in a replay.
Finally we think that unlocking new bikes and new difficulties at the same time can make the increase in difficulty too great. This is most noticeable with the agile bike (Pit Viper/Phoenix) and hard difficulty. For players who are still learning the game, the agile bike is hard enough to handle without adding more difficult tracks into the mix at the same time. It could be that unlocking bikes a bit earlier in the progression could help players get a feel for these bikes on easier tracks before they are given tracks where they need some skills on the bike to succeed.
These are a few ideas we’ve had related to easing the difficulty curve for new players. We look forward to hearing your thoughts. We have a pretty short survey this month, we would really appreciate if you could take a few minutes to fill that out. We’ll be back next month when we’ll be talking about Trials history and potential on PC. Until then, we’ll see you on the leaderboards.
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