(OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

When playing a strategy game such as this one, do you prefer to know exactly what the rules, values, and formulas are that determine what happens during play?

Some players prefer to know what the formulas are, often so they can strategize against the game mechanics, and figure out the exact odds of success of failure in certain cases.

Some other players prefer not to know the exact formulas, for various reasons such as so that the mystery and illusion of reality Last longer, and/or so that players can't game the system and skill requires learning from experience how well different things work.

I'm also curious how many players prefer simple formulas to complex formulas for game mechanics. Do you prefer the movement system to be something like Movement = speed, or would you prefer something more like Movement = Inertia + Force(Friction)/(Vehicle.Mass + Crew.Mass + Cargo.Mass + Fuel.Mass) * Behavior(Driver.Skill, Driver.Caution, Traffic.Laws, Traffic.Density) * Terrain Modifiers * Weather Modifiers?

Similarly, some players may prefer to see actual data values for their units, equipment, terrain, and so on, so they can compare and choose the best of a type. Other players may prefer to be given vague and/or inaccurate estimates or descriptions, so there is uncertainty about how things will actually perform.

I'm posting this poll in each of several game forums, to try to get a feel for the opinions of the fans of different game types. If you like, you could take the poll in other games' forums. If you do, please answer what you would prefer for a game like the forum's game (which might or might not affect different people's answers. Someone might like simple game mechanics for one genre, but complex mechanics for another genre.)

PvK

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

Well, the first few months I play a new game, I don't need to know all the formulas; I would like to just have fun and not go into all the details. Once I'm familiar with the game and played it several times through, I'd like to know all the formulas so I can optimize and tinker with designs and strategies.

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

Good exactly what I predicted. I fit right into the SE community lol.

Brian

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

To me, lack of detail is associated with poor balancing.

The best possible balance is achieved when you can specify clearly and precisely what things do, and where players can and do win with widely differing choices.

Now, a lack of detail in items that you can't reproduce yet is quite reasonable.
However anything you do produce should have all the statistics you care to know about it. We aren't producing stone spears here, and if the factory can't tell me and guarantee to fine tolerances all the details, they won't be around very long.
Anything from fines and the loss of the build contract, to a "visit" from the elite stormtroopers, depending on your current government type.

Granted, giving me all the details without a summary is also a bad idea. Give me the range, damage, etc and any variance on each instead of making me keep a calculator beside my mouse http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

-----

In the big picture, lack of knowledge is fleeting. If you try to hide the details, players will slowly figure it out, and there will be a huge experience penalty to new players, regardless of their skill.

To level the playing field, either give everybody full information, or destroy the information advantage of the old hands by randomizing the tech tree and component values/strengths http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

I voted with the majority (and I voted in the one you made in the Dom2 board too), but I think the exception is if the ambiguity is part of the game design. I think that MOO3's original idea of Imperial Focus Points was quite cool, but it would have been a good rationale to prevent the player from knowing the exact details of some things unless he spent resources to know them.

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

I've never given thought to such things as game formulas I think, however I am the sort of person who designs ships so they are built with as near as possible the number of resources usable each turn (but that's just good thinking)

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

axis and allies is a classic example of what your posting pvk.

vs.

Reality.

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

Do you prefer to know game formulas?

Yes.

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

As long as the game lets you know the details of the ambiguity. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Don't say "DUC: does about 50 damage", when you could say "DUC: does 40-55 damage" (with linear/gaussian/etc probability curve)

-----

Focus points...
So many ways for that to go wrong.

You need to have both competent AIs, and AIs that can take orders without going insane.
You need to let them remember a priority list of your orders, and have them ask for clarification when things conflict.
And perhaps most importantly they need to be able to justify their actions to the player, and then adjust their priorities and values based on what the player orders.

Perhaps the focus points really should be used in a different way...
let the player adjust the sliders and generic orders all he wants: "Tell the governor of Arcturus that my flagship had better be done this month, or he'll be drinking his beer from the bottom of the lava mine on Hades II"

Instead, use the points for bringing in ministers for a personal tribute/talking-to/torture session. IE: give your AI's priorities and values a direct tweak so they will do better next time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

You also need to let the player remain in control of everything... If they player orders something specific, it must remain that way.
If the AI wants to change something that the player did, they need to ask/beg first. And SAY WHY. If the player says no, then the AI had better increase its percieved value of leaving the setting as is. Ask again only if it is really important, and redouble the threshold every time the user says no.

-----

The question of Why would make a huge difference:
Consider if you had personally ordered a training facility built in a chokepoint system to help boost the troops as they arrived.

"Governor Joe wants permission to scrap your training facility at Algaran I"
Heck, no! I built that for a reason, dummy!
...(Two Months Later)...
"Governor Joe REALLY wants permission to scrap your training facility at Algaran I"
What? You again!? Grr, now I've gotta go and look at everything to see what's got you so upset. 50 lashes for wasting my time!

-or-

"Governor Joe wants to scrap your training facility at Algaran I because a higher-level training facility is under construction (2 months) near the resupply depot on Algaran II (Y/N)".
Ah, excellent work. Have a cookie!

Note that this isn't going to be easy.
The AI has to pick out just the new and/or major influencing factors in its decision, and decide which of those to present to the player in a sentence or two.
And you can't just try to maximize the number of "yes" responses. The minion needs to mention the big negative influences too, or it will be seen as manipulative and untrustworthy. A fair and balanced summary of why in a sentence or two is very hard.
Allowing a small chart/graphic/icon-map might help.

Hmm, this seems to have wandered really far off-topic.

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

Wandering in an interesting direction, though, SJ, and I can still see the trail from where you left the path.

PvK

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

Sure, and it wouldn't be for a pure strategy game of course, rather more like a new kind of strategy + RPG hybrid, in which governors et al. have "personalities" which determine how they behave as so forth.

