Fatigued by the Numbers | Cold Take

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Second Wind [Intro Music] When I was in high school my statistics teacher  had a mental breakdown and disappeared without   warning. I completed the course the year before,  so I was asked to help her students prepare for   their midterms–It's not like there were many  options in such short notice. To their credit,   my peers were more than capable of extrapolating  numbers from data, plugging them into formulas,   and spewing out new numbers, but they didn't  understand them. They could find the distributions   and standard deviations, but when asked to  interpret their results in plain english they went   blank. To them, the numbers were meaningless. “The  numbers were meaningless.” The thought echoed once   more when Nick, fed up with the visual clutter  in Suicide Squad, turned off the damage numbers.   And yet again when Jeremy Smith of Smithy Games  responded to a tweet. “I don't know why so many   people like to see swarms of numbers that mean  nothing while playing a game.” Do they though?   I kinda like numbers, not to the point of pulling  out a calculator but enough to fill out a napkin,   so I’m not sure if games are showing more numbers  than before or if it’s just the game feature   whinge of the year. Perhaps there is truth to the  matter and developers have lost the plot, filling   your screen with numbers out of sheer assumption  that our rat brains want to see numbers go brrrrr. Let's discuss the design principles behind numbers. I feel I’d be browsing for a while in search  of a video game that uses numbers in a truly   meaningless way–aside from Frog Fractions. In fact  I believe numbers make games more accessible. You   point a gun at an enemy, shoot center mass, and  when the number 80 pops up you know without a   shadow of a doubt that you’ve hit something. I’m  29 this year, a first person shooting geriatric,   and I find myself warming up to gun games  that show damage numbers. I used to prefer   the “hardcore” or “barebones” shooters that left  you wondering if the pixel you sniped from 300   meters out was a person or a rock. My tired eyes  will take Fortnite and Apex Legends over PUBG now.   But numbers aren’t just helpful to those who  are hard of hearing, hard of seeing, or have a   hard time denying they don’t have it anymore. They  knock down language barriers. Virtually everyone   can identify the Hindu-Arabic numerals; it's the  closest thing we have to a universal language. Let’s playback that scenario from before. You  point a gun at an enemy, shoot center mass,   and when the number 80 pops up you know without  a shadow of a doubt that you’ve hit something   and you know, regardless of primary language, that  you did 80 of something, presumably damage. Shoot   at its head, “120” pops up. You now learned  headshots do more damage. Shoot at its toes,   “8.” This is the developer telling you toe  shots aren’t a proper course of action. An   enemy steps closer. You tag ‘em in the head.  Where you were expecting “120” to appear is now   “140”. You shoot an enemy further off in the  distance. Click him right in the head, a tiny   “100” appears. Without a word or tutorial, you now  know headshots do more damage than body shots, toe   shots are a waste of time, and distance is also  taken into account. No translation is necessary. But we can do more than that. Because distance is accounted for... you need a better way to differentiate between  a headshot from afar and a body shot up close.   Color the headshots red, leave the body shots  white, and fill the toe shots in gray to really   create a distaste for them. If you want to  include different weapon damage then add in   some more colors. Blue for ice. Orange for fire.  Bluish orange if you want to encourage players to   mix and match elements. Critical hits that pop  up big and yellow. Little daggers to indicate   shots to the back. You name it. But now let’s  imagine that the base health of all enemies is   2. Everything goes down in one shot regardless  of what you’re using, where you’re standing,   or if you hit them in the blasted toes. Being  shown all these numbers makes me anticipate a   grander system at play waiting for me to sink  my teeth into it, but when there’s nothing but   But a pocket of air, feels like I got mathematically catfished. The numbers then- are meaningless, even worse, they’re creating  visual noise and clutter obscuring your vision   and filling your brain with useless data. Noise  is a natural byproduct of using damage number   systems and that is where I believe the system can  go wrong. When implementing a number system you   have to think, is what I am communicating  to the player worth the noise it creates? That can vary depending on the game and the gamer.  Street Fighter and many other pvp games go for the   time and place approach. As in, there is a better  time and place to show you all of the numbers   than while you are playing. The health bars don’t  even have numbers on them. You’re shown a timer,   special meter, and combos. When you’re not in  matches, you can take the red pill and head into   training mode where you can see beyond the matrix.  