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Original post by Matei
I think that adding explicit numbers makes a lot of sense if you're trying to make a strategic game. For example, what happens in an RTS game whenever a company doesn't release the full stats of the units and the combat damage calculations and the bonuses of each upgrade is that the players test these things themselves and post them on websites. In multiplayer games of other genres, the same thing is true, because players have to compete based on skills and planning and thus look for all the information they can get in order to make it easier. And there's nothing wrong with strategic gameplay - it can be fun to gamble based on chance or figure out how to optimize some strategy when you have all the information available.

Thus the only way to remove this need for explicit numbers is to either make a game where the focus is much more on exploring the world than on applying some skills (like Myst, or a singleplayer RPG), or make a game where there are no entities that the user will have to know hidden numbers about, and players must compete starting from the same situation (like Chess, or an FPS game).

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I was just going to say almost the same exact thing. I don't like it when RPGs that try to disguise their numbers, it reminds me of the "security through obscurity" idea, where you try to hide how a system actually works in order to make it more challenging to the user. One of two things usually happen when I'm playing a game that's trying to hide the effects of weapons and how combat works:

A) I get frustrated trying to figure it out and decide to just give up on strategy and just hack my way through everything if the game's easy enough.
B) I spend the time figuring out the math on my own or reading it on a website, and then the game becomes too easy and I feel like I'm exploiting it.

It kindof reminds me of Everquest when it first came out. They gave you all these stats that you could put points into, but the instructions and game hardly said anything at all for how they were actually used. After the game was out for a few months, people gradually began to figure out what the stats were for, and half the time it made no sense: For example, Dexterity didn't have any effect on how fast you were or how good you were at dodging, it determined how many times the spell on your sword would fire. Things that would seem useful for fighters, like strength, really hardly had any use in the combat math at all. So when people figured this out, they would made a lot of high-dex low-str fighters and gave them weapons with spells on them, and were far more effective than a fighter build that made sense to most people. The devs considered this exploitive and had to patch it to fix the problem. This happened to tons of things as people gradually began to figure out the hidden math, and systems had to be reworked, and lots of people were angry with their characters and felt the need to start over when they found out that all the effort they had put into raising certain stats was actually completely useless and they had possibly got their character to a state where it was impossible to fix it so that he would be any good, or even playable. None of this would have happened if all of the math and how combat actually worked was available.

I can see how some people would dislike seeing numbers, but I definitely don't think that there should be major parts of a game's mechanics hidden. Chess is a game where all the mechanics and math is laid bare, and it's still one of the most challenging games I've ever played.

[edited by - makeshiftwings on May 12, 2004 5:34:57 AM]

I agree in that I don''t really like games that try to hide information "too much". Now granted I don''t want to know everything -- I don''t need to know every diceroll or every random number that''s been done. I only need to know if I hit or not, some way to make a rough estimate wether I''m doing enough damage or not and whotever else special effects that applied. I think Diablo II does this fairly well in that it reveals alot of numbers for yeh if yeh want to see them, but they''re far from necessary to understand whot''s going on.

Equally I don''t want items to be too obscure in whot they do. If I find a new item I want something to specifically tell me if I want to use it or not. Now this can either be based on raw power (is it stronger or not) or getting added complexity by giving other kind of bonuses or drawbacks. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for instance displays raw weapon power and a line of text describing it. This doesn''t list whot type of movement the attacking motion will do or how fast it swings, but these statistics are obvious if yeh just practice a few swings with it.

As such.. the only numbers that should be hidden are either the ones the player has no need of, or the ones they can make a simple estimate of their own without throwing themselves into the fire. Yeh don''t want to venture very far from a save point, find a new weapon of immense neatness just before a boss and then find the only way yeh can tell wether the weapon will be good or not is to throw yourself into a battle that''ll set yeh back some 30-60 minutes if it wasn''t as good as yeh''d hoped.

It seems actually that hiding information in a good way becomes easier if there''s more information. Like say, playing a BattleTech simulation game that''s true to the original rules will present yeh with an overwhelming ammount of information, while playing MissionForce: Cyberstorm whichs underlying calculations are far more complex than BattleTechs will present yeh with something far more comprehensible. I think the reason RPGs have problem with showing too little or too much information to the player is because they borrow much of their system from old table-top or paper-sheet RPGs. These are made inherently simple so they could be done without the immense processing power of a computer, with the end result that their statistics are also so simplified that it''s hard to make them simpler -- it''s generally easier just to thrust them onto the player and that''s that.

Information hiding in RPGs would probably be a fair bit simpler if they invented a deeper and more complex system to base standards on rather than basing most things in D&D. This way all information to the player could be aproximated estimates which change depending on fairly obvious factors - a way which would be easier for a player to get a "feel" for rather than having to know.