Secrecy of Game Mechanics

[Cadsuane]

Game mechanics secrecy is absolute bullshit, and ends up being nothing but an arresting influence on the progression of the game. The contention that it brings the community together is bollocks. Arguably, it's more divisive than anything since controversy over unclear aspects of gameplay, gear with hidden effects and so forth, precludes the homogeneity of strategy philosophies between disparate players. Job forums often have a half page full of stickies which mostly warn about what topics not to post, which is to say more energy gets spent preventing discussion about unresolved or contentious subjects than is spent on the well-reasoned resolvation of those issues.

If game mechanics were transparent then we would have that much more to discuss without getting mired in experimental and mathematical absurdities. Enmity mechanics testing was a catalyst for discussion and renovation of tank strategy and by extension greater party strategy. After years of absolute tripe about CHRs modification of provoke, the insistance on /war, and other worthless ideas and discussion, all as a result of confusion and ignorance, there was a scientifically sound, well proven theory which provided sweet merciful clarity and an end to socially entropic guessing games about how provoke must really work. What do you think, that ffxi forum traffic took a hit all of a sudden because people didn't have anything to talk about anymore?

Theorycrafting in FFXI takes ridiculous experimental rigour. Thousands of hours of experimentation are required to uncover the fundamental mechanics of the game. I don't need to contend that it's too much to expect of a community, because it's fucking self evident; A great deal of the game workings are still a vast and incredibly stupid mystery. Moreover current stat priorities and gear choices are often more a result of shallow fashionability and social palatability than they are well researched.

What we get as a community from this state of affairs is an endless stream of stupid forum discussions that either go nowhere or require OCD mathematicans or FFXI gurus to resolve, and endless cripping difficulty with certain game events which likely has a simple arbitrary solution we can't guess without knowing game mechanics. We gain... a liking for masochistic japanese bullshit, I guess, if we're really saying that this shit is a good thing.

[arshesney]

They shouldn't release all the formulae etc but would it really have been that hard to show stuff like ranged attack (and maybe even ranged/melee/magic accuracy) in a menu like attack and defence appear on the equipment menu?

This, in one of the last interviews they said that enfeebles are calculated comparing various stats MND vs. MND or INT vs. INT, but also vs. AGI, vs. VIT. Why not say which is which?

Why not disclose how the hell magic accuracy works? Again, you HAVE to resort to 3rd party tools (parser) to TRY to figure it out.

It doesn't have to come through forums or anything either, I think SE did a nice job with the SCH taru that explain you campaign workings, they could revamp some NPCs to add color and detail.
Would be also nice to see more combat stats, ranged comes to mind, but also evasion and total accuracy, hMP and whatnot.

[Wolfknight]

They shouldn't release all the formulae etc but would it really have been that hard to show stuff like ranged attack (and maybe even ranged/melee/magic accuracy) in a menu like attack and defence appear on the equipment menu?

This I would be happy with seeing evasion, acc, macc, racc, ratt, mdef, and so on, on the equip screen and leaving other stuff secret but too much is secret with hiding all of the stuff besides att and def.

[Baha]

Secrecy to this degree is retarded. You can't see half of the relevant stats for most jobs. Oughta let people figure out fights on their own, no doubt, but mechanics should be transparent.

Also: stockholm syndrome

[BRP]

Spoiler: show

Most games keep every single one of their "mechanics" as secrets.

[Gergall]

Most games keep every single one of their "mechanics" as secrets.

I'm more interested in what most GOOD games do.

Starcraft - extremely popular, well-balanced and fun game. Mechanics are 100% transparent. Even stats not shown during gameplay (like unit build times) can be seen by looking in the Map Editor or on the game website.

Command and Conquer Red Alert came out around the same time as Starcraft. It has ambiguous HP bars and energy bars and power bars (mmm...powerbars). There were weird bonuses to different countries that weren't documented anywhere (one country had slightly faster build times, another one had slightly lower prices, etc).

I think the most popular games are ones where the player knows what they need to do to perform better instead of just guessing/experimenting endlessly.

