Tim Cain at Reboot Develop 2017 - Building a Better RPG: Seven Mistakes to Avoid

[Gromnir]

 

keep using ad&d?  ad&d is not a crpg system.  obsidian and other developers understandable avoid the mistakes o' ad&d and yet is your example.  why?

 

Because I can remember how to calculate it off the top of my head without having to spend time researching the formulas used for a crpg so as to provide a numerical comparison that would come from a native computer game.

 

in any event, we gave reason why numbers is useful when deciding if you hit or not.  got a good strength character with a swell sword. we keep missing when fighting the burly rock trolls.  would be better to have a character with excellent agility and a fine rapier attack the troll while the good strength character switches to goblins in crude armour?   only gonna figure out through trial and error, and if tim gets his way and we include genuine randomness, we might be learning wrong anyways.

 

numbers make more sense and is far more clear than is adjectives.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

Isn't this more an issue of feedback to the user rather than the superiority of the use of numbers?

 

If good STR character w/ good sword is given feedback when contemplating an attack on the troll and the feedback is yucky or -10 (or if not turn-based, other contextual evidence that the fight isn't pursuable) wouldn't the end result provide the information necessary for the player to know the character isn't ready to fight the troll?  

 

you realize how silly you is being, no?  gonna continue using your example o' hitting foes as it is quite illustrative. to give feedback as specific and useful as numbers, you need an equal number o' adjectives as numbers... at which point you has reduced this discussion to pointlessness. two equal arbitrary systems. also while you may not think yucky is less illuminating than -10 such is only 'cause you gave yucky a specific numerical value.  difference 'tween -10 and -9 very well could be illustrative and useful. got an adjective for -9? if you honest is creating a specific adjective for every potential number, then what has you achieved by using the adjectives?  our new player switches from seeming ineffective weapons and instead o' yucky he gets terrible miss feedback.  am not certain what yucky v. terrible means at the start o' the game (damn you example o' the cain learning curve mistake) but when we used a strength boosting spell and we sudden hit we would necessarily be left wondering what were the reason for sudden success.  maybe we hit 'cause o' randomness. did strenght boost help?explain via psychological satisfying adjectives the full range o' math feedback possible. perhaps close miss, bad miss and yuck miss is the feedbacks?  honest, doesn't this feel silly to you?  is so much more clear and simple to use numbers. 

 

also, and this should be obvious, as is Computer games we are talking 'bout, there is gonna be math involved.  sure, a living dm or gm can rely on gut and whimsy and adjectives to decide if a brutal strong fighter with excellent training and the magic sword invashan will succesful beat a swarm o' malevolent fire sprites.  no dice. no math.  a human gm could simple paint a vivid image for players and resolve.  a computer is gonna use math.  math is fair and impartial.  math has potential for infinite small and infinite large. perhaps best o' all, math won't ever leave us with horrific possibility o seeing feedback o' a "yucky" miss in a game. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Amentep]

Sure there's going to be math involved.  Did I say there wasn't?  My only question is in a computer game how much math the player actually need to play the game.   It seems to me if there is well defined feedback it shouldn't matter if the feedback is numbers or words.

 

You'd still need to define a spectrum of words that create a scale of some sort without numbers (worst-worse-bad-average-good-better-best being an obvious example).  But my point is that is just as intuitive as, say, a 10 point scale (it is, in essence, a 7 pt scale without using the numbers).

 

Using arbitrary words - yucky-terrible-not great-bad- better but not quite good - good - okay - nice - fine - great - awesome - stupendous wouldn't be well defined to the audience (anymore so than say, using any unclear numerical system, say one that uses really large numbers).

[Gromnir]

  But my point is that is just as intuitive as, say, a 10 point scale (it is, in essence, a 7 pt scale without using the numbers).

 

 

and our point is you is still missing the point.  if is "just as intuitive" then is hardly the example o' some kinda mistake.  cain were suggesting superiority o' adjectives. if you gotta explicit define a detailed adjective-based spectrum so it is making feedback as useful, elegant, and specific as a numerical system, then what psychological benefit could you possible have achieved?   you concede the integral nature o' math in the crpg.  so the question is why would one work bass ackwards to replace the necessary numbers with adjectives which is unlikely to be able to fully express what is actual happening in the rules anyways? check the math for poe and try and express with adjectives.  reduce the math in a game to a psychological satisfying and necessarily limited adjective spectrum and we can say for certain Gromnir and many others will be disatisfied.  count the days post release before many is unlocking the real math so folks can actual understand.

