For things like weapon stats, maybe part of the problem can be traced to the fact that there are swords that can make a novice warrior extremely deadly. How is it that a poor swordsman can pick up a sword that makes him three times as dangerous as he would be with a different sword?

I think that weapons should certainly have an impact on your fighting potential, but not a terribly large one. One way to circumnavigate the need to call it a +3 Estoc of Whacking is to simply use the higher graphical capabilities of modern computers to reflect its quality. Have finer steel be shinier, sharper blades look sharper, and any magical enchantments they might have could be determined by reading magical runes on the blade. So you've got a really sweet-looking short sword with a steel hilt and a nice shiny rust-free blade with three runes on it: One for "mankiller", one for "ever-sharp", and one for "unbreakable".

That's a damn good sword, and worth a pretty penny if you know whom to sell it to. It's a great backup weapon for a ranger, who will be out in the wilderness for long stretches, using mostly his bow, but might need to do some up-close work with bandits. A small, light, high-quality, zero-maintenance blade that works best on human targets would be just the ticket. And you can communicate all those attributes without a single number or even a euphemism appearing on-screen.

The same could hold true for armor, shields, etc. A simple deforming magnet on the model, some morphable texturemaps/bumpmaps and color switches could account for metal types, condition and magical properties. Maybe the weight and balance would have to be tested, but it might be possible to adjust to the imperfect balance of a weapon over time, so that you could gain weapon-specific skill and affinity, also all without overt numbers.

To use Vagrant Story again, I remember being very attached to a low quality bronze sword that I'd had since just about the outset of the game, because I'd used it so much, and built up such a strong correlation between it and fighting humans that I named it "Wirrikidor" and kept it, even when it wasn't really all that good anymore.

Editted to add some content.

[edited by - Iron Chef Carnage on March 15, 2004 9:50:15 PM]

Actually, I quite like being told about the numbers.

If you don''t want to see the rolls, use the option to turn them off. Ever thought of that?

-Melekor

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Original post by Melekor
Actually, I quite like being told about the numbers.

If you don''t want to see the rolls, use the option to turn them off. Ever thought of that?

-Melekor

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Yes we did, if you had of been bothered to read the whole thread you would have seen that we are talking how to cover the maths up as they have good options on how to display the maths but not how to remove it from the players site.

If we come up with a good removal system we will have the option for the maths and it remove it.

Read the entire thread before posting spam. ¬_¬

If we really want to cover the numbers, I''d prefer a system that goes without any descriptive names, but uses graphics to indicate a special property. Like Iron Chef Carnage said, simply let a better blade look better. It would limit the item''s design however, since no rusty old blade can have special qualities. In NWN a weapon that does additional acid damage would be slightly green, and acid would drop from it slowly, which was a cool effect in my opinion. (Just to have named the game as a positive example after all the negative statements about it )

If we have such a system, the special features would have to have a noteable impact, however. If a normal sword''s damage is 1-6 and a special goblin killer is 2-6, no one is ever gonna notice the difference. What I mean to say is, the less information the player has access to, the more obvious we''d have to make the properties of the items. No player will want to spend hours and hours in testing and looking for the specialities of the item...

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There are only 10 kinds of people: those that understand binary and those that don''t.

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Original post by grbrg

Like Iron Chef Carnage said, simply let a better blade look better.

In NWN a weapon that does additional acid damage would be slightly green, and acid would drop from it slowly, which was a cool effect in my opinion.

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Yeah - I did like that effect. The other great thing about it is that it conveys more threat and mystery if you're faced by someone weilding it. Being attacked by some maddened warrior waving a sword that is so infused with venomous power that it drips acid is far more exciting than finding I need to use some Slow Poison spells and then find the sword does +5 Poison Damage when I pick it up after the fight.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage

The same could hold true for armor, shields, etc. A simple deforming magnet on the model, some morphable texturemaps/bumpmaps and color switches could account for metal types, condition and magical properties. Maybe the weight and balance would have to be tested, but it might be possible to adjust to the imperfect balance of a weapon over time, so that you could gain weapon-specific skill and affinity, also all without overt numbers.

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Now I'd love that. Surely if this was done well, we as players would be able to make a pretty good guess at which item was better than another? I'd rather use a shiny sword rather than a rusty one any day of the week, and if I went charging into battle with a battered shield I wouldn't be at all surprised to see it shatter quickly. I think a system of this type has the best potential to convey item information to players without banal statistics, so I propose we put it to the test.

