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

[John Buehler]

Marian Griffith writes:

> If you want to be that realistic then things are a *lot* more
> fuzzy than that. Sharpness, for one, only matters when you are up
> against leather armour, and even then only to a degree. [...]

> Problem is that the traditional way of handling combat is flawed
> in this respect. Real combat is not about trading blows until your
> hit points were exhausted. Frequently the first blow that fully
> connected was lethal, or at least disabling. [...]

> For the most part, fighting with those heavy long swords was slow,
> but it is difficult to study it properly as it is virtually
> impossible to avoid serious injuries once you start using swords
> that are properly weighted.  No amount of padding can prevent you
> from breaking an arm if you hit it with a 20 pound iron bar.

> I also have no idea how to capture this in a game, only that to do
> it properly it should focus on deflection and evasion rather than
> on meeting blows head on. Once a blow hits the fight is
> over. [...]

I'll try to stay at least roughly related to the topic of numbers
here, but my solution to this particular problem is to go with
non-lethal combat that is more in the spirit of progressive ablation
of some resource in opposing fighters: martial arts with a variety
of wooden weapons or bodily attacks.  And the specifics of the
martial artistry are structured such that combat can slowly disable
an opponent, and that there can be many counters to each attack.
This offers the potential for a "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"
style of combat, but with fewer small, quick motions that don't
really translate to the Tiny Screen.

This is in response to the specific point that Marian is talking
about, but more broadly fits into the whole 'numbers discussion'.
The point that relates back to that discussion is that if combat, or
any other kind of entertainment, is predicated on the visual
spectacle and not on the outcome, then numbers become less
interesting.  I believe that non-lethal martial artistry combat
which is designed to be visually entertaining, combined with the
elimination of 'player laboring to advance character abilities',
holds the potential to attract players who aren't particularly
interested in the numbers.

When a game predicates its entertainment on achievement, players
focus on achievement.  Players who focus on achievement want to be
efficient about that achievement in order to get the maximum
entertainment in the shortest time.  Efficiency involves analysis of
the game.  Analysis requires data, and the numbers are the data that
the players need and want.  So games that predicate their
entertainment on achievement invite players to want to know the
numbers.

Note that when I say 'achievement', I really mean any game that
stages the disclosure of content via hurdles that the players must
negotiate.  If socialization is the focus of the game entertainment,
but in order to get the Form Social Group ability (permits you to
talk to multiple people at once) you have to convince multiple
individuals to vote for you, then numbers and other game internals
are valued where they aid in accomplishing that task.

In short, where the game presents a barrier to entertainment,
players will attempt to overcome it by the most efficient means
possible.

My comments about martial artistry, etc, were to suggest that if you
were to give a fully-capable character to a newbie player and there
were no barriers to them pursuing scads of different forms of
content right off the bat, perhaps they wouldn't care about the
numbers because there are few or no barriers to accessing new
content.  It seems that the worst approach is to hand out new
entertainment experiences with an eyedropper, where the hurdles are
very much non-trivial.

So my solution is to give players more content than they can handle,
and eliminate large game barriers to accessing that entertainment.
SMALL barriers are reasonable, so long as the barrier itself holds
the potential for entertainment.  Achievement-focused entertainment
can then be constructed for those players who seek such
entertainment by placing more barriers into the entertainment
source.  If you permit players themselves to present those barriers,
you have achievement entertainment by carefully crafting your PvP
entertainment.

> If you decide to present the numbers, then present the numbers
> that the player needs. If you withold them, then do so
> completely. In the end it is a choice on the part of the game
> designer to help shape the type of game and gameplay.

In a venue with a single 'game' to it, I would agree with this.
What is slowly happening in the industry is an attempt at providing
multiple 'games'.  What I call multiple 'forms of entertainment'.
Within a form of entertainment within a venue, either numbers are
involved or they're not.  That's because the numbers need to be
there if access to entertainment is predicated on achievement
(following the whole 'achievement, efficiency, analysis, numbers'
chain), while the numbers shouldn't be there if access is not
opposed by the game.

Given what I said about PvP above, those who engage in PvP are going
to want the numbers where the numbers oppose their ability to make
achievements on the PvP front.  Each win in PvP is entertaining, and
numbers that aid in winning are desireable.  Note that PvP here does
not just mean combat.  It can mean any competitive form of
entertainment.  Political, economic, social, military, etc.

JB
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