On Mental Load, Learning Curves, and Skill Floors/Ceilings

Warning: This article may stress your mental load, be warned and take precautions. 

Hello everyone, Pippa back once again with a brief discussion on the recent article(s) put out by Bill Stark, the director of game design for UVS. I’ve seen a lot of discourse around the recent article and I wanted to offer my take, perspective, and facilitate a discussion around the various points the article makes  and subsequent comments made by the community. As with my last discussion, it will be less formal but I hope that is fine anyway, but I will try to keep somewhat of a structure for this. So with that, let’s get right into it! 

On Mental Load, Chess, and UVS 

On May 16th 2024, Director of Game Design at UVS Bill Stark released an article where he discussed the overall complexity of Universus, specifically calling out the mental load within the game and how that complexity makes it a pain point for growing the game and attracting new players. He draws several examples, such as from checkers and chess, about the mental burden of playing those games compared to the number of things you have to keep track of during a standard game of UVS. 

Before continuing, I wanted to make a quick note about the term “mental load”. Within the article, Mr. Stark explains it as a concept describing the number of things players have to keep track of within any given game. He uses the example of checkers within a game to show it has a low mental load of only having several movement options throughout a game, then expands upon this by showing that Chess is an expansion of it, with different pieces having different movement patterns, but not to an extent that burdens the player with knowledge. 

This is an adequate example, but I would argue that it undersells the concept in a big way. Mental load is primarily used to refer to complexity within playing the game, where I would argue that the functionality of chess pieces more closely resembles the rules of the game which carried different connotations in terms of mental burden. Knowing the rules of a game is foundational to playing it (obviously), but the complexity of games arises from the interactions and decision making that happens within a game. Mr. Stark mentions that chess and checkers have had followings for centuries due to the puzzle they present, which more accurately represents the mental load of a game of chess. You can theoretically make any move, but only a certain number of them are “viable” within any given situation, which represents the mental load of the game. 

I am no chess grandmaster, master, or even good, however I understand the theory of the game, and one of the primary concepts is developing varied threats that your opponent has to deal with. If the opponent has to play around multiple attacking pieces, their mental load goes way up from having to defend from multiple angles, and as the aggressor your goal is to overwhelm your opponent, which can result in blunders from players having full mental loads and not being able to parse the game-state properly.  

There is also the concept of a simplified game-state, which is a term used in various other TCGs as well. This is when the board has been reduced to few pieces, and there are overall less things to be required to play around. When games reach this point, it greatly frees up the mental toll on the players, allowing them to more actively engage with the game as they aren’t overwhelmed and have fewer overall decisions to make. Newer players often reach this state as they are inexperienced in properly applying pressure and closing out games, leading to a slow early game, a potentially explosive midgame where pieces are being traded back and forth, and finally winding down to a slower endgame where the board is easier to parse. The midgame has the greatest mental burden on players and where most newer players blunder given this. 

In any of the previous scenarios, the mental load placed upon the player isn’t from the rules in how pieces move around the board, but rather the interactions of considering when, where, and how the pieces move affect the gamestate. At the start of a chess game there are exactly 20 moves you can make on turn 1, and while not game-definingly impactful (usually), it shows that the mental load of the game is much greater than the 6-pieces of rules that Mr. Stark notes as the “mental load” for the game. This climbs higher and higher as the game progresses, with each potential move being the equivalent of an enhance within an enhance step. Sometimes the ordering doesn’t matter, however as the game progresses and the boardstate becomes much more clogged, sequencing becomes hugely important and is where a lot of the “good” complexity within both games reside. 

This is not to say that Mr. Stark is necessarily wrong about the mental load UVS presents, but the logic in the examples used is flawed. The primary difference between knowing what chess pieces versus UVS cards do is that the chess pieces are foundational to playing the game, whereas UVS card effects are secondary, as you cannot understand the game mechanics purely through effect text. This is compounded by decks including (at minimum) around 20 different cards that you don’t see every game and that you have to deal with card interactions between effects and combinations that you don’t get to consistently experience every game (unless you’re Momo3). 

