15 Jun, 2009, Guest wrote in the 121st comment:
Votes: 0
Directly above the text after it's been posted.
16 Jun, 2009, Confuto wrote in the 122nd comment:
Wodan said:
i'd say use small numbers and print some extra 0s to make people feel better! :grinning:
set0s
> How many 0s would you like to add to your numbers?
16
> Ok.
slash kobold
> You viciously slash a grumpy kobold.
> You hit a grumpy kobold for 580.000,000,000,000,000 damage!
drink potion
> You drink deeply from a health potion, healing 250,000,000,000,000,000 hit points.
Good idea? I think so.
16 Jun, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 123rd comment:
David Haley said:
Quix gave a contrived example where a character has an advantage in a single case, not one where on average the two are equal. It's not interesting to talk about some random case, maybe even a fluke, where a character loses to another.
What you seem to miss though, is that every single game, and every experience a player will ever have in any such game, is a series of these "single cases", not a set of averages. My point is that when you specialize, you are setting yourself up to win one set of encounters, and lose another set. If you spread your points, you don't gain the advantages, but you also don't gain the vulnerabilities.
If you have the luxury of being able to pick your battles, either through a "duel" type consensual PvP system, or by learning the game and avoiding the quests or NPC groups that you're vulnerable to, specialization is the way to go. If you don't have that luxury, you can't say that specializing will yield a better character. If you can, your game isn't balanced.
16 Jun, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 124th comment:
Confuto said:
set0s
> How many 0s would you like to add to your numbers?
16
> Ok.
slash kobold
> You viciously slash a grumpy kobold.
> You hit a grumpy kobold for 580.000,000,000,000,000 damage!
drink potion
> You drink deeply from a health potion, healing 250,000,000,000,000,000 hit points.
Good idea? I think so.
Wodan said:
i'd say use small numbers and print some extra 0s to make people feel better! :grinning:
set0s
> How many 0s would you like to add to your numbers?
16
> Ok.
slash kobold
> You viciously slash a grumpy kobold.
> You hit a grumpy kobold for 580.000,000,000,000,000 damage!
drink potion
> You drink deeply from a health potion, healing 250,000,000,000,000,000 hit points.
Good idea? I think so.
No, no… that will be seen as contrived. It's far better to decide to add 9 digits of zeroes, and instead add a random number from 0 to 999999999. That way it'll look more realistic!
You smack the fluffy bunny for 7,162,118,201 points of damage!!!
16 Jun, 2009, KaVir wrote in the 125th comment:
quixadhal said:
No, no… that will be seen as contrived. It's far better to decide to add 9 digits of zeroes, and instead add a random number from 0 to 999999999. That way it'll look more realistic!
Actually I'm tempted to really let players add 0s on the end of their numbers, just so that when one of those 'big number' players connects and complains, I can tell them "just use the 'set0s' command". Having it look less realistic is actually desirable if the goal is to drive home how meaningless big numbers are! The feature wouldn't add any value to the game, but would be amusing (and if you're lucky might get you some publicity from future game design discussions).
It rather reminds me of the occasional case that crops up, where a player tells me they miss having to type 'save' all the time (I don't have a save command). So I suggest they type 'alias add save display Ok.' :)
16 Jun, 2009, ATT_Turan wrote in the 126th comment:
There is one thing that hasn't been mentioned in the thread, and that's how the size of your numbers affects the length of character development. It's 4 in the morning so that may be worded oddly…let me elucidate.
Let's say the maximum number of hit points a character can get on your MUD is 100. If you want it to take, say, 400 hours of gameplay for a player to reasonably be able to achieve that maximum number, they're going to be progressing very slowly - getting enough experience to increase their hit points by one every four hours.
If you increase that maximum to 10,000, a player can now be occupied for that same 400 hours but they can now get enough experience to gain 25 hit points every hour.
Even if all of your core mechanics are proportioned such that whether a character maxes out at 100 hit points or 10,000 it makes no difference in the length of fights, the second case may well be more satisfying to play because there is a more tangible feeling of making regular progress. In this case it's not so much that the players necessarily want to see larger numbers, it's that they're able to see improvement as the result of their gameplay on a frequent basis.
Obviously there are more ways to make and monitor character improvement than on the basis of a single stat, this is just another thing to take under consideration when deciding the scale of your numbers.
