Quote:Original post by Madster
quantization of relative scale wasn't even mentioned [crying]
Still a good read. Seems part two is a lot less impartial than part 1 :)
try and get it featured!

Thanks! I'm not sure how I would go about getting it featured, though. I just hope it was helpful to some people. I know it was helpful to me. I've never bothered to sit down and put all that into writing, which is why it was so long. :)

Yeah, I know the last part was more specific, and thus less impartial. But it couldn't really be helped much, as I had to get down to details eventually. Also, a lot of my own game design preferences showed through there in the end; I suppose they should be taken with a grain of salt, even though I find them to make a lot of sense.

As far as not mentioning quantization of relative scale -- Really, I didn't think I had to explicitly mention that. Every discussion that revolved around how to put vague or arbitrary things (such as "strength", etc) into numbers technically covered that topic. Ultimately, every individual programmer has to decide for him or herself how to quantify relative spectrums.

The point was this: Make numeric relationships seem more intuitive (i.e. correspondent to real life). In addition, once you decide on some scheme, be willing and able to change it if it ceases to feel real. I know I said that fun is more important than realism; however, this was mostly in regard to wanting to add more realistic features, not to developing a number system in general. If an RPG's numbers feel only remotely related to reality (if even that), the character-to-player mental interface won't be nearly as intuitive (read: fun).

Thanks for the interest,

~Ranger Meldon~ M.M. .:

Quote:Original post by rmsgrey
A cap on power needn't mean a cap on level number - for example, if each level gained increases your power by half as much as the previous level, then you will never get more than twice the first increment from your base power, but can keep gaining levels until the computer runs out of memory to store the numbers (or, more likely, you die of old age)

I agree with your theory; this would be a viable recourse if you wanted to give the player the option of unlimited level-ups. That being said, I'm not sure it would be a good idea to implement such an option. For one thing, you aren't going to be able to make a game world capable of supporting fun gameplay for an infinite number of character levels. It's easy to have individual numbers able to go off into infinity, but making an entire world's worth of quests do that? "Highly unlikely" would be speaking optimistically, I think. In an XP-based progression system, one of the defining concepts is that it gets harder to level up the higher you go. Eventually, you won't be able to find ten different combined armies' worth of enemies that can make you level up again. So even if your system supported leveling up to infinity, the player would never actually see that aspect, or even suspect it.

Therefore, it would seem to be most prudent to focus on improving the gameplay for whatever is calculated to be the viable range of reachable levels. Not to mention that you would be unnecessarily extending game development time to incorporate game content that hardly anybody is ever going to see. You can always go back and release an expansion pack that caters exclusively to higher-level characters wanting to level up more. Still, as a programmer, you have to try to limit the scope of your focus, or else you will get overwhelmed. Every piece of a program ever created by one person was written one line at a time.

The other reason I have for thinking the infinite range might be a bad idea is this: what would be the incentive to level up when the skill rewards are guaranteed to be half what the last level's were? Having to play twice as long to reach each new level should ensure that when you reach that new level, it should yield as much benefit as the previous. Perhaps it would be acceptable if we slowly lowered the benefit of each new level, but by half each time? I can tell you that I wouldn't enjoy playing that game. Overall, it would just seem like it would be logistically better to not have to plan on your level system extending to infinity.

Quote:Original post by rmsgrey
For stair-step improvement, one problem with level-based games is that everything improves at the same time - which makes bookkeeping easier for PnP players, but is unnecessary in cRPGs - even with an outright XP driven system, you could have the characters various skills and attributes advance at set XP totals independently rather than in lock-step - achieving a significant blurring of the (necessarily) quantised nature of character improvement.

I completely agree. I may not have mentioned this explicitly in those two posts, but what you propose is what I had in mind while writing it. To me, this is what is ideally implied by having a system where you only improve in the skills you actually use, but I should have said so.

Quote:Original post by rmsgrey
For massive hit points, various PnP RPGs explain hit points not in terms of getting stabbed 100 times by a sword and surviving, but in being swung at by the sword 100 times and managing to just dodge (or ride the blow) each time until you're sufficiently tired and/or bruised that subsequent attacks actually connect - high HP representing your being hard to kill because you're good at avoiding being wounded, rather than hard to kill because you can have your head chopped off and still keep fighting. The issue here is more one of terminology than realism - if you called it stamina or survival instinct points, you'd have a lot fewer complaints...

Ok, this is a really tough (i.e. good) topic. I have had this same discussion with some of my friends in the past. Things seem to come down to one problem: CRPG vs. PnP RPG.

