Visual immersion in RPG UIs - should RPGs hide numbers?

[thesheeep]

I don't want to have to look at a fucking pipboy to equip fuckling inventory though, bloody retarded larping shit. F1&2 got it better wi a simple inventory button.

But the Fallout1&2 inventory sucked balls, too.
Funny how having crappy inventory is one of the few things Bethesda managed to keep around from the good Fallout games

Again you seem to be missing what I'm saying. I don't want to see this at all times:

Saving Throw vs. Wand: 6
Saving Throw vs. Shit:6
Saving Throw vs. Whatever:8
Saving Throw vs. Yeah:9
Saving Throw vs. Okay:6
Saving Throw vs. Yea-yea! (Ice Cube):11
Resistance to Random Shit: 2.3%
Resitsance to Resistance Magic: 4.7%
Reistance to Seeing Unnecessary Stats on Char Sheet: 2.1%

I'd rather see (hypothetical examples not based on any real ruleset):

vs. Wand - Great
vs. Shit - Great
vs. Okay - Great
vs. Whatever - Good
vs. Yeah - Average
vs. Yea-Yea! - Poor

And if you hover over any of those items, you should see:

vs. Wand - Great *HOVER OVER* - Ability Score: 6. You can withstand some of the more sophisticated Wands in The Realms, but should be wary of Wizards wielding unknown magical devices.

With that you introduce the need to hover your mouse over things like crazy to find out the actual numbers. It would result in a worse UI. And there are people who WANT their numbers (the majority of RPG players, I'd argue).
I for one would immediately ask "so is Wand/Shit/Okay the same value"? And then I'd have to go hover-crazy just to get some answers. And when I want to do some actual math, I'd have to do it all again...
Immediate turn-off, UIs must be optimized to require less clicking/mouse movement instead of more.

Once you understand the underlying rules, numbers are simply more informative and more clear than words (or graphical displays).
Words/graphs are always kinda vague, unable to serve as a real point of reference, only really useful as long as you don't understand the underlying rules and to give a rough overview.
So to serve both noobs and pros, having both is the optimal solution:
vs. Wand - 6 - Great (or some other format or graphical display instead of the word "great")

I'm all for having an additional indicator of how good something is besides the number (for the reasons above).
But completely removing numbers from display doesn't make sense as it will never be as accurate.

If an alternative display is there, then people with their irrational fear of numbers can use only that and ignore the numbers. Though that of course begs the question what the hell they want with heavily stat-based games...
But if the mere existence of numbers on a character sheet is already too much for a person, then that person is simply an idiot and not really worthy of more consideration by the dev.

You could even go so far to develop a "simple" and "advanced" character sheet, but I doubt any dev would like to invest the time for such a silly feature.

 

[Grauken]

I always thought simple numbers are idiot-proof

boy was I wrong about that

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

I always thought simple numbers are idiot-proof

boy was I wrong about that

Irony at its finest.

I'm all for having an additional indicator of how good something is besides the number (for the reasons above).
But completely removing numbers from display doesn't make sense as it will never be as accurate.

Being vague or slightly hiding less important information in favor of looking better is the idea. What benefit is there to seeing Saving Throw vs. Garbage = 2 over having a text rating saying "Good"? Is that information you simply can't live without seeing a number for it at all times?

To me it's less vital to know the exact score. Playing BG:EE now and the char sheet is cluttered and hard to navigate. Numbers, numbers everywhere.

 

[Storyfag]

Only if the Awesome Button makes the game nerdier, more hardcore CRPG and pen-and-paper style, then sure, more Awesome Buttons please.

Numbers are nerdy and very much pen-and-paper style. At least on your character sheet. For expanded descriptions, wrestle the GM for the manual

Again you seem to be missing what I'm saying.

Again you seem to be missing what I'm saying. What you want is pretty fucking far from the typical PnP experience.

 

[thesheeep]

Being vague or slightly hiding less important information in favor of looking better is the idea. What benefit is there to seeing Saving Throw vs. Garbage = 2 over having a text rating saying "Good"? Is that information you simply can't live without seeing a number for it at all times?

Trying to hide numbers from players just means treating them like idiots.
Just think it through. If you only had vague nonsense in the character sheet, how would you show damage numbers and logs, then?
Imagine you hitting an enemy, and a text pops up above it, saying "some!" "a lot!" "almost nothing!".

Or do you want combat logs that look like this:

Wolf hits for some damage and you have bad nature resistance so you receive some damage. You still have some health left.
You slash at the wolf and miss by a small margin as he has high dodge and you have high sword skill.
Spider hits for a lot of damage and you have great poison resistance so you receive some damage. You still have some health left.
Rat hits for little damage and you have bad nature resistance so you receive little damage. You still have some health left.
You use healing spell. Your healing is okay, so you receive some health. You still have some health left.

I must admit, I find the idea kinda hilarious and would love to see it in a comedic game, but I do hope you see the problem.
Imagine looking at your online banking and all it shows to you is "you have some money left", requiring you to do some additional action to see how much it actually is.

Vagueness is useless to you as a player.*
Having less information means your ability to plan an act is hampered, leading to inferior results.
I would never want less (and that includes less accurate) information if I can have more without needing to invest more time.
In addition to that, numbers are short, thus fast to check when you need to. Vague descriptions just waste your time.
Of course, if a game is piss easy and doesn't require you to understand anything, it doesn't matter, but then that is a bad game (or you play on "too easy").

