Too much numbers, bad for gameplay?

[Binky]

Or, if short: the identify.

The reason identify works so well in most rogue-likes is because of their magical/fantasy nature. A ‘glowing sword’ could be a sword of frost/fire/darkness/blessing whatever. However as Cataclysm is completely ‘realistic’ there won’t be much chance for that sort of thing, which will lead experienced players to just ‘know’ what things are.

As mochi said, various levels of abstraction depending on the players knowledge:
I’d propose to first just have an adjective (this gun has ‘accuracy= good’) for levels 0-3
Second to have * or bars ‘accuracy = ***’ up until levels 3-6
and third to have exact numbers from 6-10 (as the soft cap is probably going to be around ten I think, when it gets implemented)

This would mean that between levels 6-10 you’d be so experienced/invested in the skill that you’d want to squeeze the little bit extra out that number balancing gives you, whilst for the other levels it’d both be sufficient for your purposes and give you a sure sign of progress.

[Dominae]

[quote=“EditorRUS, post:40, topic:4570”]the very first ones he can’t even fire because he have not … switched off (?) the fuse.[/quote] Do you mean the “safety” switch? The switch that keeps it from firing so you don’t accidentally shoot the wrong thing? English translation issue I assume

The thing about identifying objects is that some people love it, while some hate it. The supporting side said it would add excitement to discover new items, help varying game-play instead of choosing the best statistical item in every games. The against side said it encourage metagaming, harder for new players while veterans would found out about it already, and involve having spoilers. NetHack is a prime example of this identify sub-game.

Personally, I’m leaning toward the first side, not a truly identify game like in NetHack but I’d like to see numbers get screened out or abstracted and slowly revealed as the character progress in relevant skills.

It could get partially done, sure. You’d just redact all the important information until the player makes a big discovery.

“A handgun” becomes “A pistol” when you stand next to it. If your character has decent firearms skill they’ll figure out brand and caliber (though since its stamped on all production guns it would be hard to argue that not instantly being revealed for everyone).

Stats, without decent skill, would be cluelessly blank. Fire it a few times, “Whoa, that has a kick to it”, game fills in recoil stat. Actually HIT something a couple times and notice it 1-shots a zombie at medium range … “Damn that is powerful” … damage stat fills in.

Yeah there is still the issue where seasoned players or those familiar with firearms would be able to know if A is better than B super fast. The only way I know of to stop that is either completely randomize weapon stats so a MP5 has varying stats each game (which would drive many people crazy if the gun didn’t perform as its real-world counterpart every game) or to strip all real-world names off the guns and THEN randomize it, because then you couldn’t get previous argument because who knows what a “Hetchin’Peckler 108” is SUPPOSED to perform like since its fictional.

Slightly off topic, but since you mentioned metagaming -> I pondered, what if character gained “familiarity” with a firearm as they used it, a specific firearm I mean. So on day 2 you find a Glock 19 and you don’t find another gun for a week. This whole time you’ve run every round you found through that 19, and even made some more by hand. Then you find what looks to be a more powerful handgun … do you swap out for the bigger model, or keep your old 19 because you’ve built up firing experience with it and it actually performs better for you now because you’re so handy with it. Sooner or later you’ve named your gun and wouldn’t put it down if you had to. lol

[Binky]

Yeah there is still the issue where seasoned players or those familiar with firearms would be able to know if A is better than B super fast. The only way I know of to stop that is either completely randomize weapon stats so a MP5 has varying stats each game (which would drive many people crazy if the gun didn’t perform as its real-world counterpart every game) or to strip all real-world names off the guns and THEN randomize it, because then you couldn’t get previous argument because who knows what a “Hetchin’Peckler 108” is SUPPOSED to perform like since its fictional.

I know that Ratchet is very much for making unique weapons for the game so that we don’t have constant arguments over stats of weapons and trying to make things too much like their real life counterpart. I think this is a really good idea, and then weapons could definitely be randomised per play. It’d make for very interesting gameplay, but I imagine it’d be hell to code and balance.

Your idea of firing/use allowing you to see more statistics is good in theory, but I think it’d be difficult to stop it being just a tedious discovery game (shoot tree to find out recoil, reload a few times to find out clip size etc.) I can’t remember what game it was that had that, but I remember it getting very annoying after your 10th game trying to identify daggers.