On paper, there is only one scenario: If you get attacked, it is assumed that the enemy is within range, and you stand a chance of being hit. In a CRPG, unless the enemy attacking you is extremely disciplined and experienced, there is always a chance that they will attack you even though their attack has no chance of success (i.e. their attack is out of range, you moved at the last second, etc). In a CRPG, if you interpret HP as you have above, then for the sake of realism, you really need to have two separate quantities. You need to have a number for HP and a number for "stamina" or whatever. In sci/fi games like Descent, this is somewhat the equivalent of shields vs. hull integrity. Using this method in a CRPG, a player can tell when they dodged or otherwise avoided damage, and when they took damage. Taking damage is inherently less cool than avoiding damage. If a player can see how often they are avoiding harm, they can enjoy working to improve that rate. Having two separate quantities is also a good way to add nuance to your game, since each quantity can regenerate (or not) at separate rates. You can also have separate sounds for dodging vs. getting hit. Another reason I don't like the idea of a unified number is that, even if your character is totally exhausted (no stamina), there's no guarantee that they will be hit. This is especially true if they are using terrain strategically.

~Ranger Meldon~ M.M. .:

Quote:If you can't be very specific or the DM can deviate greatly, then you don't have much say in your character's design.

Assuming the DM equals here the game engine for a CRPG, you can always have almost absolute say in your character's design. The great thing about making an RPG game engine is that there is no DM ego or desires. There's nobody to try to railroad the player (no matter how well-planned) into doing things or being someone they don't want to do or be. You can code in the ability for players to adventure aimlessly, killing monsters where they find them, or take part in the politics and relationships of the world. No matter how a player wants to play, or what kind of character they want to develop, they can go out and do it. On top of that, they can change their style at any time from "kick-in-the-door" to "intriguer."

~Ranger Meldon~ M.M. .:

Quote:Original post by Daniel Miller
You guys are obsessing over the technicalities of genres, when you should instead be obsessing over what more people like in a game. [grin]

This thread is not solely about what people like more in a game, although it does directly relate to that as far as numbers are concerned. We are not obsessing; it is important to understand that CRPGs came from PnP RPGs so we can determine how they need to part ways. It's not genre bickering.

I do agree with the spirit of your sentiment. Would you care to suggest a number-related idea that concerns what more people would like in a game?

~Ranger Meldon~ M.M. .:

Edit: Wow, finally a new page.

Quote:Original post by Daniel Miller
It doesn't matter what the root of your genre is;

Yes it does. If you don't know what influences your genre, you can't as easily identify what shortcomings it may have, or how it can be improved without losing the essence of what started it as a genre in the first place.

Quote:if something is found to be more enjoyable by more people, then that is what you should have in your game.

We do not disagree at all in this respect.

Quote:However, if the majority of people playing your game are playing it because they want to play game similar to how the genre started, then fine, but otherwise it shouldn't be brought up as a reason to do one thing over another.

I think you misunderstood me. When I said "so we can determine how they need to part ways", what I meant was, "so we can determine how best to evolve the CRPG in such ways that it will begin to significantly differ from its PnP origins." This is vital to making next generation CRPGs. Otherwise, you could be taking certain elements of your genre for granted when you shouldn't, including them in your game at all, or at least unaltered from their original form, when you shouldn't.

Quote:As to the discussion:

I don't mind seeing numbers in games, but I realize that some people really do. If they want to abstract them away, fine, but be sure to say somewhere what everything really means in order to save players' time so they don't have to figure everything out.

There are many times in a game where numbers are unavoidable, and in those instances, I completely agree with you. If you're going to use numbers and make them known as numbers, you should show exactly what they mean and how they relate to other things in the game. However, there are other instances in life where it would be absurd to visually represent things in numbers, such as swinging a sword. A real-life fighter doesn't think, "Ok I need to swing at least 7.06 speed and do 37 damage in order to kill this thing." This would be the height of unrealism. So in these cases, visual and/or auditory methods should be employed to communicate these things that numbers shouldn't.

As far as saving players time, I sometimes wonder if this is always a good thing. Sure, it's a great thing when you're literally saving them time, as when you offer ways to transport quickly across the game world to places the character has already been. Taking 20 minutes to have to walk somewhere really sucks after a while. Players start making autotravel mods to navigate for them while they go read a book or something! In other words, you're not adding to the gameplay experience (after a while) to make them walk everywhere.

But is it a good thing to take away part of the learning curve that would be a natural part of a person's life education if they were actually an adventurer? If you were your character, you wouldn't know how many times you have to hit a goblin to kill it. The only way to find out would be to pick up a sword, go to a goblin den, and start swinging. Even then, you'd have to do a lot of killing to get accurate about how much health goblins have. Hence the bravery (and foolishness) associated with the adventurer archetype. Taking this element of uncertainty out of the game would be sadly crippling the roleplaying AND realism elements, without gaining any significant advantages for your trouble.

As others have mentioned, you could even have a skill that you can develop over time that allows you to make more accurate assessments of enemy HP and strengths. The enemy HP bar could have a colored background that spectrums color between green/yellow/red to indicate assessed enemy difficulty. That way, if you see a dragon and can't tell how many HP it has, but its bar is red, you still know to run away unless you feel lucky. During a fight, the enemy model could be animated differently to reflect flagging health, and perhaps have wound decals applied based on the angle of a successful hit and the damage done. This would indicate all the places a monster is wounded, and how bad each wound is. A real-life adventurer would have no better indications than these as to how much health his opponent has left.

~Ranger Meldon~ M.M. .: