There's no way that this isn't going to sound mean, Believe it or not, that's not the intent.. So there is a debate argument, and then there is a logical argument... Both have to follow a certain amount of logic, one very specifically does not delve deeply into counter point that might hollow out the framework of the argument because the objective goal is winning.. this is pretty much a series of that... And it's.. honestly it's very.. very Reddit.. It's like a fanboys argument for damage numbers, except who, why? That's the confusing part.. and it's not treated with that ideological polarization.. and yet.. for every door opened on the ideal pathway of supporting statements.. any sort of redirect or gaping hole in the floor is just subconsciously navigated like it wasn't even there.. You know what's also a universal language... Somebody's skull getting popped open.. did I shoot him in the foot.. did it look like I shot him in the foot? I don't know I can't see it.. there were too many damage numbers in the way. Sure, rather than using modern technology and having any sort of environmental impact that has any sort of comparative standing against the fact that we modeled the cavities in the guy's teeth.. but... I mean the thought never occurred to us, half of us still play Counter-Strike at 4x3 stretched out to 16x9.. we're working on impulses here buddy! Light flash satisfaction! And 9 out of 10 casinos think this works... and it does! Just ask any MMO player! And only ask them.. Also, something to note... yes, you are correct... the thought did never occur to us that environmental deformation might be a immersive feature but it's okay because the damage numbers would cover that up anyways lol.. silly! You could stop hitting the interact key there.. we didn't want things like the environment to be too distracting or inconsistent when trying to minmax, no you can't pick anything up here lol... static meshes baby! If certain things didn't lead to other things, and these weird isolated pockets within game development that can form a completely different picture what things are and what's a priority within even some of the same branches... I'd probably be less irritated about the resurgence of the numbers in the time that we have all of the capabilities to actually not have to show any of them and still convey the same information... But that's not even a brain fart anymore in a lot of studios developers and theprogramthe worse it gets.. we're not striving for better anymore we're not trying to outdo ourselves anymore we're trying to delve back into the past at this point.. and they don't know any better cuz they don't understand the forward momentum that we lost, and honestly at 29... that might be you. But.. I'm more worried about The fact that everything is quotable no matter how completely BS it is when you think about it for half a second.. and how many times I've heard people explain why things are the way they are, because of marketing team was throwing some spin on something.. And it's just bad form, and I'm sure this isn't great either.. but you're in that position where you've got to actually try and hold a higher standard when conveying information no matter how Entertainment focused.. The genuinely doesn't change anything, especially with commentary. Such a silly thing to damage number or stat number or not to stat number on the screen, to be throwing all those words up there at.. but but if you got this far then you should know, problem isn't The subject matter or whether you do four or whether against.. The problem is presenting an argument like it's a marketing pitch where you just skip over everything that doesn't fit, no matter how blaringly it may or may not exist... A debate or a discussion I guess to differentiate the two from the start.. and I'm certain to really absolutely loathe debates.. that being said, there's a point where the standard for actually using actual facts or thoughts or things will be treated as an exceptional high note to the norm, as opposed to only using specific ones being a negative.. because when The tipping point of uncoiling spaghetti from one's ass is the general sign of a knowledgeable individual.. yeah.. One of those is less egregious and somewhat exponentially.. but one leads to the other.. and it's amazing how little thought we're training ourselves and the next generation to put into jumping on any visual artifact that construed as a train... Hyperbolic at all? Maybe... But.. in 5 years maybe not... But if I'm right but then making that kind of connection isn't even going to be on the program... Much less the title page.
It would be cool if you could include the names of the games somewhere. Maybe in the description, transcript, subtitles, or on screen. I couldn't find anywhere what game is shown at 8:24
7:15 "Those who are not as math inclined. You know, English majors." It was an English major in college who once told me "Math is not an exact science". To no one's surprise, he was failing math that semester.
@@Monochromatic_Spider Are you trying to imply that mathematics doesn't require empirical evidence? I think you're arguing from a place of deep ignorance because that is a wild claim.
@@Monochromatic_Spiderto be an exact science is not to be based on empirical evidence. An exact science basically means that every question has one right answer; an objectively right answer.