 

'course you ain't actual arguing what cain were saying.  cain were claiming psychology should trump math.  yeah, in ad&d, the numbers didn't make sense w/o considerable explanation, and such is bad, but cain specific were noting that some/many see numbers and reject. "we don't work numerically.  we work very  visually." use a triangle to show proportional values o' attributes so as to avoid using numbers. first targeting o' a stationary foe should hit 'cause o' psychology, regardless o' the math o' the system.  easily digestible adjectives is superior 'cause the words is inherent having qualities impossible to achieve with numbers.  etc.

 

tim is wrong 'bout psychology o' numbers in games.  absence o' numbers is as likely (more likely) to cause consternation.  go ahead and try and take numbers outta baseball and see how fans react.

 

so, arguing cain or amentep, am not seeing value in the adjectives approach. either you need try supplant numbers with adjectives as amentep suggests, which is pointless work and less clear anyways, or we accept cain's notion o' inherent psychological inferiority o' numbers, which is just silly. you are both wrong in our estimation.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Amentep]

I'm not sure I'd call all 7 mistakes of his presentation mistakes, either.

 

I can see a benefit to not using numbers. That benefit is that the computer game player doesn't need to know math, therefore the math could be replaced with an adjective system that could be more friendly.

 

I'm of an agreement that POEs mechanics would be hard to express without numbers; that really doesn't make it a simple or eligant design (given the complaints about how it worked and changes to same over the development, perhaps the opposite?)

[Bartimaeus]

The only kind of math that I hate in games is percentiles and ugly decimal points. I'm not sure what it is about them, but seeing my chance to hit expressed as "65.1%" just feels so incredibly and unsatisfyingly gamey to me. AD&D abstracted this away a little by using the THAC0, AC, ability bonus, and dice roll systems, which I always loved. The math is still there, and you can still rather easily figure it out if you so wish, but it's hidden away just a little bit in the game under a system which allows me to think of my average damage as being "1D6 + 1" (or 2-7) instead of an average of 4.5, or that I need to roll a 13 or better with my D20 roll combined with my other THAC0 modifiers to beat their AC instead of it being 65% chance or whatever to hit. I like just a little bit of fuzziness and abstraction for numbers, but not too much - the numbers should still be moderately transparent and tied to hard math that you can figure out.

 

(e): So I guess I basically like rational numbers and fractions rather than irrational numbers. Gee, what a surprise: the guy with OCPD doesn't like irrational numbers - that's a shocker.

Edited May 2, 2017 by Bartimaeus

[CrumpetsForBreakfast]

It's funny people are arguing about numbers now. If you look at an alternative example in say fighting games, there are no numbers, there are only buttons and moves with various combination. They don't show numbers and instead use visual information like life bar and character animation. The games are still broken down into numbers by the players that reverse engineer it and call it frame data and reverse engineer how much life each character has.

 

The exact same argument of learning curve is given for fighting games, which hide their complexity, because players have to understand the hidden numbers to do well. People say they're too difficult to get into, learning curve is much too steep, and too esoteric to do well.

 

If your simulation is based on numeric values then it's probably easier for players overall to make the important stuff explicit.

[Amentep]

I've never played a fighting game where it was necessary to figure out exactly how many points of life a move took off.  It was often required to know the priority of the attacks so as to be able to counter actions. That said, I've never played outside of local circles, so perhaps its more important to elite players looking to find an edge on one another?

 

A couple of further thoughts -

 

About baseball stats - they are derivative of real actions.  The only numbers that really matter to the game are balls/strikes/outs/innings/scores which are inherent in the game and described to the viewer by the rules of the game (ie the system).  While much pleasure can be had debating the benefits of a .200 batter with a high home run percentage vs a lifetime .333 batter with a low home run percentage, that's actually not what the game is about.