I do believe that Mr. Stark makes a solid case for the additional complexity of the game however. UVS is unlike any other card game, which already creates a dissonance with players picking it up, and mechanically is simple but a lot to pick up all at once, assuming every single card has text. The number of times I have had to watch new players reread all of their cards several times over the course of a single turn cycle to ensure they weren’t missing anything is uncountable, and at least for demo-materials the decks with generally-textless cards is a good start for introducing the game mechanics without the additional complexity of having text on every single card which is also relevant. 

I also wanted to point out a number of tiny things that add up to the amount of complexity the game can have at a baseline level. UVS has a lot of math involved, which while ultimately simple, does add additional factors to consider when playing through a turn. If for example you want to attack twice and build twice, you need to consider difficulties of passing checks and consequences of checking poorly and committing down resources, which notably all matter since every card has text, the order of what to play when. This is further exacerbated by defensive effects such as Breaker, Keiko’s Aid, or Eri Smiles, along with the stat portion of attacks such as making things unblockable by the rival or reaching certain damage breakpoints to set up for lethal on future turns. All of this without even considering effects printed on your foundations, face, or attacks.  

UVS to ingrained players isn’t too bad, and the game IS simple once you understand it, but the inability to have skills from other games transfer on top of complex board states the game provides do not help with the new player experience. Full boards add even more effects and complexity to a game with mechanics that are weird to begin with, easily leading to overwhelming players.  

I would argue that the first challenger series featuring Trigun Stampede and Cowboy Bebop are the right amount of complexity for newer players. The cards are simple and easy to understand without serious complexity, while still giving a higher level of interaction than purely blank cards. As someone who witnessed the demos at Level Up Expo at the Vegas regional, the number of players being engaged with the game was significantly greater with blank decks than using the previous Deku vs Bakugo demo decks due to not having to read every single card. The demos were able to introduce the base mechanics of the game, and if players felt compelled to delve deeper, recent starter and challenger decks provide great onboarding points for new players looking to get further invested. 

Overall while I disagree on how Mr. Stark makes his point, I can concede that it is valid, at least from an onboarding perspective. UVS IS complex, just from all the interactions and things to think on, but that complexity is a big barrier to entry. One of my favorite games is League of Legends (cringe, I know), but I can never recommend it to people. It has 168 characters, each with 5 (sometimes more) abilities, on top of items, stats, and playing the game. The burden of knowledge is too great for me to recommend it, and UVS can appear similar, just to a smaller scale. Each deck has a plethora of cards and countless interactions to consider, which is what people love about the game, but it is intimidating for new players to get into especially as there are few transferable skills from other games coming into this one. 

I also understand if players can understand the game easily, sometimes that happens, but from most players I have seen they need several games before getting into the swing of things. I also think that having proper resources to teach and introduce new players into the game is wonderful, but it also isn’t indicative of what the game may potentially become. Games are hard, and making a welcoming environment for people to join goes a very long way towards hooking and eventually keeping players. 

The New Player Experience 

Remember what I said last time about the community being severely at odds with the company of UVS? The recent reactions have been an exemplary example of this, with all the jokes, discussions, and memes presented over the last few days regarding the article. I haven’t been able to catch everything, or even a majority of things, but overall I have seen two major sentiments; ingrained players both combatting the claims of how difficult UVS is as a game, and worried that their favorite game is potentially going to see changes aimed at reducing the favorite parts of the game,  (as well as plenty of memes about mental load).  

On the first point, I would agree that UVS as a whole isn’t too difficult, however it does require a large working knowledge of the game and solid fundamentals in order to keep up with the pace of play required for this game. New players won’t have this luxury, and trying to parse a board of effects on top of attacks and playing the regular game, it can get very overwhelming very quickly, on top of grasping mechanics unlike most other TCGs people have likely played. 