@@SaltienceProbability Theory has entered the chat. But even before we hit that we run into math with two answers. This does not mean it isn't exact. It means we were introduced to the concept in Algebra before having it explained why multiple answers are correct. Math and Science does this a lot. Introducing a concept sometimes years before explaining the why. Getting bogged down in the why isn't going to help and may hinder when trying to learn something hard.
🎵Heartache #1 was playing Borderlands alone. I thought that I would get by, but was never thrown a bone. Heartache #2 was when I did the Outrider's craze, But all of us could see the quickly falling numbered days.🎵
🎵Heartache #3 was killing time with Remnant 2... Bullshit bosses made me count again With hopeful heart I minmaxed tryn'a optimize my shots Done and then ran out of time to play 🎵
Everyone over 25 thinks they are old, and everyone older than them has a petit crisis about it when they hear it. It seems to me there is a pretty simple solution to this.
@@dreamedoutdoll that strikes on the perfect vibe of Cold Take, it's like settling down into your favorite barstool and letting your old drinking buddy talk you ear off except I'm actually listening
@@dreamedoutdoll The aesthetic fits perfectly. Bugetin- I mean creativity manifests in many forms and they're doing a great job. Not that theres any place for cynicism in this space or anything...
As an RPG enjoyer, I was initially excited when games started to trend towards including RPG elements, and numbers as a result. That excitement quickly faded when it became clear how shallow those numbers were and were going to remain. I really hope games trend away from this soon and do anything else for visual feedback.
I'm reminded of how the old 90s Doom showed the damage you dealt and received with nothing but blood and screams. Monster bleeds and screams, you did damage. You avatar is bleeding and groaning, you're hurt. It communicated exactly the same as health bars and floating damage numbers in a far more elegant and integrated way.
The problem is, in RPG you can usually actively do thing that affects the numbers. In a lot of genre they're like "hey have some numbers" but you can't really do anything to make the numbers bigger except find the next piece that's a 5% upgrade on all your stats, so there's no feeling of "hey I used X with Y coupled with Z spell and so on and so forth and now I made numbers bigger"
@@LadyDoomsinger I remember wincing when I got caught in five exploding barrels or some other massive damage, and the screen taking several seconds to go back from deeply red-tinted to normal (usually to find out I'd just died). It was amazingly effective.
@@paulgibbon5991 It's obviously not the right way for *every* game - but I think for a fast paced action game, that involves violence as it's core gameplay loop, it is a far more interesting way of doing it.
@@LadyDoomsinger Er... what? I'm fairly certain Doom's HUD always told you precisely how much health and armour you had as numerical values on either side of the avatar you mentioned.
0:53 I think that's where most of the issue comes from the reference point for said numbers moving. The division is a good example of this. The enemies level up with you. So it feels like your not changing.
Like if I'm level 50 and my super special revolver can kill someone in the same amount of time as my starting pistol when I was at level 2, I don't feel like the numbers matter
@@Dannyjake32 The worst part is - the numbers do matter. It's the progression that doesn't matter. Because if you were to switch back to that starting pistol you would be doing considerably less damage. The result is that you're not upgrading your gear to get stronger, you're upgrading your gear to avoid getting weaker. Which means that the best you can hope for is stagnation.
@@Former_Halo_Fan A good system will have equipment do more interesting things at higher levels beyond just doing more damage or having the player take less damage. I may have just had really bad luck with loot drops but I ended up quitting BL2 a few hours into NG+ because I was finding I was going a few levels between finding anything better than what I had which made combat rather a slog (heck at one point I celebrated hitting lvl 35 by buying common vendor trash that was several levels better than what I had at the time and was an upgrade to my existing equipment). In the Borderlands series the only thing that actually feels more powerful at higher levels is the player's skills.
I know this is a weirdly specific take - but the new intro means so much to me I love the noir style Frost used for his videos, but as a recovering alcoholic, the drink pouring at the start of the old era was always difficult for me. I still watched, but it always tripped something in me. Love Frost, his tone, his insight, his style. I’m so much more comfortable every time these new ones pop up.
The whole "numbers are visual clutter" thing is something I definitely felt in Vampire Survivors. I literally do not care how much damage my weapons are doing as it's not information that actually helps me. The much more useful visual information is seeing that my enemies got hit in the first place so I know if they get knocked back, or seeing them go through their death animation.
