It sounds like your solution would be to just throw out games entirely and build virtual real life. It's ambitious [smile]
I'm curious to hear how you would deal with pain or body damage. How does the player count the bullets in his gun? Can he take off his armor vest and look at the cracks to see if it's too damaged to help? Does he search all of his pockets for extra room before stashing a new weapon?
Games normally throw out most of the tedious things that are tied to real life.
why not hide the numbers?
Quote:Original post by hymerman
the way i see it, is that in a FIRST PERSON game, everything should be done in the first person- including skills, and ways of representing attributes.
How are you going to determine the most basic character attributes -- speed, stamina, strength, and a number of others? These will have to be the character's attributes, not the player's attributes, because the player doesn't for example bleed when their character gets a leg slashed off, and thus would have theoretically unlimited hp (if the player is never hurt then neither is the character, if the character's attributes are supposed to rely on the player's attributes and skills)
And if the character's attributes are character's own, you need *some* way to tell the player *what* they are, because otherwise the player has no way of knowing that.
edit: also, i was under impression the point of RPG is to experience life of character that *ain't* you. In other words, it's perfectly okay to have the character with their own set of attributes and skills -- that way a player who in reality isn't the master of swordfighting, or the world's top burglar or renowned artisan, or anything else ... is given opportunity to experience how it is to *be* someone different than themselves.
The game Everquest did not show the amount of mana/magic you had as a numeric value only a percentage... and this 'feature' was one of the single most complained about aspects in the game for years.
One of the things I'd also like to do in an RPG (even text based) is to have player intelligence play more of a part than skills. Instead of having higher skills allow you to pick locks you might see the following.
When the user starts on the first tumbler of the lock, a "click" is sent to the player to indicate the correct unlock position and requiring user input to stop working on that tumbler. Higher skill will both make the click occur sooner and allow them a longer period of time before the user has to respond.
With this, the user gets an input of their skill relative to the lock. I doesn't matter what their skill level or what the lock level is, just the relation.
When the user starts on the first tumbler of the lock, a "click" is sent to the player to indicate the correct unlock position and requiring user input to stop working on that tumbler. Higher skill will both make the click occur sooner and allow them a longer period of time before the user has to respond.
With this, the user gets an input of their skill relative to the lock. I doesn't matter what their skill level or what the lock level is, just the relation.
About hackers in a MMORPG: It can be somewhat solved by only sending the necessary information to the client. Example given: You only send the information that a specific item is a "light dagger", while its actual numbers are stored at the server. You only send the HP percentage to the client, not the actual HP data for the client itself to make the calculation (a simple division like this won't slow down a server). And really, while you can argue that doing a calculation X on a client would off-load the server, would you want to even in a MMORPG where the numbers are shown? If the client is allowed to do the calculation there is always a possibility for a hacker to modify the procedure; it doesn't really matter whether the data is shown or not.
In essence this means the relationship between the client and server resembles this:
Server sends Client: Character X wields weapon Y at location Z, where X has health percentage H.
Client: Knows graphics ID and animations of weapon Y and character X as well as the relevant names, but not any numbers.
Server: Knows numbers, but only use them for calculations of its own and never tell forwards that to client.
Of course, non of this works for a local RPG, but that's no problem actually. Security issues in a single player game are not as relevant for the reason that if a hacker wants the real numbers beneath, he will get them. It will he ruin (or enhance) his own experience, BUT he does not force this upon anybody else, as in a multiplayer game where this will put other players at a disadvantage.
In essence this means the relationship between the client and server resembles this:
Server sends Client: Character X wields weapon Y at location Z, where X has health percentage H.
Client: Knows graphics ID and animations of weapon Y and character X as well as the relevant names, but not any numbers.
Server: Knows numbers, but only use them for calculations of its own and never tell forwards that to client.
