Ok here's a serious idea. When it comes to weapons and whether or not your character can wield a weapon based on his or her strength.

Taking the inventory idea from Diablo, the players inventory is made up of boxes (i'm getting to a point, please bear with me). This inventory system could also be used for determining whether or not a player could wield a weapon.

When a player attaches a weapon to their character is goes in a (weapon)portion of the inventory. The stronger the player the more space they have in this portion of the inventory. Now you can get rid of the strength stat forever if this is all it is going to be used for in the game.

The more boxes left over in the weapons portion of the inventory then the more bonus modifiers they get when using a weapon. This way a huge man/woman wielding a knife will get the deserved damage modifers.

You could also allow weapons to be used by people who are not strong enough to wield a particular weapon. If the weapon carries over in boxes that are highlight as not useable then for each one of these boxes the weapon carries of into the character gets a negative modifier.

Think about it, a small man/woman could wield a large axe but not with much success.

Paul C

Edited by - Paul Cunningham on June 19, 2000 9:06:27 AM

Still - however, that doesn''t solve the problem is the player got a weapon and it doesn''t work very well on his character? Or perhaps not as good as another weapon might have.
But I like the idea you had but that doesn''t technically get rid of strength, you could just count up the number of squares?

quote: Original post by Maitrek

Still - however, that doesn''t solve the problem is the player got a weapon and it doesn''t work very well on his character? Or perhaps not as good as another weapon might have.
But I like the idea you had but that doesn''t technically get rid of strength, you could just count up the number of squares?

So you need something a little more analog than squares, fare enough that can be solved. I probably should reply yet as i''m sure a can work out the other problem (weapon not working as well).

Thinking... ok, maybe i''m trying to help solve the problem from a too higher level. Let''s look at the nitty gritty.

Barbarian vs Swordsman: Barbarian can wield heavy axe but can not wield a sword (lighter) as well as the swordsman. Is this becasue a sword is a smarter weapon. ie. intelligence is an attribute to getting to most out of a sword?

So maybe you need more than one attribute when working out whether or not a character can use a weapon (yeah, aready done). But what if these extra attribute were represented in the inventory system i mentioned earlier.

An analog inventory system could work with a bar (like health and mana in diablo). When you drop a weapon in this bar (indicating that you wish to wield it) the bar/s drop/s. One bar per attribute.

Hmmm, that''s my thought for the day.

What''s the big deal about quantification? So, you give some fuzzy verbal descriptions of numerical stats, and people might try and work them out, or express them numerically. So what? Some of you have already stated above that this happens in real life too. It''s as if you''ve taken the original point, something like "RPGs with numerical stats are unrealistic and allow you to precisely powergame due to manipulating the numbers", and blown it out of all proportion to "numbers are the devil''s work and I don''t want anyone mentioning a number in my game!!".

Players need to see progress, and they need to be able to see relative abilities. They don''t have the benefit of years of hindsight like we do to judge their own abilities from. They also don''t have the detailed amount of sensory feedback that we do. Imagine 2 guys lifting the same weight: they may both succeed in lifting it, yet one did it without thinking whereas the other struggled. Yet in most systems, the difference between succeeding by 1% and succeeding by 90% is irrelevant. And to give this kind of feedback is often distracting from the game. This is why you can''t really judge your character just on successes and failures. Players in game tend to do more risky things than in real life, too. Should everyone try to kill a dragon just to see if they can or not? If so, you''re damaging the game by forcing reloads, which translate to out-of-character knowledge anyway. If they instead avoid everything as they have no way of judging relative strength, your game becomes boring as no-one dares try the fun stuff. Far better to give them some scale of self-rating, to at least let them make an educated guess.

Sure, abstract numbers away and hide them from the user, but don''t stress too much if they bring numbers back!

There has to be some kind of accurate measurment system, or else people would just get frustrated trying to figure out if they can do something. Obscuring things takes away the fun part, by putting in a tedious part. The best part (IMHO) of RPG is character development. It's great knowing that you started with 10 strength, and that you've worked hard, and now your at 25. If you made it unclear, why would anybody bother trying to develop their character, since they wouldn't know what's happening?