Yeah, the damage numbers absolutely are meaningless in that game and it certainly doesn't help that a few minutes into the round there are so many numbers that you can't even distinguish them any more. That said, and I'm playing devil's advocate here, I think it's easily argued that the damage numbers in that game are more about adding to the visual chaos that's meant to represent your (increasing) power. In that sense, I think they're more akin to particle effects than actual damage numbers.
@@WPPatriot Indeed, the numbers there are pointedly to tickle the lizard brain (or rat brain as was called here); the whole game's progression and leveling are geared towards drip feeding dopamine through numbers and a casino's flashiness. Equating them to particle effects is a good take I hadn't considered.
Exactly! It's useful to know how much damage you're doing when you're attacking occasionally, but I don't want my screen filled with numbers if I'm attacking frequently. There's a reason they change the value of the number, when you do multiple hits in quick succession in Elden Ring, rather than add new numbers.
How much damage you do could easily be communicated with violent blood spatters and screams of agony, you know... The numbers were just a sanitized, kid-friendly way of relaying the same information to players... And probably cheaper to code and animate as well.
@@LadyDoomsinger Numbers communicate what and how well the player is doing far faster and easier than blood splatters and screams. Lets put two enemies side by side, a regulars sized guy and a really big guy. You hit em the same way and the same number will pop up, you did the same damage. How would blood splatters and screams do that? Would the big guy bleed the same amount as the normal guy? Less? More? Does he shout the same? What if you have a little guy in armor and a big guy without? What if you're fighting alot of guys? What if there's more then 10 types of guy who interact with your weaponry differently? Do you make a scream and blood splatter for every possible combination and situation? How do you make them distinct enough to give the information the player is looking for without overwhelming them? What if the player uses a grenaid and they all blood splatter and scream in agony at once? Blood splatters and screams work well in video games, but not in every videogame nor in most ones about fighting things. Otherwise why do actual fighting games use health bars instead of blood splatters and screams? Sure asset numbers come in, you can only make so many assets related to taking damage and sure using solely numbers is moire kid friendly then lopping off arms, but that's nowhere near to the only or even main reason they use em. Different games have different amounts of information to convey and different allowances for how they can convey it. So for a bunch of games, numbers are the best choice, for some, sounds, for some colours, for some bars, for some spreadsheets, for some blood splatters and screams and for some nothing at all. Its reductive to say all games can easily convey this information via only one way.
Something about the thought of feeling a felt tip or marker pen draw roughly onto napkins makes my skin crawl and my lips draw in. Great video as always!
The whole time I found myself staring, waiting for the ink to oversaturate the napkin and start tearing. Somehow it made the video way more stressful than I expected.
"The numbers were meaningless." Perfectly describes my entire scholarship relationship with Maths. I was mega bad at Maths but pretty decent and sometimes good in Physics and even better in Engineering. Same equations, but with context, giving them meaning. Now, back to the episode!
Pure maths is an art. Utility isn't the point. Number theory is thousands of years old and was almost entirely useless until the 1970s when it became the backbone of encryption algorithms. People do maths because they delight in the beauty of its structures, not because it's useful. See Paul Lockhart's 'A Mathematicians Lament.'
Well... That can be accomplished with excessive blood spatters, screams of agony, and general visceral ultra violence... I kinda suspect that the numbers were just a kid-friendly way of communicating the same thing. Or it's cheaper to code and animate.
@@LadyDoomsinger Contextual clues can work, but you lose a lot of granularity that way. You can have a couple different tiers of explosion or screen shake, which is perfectly fine for games with more limited progression options, but if you've got a broader selection of different attacks or upgrade options or places you can hit, you pretty quickly run out of non-numeric ways to compare them to each other. That's not ideal, as much as overloading players with damage numbers also isn't ideal.
"Doomguy only does two things: Rip and tear. Neither of those are math." I dunno; tearing could be considered subtraction, as in tearing that demon's head off of his total mass.
The best implementation of damage numbers I've seen (although somewhat immersion-breaking) is the "shots to kill" number in Valkyria Chronicles. It tells you exactly what you need to know without forcing you to pause the game and pull out a calculator to check how many times you need to attack to kill the enemy.
