[MUD-Dev] Re: DGN: Why give the players all the numbers?

[Lars Duening]

On Thursday, September 11, 2003, at 03:40 PM, Chanur Silvarian wrote:

> I know that I'm a radical in thinking it, but I believe that
> complete removal of all numbers (except how much item X costs)
> would go a long way to improving immersion in anything calling
> itself an RPG and would stop a lot of the customer complaints
> about how they can't optimize themself to be as good or better
> than someone else.

This topic showed up in text mud development before, and opinions
differed widely and wildly. Practical experience showed that players
are smart enough to assign numbers to the various measurable items
and skills themselves and then circulate the lists.

And there is also the point of view that in real life you can tell
whether something is abysmal/bad/average/ok/good/excellent - which
immediately gives you a scale from 1 through 6, just using words
instead of numbers.

I think that hiding the numbers (either completely or by giving them
names) can improve immersion only indirectly in that it's a way for
the game designers to tell the players that this game is not
targeted at MinMaxers. Of course, if the players steadfastly ignore
the hint or if the rest of the game content (I start to dislike this
word) doesn't follow suit, hiding the numbers won't help you either.

--
Lars Duening; lars at bearnip.com
GPG Key: http://www.bearnip.com/lars/lars-duening.gpgkey
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