Let's say the maximum number of hit points a character can get on your MUD is 100. If you want it to take, say, 400 hours of gameplay for a player to reasonably be able to achieve that maximum number, they're going to be progressing very slowly - getting enough experience to increase their hit points by one every four hours.
If you increase that maximum to 10,000, a player can now be occupied for that same 400 hours but they can now get enough experience to gain 25 hit points every hour.
Even if all of your core mechanics are proportioned such that whether a character maxes out at 100 hit points or 10,000 it makes no difference in the length of fights, the second case may well be more satisfying to play because there is a more tangible feeling of making regular progress. In this case it's not so much that the players necessarily want to see larger numbers, it's that they're able to see improvement as the result of their gameplay on a frequent basis.
Obviously there are more ways to make and monitor character improvement than on the basis of a single stat, this is just another thing to take under consideration when deciding the scale of your numbers.
16 Jun, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 127th comment:
ATT_Turan said:
If you want it to take, say, 400 hours of gameplay for a player to reasonably be able to achieve that maximum number, they're going to be progressing very slowly - getting enough experience to increase their hit points by one every four hours.
If you increase that maximum to 10,000, a player can now be occupied for that same 400 hours but they can now get enough experience to gain 25 hit points every hour.
If you increase that maximum to 10,000, a player can now be occupied for that same 400 hours but they can now get enough experience to gain 25 hit points every hour.
I know what you're trying to say, but what you actually said isn't true. :) Your player is advancing at exactly the same rate, namely taking 400 hours to "finish" the content. The fact that they're getting smaller hit point bonuses, or getting the same size increases less frequently will be a turnoff to today's short attention span theater children.
That's one of the reasons I liked the way BatMUD did things. They gave you seperate physical body levels and class levels. You could choose where you wanted to spend your experience, so if you felt like you didn't have enough hit points, buy a few body levels and increase your hit points. If you want betters skills, spend them there instead. Giving the player the choice of what they get also takes away the need to pad things, since making an active choice is generally more rewarding than getting a passive "You gained 300000000 hit points!" message.
16 Jun, 2009, ATT_Turan wrote in the 128th comment:
quixadhal said:
I know what you're trying to say, but what you actually said isn't true. :) Your player is advancing at exactly the same rate, namely taking 400 hours to "finish" the content. The fact that they're getting smaller hit point bonuses, or getting the same size increases less frequently will be a turnoff to today's short attention span theater children.
It is true, because I said exactly what you just did :smile:
Turan said:
Even if all of your core mechanics are proportioned such that whether a character maxes out at 100 hit points or 10,000 it makes no difference in the length of fights, the second case may well be more satisfying to play because there is a more tangible feeling of making regular progress.
I acknowledge that they're advancing at exactly the same rate, but it can get boring if you have to grind kills/complete quests/do whatever for long periods of time and not see any concrete improvement to your character. Does that make me impatient and a theater child? Perhaps :wink:
I also acknowledged that any decently-designed game will have more to do and advance than a single stat, but my statement can be applied more broadly across the character - what feels more fun after an isolated evening's play of four hours: knowing you gained one hit points and learned magic missile, or knowing you got 5 hit points, 2 mana, learned magic missile and upgraded your force bolt to level 3?
I'm not saying all MUD's have to use large-scale numbers, I'm just pointing out that one benefit of doing so can be to inflate the period of gameplay before a character is maxed without it feeling slow. It's the difference between a MUD with 20 character levels and one with 100.
16 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 129th comment:
ATT_Turan said:
There is one thing that hasn't been mentioned in the thread, and that's how the size of your numbers affects the length of character development. It's 4 in the morning so that may be worded oddly…let me elucidate.
Let's say the maximum number of hit points a character can get on your MUD is 100. If you want it to take, say, 400 hours of gameplay for a player to reasonably be able to achieve that maximum number, they're going to be progressing very slowly - getting enough experience to increase their hit points by one every four hours.
If you increase that maximum to 10,000, a player can now be occupied for that same 400 hours but they can now get enough experience to gain 25 hit points every hour.
Even if all of your core mechanics are proportioned such that whether a character maxes out at 100 hit points or 10,000 it makes no difference in the length of fights, the second case may well be more satisfying to play because there is a more tangible feeling of making regular progress. In this case it's not so much that the players necessarily want to see larger numbers, it's that they're able to see improvement as the result of their gameplay on a frequent basis.