Experienced players can easily categorize cards into groups of similar effects, or have the ability to commit large numbers of cards to memory to always have a solid grasp of what each deck is trying to do and how each piece fits into the metaphorical puzzle of the game. They’re also familiar enough with the game to where they don’t have to focus on the underlying mechanics and can instead dedicate their energy towards figuring out what the optimal lines are by taking in every bit of info they can. Brand new players can have difficulty processing this, as they also have yet to learn enough of the game to have enough space mentally to absorb all the information presented in a standard game of UVS. 

This may be underselling new players, and I have seen stories of players getting into the game without trouble. However, with the expansion of new IPs, the game could experience significant growth and with it many people who have never played a TCG before being introduced into a game notoriously difficult to parse at times. And while I understand that some people have no issue, I am also aware that other games have a much better new-player onboarding experience in terms of starting and fully getting into the game, which UVS sorely lacks. 

Personally, I have seen the game receive a lot of hype locally purely due to the Critical Role decks, and with more big-ticket IPs being introduced along with marketing, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get more large influxes of players within the next few years with big IP releases. The caveat is that support structures must be in place to support the game, with a big part being able to have the game in a teachable format to get new players playing the game instead of spending entire rounds trying to figure out what their cards do. 

The Good kind of Complexity 

Before I get into the community reactions of potentially dumbing down the game we all love, I wanted to take another moment to discuss the good kinds of complexity within games opposed to bad kinds (there is a difference). 

UVS for the most part has good complexity, which is having varied impactful decisions that you can make throughout a game. In THIS article I discussed player agency, and good complexity is giving the player high agency over their gameplan while not stifling the rival and their agency over the game. Being able to have a fleet of enhances that all feel important situationally is great, it gives the player control over their play and the ability to have a lot of skill expression within a game. 

Bad complexity on the other hand is when games introduce needless complexity, with Yu-Gi-Oh being a prime example. Without detailing, Yu-Gi-Oh is a super-fast TCG, where the premise is to combo off and assemble a board that can prevent the opponent from playing as much as possible (big simplification, just roll with it). This is through extensive combo-lines that make you cycle through a swath of cards, searching your deck repeatedly, activating 10+ cards a turn, each with multiple effects, and making boards that ultimately are to stop the opponent from doing the same thing to you. 

While not necessarily a bad thing, as interaction within games is important, YGO has evolved into games where single turns can take upwards of 10 minutes, and each card has about an average of 75 words on them with various effects that need to be parsed. This complexity is part of what makes YGO fun, but it also makes it near-impossible for a new player to parse the game unassisted due to the needless complexity of the combo lines within the game and the density of effects on YGO cards.  

UVS, however, has complexity on a mechanical level instead of an effect level, as most effects in the game are self-explanatory, with the biggest hurdle being understanding the framework as to how the effects slot into place and how the game functions. I would argue that blank cards don’t properly convey the extent of the depth of the game to new players, and while they are great for very beginning introductions, I would think it better if instead of blank cards, cards within demo products have exceedingly simple effects, such as flip/commit effects for draw/damage/speed, interspersed within blank cards. Basic effects such as “Commit: This attack gets +1 damage” or “Flip: This attack gets –2 speed” would be something understandable for players while also giving a hint of the depth of the game without adding needless (bad) complexity. 

Moving onto the community reaction, it was less than stellar, though very few community reactions end up being positive, or come with a “but” attached to them, with the primary reaction of the community (that I have seen) is a fear of UVS Games reducing the amount of good complexity within the game in favor of less interesting cards and designs aimed at getting new players into the game. This is compounded by a lack of trust of Mr. Stark in his handling of the game, though I would tentatively fight back on that given he hasn’t been part of the team for long enough to make severe changes, and Attack on Titan will be the first big release he had a heavy hand in, from what I know and am aware of from development schedules. 

