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

[Chanur Silvarian]

"Derek Licciardi" <kressilac at insightbb.com> wrote:
> From: Chanur Silvarian

> Players vote time and again with their dollars in not just video
> games but board games, card games, weight-loss feats, strength
> feats... that quantifying their world is very important.  I don't
> believe a game design that hides every number will succeed long
> term.  This doesn't mean the opposite either where a game should
> show the numbers because as I said above, without the unknown in
> the world there is nothing for the achievers to strive for/argue
> about.

What about the first-person shooters like HALO?  When you pick up a
weapon there you don't get a dissertation on its damage per second.
You don't see your health displayed as a number.

Do the numbers exist?  Of course they do, they are just not
important to actual play of the game.  I'm sure that there are
people out there that have created massive charts and graphs of the
damage per second of every weapon in HALO against every possible
opponent type, and I'm also sure that your average HALO player
doesn't care.  They know (or at least think they know) which weapons
are stronger and will choose them without a thesis on damage per
second.

I believe that the sheer amount of (useless) data that is thrown at
your average MMO player today actually drives away a lot of
potential players because they see it as a much more complicated
game than it really is.

Some data is necessary, for example I need to know how much fuel my
harvester needs to operate in SWG, I need to know that if there is a
higher percentage of the resource in the area that it will extract
more (but I don't need to know exactly how much more), and finally I
need to know how many credits per day are needed for me to maintain
it.  I don't need to know how many resources per hour it is going to
extract because even if my harvester is not the best quality that I
could get I'm not going to toss it out and buy a new one.

The achiever can satisfy themself with realizing that a higher
quality extractor pulls out more resources and can go buy the best
quality harverster they can find.  As I said, I'm not trying to
eliminate achievements, even if one were to try it would be a futile
endeavor.  I'm just saying that the majority of these numbers thrown
at the players are more than just unnecessary, they drive away a
great many potential customers.  A simpler interface with less
(useless) numbers in it will be far more appealing to those who have
not played an MMO before.  The viability of numberless games is
demonstrated time and time again in the first person shooters, yet
the MMO crowd seems to think that it is anathema.

Side note to the SWG example above; in the game the monetary and
fuel costs are not given and must be calculated out from trial/error
by the player.  The devs went to extremes to give (useless)
statistical information about efficiency yet left off key
information necessary for usability of the game.  I'm sure that it
exists on websites, and perhaps in the game manual, but why display
the useless in the game and the useful elsewhere?  It should be just
the opposite.
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