Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Sunday]

Yeah, the only reason the numbers should be available (IMO) is for bugfixing, and the knock to gameplay isn't worth the slightly greater ease of bugfixing.

For actual gameplay, it doesn't really make sense. Can you, in real life, rate your musical ability on a scale from 1-1000? IQ is the only "stat" that we have that we have numbers for, and it's extremely inaccurate (Richard Feynman had an IQ of 120, but he was one of the smartest people of the 20th century by many standards). One might argue that strength could be measured by how much one can lift. . .but that only measures the strength of certain muscles, and is dependent on a whole variety of other factors (how well one slept last night, what one has been eating, etc.).

As stats are now, I can glance at the screen and get a very good feel for where a dwarf falls - whether it's a weak dwarf, a strong dwarf, or an amazingly strong dwarf. For gameplay, there's no reason for more than that. Indeed, adding numbers would be less intuitive - I'd have to know the dwarven average to figure out whether a given dwarf is strong or weak.

[NW_Kohaku]

Of course, this is an open alpha, and will be for the forseeable future, and as such, we are supposed to all be bughunting, and it would make sense if we were given the tools to do such.

Beyond that, we could get by without numbers if we were still given the relevant information.  We don't need exact experience point values, for example, to really understand how skilled a dwarf is, even if the 15 stated ranks require a trip to the wiki to understand whether "accomplished" is better than "expert", and THEN there are 5 unlisted skill ranks. 

For stats, however, there really is no useful information, as they are all relative to caste standards, which is very confusing when you have custom castes that may less strong or more agile than other castes.  They don't even tell you when something is rusting, when something has gone up, when something is nearing the maximum allowable for that creature because of the fact that there is a cap on stats that is set at twice what the value of the stat the creature was born with, which may very well not correlate with a "very high" value in text, leading to fruitlessly grinding to try to improve a stat that has hit its cap, and there is essentially no way for you to understand, without explicit experimentation, exactly what tasks correlate to gains in what stats, anyway.

You essentially need to hack the game just to understand what the heck you are doing in the first place, which is my original complaint.  The problem isn't that I need a perfect understanding that can only come from explicit numerics, it's that the "descriptive text" doesn't describe anything relevant.

[zwei]

...

Basically, current descriptions can not tell you if dwarf is more agile than goblin.

[NW_Kohaku]

...

Basically, current descriptions can not tell you if dwarf is more agile than goblin.

Actually, even knowning the agility doesn't even tell you which one is faster.  Strength is coded to build muscle, which in turn adds mass, which in turn slows your dwarves down almost as fast as building up Agility will speed them up.  At 5000 Strength and Agility, a dwarf will still move at a speed roughly equivalent with 1000 Strength and 1200 Agility. 

On top of that, Agility is only a modifier of Speed, and so a speed 500 creature with 1000 Agility is still faster than a speed 1000 creature with 5000 Agility (and 1000 Strength).

[Biopass]

Actually, even knowning the agility doesn't even tell you which one is faster.  Strength is coded to build muscle, which in turn adds mass, which in turn slows your dwarves down almost as fast as building up Agility will speed them up.  At 5000 Strength and Agility, a dwarf will still move at a speed roughly equivalent with 1000 Strength and 1200 Agility. 

On top of that, Agility is only a modifier of Speed, and so a speed 500 creature with 1000 Agility is still faster than a speed 1000 creature with 5000 Agility (and 1000 Strength).

Does it at all make sense that a bulked-up muscledwarf that weighs 500 lbs is going to be able to sprint like a scrawny 150lb one? No, he's always going to move slower. We've moved out of the 40d system, there are tradeoffs for things like strength. It's just another example of DF (accidentally?) imitating real life.

[NW_Kohaku]

Does it at all make sense that a bulked-up muscledwarf that weighs 500 lbs is going to be able to sprint like a scrawny 150lb one? No, he's always going to move slower. We've moved out of the 40d system, there are tradeoffs for things like strength. It's just another example of DF (accidentally?) imitating real life.

Not at the rate it is implimented, it doesn't. 

Consider a football player like a Halfback or Running Back.  Yes, some players are less strong but faster, and some are stronger and slower, but the way that DF is currently set up strength all but completely counteracts every point of agility you gain.  That would make someone with a balanced ratio of strength and agility who was super-fit essentially the same as a couch potato whose strength and agility had dwindled to almost nothing.  Even if they are large, burly men, Halfbacks can easily outrun most untrained humans. It is, after all, exactly what they are paid to do.

[Biopass]

But we're not talking halfback strength. At strength 5000 (if I am correct in believing that this is the max allowed), we're talking about ripping goblins in half with your bare hands with no effort. We're talking something like this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Likewise, the cross country runners at my school (the ones with .5% body fat and less muscle mass than Biopass the Couch Potato) can easily outrun the halfbacks at my school.

Also, please consider that there's really no distinction right now between running and walking. Units just move at their max speed, which considering that they always move at this speed, is not running by any means.

[NW_Kohaku]

But we're not talking halfback strength. At strength 5000 (if I am correct in believing that this is the max allowed), we're talking about ripping goblins in half with your bare hands with no effort. We're talking something like this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Likewise, the cross country runners at my school (the ones with .5% body fat and less muscle mass than Biopass the Couch Potato) can easily outrun the halfbacks at my school.

Also, please consider that there's really no distinction right now between running and walking. Units just move at their max speed, which considering that they always move at this speed, is not running by any means.

That doesn't matter.

5000 Strength, 5000 Agility is just the most extreme example, it literally goes down the line - a 1 Strength, 1 Agility character who probably has trouble standing up under their own power is almost as fast as a 2000 Strength, 2000 Agility character or a 1000 Strength, 1000 Agility character.

The problem is that strength nearly nullifies agility.

That is not to say that a large degree of muscle mass should not have some effect on agility, but that it shouldn't have such an effect that it actually means that agility gains are almost entirely nullified by your strength.

If someone trains in track and only trains to be able to move faster, not to be stronger, that's fine if they are faster than someone who trains to do both equally, but someone who trains to do both equally should not be tied in a footrace with someone who can hardly carry the weight of their own body.  Even walking, a physically fit person with well-rounded training should have a better pace than a person who can hardly walk.

[Untelligent]

Personally, as far as my own opinion and my own gameplaying goes, I think the attribute thing is perfectly fine the way it currently is.


Also, since when did a creature being heavier slow it down? This thread is the very first I've heard of it. Not that I'm bothered by it at all, since I obviously haven't noticed it.

[NW_Kohaku]

Also, since when did a creature being heavier slow it down?

Since 31.01.

The very first thing I did when DF 2010 came out was start experimenting in the Arena, and displayed speed was one of the few truly measurable pieces of data I had regarding the new attributes, so I worked that for as much data as I could get.

[NRN_R_Sumo1]

A medical dwarf could give everyone an annual physical

[breadbocks]

Those look more like very hairy testicles than a beard.