Hiding the Numbers (was Re: [MUD-Dev] Maintaining fiction.)

[Travis Nixon]

From: "Alex Kay" <yak2 at iprimus.com.au>

> It's interesting. I remember when I started playing EQ and there was
> alot of talk on whineplay to show all the numbers. I was in favour
> of this at the time, finding some of the vagueness annoying, and
> falling into the trap of playing the stats game.

> After a year or so I tried AC and found the stats overwhelming, it
> took the numbers game to the extreme. I quickly found I didn't like
> this much at all and had a new appreciation for Verant's stance on
> not showing the numbers (which has lately been relaxed it seems,
> though I 'quit' a few months back).

> Now, I would welcome a game that hid all that. I have little doubt
> that this would reduce/eliminate the power gamers and l33t dudes and
> encourage roleplay.

I'm on the side of this debate that believes that developers should
not only show the numbers, but that they should publish their
mechanics as well.

EQ was sort of an odd case, though, as it did a little of both.  It
showed the numbers and it also hid them.  In many instances, it hid a
number and then would show the same number later on, only to put it
back in hiding.  It always frustrated me that when I became better at
baking I knew exactly what level my skill was at, but at other times I
didn't have any way to check and see what the number was (that I had
already seen).  Unless, of course, I had a notepad handy and wrote
down every skill increase.

Which brings up an interesting thought.  Any game that requires the
player to keep a notepad handy has some inherent flaws.  For example,
I am playing Deus Ex right now, and there are little numbered keypads
all over the place that require codes to open a door.  Often these
codes are found on datapads that are left lying around (usually with a
note saying to erase the message as soon as it has been read and
memorized).  When you read one of these datapads, the text gets stored
to a sort of journal that you can scan back through to read the code.

Hmm...ok, I'm going to have to backtrack a bit now, because I was just
about to say something that I just went into the game and checked on,
and in fact I was wrong.  Oops.  (sheepish grin)

Anyway, I was going to say that although the game so handily added all
these datapads to your journal, once you tried to use the keypad there
was no way to actually look at the journal while the keypad was up.
Turns out that you can in fact open up the history while the keypad is
up on the screen, and I've been playing the game for weeks now without
knowing that.  In my own defense, when the keypad comes up on the
screen, the rest of the screen darkens, which for some reason led me
to believe that I couldn't do anything except enter the code.  But my
point still remains, because you can't have your journal open while
you're entering the code.

The whole point of this monstrous tangent is that what I ended up
doing was keeping a notepad next to my mouse, and writing down all the
codes and what they went to.

And that tangent is marginally related to the original idea which is
this: If you're going to hide the numbers, hide them.  If you're going
to show them, show them.  Don't do both, because you just piss people
off when they can't look at numbers that you've already shown them
because you're "trying to keep fiction, and hide the numbers because
seeing the numbers somehow reduces immersiveness" even though you've
already shown the same numbers, or shown other numbers that obviously
lead to being able to determine "hidden" numbers.  (For example, in EQ
you can determine approximately how many hitpoints a monster has by
watching how much damage it takes to kill.)

And most importantly, if you're going to hide the numbers, for god's
sake, never, ever, under any circumstances, send them to the client!
If you're going to represent health by a bar, then all the client
needs to know is what percentage of the bar is full.  The client does
not for any reason need to know what the maximum and current health
is, so it can figure out how full the bar should be.  All you
accomplish by giving the client access to information you're trying to
hide is insuring that hackers will have access to a lot more
information than those who play fair.

Of course, I'd prefer if you just didn't hide the numbers.  Then you
don't have any of those problems.  And you have the added benefit of
thousands of people, some of whom are sure to be smarter than you are,
pounding on your systems and finding imbalances that you can then
(hopefully) fix. :) Surely they'll exploit those advantages when they
find them, but if your systems are published, they'll find them early.
In fact, they'll very likely find most of the problems during testing,
as opposed to 3 years down the road, when they've figured out how your
systems work anyway.


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