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General discussionYour thoughts on stat inflation?(97 posts)(97 posts)
(97 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted August 30, 2022
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Aenvar: I prefer reasonable stats but, no matter how crazy the numbers are, I believe your eyes get used to it after a while... So it doesn't bother me that much.
Yees, they do get used to it; in some incremental games you learn to just look at the exponent.

Then again, in Reinhrdt's House I recently went from e300+ gold to what looked like a smaller amount, "e200+" (with extra digits before the last e), so I was a bit worried before I noticed the second e. There's a big difference between 10^300, an extremely large number, and 10^10^300, a much bigger number than that.

Imagine a game where the numbers reach a point where the number of "10^" in the value is what you're looking at.

Then again, as has been mentioned, such big numbers can have strange consequences, and do not work at all with RPG mechanics.
Posted August 30, 2022
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Tokyo_Bunny_8990: I am for bosses having more HP or the game wont be fun. Its the same with action games, bosses having tons more HP than the player so you need to dodge and slash them hundreds of times while they only need 3 to get you to critical HP. In return, you can heal.
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Cavalary: Do they really need so much more HP for that though? How about mixing it with high defenses that make them take little damage when they are hit, and evasion that makes it hard to hit them in the first place, and/or regeneration that means that the effective damage is what you manage to deal per unit of time above how much they regenerate?
Just piling more HP is the cheap and easy way out.
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AustereDreamX: My apologies, maybe what I said was a bit vague. What I meant is currency revaluation, for example changing 1,000,000,000 "old dollars" into 1 "new dollar". I'm pretty sure that's basically what the government of my country did in 1989.

I'm definitely no expert though so correct me if I'm wrong.
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Cavalary: Yeah, you're referring to redenomination. Over here it happened in 2005, 1 "new" Leu = 10000 "old" Lei, both being accepted in parallel for a time, and as the old ones got to banks they were withdrawn from circulation and replaced with new ones.
This concept of redenominaton might help also if the game designer really really want gigantic numbers of hp and damage. The interface can help. Just like, imagine that regular damage appears in white, but then you have blue, red, etc. Imagine you have then bronze, silver and golden damage. Like, n bronze damage means n millions/trillions/whatever, but silver is showing the exponent of the damage in exponential notation. And golden shows, say, the exponent of the exponent of the damage, in exponential notation.

Not a fan of these high numbers in rpg, but if someone really wants that, this could be a way to show an evolution, by allowing the interface to make it clearer. So high numbers are there, just they are not shown to the player raw.
Post edited August 30, 2022 by Carradice
Posted August 30, 2022
Smaller numbers are easier to read, especially in games that don't have other visual aids like a health bar. Smaller numbers also makes each point of increase more noticeable.

However I can understand the use of large numbers in some situations. Regalia- Of Men And Monarchs uses large numbers to diminish the impact of decimals, especially from small percentage increases.
Post edited August 30, 2022 by SpaceMadness
Posted August 30, 2022
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rtcvb32: So... doubles?
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dtgreene: But then you don't get to see a gain of 1 point anymore (at least once the numbers get to around 2^53 or so).
If your stats/damage/anything is that big the loss of 1 would be insignificant. But floats/doubles are intended for approximations for scientific purposes, not exact numbers when they start getting so big/small.
Posted August 30, 2022
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dtgreene: Thing is, in battles, damage numbers are a way to see what's going on, and when you take those away, it becomes not so easy.

In Final Fantasy 4, the fact that Meteor (a powerful spell that would normally not appear until the end, but which happens to appear in a mid-game cutscene, as well as on the spell list of a character who doesn't have enough MP to cast it) is shown to deal 9,999 damage in a mid-game cutscene really does emphasize how powerful that plot-critical spell is, especially compared to the much lower numbers seen earlier in the cutscene, or the damage numbers you've been seeing during normal gameplay.