Obviously there are more ways to make and monitor character improvement than on the basis of a single stat, this is just another thing to take under consideration when deciding the scale of your numbers.
Let's say the maximum number of hit points a character can get on your MUD is 100. If you want it to take, say, 400 hours of gameplay for a player to reasonably be able to achieve that maximum number, they're going to be progressing very slowly - getting enough experience to increase their hit points by one every four hours.
If you increase that maximum to 10,000, a player can now be occupied for that same 400 hours but they can now get enough experience to gain 25 hit points every hour.
Even if all of your core mechanics are proportioned such that whether a character maxes out at 100 hit points or 10,000 it makes no difference in the length of fights, the second case may well be more satisfying to play because there is a more tangible feeling of making regular progress. In this case it's not so much that the players necessarily want to see larger numbers, it's that they're able to see improvement as the result of their gameplay on a frequent basis.
Obviously there are more ways to make and monitor character improvement than on the basis of a single stat, this is just another thing to take under consideration when deciding the scale of your numbers.
I disagree. The argument just is just based on some false assumptions. Change your test case to 100.00 hp vs 10000. Make the previous gain .25 hit points a ever hour and the later 25 hit points an hour. It's the same exact thing, one is represented by a much smaller number, and as long as everything is to scale it would make absolutely no difference. Not even by "the frequency of which they see improvement."
16 Jun, 2009, Sandi wrote in the 130th comment:
Runter said:
I disagree. The argument just is just based on some false assumptions. Change your test case to 100.00 hp vs 10000.
I disagree with your disagreement. His assumption is that players need to see some reward for their efforts, and I don't think your suggested .25 hit point increase is going to seem very rewarding. Nor do I think it has anything to do with their choice of venue.
This is something I've dealt with, since my game has only 30 levels, and 400 hours to Hero is a fair assumption, even for an experienced player. My answer is similar to BatMUD's, though I didn't realise it. Skills are based on levels, but your HP, Mana and Moves are advanced on a separate, shorter scale, resulting in more advances per level as the levels increase. As my game is based on the original ROM values, this means the increments are rather small, and perhaps disappointing. Now you've got me considering scaling things upwards, at least in the displays. Hmmmm…
16 Jun, 2009, Runter wrote in the 131st comment:
Sandi said:
I disagree with your disagreement. His assumption is that players need to see some reward for their efforts, and I don't think your suggested .25 hit point increase is going to seem very rewarding. Nor do I think it has anything to do with their choice of venue.
This is something I've dealt with, since my game has only 30 levels, and 400 hours to Hero is a fair assumption, even for an experienced player. My answer is similar to BatMUD's, though I didn't realise it. Skills are based on levels, but your HP, Mana and Moves are advanced on a separate, shorter scale, resulting in more advances per level as the levels increase. As my game is based on the original ROM values, this means the increments are rather small, and perhaps disappointing. Now you've got me considering scaling things upwards, at least in the displays. Hmmmm…
Runter said:
I disagree. The argument just is just based on some false assumptions. Change your test case to 100.00 hp vs 10000.
I disagree with your disagreement. His assumption is that players need to see some reward for their efforts, and I don't think your suggested .25 hit point increase is going to seem very rewarding. Nor do I think it has anything to do with their choice of venue.
This is something I've dealt with, since my game has only 30 levels, and 400 hours to Hero is a fair assumption, even for an experienced player. My answer is similar to BatMUD's, though I didn't realise it. Skills are based on levels, but your HP, Mana and Moves are advanced on a separate, shorter scale, resulting in more advances per level as the levels increase. As my game is based on the original ROM values, this means the increments are rather small, and perhaps disappointing. Now you've got me considering scaling things upwards, at least in the displays. Hmmmm…
Okay. And someone else can suggest 25 is not a reward and it should be 250. Or maybe 2500. Or maybe 25000. It's all a multiple of the same number and makes no correlations as to how often you reward them (Which is what his argument was.)
And if bigger numbers make a bigger thrill go down someones leg then that's kinda an insult to their intellectual ability to decipher the value of a stat.
16 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 132nd comment:
quixadhal said:
My point is that when you specialize, you are setting yourself up to win one set of encounters, and lose another set. If you spread your points, you don't gain the advantages, but you also don't gain the vulnerabilities.
