Would you play this? (poll)

An RPG that hides all the stats and all of the math. It gives no tutorial or instructions. You're basically just expected to figure it out.

Of course the game would need SOME cues to give the player a sense of direction. More damage done to an enemy causes more blood to spurt out. Enemies slump more and more the less life they have. Your character changes in appearance as their stats change, such as growing muscles.

And of course the game would use logical relations. Hammers have a wider damage spread than daggers. Blades are better at critical hits, while blunt weapons knock people around.

But even the map and quest log are gone. You're actually expected to break out a pen and paper to jot them down.

Of course, the internet being a thing players would most likely start a wiki to try to reverse engineer what's going on, but I think that would be part of the fun.

What do you think, would you play this?

What would you do different?

 

Sound a little bit like the older Elder scroll games. Sure they had you using points of reference in the game to find stuff instead of way markers.
Personally i wouldnt playa game like that. Mainly because im a lazy gamer..
but im sure there are pleanty of people who would love a more realistic hardcore roleplay style game like that.
See it all the time in moddign where people tweak the game to make it more life like and remove all the gaming crutches we are used to.

 

Depends how you implement it, the premise sounds good, and could help set some form of "dark soul" difficulty punishing rpg.

 

The only things I'd change would be to give the player character a compass and a watch to calculate their travel time and direction. Apart from that, it sounds good.

 

Some of these concepts remind me of Dwarf Fortress. One example being the lack of a quest log. Dwarf Fortress instead has a rumor system and you have to determine where the correct destination is based on those rumors.

 

How about JOURNEY (Jenova Chen of ThatGameCompany)? Feedback is important. However you give it, it's a pre-requisite for learning, for connecting actions to outcomes, and for flow. In journey, you have a neck-scarf that shows your health. It's the only stat.

Gigi

PS - Quest logs help to create clear goals (another pre-req of flow).

 

How would the player know it's a critical hit, or that hammers hammers have a wider damage spread? Visual and aural feedback?

(For @Not_Sure) How would you provide feedback in place of a quest log? NPCs constantly reminding you that they need tasks done and/or frequent gameplay events? (If dragons are constantly attacking, causing the villagers to flee, the player will eventually get the idea that he should stop the dragons.) Sandbox world with no quests?

The concept appeals to me, but story, setting, writing, and implementation would be bigger factors in deciding whether to play the game or not.

 

Feedback is important but it doesn't have to be in numbers. You could use qualitative feedback instead. For role players, this is ideal.

 

I agree. It's much more immersive, too. I think that's the gist of Not_Sure's original post. In other words, how appealing is a game that provides feedback within the game world (blood spurts, body postures, etc.) rather than externally through stats, HUDs, overlay text windows, etc. Clearly it's appealing enough to make games like Journey successful. Can you sustain that style through a deeper, more-complicated RPG? I think that's a tough question.

 

I'm thinking audio cues for crits. Like different sound effects.

As for quests, I think that I would make it so that every quest you encounter is taken up automatically and then unfolds as you further your encounter, and eventually reach a conclusion.

The quests could be a grab bag of explicit quests: "Could you take care of these bandits? I'll pay you handsomely!" To the vague: "Does anyone know what happened with Greg? Haven't seen him in days..."

 

I've actually been thinking about something like this recently (in the vein of a pokemon game). The problem is games don't handle qualitative properties well, or maybe traditional systems don't handle them well.

As far as combat goes, Dwarf fortress and Rimworld are probably the best examples where vital, life-sustaining organs having been irreparably damaged (i.e. the person's brain is now missing) or blood loss is what kills people. In Rimworld, the main ranged weapon stats are accuracy, range, and rate of fire, and it makes since to have these stats available when in RL you can find these sorts of stats of a firearm. The way Dwarf fortress handles weapons is probably not ideal, but at least it's intuitive. Edged weapons rely on the materials' ability to create a sharp edge, making steel the best of the real world materials, while blunt weapons rely on the materials' weight (explicitly it's density I think), making silver the best of the materials you can normally make a weapon out of. None of that in DF is conveyed outright to the player.

Arguably you lose a lot of the choice and decision making that people come to expect out of an RPG. Any choice the player makes should just be preference. If the player chooses a weapon, it should be because it fits their play style, not because it's secretly, statistically superior. That might just be the most important. The stats shouldn't be secret, they should be irrelevant. Anything special about a weapon should either be easily intuited by look and use or come with enough flavor text that screams "IT'S SPECIAL."

