Maitrek - Look at the arguments for having many stats in an RPG. First and foremost the example comes you can go build up your strength in a gym etc. Then comes the blatantly obvious "If I were a scrawny fighter" etc etc.

Does anybody know what this quote means? Maitrek, without stats, how CAN you build up your strength? And if there were no stats, couldn't players powermax without limit? I don't think you are addressing the questions, and therefore you don't have an answer that would support your position so you just sputter out words.

I think Dwarfsoft has a good solution to this problem with the skills, however. Should sword skills be more refined to short sword, long sword, dagger, etc.? Also, how would the skills deal with a character who is very strong versus a character who is not very strong?

I also have a quick question that is totally off the subject. Does anybody know how to make a string equal to a integer variable in c++? I'm saying like string = variable. What I'm trying to do would be string = "Text" + variable + "." in Basic, but I don't know how to accomplish this in c++. I just started programming in c++ three weeks ago.

Edited by - fat_tony_123 on August 8, 2000 10:25:55 PM

fat tony - the reason for NOT having stats in a game is to decrease the ability for a player to POWERMAX (ie, keep pumping up their stats to unbelievable heights). The distribution system was a BIG mistake (ie, you chose which stats get updated from your new level) and you only managed to get this distribution from murder based experience (something which is seriously wrong. If it is IN CHARACTER then it MAY be justifyable).

Stats are ok, but you simply cant allow the player to do as they please with them based on the system that has been used for so long now.

Just my $(2*rant/100)

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

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quote: Original post by fat_tony_123
Look at the arguments for having many stats in an RPG. First and foremost the example comes you can go build up your strength in a gym etc. Then comes the blatantly obvious "If I were a scrawny fighter" etc etc.

If you are suggesting that in order to be a "scrawny fighter" you need to have stats, I believe you are wrong. The exact enumeration of how scrawny you are, how many pounds you can lift, what your chances to bend bars/lift gates are ( you know where these come from ), can be irrelevent, depending on the style of game.

What if really all you knew was that you were a scrawny fighter. The internal system has no more detailed way than "scrawny" to describe your physical prowess. It''s a stat, in a way. But it also isn''t. It''s not something you can write down on your character sheet and cross reference in table 24 on page 112 of the Ultimate Elven Archer''s Guide.

What if a potion makes you stronger.
Not "gives you 50% extra strength", just makes you stronger. Abstraction is not impossible to work with. It simply changes the way to look at things. You couldn''t push the rock aside before, but now you are stronger, perhaps you could push it now.

I hope this post in some way makes sense

And to your offtopic question:
You have to use standard C / C++ functions to convert numbers to strings.
Look at itoa() ( integer to ascii ) and related functions, you''ll find something useful there.




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Makes sense to me MKV... I think I suggested something similar to this, but I termed it "data hiding" rather than "data abstraction". I think they pretty much go hand in hand. But basically your system uses stats to figure out its calculations (because it works and is proven to work) but it doesn''t give the player a direct definite answer on WHAT the value is. It just gives an abstracted answer... Which is a better way than I think they do it.

This would definitely remove "pumping" up your character, because there is nothing "definite" to pump up... Do we all (or most) agree on skill-based then?

-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

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fat_tony: look up sprintf () in your C help guide.

No, dwarfsoft, we are not. Every game is different and every game should a have a system that works for it. It might be your system, it might be MBE, but the important part is that it fits with the game. And that it''s well thought out.

As far as the abstraction goes, I think I suggested a while back that you could make it an option, or do both numbers and descriptions. I like abstraction, but I think that it could get frustrating for some if they don''t have something concrete to look at.

-------------------------------------------
"What's the story with your face, son?!?"

Because I''ve had words shoved into my mouth I''ll spit a few back out in as neat and unoffensive way as possible.

Okay - what I''m saying is that stats are primarily designed to assist in the judgement of combat. Further than that, they don''t really suit much purpose, other than inhibiting the player''s method of approaching problems in another fashion. In fact, more often than not in games we are left with just one big long combat fest and there is rarely any time in an RPG where given a quest that you need to "go get this sword" is there a point where you don''t need to kill something (except in those annoying jumping puzzles ala Ultima 8).

I didn''t say that stats where bad in that reply, I was making a noted observation of your way of defending stats *and* trying to point out that thinking of combat first is going to ruin any possible achievements that you could make in the stats-based system. I''m not always going to be posting up something against stats because I agree that they can be used for good purposes like so many have stated. I was hoping that perhaps someone might look at that post and actually sit back and think about why we are looking at stats, what purposes can they serve, when in the first place - they aren''t entirely at fault.

Secondly, stats won''t always apply to situations you put the character in, and the stats system isn''t always flexible enough to suit what you want to do with the world. Beyond combat, there are alot of other things you can do to a character and get the player to accomplish and these kind of things are largely ignored by the statistics system. MadKeith knows a billion ways around simply using the tried-and-true method of stats, and that''s what will most likely make his games the most diverse in terms of playing compared to the rest of us.