 

And to counter the idea that 9 and 10 is naturally understood without in-game context and feedback, I ask - is the system additive (10 would be superior to 9), subtractive (9 would be superior to 10) or divisional (the superiority would be whether the numbers were being used as a numerator with the same denominator or denominator with the same numerator)?  You can't say that 10 is always going to be better than 9; the system dictates that - the same as a well designed adjective scale.  What the player needs is appropriate feedback about the well designed system - whether its numbers or adjectives.

 

Yes, math will be at the back end of the activities, but what I'm not convinced is that its necessary for the player to understand the math excepting if the players main interest is in min/maxing stats and equipment.  Which may be fun, but I'm not sure its actually the point of an RPG anymore so than debating hit statistics is for baseball.  And I gathered from Tim's comments that some people feel that if you're not calculating min-max and understanding the math, that RPGs are impenetrable.  Which if true - and I know people who've expressed that statement - then a well designed adjective system could address that problem (with, perhaps, adding in its own unique issues).

[kirottu]

yeah, the learning curves should be flattened even in highly complex crpgs.  there is no genuine advantage to be dumping the entirety o' a new rule system 'pon a game purchaser.  if you got levels in your game, to be demanding a player make the mostest important and numerous character development choices at level 1 is bass ackwards. is axiomatic that the point o' the game where we will know the least 'bout game mechanics is at the beginning.  life may be unfair, but gamess don't need be.  developers should make more significant character generation choices occur later in the game rather than early. sure, there is gonna be fundamental choices made during the intro portion o' a title which will have major impact 'pon future gameplay.  race o' your character is likely gonna be decided at the start o' the game, and such a choice will and should be meaningful.  is gonna be multiple fundamental choices made early.  fine.  is all the more reason to avoid demanding more than necessary o' the starting player.

In Bethesda Fallouts simplifying character creation also simplified the gameplay and especially roleplaying. I'm not saying it can't be done right. I just don't know if it has ever been done right.

 

on the other hand, we don't agree with tim's observation 'bout his numberless triangles.  is nothing inherent better 'bout labeling an attribute with a value o' "good" as 'posed to "7."  perhaps we can eventual reach "supecalifragilistic" or "10" ? the labels is not particular meaningful 'til Gromnir understands the mechanics o' the game.  hell, many games use both numbers and basic adjectives, no?  7 is good. 10 is supercalifrgilistic. so what? change the label don't magically confer genuine understanding o' how the attribute (or whatever) works with in the game mechanic framework.  maybe "good" is, in the mind o' the developers equivalent o'  three on a ten point scale?  what does "good" even mean w/o the numbers and mechanics? regardless, am agreeing with tim 'bout steep learning curves being a big mistake.  not gonna fix with "good" v. "swell" triangle points, but confronting the player with complex character development choices later in the game makes sense.

 

HA! Good Fun!

I think Cain kinda fell to his own trap on this one. "Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler than that." Or however he said it. I think people have instinctual grasp of numbers from 1 to 10. Probably because people generally have 10 fingers and toes. Numbers from 1 to 10 are as simple as it gets.

 

Example: Good is better than okay, but how much better? I have absolutely no idea, because that's not how those, erm, "thingies" work. With numbers that would be child's play. 7 is better than 5 by 2.

[Amentep]

Numbers from 1 to 10 are as simple as it gets.

 

Example: Good is better than okay, but how much better? I have absolutely no idea, because that's not how those, erm, "thingies" work. With numbers that would be child's play. 7 is better than 5 by 2.

5 is better than 7 in a subtractive system where lower numbers are better than higher. 4/5 is better than 4/7 in a divisive system where the number represents the denominator. 7 is only better than 5 in an additive or multiplicative system. Ergo the relative relationship between 5 and 7 with respect to which is better in a game is predicated on what system the numbers are going into rather than their numerical position within a counting set.

 

As a separate question, I don't understand (and I mean this literally, not as some kind of snark) the insistence in knowing how much better "good" is from "okay" in a video game? If the game is giving you appropriate feedback, why would you need to know more than "good" is better than "okay"?  How does knowing that improve the game or the ability to hone your character in the game -considering that unlike P&P you don't actually have to do the math yourself?