It's great abstraction for games that have mostly fixed damage or games with very short time-to-kill. It makes decision-making feel more relevant/impactful without needing a calculator. e.g. in Starcraft, most pros don't know/care how much damage a unit deals, or how much HP it has; what matters is how many times it needs to attack to kill a certain enemy, or how many attacks a unit can survive. Fewer numbers to worry about, and much easier to visualize.
Oh, the doom guy most certainly does math. He ADDS bullets to the bodies of his foes in order to SUBTRACT the number of enemies in his way. His bombs and missiles MULTIPLY the number of chunks flying through the air while his chainsaw efficiently DIVIDES monsters in twain.
There are alternative ways to do visual ques as well, for those who don't like exact numbers. Just some ideas that I've seen: - Sound design can be used to indicate a critical hit, a good hit, or a deflection/ineffective hit. If the sounds are rewarding, it won't take long for players to work out which is which. This can be accompanied with obvious VFX indicators of a damaging hit or a failure to damage. - The enemy can be shown getting progressively damaged. Humanoid characters can loose armor/appear bloodied, or vehicles/robots can start to smoke or look like they're catching fire. - A large enough hit can stagger the enemy, knock them down, or stun them. - For less realistic games, damaged enemies can take on overglows of red or something similar when they're very damaged. - There's also the option of doing numbers without having "numbers". For example, a enemy could have 5 dots about their head, which indicates that they can take 5 attack damage. The fewer dots that are displayed, the fewer attacks they can take.
6:32 I've been working on a roguelike project, and one of my mandates for it is SHOW EVERYTHING. Even if it's in some sort of in-game encyclopedia, mastery of the mechanics is everything to this game, so there _must_ be some way for players to look into the specifics for optimizing.
Or you can do like slay the spire: Make a system that is so simple that you can show the player all the numbers, and trust me the numbers are everything, I've had many times that I was less than 20 HP away from beating a boss with 800 HP.
I do distinctly remember getting burned by excessive math before, and that game was The Ruined King Runeterra RPG that released a few years back. Turns out when you combine a complicated stat system where different items prioritize different stats, sometimes to dramatic effect, with an incremental upgrade system where you expect to get a constant stream of slightly better stuff, you can easily find yourself spending a lot of time trying to figure out which piece of gear you want to fit into each slot. This was already somewhat of a problem in something like Borderlands, but it's so much worse in Ruined King where you have 6 different characters with 4 or 5 equipment slots each. I found myself spending more time on the equipment tab than I did actually playing the game because you're just getting a *constant* stream of new stuff and my RPG instinct is constantly going "ooh, new thing! Better see if it's better than my current equipment so that I don't fall behind". Having an overly complex stat system can really bog down a game if it's paired with rapid progression.
one thing that gets on my nerves numbers wise his health systems. if i have 150 hp , but i can still get two shot, then just give me a 3 hit system. (looking at the progression of the ratchet and clank series for this one.) went from simple here's 4 hits. if you get hit 4 times. you die upgradeable to a maximum of 8. then it went onto the sequel which went, a bit like the legend of zelda, just a round version of the hearts.maximum of 20 which could divide into 80 maximum if only taking 1 point of damage at a time. then the rest of the series, just had a boring blank/100 (once upgraded) but some harder hitting enemies could kills you in very few hits, in which case... just take me back to the first health system.
@@Kenionatus it should, otherwise what's the point of the armour upgrades? but the second health system is probably my preffered system. but to each their own.
This segways nicely into something I've been thinking about a lot recently (also the fact we both turn 29 this year is the oddest coincidence to wake up to this day) Damage is all relative. Ive played plenty of games where damage was up in the millions cause enemies had billions of health. At what point does such numbers have no meaning? 1 damage to something with a million health is barely a scratch. 1 damage in something where the health is in the single or low double digets only is like the loss of a limb! A mobile game I once played underwent a numbers flattening just before shutting down. They also did a lot of other controversial changes I don't really understand it was all stat stuff and ability changes. It wasn't to bad. I hated no longer seeing the big numbers but things were dying basically just as quickly so it didn't really matter. Maybe a lil slower but that was fine. However. They WAY over did it on the healing. My best healer could now only target 1 person when before she could target 2. And her healing spell didn't even move the health bar. Sure hero health got flattened but the healing got flattened way harder. I watched the numbers the next time she healed. I don't remember what it said but it was LOW and my characters had taken a few hundred or thousand damage. It was pitifully low. Low enough that healing was pointless and time would be better spent having 4 damage dealers to speed through encounters and just hope they tank everything.
