Designing for Low-Skill Players: Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em

Here's an obvious fact about human psychology: Losing feels bad, whereas winning feels good. 

Here's a less obvious fact about human psychology: Losing feels significantly worse than winning feels good. This phenomenon is called "loss aversion", and it explains why consumers would rather avoid a $5 surcharge than get a $5 discount, even though they amount to exactly the same thing. Our brains place a heavier weight on keeping things we already have than on acquiring new things of equal value. From the perspective of classical economics, this is utterly irrational. But it's how people work, and designing against human nature is a losing battle.

In Magic, this tendency causes LSPs to place inordinate value on their creatures and life total. They will prioritize actions that protect these resources, and avoid actions that could lead to losing them. This attitude is strikingly at odds with that of HSPs, who will gladly throw away permanents and life for increased probability of victory.

There are two overlapping categories of cards that appeal to the "don't lose" instinct. First, there are "don't lose the game" cards whose role is entirely defensive, and have no chance of actually killing the other guy. Examples include life gain, walls, and damage prevention.

Second, there are "don't lose my stuff" cards which are aimed at preserving themselves or other permanents. Some cards in this category are very obvious in their function: creatures with (or auras or instants providing) regeneration, hexproof, or indestructibility, for example. Others are more subtle: any form of evasion makes one less likely to lose an attacker during combat.

What's the worst that could happen?
(Aside from the fact that you're playing
with an Abbey Griffin in your deck.)

The tricky part of designing these sorts of cards is that the player's goal (maintain the status quo) is in direct conflict with the designer's goal (make the game end in a timely fashion so that players don't get bored). The solution to this conundrum is to sneak in cards that enable safe attacks, so that life totals will continue to drop. LSPs will often leave a creature home just in case they unexpectedly need another blocker. Or they may be too worried about what would happen if their attacker got into a fight. But if you put vigilance and evasion on the same creature, both of these reasons go away; attacks with an Abbey Griffin are guaranteed to be safe! On-board combat tricks such as Aquus Steed similarly enable risk-free actions that propel the game forward.

We're nearing the end of this series of articles. Readers, do you have any requests for card types or LSP tendencies that you'd like me to write about? Otherwise, I'll finish next week with some discussion of "newbie traps", how good these LSP-oriented cards should be, and cards that teach lessons.