 

Sounds horrible. I did some old RPGs where you had to do a hand drawn map. It was very easy to mess up. And of course regular map making techniques like triangulation were unreliable due to depth culling and LOD and the like.

Breaking weapons right down to straight dps numbers becomes boring. But so does no numbers at all. You would expect an experience swordsman to be able to judge a good weapon, by it's feel and heft and balance. I shouldn't have to go kill 10 goblins to figure out my new sword isn't as sharp as my old one. I can just test the edge with a finger. Numbers simulate this fighters intuition.

 

Obviously that would be something I would want to avoid.

I'm thinking more or less having visual cues that aren't immediately understood, but you can get a general idea.

So a weapon would have a couple things that you can determin from it. The weapon type (Axe, Mace, Dagger) which would be the model, the material (Iron, Steel, Mithril) which would be the material, and the quality (crude, sturdy, fine) which would be shown as a overlay of scruffs that is less apparent with higher quality, and finally you could imply special stats or effects with jewels, glows, or particals.

So from those four thing you would need to learn how they differ and what it means to the weapon. Daggers are fast and have high crits, while hammers knock people around.

Then the material would alter it. Steel is lighter that iron so it's better for blades, but iron's weight adds to strength bonuses.

Of course this means that the game wouldn't fair well as a Diablo clone, so no going from ~60 DPS to ~5,000,000,000 DPS.

 

But your fingers give you "dull" or "sharp", not 1 or 100. Games can be made without numbers but they need something to replace them. Players are simply used to having the numbers. Oddly enough, my fans make me promise all the time to never add numbers. lol Numbers are there, of course, but they want them hidden.

 

In the context of this game idea, I could envision the player avatar examining the blade and smiling, maybe doing a couple graceful test swings, if it's good sword. If it's a bad sword, the avatar could look at it with a scowl, shaking his head. For me, that's as good as displaying a text window that says "50 DPS, +2 To Hit" but more immersive.

 

I agree. And for some of us, it is also more satisfying. My favorite part is that the players won't be saying "I can sell you a sword that is a 99!"

 

First issue is this makes weapon choice one dimensional. Second issue is this means that players now need to discern where on the spectrum from crying in poverty to majestic boner the weapon happens to be on (because how can anyone really figure out which one is the infinity +1 sword without being at full mast?).

Just because there are options, that doesn't mean there is an actual choice. If you can definitively say that this is the best sword, there isn't a choice so don't pretend like there actually is one.

The ideal case here is you hide stats because they aren't needed. I get the feeling though that the intent is to hide stats to be obscure, which I'm gonna say means you're just being a dick.

 

No....we are hiding numbers to improve immersion in a game for role players. Anyone who thinks we are "being a dick" won't want to play the game anyway. I am sure others have reasons for doing so that improve their game. You could have said exactly what you meant.....which is probably, "I feel that hiding numbers is a choice made by the developers to punish the players." Instead, you insulted us with language.

I get your point..but that is because your players care about numbers. It might be hard to believe, but not all do and in fact, among our fan base, the vast majority find the lack of numbers as one of our greatest features. Gamers are as different as developers are, you know.

 

It needn't be one-dimensional. If flames run down the blade of a magic sword, you might assume it's particularly good against ice creatures but not as good against lava creatures. And through experience, you might find that some items work better than others in particular situations, rather than reading a box of text that says, "+5 vs. ice creatures". In a way, this is more realistic than mere published numbers.

What @Teila said.

 

Wasn't the early Minecraft just what you describe?

 

Right now I see three options: A) show stats and give clear definitions of it's abilities, B) give enough detail that I can vaguely sues out it's capabilities intuitively, or C) force me to waste my time to assess it in some sort of AB testing (made worse if I have to buy of craft it). If all I'm left with is option C, then yes you are just being a dick if you give me hundreds of weapons to choose from.

Do we really want to get into realism though? If we were talking about firearms, we could find useful stats like rate of fire and effective range (or the more technically accurate stats of muzzle velocity and aerodynamic properties).

As far as swords historically go, the thing that determines 95% of the quality was the quality of its steel (and by extension it's processing), and the main thing that determined was how likely the sword was to shatter or become bent. What determined the sword's deadliness was the user and his style (which is in part dependent on the type of sword being used). Even then there are still usable stats, mostly the weight, length, and point of balance, it's just that those are more for a person's preferences. At the end of the day that is kind of the point of stats, to make choices to fit your preferences.

 

No, it means she found a small niche of players who are not satisfied by the typical drivel being produced by so many game developers today. The concept is not too dissimilar to that of a dwarf-loving community who has the motto of "Losing is Fun" and insist that you haven't really played till you've lost your first fort.

