skill floor

skill floor (plural skill floors)

1. (chiefly video games) The minimum amount of skill required to be considered competent at some game or activity.

   Coordinate term: skill ceiling

   • 1999 February 21, Kid Vid, “VS=Good Game”, in alt.games.sf2‎ (Usenet):

     Hey, I like all the VS, it's just the skill ceiling may not be as high as on some other games. But I feel the difference is far enough from the floor that it provides a decent spread among players in the area. The problem comes in when the skill ceiling is close to or even ON the skill floor.

   • 2004 February 29, Scott Kurland, “poi/juggling communication invitation”, in rec.juggling‎ (Usenet):

     Yeah, just you. If we set 3-ball cascade as the skill floor of juggling, 5 ball cascade is not an extremely low level.

   • 2009, Steve Swink, Game Feel: A Game Designer's Guide to Virtual Sensation, Boca Raton, F.L.: CRC Press, →ISBN, page 302:

     There's an old game design maxim: good games take minutes to learn but a lifetime to master. Another way to say this is "low skill floor, high skill ceiling."

   • 2015 December 5, Julian Aidan, “Complex Champions Means Longer Life For League Of Legends”, in Hardcore Gamer‎, archived from the original on 2022-01-23:

     Enter Gnar, Azir, Kalista and the upcoming Rek'Sai. These are champions with considerably elevated skill floors – they’re simply difficult to play any kind of competently.

   • 2018 January 9, Dave Thier, “It Turns Out You Can Get A Baby To Play 'Mario Kart 8' On Nintendo Switch”, in Forbes‎, New York, N.Y.: Forbes Media, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2020-11-09:

     There may be no better example of how low the skill floor can go than getting literal toddlers to play Mario Kart and actually exercise a modicum of control over what's happening on screen: Kinect is the only other platform for which I can imagine that happening.

   • 2019 June 13, Game Design Snacks: Easily Digestible Game Design Wisdom, Pittsburgh, P.A.: ETC Press, →ISBN, page 111:

     Designing a game with a high skill ceiling (where players must invest significant time and effort to achieve maximum skill) often results in a game with a relatively high skill floor as well.

   • 2020 October 21, Ricardo Contreras, “'Valorant' Is the Tactical Shooter I Needed to Get Into Tactical Shooters”, in VICE‎, archived from the original on 2022-12-07:

     This is to say that I'm not predisposed to sticking to Valorant due to its genre. I'd tried my hand at both Counter-Strike and CS:GO and found that between the aesthetics and a high skill floor, neither of them really got their hooks into me.

   • 2022 June 9, Alice O'Connor, “Former Blizzard folks announce free-to-play RTS Stormgate”, in Rock Paper Shotgun‎, archived from the original on 2022-08-14:

     I'm always here for lowering the skill floor while preserving a high ceiling. Many developers have tried to make unwelcoming genres like real-time strategy and fighting games friendlier, and I want to see devs continue to try.

   • 2022 June 21, Andy Brown, “Frost Giant Studios CEO Tim Morten on 'Stormgate': "The RTS genre's best days are ahead"”, in NME‎, archived from the original on 2022-06-29:

     […] we're also working on lowering the skill floor for our game by providing easier ways to take certain actions, such as building our equivalent of a barracks.