You are shown damage numbers, button presses,   and even frame data. The best players spend  as much time training and studying frames as   they do playing matches against other people,  because numbers are knowledge and knowledge is   power in a discipline known as Theory Crafting.  Always make them plus. Don't do that. This is minus two. Minus one. This is plus. ... you know, for months and months and months and everybody out there makes some noise for AngryBird. Your first Street Fighter 6 Evo Champion. Theory Crafting sounds like nerds optimizing the fun out of video games, but mathing the systems is  considered part of the fun in competitive circles,   especially any game with an esport  scene like CS:GO, League of Legends,   or what have you. However, theory crafting is more  commonly used as a way to get more variety from a   game. If you've ever played a game with gear and  ability management like an RPG, a looter shooter,   or a roguelike and looked for synergies and themes  to do silly builds, then you’re essentially theory   crafting. Your teacher was right, algebra does come in handy in the real world. Just don't tell him you were using it for butt slam only runs on Elden Ring. But not every game needs or even wants their depth  to come from pencil pushing and spreadsheets. Doom   offers a diegetic approach because Doom Guy only  does two things: Rip and Tear–neither of those   are math. The intended experience is unstoppable  forward momentum, so all you need to worry your   little demon slayer head over is health, shield,  bullets, and the distance to the next bar fight.   Dead Space gives you even fewer numbers which  adds to the uncertainty and suspense of being   a janitor trying to survive an alien invasion  with only a nail gun. But you still see your   ammo count. Surely it would up the ante if  you didn't know how many bullets were left,   and I'm sure the developers thought of that.  Not having enough information can feel scary,   but having no information at all, while creating  less clutter, risks your game being too obtuse   for a player. It's why the roguelike genre  gets the reputation of feeling too random. You   have to go to their wiki or dig into the files  to find the procedural generation algorithms,   loot tables, and unspoken mechanics. Some of  them flat out refuse to give you any numbers   and settle for phrases like “do more  damage” or “increase movement speed”.   I don't know why rogues feel as if they’ve  adopted this quirky tradition of secrecy.   Maybe it's a hassle to go back and tweak the  numbers during balance updates. I love the   genre and feel like it doesn’t do itself any  favors by playing coy with its information. It’s the same feeling I get when I see gear score.  I see it as an attempt to streamline the process   for those who are not as math inclined– you  know, English majors. It’s the game going,   “Don’t worry doll. You don’t have to pull  out a pen for this. Just pick the biggest number.   Because that's the problem with incremental upgrade systems giving you items that are only +5% better than before.  There’s no incentive to start playing with   the numbers until the numbers settle. Is  it meaningless? It certainly feels meaningless   in the early and mid game. No one can know  until they get to the end game content of   Suicide Squad if the numbers are redundant or  overkill, and most people won’t wait long until   they pass judgement. Unfortunately, we’ve been  burned by too many games that feel they’re all   number and no substance to the point where  numbers are becoming a turn off on sight. There is one final way to bypass this through aesthetic,  but we get enough complaints of games going for   the comic booky cell-shaded vibe people refer to  as Borderlands Graphics. Ideally, I’d like it if   games with numbers did a better job of making  moment to moment math feel meaningful like in   Brotato or Loop Hero. Two games that are fun to graph out from beginning, middle and end. Whether you're a novice or someone who takes it more serious. If a game doesn’t want to overload its players during  gameplay, perhaps consider a separate section   specifically for numbersexuals. I’m telling you,  a good training mode gets my pistons firing as if   If I got free DLC, and if a game really doesn't want to emphasize its internal logic then perhaps consider forgoing the numbers entirely. I've made the case that numbers are always meaningful. Except in frog fractions. But players won't always understand how meaningful they are. And if that's not the point of your game, then maybe it's not worth it. Or, you can always just let a player tweak the numbers being displayed in the settings. In which case, this Cold Take could’ve been an email, but  you can’t attach a stiff drink to an email.
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Channel: Second Wind
Views: 157,465
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Borderlands, Video Games, Numbers, Cold Take, Second Wind, TheOtherFrost, Frost
Id: BhjiUWlYAF0
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Length: 9min 52sec (592 seconds)
Published: Mon Feb 12 2024
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