No More Numbers.

[Axsyrus]

I was thinking, why do all RPG\'s always have to do everything in numbers?
HP is a certain number, so are Mana, Fatigue, Strenght, Agility etc. but why?

IRL you have most of these things too(except for magic stuff), I never heard anyone say, \"Oh look at me, I have 200 strenght and 150 Agility\"... So why not do it the same in the game as we do it in real live.

Now comes the question, how do we define our strenght etc. IRL. I will start with HP and I hope to cover every status number here.


HP
The name already starts out bad, \"Health Points\", points would mean number so that basicly already says you have to define your health in numbers or points. IRL however, you can only feel how badly hurt you are by having pain. You can\'t say something like \"quick bring me to a hospital, I only have 5 HP left!\". So why do this in an RPG, all it does is ruin the RP part IMHO, why not just make a bar, like there usually already is, but don\'t show any numbers with it. This way you can see how high/low your health is, but it\'s impossible to say \"I\'ve only got 5 HP left\", as there aren\'t \"points\" anymore this way, just a bar.

Mana
This one is a bit harder, as you don\'t have mana IRL. But you can still ask yourself how you would now how high/low your mana would be if you had it. Would it be numbers? I don\'t think so, it would be the same as with HP I think, you feel normal when you have full mana, but as you use it you start to feel empty or something. So my suggestion would be to do this the same way as I would handle HP, simply a bar, like you have now, but without numbers.

Fatigue
Firstly, yes, there will be fatigue(they wouldn\'t make a bar in the status window for it if they didn\'t want to implement it would they ). With this again, I hope you won\'t see any numbers, like \"you only have 3 fatigue points left, please take a nap\", but instead your character will just get slow, maybe even falls down when his fatigue is low, no need for a bar here IMHO (there are some other threads covering fatigue/sleep etc. there are nice ideas in there).



Attribute Points
The Attribute Points(strenght etc.) are a bit harder, since you define them in the character creation with numbers. However, I think that if you want the game more RP like, you should remove the numbers even there. I was thinking about some bar that you could just could drag up/down(or anything else, just not numbers). Once you would be playing, I think numbers should be completely removed too, so an NPC can\'t say \"you can\'t buy this weapon, your strenght isn\'t high enough\" or something. Instead you can buy the weapon, and you would drop it when you tried to equip it(or something like that).


Stenght
IRL you have strength without number too, so why not ingame, you just train it the normal way(fighting, even going to the gym maybe), and when you want to know how high your strenght is, you just have to try it out(just like IRL). so for example, you go to a gym and try to lift some weigths, if you can\'t lift, let\'s say, 50 kilos, than you know how powerful you are.

Endurance
To find out your endurance IRL, you can just go running with someone for a while, to say who gets tired first. So why not do this ingame, just \"duel\" someone to run with you, and if you last longer than him, you know who\'s got the most endurance.

Agility
Same thing as endurance and strength, you\'ve just got to try it out, duel someone to throw some stuff at you or something and then try to evade it, or just go fight some monsters. You don\'t need the numbers to know your agility.

Intelligence
Intelligence is harder, you can\'t just measure it like you measure strenght or endurance, you would have to take a test IRL. So unlike with the other stats, you do have to measure this stat with numbers. However, this doesn\'t mean you would always know these numbers, if you\'re interested in them, let your character make a test(the character makes the test, not the player!) and you\'ll get the score.

Will
Will is probably the hardest stat to measure. You never really say you have a certain amount of will IRL. I think the best solution for it would be some sort of test too.

Charisma
Like will, Charisma is very hard to define IRL. So a test of some sort would be best.


I hope I covered everything I wanted to cover here. again, the tests are done by the character, the player just sits in front of his screen doing nothing while the character does the test(some sort of reading/writing animation or whatever).

PS. just before I wanted to post this, I found a thread that Talad took from the old forums, you can find it here.
My idea is different as there won\'t be a way to see your status at all as you \"level up\", you\'ve got to visit the gym(or anything else) first. I think it would be a good idea to have some sort of note book for your character where you can write down your stats. This way you won\'t have to remember everything as the player.

EDIT: fixed the URL to talad\'s post, why did nobody tell me it was broken :\\

[Moogie]

Using numbers in RPGs is simple, quick, and easy.

Games arn\'t supposed to be as vague and unreadable as real life, and if they were, I would definitely not be a gamer.

[Xordan]

Yay, all hail the numberlessness!!!

I think this is a good idea. I\'m not too sure about the stats, as they are much harder to do, maybe if they started as numbers in the character creation screen, but when you go in game, they change so that you can\'t see what they are, but the server can tell. Maybe they could change into some sort of bar, with say a skill of 100 being at the top, and 0 at the bottom, but with no numbers in between. Then when u reach 100, it changes so 1000 is top, so you roughly what skill lvl u are, but u can\'t tell exactly. .... but for HP, MP, and FP, I see no problems, and would be very cool.

And a notebook?? I\'d like that ingame somewhere.... Would be very useful for jotting down notes.

Edit: booo moogie, u have to post a small post and ruin it all!!!  

[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.

[Kixie]

this could be cool. but it could also be bad. pretty much you would always be in the dark on what your good at... Have you ever played tiger woods PGA tour 2004? pretty cool how they measure stats and stuff. You have percents at how good you are at the skills. this could work for stats and skills. However I would like to level stats and skills differently and have them do different interfaces.

But this is a mmorpg. Theres a reason 9/10ths of them have stayed to the true measure of numbers. All the successfull ones use em. Although that really isnt a good reason, especially considering the game we are trying to build here, the numbers have survived this long and I\'m sure they are still here for some good reason so why not just keep em here? Do what you will developers, I\'ll still play.

