Full Game Mechanic Transparency. Why not?

[10d6]

So lately I've been playing the Exile and Avernum titles, and one thing I noticed is how only a part of the mechanics are shown. Like half of a formula is shown, the other half is pretty vague.

 

For example Skill A gives 5% per point to accuracy, while the description for Skill B says "it boosts your accuracy", Boosts? Boosts by what? 50% per point? 1% per point?

 

Why go halfway? Not to overload the player with too much information? Then why not stuff it into the helpfiles, like in the appendices.

 

I don't see this task taking a huge amount of time, and it's not like the guy doing this is someone tracing the game code using a de-assembler, watching as how the assembly code goes step by step.

 

I've seen mechanics discussion on various forums (like GameFAQs) for example, and the actual "meat" of the content, or the formulas, only take a few minutes to write down. Some game mechanics guides are 1MB long but this is because the guy writing it tries to make it as simple as possible. Like making a 2 sentence description of each variable in the formula. The actual formula however is just a single straight line. So it can't be that heavy on text if you just want to provide the facts.

 

I mean anyone who's really interested in the mechanics of the game would probably figure out the formula on their own with just a simple legend like D = Dexterity S = Strength.

 

And god knows that there are a good number of RPG players who like knowing the mechanical side of things. I mean for god sakes WoW is filled to the brim with munchkins. I understand that sometimes munchkins ruin the fun for "casuals" or pure "role"players but who exactly is the game being ruined for in a single player RPG? Casual and pure "role"players can simply ignore the appendix, or the portion of the website that says "GAME MECHANICS" or "FORMULAS AND STATS"

 

While the munchkins and people who enjoy a little bit of min maxing would be pleased for those really few lines of code detailing how much more damage they'll be getting per point in Strength.

[Lilith]

I'd try to justify the way things are but the truth is it's mostly just because Jeff is super lazy about writing documentation. Us powergamers have pretty much worked out how most of the in-game formulas work by now, though; there's a decent knowledge base in the game-specific forums.

[10d6]

It doesn't have to be the old games, well those would be nice, but the new ones. A6 and G5. Or how about starting it with the new game series?

 

Like I said what min maxers are looking for (at least the ones I've run into) aren't Math Book examples where there's a whole paragraph detailing every single variable. I'm pretty happy with something like

 

A = X*5 + Y*5 + D*40 - E*3

 

You don't even need to give a super detailed legend, one word for each variable. Min maxers can probably figure out what each of those variables mean.

 

Some game manuals (like say that Baldur's Gate) where the 5 table(?, can't remember exactly) appendix detailing certain stat bonuses can be miniaturized into a single table.

 

Or take the page on Attack Rating from Diablo 2's guide on B.Net. There's like 10 paragraphs but the formula itself is just 3 lines I think and can be compressed to 1 line with the legend taking up just 4 lines. Hell he can even omit pressing the Enter Key if that's too much of a hassle. Make the legend one long line, no spaces even. I really doubt someone who wants to know the mechanics will care about how pretty or how much "fluff" there is.

 

Copy pasting the line(s) of code relating to that would still be understandable. I mean some of the munchkins are the people who sludge through Assembly Code to get the formula. A line from a high level programming language is at least 10 times easier to understand.

[Lilith]

You are to some extent preaching to the choir here. I'm not saying it's not a good idea, but Jeff's beta testers have bugged him about this since time immemorial and things haven't improved much yet.

[10d6]

Ah well, I hope it's because he's too lazy to create documentation and thinks munchkins expect the a certain amount of of fluff for their mechanics as a D&D Handbook. No siree, munchkins would be perfectly happy even if 19/20ths of the material were ripped out and the remaining 1/20th condensed into 1/5th it's size and then probably what's left could be even reduced to half by just using abbreviations. And that would still have more fluff than needed.

 

We only need the barebones formulas. No flavor text. At least I'm happy with just that.

