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LARGE NUMBERS!!!!
Posts
McBick
1339
McBick
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CloseI've noticed a lot of modern RPGs use large numbers from upwards of a 1000 for damage, I've even seen 6 digits before. Is there a reason they use such large numbers? Most of the time they can be reduced to 3 digits or even less depending on the rpg and it wouldn't even affect game play (Granted everything else is scaled down accordingly as well).
The only reason I can think of is that they think people prefer larger numbers. I myself prefer the simplicity of small digit numbers, but maybe the majority likes large numbers?
What do you guys think about this? Also what do you use for your games LARGE numbers or small and why?
The only reason I can think of is that they think people prefer larger numbers. I myself prefer the simplicity of small digit numbers, but maybe the majority likes large numbers?
What do you guys think about this? Also what do you use for your games LARGE numbers or small and why?
Some people prefer large numbers to have the illusion that they are dealing more damage. I prefer starting with small numbers and growing to bigger numbers to indicate how much my character has grown.
Another point is, if you want to know the difference between 485 damage and 495 damage, you can't do that with single digits. Single digit figures have such a huge difference between them that even a small difference between them means a whole deal. I mean, the difference between 1 and 2 damage is a 200% increase!
But also realizing that "three zeros at the end of something doesn't make my brain happy" (quoting Craze). Smaller numbers are swifter to comprehend in battle, and quickness is a key to fun battles.
Another point is, if you want to know the difference between 485 damage and 495 damage, you can't do that with single digits. Single digit figures have such a huge difference between them that even a small difference between them means a whole deal. I mean, the difference between 1 and 2 damage is a 200% increase!
But also realizing that "three zeros at the end of something doesn't make my brain happy" (quoting Craze). Smaller numbers are swifter to comprehend in battle, and quickness is a key to fun battles.
Dreaded
772
For making my own games, I've always used small numbers, part of which may be influenced by some of my favorite games (Baldur's Gate for example) and partially because I've found it a little easier to manipulate the system to do what you want and eliminate so much volatility.
Sviel
2006
It gets pointless fast.
I like a few large numbers for emphasis, but if someone's hitting 4 digits I want the player to feel like they've really accomplished something. A character going from 3 digits to 4 is a big deal, but going from 6 to 7 is just routine. Thus, if I'm using numbers as part of the gameplay experience, I can pack more relative punch by keeping them condensed...no trails of 0s.
I like a few large numbers for emphasis, but if someone's hitting 4 digits I want the player to feel like they've really accomplished something. A character going from 3 digits to 4 is a big deal, but going from 6 to 7 is just routine. Thus, if I'm using numbers as part of the gameplay experience, I can pack more relative punch by keeping them condensed...no trails of 0s.
RyaReisender
200
To answer the thread's opening questions: Players do like high numbers.
It's true. Disgaea 1 in my area was mainly popular because all the children were like "Man you gotta check out that game, you can level up to level 9999 and do 3691693693699 damage with one attack!"
(And how disappointed I was when I figured I need to grind endlessly to even reach those numbers and that the main game can easily be cleared with level 60.)
From a game design viewpoint, the number of optimal digits really depends on the game.
I do see the charm in really low numbers in that they are easier trackable for the player. For example your max HP is just 20. And monsters do 1-3 damage. Then you will actually remember those numbers as a player. You will even realize things like "If I use this armor on this monster I will take 2 damage". With higher number you will never think so in-depth (just "more DEF = less damage" and that's it).
Also it's much easier to keep track of as game designer as well. So in the end creating a good balance is easier, but a perfect balance is often harder to do (because there's nothing between 1 and 2 damage, which actually means doubled damage!). But of course you can still design your game all around this.
Once it goes above say 99 max HP, it will start feeling less notable. In all those three digit or four digit HP RPGs, if an armor tells me I get 2 more def it just doesn't tell me much anymore. I might even be hard to notice the different between the current and the next tier armor because it won't even change the number of hits I can take at all. Though this could be worked around by good design as well (making armor much more meaningful), it rarely happens in games.
High numbers above four digits are like an action movie. Boom pow bam. You gotta watch it, he did 35030603600 damage with a 100 combo attack!