I think players are rightfully scared of big change, especially when the appeal of this game is the high level of complexity and the amount of interaction within the game. As always, “UVS is the best game that no one knows about”, and I am sure many share my sentiment, especially coming from other TCGs. I think that making the game more accessible by reducing base level complexity would be a great starting point to making it more attractive for new players, which is ultimately good for the game. I think that they could limit complexity for un/commons, while ultra/rares could maintain higher complexity to keep the game introductory for a majority of players while keeping the highlights for ingrained players as well who will be the ones most likely to spend money and chase the higher rarity cards. 

A lot of the community reaction has also been directed towards the memes regarding mental load, and how Mr. Stark’s poor example leads into a further example of how much there is to keep track of within the game. In reality, most players shortcut effects and maintain “categories” or groups of cards, such as grouping offensive/defensive effects together, keeping a mental note on effects that are relevant on your/rival’s turn, or even just having a large working memory of understanding what cards do so they don’t have to maintain perfect concentration over keeping track of the board. Brand new players have yet to acquire the knowledge or mechanics to shortcut this however, leading to them being overwhelmed if they pick up even an easy UVS deck due to the number of effects to keep tabs on. 

While I don’t have anything constructive to add onto the memes, I did want to further reexamine the relationship between the players of UVS and the company of UVS games, and by further extension Mr. Stark. Whether he knows it or not, Mr. Stark has garnered a certain reputation within the community, whether it be comments he has made in person or within articles, he has become an antagonistic figure within the community.  

Any time a poor design decision is made, such as the Trigun/Bebop decks, the shift to “blank” commons, or the overall state of the game, people will quickly hop on the “Bill Stark was bad for the game” train, and blame him, while ignoring some of the design decisions that are commendable that have happened, such as having powerful high-rarity cards to make opening packs worth it. Additionally, there has been a higher focus on “archetypes” such as within Girl Power and the focus on keywords and printing enablers of certain archetypes, such as Recipro Turbo being a newly-released cornerstone of Kick lineups, which I believe is cool for the game to have solid “packages” available for players to build around. 

I do want to caveat all of this with a big disclaimer that Mr. Stark isn’t the only person on design at UVS games. He may be the Director of Game Design, which means he oversees the overall direction the game goes in, but there is also a team of designers working with him to help guide the direction of the game, and of those designers are a bunch of “oldheads” that have been playing the game for years and know the strengths and weaknesses of the system. Some decisions I attribute to Mr. Stark may not have come from him, while others he may have been more directly involved with. Ultimately, we as the community don’t know exactly what he has and hasn’t pushed for, and I find it hypocritical to pin all poor decisions within the game purely on him while ignoring the good decisions as well, or the rest of the team behind design. 

Of course I am by no means necessarily defending some of the decisions. Trigun/Bebop were horrid products, and the shift to “blank” commons and very niche uncommons has removed one of the things that has attracted me to the game, which is the ability for every card to have a solid function and potential to see play. Coming from Pokemon, nearly every single “bulk” card was unplayable, and being able to open a pack and see a variety of competitively playable cards within the un/common slots was an absolute joy. This singlehandedly turned me from a singles buyer into someone who actively seeks out product to crack packs, and with the recent shift to poorer un/common card quality has made it worse for me to seek out and purchase product, and I will continuously lambast the company for this decision, even if it helps the new player experience. 

I will also continue to point out inconsistencies and poor explanations given within articles and communications from UVS Games, though as always it is out of passion. I want this game to grow, thrive, and succeed as much as everyone else does, but sometimes the biggest wall in the way of success is UVS Games the company. The company has been going through growing pains throughout the last few years, however it is coming close to the time where I would argue that it isn’t a feasible excuse anymore. As I always say, change is slow, and while things are looking up on the horizon, there continue to be speed bumps and road blocks, I just hope that we can achieve the future of success before the metaphorical car breaks down on the pathway there.