by Cody "Micajah" Bye
Every child goes through that fateful day, the one where everything
they thought they knew about the world comes to a shuddering halt.
Whether it was their parents coming clean about Santa Claus ("No honey,
he really doesn't exist.") or the truth about where babies come from
("Let's have a talk about the birds and the bees."), there's always
that moment of clarity in a person's life. And it doesn't
always happen in childhood. As I entered college, I felt pretty solid
about what I had learned in high school and thought I could take on the
world. Yet when push came to shove, I learned that there were smarter
people out there than me, and I couldn't get by on natural
intelligence. It's at this moment when we all say a collective, "Crap!"
border="1">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/13127" title="Everquest">
src="/image/view/78292"
width="200">
style="font-style: italic;">In the beginning,
Everquest
didn't reveal every single number to the user.
In some ways, MMOG fans have had a similar experience with the growth
of the industry. When I first began playing MMOGs - back
in the 1998 beta of Everquest
- I remembered how enchanted I was with the world of Norrath and the
amazing amount of mystery that the game held for me. I had no idea
what was around each corner. Who knew what sort of loot a Giant Wasp
dropped nor how much it sold for? What sort of speed did my weapon
swing at? Was my newest spell actually more efficient than the spell I
had previously? Through trial and error you could gain a general
working knowledge of your character class and the sort of armor and
weapons that were most effective for you, but you weren't exactly
positive what the numbers were behind it. You were given a set of
beginning statistics, but you were never sure exactly what they did.
You figured that there were numbers, but there was something magically
mysterious that kept you coming back for more.
Yet between the decline of EQ and the current iteration of
style="font-style: italic;">World of Warcraft,
something changed. Instead of keeping to a simple formula of "let the
player play the game," there now seems to be a set of numbers that
correspond to every single piece of merchandise that you pick up. When
you open your character screen in World
of Warcraft, you're practically barraged with numbers and
percentages. What's your critical chance? Armor rating? Resistance
rating? Total hit points? Total mana pool? Weapon damage-per-second?
All of these things have been plopped on your screen for easy viewing,
but is it a good thing? Do players need to see every single piece of
information that they can about their characters?
To me, and possibly to many others, it seems like a lot of extraneous
information that isn't absolutely necessary in the grand scheme of
things. Yes, it certainly helps players maintain the ultimate
efficiency that they can afford. Yes, it may add a certain amount of
strategy to the game that wasn't enlisted in Everquest. Yet now the
mystery is gone, we can look and see exactly what sort of weapon would
provide us with the best overall DPS rating, what armor is the most
efficient at protecting against normal and magical attacks, and what
spells are the most useful in the grand scheme of things. Rather than
playing like a mysterious and magical world, today's current MMOGs play
more like their trading card game brethren, where managing your decks
for optimum efficiency provides the best route for success.
border="1">
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title="Character Screen">
src="/image/view/13128/preview"
width="200">
style="font-style: italic;">Now, if you look at
the WoW character screen, you'll see numbers and explanations all over
the place.
However, now that developers have opted to run down the route of number
crunching and min-maxing, can players ever go back to the days when we
weren't entirely sure exactly what everything did in the game?
Honestly, I don't know if it's possible. If developers ripped a piece
of information out of the sight of the player, it would almost
automatically create a knee-jerk reaction in a negative fashion.
Players, instead of embracing the unknown, would rebel against it. That
is, unless the game was designed from the ground up with this sort of
system in mind. What if developers stripped away all the numbers? What
would players do? Would they stop playing the game?
Gamers, in some ways, love numbers. They crave that sort of
micro-management style that is so prominent in turn-based strategy
games, TCGs, and some tabletop games. Managing their own little portion
of table space - or their own particular avatar - is incredibly
important to them. The unknown can lead to poor decisions, bad
character creation and a host of other problems. I remember how certain
players were certain that dexterity and agility were more important to
a warrior than strength - yet thousands of warriors still focused on
the strength and stamina statistics. Having the sort of numbers in
style="font-style: italic;"> World of Warcraft
helps alleviate many of the problems that certain areas of Everquest
had.
At least one game in the future is taking a very number intensive
course of design. When I saw Fallen
Earth at AGDC,
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/12535">Lee Hammock
told me that there would be statistics associated with every
piece of equipment you picked up, and indeed each piece of armor had
certain resistances to forces you'd find out in the world. Instead of
making a class-based system, Fallen Earth will be entirely skill based,
which means even more numbers for players to filter through. As an item
and skill-based game, Fallen Earth is probably one of the most number
intensive games in creation. It will certainly give players a huge
amount of knowledge into the workings of their characters, freeing them
up to devise the best strategies they can imagine.
border="1">
href="http://tth.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?set_albumName=album225&id=massacre&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php">
src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/tth/gallery/albums/album225/massacre.sized.jpg"
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style="font-style: italic;">Fallen Earth is
slated to have extensive statistics associated with every single piece
of equipment you own.
But in other ways, the contrary is true. Without numbers, players can
become more immersed in their characters. When hit points are
represented by life bars instead of numbers, you intrinsically want to
"kill the beast" rather than "retain the best DPS". Without knowing
what statistic modifies what skill on your character, you are simply
concerned in making your character "better", which may mean better
items, better base statistics or simply more advancement. In some
games, advancement isn't even associated with experience, levels or
skills. Advancing your character may simply mean getting better
equipment and becoming a better player of the game.
For those of you who doubt my idea of a slimmed down version of an
MMOG, I'd like to direct you to the latest product that has been
published by Wizards of the Coast, The
style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars Roleplaying Game: Saga
Edition. In previous versions of the Star Wars RPG,
numbers were key. By the time everyone had reached the higher levels,
most of them were trying to manage many different statistics and die
pools, constantly having to roll multiple d20s to try and determine if
they'd won a battle. In the new version, the numbers have taken a back
seat to the immersion of the game play experience. Die rolling has been
cut down significantly and now players are only responsible for a few
dice and not the huge amount they had to take care of previously. Many
gamers believe that the next edition of Dungeons and Dragons (the game
which modern MMOG were inherently based) will take a similar approach.
To me, it's be an interesting experiment to see whether gamers would
enjoy a game with a very slim-downed version of the numbers. Perhaps
gamers might enjoy a game that they could relearn, a game that provides
them with opportunities to play rather than handing them everything on
a silver platter. So what if an axe does less DPS than a dagger; wield
the axe if you're a warrior!
But until that day comes when a developer goes out on a limb and cuts
out some of the numbers, that will be all a player is concerned with.
As for me, I wouldn't mind a return of my innocence.
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