Arcade Berg aka. "Learning Game Design with Arcade Berg"

Tweaking of Exposed Variables?

Something that's been on my mind lately is the extra attention to the numbers when tweaking exposed variables. As in, values shown to the player.

Sometimes the "perfect" value when tweaking... Let's say the jump strength in a platformer is 4.56697. That's the value that makes the game feel just right, and if it's "hidden" as most variables are, then it's just fine.

But sometimes, in some games certain variables are shown to the player. Like the power of spells in a Role Playing Game or maybe the duration of a boost-skill?

Take Mass Effect 2 for example. In it you, the player, can read about the duration of skills for each level, the exact range and radius, the damage it does and even the percentage of another variable (weapon damage).

Right; 1.5 sec, 60%, 3.0 sec and 3 meters. Enough info for you, or do you need a chart?

When doing things like this, what I'm wondering about is how far should you go to make the variable values "pretty". How much of a compromise? Now, in many cases I'm sure we're only talking about rounding it to the closest decimal, but sometimes I think this can be a bother and something that's a pain for the designer.

The perfect duration for fantastic gameplay might be 57 seconds, but that's in no way as pretty as 60. But maybe 60 in reality is too much? Not worth arguing about some might say, but at the same time, isn't the micro tweaking what really makes a game great?

Also, when exposing the variables, you have to keep them simple enough for that particular audience to grasp. In Dungeon & Dragon-games for example, there's a lot more statistics than . can find in Mass Effect, and that's not a problem for the normal D&D-audience, because they're used to it and might in fact like it. Meanwhile, it scares me and I much more appreciate the Mass Effect 2 approach with "medium amount" of info.

But heck, you always have to cater to the specific audience regarding all subjects and not only numbers, I guess.

This post was finished at 22:54, but it might be wiser of me to say 23:00. Sounds better, don't ya think?