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

[Scion Altera]

Sunday, June 03, 2001, 10:07:54 PM, John Buehler wrote:

> Pope really aren't all that worried about how they compare with
> others on any axis. No, I don't believe that they're concerned with
> being more humble, holy or wise than other people.

Perhaps the Pope and the Dalai Lama aren't but I don't think those are
appropriate examples. You can bet the Cardinals under the Pope compete
with one another, especially now that the Pope is getting old. I'd bet
the Tibetan monks compete with each other to be the best monks, just
as tennis players compete to win tournaments and used car salesmen
compete to sell the most cars.

The Pope and the Dalai Lama aren't good examples because they are the
only ones to hold their positions. You put many people at the same
level, and they'll try to beat each other to the "top", whatever it
might be.

> A game that shows all information is geared for competition.  A game
> that obfuscates all internals permits both competition and
> cooperation, while catering to neither.  Quantification is the
> cannon fodder of competition.

I disagree, in part. Hiding internals is something that I've
experimented with quite a bit. I once wrote a skill system and kept
the internals secret to everyone: I was the only one who had any idea
how it worked. The flaw, of course, was that after two weeks or so
people started to gain some insight about the system by using the
information they had available to them. The game didn't change at all
now that nobody knew how it worked, and it didn't foster any
cooperation at all. In fact, people were very secretive about the
tidbits of information they learned about the system, because the
small group of people that learned to work the system quickly gained
an edge over the rest of the players.

By making the majority of the numbers available to the players, you
take away the "let's figure out the system" stage and move right along
to the "how do I use the system the most effectively" stage. The
benefit I see here is that everyone has the ability to work the
numbers for themselves, and can be on an even footing with the
experienced players in a much shorter time. Thus, the people who
aren't interested in the numbers and just want to play the game can do
so, and the ones who are interested in min/maxing are at liberty to do
so as well.

The point I'm trying to make is that people will min/max no matter
what you do, so making it accessible to everyone seems to be the best
way to reduce its impact.

-- Scion

"If you don't find it in the index, look very carefully through the
entire catalogue." -- Sears, Roebuck, and Co., Consumer's Guide, 1897

-- scion at apn.dhs.org -- keeler at teleport.com -- ICQ: 1824934 --


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