11 Jun, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 1st comment:
Votes: 0
I'm interested in people's opinions on the use of big or small numbers in a MUD (or other computerized game) engine.

A lot of my solid game mechanics design experience are in the table-top and LARP fields, which really necessitate small numbers. LARPs especially require small numbers since you have to do all the math in your head while participating in heavy combat, but even table-top games should be streamlined and capable of playing without having a calculator on hand (I've played one that _did_ require a calculator to resolve combat… that was a pain in the ass). Computer games obviously do not have these restrictions as the computer does all the calculations for the players, but I realize I may be biased because of my experience.

The nice thing about using larger numbers is that it gives far more control over bonuses and penalties. If the base damage of a weapon is 1 and the smallest numeric increment you can give is +1, then the smallest bonus possible in the game literally doubles the damage potential of the weapon, which cuts the hits-until-death of the weapon in half. Which is a freaking huge power increase. If on the other hand the base damage is 1000 then you can give a bonus as low as 0.1% (not that you probably want to go that low, of course), so you can easily have both nearly trivial bonuses as well as huge ones. Trivial bonuses are useful in cases when you want a game that requires bonus stacking to get effective combat bonuses, such as wanting a weapon's damage to be a combination of condition, base damage, player skill, magic bonuses, situational modifiers, etc.

A debate I've had a lot with some other designers is whether or not the game should expose those large numbers directly to the player or if it should scale them down. For example, even if the weapon damage is 1000, it might be displayed as 10. My thoughts on the matter are that displaying the smaller numbers is better because it makes the game more approachable and easier to understand. An opposing opinion is that the bigger numbers make a lot of gamers feel like their characters are more powerful and cooler and hence they get a bigger kick out of the game.

I can point to very successful computer games that take both approaches, such as many of the later Final Fantasy games (I do 9999 damage at the beginning of the game… and then I get to Limit Break and do 999,999!) or Fallout (primary stats are a mere 1-10, skills are a simple 1-100, and +2 rads/sec is quite dangerous), so there's no clear evidence that one approach is actually superior to the other.

So… thoughts?
11 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 2nd comment:
Votes: 0
I clearly have always enjoyed games with smaller numbers. To me it usually just translates into smaller scale and makes it easier to grasp the numbers you are actually dealing with.

Some of my favorite games you end up with characters where 100ish hp is a ton. :)

But I've played enjoyable games on both ends of the spectrum.
11 Jun, 2009, Zeno wrote in the 3rd comment:
Votes: 0
It's over 9000!

Anyway, I think on the smaller end is better. Going up beyond 10k is a bit much, but at the same time with say stock Smaug stats max being 25 is a bit low for me.
11 Jun, 2009, Kline wrote in the 4th comment:
Votes: 0
I'm a bit of a moderate, I suppose, having a lot of time spent on numerous iterations of GodWars games. A 30k statcap doesn't bother me, and seems like a decent "end game" value. Damage can be appropriately scaled between 100 (weak) and 3-4000 (exceptionally strong) based on the pace of combat you want. Having numbers in the 1000's does allow you to use small or large bonuses, as you suggested, and gives a lot of freedom there.

That's just what I like, though. My experience with players….Is the larger the better. I still run a lonely, old, GodWars – with the 30k ish statcaps, and the damage figures I referenced, but most new players log on and say "Wow, that's a really low cap. I'm used to like 1 million." and complain how weak they are "doing only 3000 damage a hit…why can't I hit for 25,000 ?"

I've considered moving to smaller numbers behind the scenes and just multiplying all data sent to the player by 100 or 1000 to make people like that happy, but never got around to actually testing it out ;)
11 Jun, 2009, tphegley wrote in the 5th comment:
Votes: 0
Personally, I think wow did it right in having big numbers (to flex your emuscle) but it funnels into a smaller number that counts.

IE. Crit has crit rating. YOu have to have so much crit rating in order to raise your crit percentage. So you could have 200 crit rating and at level 70 it would raise your actual critical percentage by 10%, whereas at level 80, with the same amount of crit rating it would be only like 5%.

