Keeping Stats for your Players

[Tsukihime]

I created a pic:





For a lot of games I've played, this was never explicitly stated.


You would collect a bunch of items/weapons, but you never really knew "if you had it all"


Granted, I've only played pre-PS2 games, so maybe the newer games from the past few years all incorporated these as the de facto standard for gamification.


Is keeping track of these statistics a must for games?

 

[TheoAllen]

Is keeping track of these statistics a must for games?

No...

I'm Bethesda games player (Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim)

The one of fun factors are when you read some walkthroughs and then you realized that you missed something.

Or you talk to your friend about the game and your friend found something that you never find it yet.

Statistics is important for those games which display your achievements.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

The only game so far that I care about how much treasure I got is KH 3D, mainly because I want to get the trophy for obtaining all treasures...

 

[The Art of Gaming]

I personally haven't played many games where you have this option however, I get much more excited for the game and the bragging rights.

 

[Kes]

I include some stats because the feedback I've had from players tell me that they like it a lot.  In my current project I tell the player, with running totals so they know where they are at any time,

How many quests they have completed out of the total

How many secret rooms they have found out of the total

How many enemies each individual actor has killed using physical attacks and how many by using magic attacks.

There is already an in-game reward of rare items for finding all the secret rooms.  I shall (probably) be implementing an award for completing all side quests.

Maybe in my next project I will also be including some gear collecting stats.

 

[Andar]

It depends on the type of game and the type of players.


For explorer-type games it's extremely important, for story-type games it can be omitted. In some cases of story-games it's even distracting (if for example the number of simple healing items found is calculated in a linear-story game with a lot of combat or so)


But because a lot of games are mixtures there are no hard guidelines to say when such a function is needed, when it's a nice option and when it distracts from the game.

 

[amerk]

I typically pay more attention to the quests completed more so than the items obtained, but it's not necessary. Nor do I try to complete everything 100% all the time.