Clarity versus Complexity

I think a question that I have been wrestling with over the last few days is what is the audience for my game? Who do I want to be playing it? After reading New World Order by Maro, I was definitely thinking in those terms. That you should design for the lowest common denominator. That you should take pains not to alienate new players. Then I started playing Path of Exile. Path eschews all of the conventions that Maro was talking about. Its incredibly complex and makes basically no move to explain itself to a new player. Decisions are essentially permanent, and you can accidentally get your characters into a fail state. These two philosophies seem to be irreconcilable, but both games are thriving. Why is that? Is clarity not important?

Clarity is a goal of a game but I think that Path shows that games can have many routes to the same goal: fun. Path and Magic both have extraordinary "end game" complexity that is centered around Building. In Magic you build a deck, in Path you build a character. Magic tries to walk new players through this process by putting emphasis on limited first, then slowly graduating players to standard, modern, and the true eternal formats, where there are more cards than you can really know what to do with, and interaction is so dense that every decision matters. Path has the same insane density of interaction  as an eternal format, but unlike Magic doesn't give you the experience of building in initial formats. Path begins with the equivalent of Modern. It makes the assumption that you have played games of its type before and doesn't bother you with introducing you to the basics of an action rpg. Magic, even though its been around for over twenty years and has a truly outrageous retention rate (seriously, the statistics say that once you start playing magic you just don't stop. Its more addicting than food.), is still trying to appeal to people who have never played a tcg before. Because of this, and because Magic only releases 1 product a semester, it takes a long time before an introductory player is skilled enough and has enough knowledge to play with the most powerful cards.

Is Magic's New World Order, its emphasis on clarity, its ponderous material game model, doing it more harm than good? Fuck no. Magic is growing, and has been growing, every year. They clearly have a good business model.  Is their game as fun as it could be if they let commons have complex interactions? I would certainly enjoy Magic more if every set was the equivalent of Time Spiral. Am I the majority? Wizards has very clear reasons to think I am not.

Is Path, by assuming a base of knowledge, not explaining itself well to new players, having very obscure interactions, and punishing its players for mistakes, doing more harm than good? Fuck no. Path is growing perhaps more quickly than the small-ish New Zealand company can keep up with. While not very scienctific, Reddit is the game's largest community and has doubled in size in a year. I found the game difficult to pick up and was turned off, and it was only through some detailed help that I started to figure out what was important in the game. Am I in the majority? GGG clearly has clear reasons to think I am not.

So the question is, and its one that's come up on Mostly Walking, how much should you assume your audience knows? What barrier to entry is acceptable? These are not simple questions with a definitive answer. This is a core principle to the game you are making. Just like any logical process, the important thing is to identify what your assumptions are in the first place, and go from there.