Of course, non of this works for a local RPG, but that's no problem actually. Security issues in a single player game are not as relevant for the reason that if a hacker wants the real numbers beneath, he will get them. It will he ruin (or enhance) his own experience, BUT he does not force this upon anybody else, as in a multiplayer game where this will put other players at a disadvantage.
It's always weird when people write about wanting to hide numbers in an RPG from the player. RPGs are very popular mainly because they have the numbers in them; that is what makes them RPGs. Sure, you can claim your own fancy idea of what a "true RPG" is, but generally, the game magazines and fans consider an RPG to be a game with stats that you can control in it. There are plenty of other genres that don't use lots of stats... an RPG without any stats is basically an adventure game, like Zelda. But if you as a developer want this complex numerical system that only you can see, and you're just going to try to frustrate your players by making them figure out all the formulas on their own, then it's not going to be a success. When I play a game that requires any kind of tactical or strategic thinking, I want to know what each stat is for and how it affects me before putting any precious level-up points into it. I don't want to increase my strength from "sort of strong" to "sort of a little stronger than sort of strong", and have the tooltip tell me "being sort of strong means maybe you can lift things that are sort of heavy, sometimes". I would see it as being purposely vague just to artificially introduce needless complexity as a fake gameplay element to stop players from knowing how to play well. Kindof like the concept of "security through obscurity" in application development.
I agree with the original poster, numbers should be more behind the scenes or something you can pull up in a stats menu etc. I believe we see numbers as much as we do because of the holdover from paper RPG's & laziness on the part of gamer designers to convert that style of play to something more resembling a 3D video game.
The numbers should be represented by corresponding animations and/or sound effects to the action being performed whenever possible, & when not you could use any other sort of UI graphic to represent progress, such as a health or progress bar etc.
For example, the number system used for the breaking down a door scenario could be used behind the scenes to cue up different animations & sound effects of the door cracking, splintering, & finally breaking. Also, the number system used to determine a char's ability to break the door in the first placed could be represented by things like physical attributes & weapons or objects used -- a midget with a small hatchet would obviously take longer to break down a door than a giant troll with a massive sledge hammer would.
An example where varied staged animations wouldn't work would be something like representing the time it takes to hack a computer or pick a lock etc. Obviously the sound of keystrokes or lockpick tools don't change much from start to finish, so these kinds of animations are better represented by a progress bar or other similar visual display.
The actual numbers are still present in these examples, because they are necessary for any game... the difference is that further steps have been taken to represent those numbers in a visual and/or audible manner that is more appealing & entertaining to the player... And isn't that what making games is all about?
The numbers should be represented by corresponding animations and/or sound effects to the action being performed whenever possible, & when not you could use any other sort of UI graphic to represent progress, such as a health or progress bar etc.
For example, the number system used for the breaking down a door scenario could be used behind the scenes to cue up different animations & sound effects of the door cracking, splintering, & finally breaking. Also, the number system used to determine a char's ability to break the door in the first placed could be represented by things like physical attributes & weapons or objects used -- a midget with a small hatchet would obviously take longer to break down a door than a giant troll with a massive sledge hammer would.
An example where varied staged animations wouldn't work would be something like representing the time it takes to hack a computer or pick a lock etc. Obviously the sound of keystrokes or lockpick tools don't change much from start to finish, so these kinds of animations are better represented by a progress bar or other similar visual display.
The actual numbers are still present in these examples, because they are necessary for any game... the difference is that further steps have been taken to represent those numbers in a visual and/or audible manner that is more appealing & entertaining to the player... And isn't that what making games is all about?
Quote:Original post by Grim
Numbers break the immersion? I wouldn't say so. You need to use your imagination more and see what's beyond the numbers. Usually games are so full of abstractions anyway so I really don't see why the use of numbers for the sake of simplicity is so evil and loathsome. As I am quite fond of saying, "a good game is like a spreadsheet". But that's just probably me... [grin]
This is sort of skirting the issue of what kind of game you're trying to provide your players. If I want my players to have a number-crunching game where they endeavour to squeeze every last bit of effectiveness out of their characters, I cannot in good conscience hide the only piece of valuable information that they can have.
