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[Jonathan S. Fox]

One thing I've noticed about the games here is that they shy away from numerical, traditional approaches to RPG conventions. Sure, in Liberal Crime Squad everybody had a "blood" value from 0 to 100, which worked like HP, but the game never showed you that. All you knew was that your person was "Lt Wnd", or was "NearDTH" and was babbling about their childhood and bleeding all over the hallway. LCS showed exact skill levels as numbers, but didn't show progress to the next skill level until you reached it. Dwarf Fortress takes LCS-style descriptive combat to the next level. It also changes up the skill numbers, and gives qualitative descriptions for skill levels, but shows the exact progress to the next level. LCS had numerical stats, while Dwarf Fortress has descriptive stats. Neither showed you the performance of various weapons and armor you could use.

Because of this tendency, the game doesn't appear to have been designed in a way that it would support that kind of traditional attribute scale. From what I've seen of Dwarf Fortress, I honestly doubt that Ultra-Mighty is associated with anything like 90. It's probably just anything greater than or equal to 5, with no description being 0, and is just a modifier used on other numbers. There's nothing particularly glorious about seeing strength-5+, agility-3, toughness-4, and it's no more enlightening than seeing Ultra-Mighty, Extremely Agile, Unbelievably Tough, it's just less glossy. Since the game doesn't track 100 different gradations of strength, it would not translate smoothly to that scale, and you'd be left feeling distinctly unsatisfied when your strength suddenly jumped twenty points.

It would also lead to confusion when you start an Elf adventurer and a Dwarf adventurer and both have zero agility when in reality Elves are approximately about two levels of agility faster than Dwarves on average, and the agility scale isn't even comparable, since a level of agility has a different effect on each creatur (it has a bigger effect for Dwarves). What isn't surprising or unclear is the intuitive and correct idea that an agile elf may very well be more agile than a very agile dwarf.

Size is another factor that probably makes a huge difference but is probably not incorporated into the displayed creature attributes -- nobody questions that a weak colossus is still colossal in might, but if the colossus appears to have a lower numerical strength than your dwarf, you might be fooled into thinking you can take it. Incorporating all the effects into a final number would expose more of the combat mechanics than is intended now, and would change gameplay and your judgments. It's hard to know exactly how much deadlier a blow from a Minotaur is than one from your Dwarf guards, and that's part of the tension of gameplay now.

Finally, the game as it stands prevents you from knowing exactly how strong a creature is because Ultra-Mighty, for example, could be 5, or it could be 7, or it could be 10. It's a net that catches anything above a certain number. Like trying to judge the strength of a dragon exactly, it's left in the nebulous "really big" area, where above a certain amount, everything seems to run together into the "don't mess with it" zone.

Ultimately, the biggest barrier to putting a smooth universal stat scale that would make everything easy to understand, even as an option, is that there's no reason to believe Dwarf Fortress even has such a scale internally to display, except in the case of speed. Especially if your effective striking power or damage resistance changes based on what creature you're fighting -- and I strongly suspect that it does.

[Gangsta Spanksta]

I think the stats should be secret, and the dwarves know though, mighty or whatever, by how muscular something is.  Also, it would be nice if you could use k or v on a dwarf and be able to tell if an area is "Scorching" "Hot" "Warm" and so forth and not the actual temperature.  It might come in useful, if temperature had an effect on living quarters, especially on a frozen world.

[Tormy]

Huh well, I still dont understand that why shouldnt we have a system like this what everyone can turn off if they dislike it. Ah well.

[Tracker]

A lot of things in this game are kept secret from you, and you often must make decisions with only part of the information. That's part of the challenge.

[Capntastic]

Descriptive words are more descriptive than numbers on an arbitrary scale.  

QED.

[Ookpik]

I strongly oppose any suggestion that adds boringness to a game.

[Capntastic]

quote:Originally posted by Ookpik:
<STRONG>I strongly oppose any suggestion that adds boringness to a game.</STRONG>

Can I transfer my QED to this statement?   Thanks.

[Citizen of Erl]

Ambiguity adds a much greater sense of danger. I love not being able to safely play brinksmanship with stats.

Really, having numerical stats just makes threats more quantifiable, and thus more prone to metagameyness. You never know if you can really take on that Bronze Colossus, for instance, with the current system. You can only be as prepared as you can get. And that's a good thing, I think. It encourages the player to be more realistically cautious.

[Fourth Triad]

I like states the way they are it makes df feel more alive and unique.

[Gangsta Spanksta]

quote:Originally posted by Tracker:
<STRONG>A lot of things in this game are kept secret from you, and you often must make decisions with only part of the information. That's part of the challenge.</STRONG>

In fact, In dungeon and dragon's those things should be only known between the player and the Dungeon Master, or in some cases just the DM.  Say you pick a fight with an NPC, your not supposed to know how though he is, except maybe asking the DM for a description.

[jellyman]

One problem a numerical stat would reduce is the ambiguity of some of the descriptions.

I mean who would actually find it intuitive to know whether adept, master or expert is a higher level skill?  Proficient or Competent?  I still don't know and I've played dozens of hours of this game.  And could anyone be realistically expected to assess a worker and assign his skill level to one of more than a dozen categories?  If we really want realism, I suggest we significantly reduce the number of skill categories.

