Trahearne in GW2

I've been playing Guild Wars 2 since the game launched. So far, only one of my characters has completed the main story path of the game, which includes pairing with an NPC named Trahearne. I enjoyed playing the story arc through to the end, and didn't have any strong feelings one way or the other about Trahearne.

However, some players have very strong feeling about him. A sub-reddit just to complain about Trahearne even exists.

The most common complaints I've seen are that some players feel Trahearne takes the credit and receives the recognition for the battles and achievements by the player's character. These players want to be recognized as the hero of the land and the one who killed the rampaging dragon, not as the second-in-command to Trahearne who stands aside and watches him accept the credit and praise for the victory.

For these players, their experience is ruined. They feel frustrated and cheated at not being the greatest hero in their own story. I never felt this way, but I can understand how someone expecting to be biggest force in the narrative would be caught off-guard.

Of course, there are people on the other side of the issue. Some players have said that after creating a sylvari character, the same race as Trahearne, and seeing him in their character's story much earlier gave them a greater appreciation for the character.


The lead writer of GW2 responded to players on the game's official forum, saying that they are listening to user feedback and looking at how they will handle the Trahearne character and others in future content. He also made a point I think is very important (emphasis mine):

...Trahearne was intended to fill a very specific role that, in terms of both gameplay and story, the PC could not fill—an order-neutral character with extensive knowledge about Orr and the magic of undeath who could coordinate a global war effort and make the necessary plans, thus leaving the actual gameplay up to the player.

Trahearne was set up the way he was so the player didn't have to act like a manager but actually play the game; instead of choosing objectives to meet or who to assign them to, the player goes out and achieves those objectives him- or herself. If Trahearne's role in the story was any different, it would have negatively affected the gameplay.

The role Trahearne filled in the plot was necessary to keep the game fun to play, but the execution leaves some players feeling that their contribution to the story is not recognized. Editing Trahearne's dialogue to shine the spotlight more on the player's character or giving Trahearne more depth regardless of the player character's race may help resolve the issues some players feel exist in the main story. The GW2 team has been very open to the game community's concerns since the game launched, so I am interested in how future content will be shaped as the team takes in feedback from their players.

UX that worked - iPhone contact forwarding

A while ago, my wife needed the phone number of a friend that I had saved in my iPhone that she didn't have in hers. We were texting at the time, so I looked up the friend's contact information and was ready to either memorize the number or write it down to text it back to my wife.

When I found the friend in my contacts app I saw a button I never noticed before, 'Send Message,' on the contact info page. When I tapped it I was able to forward the contact, with all the information I saved on the person, to my wife like it was a text message. It even included an icon that made it recognizable as a contact and not just a text of the friend's name.

This is the kind of thing that makes me excited. I had an action I wanted to perform, and while trying to figure out how to execute it I found a feature I hadn't noticed before that let me do exactly what I was trying to do easily and quickly. I was impressed that I could tap a button or two instead of trying to hold the phone number in my memory long enough to type it up in a text or having to write it down so I could make sure I gave my wife the right number. It's not the fanciest feature, but it made my day a little easier.

UX in games - includes emotional reactions?

Warning: This post contains major spoilers for the ending of Half-Life 2: Episode 2.

One of my hobbies is playing video games, and as I've become more and more interested in UX and HCI I've wondered how much of the video game experience is considered the user experience.

Two games I've played in the last few years stand out in my mind. One is Alan Wake, a survival horror game about a writer who's wife is kidnapped by a supernatural force and his attempts to rescue her. At the beginning of the game, it's explained that Alan's wife suffers from a fear of the dark. The couple arrive at a lakeside cabin, and while Alan is outside the power is cut to the cabin and his wife begins screaming in fear.

At the time I played the game I was engaged, and I could relate completely to the situation. I mashed the sprint button, running Alan back to the cabin to check on her and as I did I could feel that I had become tense and anxious. The game had triggered an emotional reaction in me, and I had only played it a few minutes.

The second game is Half-Life 2: Episode 2. In the game's final scene, Eli Vance is grabbed by an alien creature and murdered on-screen while the player's character is pinned to a wall, unable to move or stop the alien.

I was shocked at the death of the character, but my wife was choking back tears. She told me that she had liked the character of Eli because he reminded her of her grandfather, so his death had a much greater emotional impact on her.

In both these cases, life experiences caused a dramatic scene in a game to have an even greater emotional impact on my wife and myself, the players. To me, that's one of the highest goals a game UX designer could hope to achieve. Because these two moments triggered such emotional reactions within me they remain two of my favorite gaming moments. I see no reason why emotional responses to games should not be included or considered part of the user experience of them.

Usability in Metroid: Other M

This post contains spoilers for Metroid: Other M

The ending of the main story arc of Metroid: Other M was very frustrating to me, and I think the blame lies in the poor usability of one of the final boss fights of the game.

The game begins with a tutorial which teaches you the button combinations for Samus’ attacks. One of the moves is the Power Bomb, and once you leave the tutorial this move is disabled. However, you still have the regular Bomb attack. Towards the end of the game, you fight a Queen Metroid and roll down into the creature’s stomach in Samus’ morph ball form. As the morph ball, your only attacks are to lay bombs.

When I reached this point, I began laying as many Bombs as I could but did not see the monster’s health dropping. However, mine was falling while inside the monster’s stomach and I eventually died. The game let me restart right before I entered the monster’s stomach, but with only about half my health. This time I rolled around trying to lay bombs in as many places as I could, trying to find a weak spot that would let my bombs do damage. With my health much lower, I had less time to lay bombs and died again. I repeated this a few more times, using what little time I was given each restart to look for some weak spot that would damage the queen.

After dying over and over, my wife checked online to see how I was supposed to beat this monster. She told me I was supposed to use the Power Bomb attack. I had to look up what the button combination was because I did not remember it from the tutorial, which I had played through at least a week before. When I restarted again and used a Power Bomb, the monster immediately was killed. It was at that point that the game showed the Power Bomb ability being unlocked and reminded me of the button combination to perform it.

This was not a boss fight designed with usability in mind. The game required me to use a move the game told me previously was not available and only reminded me of how to perform the move after I had to use the move. Since the other abilities in the game would be shown as being activated when they became available the same thing should have been used here, probably when the player performed the action to jump down the monster’s throat.