If you only cater to the typical gamer you may have more customers, but you'll miss out on a potential user base that can be quite sizeable.

 

Boy do I feel misunderstood today. I suppose my stats are pretty obscured though. Wait... does that mean I'm a dick?

Without stats, you fundamentally lose the ability to see differences in scale. You can't and shouldn't be expected to make decisions that you don't have any capacity to understand. That is unless you expect the entire playerbase to have at least a bachelor's in statistics. I suppose someone has to cater to them, but I've never taken that crowd to be the type to take their work home with them.

It just makes much more sense to work with difference in kind, so that whatever the actual stats are becomes irrelevant. Here's a sword to lope people's heads off. Here's a wand to turn things into popsicles. Here's a knife that starts wildfires. Here's a pick that causes acid to erupt from the ground... Do I care what any of their stats are? Nope.

For those who don't get the terminology:

 

There are alternative ways to make the differences apparent without outright giving the numbers. Skyrim had a way to view the item itself in your inventory. Now imagine taking that concept and allowing you to check a sword to see if it still had an edge, if the blade had cracks in it, etc.

 

Yeah, I have to say that making items multi-dimensional is a must to have any point in obscuring the stats in the first place. And not just in terms of "fire swords" and the like.

I'm thinking more along the lines of giving bladed and piercing weapons a static damage value and AGL increases the rate of attack while blunt weapons are dependent on STR to increase the raw damage. This would mean that the blunt weapons work indiscriminately against armor, while bladed weapons would need to score criticals to by-pass it. Sort of like the DT/DR system in Fallout.

Then to layer on top of that, weapons would not just work as a means to dish out damage, but also crowd control. Since stats would be hidden, enemies would need to be fairly predictable in their abilities and not just scale up in level indefinitely. That means that instead of making a goblin level 1, then 2, then 3 and so on the combat would focus more on the effects of fighting multiple enemies. Hammers in turn would make that easier to do, while blades are better for taking out one really tough guy.

So like a hammer would swing wildly and knock the enemies around, lowering their AC and staggering them, slowing their attacks. Meanwhile, the dagger would be perfect for running into a solo enemy and tearing him apart, then getting away when your AC drops due to the attack. So, Hammers --> crowds. Daggers --> solo bosses.

Or something...

All the while every weapon type has its own quirks that make it unique. Spears are good against mounted enemies and have more range. Foils are good at scoring criticals. Crossbows are good for one good armor piercing shot. Bows are good at rapid shots. Maces are good at breaking bones. Wands are good against slimes.

And on and on...

 

I guess my take on it is that ideally a RPG would have enough effects in play that you automatically know what's going on without having to check the numbers. So you focus on playing your role. Checking the numbers would be mainly to confirm what your senses tell you.

Looking at it from the other end, though ... putting the numbers up saves you - the dev - from having to engineer a lot of effects. Going to the extreme on this ... AD&D was generally played by the numbers, and any effects were in your imagination.

Also, in a FX based RPG you'd lose some precision in the mechanics, in that a player is unlikely to notice the difference between a +3 flaming sword and a +4 flaming sword judging only by their effect, but the difference between a normal sword and a flaming sword ought to stand out.

 

Well I think you hit the nail on the head with the role playing, but I still think there would be fun in discovering what works where and giving raw stats kills that fun.

 

You simply need to find alternative ways to represent the differences. You could use aspects such as the workmanship quality, the materials used to make it, and the style of attack used.

 

You know, the one thing that would be hard to get around would be having a menu for abilities.

Like how could you use a specific spell without having a menu for it?

Voice commands?

 

I said "YES" (I'd play it) before I even finished your first paragraph.

Please, please, please, for those players like me, who like to try and take on a "larger" enemy, make it so that we can run away... far, far, far away, if we take on the commander of the army by accident, no realizing it was him.. in plain clothes... off duty. ...

Can't wait to see more! (or less, in this case)

 

Well thanks, but this is more like a down the road project. Not a right now project.

 

Not necessarily. I've played a game where the numbers were hidden, and when you had an ability that was said to be stronger and which had more impressive animations and effects but looked to be roughly as effective as a lesser power, you'd wonder if it was really worth it (or even if it was bugged). It can be hard to judge by eyeball the effect of a single +1 (or even greater values, especially if there is a random damage element).

On the other hand, if you're trying to get your players continually excited about gaining new abilities, with numbers you can micromanage expectations by raising abilities by tiny percentages and players will still be pleased, because even if they can't see any difference in effectiveness, they do see the number going up.