Bruce Geryk's essay Master of Orion 3 rebuttal really says what I think on the subject.

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

I think exact values and formulas should be a research item in itself. when people made handguns at first they knew they could kill people, when people make handguns now, they know the approximate speed at which the bullet leaves the gun, how much of an impact force it has, and how much it'll travel in distance.

Also the formulas are like the formulas of physics. hence I'd keep the formulas hidden until you have researched physics.

Offcourse in the game you could write them down once you had them researched and never need em again. you could prevent this by making a semirandom universial constant. say, gravity is 9.8 m/s² today on earth, and another game its 11,4 m/s² slight differences, which still make it realistic, but make your previously noted formulas off by quite a margein.

Would be great imho, would also make the theorethical sciences more than just tools to unlock the others.

Because the exact knowledge of the formulas gives you a more detailed view of the game and helps you to build better designs, i think it's something you should earn and spend resources on.

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

I prefere to explore (myself, or along with community) a _good_ game for its underlying mechanism (like formulas, algorithms), rather than to read this kind of info from manual. It reminds research work and it has an indisputable virtue - pleasure of gaining new knowledge.
Of course if game is bad, I have no interest in such research.

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

That is what MOO3 was supposed to be... 5X, with the 5th X being "experience." Of course, due to the usual corporate marketing snafus, the game concept was trashed to hell before it was ever released...

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

SJ said:

The question of Why would make a huge difference:
Consider if you had personally ordered a training facility built in a chokepoint system to help boost the troops as they arrived.

"Governor Joe wants permission to scrap your training facility at Algaran I"
Heck, no! I built that for a reason, dummy!
...(Two Months Later)...
"Governor Joe REALLY wants permission to scrap your training facility at Algaran I"
What? You again!? Grr, now I've gotta go and look at everything to see what's got you so upset. 50 lashes for wasting my time!

-or-

"Governor Joe wants to scrap your training facility at Algaran I because a higher-level training facility is under construction (2 months) near the resupply depot on Algaran II (Y/N)".
Ah, excellent work. Have a cookie!


Hahahaha!!!! Great stuff SJ! Almost fell from my chair. Hahahaha!!!! LOL!!!!

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

Although I voted for knowing exact values, I voted for this game only. I believe that this is consistent with the flavor of how I would want to play this game.

I could envision another game where I would want vagueness if it is consistent with the flavor of that game. A good example are First Person Shooters (which I play occasionally). I really don't want to know exactly how many hitpoints the various baddies have nor how much damage the Rocket Launcher delivers with a direct hit and/or splash damage. I'd much rather figure out by playing that some guys will be blown to smithereens with one hit and other bad guys are best dealt with by increasing the distance between them and my high-tailing rear end.

Bottom line for me is that it matters on the kind of game.

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

Well no, you don't. But there are numbers in FPS. For example, you don't know exactly how much damage a rocket launcher will do, but you know a rocket launcher in the face will kill them. So, in a FPS, there is an incredibly simplified style of playing. This is different for different games of course, especially with more modern games that have hitboxes where shooting them in the head does more damage than in the foot. But generally, you know that a sniper rifle hit to the head will kill, you know that six pistol shots will kill somebody, etc. Its just not quantified, but qualified when you see the person hit the deck =D.

Brian

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

As counterpoint, there have been cases where people were shot several times in the head, didn't die, and in fact got up a bit later and started fighting again. Not often though. Even now that we know the exact (advertized) muzzle velocity of a weapon, in reality, we don't know the actual chances of what will happen when it gets fired. Not that many of us want that in a FPS game. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

In fact, each of us want different things from different games, but it's interesting to see a bunch of others' thoughts.

boran_blok, it was fun to read your ideas about having to discover the rules during play - I'd had some similar thoughts myself.

Thanks for the interesting thoughts and comments, everyone!

PvK

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

I prefer to not know formulas. If I know too many, I feel like it's the numbers playing instead of me. Then again, maybe that's just being ot lazy to figure out what they are. If I DO end up knowing some formulas, I play via calculator. Either way tho, I feel there must be enough beyond my grasp.

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

I'll agree with Slick about the character of the game determining whether I give a fig about formulas. To be honest, I have calculated stuff a handful of times in SE IV, gotten the wrong answer and then determined that I was doing the math wrong, not the machine adding mysterious modifiers. Talk about embarassing.

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

I do not need the exact formula or some complex damage table.

However I would like more complete discriptions of how some things work together.

For example, we are told that the Phase Polaron Beam goes through regular shields. The phase shield will stop the Phase polaron beam.
But we are not told how the phased shield works verses regular beams.
It seems logical that it would work better than a regular shield but how to tell?

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

Not necessarily, the Phased Polaron Beam could exploit a weakness in the normal sheilds that the 'phased sheilds' do not exhibit. This doesn't have to lead to increased conventional strength.

Example: The phased sheilds expand the 'spectrum' covered by the sheild. Any attack made on the conventional 'bands' are absorbed with the same degradation in sheild performance as the 'phased polaron' 'bands'.

Example: The phased sheild generator components are actually multiple different types of generator, each with its own specific defensive responsibility, sharing common support components. Thus the strain on the support facilities depletes the usefulness equally (I realise this is not the most brilliant of arrangements for a sheilding system, but it makes the point.)


Besides, after reading this, I feel that phased sheilds act a bit strangely when their name is taken into consideration. They could be more accuratly considered multi phase sheilds

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

Interesting read, so far.

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

Thanks for posting the link. That was an excellent article. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

Don't read it as "shield which is phased", but rather as "shield for phased stuff" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: (OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?
 

Yeah... SE4 doesn't pretend to have any physics or pseudo-physics behind it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif