No More Numbers.

[Dalec]

Originally posted by Axsyrus

Originally posted by Dalec
Hmm...It seems to me that if you have a weak/medium/strong stats measure, you are basically dealing with numbers anyway. They increase as your skill increases, so what is the difference? Also, how would you know your exact requirement to use a weapon? Just from vague words like, need to be strong? Doesn\'t sound like a good idea imo :/

Also, numbers are easier to deal with for people with lag. If you can see the number of hitpoints you have and how much dmg you are taking, you have a better idea of when to run. If it is just a bar, you have to hope for the best, and not really know if you are lagging or not.

Finally, how would you display special items, such as a Sword +1? Would you just call it, Sword with slightly more power?

Numbers are easy. Thats why Human\'s invtented them

for the [insert random number here]\'th time, MY SYSTEM IS NOT A DESCRIPTIVE SYSTEM.
I\'m not going to explain it all over again.. just read what I posted.

about your lag problems, I don\'t see how this could in any way be related in how it is shown, if you have lag your stats won\'t get updated so fast, no matter how they\'re displayed.

About your uber swords + 5, these kind of things don\'t fit in my ideas at all. What is a sword +5 anyways? if a sword would be stronger it could be enforced with steel or whatever, so that makes a \"sword enforced with steel\", maybe a it\'s long, but atleast it makes sense..

I think I was referring to someone else\'s post in here about the skill level, but I don\'t remember Anyway, for some reason it always seems to me that bars are updated less frequently then numbers...Maybe its just me, and if not I\'m sure the Dev\'s could come up with something. A sword +5 is an easy way of saying \'sword with enforced steel\', not to mention you can be more descriptive. I see your point, however. I still like the number system because I want to know point wise how much better one sword is going to be from another.
Example:
#\'s: Flaming Great Sword +2
       8-12dmg +2 fire dmg
       req: 19 str, 2H

No #:  Enforced Flaming Great Sword
           More powerful then a Flaming Great sword

I just find the first easier to work with. I like to know what I need and what it\'ll do, not be poking around hoping I can lift a sword. Just my thoughts and doesn\'t mean I\'m right

[Kixie]

Really I dont care which way it goes. Everyone who makes the  argument \"But i wanna see how much HP i have!\", it doesnt matter because your just checking what percent you have anyways. what im interested is how your going to describe stats.

The idea you have now just doesnt make sense and wouldnt work. All your doing is just masking the stats with words. And if you plan to replace the numbers, then its going to take years to get from your awful, to godly status with only 9 levels.

 It really should be easier to get to the maximum of your abilities with a weapon. I mean look at real life. It doesnt matter how good someone is with a katana or whatever. if someone takes the time of one year to fling the sword around and chop things and get a general feel for the sword, they will be just as good as the so called \"masters\" weapons are very easy to master. Hence why they have stayed alive so long.

Nothing is easier to learn than the sword, thats the beauty of it. BUT if your stronger, have more dexterity, then your are considered greater because of your speed and accuracy.

So bassically what im trying to say is the actually weapon skill should be very easy to max. However attributes like strength should be VERY hard to increase. Getting stronger in real life takes a several years of very hard training, every day to get considerably stronger. The same goes with speed and dexterity. All of those take many many years to get good at.

Now (takes deep breath) I REALLY like xandria\'s idea on using any weapon whenever. This is a very good idea. You can pick up a super awesome katana any time you feel like it. but chances are, if you just start wavin it around your going to decapitate someone (chances are yourself). But working you way up to a better weapon is very realistic, and most of all different from MMORPGs today.

Well thats just about it. However i do have some general ideas about making weapons that i wanna cover *makes new thread*

[Axsyrus]

Originally posted by Dalec
If numbers are being showed, you have a clear mathmatical understanding of where your health/mana or whatever is. With bar\'s, you\'re kind of guessing

and that\'s exactly what I\'m trying to acomplish here
You don\'t always have to go into a fight and think about maths.. just fight and do whatever looks right to you, and what does the most damage. not \"I only have 40 HP left, that monster\'s attack does 35 so if I attack him now, he will attack me, I can attack him again and then I\'ve killed him with 5 HP left \".. that\'s just not realistic, it should be a game, not one big calculation.

EDIT:

\"The idea you have now just doesnt make sense and wouldnt work. All your doing is just masking the stats with words.\" - I _really_ hope you\'re not talking about my ideas here  :rolleyes:

[Kixie]

Originally posted by Axsyrus
EDIT:

\"The idea you have now just doesnt make sense and wouldnt work. All your doing is just masking the stats with words.\" - I _really_ hope you\'re not talking about my ideas here  :rolleyes:

NO i am referin to escoulota\'s post (i cant spell it... )

gee dont get all in a wrap axsyrus. i only offend and critisize your posts to keep you on your feet ya know. if i dont, youll get lazy and post horrible ideas. its the circle of life here on the old forum board.

[Ghostslayer]

Originally posted by Axsyrus
lol, that completely makes Xandria\'s idea unnecesary. you should get to know if you can use something by trial and error. If it\'s to heavy, too bad.. go train some more.

It would be nice to try out weapons before you use them though, so you don\'t buy useless stuff all the time(just try to swing it a few times, things like that).

I don\'t see how this would make the idea unnecessary.  If you defeat an enemy, find some gigantic axe and your character has low str, just by picking it up, they would know that they would not be able to wield it properly.  (Ie. if you almost fall over trying to lift the thing, you wouldn\'t bring it to battle to try it out )

For further clarification on my earlier thought, it could be used only if your stats were significantly lower than what was necessary.  (If your stats are close, you could still use it well enough to try it out, then  you would know if it is a weapon for you.  It could also possibly be used if your stats were significantly higher than requirement, basically stating that you can easily use something that you just found.

[Xandria]

Wow, I didn\'t realize everyone agreed with me so well; I didn\'t get that much feedback the first time I posted it...

*Xandria spends 30 minutes (seriously) trying to find the place he originally posted it*

Well, I know I posted it somewhere...anyhow:

Originally posted by whemyfield
The idea you have now just doesnt make sense and wouldnt work. All your doing is just masking the stats with words. And if you plan to replace the numbers, then its going to take years to get from your awful, to godly status with only 9 levels.

But so what?  The whole idea of taking away the numbers is so that people don\'t track them.  The only reason for putting words in there is so that at least you have some general idea of where you stand as far as statistics.  Especially if you had multiple characters or something like that; it could get awefully confusing if there was no mention of your skills anywhere.

As far as HP/Mana bars, I think you could easily get away with not having numbers.  I mean IRL, you can easily assess what kind of shape you\'re in and how bad your wounds are.  But what you can\'t do is, \"well I have about 50 hp left, so I should be able to take out those two enemies that only deal 5 damage per hit.\"  Remember, the only reason these numbers have been present in RPGs in the past is because with P&P you had to work with numbers in order for it to work.  So let the computer mess with the numbers and allow the gamers to have fun

And to refine my idea a bit:

There should probably be a *bare* minimum requirement for weapon checking.  As in \"you are not strong enough to wield the sword\" sort of message.  But again, bare minimum will most likely be completely unacceptable as far as combat goes.  But it would be kinda nice if when you were in a shop, you could have an option to \"try out\" a weapon.  Basically you would receive a ghosted weapon or something in your inventory, and you could equip it and use some sort of \'test\' skill that simply waves the sword around in the air (or some cool animation like that ) and you could get an idea for how effective it would be.  If you brought a friend to the store with you, perhaps you could even do a quick parry match to try it out  At which point, you can either buy the weapon, or walk away from the merchant/shop and the ghosted weapon would simply disappear.

The possibilities are endless, but I really do think it would be a cool system to implement  

[Axsyrus]

Originally posted by whemyfield

Originally posted by Axsyrus
EDIT:

\"The idea you have now just doesnt make sense and wouldnt work. All your doing is just masking the stats with words.\" - I _really_ hope you\'re not talking about my ideas here  :rolleyes:

NO i am referin to escoulota\'s post (i cant spell it... )

then please say you\'re refering to his post.. he hasn\'t posted for 2 days in this thread and I\'m supposed to make a wild guess who you\'re criticing..?

[Kixie]

Originally posted by Axsyrus
then please say you\'re refering to his post.. he hasn\'t posted for 2 days in this thread and I\'m supposed to make a wild guess who you\'re criticing..?

yes. yes you should.

[paxx]

This was considered at one point, later we figured it would be impossible to grant a level of progression and improvement without numbers changing on regular intervals.


Overall this is a very nice idea and can be very well implemented, but won?t be any time soon.

[Draklar]

ok, I didn\'t read all those posts besides first one, I don\'t really care what someone said against it, I\'m here to state my opinion

so:
from my experiance in roleplaying, I\'d say getting rid of numbers gives a very nice feeling. I like it when roleplaying is just about \"flowing\" with your character and not playing with the numbers.
And I\'d prefer to see playing like \"when I get stronger I\'ll go fight that monster\" instead of \"when I get lvl 50 in swords skill I\'ll go fight that monster\"
It gives you more touch with your char, which is good, isn\'t it?
and Planeshift is supposed to be oryginal and this idea isn\'t that much used in other games, so cheers!

[sashok]

Originally posted by Phinehas
I agree, although not quite so extreme. The only thing that stuck out to me this time is that it would be ok if an NPC player instead of saying, \"You can\'t buy that, you have to be level 45 strength\" They can just say, \"You can\'t buy that, as you\'re not strong enough to wield it.\" Anyway, I think this should be a compromise, some numbers are necessary in a game, but Axsyrus is right in saying that it does get very dull and annoying to always be level # this or HP # that. I think bars are a good idea.

that\'s about how I feel.  The NPC should not say, \"you gotta have level 45 str, 34 agil, etc etc\", they have to say \"You must get stronger, blabla\" , but at the same time there has to be some kind of indication in parenthasys (lvl 45 str, 34 agil required)

But I still would want to stick with numbers, it\'s much eaiser to communicate with friends, merchants, etc etc.  
for ex.  You are near death, well if you say \"I am near death\", nobody really knows how near to death you are, it\'s vague.  But if you say, \"I\'m down to 5 hp\" it\'s clear and fast, not vague.


   I think this system is really not needed for RP in Planeshift, but if it were implemented I would give it a try

[Kixie]

this brings up another point and that is people are going to use numbers no matter what. if is only a bar they will say \"i only have like 4% left!\" its just easier. I would love no numbers but, this is an MMORPG so there are somethings you just gotta keep.

But the merchant idea would be good and not to hard. Although the newbs would hate not knowing how much strength to get. although this shouldnt happen to often. maybe the merchant should say \"maybe this weapon isnt for you...\" because your dexterity is low. I would like to be able to equip any weapon, any time like xandria said because this hasnt been done and is quite annoying to have to have an item you cant use because of \"imaginary\" rules.

[sashok]

well I personally believe the merchant should and will sell your anything you like even if you can\'t use it .  hey, as long as you pay for it.  But don\'t complain for not looking at prerequisites of the weapon you are holding.  For example, it\'s a magic weapon that requires knowledge of spell to operate or knowlege of wielding two handed sword, or much simpler scenario, JUST NOT for your race .  once you buy it, you buy it, but you either drop it right away or the magical sword for example doesn\'t glow like it should because the knowledge is missing

[Vengeance]

Most tabletop RPers and longtime computer RPGers like all the numbers.  They like the stats, rolls, dice, etc.  It is part of the enjoyment.

Note that with PAWS skinning capability you can make a skin that doesn\'t show the numbers, though.

- Venge

[Xandria]

Now I remember the big point why I came up with my idea for no weapon req\'s:

How many people have played any other form of RPG(Hack \'n Slash or whatnot) and have at one point in the higher levels of their character where they got to a point that in order to use the next greatest weapon had to spend SEVERAL DAYS leveling up because they were only off by *ONE* skill/attribute point?

*Xandria raises his hand*

Now maybe that\'ll get a few more people on my side

I\'d still like to hear what the devs think of this idea, because I happen to think it could be the greatest thing to happen to computer RPG\'s since...the pseudo-random number generator.

Yes I know people are attached to their numbers, but I just really think that it could make a huge difference in the entire atmosphere of the game if people could just forget about stats and skills, and just have fun RP\'ing.  In such a world, I might not ever think of any other game again