I just remembered an interesting case, in Dragon Quest 6's secret ending. There's a fight between two powerful creatures, and while damage numbers aren't shown, there's one point where an attack is said to deal 9,999 damage. For those familiar with DQ games (particularly 7 and earlier, before the tension mechanic showed up to allow a character to do massive damage after spending turns psyching up), that is an *absurd* amount of damage. The most I've done in DQ6 is a bit over 3,000 damage, and I believe that involved the most powerful recruitable monster with multiple boosts, including the one that is a predecessor to psyching up; in more reasonable situations, attacks, even late game, do only a few hundered at *most*. Even the most powerful non-physical skill (if you don't count the one that takes all MP in a game that doesn't have any powerful MP restoring items) only hits for around 400.
I disagree. You can extrapolate what is happening even if numbers dont show up. If the cinematic is good or just from the outcome, you can see if a strike is supposed to be deadly without numbers showing. If you watch a movie, you dont need to have numbers to show up to tell if the good guy or bad guy is winning and how deadly any specific attack was. Numbers popping up tends to be rare and also ruins the cinematic if you are watching a cutscene.

When it comes to similar attacks doing more damage in cutscenes vs in game, there is the trope of cutscene competence/incompetence where attacks in cutscenes are very different compared to their game counterparts. Thats just a nature of storytelling in the video game medium and is not a big issue imo.
Posted August 30, 2022
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dtgreene: Thing is, in battles, damage numbers are a way to see what's going on, and when you take those away, it becomes not so easy.

In Final Fantasy 4, the fact that Meteor (a powerful spell that would normally not appear until the end, but which happens to appear in a mid-game cutscene, as well as on the spell list of a character who doesn't have enough MP to cast it) is shown to deal 9,999 damage in a mid-game cutscene really does emphasize how powerful that plot-critical spell is, especially compared to the much lower numbers seen earlier in the cutscene, or the damage numbers you've been seeing during normal gameplay.

I just remembered an interesting case, in Dragon Quest 6's secret ending. There's a fight between two powerful creatures, and while damage numbers aren't shown, there's one point where an attack is said to deal 9,999 damage. For those familiar with DQ games (particularly 7 and earlier, before the tension mechanic showed up to allow a character to do massive damage after spending turns psyching up), that is an *absurd* amount of damage. The most I've done in DQ6 is a bit over 3,000 damage, and I believe that involved the most powerful recruitable monster with multiple boosts, including the one that is a predecessor to psyching up; in more reasonable situations, attacks, even late game, do only a few hundered at *most*. Even the most powerful non-physical skill (if you don't count the one that takes all MP in a game that doesn't have any powerful MP restoring items) only hits for around 400.
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Tokyo_Bunny_8990: I disagree. You can extrapolate what is happening even if numbers dont show up. If the cinematic is good or just from the outcome, you can see if a strike is supposed to be deadly without numbers showing. If you watch a movie, you dont need to have numbers to show up to tell if the good guy or bad guy is winning and how deadly any specific attack was. Numbers popping up tends to be rare and also ruins the cinematic if you are watching a cutscene.

When it comes to similar attacks doing more damage in cutscenes vs in game, there is the trope of cutscene competence/incompetence where attacks in cutscenes are very different compared to their game counterparts. Thats just a nature of storytelling in the video game medium and is not a big issue imo.
Thing is, a battle is *significantly* less interesting to watch without damage numbers.

Also, how would you translate something that would be shown as an attack doing absurd damage and *not* killing its target?

If something is to be cinematic, it should be a movie, not an RPG with combat mechanics.

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Cavalary: Do they really need so much more HP for that though? How about mixing it with high defenses that make them take little damage when they are hit, and evasion that makes it hard to hit them in the first place, and/or regeneration that means that the effective damage is what you manage to deal per unit of time above how much they regenerate?
Just piling more HP is the cheap and easy way out.

Yeah, you're referring to redenomination. Over here it happened in 2005, 1 "new" Leu = 10000 "old" Lei, both being accepted in parallel for a time, and as the old ones got to banks they were withdrawn from circulation and replaced with new ones.
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Carradice: This concept of redenominaton might help also if the game designer really really want gigantic numbers of hp and damage. The interface can help. Just like, imagine that regular damage appears in white, but then you have blue, red, etc. Imagine you have then bronze, silver and golden damage. Like, n bronze damage means n millions/trillions/whatever, but silver is showing the exponent of the damage in exponential notation. And golden shows, say, the exponent of the exponent of the damage, in exponential notation.