Remember when games used to have enemies visibly flinch when you shot them? Nowadays, they just make a number appear and nothing else. Which in turn makes all of the weapons feel like BB guns, since the enemies literally do not react to them. As an example, compare shooting an enemy in TimeSplitters to Borderlands. Numbers are just a lazy and "gamey" way to show that you're doing something. Which I find funny, since people consider older games like Doom to be a time when games were more "gamey", but enemies in Doom actually react to being shot, instead of just showing a number.
Damage numbers in games are usually tied to level scaling too, an arbitrary "progression" system that attempts to up the ante continuously while never really changing the actual interactions (the enemies you encounter scale with your character's level after all, so you might as well play through the entire thing on level 1, in the case of elder scrolls games), and the only difference between a draugr wight and a draugr overlord is the arbitrary numbers assinged to them, it's the exact same model and moveset otherwise. You still press the same buttons you did when you had the level 1 stick, that level 50 shiny sword of shiny swordiness fulfills the same function as the stick, it, at best, entertains the most lizard-brained appeals, giving a sense of progression where nothing actually changes except the numbers, or the appeal of big numbers which are just big because they lack a comparison to anything real. Damage number systems may have made sense as an approximate model for character health during a time of serious technological limitations - but that time ended more than 10 years ago, and realistic physics-based damage models have long been established as a possibility, doubling down on item tiers and level scaling is just psychological trickery, and not a serious approach to game design. What's the point of clinging to a cultural artifact that stopped being a consequence of the limitations of the medium, when more accurate models are possible, or you could take a completely different approach that doesnt even need such mathematical scaling models?
Your bit about roguelikes hiding numbers reminds me of what Dead by Daylight had for ages - the item descriptions would say things like "slightly increases healing rate" or "moderately reduces charge time" (with the 'x-ly increase/decreases' in bold for extra emphasis!). The numbers were there, they just had to be datamined by tech-savvy members of the community. An attempt at simplicity? Maybe, but it just ended up making things unclear as for one item 'slightly' might mean 10% where for another it would be 25%. Eventually the developers did cave and just put the numbers on, but they held out for a baffling amount of time.
I'd say being obtuse would make sense in that case, given that DBD is ostensibly a horror game. Putting hard numbers on everything would remove a degree of uncertainty (and thus tension).
The DbD devs are notoriously bullheaded and refuse to do the simplest of changes unless their backs are to a wall. I mean they only recently added in an FoV slider into the game despite it being requested since launch...Which was 8 years ago.
@@Warcrafter4 Can't forget them dragging their feet on accessibility too. When someone requested colourblind options, one of their head people said as close to "Who cares? Fuck colourblind people" as you can get in corporate speak.
Sounds like they didn't actually have a clear reason for doing it that way in the first place. If they didn't want the descriptions to be filled with numbers then they could have standardized the words to number associations. Like GW1's touch range, adjacent, nearby, in the area, hearing range. Another option is show word description by default but have a hotkey to display the numbers under the hood.
6:31 honestly this point is why noita sits at the top of the roguelike pyramid for me. it lets you do whatever you want immediately, but the environment pushes you to better yourself or just be crushed. then it gives you immaculate, diegetic tools for doing so and it gives you the numbers - but figuring out what they truly mean is the real challenge. and not killing yourself with what you've made. it's an amazing dance of knowledge fighting mystery, somehow managing to live up to being a game about magic and alchemy.
The big thing I hate in these kinds of games is the leveling treadmill. When you fight the same enemies at level 1 and level 100, and your only way to tell the difference is by checking the numbers over their heads. If you want me to be struggling against a half-dozen bandits the entire game then don't make me level up 100 times. I remember being pissed the first time I played Destiny, I thought the starter gun looked cool, but of course in an hour or less I was forced to ditch it for whatever 'rarer' gun I'd found most recently, to fight the same enemies I'd fought with the starter gun but who now had more health. It's all a lie, designed to keep you fighting the same enemies to earn the same guns over and over again.