[Slawbug]

Yeah, that's not gonna happen. Personally, I would be happy if the little one sentence descriptions of traits and skills and abilities in the game were all ACCURATE -- there have been a few misleading errors in almost every game after Nethergate.

 

OTOH, there are hardly any CRPGs that actually have the "full game mechanic transparency" you're asking for. In fact, outside of Angband and a handful of other open source games, I'm not sure I can think of any. I guess games that draw 100% of their mechanics from D&D would be an exception, but I think that's a different category entirely.

[Randomizer]

Avadon will be the first game in years where Jeff won't be able to completely cut and paste the manual from a previous game. I'm sure he will try and that some material will be wrong because he decides to change the game after he writes the manual.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Avadon will be the first game in years where Jeff won't be able to completely cut and paste the manual from a previous game. I'm sure he will try and that some material will be wrong because he decides to change the game after he writes the manual.

Doubtful. Some of the spells look identical (Charm, Daze, etc.), and he might just copypaste the code from another of his games. Then he'd copy the manual information, and we could be stuck with the same wrong answers.

[Slawbug]

Yeah, unfortunately you're wrong about that Randomizer. If you look at Geneforge 1 and Avernum 4, both games that started a new engine for the series, a lot of trait/stat/spell descriptions were copied directly from earlier games.

[Niemand]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Avadon will be the first game in years where Jeff won't be able to completely cut and paste the manual from a previous game. I'm sure he will try and that some material will be wrong because he decides to change the game after he writes the manual.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Jeff

*slow claps*

[Celtic Minstrel]

Though, it's quite possible that that dialog is never actually displayed in Avernum 3.

[Triumph]

Does Jeff know you playtester-types make fun of him like this?

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel

Though, it's quite possible that that dialog is never actually displayed in Avernum 3.

It looks to be in a readme somewhere- I highly doubt that most players ever see it.

[Slawbug]

If you think that's bad, Avernum 3 for Mac actually has some window resources in it that are clearly labelled as Exile 2.

 

It's also possible that the dialog is displayed, and just doesn't use the default text.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Possible, sure, but rather unlikely in my opinion.

[Alorael at Large]

All Jeffs games give a little thank-you when you register. One Avernum (4, probably?) instead thanked the player for registering the most recently released Geneforge.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't even know how that happens. He would have guessed that Jeff repurposed the Geneforge engine to Avernum only once, but he actually recalls the message popping up in A5.

[Dikiyoba]

Quote:

—Alorael, who doesn't even know how that happens. He would have guessed that Jeff repurposed the Geneforge engine to Avernum only once, but he actually recalls the message popping up in A5.

Maybe it didn't get caught the first time and so appears in both A4 and A5?

Come to think of it, Dikiyoba might remember that message, which means it must be in A5 (or even A6) because Dikiyoba didn't ever register A4.

[Slawbug]

There are definitely some engine pieces that go straight from A4 to A5, but others that went from G4 to A5. In particular, G4 introduced the greatly improved encumbrance system, and A5 used the G4 encumbrance system and not the A4 one. So it's done piecewise, somehow.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Triumph

Does Jeff know you playtester-types make fun of him like this?

Beta testers have their own game, it's called Drive the Game Designer Crazy. You make a party using strange builds to see how to break the game in the shortest amount of time.

The worst part about beta testing is seeing reported mistakes appear in the released version because someone forgot to fix them.

[10d6]

"Just because other games don't do it" is a pretty poor excuse. Plus, let's not forget that the mother of all RPGs has it's mechanics all laid out in the open (okay granted that mechanical transparency is a requirement for tabletop RPGs)

 

And let's look at major RPG developers, Blizzard is pretty open with a good portion of the mechanics. Even if they don't reveal everything, they at the least don't give half done formulas. You fully can calculate Accuracy and Damage.

 

Going back to D&D, let's look at the Infinity Engine games. They could have just said "Look at a D&D manual if you want to know the numbers" but they copied all the spell description with numbers into the game. Then took a step further and put it into a manual.

 

There's even THAC0 feedback in the game console. That shows the actual roll. That kind of detail could have been skipped, but they went and did it anyway.

