So, from what i gather everyone in this world has a cybernetic mind that lets them know exactly how much pin they’re in, as a presice number, how quenching or nutrisious an item is, and an exact chance of how well they might install a cybernetic. So, what if instead of it saying Pain: 42, it would say Pain:Moderate , or something like that. I find it weird that everyone knows exact numbers. Thoughts?
If I had to rate my pain on a scale of 1 to 100 I’d probably score at least within 5 points
Eh.
It works doesn’t it?
Cataclysm DDA: It doesn’t have to make sense, because bear!
We actually had a system like that in Whales’ old version IIRC. I think he took it out close to his last build because sometimes you need to gauge how much pain you’re in, exactly, and “moderate” doesn’t cut it.
The nurse in the hospital asks you to describe your pain on a scale of 1-10, not none to groin-stabbingly-excruciating (though just seeing that line actually might make descriptive pain indicators worthwhile).
How the hell would you not know exactly how much pain you’re in, anyway? The entire concept of pain is subjective. You are the only one who can know how much pain you’re in, so a number is appropriate since nobody can say, “You’re lying, that number is way off!”
I don’t mean just pain, i mean things like the exact amount of quenching-ness water has, or the exact damage you are doing. Also, irl, pretty sure you don’t just say My pain is 123!, you say I have severe pain. Anyway, most of the painkillers say “Used for low-to medium pain.” So i don’t think it would be much of a problem. I don’t really know, just throwing out ideas 
It’s a roguelike, when you die you should know that it was your fault RNG’s bad day. You should never say that you died because you didn’t know how much something does.
An easy example of this done wrong:
When I play Heroes of M&M V, it shows me that there’s for example a ‘group’ of imps, and i never know how much it is because for me a ‘group’ is anything between 3-infinity. I start fighting them and it turns out I attacked a horde counted in thousands with four gryphs. This is bad.
The same thing would happen in cataclysm. For some ‘moderate’ pain is nothing special, and for others ‘low’ pain is unbearable. For some ‘high’ success rate is 99,9% and for others ‘low’ success rate is 0,1%
My opinion: Leave as is.
If you make pain use adjectives, you can still closely track the actual amount of pain by seeing how many percentage points of speed you lose on the character sheet. All you’re doing is making it more annoying to do so.
Mind everyone that his idea has already been put in.
Just it was put in under the body health thing-y.
So instead of saying that your arm has 51 HP left, is says your arm has ||\ HP left. (Done in 0.4 or 0.5 IRRC)
So something similar could be implemented with pain, and to get exact numbers just bunch the Self-Aware trait, which gives you number readings for body HP.
I like your idea, though I feel the thread title is sorta misleading and could be a little more straightforward.
But yeah, having an exact pain value doesn’t make much sense. You can’t have conversations like this in real life:
“Ooh, that’s a nasty cut.”
“Yeah, I’m in like, 36 pain right now, man.”
“Eh, I reached 48 pain once.”
It’s more like this:
“Ooh, that’s a nasty cut.”
“Yeah, it hurts a FRIGGIN’ LOT, man!”
“Eh, I’ve had worse.”
And there you are wrong, because nurses in hospitals actually do ask you to describe your pain on a scale of 1-10.
[quote=“Nighthawk, post:10, topic:1901”]But yeah, having an exact pain value doesn’t make much sense. You can’t have conversations like this in real life:
“Ooh, that’s a nasty cut.”
“Yeah, I’m in like, 36 pain right now, man.”
“Eh, I reached 48 pain once.”
It’s more like this:
“Ooh, that’s a nasty cut.”
“Yeah, it hurts a FRIGGIN’ LOT, man!”
“Eh, I’ve had worse.”[/quote]
There’s a significant difference between trying to communicate with other people, and trying to accurately guess your own pain, the latter is always a great deal more accurate and doesn’t need to rely on vague comparisons using a handful of words.
IMO, the game displaying personally subjective information should always be accurate.
Though, mentioned earlier, I would really like it if you had some stuff to learn about items rather than just knowing everything about them upon acquisition, making everything (nutrition, quenching, enjoyment, pain, speed, morale, damage, armor [/exaggeration]) more vague would be another dramatic increase in the game’s learning curve, while having almost no effect on long time players that just know that stuff already.
oooh, someone would like a teddybear from the PainFairy.
I don’t know if you’re serious, but intentionally obfuscating invariable values for the explicit purpose of encouraging rote memorization would be absolutely atrocious.
I don’t know if you’re serious, but intentionally obfuscating invariable values for the explicit purpose of encouraging rote memorization would be absolutely atrocious.[/quote]
Not really serious, was in response to the idea of obfuscating how nutritious food and drinks are, with a universal application brought to the logical (ludicrous) extreme.
My real suggestion is along the lines of having some items with variable attributes or conditions, or items not immediately identifiable such as a container with no label, or pill bottles, etc. Also, little things that become apparent when trying to use something, of course if you’re skilled enough you’d notice it immediately, I’d prefer to see problems be minor, and if they occur by degradation a monthly/yearly basis would probably be best.
For example you might not know exactly how sharp your katana is until you try it on something, it may be slightly rusty, or the handle might be loose. If you find a gun maybe it has a misalignment somewhere, causing it to throw your aim off or jam more often.
The idea being that a person with no skill at using weapons or guns wouldn’t immediately notice things that impact their effectiveness, though I understand most people dislike hidden modifiers they would become readily apparent at higher skill levels, or after using the item for a little while.
This can’t be added.
Pain and other things are subjective, they are different from one person to the next.
If you stabbed an office drone in the gut he would probably say he was in the worst pain of his life, whereas an army veteran would call it a high-moderate amount.
Same thing with water, if you gave a dehydrated man a cup of water he would call it the most quenching thing in the world. Whereas if you gave a kid a cup of water when he was thirsty he would call it pretty crap.
So nobody would ever be able to understand because everyone has different ideas of moderate and low and Ectera.
I don’t know if you’re serious, but intentionally obfuscating invariable values for the explicit purpose of encouraging rote memorization would be absolutely atrocious.[/quote]
Many many games do this. It has nothing to do with encouraging rote memorisation - most games that use opaque values never provide the player with a way of uncovering them definitively, short of looking at the code. The point is to make players explore and discover things within the game and form their own conclusions about things (which may or may not be erroneous) rather than just metagaming their way to victory.
I always hated that, like when my Appendix burst, they asked for a scale of 1 - 10, I had no idea what their idea of 10 was…
So I said 8 and they say, “Okay” as if 8 wasn’t that bad…
So I was thinking… ‘What the Hell’
[quote=“Dzlan, post:18, topic:1901”]I always hated that, like when my Appendix burst, they asked for a scale of 1 - 10, I had no idea what their idea of 10 was…
So I said 8 and they say, “Okay” as if 8 wasn’t that bad…
So I was thinking… ‘What the Hell’[/quote]
You weren’t even sure of your own answer, so you shouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t believe you. But you shouldn’t think of the player as a nurse asking about pain. Think of the player as the homunculus inside the character’s head. You are your character, so even if you don’t know what a 10 is to anyone else, you still know what it means to yourself, and thus to your character.