[Gromnir]

It's funny people are arguing about numbers now. If you look at an alternative example in say fighting games, there are no numbers, there are only buttons and moves with various combination. They don't show numbers and instead use visual information like life bar and character animation. The games are still broken down into numbers by the players that reverse engineer it and call it frame data and reverse engineer how much life each character has.

 

 

you have identified a fundamental difference 'tween fighting games and crpgs.  the effectiveness o' a crpg character is based on the character's stats and numbers and math as 'posed to the player's skill at hitting the correct button combination at the correct time.  is precise 'cause the player's manual dexterity is not what determines the efficacy o' the crpg character which is making awareness o' the numbers important.  

 

similar, am imagining how agiel would react if the numbers were removed from his military simulation games.  don't need specific ranges for fighter avionics when can simple use a range o' yucky to exceptional. flight ceiling and air speeds being discussed numerical no doubt confuses agiel and others who play such games.  would be better to remove the numbers in military sims and strategy games and replace with more psychological satisfying adjectives, no?  the most obvious and clear manner to express the capabilities o' military hardware is via numbers, particular in a computer game.  

 

in crpgs wherein the player's character efficacy is largely defined by computer math (whether you see the numbers or not) it is difficult to imagine an approach using adjectives which would make the game mechanics more clear than numbers. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Amentep]

similar, am imagining how agiel would react if the numbers were removed from his military simulation games.  don't need specific ranges for fighter avionics when can simple use a range o' yucky to exceptional. flight ceiling and air speeds being discussed numerical no doubt confuses agiel and others who play such games.  would be better to remove the numbers in military sims and strategy games and replace with more psychological satisfying adjectives, no?

Wouldn't this be a product of being more a simulation of something that exists in the real world rather than an abstraction designed for a non-simulation style fantasy game? I don't disagree that a simulation would have to provide information in the way the real-word thing being simulated would (ie a flight simulator or aerial combat simulator or tank simulator or racing simulator is going to need to provide the same kind of numerical data that the vehicle would provide during real-world operations).

[Gromnir]

 

similar, am imagining how agiel would react if the numbers were removed from his military simulation games.  don't need specific ranges for fighter avionics when can simple use a range o' yucky to exceptional. flight ceiling and air speeds being discussed numerical no doubt confuses agiel and others who play such games.  would be better to remove the numbers in military sims and strategy games and replace with more psychological satisfying adjectives, no?

Wouldn't this be a product of being more a simulation of something that exists in the real world rather than an abstraction designed for a non-simulation style fantasy game? I don't disagree that a simulation would have to provide information in the way the real-word thing being simulated would (ie a flight simulator or aerial combat simulator or tank simulator or racing simulator is going to need to provide the same kind of numerical data that the vehicle would provide during real-world operations).

 

am thinking you focus on the wrong detail. make it a large-scale space combat sim or giant robot battle game.  take numbers out of the upcoming battletech game, eh?  giant, bipedal weapon platforms don't exist (and never will exist 'cause they is stoopid,) but battletech is gonna have tonnages and ranges and weapons with capabilities expressed in clear numbers as 'posed to yucky and exceptional.  in the space warfare sim, would agiel and those like him be satisfied with carriers which had mediocre range, good armour and the capacity to deploy a fair number of fighters? don't know the specific capabilities o' your anti-fighter defensive weapons as expressed inn ranges n' such, but you know they is swell?  really?

 

is not the real-world aspect which makes the numbers important.  yeah, if you got real-world then there will be understandable desire to have the numbers be accurate and representative o' actual rw capabilities, but am thinking you are coming at this from the wrong direction.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Amentep]

I really think you're comparing apples and kumquats. You keep comparing a numerical system with random adjectives. If "mediocre range, good armour and the capacity to deploy a fair number of fighters" uses a scale where "mediocre" "good" and "fair" are defined, then either "swell" would also be defined on that scale, or it wouldn't be used.  A lot of games have used S, A, B, C, D, E, F ranks to define equipment.  Sure they show the numbers behind it, but the truth is (IMO) you don't really need the numbers to make a decision.  S is defined as better than A, so an S weapon should have better overall stats than an A.