Sticking with the fantasy theme (even though hopefully we should be able to apply this dogma more generally), our game contains weapons, shields and armour - all the usual stuff - and using the in-game graphics as much as possible, and without using any maths, you need to convey the following information:

- The item's condition (pristine? battered? etc)

- The item's quality (is it a good longsword or a bad longsword? Well made interlocking chainmail or a dangling collection of scrap metal? etc)

- in the case of weapons, their relative power (we know a battleaxe does more damage than a dagger, but what's the difference between a longsword and a broadsword?)

- in the case of armour, how much protection it offers

- any magical properties

Any stuff I've left out here? Note that I'm gunning for a general solution to items common in fantasy games - not specifically trying to replace D&D. So let's see what we can come up with. I'll have a go once I've had some breakfast. The Thunder Hammer Smithy doesn't open til 10 anyway.


[edited by - BiggerStaff on March 16, 2004 4:51:11 AM]

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- The item''s condition (pristine? battered? etc)

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We could use textures for this, like Iron Chef Carnage suggested. A shiny metal if it is brand-new, and rusty ones for not well-attended ones. There should of course be a fluid transition from one state to the other - and bump mapping effect should be added to imply scratches etc.

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- The item''s quality (is it a good longsword or a bad longsword? Well made interlocking chainmail or a dangling collection of scrap metal? etc)

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If we use textures for the item''s condition, we might use the item''s form for its general quality. A simple sword which every smith can make is just plain, while a special one has a more exquisit design. The drawback of this approach is of course, that there can be no exceptional weapons that look simple...

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- in the case of weapons, their relative power (we know a battleaxe does more damage than a dagger, but what''s the difference between a longsword and a broadsword?)

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Actually I don''t think this difference has to be explicitly conveyed to the players. After all, in real life there is no such clear distinction between long sword and bastard sword, and even in games the difference is not that big. If we make the bastard sword just a big larger, than that''s all the players need to know. Later, when magical effects come into play, those minor differences become irrelevant anyway.

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- any magical properties

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Here''s where the special effects applied to the item come into play. A sword that does magic damage burns (at least sometimes), an armour that offers additional fire protection is somewhat red. If a weapon offers special damage to goblins, it might glow whenever hitting one, or maybe have the goblin cry out.

Reading my post, this is just the summary of what has been suggested already, but I''ll post it anyway. The most import thing with this is, that the player must not miss the graphical features of the items. The game has to provide a close-up of all items, so the players can really "have a closer look at it"...

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There are only 10 kinds of people: those that understand binary and those that don''t.

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Original post by grbrg

The most import thing with this is, that the player must not miss the graphical features of the items. The game has to provide a close-up of all items, so the players can really "have a closer look at it"...

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Maybe for that we could include an 'examine' feature similar to the one in the Resident Evil games. Then if there was some other stuff about the item you really wanted to make clear, such as magical runes down the sword's blade, then you could add a line of text drawing the player's attention to them.

One thing that will most likely require textual explanation is magical properties such as healing and causing fear. I think a large amount of players would cotton on to conventions such as red for fire and green for poison, but other things don't have an associated colour or symbol. (White for healing maybe? Or is it lighting? wouldn't want to get those two muddled up). But a line saying that a ring causes fear or a wand causes some healing would be sufficient - it doesn't jar from the atmosphere of the game. And again the size thing comes into play - I don't need to be told how much healing a potion causes, because I'll find out the first time I use it, and I'll presume that a larger potion will cause more healing than a smaller one. Once I've remembered to free up both of my hands from holding my two-handed sword, of course

[edited by - BiggerStaff on March 16, 2004 6:18:47 AM]

I haven''t read through everyone''s posts, so sorry if I''m being redundant here.

I think the problem is not math per se, but information hiding . One of the things I used to do in roleplaying was to have adjectives that described the numerical value ranges of attributes, and I also didn''t let the players see me roll the dice. This had two huge effects. The first was that a player knew that he was "Quick", but was this a 15 out of 20? A 13 out of 20? He didn''t know...only I did. Secondly in most of the systems I played, I converted all skill resolutions into a contested system. Therefore the player would roll his dice and go "aha!! I got a 15 on 3d6!!", but then again, he wouldn''t know how well, I rolled. I also did the same thing for wounds by simply describing how painful the wound was and secretly marked off the dehabilitating effects for myself. This made players a lot more cautious when it came to battle, as a few them shrugged off their hideous wounds that I described and wondered why they failed so miserably when they tried to perform a task (pain, torn ligaments, and broken bones tend to have a negative impact on being able to perform normally )

Life is uncertain, it''s what makes it scary and challenging and fun. When we know exactly how good or bad we are at something, it makes us over or underconfident.

