The new *10 encumbrance system can be a bit misleading. Most importantly, the part where it is rounded down to nearest 10.
How about dividing all displayed numbers by 10? Internal values would remain the same, but the players would see the divided values. The fractions could also have a different color, to make it more obvious that they don’t do anything yet.
I’d say rounding numbers to integers is a bit more intuitive than dropping the last digit.
This would require adding 2 symbols to the display (the dots) and so widening the display, but current display size does not always work correctly either.
When you go above 99 on a bodypart, the symbols push temperature info to the right and even to the next line. This gets even worse when the temperature is also above 99.
It is not very important or objectively wrong, but it could be confusing to people who don’t track the commit history and forum posts.
Wouldn’t it be better if a player only knew the effects? Like, maybe every step from 0-10-20-30-… attached to a name (e.g. no encumbrance, light encumbrance, medium encumbrance, significant encumbrance and heavy encumbrance for all values over 4.
Besides this, the real values could be shown, rather than the effective (rounded) so that it will be more informative.
Figuring out how encumbered you are from the effects would only serve to confuse new players and make everyone else waste time on trivial math.
Hidden variables only make sense when you can’t use free in-game methods to figure them out (“free” as in “kicking a rock to figure out if it’s a rock or a loadstone” rather than “using an identify scroll”).
Ok, so why not show the real value and just let the player figure that the effective value is the rounded one?
The way i see it, its better to know the real encumbrance cause by what you are wearing rather than the rounded version of it.
For a cost of at most 3 extra symbols, the display could be made more intuitive.
Current:
34 + 10 = 44
Divided:
3.4 + 1 = 4.4
There’s already quite a bit of confusion on the forums regarding the *10 change. I’m sure a great deal of new players will get wrong ideas about encumbrance, thinking that 9 is worse than 0, trying to bring the “very bulky” item tag into it and similar attempts at explanation. Layering system is already quite complex and causes a lot of confusion, no need to burden it with yet another confusing thing, especially when the fix is as simple as better display.
There is nothing in the game that requires the displayed values to correspond 1-1 with internal values.
I think you’re right for the system as it is now, but I also think we can take this opportunity to simplify the system, we probably don’t need the layering thing anymore since the “0 enc + fitted” clothes can simply become some baseline low encumbrance (1-3 or so?), and the system will return to being simple addition with thresholds for various penalties.
At that point I’m not sure we want to have encumbrance shown as a decimal, since what I see happening very soon is various penalties accumulating based on that raw score, so the distinction between the tens and ones digits will disappear.
I based my assumptions on the rounding. If it is to disappear, then yeah - raw score makes more sense.
As for layering: are those long-term plans or something about to happen soon?
What will happen to layer tags? Will wearing 2 trenchcoats be just as encumbering as wearing a proper set of clothing with same sum of encumbrance?
Are there plans to remove the limit of 2 items of same ID being worn? It is rather artificial that you can’t wear 3 bindles, but can wear 2 bindles, 2 briefcases and 2 shopping bags just fine.
It’s happening soon if at all, encumbrance values have gotten shaken up, and might as well have them shaken up a bit more if we need to settle them down.
If your going through some of that UI work. Please please, show the full EP value per slot on the layering or another screen.
I actually like the layering screen but I personally think it should be static.
So show the layers so the player knows what would be most likely to get hit and what is covering each area (as that screen is nice), but don’t allow the movement of the items around.