> 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.
> 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.