Some may say, "well, using an adjective system is great...until a player figures out through experience what ''quick'' is versus ''snail-like''". One answer is that there is no unified adjective scaling system. In this manner, adjectives are what they are in human language...not an objectively quantifiable system, but rather a subjective personal interpretation. The computer will manage the exact numerical quantity...but there may be two players both described as having a strength of "Herculean", and yet one player has a 19 out of 20, and the other only a 16. Afterall, every person has their own personal evaluation of what the terms "most, "many", "few", and "some" are. The adjectives still have to make sense of course, and you wouldn''t describe someone with "Herculean" strength if they only had a 5 out of 20 (unless the PC had the disadvantage of being delusional or VASTLY overconfident).

The other option is to just let the adjectives describe a range of numerical values. Perhaps "Quick" is the values of 13-15 out of 20 for your Reflexes stat. The disadvantage to this is that players will figure this out. So an option here is to switch the adjective system around from game to game. In one campaign one adjective may describe one range, and in the next, there might be a totally different adjective, or you can shift the numerical values around.

I've just read this thread for the first time so I'm going to revisit an earlier point that has been dropped to concentrate on "graphical" issues. It is one of levelling.

I just wanted to recall the story that a work friend told me about a PnP-type RPG game on the XBox which assigned experience based on using special skills as opposed to "killing goblins makes you pick locks better". I can't remember the name of the game. Anyway, there was a special "jump" feature. The more you "jumped" the better you got at it. Logical, right ?

What he did was to walk his character into some small room where he wouldn't be disturbed, selected the feature, rested a book on his mouse and went to bed. In the morning his character was still jumping but, naturally, had become exceptionally good at it.

My point is that for stuff like this it pays to be careful not to allow someone to easily exploit the system if you change how things work. Your QA people need to be thorough but they also need to be devious little hackers. Of course, you couldn't improve "pick locks" like this because if you can't pick the lock you get no experience from it and if you do pick the lock then the lock won't need to be picked again.

Just thought to mention it.

Back to the graphical point. Well, I played Baldurs Gate II and loved it but I agree with quite a lot of what has been said about numbers. I like some numbers but seeing dice rolls is boring. BGII had lots of "features". Think of each item (sword, scroll, etc) as a feature that needed some specific coding (not a lot) and some specific graphics etc. Look at the spells in the same way - each has it's own animation when cast, etc. Then look at the interface and there are very few options. If they had spent 1% of the time they spent on all those hundreds of items and spells and monsters on interface features like "more graphical/more numeric" like we have been talking about it would have turned the RPG world on it's head (consider when it was released). Sure they did spend a bit of time on it (gfx) but it's static and feels rigid.

I'm a software developer and my job is to work on a large financial system that has to be configurable to run in any country in the world that we install in, in a multitude of languages with seemingly everything being an optional feature or having some sort of setup or default. We have thousands of options and setup features so I know that creating a few graphical options for showing numbers vs coloured bar for hitpoints etc. is actually very easy.

However, interface design is an art IMO and I know I'm not that great at it.

It just takes a willingness that noone seems to have been prepared to show. It's a shame that interfaces have not been the selling point they should be although this does seem to be changing. Most games are sold on "5 millions spells, 37 billion items and a host of *new* monsters and animations !!". BGII almost seemed to go out of it's way to outdo everyone else in this regard. Noone says "By the way, our interface is going to annoy the sh*t out of you".

Even programs like WinAmp show that having some interface options (skinning) is not as hard as it seems. Not that we have been talking about skinning the entire application a la WinAmp - that would be going wayyyyyyyy too far for an RPG. It's not hard to say "this space on the screen is reserved for the stats interface and that can be one of five styles that the user may choose from". Each style is essentially like a plugin.

It's a great idea. Bring it on ! :-)

You could even go over the top and allow the users to design their own styles and graphics to display. Maybe that's a topic for later. However, considering what someone said earlier in this post about people researching the attack stats for a game that didn't display them then you'd be sure that someone will do it and put them up on a site. There will always be someone.


R

Edit: Slight clarification to one point.

[edited by - RowanPD on March 16, 2004 8:16:20 AM]

I just realized that a graphical representation would be very difficult, if items can have more than one special property. Imagine a "+2 Longsword, +3 against Goblins, fire-resistance +10, +2d6 fire damage". Finding a unique representation for this (that players can easily identify) is at least very difficult. The simple system I wrote about earlier (textures for condition, model for quality, effects/colors for special features) might not be sophisticated enough for such complex items.

If items can not be identified easily by players, they''ll soon lose interest in them... Since finding and using items is a big part in any RPG, this would be a major drawback.

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There are only 10 kinds of people: those that understand binary and those that don''t.