In real life we don't have numbers to measure how strong we are, our brain gauges things automatically, so we know our limits. When you try to pick something up, you get feedback from the nerves in your muscles telling your brain that it's heavy/light. We can't sense what our characters' feel, so we have to have some kind of accurate way to measure things. Numbers are natural for humans, if they weren't, we would have never used them in the first place.

Just becuase it isn't like real life doesn't mean it's bad.

And BTW, Zelda does have stats, but it's not numbers, it's hearts and "how many times I have to hit something before it dies".

Edited by - pacman on June 20, 2000 6:24:41 PM

You are welcome to stay the way things are. Nobody has the authority to dictate what is "good" or "bad" beyond personal preference. However, if you don''t actively seek improvement, you will never find it. There are those for whom the status quo is good enough, but with the glut of ultra-similar games on the market, I must ask: can you afford to be the status quo?

Nothing is perfect guys. What would you change?

quote: Original post by Landfish

You are welcome to stay the way things are. Nobody has the authority to dictate what is "good" or "bad" beyond personal preference. However, if you don''t actively seek improvement, you will never find it. There are those for whom the status quo is good enough, but with the glut of ultra-similar games on the market, I must ask: can you afford to be the status quo?

Nothing is perfect guys. What would you change?

Right on! I hope people don''t read my babblings and think i''m a tyrant (to much responsibility ;-)

How complex are rpg''s going to get? That''s the big question to me. Considering that stats tend to convey a generic usefulness to a character at hand.. will stats become more complicated (we all know of the 2nd Edit of AD&D rules that were expanded so there was various str stats for this and that). One day we will want to use these more complicated stat systems whether we''re trying to make a game more dynamic or what. But we can''t have them all veiwable to the player. I for one wouldn''t be interested if the stats contain 10 different str scores.

In brief, you can''t have the best of both worlds.



The measure of intelligence is in the question not the answer.

Okay, how do I know i can take on a dragon even if I do know exact numbers? Do gamers have fun adding up and calculating percentages for each hit and taking the average amount of damage their weapon does and then see if they can take the creature out when they''ve calculated the probability? The answer is no, they base if they can kill a dragon on if they''ve killed something similar before. It''s all about gameplay balance too, why should a character be suddenyl thrown into a situation, that potentially stops the development of a plot, where he must go to the town and train, and then go out and practise in some "spawning areas" to get the necessary experience to take out a dragon?
The player can just as easily figure out how strong he/she is from what it shows on the screen (in physical stature, how competent he seems with his/her weapon) and from the previous experiences with similar creatures.
Most of the time in RPGs the only times I look at my stats is to see if I can hold a weapon, rarely to see if I can kill a particular creature. IT''s a matter of overcoming the problem of weapon statistics that i think is the major fault in not having stats.

quote: Original post by Poltras

Three words: Zelda don''t have stats.

<table Height=100 Width=550 CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=10 BACKGROUND="http://tougs.citeweb.net/images/fond-gdn.gif"><tr VALIGN=TOP><td>Programming is: <table CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=0><tr VALIGN=TOP><td>A.<td Width=10><td>The art of debugging a blank sheet of paper (or an empty file).<tr VALIGN=TOP><td>B.<td><td>A pastime similar to banging one''s head against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.<tr VALIGN=TOP><td>C.<td><td>The most fun you can have with your clothes on (although clothes are not mandatory).</table></table>

Wrong and wrong. There are four words and it''s "Zelda doesn''t have stats"


Time comes, time goes and I only am.

Okay - another thing to add I suppose. Let''s just say a game doesn''t have stats - can it still be considered an rpg? See aboloishing stats decreases the need for the weapons to contain detailed information like damage that it deals out etc. Sure, this won''t pertain too well to medieval RPGs, but I''m sure other ones can work without stats.
Would system shock 2 have been any worse or better without it''s stats? Or even watering of it''s statistic based system?
Anyone played the deus ex demo - is that any sort of RPG or has this term "reole playing game" more or less degraded into "stats based game"?