It's true. Disgaea 1 in my area was mainly popular because all the children were like "Man you gotta check out that game, you can level up to level 9999 and do 3691693693699 damage with one attack!"
(And how disappointed I was when I figured I need to grind endlessly to even reach those numbers and that the main game can easily be cleared with level 60.)
From a game design viewpoint, the number of optimal digits really depends on the game.
I do see the charm in really low numbers in that they are easier trackable for the player. For example your max HP is just 20. And monsters do 1-3 damage. Then you will actually remember those numbers as a player. You will even realize things like "If I use this armor on this monster I will take 2 damage". With higher number you will never think so in-depth (just "more DEF = less damage" and that's it).
Also it's much easier to keep track of as game designer as well. So in the end creating a good balance is easier, but a perfect balance is often harder to do (because there's nothing between 1 and 2 damage, which actually means doubled damage!). But of course you can still design your game all around this.
Once it goes above say 99 max HP, it will start feeling less notable. In all those three digit or four digit HP RPGs, if an armor tells me I get 2 more def it just doesn't tell me much anymore. I might even be hard to notice the different between the current and the next tier armor because it won't even change the number of hits I can take at all. Though this could be worked around by good design as well (making armor much more meaningful), it rarely happens in games.
High numbers above four digits are like an action movie. Boom pow bam. You gotta watch it, he did 35030603600 damage with a 100 combo attack!
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Well, obviously, ultimately the only thing the damage numbers affect are flavor. It's like a spell animation - making it bigger and flashier doesn't make the spell stronger, it just makes the player feel a little more badass. How badass do you want the player to feel?
In a horror game you almost certainly want the player to be dealing very low damage numbers, because the goal is to evoke feelings of helplessness. But you might want enemy damage to be higher. Maybe the damage dealt by enemies is 5x the player's damage? I'm not sure increasing enemy damage has quite the same effect, since you have to increase the player's HP and healing to match, and this makes the player feel tougher. (The same thing is technically true when increasing player damage - you have to increase enemy HP to match. But enemy HP is invisible in most games, whereas player HP is shown on the screen.)
Your traditional world-spanning JRPG starring a cast of misfit heroes probably has you start the game wielding a pointy stick and a cloth shield, taking three attacks to kill a bee. And then by the end of the game you're singlehandedly attacking a fortress head-on that's the central base of an army of demons that destroyed three different countries. So this would be a case where you want the numbers to start off really small and eventually get really big.
WildStar Online suffers badly from high number syndrome. You can do upwards of 1000 damage per swing before you hit level 5. I don't really get it. I could buy the big-numbers thing in a game like... I dunno, God of War 2, where you are the actual freaking god of war, and you just killed like a hundred other gods in the first game, and now you're back for an encore. Yeah, okay, millions of damage are justified there. But not if you're just a random explorer dude.
In a horror game you almost certainly want the player to be dealing very low damage numbers, because the goal is to evoke feelings of helplessness. But you might want enemy damage to be higher. Maybe the damage dealt by enemies is 5x the player's damage? I'm not sure increasing enemy damage has quite the same effect, since you have to increase the player's HP and healing to match, and this makes the player feel tougher. (The same thing is technically true when increasing player damage - you have to increase enemy HP to match. But enemy HP is invisible in most games, whereas player HP is shown on the screen.)
Your traditional world-spanning JRPG starring a cast of misfit heroes probably has you start the game wielding a pointy stick and a cloth shield, taking three attacks to kill a bee. And then by the end of the game you're singlehandedly attacking a fortress head-on that's the central base of an army of demons that destroyed three different countries. So this would be a case where you want the numbers to start off really small and eventually get really big.
WildStar Online suffers badly from high number syndrome. You can do upwards of 1000 damage per swing before you hit level 5. I don't really get it. I could buy the big-numbers thing in a game like... I dunno, God of War 2, where you are the actual freaking god of war, and you just killed like a hundred other gods in the first game, and now you're back for an encore. Yeah, okay, millions of damage are justified there. But not if you're just a random explorer dude.
Itaju
89
I prefer numbers as small as possible. It's easier to read.
You can tell the difference from 5 attack to 7 attack by a glimpse, but
3759 to 3812 needs to make you think a lot more to see and doesn't feel natural at all.