[DG123]

That does sound extremely irritating.

[infectedmochi]

Slightly off topic, but since you mentioned metagaming -> I pondered, what if character gained “familiarity” with a firearm as they used it, a specific firearm I mean. So on day 2 you find a Glock 19 and you don’t find another gun for a week. This whole time you’ve run every round you found through that 19, and even made some more by hand. Then you find what looks to be a more powerful handgun … do you swap out for the bigger model, or keep your old 19 because you’ve built up firing experience with it and it actually performs better for you now because you’re so handy with it. Sooner or later you’ve named your gun and wouldn’t put it down if you had to. lol

I think it’s a good idea, you gain familiarity for each weapon of every kinds. Once a threshold is reached, you gain a small boost to hit chance, this can apply to gun’s accuracy and melee weapon’s to-hit. If you stop using it for awhile eventually that weapon will lose it “familiar” flag.

I know that Ratchet is very much for making unique weapons for the game so that we don’t have constant arguments over stats of weapons and trying to make things too much like their real life counterpart. I think this is a really good idea, and then weapons could definitely be randomised per play. It’d make for very interesting gameplay, but I imagine it’d be hell to code and balance.

A little randomization wouldn’t hurt I think, like ±2 point in damage and/or ±1 point in accuracy for example. A pretty corner case, but I think it would be nice to have small stat randomization to prevent player from doing something like “3 glock 19 shot WILL kill a brute” or “1 grenade WILL kill a brute”. A small random shouldn’t be too hard to balance either.

Your idea of firing/use allowing you to see more statistics is good in theory, but I think it’d be difficult to stop it being just a tedious discovery game (shoot tree to find out recoil, reload a few times to find out clip size etc.) I can’t remember what game it was that had that, but I remember it getting very annoying after your 10th game trying to identify daggers.

Maybe not for melee weapon and bow/crossbow (weapon that has easy to make ammunition). But a gun has limited ammo, so “shooting a tree to find out recoil” isn’t without drawback, so unlike the “shoot arrow at ground to train archery” situation. You can do that, but you have to consider the option between shooting tree to figure out information faster (and waste precious ammo) or wait for actual zombies to shoot.

[Ferodaktyl]

i kinda like the idea of weapon becoming more familiar and gaining a small boost. (normally that would be an accuracy boost).
Also revealing more weapon stats with the skill progression is nice, but only for measurable stats, not for subjective ones. I mean, you can find out the factory dispersion for a gun, but accuracy is tied to the user usually :). Same for recoil, maybe, a strong recoil for me might be tolerable for another, but this could be “measured” against other guns recoil, so idk.

Anyway, lots of good ideas here, but i wonder how many are “code friendly” or even possible to implement

[Inadequate]

Using a familiar weapon could provide a morale boost, if nothing else.

Also seconding the idea that the discovery game sounds tedious as all get out.

[Binky]

[quote=“Binky, post:44, topic:4570”]I know that Ratchet is very much for making unique weapons for the game so that we don’t have constant arguments over stats of weapons and trying to make things too much like their real life counterpart. I think this is a really good idea, and then weapons could definitely be randomised per play. It’d make for very interesting gameplay, but I imagine it’d be hell to code and balance.

A little randomization wouldn’t hurt I think, like ±2 point in damage and/or ±1 point in accuracy for example. A pretty corner case, but I think it would be nice to have small stat randomization to prevent player from doing something like “3 glock 19 shot WILL kill a brute” or “1 grenade WILL kill a brute”. A small random shouldn’t be too hard to balance either.

Your idea of firing/use allowing you to see more statistics is good in theory, but I think it’d be difficult to stop it being just a tedious discovery game (shoot tree to find out recoil, reload a few times to find out clip size etc.) I can’t remember what game it was that had that, but I remember it getting very annoying after your 10th game trying to identify daggers.

Maybe not for melee weapon and bow/crossbow (weapon that has easy to make ammunition). But a gun has limited ammo, so “shooting a tree to find out recoil” isn’t without drawback, so unlike the “shoot arrow at ground to train archery” situation. You can do that, but you have to consider the option between shooting tree to figure out information faster (and waste precious ammo) or wait for actual zombies to shoot.[/quote]

Good point about small amounts of randomization, however I doubt many people would be for it as they’d find it annoying that sometimes things changed too much. Even a one or two point change might put one type above another (for instance a automatic pistol might do more damage than a revolver or something - not a great example but you know what I mean) and get people very annoyed on the realism front. I think it’d only work if you had non-realistically named guns to be honest.

