I’m very certain that you hypothesis are correct. Most people play to have fun, not to win. Winning is instrumental to fun, but for most people it is not worth the cost of doing some math, which is anti-fun. I like math in general, but I still would not make this explicit calculation, because it is the wrong type of math for me to enjoy. (Not saying it is wrong for you to enjoy it, just that it’s unusual.)
I think that making the game design such that it is hard or impossible to do the explicit math is a feature. Most people don’t want to do the math. The math is not supposed to be part of the game. Most people don’t want the math nerds to have that advantage, because then they’ll have to do the math too, or loose.
That seems like it could only potentially be a feature in competitive games; yet I see it all the time in single-player games with no obvious nods to competition (e.g. no leaderboards). In fact, I have the vague impression games that emphasize competition tend to be more legible—although it’s possible I only have this impression from player-created resources like wikis rather than actual differences in developer behavior. (I’ll have to think about this some.)
Also, many of these games show an awful lot of numbers that they don’t, strictly speaking, need to show at all. (I’ve also played some games that don’t show those numbers at all, and I generally conclude that those games aren’t for me.) Offering the player a choice between +5 armor and +10 accuracy implies that the numbers “5” and “10″ are somehow expected to be relevant to the player.
Also, in several cases the developers have been willing to explain more of the math on Internet forums when people ask them. Which makes it seem less like a conscious strategy to withhold those details and more that it just didn’t occur to them that players would want them.
There certainly could be some games where the developers are consciously pursuing an anti-legible-math policy, but it seems to me that the examples I have in mind do not fit this picture very well.
> Offering the player a choice between +5 armor and +10 accuracy implies that the numbers “5” and “10″ are somehow expected to be relevant to the player.
When I imagine a game which offers “+armor” or “+accuracy” vs a game which offers “+5 armor” or “+10 accuracy”, the latter feels far more comfortable even if I do not intend to do the maths. I suspect it gives something for my intuition to latch onto, to give me a sense of scale.
Do you mean that it’s more comfortable because you feel it provides some noticeable boost to your ability to predict game outcomes (even without consciously doing math), or is it more of an aesthetic preference where you like seeing numbers even if they don’t provide any actual information? (Or something else?)
If you’re applying a heuristic anything like “+10 accuracy is probably bigger than +5 armor, because 10 is bigger than 5”, then I suspect your heuristic is little better than chance. It’s quite common for marginal-utility-per-point to vary greatly between stats, or even within the same stat at different points along the curve.
If you’re strictly using the numbers to compare differently-sized boosts to the same stat (e.g. +10 accuracy vs +5 accuracy) then that’s reasonably safe.
The improvement to my intuitive predictive ability is definitely a factor to why I find it comforting, I don’t know what fraction of it is aesthetics, I’d say a poorly calibrated 30%. Like maybe it reminds me of games where I could easily calculate the answer, so my brain assumes I am in that situation as long as I don’t test that belief.
I’m definitely only comparing the sizes of changes to the same stat. My intuition also assumes diminishing returns for everything except defense which is accelerating returns—and knowing the size of each step helps inform this.
That seems opposed to what Linda Lisefors said above: You like the idea that you could calculate an answer if you chose to, while Linda thinks the inability to calculate an answer is a feature.
(Nothing wrong with the two of you wanting different things. I am just explicitly de-bucketing you in my head.)
My intuition also assumes diminishing returns for everything except defense which is accelerating returns
My model says that the trend in modern games is towards defense having diminishing returns (or at least non-escalating returns), as more developers become aware of that as a thing to track. I think of armor in WarCraft 3 as being an early trendsetter in this regard (though I haven’t gone looking for examples, so it could be that’s just the game I happened to play rather than an actual trendsetter).
I am now explicitly noticing this explanation implies that my model contains some sort of baseline competence level of strategic mathematics in the general population that is very low by my standards but slowly rising, and that this competence is enough of a bottleneck on game design that this rise is having noticeable effects. This seems to be in tension with the “players just don’t want to multiply” explanation.