In the Battlefield games, one of the best updates they ever had for BF4 was the ability to customize your hitmarkers. I would make headshots orange, and killshots red. When in a firefight, if you see that orange hitmarker, you could probably just spray and pray in the enemy's general direction and get a kill. In later games they even explicitly showed you how much damage you were doing, but as part of the kill notification system rather than ugly damage numbers bursting from enemies.
Where the number problem really shows is Live Service and MMO games where the player get incremental increases in numbers, but so do enemies, and so the only benefit of the bigger numbers is that if you need to go back to earlier content, you'll steamroll it.
The great irony I'm noticing is looter shooters show you so much meaningless information because the numbers barely go up and yet rogue likes show you non of that information when a single item is capable of making or breaking your run.
excellent video! calls to mind matthewmatosis's "take a penny, leave a penny" observation. one developer adds numbers to help players interact with the depth of their system, and players get so used to the idea that numbers indicate depth, that that expectation can be preyed upon. the point of numbers becomes, not helping people through the depth that exists, but to indicate a false depth where there in fact is none.
There's something about being able to quantify just how badly I've ruined a line of code masquerading as a character's day that triggers the good chemical in my monke brain.
I still remember the first time I saw Borderlands 1 and it was a FPS but with numbers bouncing out of the enemy like it was a turn based RPG, and I said “Woah! I am home!”
Damage numbers against enemies with the consistent and known health and with actual variance are genuinely useful in the moment. The numbers in TF2 basically inform your entire next decision. If you managed to land a meat shot as a scout on a medic, you're almost guaranteed to down them on the next shot, even as he retreats. Prick a -40 from a soldier that just came flying in from his Medic, and you will very likely need to pull out. The damage numbers themselves arent just sources of feel good juice, they actively report the current matchup.
I think my biggest issue with numbers in games, in general, is when they're confusing or downright misleading. I don't need to know that headshots can do between 1567438 and 174191 damage when I'm fighting a boss that takes a grueling 5 minutes of plinking to kill. A good hit is a good hit, unless you're trying to communicate something important via your numbers just play a sound or display the classic COD headshot aim reticle
The weirdest example I can think of is in one of my favorite games enter the Gungeon. That game has all sorts of numbers tied to damage, but they’re almost. If your a veteran player you can into it some of the more regular damage intervals. There’s actually an item that will tell you exactly how much damage you’re doing but it’s cursed and makes the game a little harder which makes me think that the developers put it in as a little wink to remind you that they really don’t want you to know this stuff most of the time.
Well that is true for most games most of the time. Even in the example given here where they are useful it is mostly useful the first time. Once you learned that different locations and distances make a difference it is not a lesson you need to learn over and over again until you encounter a different enemy with different rules. Although the trouble is that different people learn at different rates/ways.
I prefer a hit indicator flashing on the reticule and a different coloured one for critical hits. I subscribe to the philosophy that every piece of UI is an acknowledgement of devs to a failure of conveying something in-game. In Metro 2033 having no UI at all was completely functional. Ammo? Mags have gaps to show. Map? Your character physically pulls out a clipboard with the map. It's not always optimal, of course, but the ideal should be to minimise UI as much as possible because it stands between the player and the game. In a survival game, giving the player a six shooter and making them count the bullets themselves can actually really up the tension. Loved the Last of Us hardest difficulty for that exact reason.
I tend to skip past Patreon credits for Second Wind videos, but the music at the end of Cold Take just fits the vibe too well. It's like hanging out at the bar after last call, you know you should probably head out but you're still too chill to move after that last shot.
I remember the first time i came in contact with algebra in my school. Up to that point i liked math. But then they added letters to the math problems and it just messed things up for me. Too me letters were limited to the alphabet and numbers to math. And all of a sudden they decided to mix things up.