Second point - No matter how well the game is balanced, you’re probably going to have ‘easy’ areas (small villages, farms etc) where you could identify your weapon in relative safety, and it’d be a ‘no-brainer’ to do so as you probably want to clear it anyway (when you’re at the identifying stage of the game) and you probably wouldn’t waste too much ammo in the current item balance of the game. Passive identification of stats sounds less tedious in my opinion, as you’d still get an adjective at any stat level.

Regardless, the randomisation one sounds like hell to code and balance (I certainly won’t be doing it :P) but the obfuscation tied to skills easier.

[kevin.granade]

A little randomization wouldn’t hurt I think, like ±2 point in damage and/or ±1 point in accuracy for example. A pretty corner case, but I think it would be nice to have small stat randomization to prevent player from doing something like “3 glock 19 shot WILL kill a brute” or “1 grenade WILL kill a brute”. A small random shouldn’t be too hard to balance either.

The problem with this is that roughly speaking, every Glock 19 IS the same, there’s no rationale for changing their stats around. Perhaps for hand-crafted weapons the player makes, but those aren’t really what we’re talking about.
Also technically speaking, dragging all the extra state around to track that kind of thing is fairly high overhead.

The real problem is there are a bunch of suggestions, but it’s light on identifying problems. It sounds like the problem is that there isn’t enough variation percieved between different item options, but instead of fixing it, the suggestion is to literally obfsucate the lack of variation.
I like the suggestion to track how often the player uses different weapons and track familiarity, giving the player a boost for often-used ones, I’ve just been on the fence whether it’s worth adding.

[Datanazush]

The problem with this is that roughly speaking, every Glock 19 IS the same, there’s no rationale for changing their stats around. Perhaps for hand-crafted weapons the player makes, but those aren’t really what we’re talking about.

I what if it was that you wouldn’t have variance between the same guns in the same game, but on generation of a world, or perhaps on death?

[infectedmochi]

Yes, what I meant was a little randomization for stats each time a new character or new world is generated (probably new world), the same gun in a game will still has identical stat.

[Ferodaktyl]

while some food stats randomization at the creation of the char would be great, i don’t think that gun randomization would be any good. In fact it may add to the general “i don’t care what i’m shooting with” feeling i was complaining about.

another thing i was thinking of, kinda off-topic : why not make books facilitate skill progression instead directly adding to skills?
(maybe this deserves it’s own thread)

[DG123]

[quote=“Ferodaktyl, post:53, topic:4570”]why not make books facilitate skill progression instead directly adding to skills?
(maybe this deserves it’s own thread)[/quote]

Wouldn’t that make certain skills way too hard to train up?

And also it wouldn’t make much sense for a book to help you train super fast if your skill was already very high. Unless you meant keep in a cap where books stop working like there is already.

[Waladil]

I’m staunchly against removing stats from a game.

Firstly: Removing stats requires all weapons to have constantly-updated descriptions relative to all other weapons. You’re suggesting a 1-5 star system for the stats? Say the most damaging round right now is the .700 Nitro. (I don’t know if it is or not but that’s the first example that comes to mind.) So it’s rated five stars. And then later someone adds a weapon that does even more damage. Now what do you rate this new weapon? Six stars on a 1-5 system? Or do you make it the new Five Star, and then go back and update EVERY OTHER weapon to reflect it’s new number of stars. I’ve seen too many games that attempt that method of denoting stats and what usually happens is that the system gets out of whack, things get forgotten, and the apparent stats of weapons gets knocked out of whack with the real stats. So you might compare two weapons and weapon A shows four stars and weapon B shows three… yet weapon B actually does more damage. Showing the absolute values is much simpler to maintain.

