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

[Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com]

From: Chanur Silvarian [mailto:chanur at guildsite.com]

> The major restricting factor to complete removal of numbers from
> these games is simple resistance to change on the part of everyone
> involved; devs, publishers, players, et al.  Nobody even considers
> removing the numbers altogether because of a prevailing "everyone
> else has them, we can't just remove them" mentality.

> 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.

Except that your idea isn't at all radical, and that all attempts at
hiding these things have in fact failed as player will simply apply
statistical methods to work out what going on under the covers. Has
it occurred to you that a great number of people actually enjoy
knowing these numbers allowing them to tweak their characters as
they see fit?

If you want this to work then you'd want a game without any levels
at all, so there aren't any numbers. Obfuscation won't fool anyone
for a moment.  Anyway, the reason players get unhappy isn't because
they know the numbers, its normally because there is an imbalance,
and burying ones head doesn't make it go away. You do players a
disservice if you think they need a number in front of them to spot
a problem.

Dan
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