(OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?

[Cainehill]

I prefer not to have a clue - takes me back to the joyful old days, when I didn't have the faintest idea of whether a heavy crossbow or a wardog was any good, but I have the most vivid memory of opening fire on a hydra in my first ever game of AD&D, back in 80 or so.

Heh. Actually, I prefer to have a good idea of what things are supposed to do though. I mean - I read all the books cover to cover back then, and would lay awake at nights thinking of unconventional ways to use spells or items. Hard to do that if you don't have a good idea of what they're supposed to do. If things had had as ... vague a text description in RPGs as some things do in Dominions, it would have been difficult to rules lawyer my way to success and gory, er, glory.

Then again, in a computer game it's okay to have things a little less cut and dried, as long as you can still determine the deal via a reasonable amount of experimentation. This isn't always true of Dominions 2, in part because of the way the battles are resolved / shown.

[Crash]

For a game like this, I like some amount of vaguary or randomness thrown into things. It helps preserve the 'flavor' IMO and makes the game a little less like chess.

However, if stuff is too vague, it is hard to figure out what is broken balance wise and what isn't... so I can see the merits to something more concrete.

How's that for a preference

-Crash.

[Cainehill]

Crash said:
However, if stuff is too vague, it is hard to figure out what is broken balance wise and what isn't... so I can see the merits to something more concrete.

Exactly - without some decent amount of concrete information, it's also hard to say what's broken, period. The bugs / glitches in items and spells - for instance, the burning pearl granting full fire immunity when it shouldn't, wouldn't necessarily have been spotted without some level of concrete description.

[deccan]

PvK started a similar poll in the SEIV forums and there's been a bit more discussion there, so you might want to check it out.
(OT) Do you prefer to know game formulas?

Poll results are fairly similar though, as I'd expect them to be.

[Skolem]

PvK
could you please explain what you understand by complex, there could be formula that albeit long, are easy to understand because they make sense?

[Gandalf Parker]

I think this has alot to do with MultiPlay vs SoloPlay. The MP people tend to like some variety but only a little bit. Enough to affect a turn but not enough to decide a game. The SP folk are playing against the game itself so larger game-changing events are more acceptable.

I personally would like to see more variance in the formulas but I understand both sides. So what I would like to see in a game is that the formulas all have an random die-roll in every formula, but a game switch of some sort which can run the game with the randoms set from zero to devestating as a choice at game-start.

[PvK]

Skolem said:
PvK
could you please explain what you understand by complex, there could be formula that albeit long, are easy to understand because they make sense?

Yes, I meant complex but sense-making.

There are of course important different types of complexity. Here I was trying to reduce it to preference about complexity itself, and the theme I had in mind was the difference between being able to fairly easily completely understand the rules and be able to predict outcomes.

On one extreme, a player would prefer to know all the rules and the values of both sides, and for them to be simple enough to easily predict results.

On the other extreme, a player would prefer to not know the exact rules, nor the exact values even of his own assets, so that players need to accept much uncertainty, relate to what the things are supposed to represent, rather than their game values, and to learn from play how things work and which units have which qualities.

Thanks for the really interesting answers, all of you! I posted this in SE4 and also in the 82nd Airborne thread. The values have fluctuated a bit, but I think I see some interesting differences between the responses in each thread, which I think kind of make sense. For instance, although only a few people have voted so far in the 82nd thread, in that game there are very complex formulas which tend to be explained but usually not written out, and the values are detailed but not shown exactly - the game is all about dealing with uncertainty and complexity. In that poll, there was more in favor of those sides of the scales. In SE4, being more about technology and machines and being a bit simpler and clearer in the game mechanics than either 82nd or Dominions, I think there has been more of a preference for simplicity and open rules and values.

Of course, some game mechanics can seem to give the players full information, and yet be impossible to predict what will actually happen, because there will be too much going on during play. For example, even if we had the exact formula for how the missile weapons fly in Dominions II it would still be hard to predict the odds of a certain amount of damage from a barrage of 30 archers at various ranges, target densities, etc. It's only when the game mechanics not only involve clear formulas, but simple algorithms (like Mind Duel, or castle defense erosion in Dominions), that it becomes very easy to predict.

Anyway, very interesting - thanks again for your thoughts!

PvK

[Cohen]

I strongly prefer to know exact formulas, item values, and to have complex formulas.