[Axsyrus]

Yes, I was talking in extremes a bit here.

Just think about this the same as IRL, you won\'t see anyone telling you you can\'t buy something because you\'re not strong enough there(how would he know). And you never know exactly what your skills and strengths are. So I don\'t think it would be that bad, you still know aproximately how strong/skilled you are, just not enough anymore to go around shouting \"I have 50 strength woohoo\", wich I think is stupid anyways.

[Phinehas]

Well, Ax, in some ways you\'re right, but in some ways you\'re wrong. Trainers in gyms don\'t let you kill yourself trying to benchpress something that\'s way too heavy for you, etc. Also, remember, this IS a game, not real life, but in general, I agree with you, numbers are starting to annoy me.

[Saphire]

HP, Mana, and Stamina bars i can stand not seeing numbers - it\'s the stats i want to know all the time.

There could possibly be a number in brackets showing a certain amount of play between numbers IE: -/+4 would be the [common] max, because you havn\'t used a skill that uses that ability that much. If you\'ve never swung a long sword, how do you know how strong you are?

This would be where the -/+# would come in. The more you swing your sword, the closer that -/+ would get to 0. If you fail to practice that ability for awhile, the number would grow to a certain amount based on race. Races specializing in Strength will always have a good idea (-/+2) of where they stand, where as a race focusing on inteligence may not know how strong they are (-/+6) but know very well how Inteligent they are (-/+1)

[Kuiper7986]

I personally think this is a bad idea. I think you should be able to tell people how much HP and MP they have or I have. A bar is just too inaccurate for me, besides this is the \"magical world of Planeshift,\" not boring old life Planeshift.\"  Like it says when you exit the game.

[Deddarus]

also there are implications with lore skills

eg.. say there is a beastlore skill which can be used to determine the stats of a creature (this would be a usefull skill for monster hunters, animal trainers etc).. how, without a numerical representation of stats, would this work?

[Sunken]

I know... the best RPG must don\'t heave numbers but...
Without numbers, how do you create your character... just clicking in a race and conecting !?

witout numbers is more realistic, but with numbers is more game  :]
So you play your life or you play a game !?

[Axsyrus]

Originally posted by Phinehas
Well, Ax, in some ways you\'re right, but in some ways you\'re wrong. Trainers in gyms don\'t let you kill yourself trying to benchpress something that\'s way too heavy for you, etc. Also, remember, this IS a game, not real life, but in general, I agree with you, numbers are starting to annoy me.

I was talking about the example of the merchant NPC here, not about a trainer. like I said, if it\'s possible IRL, it would be possible ingame too. and I was still talking in extremes, not everything would have to be implemented immidiatly, first start with one stat, then anothor, just to test how it\'ll work.

Originally posted by Saphire
HP, Mana, and Stamina bars i can stand not seeing numbers - it\'s the stats i want to know all the time.

You do see these stats all the time, just not in a numerical representation. you would see a bar or something, if it would be full you would have full HP, if it would be empty you would have no HP. so you can still see if you can fight a monster without dieing after 1 hit, but you can\'t see it in numbers.

Originally posted by Kuiper7986
I personally think this is a bad idea. I think you should be able to tell people how much HP and MP they have or I have.

Why? this completely ruins the roleplay aspect of the game.. you just have to say something like \"I can lift 200 kilos in the gym\" or \"I can kill 5 trepors without even getting hurt\" now. doesn\'t sound bad to me at all.

Originally posted by Deddarus
eg.. say there is a beastlore skill which can be used to determine the stats of a creature (this would be a usefull skill for monster hunters, animal trainers etc).. how, without a numerical representation of stats, would this work?

for example it could tell you how many hits you\'d need to kill it, or how many hits it would take to kill you. You could also just see how strong he is compared to your stats, so \"this monster is smarter/stronger/faster than you\". It\'s really not that hard to replace stats with something more realistic.

Originally posted by Sunken
Without numbers, how do you create your character... just clicking in a race and conecting !?

Like I explained in my post, you would have several bars, just like you would have with numbers, but without numbers
for example: you\'d have one bar with the amount of points you can spend on your character, it\'s full on the start, then you add some points to other stats and the bar that was full becomes more empty. this is really the same as how it is now. you just don\'t see the numbers.

[elscouta]

i agree with Axsyrus. Bars are just good. For stats i\'d like a combination of a color and a word like:
Awful  -> Very bad -> Bad -> Average -> Good -> Very good -> Excellent ->Legendary -> Godly

This is enough precise and remove completely numbers. It can be even better if you had a kind of randomness so your feeling of your stats can vary depending of your humor and what you did in the last hour (if you beat a dragon, even if you are \'Excellent\', you\'ll feel \'Lengendary\')

[Kixie]

well there will always be numbers. the numbers will be in the code of the game. i mean there just has to be numbers somewhere. if you dont want to see them, just customize your client and add and take away what you will. basically your systems are just replacing numbers with different words, which really isnt replacing them at all. All i see is about 9 levels with your system elscouta and i hope your trying to make the game only have 9 levels. then it would take for ever to get to the next level. So your probably going to say \"well level level 1-10 is awfull, 10-20 is very bad, etc.\" well all that is doing is taking the numbers away and adding words. not replacing them. Bassicaly thats just masking them over. So i dont want it.

[elscouta]

if you had read my post, you\'ll have remarked that i also want that numbers the server send are not completely accurate. And about your point:
1/ you can\'t ask the players who want to shadow their numbers to recode their client.
2/ what Axsyrus and me want to avoid is people who say \'Hey, i\'m uber powerful, i have 247.2 in strengh while you have only 148.4\' and you can\'t recode others clients.