Not a fan of these high numbers in rpg, but if someone really wants that, this could be a way to show an evolution, by allowing the interface to make it clearer. So high numbers are there, just they are not shown to the player raw.
Using color as the only differentiating factor is not a good idea because:
* Some people are colorblind, and may not be able to tell the difference between colors, or might have to look closely, which doesn't work when the numbers disappear quickly.
* The display the player is using can also be an issue; not every TV/monitor is good at differentiating certain pairs of colors.
Post edited August 30, 2022 by dtgreene
Posted August 30, 2022
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SpaceMadness: Smaller numbers are easier to read, especially in games that don't have other visual aids like a health bar. Smaller numbers also makes each point of increase more noticeable.

However I can understand the use of large numbers in some situations. Regalia- Of Men And Monarchs uses large numbers to diminish the impact of decimals, especially from small percentage increases.
When you get to really large number and number scaline, a health or progress bar stops working well. In Reinhardt's House, for example, the large luck potion costs e1e1000 gold, and at e1e999 you're very close to affording it, but even a logarithmic progress meter would appear empty.
Posted August 31, 2022
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dtgreene: Using color as the only differentiating factor is not a good idea
The idea as mentioned was changes in the interface. Colour was mentioned as an example. Surely the size and font of the text, as well as possibly patterns and whatnot could be used as well.
Posted August 31, 2022
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dtgreene: Using color as the only differentiating factor is not a good idea
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Carradice: The idea as mentioned was changes in the interface. Colour was mentioned as an example. Surely the size and font of the text, as well as possibly patterns and whatnot could be used as well.
So, making larger (by order of magnitude) amounts of damage bigger? That could work, assuming the damage numbers don't get so big they no longer fit on the screen.
Posted August 31, 2022
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dtgreene: Thing is, a battle is *significantly* less interesting to watch without damage numbers.

Also, how would you translate something that would be shown as an attack doing absurd damage and *not* killing its target?

If something is to be cinematic, it should be a movie, not an RPG with combat mechanics.
We are talking about the cutscenes in the game and not gameplay itself right? Alot of games dont have numbers pop up when doing damage and you can tell what is effective or not based on the enemy's reaction (Megaman, Zelda). Even if an attack isnt super effective, it doesnt matter since its impact depends on the story. It would ruin the mood if in the scene when Ovelia attacks Delita, numbers pop up. It would be a parody.

There are many cinematic tricks you can use to show your characters or the enemy does big damage and not kill the target during gameplay, let alone in a cutscene.

Fire Emblem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH-WRse7fDw

When a character in Fire Emblem is about to do a critical strike which does more damage than normal, there is a flash, quote by the character, and a slowdown when the character hits the enemy. Although Fire Emblem shows numbers because its an RPG, it doesnt have to to still convey the fact that this is a special attack that doesn extra damage.

Showing an enemy surviving but reeling from a super strong attack is also easy to convey, especially in cinematics. You show the enemy guarding against the attack, struggling to push it back or deflect. When the dust settles, you see movement and that the enemy is still up but possibly panting or slouched to show that the attack did a ton of damage and the enemy is barely standing. This is also used in gameplay very often when there is no life bar, the enemy slouching to show that it is nearing the end of its health and often also conveys a phase shift where the enemy will now begin to use its strongest attacks.
Posted August 31, 2022
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Carradice: The idea as mentioned was changes in the interface. Colour was mentioned as an example. Surely the size and font of the text, as well as possibly patterns and whatnot could be used as well.
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dtgreene: So, making larger (by order of magnitude) amounts of damage bigger? That could work, assuming the damage numbers don't get so big they no longer fit on the screen.
That is not what was written nor intended in the previous posts. Size, is just one of the mentioned resources are font, embellishments, textures, special effects (blinking if you want, inflating and deflating, whatever), other changes in the interface. The limit is the designer's imagination.
Post edited August 31, 2022 by Carradice
Posted August 31, 2022
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dtgreene: The enemy's attack hit, dealing 3 million damage to you. Your action?

What do you think of games that have such high numbers for stats? Do you think it's a good thing, or do you prefer it when games keep numbers small?
Usually it is enemies who have millions of health. And player usually has "health bars" or thousands of health. Why? I think it is the same question as "Why we have 100% as 1. not 10% not 10000%". I think - for clarity.

1. we need to evade fractional numbers. So 1230 is better than 1.23 or 1.23e3. This is a game, not some physical example from school.