Sorry pacman, (gee... this is the THIRD apology today... and its only 9:30am!) I am very caught up in my systems at the moment (and the writing of my doc). I agree that it GREATLY depends on how your games is written as to what it requires in it. If we can all agree on that then I have to say that there will NEVER be a conclusion to this discussion. I did, however, suggest that there should be abstraction (as MKV said) but not to what level. I also see players becoming frustrated when they find it impossible to compare their characters.

The two aspects that I see being of importance are: Stoping powermaxing, and Keeping the Player happy. Can we find a balance? Well, I think it would be difficult to find the PERFECT balance, but a balance definitely should be simple to come across (and a balance that is NOT the same as the current system).


-Chris Bennett ("Insanity" of Dwarfsoft)

Check our site:
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dwarfsoft, I''m sorry if I came off angry or something, you really didn''t have to apologize (hey, now I''m the one apologizing ). I totally agree that those are two things that need to be dealt with.

I think that there can be a solution where we don''t have to have more of one at the cost of the other. The best way to do this is to just redefine the game to the players. They powermax for a reason, and it''s that reason that makes it fun. If we isolate that thing, and take it out, the game should still be fun, but now for a different reason (the right one?). Ihave no idea how to do this, but....

BTW, Maitrek, I think your right on here.

-------------------------------------------
"What's the story with your face, son?!?"

After the forum has gone this far I thought that I might as well add some of my insight to it. For one thing I think that Data Abstraction is the way to og in terms of an RPG, in a way Ultima Ascension (great game, just in the middle of it now) did it well, it still showed you how much health and mana that you had and the strength of your weapons and armour. But the fact is that you could only raise those values by getting better weapons and armour. And you could only raise your stats by advancing through the game, so you naturally got stronger the close to the end of the game that you were, skills like weapon skills in particular were taught to you after you had paid a progressively larger fee for them from instructors all over brittania. So far this has been the best way of abstracting and utilising stats and skills in a single player rpg. The way that UA (or UIX) handles this is a simple one, you gain strength (in stats and skills) relative to where you are in the game and relative to how tough the enemies are. Mana is also increased by doing good deeds and progressing through sub quests, which IMO is exactly what you guys are trying to do in a way. The only problem with this lies in that the story line is very linear and that you only play one type of character, the Avatar, an ultimate champion of virtue for all you Ultima fans , so there''s not much diversity or multiple approaches to the subject.

And for the diablo argument, I have to say that Diablo is indeed not an RPG, its a hack and slash dungeon crawl. And to boot the second one is what the first diablo should have been, and there''s no way that I''ll be forking out cash for it, I''d personally rather fork out cash to upgrade my comp and get deus-ex (went over and saw a preview of it on Maitreks comp . For it is a vastly better RPG...

Back to the discussion about stats and skills: In my RPG project, which I''m afraid will most probably fail like all the rest *sigh* I have attempted to design a system that uses both stats and skills but it does not actively show them to the player, like it has values for strength and speed etc and it allows the player to see what kind of state his character is in by how the game shows the model. I.e. a Damaged character, low health and all the rest would be limping a bit, a few cuts, scratches of clothing etc. Also especially in terms of the attractiveness attribute, ala charisma, determines how society treats them, i.e. for a character with low charisma the people on the street would try to steer away from them, and they would do the opposite for a high charisma character, i.e. the traditional high charisma female would get wolf whistles and glances from guys on the street etc. This all gets me to my point finally, that you don''t need to know what your stat or skill value is for something, especially if you give some sort of fuzzy-logic way that the player can tell. Like the bloody face in doom as a primitive example.

And finally I come to my last segment of this rather long post, it is about food and sleep, and so far the best game that I have played for that is Ultima 7, although I didn''t get too far through it because moslo didn''t work properly. In tehre you needed to feed your characters and sleep also, now if some other game had that in it it would be cool to say the least, especially if they found a way to accurately measure sleep deprivation, tiredness, huinger etc. It would be hard but the results should be worth it...

BTW if anyone wants to read my Design Doc I''ll have it uploaded shortly on my Page: http://www.eisa.net.au/~sdgrab/index.html

-Cya

Dæmin
(Dominik Grabiec)
sdgrab@eisa.net.au

quote: Original post by pacman
As far as the abstraction goes, I think I suggested a while back that you could make it an option, or do both numbers and descriptions. I like abstraction, but I think that it could get frustrating for some if they don''t have something concrete to

I''ll call you "the voice of the stat-appreciating player" then, Pacman I''ll bounce some ideas off of you.
I''m thinking of using a fuzzy-logic system for stats. You may or may not know anything about fuzzy logic, but the way I intend to use them is to track variables using real (floating point) numbers between 0 and 1. ( Where 0 is "not at all" and 1 is "completely" ).
If you wanted to see your "stats" in this game, you''d be shown a potentially HUGE list of internal variables of the game, pertaining to your character, between 0 and 1. Some of these might be readily interpreted ( perhaps rather like "muscle" or "reflexes" ), and some of them perhaps very abstract, ( like "righteousness" or even worse, "adherence to current storyline" ).
Normally I would not show these to the player, but I could have an option to "dump" these onto a screen or into a file for those that really wished to pick their characters apart and see how complex the inner system was.
If done right, would this appeal to you? Perhaps categories, "player internals", "player reactions", "story variables".


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