Making Stats Invisible: Mysterious or Annoying?

[ScientistWD]

In Pokémon Go, you only get some information about your actor's stats. This bothered some people I knew, but it's not as if in other games you get all the information. Is this irritating to most people? And, more importantly, how much information is needed?

In my game, an actor earns new skills if their stats change. For instance, increasing Speed has the character earn skills based on Speed. This makes their stats a very important consideration for my players, but I am starting to think that hiding the intimate details might be more fun to keep away from them. They be able to see how they gain or lose skills as their stats change, so they'll be privy somewhat, but...

I guess this is where my question comes in. How much information do players need when looking at their stats? Exact numbers? None at all? A little bar graph or pie chart? Tallymarks for every ten stat points or something?

What's the word, crew?

 

[Rinobi]

Depends on what the information is, and in what game. In your example, the added mystery may seem like a good idea on paper, but it'll likely annoy most players since the information in question directly influences the gameplay experience.

Hiding the less important information, such as stats that are never or rarely influenced (guard rate, counter chance, etc..) is fine, but if it's as important as determining your class build its best to be transparent about it. Though this is just a generalization.

As for HOW the information is displayed... it's mostly theme and personal preference.

 

[bgillisp]

Annoying. I've been playing Persona 5, and I'm constantly finding myself annoyed at how they don't convey *exactly* where you are in your social stats (knowledge, guts, etc) and social links. Just telling me the rank is 3 of 5 doesn't give me any idea how close I am to the next rank, so I have no idea how to budget time for leveling those up.

 

[Kino]

Persona 5 messed up with that star; it's not very accurate that's one of my biggest gripes.

Anyway, I would personally let the user see their stats, the relevant ones that they see more often and have an important impact on the game.
For Persona that's social stats.
For most RPGs that's atk , def, etc.
Knowing these stats is important in order to figure out how strong you are, or if you're up to the task. Furthermore, in a sense, it acts as a point of progression. People like watching their numbers go up. @ScientistWD

 

[Caitlin]

Invisible stats.... .. . Annoying as BEEP!!! Of course, I normally judge if I am capable of defeating the boss by how well I defeat the monsters in the area with said boss. But still I do like to see what stats my characters have, so I can give bonus' to weaker characters in whatever additional thing that they're weak in. I find a nut that gives STR and I'd like to know whose weaker so I can give it to that character, except nope, invisible stats. Hence annoying, but you might find people who might be interested in that sort of game. Me, not so much, but hey, I am not the world.

 

[Kes]

You suggest that hiding the stats would be "more fun". I could not disagree more! If stats are important, and if they influence game play, and if I can carry out actions which will impact those aspects, then I do not want to be kept in the dark. Being deprived of basic information is, imo, of no value to anyone.

 

[Hercanic]

There are two things to consider: what kind of decisions are you expecting your players to make, and what are the expectations your audience has of your genre?

For the latter, consider a typical First Person Shooter. A weapon's stats generally aren't shown. You just pick it up and use it, and through that experience you gain a feel for its damage, speed, reload, etc. Yet such a game only asks you to do this for a handful of weapons that have wildly different effects and uses, such as the obviously fast machinegun vs the stealthy sniper rifle vs the AOE of the rocket launcher. Then you have a game like Borderlands with its near-infinite amount of procedurally-generated weapons. Choosing between weapons that might only have small differences would quickly become tedious if their stats were obfuscated. So while people don't expect to know the exact weapon stats in an FPS like they do for an RPG, once you make greater demand on their decision-making you must support those players with adequate information to base those decisions on.

On the flip side, lots of numbers can be confusing and overwhelming. A new player simply won't have their head wrapped around the entirety of your game design from the outset, so the value of those numbers won't be clear until they gain more experience in your system. Meanwhile, a veteran will be smarter than you at finding what is overpowered, but hiding things from them will just make them aggravated.

I am someone who likes to make decisions with concrete information, but I can also see value in mitigating info-overload. Some games try to solve this by offering both simplified and expanded tooltips as an option. Other games, like Diablo 3, show the stats in addition to a basic summary of its impact on damage, toughness, and recovery, to help players quickly gauge its value.