 

Do you really need to know exact specific tonnages of your mech in Battletech? Or do you really only need to know the comparative weight compared to others mechs?  Heck you could use the lightest mech (say a Wasp which IIRC is at 20 tons) and use that as a base weight.  An Arbelest weighs 1.25 Wasps. An Orion is 3.75 times the weight of a Wasp.  If you establish that heavier = slower, doesn't the game player know all they need to know without calculating anything and without needing specific tonnages?  Its just a step further to abstract that to light, medium and heavy (which is already there in the description of the mech) and use no numbers at all.

[Gromnir]

 

Do you really need to know exact specific tonnages of your mech in Battletech? 

yeah, we do.  am betting agiel does too.  weapon, armour and ammo loadouts for a 100 ton mech can be reduced to half tonne increments.  and yeah, if missile or ppc has an effective range in metres as 'posed to good or great, that information would likely be vital to us. a small laser is gonna generate heat and given the number o' heat sinks available to us and how much heat we has current generated, am gonna be wanting to know, with certainty, if we can squeeze of one more shot w/o blowing our self to kingdom come.  such a situation can be illustrated with much greater clarity if we have numbers as 'posed to describe with adjectives.  in sims where fuel consumption is vital, knowing exact amount is likely something we wanna know as am gonna be trying to manage down to mathematical identifiable quantities... rather than trying to guess just how far we can get on yucky fuel reserves. 

 

am also uncertain why you keep reimagining cain disapproval o' numbers into the possible (but highly impractical) replacement o' numbers with an equal detailed spectrum o' adjectives.  is nevertheless difficult to imagine a better way to describe distances and weights and volumes than with numbers.  use adjectives to replace the numbers strikes us as awkward, clumsy and wasteful. am actual having a difficult time seeing how one would adequate describe the meaning o' adjectives for distances, weights and volumes w/o using numbers to illustrate.  

 

in any event, a space navy combat simulation might perform much like a real world naval combat simulation, save for all "ships" being able to move in 3d and the lack o' parabolic trajectories for projectile weapons.  all those considerations o' range and speed and armour whatever else the developers can fit into the game is gonna be no less expected in the space sim than the rw version.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Amentep]

Adjectives - well defined in a scale - are mostly an example because I've wondered myself whether or not providing numbers to the player encourages min-maxing because if the numbers are there some players will feel incentivized to use those numbers to create a "superior" build rather than creating a character to play and one of the ideas I wondered if it would work would be character creation via an adjective-like system that gave a well defined scale but hid the actual numbers from the player.  So naturally when I saw Cain's triangles - with and without the adjectives - I perked up.  

 

Obviously graphical representations could be done (distance on a mini-map for projectiles, bars that filled/depleted) as well, but gets closer to the numerical system, I guess.

 

One of the things I've gotten from this discussion is that RPGs perhaps fill a niche that bridges simulation and gameist(? is that the right term?) design.  ie the player doesn't need to know the exact damage Mario does when he shoots a fireball in Super Mario Bros (gameist), but they do need to know what the maximum distance of a particular type of missle is and the direction and windspeed acting on it when I fire it from my mech in Battletech (simulation).

[Ganrich]

You can hide the numbers, but in any popular game the min/maxers can still figure stuff out by digging through the game files. Min/maxing will happen regardless of this. Even if the math is so hidden that they can't figure it out then you will have people figuring out what kills the fastest, what heals the most, and what mitigates the most, or some combination of the two. All you are doing is putting an unnecessary road block in their way, and in time they will crash through it either way. It's better to not try to hamstring them.

 

Not to say I don't see some value in what Mr Cain is proposing. You can do the bad/ok/good/amazing thing with the triangle, but giving those min/maxers the ability to figure out numerical values to those labels easily within the game is probably for the better.

[Blodhemn]

Agreed. I've been min/maxing as of late. Instead of trying to remove that ability, why not, as Cain mentioned, use the fact that your character is as ugly as sin, against you. It just makes for funner replays with world reactivity. If the geometric defaults will provide for loads of variables, then I'm all for it. Like Arcanum, and Bloodlines to an extent, there's plenty to choose from anyway. But I'd be lying to say I wouldn't miss a more involved system to build on than just good/bad/yucky, unless of course it were so well implemented that it didn't much matter.

