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[Brian]

(I've been working on a game for a while and I'm on some UI at the moment. This is relevant to a decision I keep putting off)

One thing that separates Dwarf Fortress from many other games is that there is no user perception of numerical values such as hitpoints, damage, or exhaustion.  I find this to be a very interesting perk and gives DF a level of realism that a 62 HP imp just doesn't convey. I think DF can do this because the combat is simulated so well (you can't hit something without hitting it somewhere).

Now let's say you're playing another game that has no close combat simulation, but entities can still attack each other, just in more generic ways a la Final Fantasy or even Doom. Is there still anything to be gained by never revealing your special combat numbers to the players? One possible method to achieve this would be to give a coarse grained life-bar style status, such as every 10% or 25%, and then to specify relative values for damages. The basic weapon might be described as "weak" in its description, and each other weapon could have a description of damage that follows, such as "more explosive than xxx".

Does that sound reasonable, or as a game designer should I be resigned to give the players cold hard numbers when they exist?

[Fishbreath]

When he was writing about Elemental: War of Magic and Civilization V, Tom Chick said that transparency in mechanics is part of what makes games fun. The only reason DF can get away with it is because there's so much detail in it; the numbers are all there and presumably you could work out the math yourself, but as in real life it's orders of magnitude easier to say "steel is better than bronze is better than iron".

It does kind of come down to what kind of mechanics you have. If our notional 62hp imp actually has 62 hit points, then hiding that information from the player is really only going to annoy them; the fun in a system of simple, abstract rules comes from optimizing outcomes in your favor[1], while the fun in a complex system of rules (a la Dwarf Fortress) is emergent, and so we decide that steel is better than bronze is better than iron, unless you're making warhammers, in which case you want something heavier even if it dents easier, and so on and so forth.

To be a bit more brief, it's not the visibility of the numbers that decides whether or not it's interesting, it's the style of rules. Rereading a bit I think it's important to say that I'm not going to claim that abstract rules are better or vice versa, or even that there are certain genres of computer games where one fits better. All I'll say is that simple rules causing complex behavior fits visible numbers well, and complex rules governing simple actions fits hidden ones.

[1] For the people who care. There are plenty of gamers who'd be happy with either visible or hidden numbers.

[3]

I can only concur with Fishbreath, as he appears to have ninja'd me on the fundamental point I was going to make.

Having said that, I disagree on the subject of DF's combat - the way I see it, DF can "get away" with not having any visible numbers simply because the combat itself is so abstract. As there really isn't any actual skill (or even interaction of any sort, besides wrestling, which is pretty limited anyway - now that I think of it, the entire thing might be better off partially automated in its current state) involved in combat, there's no reason for players to know the specific values behind HP or equipment effectiveness or whatnot.

[Muz]

Ah, this is a dangerous line. There's a lot of people who think that hiding information gives more depth, but much of the time, it just adds frustration. I don't know if you've ever played a RPI, but those are pretty much the most frustrating games I've ever played. They're made of people who insist on never showing numbers, never learning the code, "figure it out IC", "don't worry about the numbers, it's all about the RP".

Hidden information (when you want it) is one of the most frustrating part of any game. It encourages elitism, and encourages hostile responses from elitist fans when some people actually do look for the numbers.

It's not always about complexity either. Football Manager and Trophy Manager are two of the most detailed football management games and they give every football player's skills in numbers. There are dozens of simpler ones who refuse to give the skills in numbers, and give it in text instead, like "abysmal", "good", "excellent". Most of the players end up translating these text indicators into numbers, and it's actually more jarring to the game realism to find that "horrible" is not as bad as "terrible".

Long story short, if you do it wrong, it actually worsens the "mood" of the game and increases the difficulty curve greatly.


Now to argue towards not using solid numbers, my game doesn't use it either. That's because my stat system is designed in such a way that 60 strength means that you can lift twice as much as 50 strength. Showing the number is far more confusing than saying that a 50-str character has "average strength" and a 55-str character is "very strong".

DF also works this way because.. hell, imagine if we could see how many HP the heads, eyes, toes had. DF is bad enough giving unnecessary detail about gabbro chairs and cat leather. If it showed how much HP everyone's toe had, it becomes rather annoying. And if you did tell everyone that the imp had 62 HP, they would be confused when a 5 damage arrow through the brain instantly killed it.


So, in conclusion, just show the numbers until you find a very good reason not to. People will find the hard numbers when there is any reason to, and not giving it to them only makes them more annoyed and they'll post the hard numbers on the internet anyway.

[qwertyuiopas]

I think that the pokemon games never gave actual numbers for enemies(except level), and it generally worked out wel enough.

Another thing is that you can attach an ability or a stat to how well you can percieve the actual numbers, the way DF rounds your stocks and values unless you have a bookkeeper at a high enough precision. If players have a way to reveal the details, it might add an extra level of depth to the game. Perhaps [player's perception]/[enemy's level] gives a number, and the precision and types of data revealed varies as the number ranges from 0.1 to 3.0, forcing the players to choose between knowing what they fight and fighting blindly, stat-wise, but being more powerful. Even at the lowest, it should at least give one of three values for each visible stat: Better than you(at least 10% higher), worse than you(at least 10% lower), and similar to you, where visible stats would be things like speed and current health percentage, things that a human could reasonably see just by looking at someone and observing the somewhat subtle hints(he is limping somewhat and clutching his side. He must be fairly hurt. or Wow, he is fast, I can't keep up with him.).

[Bricks]

I'm not much of a min/max-er when I play RPGs, so I just like the numbers for determining the relative quality of two items/skills/whatever.  If that could be expressed grammatically, it would be fine, as long as I could still distinguish between three items without rapidly flipping between them.

Hiding mechanics DURING a fight is usually fine.  For tougher games, though, it can punish a player for experimenting.

[Cthulhu]

Knowing exactly how things work takes away some of the magic of a game for me.

[Mechanoid]

Showing the numbers in a system is the best way to give players a chance to point out gameplay or ballance faults the developer might not have recognized, or to simply demonstate to the player that "This action is totally useless, please stop wasting your time doing it." One example is the "quality level" calculations in most MMO games. The actual math itself is totally hidden, causing the player to simply throw up their hands in disgust and say "i'm getting max level/highest numbers i can and never looking back" ... of course the design of the game usually results in this anyways as there's little player input in the process aside from setting the initial conditions.

[darkflagrance]

I think that the pokemon games never gave actual numbers for enemies(except level), and it generally worked out wel enough.

For the casual player, sure. But the community is split into two groups, one of whom (the competitive pokemon players, who play online simulators that tell them the percents that each attack does and meddle with the invisible stats that you pretty much can't figure out in game) has chosen to reject this model and thus gained a reputation for elitism reminiscent of the attitude described in Muz's post.