 

[jade_angel]

I'll second the folks who are saying "as much information as is needed to support the decisions the player is asked to make".

There is a secondary element here, too: it should be fairly clear what each displayed stat does. For an example of doing it wrong, Final Fantasy 6: there's your Strength, Attack Power, and then there are nebulous effects that "boost your physical damage", plus there are other stats like Magic Power and Speed. So am I better off equipping the sword that'll give me 5 more attack power, or am I better off sticking with the slightly weaker one that gives me +Magic Power? What about the Hyper Wrist that gives me a bunch of extra Strength? Is that better or worse than the Gigas Glove (Atlas Armlet) that boosts physical attacks, but doesn't have any numbers attached to it? (The Gigas Glove is usually better, but it's not actually obvious, and to boot, two Gigas Gloves won't stack with each other and neither will two Hyper Wrists, but you can use one of each and the effects work as expected. But you have to figure that out by trial and error!)

So, in short, my vote is for transparency, and when in doubt more is probably better than less. Also, don't be afraid to have a newbie hut or similar where some folks actually explain all this. Tedious, dialog-heavy tutorial areas that you're forced to go through are annoying, but optional information areas of that sort are far more tolerable and often useful (more so if you can come back).

 

[bgillisp]

@Kino : Right? And the thing is, that is the same system they used in Persona 4 (and to a different degree, 3). Making that design foobar once is understandable, as you have to make it and learn from it. Making it 3x in a row? No excuse for that.

As it is, I've been starting to wonder if Atlas is stuck in the 90's, as they have made no attempts to fix design flaws in their system that have existed...for 20 years. But that's a topic for another discussion thread.

 

[Rayhaku808]

I think minor stats may be okay to hide, I’ll use Luck here as an example. A character named Joshua is always talking about how much he likes to gamble and how lucky he is at winning bets and such. Say his critical rate is 20% and the player has access to that information. Another character named Marisa also has a 20% critical rate with attacks but her dialogue suggests she falls short in the luck category, like unfortunate things happen to her often. Since Luck by default has some influence in whether or not an attack critically hits, Joshua can noticeably crit a little more frequently than Marisa. Maybe to compensate Marisa deals more raw damage.

 

[Rinobi]

@Rayhaku808 Then the critical rate stat is misleading in this scenario. It would actually be more interesting if Joshua had a higher critical rate number to show that the game mechanics are in line with the narrative in a more obvious way.

What if they had the same critical stat, but Joshua was more likely to succeed in luck based events, puzzles and minigames while positioned as party lead? The game can hint at this through dialogue without showing any numbers.

 

[ShadowHawkDragon]

If we're talking the core 'growth' stats then they should never be hidden. These stats represent each character's overall power and growth throughout the game and all nearly always in a state of flux. Any raise or drop is significant for managing your stats/equipment. Its fine to hide those stats which tend to move in a more controlled manner such as crit, resistances, etc. (as long as you do list the changes in item/equipment descriptions).

The biggest thing to remember is, the player is not you and they can't read your mind; nor do they have access to the database. If you don't tell them about something, they won't know. Transparency is key to allowing the player to make 'informed choices' rather than blind guessing.

For example if raising my speed to say 500 gave me a new skill: I'd want to know if a simple +25 speed ring would let me hit that milestone, or if I'll need to swap to the less powerful 'Sword of Swiftness' for that extra speed, etc..

 

[The Magic Circle]

Confusing the player is never fun and I don't like not being able to see stats, ever.

At the same time, you want to make sure the player isn't overwhelmed with stats. I would argue that the best way to do this would be to think very hard about what mechanics you want in the game and create the minimum number of stats required to implement those mechanics.

 

[FleshToDust]

One game that annoys me when it comes to hiding information is Pokemon. you need a bunch of charts just to level your Pokemon properly.

There's IV's, EV's, Natures and what Pokemon give what EV's after battle. Natures are annoying but it shows you their natures so it's okay.
EV's and IV's on the other hand...

There is no way to know about EV's unless somebody finds out somehow and posts about it on the internet and makes a chart for you to follow.
What Pokemon do you have to fight repeatedly to raise your attack stat the most and how high can your attack stat go?

