Visible Stats and How Players Perceive Them

[SamBargeron]

Hey.

So... How do people in this community feel about stats in games?

I tend to favor lower numbers. I feel like higher number just result in the same mathematic consequences (generally speaking).

But maybe players prefer bigger numbers. I don't really know, cause I'm not a normal player. I think about math and design.

A player with attack 2 and an enemy with defense 1 will have proportional results to a player with attack 20 and an enemy with defense 10.

But at the same time... dealing 10 damage to an enemy with 100 HP might feel better psychologically than dealing 1 damage to an enemy with 10 hp.

Then again, you're much more likely to experience a 25% damage variability (that's the variability I tend to favor) with higher numbers than lower numbers.

So what kind of scales do you guys favor and why?

[Edit: The intention was to talk about RPG Maker, but game design in general is cool too. I love tabletop games. But as Warpmind pointed out, stats mean a lot more in an area where their meaning is less universally defined. For example, rolling under your score in a 3d6 game would be torn asunder if you made the base stat starting point 20.]

 

[Warpmind]

Depends a little on the game mechanics in question... Systems like D&D, where you add stats to a die roll, you'll want low numbers. Systems like, say, Storyteller or Shadowrun, where you roll a number of dice equal to your stats for "successes", high, low or medium numbers can work equally well, so long as everyone is in the same approximate range. Systems like Call of Cthulhu, where you try to roll under a percentage score, well... you definitely don't want to be stuck in the lower percentiles.

 

[SamBargeron]

Oh. Oh. My mistake. I'm sorry.

I was specifically trying to talk about RPG Maker. But this is a general discussion forum.

It would probably help if my topic title and/or original post specified that.

 

[Warpmind]

No, no, by all means - that's the beauty of RPG Maker; you CAN use it to emulate various dice mechanics, which is why I brought up the different tabletop systems as examples of the mechanisms.

Choosing a consistent formula for the game and applying the RNG accordingly can make or break a game, after all.

 

[Wavelength]

I like using HP and MP numbers somewhere around 100 so that the player can think of damage, healing, or costs as a rough "percentage" of their maximum.  As far as other stats, I usually use two digits, but the numbers to use really should depend more on the formulas that you set up that use these stats.

 

[SamBargeron]

No, no, by all means - that's the beauty of RPG Maker; you CAN use it to emulate various dice mechanics, which is why I brought up the different tabletop systems as examples of the mechanisms.

Choosing a consistent formula for the game and applying the RNG accordingly can make or break a game, after all.

Ok... so I'm confused now...

let's say World of Darkness was my base. I want RPG Maker to play like WoD. How would you emulate dice with the system? Your "to hit" is not based on a character's growing ability, it's a stock percentile.

If you were to choose, say, D&D as your base you run into that same problem plus another. How do you get the damage calculation to be a random integer based on your equipped weapon? A longsword should do (I forget but lets pretend it is) 1d6 damage plus strength bonus, but a greatsword should do 1d12 damage plus strength bonus, and a greataxe should do 2d6 plus strength bonus. Essentially your strength bonus creates a minimum damage and the weapon gives you a damage bonus at random from a specific pool of chance (ie: 1-6, 1-12, or 2-12).

 

[Warpmind]

That would require scripting - changing the attack formula.

For a WoD-style mechanic, it would require, well, I have the scripting bit necessary for a suitable array in VX Ace; don't quite recall who provided me with that bit of code...

Alternative 1:

total = 0
actor.atk.times {|i|
  case rand(10)
  when 0
    total += 2
  when 8,9
    total += 1
  end
}
# do whatever you need to with total here


Alternative 2:

total = 0
actor.atk.times {|i|
  roll = rand(10)
  total += 1 if roll == 8 or roll == 9       # this is the same as saying if [8,9].include?(roll)
  total += 2 if roll == 0
}


Alternative 3:

total = 0
actor.atk.times {|i| total += [2,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1][rand(10)]}

That'd give you a total of successes per "roll", for all the calculations you'd need.