In a game where enemies have only up to 100 LP I don't need "61142 Crit Damage!"
You can tell the difference from 5 attack to 7 attack by a glimpse, but
3759 to 3812 needs to make you think a lot more to see and doesn't feel natural at all.
In a game where enemies have only up to 100 LP I don't need "61142 Crit Damage!"
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I bet you could solve the readability issue by just rounding all damage to two significant digits.
RyaReisender
200
author=LockeZ
I bet you could solve the readability issue by just rounding all damage to two significant digits.
But then might as well just use lower numbers.
Desertopa
775
But, as LockeZ already pointed out, a lot of games transition from really low stakes conflict to epic, high stakes conflict over the course of the story. If you're dealing 22 points of damage per attack to large rats in a sewer at the beginning of the game, and 64 points of damage per attack to elephant-sized flaming demons by the end of the game, then even if the combat is balanced for those kinds of numbers, the player is probably going to feel confused or cheated, because the numbers don't reflect the kind of change in scope they've observed in the story.
Ephiam
8579
I'm guilty of enjoying seeing big numbers pop up on the screen, as well as having SUPER FLASHY animations for spells and special abilities; FFVIII in particular has awesomely drawn-out animations. Even though Disgea may be the crowned king of high numbers and leveling your characters into gods, I still haven't played much of that series.
One thing that bugged me, though, is that games rarely make the damage of lengthy animation sequences worth it; Ark from FFIX took forever and a DAY, yet STILL only managed to do 9999 damage. Granted, Knights of the Round, etc. were a different story, but I wish they'd ALWAYS scale the damage to the length of the animation to make it worth using and wasting time watching.
One thing that bugged me, though, is that games rarely make the damage of lengthy animation sequences worth it; Ark from FFIX took forever and a DAY, yet STILL only managed to do 9999 damage. Granted, Knights of the Round, etc. were a different story, but I wish they'd ALWAYS scale the damage to the length of the animation to make it worth using and wasting time watching.
Desertopa
775
Personally, I prefer games to either have no damage cap, or make the cap higher than you can realistically deal in gameplay. Damage caps aren't just unrealistic, they put a roadblock in the way or the sense of growth that is usually one of the major contributors to any sense of reward from playing the game.
Ephiam
8579
I, for one, WELCOME our No Damage Cap overlords! But that would mean that a character's stats would also never cap, which in turn would drive some folk absolutely bat-shit CRAZY! Some people LIVE to max out their party's (or character's) stats, and being unable to would likely cause some hefty mental trauma.
turkeyDawg
195
I was going to make a joke about Giga Wing, but it looks like TV Tropes beat me to the punch:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PinballScoring
(31 trillion points!)
Apparently one of the sequels goes up to tens-of-quintillions (20 digits) of points! Now that's some Hyper Solid Shooting!
But is this really a modern RPG thing? I think Paper Mario 2 is the most "modern" JRPG I own, so... I'm really out of the loop on this stuff.
Speaking of that game, the most damage you can deal (by the end of the game) in one blow without expending MP or making use of special equipment is 6. So, when something does like, 20 damage in an attack, it kinda evokes the same reaction of HOLY SHIT as 9999 damage attacks!
Anyways, I think the general consensus is that big numbers, like anything big, has an immediate impressiveness to it, but smaller things are obviously easier to comprehend. Also, you grow a bit numb to the big numbers after a while in the same way that you'd grow numb to flashy spell animations or crazy explosions. On the flip side, if you get used to the big numbers, then going to something with small numbers feels really weak, but you'll adjust after a while.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PinballScoring
(31 trillion points!)
Apparently one of the sequels goes up to tens-of-quintillions (20 digits) of points! Now that's some Hyper Solid Shooting!
But is this really a modern RPG thing? I think Paper Mario 2 is the most "modern" JRPG I own, so... I'm really out of the loop on this stuff.
Speaking of that game, the most damage you can deal (by the end of the game) in one blow without expending MP or making use of special equipment is 6. So, when something does like, 20 damage in an attack, it kinda evokes the same reaction of HOLY SHIT as 9999 damage attacks!
