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

[Vincent Archer]

According to Kwon Ekstrom:

> I'm somewhere in the middle, coming from a text mud background it
> does change the circumstances a little.  IMHO the important thing is
> that the player can understand the values.  Several muds have used
> short phrases to represent number values, which is an approach that
> seems to work well.

The point is not about numbers or similar things. The point is about
perception. Despite the progress, and the rise of the 3D rich
graphical environments, the perception we have of the game world is
very sense poor. Even the best 3D engines scheduled for the upcoming
games (SWG notably) do not convey all the information you get from
normal, everyday vision, let alone compensate for all the other cues
(smell, kinesthesic) from the environment.

Thus, we do need a way to convey feedback to the player. And we need a
way that is fast and reliable. Mostly reliable: the player has nothing
but that cue to tell him how he's doing.

That's where numbers *are* useful. They're reliable, and what's more,
they can be read *fast*. The following two sentences provide the same
feedback:

  - You hit for 10 damage.

or

  - You slash, scoring a moderately deep cut.

The experienced player will quickly integrate "10", and see he's doing
average damage. The same player will have to actually *read* the full
sentence to see how he is doing (this slows down combat). And it's
even worse if, for the sake of "variety", you change the way the
damage is phrased for the same result.

--
Vincent Archer                                         Email: archer at nevrax.com

Nevrax France.                              Off on the yellow brick road we go!
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