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

[Ben Chambers]

J C Lawrence Wrote

> Practice and history has shown this assumption to be not only be
> true, but to be reliably true.  Players have been known to derive
> stats, tables, curves, formulae, and all the rest, in amazing
> detail for game mechanics.  See the archives for prior discussion.

>  Remember: Almost every curve, not matter how complex, can be
>  approximated by a simple quadratic.

> If you don't provide them the players will compute them
> themselves, document them on web sites, and then use those numbers
> and formulae.  Empirical observation is a well honed art in the
> computational min-maxer.

I agree.  I have seen in Diablo and Diablo II sites where the speed
formulas have been determined.  But the catch here is that in order
to find the formulas you have to determine what numbers are used as
an input.  In Diablo I and II this is easy -- look at your amount of
% Increased Attack Speed, look at your Dexterity, then record how
long it takes you to swing.  But, what happens when you don't know
what the variables are, or what values you have?  It is easy to find
an equation where the coefficients are variables, but what about
when the coefficients AND the values of each input is variable?
That would more then double the number of variable terms, making the
solution to the equation much harder to determine.

Hiding everything hasn't *really* been done before, so it is
difficult to determine whether or not the formulas would be derived.
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