But the way I see it, if your game is only about numbers, why didn't you make a text based MUD? If all those fancy visuals are just candy-coating, then you haven't done your job as a designer - the visuals are there to communicate game state.
Just because it's difficult to show that your armor is damaged in an 'inspection' screen where you get to look at the actual damage it's sustained and decide for yourself that it needs repairing, doesn't mean that that isn't worth a thousand times more than a simple Durability: 17/160 stat is.
Of course, that's something that needs to be balanced against play time, as Grim said, it takes longer just to read "mindstaggeringly phenomenal", so if you're going to put in equipment inspection, you don't want your players to have to do it in the middle of combat, because they'll be burning lots of valuable time.
Quote:Quote:You don't know that you have 376 hp, and your opponent has 12,439 hp, all you see is that you're at 88% health, and he's at 23% health, and you're thinking, hey, maybe I can take this guy.In this situation this kind of attacks will surely lead to many deaths of players. And also lot of anger. I was thinking of use of some kind of consider options. Yeah, guy is at 23% health. Then click onto consider button. Game say: It is too dangerous.
This is actually a really good example of why visual representation is so important (and why ambiguity is so much fun). If your character is a low-level warrior, and has 88% health, and you're sizing up a stone dragon with 23% of its health left, it shouldn't take too much brain power to decide that you're going to loose bad. On the other hand, if you were sizing up an oponent, who just happened to have been playing the game for three years, and intentionally dressed his master assassin in rags, and equipped a basic knife (that doesn't even glow) then that's a wonderful moment of deception. I'm not suggesting that the only thing you get to go on is your opponent's health (aside: I don't even think you should see your opponents health, but that's a different discussion), but if your opponent decieves you into thinking you can take him, that's a whole fabulous new world of PvP that your game has made possible.
The whole first-person/third-person argument seems like a cheap cop-out to me. Don't forget it's all about the game, you're not going to make an RPG with many jumping puzzles first-person just to excuse the fact that you're hiding the character's stats from the player. Similarly, you don't want to convert your first-person shooter to third-person just so that players aren't confused by the fact that there are bazillions of stats to be tuned.
There is no universal rule that says "In a game with deep and complex mechanics you must show players all the numbers that affect their performance." But that doesn't mean that you can be lazy and just refuse to communicate things to the player. Imagine if every sword, no matter how powerful, or how fast, or how unbreakable, was just called sword. My rule of thumb would be, communicate everything the player needs to make a decision, to within a degree of ambiguity that keeps things exciting.
So as Superpig said, representing all of these things is solvable if you put some effort into it. As a designer you'll follow your gut when it comes to what you think is a good decision for the game. If you decide that you don't want numbers (or even, you don't want alot of numbers), don't go around calling your high-end equipment stuff that can't be effectively differentiated like stupendously flabistulated and impenetrably ethereal.
If you're going to take out some numbers, decide how much ambiguity you want introduce as a result; and based on that design a system to communicate with the player that fulfills your needs.
A related issue is that most of us have a fairly good "common sense" understanding of the way the real world works - we spend the first half-decade or so primarily figuring out the world. Unless you have the player's character dropped in a totally unfamiliar world, then it's not unreasonable of the player to expect to have that sort of grass roots understanding available somehow. One way of doing that is to publish the underlying mechanics and let the player reason his way through. It may be possible to find a way to let the player understand their way through instead, but I've no idea how you'd manage it.
Quote:Original post by Jiia
It sounds like your solution would be to just throw out games entirely and build virtual real life. It's ambitious [smile]
I'm curious to hear how you would deal with pain or body damage. How does the player count the bullets in his gun? Can he take off his armor vest and look at the cracks to see if it's too damaged to help? Does he search all of his pockets for extra room before stashing a new weapon?