[CrumpetsForBreakfast]

 

It's funny people are arguing about numbers now. If you look at an alternative example in say fighting games, there are no numbers, there are only buttons and moves with various combination. They don't show numbers and instead use visual information like life bar and character animation. The games are still broken down into numbers by the players that reverse engineer it and call it frame data and reverse engineer how much life each character has.

 

 

you have identified a fundamental difference 'tween fighting games and crpgs.  the effectiveness o' a crpg character is based on the character's stats and numbers and math as 'posed to the player's skill at hitting the correct button combination at the correct time.  is precise 'cause the player's manual dexterity is not what determines the efficacy o' the crpg character which is making awareness o' the numbers important.  

 

similar, am imagining how agiel would react if the numbers were removed from his military simulation games.  don't need specific ranges for fighter avionics when can simple use a range o' yucky to exceptional. flight ceiling and air speeds being discussed numerical no doubt confuses agiel and others who play such games.  would be better to remove the numbers in military sims and strategy games and replace with more psychological satisfying adjectives, no?  the most obvious and clear manner to express the capabilities o' military hardware is via numbers, particular in a computer game.  

 

in crpgs wherein the player's character efficacy is largely defined by computer math (whether you see the numbers or not) it is difficult to imagine an approach using adjectives which would make the game mechanics more clear than numbers. 

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

It is the same for a fighting game, there is no amount of player reaction that saves you from making a bad move and not knowing the numbers either from feel or from examining the numbers. If you take arbitrary numbers that must be lower than 0 to prevent failure and one player has +10 and the other has -7 then obviously they will fail. This is the same as armor class vs attack bonus, or spell dc vs saving throw. A player that understands the values and picks the options (character selection in fighting game or feat selection in rpg) with better bonuses has the advantage.

 

Manual dexterity is similar to reaction speed in an online rpg like NWN or an MMO. Players that think quickly and react quickly do have an advantage but a 25 + d20 saving throw vs fire and 15 fire damage reduction avoids a DC 25 fireball because the rpg player knows the numbers just as a fighter player knows their numbers.

 

Obfuscating numbers with adjectives or visual representations doesn't make things easier to understand in any numerical simulation I know of. If you play a platformer and you know a jump never goes above so many pixels and an obstacle is 1 pixel higher than that range you know you can ignore it without slowing down. Difficulty is gained from hiding the numbers and forcing players to learn from experience, because they don't yet understand the parameters, not the other way round.

[Gizmo]

Tim's number 2 & 3 points would cause me to lose all respect for the game; and stop playing.

__

 

About hiding numbers... 'Eye of the Beholder' defaulted to hidden numbers by using bar-graphs.  It had a 'show numbers' option, but it looked ugly; as the UI was clearly designed for the graphs.  The problem with graphs is that percentages don't tell you the expected rate of decrease for a given attack.  You could be fighting a mob that is pecking away at the PC's hitpoints, when another monster shows up and chips away HALF in one hit.  Half the bar can mean anything depending on current max hitpoints; 50% of 20, or 50% 120.

 

Bar graphs (and dynamic icons) are fine, but never hide the numbers.  The best part about BG & IWD, was that it showed the rolls.   In Heart Of Fury, you could actuially see (and understand!) that the goblins had +29 to damage... and not simply that they could one-shot low level PCs.

Edited May 14, 2017 by Gizmo

[TimCain]

 

I think I need to clear up a misunderstanding. I never said in my talk that I disliked complex systems, just the presentation of such systems in the first few minutes of the game, i.e. character creation. I am all for complex rule systems, but I want to reduce the learning curve to understand them. If you already understand them, then you can jump right into them after character creation.

 

Hey Tim, I'm curious about the character creation idea with geometric figures you were talking about. What is your view on the point of locking physical and mental stats together, wich would leave one unable to create a purely physically or purely mentally focused character?

 

That was just one example way of grouping them. Instead of mental and physical stats, you could also group stats by power (strength, intelligence) or speed (agility, wits) or resistance (endurance, willpower). You could have squares instead of triangles if you want more stats in each group, and if you have more than two groupings, the groupings themselves can be arranged in a meaningful way (i.e., with three groupings, one group could be the most important and another the least, and bonuses assigned accordingly).

 

This geometric way of representing stats allows more ideas to be expressed than just numerical superiority.