I'm not necessarily advocating for numbers ... but they can have a role in providing player satisfaction.

I also have played a game where loot was unimportant, and that was great. Eventually it changed though, and became all about loot, and that was all right as well, but it did turn the focus away from playing a casual, fun character to playing a fully decked out character.

 

I think so too.

In my experience with tabletop gaming, there are two kinds of players when it comes to stats. There is what we cal the min-max player whose emphasis is on stats. They love to make the best character and have the best stuff. The numbers are their friends. They spend hours rolling up a character and in game, they love to shop for better stuff or to get the stuff with the highest stats when the group finds loot drops.

Then there is the other type of player, and I have known an equal number of these types. They ROLE up a character, meaning they create the archetype for their character, a description, and a back story first and then put in the stats to match their vision of the character. Their actions in the game reflect "what would my character do" not "what can I do best based on the numbers I used". They might take the bow rather than the fancy flaming sword because their character wouldn't like the sword. They might wear a dark robe rather than flashy armor, even if it makes them more vulnerable because that is the trademark of their character.

In MMO's, I have seen the same. Some players create new characters over and over until they get the stats they want. Or they go to a website where it tells them how to make the BEST character. They want the weapons with the highest numbers, the best armor according to stats, etc. Others, role play their character, and she wears what she would wear in their vision of her and sometimes, she doesn't even care about armor or weapons.

Both types can coexist in a game but they have vastly different playing styles. The Min-Maxers talk about stats all the time....use numbers constantly in their conversations in-game. They barter by yelling out the stats of their weapons. They ask people their stats. It is how they play..the numbers matter. Winning means having the best stats, the best numbers. For role players, this breaks immersion as much as someone talking about football. While I do hear my friends in real life talk about the gas mileage of their car or the brand of their clothing, I rarely here them attach numbers to their abilities or the quality of the food they eat.

In a single player game, I think it would be refreshing to have that same immersive feeling. It rarely happens but if one can do it and do it well, it might be quite popular.

Sadly, no matter how much I talk to people about this stuff, there are always a few that simply cannot understand. They see "gaming" about the numbers. This is why so many role players are tired of the current selections.

 

Well ... maybe it is okay to say those are two sides of a spectrum for this aspect of player definition? Because I think a lot of people fall into the middle ground and can be swayed one way or the other by how the game is structured.

Going all FX-based is nice and simple for the player. It's like playing at recess when you're in 2nd grade. You just play.

Going number-based can be more like a competitive sport, even if there's no PvP.

If you have both available, you are free to play in the unencumbered first mode if you wish, and you'd only check the numbers if you felt something might not be working as advertised.

 

True..in a single player RPG. But in an MMO where you have player vs player and folks "talk about the numbers" it is a little different.

Lots of people fit in the middle and they will try both sorts of games and decide what they like best. Or they will play both games and see that they can like both...and play what they want, when they want.

Just playing can be a lot of fun. That is pretty much how I play games regardless. I have never been a number person and I spend a lot less time worrying about my character's stats and a lot more time enjoying my time in the game. If I am irritated about something, it is usually the min-max guy across the table who is spending 15 minutes trying to decide what skill or weapon he should use based on the numbers.

 

So munchkin or fashionista?

Lets actually get at the root issue here. The real divide is between players who are facing a problem and those who aren't. The more a player faces a problem, the player becomes more likely to seek out any advantage they can. Since most RPG systems favor depth in progression rather than breadth, it means most games force people to give up on their billowing cloak of broodishness +2 for actual armor.

Look at the Souls games, excuse me, the Fashion Souls games. Even though there are stats, most players don't care what they wear because it's all equally crappy. Occasionally you worry about resistances if you're heading into Blighttown, but otherwise no one cares if you're going around as a sexy, naked, undead husk.

 

It definitely takes a different approach in the development process. You cannot simply build a normal game with the numbers replaced for an alternative system. You have to design the entire project around the concept.

I'm not positive you could have both in the same game without weakening one of the approaches or spending considerable time fully implementing them. I would prefer to focus on one system than try to force both.

If you intend to use the same established framework to build multiple games it may be worthwhile to make both.

 

it would be nice to add this logic to the crafting.
you craft a weapon then u have to test it.
would take a full physics engine to pay, so guess is still to early

 

You are right, most gamers do not care. But if the game is created for a specific audience that does care, then it is fine to design fashion into the game, or anything else that "most" players don't care about.