So you can get big numbers, but still have small numbers.

So with diminishing returns on how much you can have allows you to add more bigger numbers as you go, thus giving those people that like to see big numbers, big numbers, and the min/maxers to min max their gear.
11 Jun, 2009, Kline wrote in the 6th comment:
Votes: 0
I actually hate the rating stuff in WoW just for the math overhead. I'm like "hey wow 60 crit rating!" … "oh wait that's like a 0.05% actual crit chance increase."
11 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 7th comment:
Votes: 0
Kline said:
I actually hate the rating stuff in WoW just for the math overhead. I'm like "hey wow 60 crit rating!" … "oh wait that's like a 0.05% actual crit chance increase."


Yeah, all of that stuff got especially convoluted with the expansions.
11 Jun, 2009, tphegley wrote in the 8th comment:
Votes: 0
How else would you have done it though without those diminishing returns? Stats/damage would have been through the roof.
11 Jun, 2009, Scandum wrote in the 9th comment:
Votes: 0
Kline said:
I actually hate the rating stuff in WoW just for the math overhead. I'm like "hey wow 60 crit rating!" … "oh wait that's like a 0.05% actual crit chance increase."

Does that imply that you get weaker if you gain 5 levels without changing your equipment?
11 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 10th comment:
Votes: 0
Scandum said:
Kline said:
I actually hate the rating stuff in WoW just for the math overhead. I'm like "hey wow 60 crit rating!" … "oh wait that's like a 0.05% actual crit chance increase."

Does that imply that you get weaker if you gain 5 levels without changing your equipment?


Yes, yes you do. The lower level you are the more valuable "ratings" on there are. It's really a ridiculous notion when you think about it.
11 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 11th comment:
Votes: 0
tphegley said:
How else would you have done it though without those diminishing returns? Stats/damage would have been through the roof.


Well, anyone that knows the short history of WoW knows that they didn't follow even the bell curve for their stat tables. People went from in level 50 having a few thousand hp to in level 60 in the first expansion having over 20k hp end game. They didn't *have* to do that. It would be been reasonable to continue with their original item level computations.
11 Jun, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 12th comment:
Votes: 0
elanthis said:
I'm interested in people's opinions on the use of big or small numbers in a MUD (or other computerized game) engine.

I've observed that the younger generation of players are often impressed by big numbers. This in turn has resulted in certain cliques deciding that big numbers are 'bad'. Of course from a game balance perspective it doesn't actually make any difference - even if you use very small numbers, you can still use fractions to provide finer granularity. The real danger is when the numbers aren't big by design, but because of power creep.

GodWars had pretty high stats, with hp, mana and move going up to 30K. On the other hand Last City was based on the WoD system, with stats and skills in the range 1-5, and 1 exp awarded for a kill (although as I didn't use fractions, that did prove to be a bit too restrictive). GW2 has higher stats than most muds, but not as excessive as GW1, and I've found that a better compromise.
12 Jun, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 13th comment:
Votes: 0
I grew up playing AD&D (2nd edition). I see no reason to have the kind of stupidly-big numbers I see in the majority of games these days… they don't make the game more interesting, nor do they make anything more challenging. They're simply a way to artificially segregate content.

I tend to think keeping the numbers small makes the game easier to balance. It also means newbies wandering in places they aren't supposed to be are less likely to be one-shotted. It also makes it easier to have mixed level parties. If the difference between a level 5 and a level 7 character is only 15hp, they can probably travel together without a problem. If that difference is 200hp, the low level will die more often to random aggro.

Plus, which would you rather spend your time one? Balancing a sea of numbers and digits where the only thing different between monsters is their numbers and descriptions? Or keeping things small and writing code to make them do interesting things (not just damage)?

I guess the whole argument reminds me of the shield-fighting scene from Dune. Big and Flashy looks impressive, but the slow subtle move wins.
12 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 14th comment:
Votes: 0
If you don't allow fractions, numbers that are too small are bad for the reason you already gave, namely that you don't have a lot of room to work with. If you allow fractions, the whole question is moot.