Items have an exact listed coin value.  Are the purists all demanding that we need to get rid of that as well so they don't lose their sense of belief in the game?

I'm sure a significant minority would find benefit in a stat system, and the majority would not care if it was only an option that can be turned on in the game and is off by default.

Another problem is knowing which metals make better metals.  In the old version we could look up the wiki to know which materials were 50%,75%,100% or 125% damage.  It would be nice to have some in game estimate of the relative strengths of each material.  Of course the DF way would be to examine material in some way and find out it was 'flimsy', 'normal','hard' etc.  Heh maybe materials could also have various attributes such as how long they keep a sharp edge, how easy they break, how sharp an edge they can hold which can vary separately.

Gotta go, the off topic police are after me....

[spu00trb]

Just like how with the new system for stockpiles you start out not knowing whats going on (we have around 200 seeds, and about 5000 limestone) and as your broker gets better and spends more time assaying your stocks you get better indications of what you have it would be fun if such a system was extended to the monsters.

Adventurer standpoint - You recieve a quest to slay Durg, a troll living in a nearby cave. You know nothing about trolls, and less about Durg in particular. You go forth and slay Durg after a mighty conflict. You now now more about trolls. As you kill and encounter more of their ilk you will get better at identifying them.

Conversely you could consult a sage, who in exchange for coin might tell you that "Durg is a massive example of his species, as strong as 10 men, and with a stride that covers 10 feet!"

Fortress standpoint - The addition of a librarian/sage noble to your roster. He would gather the corpses of dead creatures, and study live ones in cages. Over time he would gain knowledge of the creatures and your identification skills would rise. Looking at a Dragon at the start of the game would give the message..

Ur Draco
Red Dragon
Massive

Ur Draco is a dragon. It is massive compared to you. It is red. It has wings.

So only information that can be gained from looking at it. Looking at the same dragon when your fortress has a librarian with some knowledge of dragons...

Ur Draco
Red Dragon
Male
Healthy
Massive
Flier

Ur Draco is a Dragon. He is over 40 feet at the shoulder, above average for his species. He looks healthy, and well fed. He is a mature example of his species, the Red Dragon.

Red Dragons are cumbersome fliers. An adult Red Dragon is a dangerous foe for even a group of dwarves.

Ur Draco is known to be a particularly vicious example of his species.

So more detailed information, with some specifics about the dragon and some about the species. With a detailed knowledge of dragons...

Ur Draco
Red Dragon
Male
Healthy
Massive
Flier

Ur Draco is a Dragon. He is over 40 feet high at the shoulder, above average for his species. He is 200 feet long, above average for his species. He probobly weighs around 200 tonnes. He is a mature example of his species, the Red Dragon.

Red Dragons are  cumbersome fliers. Red Dragons are highly territorial. Red Dragons can breath fire at will, and their flames can consume even the less noble stones of the mountain. Red Dragons will gladly consume humanoids, and revel in doing so. Red Dragons are rarely slain, they are stronger than a dozen normal dwarves and they can attack with their tails, teeth, claws and fire. Red Dragons are highly intelligent. Red Dragons will flee when threatened with vast armies. Red Dragons hate the smell of Lupine Violet Oil, and will avoid areas where it is present in any great quantity.

Ur Draco destroyed the City of Nonenheim in 2045. Ur Draco slew Nildran, the elf prince, in 2046. Ur Draco is angry.

So as you learn more about Dragons you get more and more specific and useful info on an inspection.

The entry for Ur Draco would inherit description items from Dragons, Red Dragons, and his specific history. This would be separate from the actual "stats" entry and be arranged so that the better the sage you had, the more useful information you would get.

[Funkadelic Jive Turkey]

Actually with the way things are going, I wouldn't be surprised to see a social\intelligence skill related to threat evaluation and things of the sort. I imagine that might give numerical values but with questionable accuracy, somewhat like the stocks screen except much smaller numbers. Or perhaps descriptives for disparity will be added, which will be all the more awesome:

You size up the Bronze Collosus,
The Collosus looks devastatingly stronger than you.
The Collosus looks slightly less agile.

Even perhaps foresee something like this to estimate creature skills.

....Oh gosh, I hope I'm right! I can't wait already!...  

[Tormy]

This is a fantasy game. Don't even begin to talk about that which system is more realistic. Basically the traditional stat system offers exact informations, while the current system is not, this is the only difference.
Once again, I guess you wouldnt have a problem if we could change to the system -what we would like to play with- in the ini file.

[Axehilt_VuP]

If you don't control a creature it makes sense to keep its stats a bit hidden (depending on your level of knowledge, as others have explained.)

Even for dwarves you don't need a really exact measure of their skills or stats as long as the description is clear.  As some people have mentioned, a lot of the terms used aren't as clear as they could be with a number attached to them (ie "Which is better proficient, competant, etc...?")  A color-coding of these stats or a legend would help, but a number is certainly the most clear way to spell it out (and you'd even still include the text: "Cooking: 5 (proficient)")