 

p.s. Sorry for the delay in answering. I returned to work from a conference in Croatia, posted here, then left for another conference in Australia two days later.

[Quillon]

I probably understood it wrong so probably stupid questions:

 

 

How would you group 2 stats & get up to 3 groupings? A line is a shape?

 

And bonuses applied to shapes instead of individual stats? 

 

If you apply a bonus to GREAT-OK-OK triangle, would it become LEGENDARY-GOOD-GOOD triangle? 

 

Then you'd get at least 5 power levels of stats from LEGENDARY to GREAT-GOOD-OK-YUCKY.

 

Then we'd ask what's the difference between a GOOD and an OK stat? Similar to "What's the difference between 5 or 6 luck?"

 

To which I personally would say 6 is luckier and I don't mind the numbers.

 

 

Tho I wouldn't mind the shapes either if the game's gonna be GOOD...preferably GREAT or LEGENDARY.

 

 

[TimCain]

I wrote my response quickly, Quillon, so I will go into more detail.

 

First, sure, a line is a shape, and it can be up-down or side-side in orientation. But I would rather invent more stats and make triangles or squares.

 

When bonuses are applied to a shape, all of the stats get the bonus. So just like what you said, GREAT-OK-OK becomes LEGENDARY-GOOD-GOOD.

 

And here's why the shape and its values are better than numbers. In Fallout, stats went from 1 to 10. This makes you think that each number is an increment better or worse than the one after or before. But that wasn't true. A 3 Intelligence is much worse than a 4, compared with how bad a 4 was to a 5, because dumb dialog kicked in at 3. Similarly, a 6 Luck was better than a 5, but a 7 Luck was way better than a 6, because that was the threshold for certain random encounters to become possible. In other words, numbers imply a smooth gradient from low to high, where having 4 or 5 distinct values does not imply that they are linear in any way. They act like thresholds. You expect something new when your Luck goes from OK to Good,a nd from Good to Great, and not just your crit chances to go up a little for each one.

 

Here's another reason I like shapes better than numbers. Instead of giving you points to spend, and perhaps some additional constraints about not being able to lower too many stats to 1 (because maybe a character with stats of 10 10 1 1 1 1 1 is just not viable), shapes have their constraints built into their geometry. You cannot point all the vertices of a triangle up. And humans have evolved to handle visual comparisons more easily than numerical ones.

 

I'm not saying this idea of shape-based stats is ground-breaking or revolutionary. It's just a different way of thinking about the issue of character creation and stats. I am sure I would allow an interested player to "look under the hood", so to speak, to see the numbers corresponding to the stats. But many players won't care about that, and most shouldn't have to. It's all part of the "play how you want" philosophy.

[Gizmo]

And here's why the shape and its values are better than numbers. In Fallout, stats went from 1 to 10. This makes you think that each number is an increment better or worse than the one after or before. But that wasn't true. A 3 Intelligence is much worse than a 4, compared with how bad a 4 was to a 5, because dumb dialog kicked in at 3. Similarly, a 6 Luck was better than a 5, but a 7 Luck was way better than a 6, because that was the threshold for certain random encounters to become possible. In other words, numbers imply a smooth gradient from low to high, where having 4 or 5 distinct values does not imply that they are linear in any way. They act like thresholds. You expect something new when your Luck goes from OK to Good,a nd from Good to Great, and not just your crit chances to go up a little for each one.

 

This seems like it needn't even be shapes at all... At its core it would appear to simply be different states (of being).  The attributes could all be shown as circles; coins, metallic ones of tin, copper, bronze, silver, and gold. Where each implies a relative increase in value and quality.   

*Could be done with gemstones too.

 

But if done with special shapes... I kind of like the idea of —perhaps a dynamic shape that reflects a growing tendency, aptitude, or demeanor.   Like a Charisma stat whose shape is getting progressively sharper (abrasive & caustic) as they make decisions and interact with others.  (I'd like it if it did that when they walk away from a speaking NPC.    )

 

Perhaps such shapes could be included with the attribute numbers as a signal of the intensity between changes in numeric values. (Like the thresholds in Fallout, that you mentioned)

 

 

Edited May 18, 2017 by Gizmo

[kanisatha]

I wrote my response quickly, Quillon, so I will go into more detail.