* There are games that are vague on purpose, because they include the "figuring it out" as part of the whole experience. That is valid, but also disliked by a lot of people.

To me it's less vital to know the exact score. Playing BG:EE now and the char sheet is cluttered and hard to navigate.

Well, that's because the character sheets in IE games have always been shit. It's just a list of "name : value" pairs, and not even sorted well and a big picture in the middle.
Thankfully, the games are so simple that I don't think I ever needed to look at it much except for checking weapon proficiency...
Didn't you even have to scroll to get to that information?

But that's not a problem of showing numbers, it is one of how they are organized and presented.
When you look at a character sheet in AoD, for example, it is much more clear. Of course it, too, "suffers" from the need to RTFM before understanding the relations. And it is all slammed into one screen instead of separating it, so I don't think there would even be any space to show some additional indicators.

Still, once you start increasing values during character generation, things become much more clear.
There is no such thing as not requiring players to use their brain in a heavily stat-based game. Nor should there be such a thing.

I rather have a number-cluttered character screen than that Skyrim-abomination of perk trees explaining nothing sufficiently and forcing me to navigate through some pseudo-3D to do anything.
It looks nice - and is entirely useless and on top of that wastes time with that navigation.
In contrast to that, going to trainers has always been my favourite in more immersive games. Like in Morrowind, PB games or M&M, it really adds a great deal of integrity to the world.
Of course, in dungeon crawlers that doesn't really matter (or isn't logically possible within the setting).

 

[Shadenuat]

- Meta information (companion approval) should be hidden
- Some to most checks should be obscured, but should give you an idea how hard they are in the context of the setting or when applicable to your character ([DEX (Easy)])
- Character building & combat are big part of the game and should be as clear as possible. By hiding what things actually do, you are just showing the player that you are not capable of making things like feats look appealing and useful, or misguide player into believing that his choices matter (like that 2% speed perk in this thread)

 

[mondblut]

Or do you want combat logs that look like this:

Wolf hits for some damage and you have bad nature resistance so you receive some damage. You still have some health left.
You slash at the wolf and miss by a small margin as he has high dodge and you have high sword skill.
Spider hits for a lot of damage and you have great poison resistance so you receive some damage. You still have some health left.
Rat hits for little damage and you have bad nature resistance so you receive little damage. You still have some health left.
You use healing spell. Your healing is okay, so you receive some health. You still have some health left.

I must admit, I find the idea kinda hilarious and would love to see it in a comedic game, but I do hope you see the problem.

URW is not exactly comedic, but its combat logs aren't very informative either.

 

[Elex]

Second, as much as I love and respect OG CRPGs, that UI can be greatly improved. Too many percentages, too many numbers that amount to near-meaninglessness to look at. The skill percentages are hideous to look at. I.e. Who cares if my Gambling skill is 27%? That's not rewarding nor interesting in any sense. If you raise it 3% on level up, ooh, now it's 30%! Boring as hell and not rewarding.

Someone does not understand percentages, I guess. Maths ees ebulz? If 27% Gambling skill is not interesting to you, it merely means you do not have sufficient mental qualities to comprehend that it translates into "usccessful in slightly more than 1 in 4 gambling attempts". But that is your problem, not that of people.

ok and what mean 156% in scienze? or 245% in barter?

 

[mondblut]

This thread: someone plays a modern popamole action game for the first time, goes all "sheeit, muh immershun, that's what that RPG thingy was always supposed to be! Maths were technical limitation".

 

[Black Angel]

This thread should be enough to make a whole new Actually Retarded™ tag for fluent.

But really, he should've gotten it when he proclaims how difficult it is to install mods for PS:T, which literally requires only a few clicks of buttons on keyboard and mouse.

 

[thesheeep]

Or do you want combat logs that look like this:

Wolf hits for some damage and you have bad nature resistance so you receive some damage. You still have some health left.
You slash at the wolf and miss by a small margin as he has high dodge and you have high sword skill.
Spider hits for a lot of damage and you have great poison resistance so you receive some damage. You still have some health left.
Rat hits for little damage and you have bad nature resistance so you receive little damage. You still have some health left.
You use healing spell. Your healing is okay, so you receive some health. You still have some health left.

I must admit, I find the idea kinda hilarious and would love to see it in a comedic game, but I do hope you see the problem.

URW is not exactly comedic, but its combat logs aren't very informative either.

Yeah, the combat logs are pretty damn useless.
But URW is one of those games that are partly vague on purpose (you aren't supposed to know why exactly you missed, for example) and finding things out is part of the fun.
It is definitely not to spare players those nasty, horrible single-to-double-digit numbers.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

This is plenty immersive for me.

 

[mondblut]

This is plenty immersive for me.

I dunno, that "fair" and "very good" crap and especially something about curly hair (wtf?) is pretty immersion-breaking.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

This is plenty immersive for me.

I dunno, that "fair" and "very good" crap and especially something about curly hair (wtf?) is pretty immersion-breaking.

 

[mondblut]

This is plenty immersive for me.

I dunno, that "fair" and "very good" crap and especially something about curly hair (wtf?) is pretty immersion-breaking.

At least she blows 2 per turn.

 

[FeelTheRads]

This thread: someone plays a modern popamole action game for the first time, goes all "sheeit, muh immershun, that's what that RPG thingy was always supposed to be! Maths were technical limitation".

Yep. It's almost always some newfag who thinks he's got the greatest and the most original idea on how to fix all those old shitty games which invariably is turning it into the newshit.

Revisionist newfags, fuck, there's very few things more disgusting than them.