Anyways, I think the general consensus is that big numbers, like anything big, has an immediate impressiveness to it, but smaller things are obviously easier to comprehend. Also, you grow a bit numb to the big numbers after a while in the same way that you'd grow numb to flashy spell animations or crazy explosions. On the flip side, if you get used to the big numbers, then going to something with small numbers feels really weak, but you'll adjust after a while.
author=RyaReisenderTATSUNICAL!
You gotta watch it, he did 35030603600 damage with a 100 combo attack!
Desertopa
775
author=Ephiam
I, for one, WELCOME our No Damage Cap overlords! But that would mean that a character's stats would also never cap, which in turn would drive some folk absolutely bat-shit CRAZY! Some people LIVE to max out their party's (or character's) stats, and being unable to would likely cause some hefty mental trauma.
Even if there isn't a hard ceiling on stats, there's still usually the practical limit of "as high as the characters' stats will be at maximum level when all stat-increasing mechanisms have been taken advantage of." So you can still "max out" characters' stats in the sense that they can't be made higher, but not in the sense of a character that's, say, hit 255 attack power, and thus will not gain any more attack power even as they continue to level up.
But when I say that I prefer to avoid damage caps, I don't mean that it should necessarily be possible to deal arbitrarily large amounts of damage in the game, I just mean that I don't want a cap at a level you'll actually run up against in gameplay. In Last Scenario, for instance, attacks dealing a few thousand damage are very powerful even by endgame standards, but it's possible to exceed 9999 damage with an attack. But this really just means that the one or two attacks capable of doing that much damage aren't arbitrarily limited; the most damage I've ever seen in that game was in the neighborhood of 13,000. The game might be capable of representing up to 65535 damage, or 99999, or maybe much more than that, but in practical terms it doesn't matter, because it really just means that in gameplay, your damage will be limited by the stats you can achieve and the moves you can learn, rather than an arbitrary cutoff point you're not allowed to exceed.
Plenty of games have these sort of soft ceilings, where there's a practical limit to how much damage you can do, but it's not a restriction imposed by how much damage the game will represent. Usually, the soft ceiling is lower than 9999, so when it's higher than that, people tend to notice and remark on the fact that the game doesn't have a damage cap, but for practical purposes it doesn't really matter whether it's higher or lower.
author=turkeyDawg
Speaking of that game, the most damage you can deal (by the end of the game) in one blow without expending MP or making use of special equipment is 6. So, when something does like, 20 damage in an attack, it kinda evokes the same reaction of HOLY SHIT as 9999 damage attacks!
20? Pshaw! More like 108! (or 80 if you don't like emulators, also the 108 is rng-capped and the 80 isn't)
FFX was stupid, in this regard. So you got like 80 points in Magic (the ceiling is 255) and already hit the 9999 cap.
You break it... And you get to the dmg cap with like 130 magic and you're like WHAT THE HELL
and we're not even talking about the aeons
You don't break the cap, in that game, you just randomly increase your attacks from 9,999 to 99,999, it's IRRITATING
SO NO TO DMG CAPS
You break it... And you get to the dmg cap with like 130 magic and you're like WHAT THE HELL
and we're not even talking about the aeons
You don't break the cap, in that game, you just randomly increase your attacks from 9,999 to 99,999, it's IRRITATING
SO NO TO DMG CAPS
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
In FF6 you can pretty easily get enough magic power to make Ultima roll over the maximum integer size and do two-digit damage. Not that it matters since Fire does 9999 damage at that point.
What's most aggravating is that Curaga, the game's most powerful spell, is healing for about 12,000 with max stats, while Ultima is hitting for 99,999 on 90 Magic, that's just AURGH
The best practical example I know of for large numbers was the strategy game Civilization V. The base game had unit HP at 10, and attacks doing 1-10 damage. This was changed with the first expansion, where HP was now based on 100. The reasoning for it, from what I can tell, is that now attacks could do 14 or 17 damage, instead of 1 or 2. The base game rounded up and down, while the expansion allowed those units hitting 1.4 and being rounded down to 1 to now hit 14. In the end, it made combat faster, so now your unit didn't take 10 turns to kill something. Once you go up to four-digit numbers, though, it starts to make less sense. The practical difference between between 98.4/100 (rounded down to 98) and 984/1000 is a lot less than the difference between 1.4/10 (rounded down to 1) and 14/100.