I was reminded of Nethack before you mentioned roguelikes. Nethack had a few oddities, which resulted in Pacifist runs (you, personally, can't attack), vegan playthroughs, illiteracy (the game tracks most "legible" material, and some forks make even reading a t-shirt verboten). One of the most egregious examples is the foodless run. There was a small code thing, that certain potions, like fruit juice, can give nutrition. Eventually people figured out strategies to maximize this, and were able to complete the game, never eating a bite, which is hard enough in itself, but also confers disadvantages because eating is a source of... other things. Torchlight 2 (dungeon crawler) had an example that's probably spread to other games. Flat damage modifiers and percents versus egregious scaling. After a certain difficulty, an equipment-slotable that gave 3% reduction to damage, found at the beginning of the game, could be more significant than the armor itself. I played Borderlands one through, but two's pacing felt bad. I didn't care about silly things, and when the game's throwing 95% worthless garbage at you from everywhere, it just became annoying. Idk if they adopted the "ignore lower quality" stuff that Diablo-esque dungeon crawlers started using, but they didn't have it at the time. Risk of Rain 2 and Binding of Isaac leaned more towards bad. Risk of Rain 2 for it's less explicable dying (hopefully they ironed it out, because about 5% of my runs felt like I died from not being good or getting 'particularly' bad RNG, but equipment that didn't do what it said or sudden deaths, from bugged and broken mechanics (multi-hit enemies with modifiers that only accounted the *first* hits were a big one). Binding of Isaac is just a numbers game where they hide all the numbers, which should lean towards "the build you find is playable" vs "try to game the system as much as possible because IT IS RIGGED GET OVER IT". Isaac's dozens of infinite combos is one, then there was rewinding time to exploit a bug, only for it to be patched, then the patch removed, and then re-patched again.
That napkin art has me thinking Kingdom of Loathing now. Any chance we’ll ever hear Frost talk about Asymmetric Publications and the Loathing series? Such a long lifespan off of such little graphics, it’s the Stuff of Legends I tells ya!
You can trade numbers by reaction and audio. There are a lot of ways to give all that feedback without needing the numbers to clutter the visuals, and if disabling the numbers gives off a muted outcome then that means they used the numbers to hide the complete lack of a satisfying hit reaction.
Thank you for bring up the subject of numbers. As someone who mainly comes from the table-top space, usually the algorithms are spelled out for you in black and white. i.e. the rule book. But in video games, it's difficult to get the meaning most of the time. Sometimes, I wish more game developers would just tell us how damage is calculated.
the Monster Hunter games used to not show damage numbers, and now they do- I like having the numbers on screen. It lets me compare each hit to the other hits, so I can have an idea if what I am doing is more or less effective moment-to-moment
It's funny, the 3 games that I've really sunk my teeth into the past few years have all been number crunchers to various degrees, but they're not all just "number go up", because what those numbers do can be very different things. Warframe encouraged all kinds of crazy builds because its different damage types all had various effects - shield break, armour reduction, DOTs, freezing, etc. Honkai Impact does a similar thing, with speed boosts, the usual elemental effects, and stackable stuns, but it also made sure you felt the difference between a B-rank character with a 10% speed boost and a goddess who could summon a dragon to not only do obscene damage, but also fly around the battlefield, or summon a motorbike and an orbital laser. The real surprise was Honkai Star Rail, because as a turn-based RPG it's the most number-crunchy by design, but again they branch out what you can do with it - not just higher stat and DOT proc, but also sequence breaking ultimates and follow-up attacks. Great fun, all three of them, though sometimes I wish I could pull myself away from them long enough to play something else XD
The numbers can be useful but Kill the Justice Leagues numbers combined with its UI reminds me of that scene from Ready, Player One where the villain talks about how many ads the can fill the players vision with without them having a seizure.
"I see as an attempt to streamline the process for those who are not as math-inclined. You know, English majors." I've never been so insulted by something I agree so wholeheartedly with XD
I use the Dmg Numbers in Remnant 2 for one exact reason, to find the weak spots of enemies. It makes a pretty huge difference and not every enemies has the Head as the weak spot. Once you know the enemies the numbers are only there to see your damage improvements and feedback if the shot was a critical hit. What the game doesn't do a good job ob communicating without it. Yes there are special animations but to me it feels like its more about the damage amount than just critical hits.
Good to see a path of exile reference in your numbers video, mathil is an absolute mad scientist. While playing that game I've had to make more spreadsheets than I care to admit.