Now we have diferent atacks - weak, usual, very strong, over time damage (low). Also we have buffs/debuffs like 3%. And all these numbers should not be fractional. For example weak atack = 100. So 3% = 3.. it is close to the limit. 2.5% will be fractional. So weak atack 1000 will be better. Usual atack = 10000 and strong - for example 50000.

Now we have different enemies. Weak/Oneshot ~10000-20000 health. But also we have bosses. For example you want to kill boss in 1-2 minutes. and atack each second. so 100 (seconds) * 10000(damage) = 1M health. If it is MMO and it is group boss then it can have several millions of health.

This is just example that we can have millions of health without inflation or without some strange mechanics.
Posted September 01, 2022
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Tokyo_Bunny_8990: We are talking about the cutscenes in the game and not gameplay itself right?
I am talking about scripted battles that occur during cutscenes, in which the game's battle engine is used, but the player has no control in.

Final Fantasy 4 is the earliest well-known example, with two fights in the intro (in the 3D version, one is now controllable and the other one is omitted IIRC), as well as a few other dramatic fights like this, like two involving Tellah and one that occurs right before the final battle. (FF4 does have an issue with an overly long cutscene before the final boss, and there isn't even a save point right before, so you have to replay part of the dungeon on each attempt, even though you get fully restored right before you get control in the final battle; FF5 is the first FF to have a save point right before the final boss, and you can actually walk back and save right before the final battle, but after the pre-final boss cutscene.)

In other news, I reached a point in Reinhards's House where things were truly ridiculous. I would boost my HP into the double exponent range (10^10^something), think I was safe, look away, and then find that my character had somehow been killed. (Of course, it was a one-hit-kill, as at this number range, it is almost impossible for a hit to do enough damage to be significant without outright killing.) Also, I got softlocked once and had to cheat; neither me nor the enemy could do significant damage, as both sides had too many HP to take any damage.
Posted September 05, 2022
Slightly tangential, but definitely related, to this thread:

I appreciate it when the game's starting numbers are sufficiently big enough for it to have some precision/room to grow. This doesn't mean I want the game to inflate a ton, just have the base values high enough that there's a meaningful distinction between weapon damage ranges, or the HP values of different classes, or something.

If everyone starts with just 10 HP, there's a giant difference between 1 and 2 damage, vs 100 HP as the starting point, you can have a 10 and 15 and a 20 damage thing. (Without going decimal, of course.)

Or everyone starts with 100 speed, so a +X speed boost is possibly relevant, and not overwhelming, rather than 20 speed being the baseline where every +1 means a ton.

This is definitely related to the original topic, because having too low/narrow-range of starting numbers makes it really easy to have level-ups quickly inflate and outclass the original stuff. I.e., the more room there is in the base stats, the easier it is to develop with less inflation.
Post edited September 05, 2022 by mqstout
Posted September 05, 2022
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mqstout: Or everyone starts with 100 speed, so a +X speed boost is possibly relevant, and not overwhelming, rather than 20 speed being the baseline where every +1 means a ton.
For some reason this reminds me of ADOM, in ADOM speed is how often you'd act, basically every creature/instance would add their speed and if it goes over 1000 the highest one goes first. Course it also had feats like fast striding where movement was 950 instead of 1000 thus almost always ensuring you move first and not getting hit on the way through.

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mqstout: If everyone starts with just 10 HP, there's a giant difference between 1 and 2 damage, vs 100 HP as the starting point, you can have a 10 and 15 and a 20 damage thing. (Without going decimal, of course.)
Reminds me a little of Pixel Piracy, when there were larger numbers and more points you got per level, before they just chopped it 1/10th. Think that was more beta/early access. But the difference is pretty easy to tell with one vs the other.

Then there's Diablo 2. The numbers look small but under the hood it has 1000:1 on actual HP for handling fractions (and likely damage over time) in a way where the engine's numbers are likely much larger than you'd at first believe.

Honestly i rather like Disgaea's method of starting with fairly low stats (typically 30 or less), but your growth is 1/2 your base stats every level. Linear growth, you know exactly how much it will grow, has near infinite potential, but is also fair overall.
Post edited September 05, 2022 by rtcvb32
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionYour thoughts on stat inflation?(97 posts)(97 posts)
(97 posts)