For a D&D-style system, the damage calculation is actually surprisingly simple, since the skills have damage formula boxes. All you have to do is to refer to a "weapon type" element, which has its own scripted formula for adding to damage.

I'll allow, I'm a bit rusty on exactly where I put those script elements right now - I have it on paper somewhere - but that was how it worked in VXA.
Right now, I'm starting to figure out MV and the Javascript equivalents, so I'm still having some trouble finding the right segments and syntax for the same mechanics.

 

[jonthefox]

I'm a firm lover of smaller numbers.  I think they give you a really immediate mental snapshot of your power level and enemy's powerlevel, the value of items, and so on and so forth.  

Also, the bigger numbers get, the more meaningless they become.  So when my attack reaches high levels, I feel very good about myself if this is still a relatively low number, because the number is still very meaningful to me.  

 

[fm2107]

when talking about high low numbers i think we have to take into account the length of the game. i feel like players need feel that their characters are getting stronger the longer the game is played. games like FF for example, 10 in particular where breaking numbers is part of the end game progression. 

so the i guess the question should become, how should the power curve be? slow at start, ramp at end?

 

[Aoi Ninami]

Well, that's a separate question. You can have linear or quadratic growth with low or high numbers. Ace's limit of 9999 allows plenty of room for growth beyond what I would consider a high starting point (the default curves start around 500 HP).

For my own game, I'm a big fan of keeping the numbers low. I have first-level characters with 50 to 80 HP, attack stats of 15 to 25, and an attack formula of ATK -- DEF, dealing single-digit damage to starter enemies. At endgame levels, the characters will not be anywhere near the 9999 limit, probably not even 999.

As for why.... that's tricky. Partly it's a reaction to playing too many games where the defaults (or values near them) were kept uncritically, resulting in first-level heroes that could wade through a ton of enemies before needing a heal. I also like the simplicity of the smaller numbers. If you have 3-digit starting HP, the units digit will pretty much never actually matter (sure, if an enemy hits for 75 instead of 70, the extra 5 adds up over time, but you'll need a heal before it ever really matters. Which means you might as well have a 2-digit number followed by a constant "0". Which means you might just as well have a 2-digit number.

 

[fm2107]

i can definitely see the value in that because i play wow and we just had a number squish because the damage level was getting to 100ks, my mage used to crit for a million in fully decked out. 

for my game i do plan to start out at low numbers and end up at high numbers, but to finish the story line, you wont need to be at max lvl. i feel like if the player wants to do the side quests, spend time getting the most powerful equipment to break the game they should, also once the character is able to break the game, i going to design optional dungeons that try to break the player. a classic example of this is ff10 and the coliseum. you dont need to be that far progressed to clear the game, and if you do get all the best weapons and break damage numbers and get that reward for time investment, there is still yet even more challenging content to do. and im not trying to say you are wrong in wanting small number by any means. the original ff3 that was re-released for psp had small damage number in the range you talked about and its dam fun. i guess the thing im trying to explain is that there is value in letting players break the game near end game, and providing content once the game is broken to challenge the player even further regardless of where you set your ceiling at 999 or 9999.

 

[stupid enough to like FF13]

I honestly don't really care all that much. Regardless of the numbers used, most RPGs done by major developers have complex formulas that would take a lot of effort to calculate yourself.

Bigger numbers though have the advantage of being more satisfying in a way, at least to silly people like me. There's a certain joy in seeing my party members in Final Fantasy II slip over the 1000-HP hurdle after starting from merely 20-40 HP. Or when I first played Lufia: The Legend Returns—getting a super-powerful drop extremely early in the game is much more exciting when it's a 480-attack weapon compared to, say, an 80-attack weapon.

(Though, as I've come to discover in making a Lufia homage/parody, making the formulas for a game where most party members' end-game HP is in the mid-to-lower three-digits and your strongest fighters' end-game Attack can be significantly north of 500 is kinda difficult.)