You can't make this statement in general; it's just not true. There are some games that require specialization, without which you won't be able to win anything. This doesn't make the game unbalanced; it's simply a different kind of balance.
16 Jun, 2009, flumpy wrote in the 133rd comment:
tphegley said:
You missed it by two posts Crat.
hows it feel to be the springboard of the 1337 posters? he so used you dude
16 Jun, 2009, flumpy wrote in the 134th comment:
David Haley said:
You can't make this statement in general; it's just not true. There are some games that require specialization, without which you won't be able to win anything. This doesn't make the game unbalanced; it's simply a different kind of balance.
quixadhal said:
My point is that when you specialize, you are setting yourself up to win one set of encounters, and lose another set. If you spread your points, you don't gain the advantages, but you also don't gain the vulnerabilities.
You can't make this statement in general; it's just not true. There are some games that require specialization, without which you won't be able to win anything. This doesn't make the game unbalanced; it's simply a different kind of balance.
Well if we can't make non-general statements is there any point in having a discussion?
There will never be, in general, any system that you can say a specialist is better than a non-specialist or vice versa. Each system is different, so generalising discussion about a very specific portion of the use of numbers for specialist or non specialist game play IMHO is pointless.
I don't think we can progress the argument about specialisation much further myself, especially if you insist on not accepting specific examples. I think all that's worth being said has been said.
16 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 135th comment:
flumpy said:
Each system is different, so generalising discussion about a very specific portion of the use of numbers for specialist or non specialist game play IMHO is pointless.
Which is, actually, exactly what I was trying to say to Quix :wink: It's not appropriate to generalize without qualification. His statement would make sense in some contexts, but it was given as a general truth.
Discussions like these always need to have bounds placed on them, otherwise we're all just doomed to talk in circles, past each other, and without making forward progress. There comes a point where we're all talking about a specific system (typically the one in our heads (that obviously nobody else knows about)) while making general claims of truth.
EDIT:
It's not that we're not arguing about specialization anymore. It's that there are very different ways to implement specialization. What Quix said simply isn't true about specialization in general; it's true about a certain way of implementing generalists vs. specialists. So it doesn't make sense to say something about specialization in general, while giving an example grounded in a very particular case that does not capture what is generally true. Special cases are fine as long as they're actually a good sampling of the broader space.
16 Jun, 2009, tphegley wrote in the 136th comment:
flumpy said:
hows it feel to be the springboard of the 1337 posters? he so used you dude
tphegley said:
You missed it by two posts Crat.
hows it feel to be the springboard of the 1337 posters? he so used you dude
I only put that in to be 99, figuring he would probably need a reply to get 100. I could care less, but I know I wanted to see his beautiful art work… :cool:
16 Jun, 2009, elanthis wrote in the 137th comment:
David Haley said:
I don't disagree with this. It's dumb to put in choices that seem reasonable but actually aren't. I still think this is rather different from always equating fun choices with strategic choices. Of course, only providing strategic choices is a way to force the equation of these two things, or at least, by ensuring that all choices are strategic, the fun ones are also strategic.
Tada!
Quote
Substitute checkers for any game with long-reaching consequences, such as chess, Go, …
Sure. But my main point there was that even a long strategic game like those runs on the order of 30 minutes to a few hours, not for months and months. Losing is not a big deal because you personally haven't sacrificed much of anything in the process. It's the difference between having your hot one night stand leave before you wake up and having your fiance of 6 years leave you in the middle of the night. One is a "meh fine with me" situation and the other is a "omgwtfbbqsauce QQ where's my shotgun" situation. ;)
16 Jun, 2009, quixadhal wrote in the 138th comment:
David Haley said:
You can't make this statement in general; it's just not true. There are some games that require specialization, without which you won't be able to win anything. This doesn't make the game unbalanced; it's simply a different kind of balance.
quixadhal said:
My point is that when you specialize, you are setting yourself up to win one set of encounters, and lose another set. If you spread your points, you don't gain the advantages, but you also don't gain the vulnerabilities.
You can't make this statement in general; it's just not true. There are some games that require specialization, without which you won't be able to win anything. This doesn't make the game unbalanced; it's simply a different kind of balance.
Hmmmm…..
A skill-based system can and should let you specialize in one (or more) sets of skills, rewarding those who focus with abilities or strengths not available to the dabblers. At the same time, they can also offer the player the opportunity to spread their points out and be good (but not great!) at lots of things.