Secondly: Removing or obfuscating stats makes decisions harder, not easier. I like shotguns, and the two pump-action shotguns currently are the Remington 870 and the Mossburg 500. The first time a character of mine had both, I unloaded them and compared them side-by-side so I could make a rational decision about which to use. One had better recoil, larger clip capacity, while the other had better damage and dispersion, so my decision was centered around whether I wanted to maximize my single shots or be able to rattle off multiple. The OP mentioned bananas, and how they’ve apparently got an overpowered nutrition rating (I wasn’t aware of this, actually). If the problem is that finding maximal strategies is too easy, the answer is NOT to remove stats, but to balance the overpowered items. Hiding the visible stat of banana nutrition wont make it any less overpowered, and anyone who knows how good they are will still overuse them. The two shotguns I mentioned are well balanced against each other, and my decision of which shotgun to use comes down to which I find and personal taste. There’s no “right” answer, since they both have their own niche.

Now, I’m okay with making stats more “realistic,” but doing that doesn’t require obfuscating or fuzzy’ing them.

[infectedmochi]

I’ll put a quick reply, for point 1 it’s not really a matter as the developers (Kevin?) has stated that there will be a soft cap on how much damage a weapon will do (the most powerful one) to prevent exactly that - everyone added their weapons that have overpowered stats without considering what the rest of the weapons already in-game can do.
Point 2: being a precise number kinda defeat the point of being realistic, no one advertise that their gun has 12 points of damage while only 1 point of recoil. Also, visualize the gun stat actually make them easier to compare, bar with colors is easier to remember than some number scale the game devised to measure gun’s effectiveness. Balance the overpowered guns is obvious, that’s not really relevant to the visualize. Your two shotguns in the example once they get the stat visualized will still be the same shotguns, and you can compare them just like before.

The stats are still there, it’s just that now they are visualized into bar, slightly less precise than numbers true, but easier to read and compare, and more realistic.

[Ferodaktyl]

looks like infectedmochi got the gist of my post exactly right.
I can only add that it’s the ammo that delivers the damage, not the gun in itself. And even for ammo it can’t be exactly measured, but approximated by penetration and kinetic energy. The game must use the damage model, because it would be too much to ask for realistic impact simulation, but feeding us values … this could be avoided.

Kevin said that a familiarity thing can be implemented. What if it would also be used for food, but with a negative effect instead of a positive one? Like when i get sick of icecream after gorging myself with it 3 days in a row? Oh, and the banana was another general example, don’t start looking for bananas in every bush now

[Dominae]

[quote=“Ferodaktyl, post:57, topic:4570”]looks like infectedmochi got the gist of my post exactly right.
I can only add that it’s the ammo that delivers the damage, not the gun in itself. And even for ammo it can’t be exactly measured, but approximated by penetration and kinetic energy. The game must use the damage model, because it would be too much to ask for realistic impact simulation, but feeding us values … this could be avoided.[/quote]

Firearms in game also have small damage numbers that get added (or subtracted) from the ammo damage, if I remember correctly.

Kevin said that a familiarity thing can be implemented. What if it would also be used for food, but with a negative effect instead of a positive one? Like when i get sick of icecream after gorging myself with it 3 days in a row? Oh, and the banana was another general example, don't start looking for bananas in every bush now :)

I think this was discussed in part in a food-related thread. I think the suggestion got lost amongst the throng of people demanding a complex food-pyramid system where you had to eat “balanced meals” with a caloric intake & burning mechanic, or something.

Your example is tragically flawed through … who gets sick of ice cream?

[ribblle]

I’m all for this. It makes no sense that your average survivor can identify every gun in the world.

On the more general subject of too many numbers; a creatures health bar shouldn’t be visible. Yes, i should see their injuries, but it is much more immersive if the player adopts a “why won’t you DIE?” attitude to the stronger critters when they just keep on stepping.

[Adragis029]

In terms of Cataclysm, I think identifying weapons and stuff is kinda unnecessary and actually takes away from the game. While it’s not realistic to assume all survivors immediately look at a Glock 22 and say ‘this one takes .45 rounds and it’s a popular polymer handgun favoured by the civilian market’, it makes everything smoother. People who prefer the stats et cetera can look at the stats, and those who prefer RP can say 'the character probably wouldn’t pick it up ‘cause they prefer the M1911’.
If your ability to discern things was impaired, it doesn’t benefit the latter (who are still going by the in-character reactions of their character) but it negatively impacts the former (who can’t tell which guns are better than which, etc.).

[ribblle]

You could make it optional. Checking a catalogue to compare guns (or trying them out for a certain amount of turns, Brogue style) would be great for roleplay though.