Sometimes I freak out that I've done nothing in my 28 years, but then I remember that neither have most. Not to make a nothing out of this something, it's just a relief that if the thing you start is worthwhile it will be well received eventually.
for me honestly, i kind of love the obsurity of information in roguelikes! there's a feeling of mastery that comes with absorbing + intuiting new information (through secondary sources like wikis or not), and then executing on it. as an example like. the fear & hunger games are all about gathering obscured information and then using it to your advantage.
It's all numbers; but some genres work better with the numbers proudly shown for the world to see, while others benefit from keeping those numbers hidden like a Wizard of Oz situation. In a game where you're trying to eke out every last drop of damage you can get, knowing what percentile of a gnat's toe you're off from reaching that peak is important. In a game where the guy doesn't die because his number of hits is more than what your pixelated pretend shotgun can do in one shot; well, it only needs to visually let you know that you need to press the button another time or so to see the glorious red goo splatter. I just feel like modern games cribbing off the stat highs for surface value "engagement" has killed a lot of love people have had for the fun numbers. Case in point; why the hell did Kratos go from needing to just use a small handful of mythical tools, to needing to spend 20 minutes every hour or so of gameplay looking through his armor to increase his resistance to hay fever by 0.0347563%?
I swear if second wind decided to go into game creation alongside journalism and just had frost as the voice actor and only one in the game it would be monotone but fuck is Frost's voice and deadpan delivery something to admire
Roguelikes have always had a thing for mystery. It's a big part of some of the original ones. Nethack for example the real "game" is identifying items. There's not much going on besides that. If you knew what everything was as soon as you picked it up, or ideally beforehand, the game would be ten times easier.
Numbers are an addiction, that 5% boost may not do much but with enough of them you start to see those damage numbers really start to increase. And once they start to go up you need more. The real trick is when a tiny bonus is enough to overcome a resistance and a zero becomes a positive value (you'll do anything to stop seeing "0 - Immune"). Monster Immune to all physical damage good thing you now have that 5% bonus fire damage those zeros are now ones. Even only dealing one damage you feel like you are making progress. Its easy feedback that what you did worked
As an indie dev working on their first game - I appreciate analysis like this. What makes number systems work - when is it a good time to show them? How do you justify showing them>
I started playing Slay The Spire last year and found in the settings an option to have the cumulative damage number displayed. So say if you play an attack that hits 3 times for 7 damage you see a big gold 21 at the end. I think it works well since being fundamentally a card game it lends well to being numbers based. Seeing huge damage rack up just feels nice.
I think there is also something to be said about the size of the numbers. If you do 5 damage, get an upgrade, now it's showing 10, you can quickly read and understand the weight of that. Some games go for the insane numbers and in the heat of the moment, going from like 3784 damage to 4325 feels less interesting/readable.
I appreciate the nod to AngryBird and the fighting game scene. For us, the numbers are critical. Frame data and damage numbers are especially important at higher levels of play. But lower level players can quite often get really far without learning the numbers just by determining what's "safe" and "unsafe". I appreciate that SF6 (and most fighting games for that matter) keeps the numbers hidden until you go to replay mode where they show all the numbers all the time until you turn em off.
As someone who's played a ludicrous amount of idle and clicker games, math is so crucial, especially for someone who loves watching numbers grow to near unimaginable sizes. I can't tell you how many times in Cookie Clicker I've busted out my TI-30Xa just to figure out how effective any combination of boosts are and how much I'd reap from them. Math-aholic, and proud to be one
Vampire Survivors is what I play when I want the noise. Just tune out, unfocus my eyes, and get fuuuucked up while I play a survival game with one hand and half a brain.
Numbers are great when they are meaningful, like in Team Fortress 2. Not when the screen is being flooded with colourful numbers that make zero difference in my decision making.
I finally figured out why Jacobs weapons generate so much less damage in the Borderlands franchise. Its' because Jacobs' selling point is good ergonomics; similar to Dahl in that sense. So if they also had the highest damage output, you'd never have any incentive to try any other weapon type, so there'd be no point in putting them in the game. Some classes, like Zane in BL3, get damage and other specific bonus types which are clearly designed to overcome Jacobs' low damage for his class, but that's ok, because Jacobs weapons still don't synergise as well with Amara or Moze.