[BRP]

Halo and Mario isn't popular lol

[Kerberoz]

There's no need to publish every little damage equation etc. Let people test/figure that out on their own.

Things like food stats should be available, though... hidden effects are just stupid. Hidden strategies that have absolutely no clues given in-game (AV) are beyond fucking stupid. We're supposed to figure it out by guessing?

[Suiram]

I think food stuff is published in some yearly JP magazine Elmer or someone wrote once. Which is how stuff like Enmity on food was known long before Enmity was figured out.

[Gergall]

Everything is a secret. Is there even a way of knowing what INT stands for?

BTW that is a loaded question, answer it with caution bwahaha

[VZX]

If you're talking about stats secrecy, I don't think there's anymore useful stats to figure out.
We know:
- how STR,DEX,VIT,INT,MND,CHR affects bunch of stuff (WS,JA, damage dealt/taken), how melee damage is calculated
- how eva/acc is related. Though evasion skill is a big mystery still (but not worth it to figure them out)
- how magic damage is calculated
- how macc works (roughly)
- how enmity works

Anything left is to figure out racc/ratk stuff , which at most only affecting 3 jobs.

Mob behaviour secrecy:
Other than AV, PW, and Bhaflau Remnant NM's randomshitisrandom, we pretty much know how to handle most of the stuff. If there's any secret one would like to know, they would like to know how to take less people and get it done faster.

[Gergall]

- how macc works (roughly)

Not as much for BRD. How do Wind and Singing factor in together? Are they averaged? Added? How do they weigh against straight Macc or CHR?

[Kaeko]

Almightly Apkallu

[Shuemue]

Wow, what a turn on... Whims who's the girl in your avatar?

Kaya Scodelario - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Fridell]

I think some of the secrecy is pretty well done and fun after all, for example it makes people test and make theories up around lots of things, esp with stats and gear.
Though stuff like AV / PW and Treasure Hunter and the likes however, is just very very stupid.

[VZX]

Not as much for BRD. How do Wind and Singing factor in together? Are they averaged? Added? How do they weigh against straight Macc or CHR?

That's why "(roughly)" was put there.

If we are only strictly talking about the test that has been done, the person only tested elemental magic and bind accuracy. Not other magic debuff.

[Jesifromgaruda]

While taking smoke breaks I usually get on BG and read through some threads. This thread actually cracked me up pretty hard. There are some really funny posts so I've condensed them into this post, in case you missed them.

New content got added in FFXI and some months(?) later people were DIEING, LIKE IN REAL LIFE, because a bad guy was bad. Imagine the comaradity people!

Hey SE? Im on Ranger using a Staff.... everything has high evasion and defense!

We gain... a liking for masochistic japanese bullshit, I guess, if we're really saying that this shit is a good thing.

Secrecy to this degree is retarded. You can't see half of the relevant stats for most jobs. Oughta let people figure out fights on their own, no doubt, but mechanics should be transparent.

Also: stockholm syndrome

This last one is probably my favorite. Cracked me up serveral times after reading it.

EDIT: Yeah, I too agree that there is too much that they don't show us. I should love to see my acc, among other things.

In this game, if you don't have friends willing to talk to you about gear or you don't read up on your job and browse forums, you are gonna be gimp. Period. You wont understand things like which gear you should use for TP and which for WS.

The last meripo I was in there was a DRG that was TPing in wyvern helm and didn't have a WS set. I was nice and explained how you pretty much need the w turban, and explained TP and WS gear. This is the kind of stuff that you have to have friends tell you or educate yourself on.

But yeah, my main point is that because of how they give you basically 0 instructions on how to play and hide a lot your stats, you only know whats is the "best" setup because of parses and forums.

[BRP]

But yeah, my main point is that because of how they give you basically 0 instructions on how to play and hide a lot your stats

Again, a common case in videogames

[Plow]

Again, a common case in videogames

common =/= good or bad

This is a question of if it's a good thing or a bad thing, not how many other games are like this.

[BRP]

Okay then.

Common case in the best videogames.