By contrast, a class system lets you select one (or more) classes, often at character creation time, but not always. Once those classes are picked, they funnel you through their pre-defined skill set progression.
If your game is set up to make it impossible for people to win without specializing, you are effectively not using a skill system at all, but a class system which gives the player the illusion of choice. At endgame, all specialists will be expected to have taken the same set of core skills with a handful of non-essentials for flavour. That sounds like a class system to me.
I'd be interested to see a skill-based system that forces you to specialize, where all players of the same specialization don't end up with the same cookie-cutter build at the end.
16 Jun, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 139th comment:
Quote
If your game is set up to make it impossible for people to win without specializing, you are effectively not using a skill system at all, but a class system which gives the player the illusion of choice. At endgame, all specialists will be expected to have taken the same set of core skills with a handful of non-essentials for flavour. That sounds like a class system to me.
Not really; you could easily specialize in several things, at several points in time, with some specialties only becoming available later depending on various things that have happened. You can perhaps reduce this to some kind of complex path-sensitive multiclassing system, but a skill-less system can also be reduced to a multiclassing system, so, well, I'm not sure what has been gained.
Quote
A skill-based system can and should let you specialize in one (or more) sets of skills, rewarding those who focus with abilities or strengths not available to the dabblers. At the same time, they can also offer the player the opportunity to spread their points out and be good (but not great!) at lots of things.
I think you're making a big assumption here, namely that a very small number of points in some skill is sufficient to make you "good" at it. Maybe you can swing around maces, axes, swords, knives, flails, spears and halberds without killing yourself, but that hardly means you'd be able to do much of anything terribly useful with it against very skilled opponents.
I'm not saying that such an assumption is always wrong – we've seen that you can make it true – but it's not always correct, either.
Quote
I'd be interested to see a skill-based system that forces you to specialize, where all players of the same specialization don't end up with the same cookie-cutter build at the end.
Again, this makes the assumption that specialization is one-dimensional.
16 Jun, 2009, tphegley wrote in the 140th comment:
My two cents, not worth much, but hey, they are mine.
I'll restate with what WoW has done. They have a class system, but within that class system they have the three trees that you can specialize in and then as the situation changes you can change your talents (with dual spec, you can change on the fly) to whatever is needed. This gives the player a feel for his character and what WoW has done (moreso with wotlk, although still not perfectly balanced) is made more options in each tree so you don't have that 'cookie cutter' (definitely not as bad as it used to be) spec that everyone else has. You might have 5-15 extra points to kind of put wherever you want here and there.
Granted, this is not the be all end all of what needs to happen, but you guys seem to be running in around in circles with your own opinions and not backing down from it.
You have stated a need for specializing (talent trees, again you can have however many different trees you wanted), and you have stated a need for if a person specs wrong without knowing what they were doing at creation they are screwed (why not just add respecing to the game).
If there is respecing then you can change your talents as you see fit depending on an encounter. Thus ending the 'Crap, had I known I needed firebolt IV instead of Frostbolt III I would have not specced this way' and giving your players the ability to adapt to new content and makes for finding that perfect spec more fun.
Did this help any or did I ramble and have no point?
I'll restate with what WoW has done. They have a class system, but within that class system they have the three trees that you can specialize in and then as the situation changes you can change your talents (with dual spec, you can change on the fly) to whatever is needed. This gives the player a feel for his character and what WoW has done (moreso with wotlk, although still not perfectly balanced) is made more options in each tree so you don't have that 'cookie cutter' (definitely not as bad as it used to be) spec that everyone else has. You might have 5-15 extra points to kind of put wherever you want here and there.
Granted, this is not the be all end all of what needs to happen, but you guys seem to be running in around in circles with your own opinions and not backing down from it.
You have stated a need for specializing (talent trees, again you can have however many different trees you wanted), and you have stated a need for if a person specs wrong without knowing what they were doing at creation they are screwed (why not just add respecing to the game).
If there is respecing then you can change your talents as you see fit depending on an encounter. Thus ending the 'Crap, had I known I needed firebolt IV instead of Frostbolt III I would have not specced this way' and giving your players the ability to adapt to new content and makes for finding that perfect spec more fun.
Did this help any or did I ramble and have no point?
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