Games normally throw out most of the tedious things that are tied to real life.
indeed, perhaps i am talking about a virtual real life. as tolaris and makeshiftwings said, RPGs have been defined already, and what i'm proposing doesn't really fit in with that.
anyways, as i said, pain and body damage, like speed, strength and anything else out of the actual player's control, would have to be adequately communicated to the player, since they have no way of knowing what their abilities are in these respects. this doesn't mean we have to resort to numbers again, just that there has to be some way of the user knowing, without much trouble (or at least, with as much trouble as can be expected in reality...). and as for the 'bullets in a gun' issue someone mentioned, most guns don't tell you how many bullets they have left, that's something games players have come to expect though. perhaps we should leave this to the players to figure out? after all, they're the ones that have been shooting, they should know roughly...
Quote:It's always weird when people write about wanting to hide numbers in an RPG from the player. RPGs are very popular mainly because they have the numbers in them; that is what makes them RPGs. Sure, you can claim your own fancy idea of what a "true RPG" is, but generally, the game magazines and fans consider an RPG to be a game with stats that you can control in it. There are plenty of other genres that don't use lots of stats... an RPG without any stats is basically an adventure game, like Zelda. But if you as a developer want this complex numerical system that only you can see, and you're just going to try to frustrate your players by making them figure out all the formulas on their own, then it's not going to be a success. When I play a game that requires any kind of tactical or strategic thinking, I want to know what each stat is for and how it affects me before putting any precious level-up points into it. I don't want to increase my strength from "sort of strong" to "sort of a little stronger than sort of strong", and have the tooltip tell me "being sort of strong means maybe you can lift things that are sort of heavy, sometimes". I would see it as being purposely vague just to artificially introduce needless complexity as a fake gameplay element to stop players from knowing how to play well. Kindof like the concept of "security through obscurity" in application development.
i don't really think you get what i'm talking about here. it's not about hiding the formulas and introducing needless complexity- the players shouldn't have to figure out how the game does things behind the scenes. current games that display stats generally do so because there is a system in place behind the scenes that doesn't relate to real life particularly well- if the game mechanics were better, the user could apply their real life knowledge to the game and be successful, rather than adopting a strategy specific to the game. obviously, this only works up to a point- the player would need to be guided if they were in a world unlike our own.
Quote:The whole first-person/third-person argument seems like a cheap cop-out to me. Don't forget it's all about the game, you're not going to make an RPG with many jumping puzzles first-person just to excuse the fact that you're hiding the character's stats from the player. Similarly, you don't want to convert your first-person shooter to third-person just so that players aren't confused by the fact that there are bazillions of stats to be tuned.
There is no universal rule that says "In a game with deep and complex mechanics you must show players all the numbers that affect their performance." But that doesn't mean that you can be lazy and just refuse to communicate things to the player. Imagine if every sword, no matter how powerful, or how fast, or how unbreakable, was just called sword. My rule of thumb would be, communicate everything the player needs to make a decision, to within a degree of ambiguity that keeps things exciting.
again, i think you're misinterpreting what i'm saying. choosing the viewpoint isn't just done to show or hide statistics. i'm saying that depending on what type of game it is (first or third person), different amounts of data should be communicated, and control methods should be changed. the very fact that the games are in different perspectives means that the interactions with and views of the world should be different.
and the second point of yours i'd like to address: honestly, in real life, how would you know how much more powerful a sword is than another? perhaps it'd be a bit more shiny? maybe the guy you bought it from told you how powerful it is? now, i don't see why this shouldn't be the way things are done in a game. in reality, you don't have a label attached to everything telling you it's statistics and an identifier, most swords look pretty similar. you only get an idea of how 'powerful' they are through use.
but of course, as i said at the beginning of this post, perhaps i'm looking into this a bit too much- there is a difference between an RPG and a life simulator :)
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