 

Some developers if they don't show the numbers are kind enough to work together with the game guide makers. I've read a couple of game guides where you have a staff member from the development team working together with the guide writers.

[Ephesos]

Personally, what I find even funnier than the "wrong game" moments are the bits of the license that have to do with aeronautics software.

[Dintiradan]

That's really common, as it turns out. For instance, you'll find a lot of licenses prohibit the software being used in nuclear reactors. There's covering your bases, and then there's really being paranoid.

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: 10d6

"Just because other games don't do it" is a pretty poor excuse. Plus, let's not forget that the mother of all RPGs has it's mechanics all laid out in the open (okay granted that mechanical transparency is a requirement for tabletop RPGs)

Yeah, this is a poor comparison. Let's look at different CRPGs that, much as D&D is for tabletop RPGs, could be considered "the mother of all CRPGs." Adventure? dnd? oubliette? Rogue? Mechanics are not transparent. A few generations down... Ultima? Wizardry? Mechanics are not transparent (less opaque, maybe, in Wizardry). Console RPG mamas: Dragon Quest? Final Fantasy? Definitely not transparent. See a pattern?

In fact pretty much the ONLY computer RPGs with transparent mechanics are the ones whose mechanics were lifted straight from D&D... and whose mechanics therefore were (1) already known, and (2) already written up! Is this a coincidence? No. Another exception would be Angband... which is open source, and the mechanics spoilers were written by fans, not developers. So that's not really an exception, except that the fan-made explanations became packaged with the software itself.

Quote:

Some developers if they don't show the numbers are kind enough to work together with the game guide makers. I've read a couple of game guides where you have a staff member from the development team working together with the guide writers.

I assume you are talking here about commercially available guides produced by companies that make commercial gaming guides. Well, that's great, but it's not due to being "kind enough," it's due to the company the puts the guide out paying the developer company in some way.

[10d6]

Even if we chalk up all the transparency in the Infinity Engine games to just copy pasting a D&D manual, that still doesn't account for the console THAC0 display. That wasn't needed, even if you make the argument that it was leftover debug code, they provided an option to switch it on and off in the menu.

 

And seeing how powerful the console commands were of the BG games, I doubt that THAC0 feedback if it were a debug function was something they had a menu for. And even if they did, it still made it into the final menu.

 

And even if they did copy paste, they still did it, twice. They didn't need to make a manual that had the spell list. But they did it anyway.

 

And for god sakes... Black Isle had it easy because all they did was copy paste and other developers didn't have that luxury? You have the game code to copy paste from. Game Mechanic transparency doesn't need "Shoots a ball of fire that flies through the air and then explodes in a blah blah blah"

 

It can as simple as [CHARLEVEL]*rnd(1,6) As I said it doesn't have to be already existing games, it can be done for a new game. One that has yet to be coded, just in case the excuse of "Need to search through the game code" is going to be used.

 

Also Planescape Torment had stat values that went way over normal AD&D limits. Sure maybe, just maybe there was some AD&D ruleset that they copied that from but I seriously doubt it.

 

And what about Blizzard? Blizzard didn't just do this for RPGs, the Starcraft Manual had values for Damage Types and Armor. Where did they copy paste that from?

 

If Blizzard is the exception, they're a pretty damn fine one and why not emulate what they're doing? And this isn't about having awesome graphics, awesome sounds, awesome voice acting, or a gigantic crapload of lore. It's just copy pasting bits and pieces of the game code into a text pad. It doesn't even need to be dressed up the way Blizzard does it (would be nice but totally unecessary)

 

That's it.

 

We could go on and on about how Developer A had it "easy" other Developers didn't, but what exactly is being asked for here? Just a copy paste of the accuracy formula. If that task is monumental and requires a load of effort then forgive me assuming all it took were a couple of keystrokes.

[Lilith]

Look, if you want a definitive answer email Jeff about it, since he doesn't often read this forum. If you want to commiserate with random internet people who can't do anything to bring about the changes you want, keep posting here. All we can tell you is that this idea gets floated by someone every couple of months and nothing is ever, ever done about it.