The big problem with games today is that they are created for "most" players leaving out niche groups. And people like you think that is okay and even more desirable. You gotta wonder if there are entire groups of gamers who sit out "most" games because they are not what they want to play. Today, we define a successful game as one that most people play but that is because "most" defines only people who play the sort of traditional rpg with numbers and all that jazz.

Maybe...a lot of people want something different? Isn't that why we are here?

 

I would say that game is a mainstream success. Quite frankly the actual metric of success should be defined by business terms, so I have no idea why you think it has to do with being popular. Better yet, I'm not sure how stats are required to be cool. Last I checked Minecraft doesn't have any stats pages, and neither do Zelda or Mario games. Those aren't traditional RPGs though, but let me blow your mind here while I point out that traditional RPGs are totally a niche.

 

A niche is just a small subset so RPGs are niches of video games but one can also have a niche rpg. I doubt very much that you can blow my mind, Rocko. I know better than to take what you say that seriously.

 

I could see having the stats hidden being fun - but there would need to be a good balance in all the weapons. Like the highest end stuff is like 10's across its invisible stats, and it decreases down to 1 for like, idk wooden weapons. This way it would depend more on the player developing a "stronger" character to do the most damage, rather than the scale of weapon effectiveness being huge (think how beginner weapons in elder scrolls games do very little damage while high level ones are ridiculous) and in turn it would seem more realistic to me.

Think of it like this: a ten year old with the finest steel katana ever made is a less deadly opponent than Goliath with a shabby iron sword... so in reality it requires you to strengthen your character more to be more of a threat. And you might battle a character who is so strong that the blows are very dangerous regardless of the quality of his sword, as long as it doesn't break in the process!

I guess what I'm saying is there should only be minor increases in effectiveness based on a different melee weapon, and instead the system would focus on character development.

 

I have been guilty of running a game with obscure stats through JMP to expose the underlying model. There is a certain segment of the population who will have both the capacity and inclination to extract every number from your game. These will then be posted on the game wiki and thus defeat the point of obscuring the stats. Some min max players will always find a way.

At the same time it's an incredibly satisfying feeling to be playing a game and think "I'm the only one that knows the real numbers". This niche might be small, but it's real.

 

The question to pose there is, how much of an advantage does it give? If it's fractionally (say 10 to 30%) better than average, then that more than likely keeps competition in the realm of skill. If the advantage ends up being unilaterally several times better, you end up with something unbalanced and exploited. I suppose the greater design question here is whether the average player should be able to learn the proper way to play the game while playing the game.

Another case to look at are IV's and EV's in pokemon which determine stat growth. They have been secret stats that are cared about mostly in competitive play, and even then it's heavily dependent on the pokemon in question. It's just as easy though for a battle to come down to type advantages, movesets, and the RNG god.

 

What would an end-game player do? As you say, the min-maxers or OCD's or completion oriented folks will be driven by new stats and improving their pixelated skill. And yes, there is a whole other group of players for whom this doesn't really matter. Maybe they want to beat levels in Candy Crush or chat it up on Facebook. Maybe they like cosplay or hanging with friends. I suspect this second group is an even LARGER part of the population, and at the same time, I expect this second group is unlikely to spend significant time playing your game.

I have followed your progress for a LONG time and find your work very intriguing. So, it is with sincere apologies that I offer a rather blunt conclusion. It sounds like a fun game design with an extremely risky business model.

Gigi

 

It's funny, when I read the original post, I assumed a single-player RPG like The Witcher or Mass Effect, where you play once to the end of the story and that's it -- in other words, no end-game playing. I think the OP's idea would work fine in that kind of game, sort of like an RPG adventure game.

 

No doubt it is risky but we have done some research and believe there is a market, although to be honest, making money is not our motivation at this point. Our biggest reason for doing this is because we have a story to tell. There are other motivations that come from experiences in the past but we do not expect to get rich off of this.

There is no end game...it is role playing, telling stories, player-driven stories, and open game world. Role players do not need us to give them an "end game". They will create their own. :

 

I'm mistaken! I remembered you were part of a larger team and so I wrongly assumed there was a financial component as well. My apologies and good luck!

Gigi

 

Hmmm, you must have confused me with someone else. Our team is larger than some but still small and mostly consists of artists and programmers in my family and a few I worked with on previous games. Financial considerations depend entirely on the interest in our game. I worked a very large team that had a similar design and we had 100k forum users so the market is there, as I said so who knows.

We are fortunate enough, with Unity's help, to be able to create our game without external funds for now and test to see if the market still exists. Regardless, Notch didn't think his game would catch on and it did so I think our game not being motivated by financial success does not make us any less viable or any less important, at least to our followers.