 

First, sure, a line is a shape, and it can be up-down or side-side in orientation. But I would rather invent more stats and make triangles or squares.

 

When bonuses are applied to a shape, all of the stats get the bonus. So just like what you said, GREAT-OK-OK becomes LEGENDARY-GOOD-GOOD.

 

And here's why the shape and its values are better than numbers. In Fallout, stats went from 1 to 10. This makes you think that each number is an increment better or worse than the one after or before. But that wasn't true. A 3 Intelligence is much worse than a 4, compared with how bad a 4 was to a 5, because dumb dialog kicked in at 3. Similarly, a 6 Luck was better than a 5, but a 7 Luck was way better than a 6, because that was the threshold for certain random encounters to become possible. In other words, numbers imply a smooth gradient from low to high, where having 4 or 5 distinct values does not imply that they are linear in any way. They act like thresholds. You expect something new when your Luck goes from OK to Good,a nd from Good to Great, and not just your crit chances to go up a little for each one.

 

Here's another reason I like shapes better than numbers. Instead of giving you points to spend, and perhaps some additional constraints about not being able to lower too many stats to 1 (because maybe a character with stats of 10 10 1 1 1 1 1 is just not viable), shapes have their constraints built into their geometry. You cannot point all the vertices of a triangle up. And humans have evolved to handle visual comparisons more easily than numerical ones.

 

I'm not saying this idea of shape-based stats is ground-breaking or revolutionary. It's just a different way of thinking about the issue of character creation and stats. I am sure I would allow an interested player to "look under the hood", so to speak, to see the numbers corresponding to the stats. But many players won't care about that, and most shouldn't have to. It's all part of the "play how you want" philosophy.

Indeed, numbers naturally tend to imply a linear scale where you clearly want to be able to represent a nonlinear yet rank-ordered scale. Or, per my research methods background, an ordinal scale but not an interval or ratio scale. Very nice!

 

I wonder if my students would find it easier to understand this concept if I used shapes. Hmmm. I need to try this.

[Quillon]

And here's why the shape and its values are better than numbers. In Fallout, stats went from 1 to 10. This makes you think that each number is an increment better or worse than the one after or before. But that wasn't true. A 3 Intelligence is much worse than a 4, compared with how bad a 4 was to a 5, because dumb dialog kicked in at 3. Similarly, a 6 Luck was better than a 5, but a 7 Luck was way better than a 6, because that was the threshold for certain random encounters to become possible. In other words, numbers imply a smooth gradient from low to high, where having 4 or 5 distinct values does not imply that they are linear in any way. They act like thresholds. You expect something new when your Luck goes from OK to Good,a nd from Good to Great, and not just your crit chances to go up a little for each one.

I can see a clear threshold would have been better for dumb dialogue, tho in a perfect game you could have dumb dialogue on higher INT values, depending on who you are talking to. Maybe I've initiated dumb dialogue on my end by talking to a legendary game developer. But you could have solved the random encounters by giving them a chance to appear according to luck number. Instead of them starting to appear at 7 luck, you'd have 70% chance of a random encounter appearing & 60% chance at 6 luck etc. (Chances would scale to much lower values depending on the max chance an encounter appears tho, probably). Or luck could have effected the chances of random encounters being good or bad rather than their appearance chance. The problem might be how you tie the stats to content rather than stats themselves.

 

Here's another reason I like shapes better than numbers. Instead of giving you points to spend, and perhaps some additional constraints about not being able to lower too many stats to 1 (because maybe a character with stats of 10 10 1 1 1 1 1 is just not viable), shapes have their constraints built into their geometry. You cannot point all the vertices of a triangle up. And humans have evolved to handle visual comparisons more easily than numerical ones.

Yes, this is what I thought this would accomplish at first. Characters would always stay diverse; you can't assign many values to their lowest & you can't max all the stats if you grind long enough(with "Intense training" or simply with perk points ın FO4). Tho I don't know if its more easy to comprehend; sounds more complicated atm; thinking about the shapes and all the combinations the stats would be assigned to them. Maybe its cos I don't have the visual reference(a character builder with shapes) yet.