[VCH]

wow guys, this is like so lame and boring, wow

[waterplant]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Look, if you want a definitive answer email Jeff about it, since he doesn't often read this forum. If you want to commiserate with random internet people who can't do anything to bring about the changes you want, keep posting here. All we can tell you is that this idea gets floated by someone every couple of months and nothing is ever, ever done about it.

It's not so much about the solution as the discussion.

The incompleteness of SW's games adds to the organic/homemade feel, I reckon. I don't mind it too much.

[Thaluikhain]

Yeah, not knowing exaclty how things works keeps an element of mystery.

 

And...I like all the weird and wacky stuff. Loads of spells in the Exile games that don't really work and you'll *almost* never use, but it's still cool to have them.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Originally Posted By: Thaluikhain

Loads of spells in the Exile games that don't really work and you'll *almost* never use, but it's still cool to have them.

Uh, I'm pretty sure they all work. They may not be useful, sure.

[Slawbug]

There were at least one or two that didn't work as all, IIRC, and definitely a few others that didn't seem to work as intended or had practically no effect.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

Rogue? Mechanics are not transparent.

This is a bad example. In rogue, the mechanics were obfuscated to the point where you had no idea what was going on. You couldn't even see monster HP! Of course, this was intentional. That way, you'd think about "should I rink another hit on the umber hulk and possibly die, or run away?", so you'd have to make these tough decisions instead of saying "Well, he has 4 HP left and my two-handed word does 4d4 +2 damage, so I'm guaranteed a kill." The very fact that the mechanics are obscure is a good reason for the fun of the game, it's not that they were obscured for some other reason, like the designers being lazy).

[Slawbug]

That's a confusing suggestion. First of all, Rogue isn't the granddaddy of every CRPG ever. Rogue is predated by similar, non-random games like pedit5, orthanc, dnd, oubliette, etc. Rogue's innovation was the random dungeon generation -- something that largely does not exist outside of the roguelike genre (or cross-genre games like Diablo). It's true that Rogue was very widely played, and very influential, but most CRPGs owe far more to Ultima, to Wizardry, to Dungeons of Daggorath and Dungeon Master, to Wolfenstein 3D, to DikuMUD and the Shadow of Yserbius.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

That's a confusing suggestion. First of all, Rogue isn't the granddaddy of every CRPG ever. Rogue is predated by similar, non-random games like pedit5, orthanc, dnd, oubliette, etc. Rogue's innovation was the random dungeon generation -- something that largely does not exist outside of the roguelike genre (or cross-genre games like Diablo). It's true that Rogue was very widely played, and very influential, but most CRPGs owe far more to Ultima, to Wizardry, to Dungeons of Daggorath and Dungeon Master, to Wolfenstein 3D, to DikuMUD and the Shadow of Yserbius.

Yes, that was why I edited out that bit seconds after I posted and ~10 minutes before you did, because after reading it, I realized it made no sense.

EDIT: Sometimes I have ADD and write half a post, then go off and do something(check email/read comics/etc), and then come back and finish it. This may result in disjointed posts that seem to argue against one another. Most of the time, I notice this and go back and edit, but sometimes it escapes me. So now you know.

[Slawbug]

Yeah, you aren't the only one who does that...

[Alorael at Large]

Black Isle included the attack rolls because part of their intended customer base was familiar with THAC0 and attack rolls. Players would be happy to see those rolls because it would tie Baldur's Gate to their tabletop hobby. The random number generation for, say, Avernum would be less meaningful because percentile dice have less emotional resonance than d20s.

 

Blizzard likes revealing formulas. Nobody is arguing that they don't, and nobody is arguing that they're not successful. They're just not in a whole lot of company.

 

—Alorael, who wonders if part of the reason Jeff doesn't reveal the calculations is for false difficulty. It's easier and more tempting to game the numbers if you know the numbers, and then balance goes to hell.