Player Stats And MMORPG's
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Ok i just have one simple question: Why in the nine levels of hades do game developers in MMORPGS and probably in consol games too, insist on useing obscure numbers to portray stats like HP, Atk Power and other stats used in game play interaction between the players and the monsters.
Im currently designing a MMORPG and ive just got to the hard part of trying to sync the stats of players, the weapons, armours, magic spells and everything else into one well oiled machine and so far ive got a load of logical even numbered {as in 10's and 1000s and stuff not 2, 4, 6 etc} stats, nothing like 363mp and 27 defence etc like ive seen in so many MMOGs and other games and i cant for the life of me work out why game devs go the way of the obscure...???
I think it's becasue of progression. You may want one character to increase say 1.2 times their strength every level, but only 1.05 defense.
It may be very difficult to find a set up where all the numbers are a power of 10 or 5. Most likley the best way is to use the sysem they use, and multiply by 5 or 10. Thus the numbers will look nicer. But now they'll be huge, and just as bad.
I don't think the issue is very bad, and I doubt it is ever worth the effort to come up with a system that uses "nice" values only for stats etc...
It may be very difficult to find a set up where all the numbers are a power of 10 or 5. Most likley the best way is to use the sysem they use, and multiply by 5 or 10. Thus the numbers will look nicer. But now they'll be huge, and just as bad.
I don't think the issue is very bad, and I doubt it is ever worth the effort to come up with a system that uses "nice" values only for stats etc...
Why would 27 defense be obscure? Isn't using 10s and 1000s just a long-winded way of saying 1 and 100?
At the risk of going off-topic, I think another reason to use smaller numbers (at least in the RPGs I've seen) is that they just seem 'friendlier'. Knowing that the maximum value is say 30, makes it a lot less daunting to reach than if it were 10,000 - regardless of the fact that the rate of progression will probably be the same.
At the risk of going off-topic, I think another reason to use smaller numbers (at least in the RPGs I've seen) is that they just seem 'friendlier'. Knowing that the maximum value is say 30, makes it a lot less daunting to reach than if it were 10,000 - regardless of the fact that the rate of progression will probably be the same.
Since kognitive science say that the brain can only hold 7 units of information a shorter number is always easier to remember since it used at most one unit.
Or why not express stats in physical units such as pressure for strength, or joules per hour for stamina. Not that it'd make anything any clearer except for us physicists :P
the reason the numbers are "wierd" is for the simple fact of tuning. everything starts off as nice round numbers but then, say mages are slightly over powered-> ok let's reduce the mana from 100 to 95. oops, now they're underpowered ok, how about mana = 97. etc etc. getting a balanced game is an art and is not driven by the aesthetics of "nice" numbers. once could, having arrived at a balanced state, normalize all the values and make them "nice" but that would require code changes so that the functionality of the numbers stayed the same. and even then you'll find out that people have found an "exploit build" with your new tuning values so you'll muck with the numbers again rendering them "wierd". in short, design tuning makes numbers crazy and unless you want an unbalanced game you'll end up with crazy numbers too.
-me
-me
Motorherp> moreover, I wonder what real world unit could be used for mana and magical stats ;)
Quote:Original post by sBibiMana would be in units of potential energy, and magic stats would depend. For something like concentration, how about IQ / second ('intellectual work units')? A really good mage can concentrate and do rocket science(erm I mean fireball magic!) in his head very quickly, but a lesser mage would have to spread that work out on paper over a long period of time =-p
Motorherp> moreover, I wonder what real world unit could be used for mana and magical stats ;)
For wisdom, how about.. hrmm... or charisma? Dunno about those
Just don't have magic be mumbo-jumbo and figure out how it works. That also helps with immersion, for example. This is not an example of a traditional magic system, but it's one interesting way of handling it.
Stats:
Ether - the actual force used to do things, 'magic' to the untrained
Flow - Ether/second, how fast a character can use Ether
Mental exhaustion - Ether/second^2, positive while resting, negative while 'casting', how tired they're getting (affects flow)
Scientests once thought that ether existed everywhere and it caused gravity (This was a while ago). You can do things like that (or make your own system).
This example gets rid of the MP and assumes that there is an unlimited supply of ether in the world. Instead, players become mentally tired as they use ether and can not do it as well. (Instead of 'Oops, I can't cast; outta MP' it's 'That fireball was weak; I'm really tired.') I think that this helps it be more interesting and easier to create.
Stats:
Ether - the actual force used to do things, 'magic' to the untrained
Flow - Ether/second, how fast a character can use Ether
Mental exhaustion - Ether/second^2, positive while resting, negative while 'casting', how tired they're getting (affects flow)
Scientests once thought that ether existed everywhere and it caused gravity (This was a while ago). You can do things like that (or make your own system).
This example gets rid of the MP and assumes that there is an unlimited supply of ether in the world. Instead, players become mentally tired as they use ether and can not do it as well. (Instead of 'Oops, I can't cast; outta MP' it's 'That fireball was weak; I'm really tired.') I think that this helps it be more interesting and easier to create.
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