I’m very certain that you hypothesis are correct. Most people play to have fun, not to win. Winning is instrumental to fun, but for most people it is not worth the cost of doing some math, which is anti-fun. I like math in general, but I still would not make this explicit calculation, because it is the wrong type of math for me to enjoy. (Not saying it is wrong for you to enjoy it, just that it’s unusual.)
I think that making the game design such that it is hard or impossible to do the explicit math is a feature. Most people don’t want to do the math. The math is not supposed to be part of the game. Most people don’t want the math nerds to have that advantage, because then they’ll have to do the math too, or loose.
That seems like it could only potentially be a feature in competitive games; yet I see it all the time in single-player games with no obvious nods to competition (e.g. no leaderboards). In fact, I have the vague impression games that emphasize competition tend to be more legible—although it’s possible I only have this impression from player-created resources like wikis rather than actual differences in developer behavior. (I’ll have to think about this some.)
Also, many of these games show an awful lot of numbers that they don’t, strictly speaking, need to show at all. (I’ve also played some games that don’t show those numbers at all, and I generally conclude that those games aren’t for me.) Offering the player a choice between +5 armor and +10 accuracy implies that the numbers “5” and “10″ are somehow expected to be relevant to the player.
Also, in several cases the developers have been willing to explain more of the math on Internet forums when people ask them. Which makes it seem less like a conscious strategy to withhold those details and more that it just didn’t occur to them that players would want them.
There certainly could be some games where the developers are consciously pursuing an anti-legible-math policy, but it seems to me that the examples I have in mind do not fit this picture very well.
> Offering the player a choice between +5 armor and +10 accuracy implies that the numbers “5” and “10″ are somehow expected to be relevant to the player.
When I imagine a game which offers “+armor” or “+accuracy” vs a game which offers “+5 armor” or “+10 accuracy”, the latter feels far more comfortable even if I do not intend to do the maths. I suspect it gives something for my intuition to latch onto, to give me a sense of scale.
Do you mean that it’s more comfortable because you feel it provides some noticeable boost to your ability to predict game outcomes (even without consciously doing math), or is it more of an aesthetic preference where you like seeing numbers even if they don’t provide any actual information? (Or something else?)
If you’re applying a heuristic anything like “+10 accuracy is probably bigger than +5 armor, because 10 is bigger than 5”, then I suspect your heuristic is little better than chance. It’s quite common for marginal-utility-per-point to vary greatly between stats, or even within the same stat at different points along the curve.
If you’re strictly using the numbers to compare differently-sized boosts to the same stat (e.g. +10 accuracy vs +5 accuracy) then that’s reasonably safe.
The improvement to my intuitive predictive ability is definitely a factor to why I find it comforting, I don’t know what fraction of it is aesthetics, I’d say a poorly calibrated 30%. Like maybe it reminds me of games where I could easily calculate the answer, so my brain assumes I am in that situation as long as I don’t test that belief.
I’m definitely only comparing the sizes of changes to the same stat. My intuition also assumes diminishing returns for everything except defense which is accelerating returns—and knowing the size of each step helps inform this.
That seems opposed to what Linda Lisefors said above: You like the idea that you could calculate an answer if you chose to, while Linda thinks the inability to calculate an answer is a feature.
(Nothing wrong with the two of you wanting different things. I am just explicitly de-bucketing you in my head.)
My model says that the trend in modern games is towards defense having diminishing returns (or at least non-escalating returns), as more developers become aware of that as a thing to track. I think of armor in WarCraft 3 as being an early trendsetter in this regard (though I haven’t gone looking for examples, so it could be that’s just the game I happened to play rather than an actual trendsetter).
I am now explicitly noticing this explanation implies that my model contains some sort of baseline competence level of strategic mathematics in the general population that is very low by my standards but slowly rising, and that this competence is enough of a bottleneck on game design that this rise is having noticeable effects. This seems to be in tension with the “players just don’t want to multiply” explanation.