Personally, I would design my system around whatever numbers made sense to me. I tend to like things in the 1-10,000 range. This gives me lots of room to play with percentages and so forth. But then, I can scale it back down to a 1-1,000 scale or even 1-~100 scale for display purposes.

Really, what the system does and what players see is irrelevant if what people see is just some linear transformation of what's actually happening. If you have a game where people like huge numbers, you can do that by just changing the display multiple. Conversely if people like small numbers, change it the other way.

The size of numbers is however quite different from the complexity of the rules. Large numbers with simple operations don't bug me too much. It's when you start getting lots of things interacting, with big numbers that aren't rounded to tens or hundreds, with a few more things coming into play from over there, that life gets complicated.

You could have a system with very low numbers, 1-25 say, and still have it be incredibly complicated if you factor in all kinds of things like equipment materials, quality, bla bla bla. Conversely you could have massive numbers and still have relatively simple math.

In the end of the day, I think that you choose your display size based on what kind of player you want to attract, and do whatever the heck you want behind the scenes. You choose the rule complexity based on what you want to model (which will also affect what kind of players you attract).

It's worth noting that very complex rules can be summarized fairly easily to the player, such as "stronger materials win against weaker materials". Min-maxers will be interested in the math, of course, but the fairly simple rule is easy to understand and could let you create lots of granularity that's relatively easy for people to predict.
12 Jun, 2009, Sandi wrote in the 15th comment:
Votes: 0
Myself, I like smaller numbers, but I'm a bit too dyslexic to easily deal with big numbers. :redface:

On the other hand, I'm not sure I want to surround myself with players who are impressed by big numbers.
12 Jun, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 16th comment:
Votes: 0
The mechanics are not at all what I'm curious about. :) I can store a number as 100,000 but only show it as 10, or I can store a number as 10 and show it as 100,000. I've got very firm ideas on how I want the mechanics to work internally; the specifics of which don't matter for this topic. Question is, would a game be better off showing that number as 10 or should it show it as 100,000?

A few people here have expressed direct support of showing smaller numbers. KaVir, you mentioned that younger players like seeing the bigger numbers – I'm interested in hearing your evidence on that. I totally believe you, but it's kinda hard for me to use "KaVir said so and it sounds right to me" as a solid argument. ;) I had always thought it was less about them being young and more about being the kind of people who use games as an escape where they can feel more powerful and important. Granted, I guess that perfectly describes 99% of teenagers. :) If you've got evidence that it really is mostly younger people, that's a valuable thing to know, especially when it comes time to designing a game that targets different demographics. It might explain why the relatively light-hearted Final Fantasy games keep getting bigger and bigger numbers while the more gritty and "grown up" RPGs have stuck with smaller numbers. Or perhaps that an East vs West thing. Or perhaps it's a console vs PC game designer preference. I don't know, hence my asking. :)
12 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 17th comment:
Votes: 0
elanthis said:
KaVir, you mentioned that younger players like seeing the bigger numbers – I'm interested in hearing your evidence on that.

Well, this is somewhat anecdotal as I haven't compiled scientific evidence on it, but it might suffice to look at DBZ games with their numbers counted in bazillions, and then look at typical player age of such MUDs.

elanthis said:
I had always thought it was less about them being young and more about being the kind of people who use games as an escape where they can feel more powerful and important. Granted, I guess that perfectly describes 99% of teenagers. :)

I think you made a broader statement than what is needed here, but sure, it's quite plausible.

In the end of the day, big numbers are appealing to people who, in general, subscribe to the "bigger is necessarily better" phenomenon. Strictly IMO, it also requires some degree of thinking and acumen to realize that if all the numbers scale linearly, the result is entirely identical in the end of the day, and that therefore it doesn't make a difference if the numbers are big or small as long as the mechanics are interesting. That's a line of thought I don't want to pursue much, though.