Now what about IV's? IV? what's an IV, how do you get one and what's a good IV and what's a bad IV, and how to they effect your Pokemon?

Pokemon is a well designed game but there are a few things I dislike about it.
I'm not a fan of valuable hidden information.

 

[jkweath]

A long time ago I played a DS game called The Dark Spire, a roguelike inspired by older roguelikes like Wizardry and Rogue. It was a decent game, but to me one of its biggest annoyances was that, for weapons and armor, it didn't show you ANYTHING about them stat-wise. Name, price, that was it. All you could assume was that the more expensive equipment were stronger, which sadly wasn't always the case.

The idea to hide those stats was probably also inspired by classic roguelikes, but it annoyed the heck out of me and I just ended up looking up the stats on the internet.

Edit: worth noting that the Dark Spire was also made by Atlus. Apparently they're notorious for this kind of thing!

But I guess to answer your question, I expect to know what the "core" stats are--HP, attack, defense, so on--but some stats aren't as important to me to know exact numbers, especially percentage-based stats like evasion, accuracy, critical strike, etc.--though i definitely wouldn't mind knowing the exact numbers if possible.

I'd be okay with a weapon saying "slightly boosts critical strike rate" but I wouldn't be okay with it not showing how much attack power it gives.

 

[velan235]

Pokemon EV and IV is a good example of invisible stats. although throughout the game , there are some NPC that talks about it with flavor-style of text (ie. every pokemon is different from the basic / trained pokemon is stronger than wild pokemon).

classic game tend to hide stats (maybe) due to game need to be enjoyed and didn't frustate the player (most golden axe style game didnt even mention damage dealt). but the games and players are evolving , player prefer information and read through it to calculate best action to take for them. ie. in turn-based combat , player gives agi equipment to healer because healing is crucial , but apparently , healing has priorities so actor with 1 agi will cast heal first. hiding information could make something like this happened, and it will frustate the player even more after they realize it.

in recent pokemon , there are actually ways to identify EV and IV in a menu format (which is detailed information) , indicate that hiding stats is not really relevant anymore right now, even the end-game and vague kind of stats like EV&IV

 

[Tricimir]

Where pokemon went wrong was in the 3rd generation where they added a cap to those hidden stats so that you could only make out 2 given stat categorizes. In the first two gens, it didn't matter much, because regardless of how you played, it was still possible to max out a Pokemon's EV values in every catagory. What this meant was that , while there was some natural variation in base stats, thanks to IVs (which any player should have been aware of simply by catching two of a kind and seeing their stats were different), there was no real wrong way to train a pokemon. They could always reach their max potential if you just spent some more time training them.
Not so anymore.
And it's actually HOSTILE to the player. in fact, you can't even play through the game normal if you want your pokemon to come out anywhere near their full potential. That is TERRIBLE game design, especially because there's next to nothing ingame that explains how this works.
The idea was to make players choose what they wanted their pokemon to specialize in, and simultaneously create more variety. but it was presented so poorly that most players didn't even realize that they had an option.
And even if they do, the process is convoluted and INCREDIBLY borring.
And Gamefreak agrees: they've spent every generation since then loosening the restrictions and trying to make them more friendly and forgiving to the average player.
But they still haven'tsolved the base problem that it's a detriment to the game.
The irony is that with their latest generation, not only does it grant the player almost complete control of EVs through various minigames, but they also introduced "Super Training" which removes the variety created by IVs as well.
In their efforts to undo the damage caused by their bad design, they've actually managed to create LESS variety than if they'd never made the change to begin with.

Short version: in the first two gens the IV/EV system was simple, non-intrusive, and easy to understand. It created a gameplay mechanic that never got in the player's way and yet added more variety to the game.
This was a good use of hidden stats. if you didn't know they existed you lost almost nothing.

Since then, it's become the exact opposite. It interferes with normal game play and severely handicaps a player unaware of it even through there's little-to-no explanation.
This was a BAD use of hidden stats.

 

[FleshToDust]

Yeah the first 2 gens were great. once ev/iv stuff happened that's when things got pretty bad, tedious, confusing, requiring pages of charts, and made the game a chore to play.