I think what makes big numbers appealing to some people is pretty much what makes it easy to parody them for others. "ZOMGWTFBBQ I just deal 99,239,721 damage! TOTALLY AWESOME!" I can see why somebody would like these if they're the kind to stop at the first degree (there's nothing really wrong with that, of course, when playing a game) but I can also see why somebody who looks deeper into things would be completely dissatisfied with superficial pleasures that don't really mean much once you peel off a layer or two.

Incidentally KaVir is in an interesting position here, what with GodWars being one of the games that tends to encourage very large numbers. I would suspect he actually has quite a feel for what these players enjoy, for whatever that is worth to you.
12 Jun, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 18th comment:
Votes: 0
quixadhal said:
I tend to think keeping the numbers small makes the game easier to balance. It also means newbies wandering in places they aren't supposed to be are less likely to be one-shotted. It also makes it easier to have mixed level parties. If the difference between a level 5 and a level 7 character is only 15hp, they can probably travel together without a problem. If that difference is 200hp, the low level will die more often to random aggro.

You appear to be basing your views on a specific implementation - a typical Diku by the sound of it. As I mentioned in my previous post, "The real danger is when the numbers aren't big by design, but because of power creep." - and if you've got an otherwise stock Diku derivative, then the inflated numbers are very unlikely to have been properly factored in to the design. This was in fact one of the major problems I had with the original GodWars, and resulted in nasty hacks such as "damage cap".

But in GW2, your percentage chance to hit is: Attack * 100 / (Attack + Defence)

Thus Attack 3 vs Defence 1 = 75% chance to hit.

Equally, Attack 3000000 vs Defence 1000000 is also a 75% chance to hit.

In other words, it doesn't matter how high your Attack rating is - only how high it is relative to the Defence of your opponent.

elanthis said:
Question is, would a game be better off showing that number as 10 or should it show it as 100,000?

If you're using the number internally as 100000, and you want the mechanics to be transparent, then I would suggest displaying the number in full.

elanthis said:
KaVir, you mentioned that younger players like seeing the bigger numbers – I'm interested in hearing your evidence on that.

It's just an observation based on what I've seen, I'm afraid I've no evidence to back it up.

Note that the original GW had larger numbers because I wanted the characters to feel more "godlike" compared to those of other muds. However later GW derivatives took it much much further than I did, and it's usually those codebases people think of when they talk about the really big numbers in GW muds.

Last week on GW2 I introduced a simple balance fix that greatly weakened many characters - it was designed to flattened out an exponential growth problem, so that the more powerful the character, the more they lost (you can read about it here if you're interested). There was some initial shock from certain players ("I've lost 10K hp!") but after they tried it out the response was (almost) all positive. However it's fair to mention that most GW1 players don't actually like GW2, and never have, so I'm not really appealing to the same audience as I was with my first mud.
12 Jun, 2009, Omega wrote in the 19th comment:
Votes: 0
Numbers big or small.

I choose…


Naming conventions ;)

Players sometimes depend on the numbers too much, which is why in the past, I've stripped their ability to see the numbers all together. Most players tend to associate a number with being good or bad. So in my older muds, I would hide the numbers by using naming conventions. "normal", "average", ","moderate", … … for things like stats. Damage delt, again, left to naming conventions.

'You deal a vicious <skill/damage-type> against <opponent name>'
or
'Your bumbling <skill/damage-type> against <opponent name> misses'


Players love the numbers though, allot of them say it helps figure out the game's balance for what works best. Which honestly, sometimes its just not needed to know the 'best' practices, and leave things vague.

Bonus for you is, not worrying about display a number that is 1000* bigger then what your mud keeps, or having to completely retrofit your mud with a new numbering scheme for bigger numbers.


Thats my opinion on the matter, though I don't use it anymore myself, I miss it though, I may end up bringing it back someday.
12 Jun, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 20th comment:
Votes: 0
Darien said:
Players sometimes depend on the numbers too much, which is why in the past, I've stripped their ability to see the numbers all together.

If the game is competitive, the more experienced players will work out the values for themselves - hiding the numbers just widens the gap between newbies and veterans. It also makes it more difficult (as an admin) to track down imbalances, because it's far less obvious why players are using certain abilities.
0.0/213