Get rid of Statistics Suggestion

Gameplay
#1

I realise it may be too late a stage to implement a system like this in KCD but just in case I’ll detail it a little anyway.

One thing I really hate in most RPG’s including M&B and Skyrim are stats on items. e.g. Honed Longsword, Damage 10, Speed 0.5, Reach 0.6, Durability 5… etc

I propose a system where a sword can have a name and maybe an adjective (say Decorated Longsword, or Rusty Shortsword) when you the player first come across it.

You can then go and speak to a professional weaponsmith or such who you can ask to give you advice about the weapon, for example they might tell you “A finely balanced blade that, good for a quick thrust and parry” or “Pah!, Better to just club them with the pommel given that blade!”. Different people will tell you different things based on their bias and expertise in that area. For example a really important/famous player may find it hard to get items honestly evaluated since almost everyone has a bias towards trying to please them, and likewise a meagre peasant player will find it hard since almost everyone will try to talk down to them and try to exploit their lack of knowledge or prestige for a cheap trade price.

This adds the ability for NPC’s to have traits that can affect their bias for instance some can be proudly honest whereas others will try to take every penny but discerning who’s who is the players task and can usually be accomplished by asking around town for opinions and recommendations.

The system would naturally not only be applied to swords but also to almost any other item with stats. E.g. when buying a horse you’ll have to suss out whether your being swindled and the horse isn’t really “the healthiest and swiftest horse from the best stock in the kingdom” and can be accomplished by asking advice from say a trusted companion or recommendations to/from good merchants etc etc.

Summary:

All items will have stats, but they will be hidden from the player. The player can then discern approximations of how good an item is by asking npc’s who have a specific knowledge in that area. Equally then every npc will have stats detailing how knowledgeable they are about each kind of item/possession. A player must be careful though because what they’re told could be affected by a bias held by the npc. Biases can include trying to swindle you a low trade price, trying to please you or simply the npc favouring one kind of item over another.

Any thoughts on how this system might/could work in KCD or if not would you like to see it tried elsewhere? Or perhaps you think it’s a terrible idea, I’m curious.

11 Likes
#2

This is great, i’ve never thought about that.

#3

I think its a good Idea
but the dialogues should be not too long, it could be annoying to find out how good everything is by talking to npcs.
Maybe this system works good for some objects like weapons or horses.
It would add a more natural feeling to the game you would have more interaction with npcs and the screen is not full of tiny stat numbers. It would not be too easy to compare different kinds of swords for example but thats a good thing in my opinion.

#4

I, too, have never thought of it in this way, but actually think it’s quite interesting! As @janfo said, the dialogue could get a bit long winded, but perhaps if by asking someone it unlocks the stats in some way or attaches the info for you to look at in the inventory. Definitely a new perspective and change from the “same old, same old.” :smile:

#5
#6

@Tomohare Thanks for pointing out that thread, my searches didn’t come up with it.

I agree the dialogue shouldn’t be too laborious for everything, but likelihood is you’ll not be overly concerned about the exact quality, value and usefulness of every item you find. I assume since this game is aiming for a large degree of realism that replacing our sword/armour/mount will not be very common in a play session. Also once you’ve found a merchant/armourer/smith you trust the likelihood is you will continue to go back to them if you desperately need a review you can trust.

#7

Nno, I don’t think that would work. One, the exact system you’re suggesting would be a LOT of work - a lot of lines of voice acted dialogue, which is also more writing. Now if your reputation would not be taken into account and you could just go and see a sworsmith to get an honest opinion, it might kind of work, buut it would add a lot of legwork to the game which would be extremely unnecessary. Besides, as it stands, you are a blacksmith. I’d say you should be able to just tell all by yourself general stats of a weapon, and if in your characters opinion something is better at doing a thing than something else, numeric representation is the most accurate one.

1 Like
#8

Yeah, this. Based on profession, you ought to already know which sword or what type of armor is better than another. Maybe there could be some use for getting the opinion of somebody else related to other things, but probably not with this.

#9

Believe it or not this isn’t really new.

Go into old school Text Muds, namely DragonRealms by Simutronics had the exact same thing. There was/is (the mud is still around) actually an appraisal skill that you had to learn in some classes to advance. It also had one of the most intricate damage, battle, and leveling systems that I’ve ever seen in a game, and never seen in anything that is in modern gaming (MMO or otherwise). One new spin on this topic though is that you could always trust the shop keeper to tell you the truth. You are proposing they lie to you. It’s just that the shop keeper usually had a very low or only moderate appraisal skill, so that didn’t help you at all when you found a really good item. (And they could drop from anywhere in the game. I found a bastard sword that could be one or two-handed that was epic in construction and damage off a low-mid level mob) The better items were just that much more difficult to properly appraise. In my mentioned bastard sword example, I noticed the smiting (who doesn’t love the word smite?) right off the bat, but I couldn’t confirm the proper p-ownage until I had another player I trusted look at it that was around 4x my level with end game gear and he was begging to buy it off me.

PS: Just one Addendum to this. There were no adjectives on that sword. It was simply ‘A Bastard Sword’. You could tell next to no details about the item until an appraisal was done. Not saying that should be universal, but sometimes the old cliche` of don’t judge a book by its’ cover can definitely add hours of enjoyment and game play in and of itself.

#10

My understanding was “I can be a blacksmith, but only if I put work into increasing that skill and getting better at the mini game”. Many people will not want to do that and focus instead on other parts of the game which is the beauty of such big open world games.

But yes, it would be a lot of voice acting I suppose and I can see your points about numeric representation… If at least we could have stats that would reflect that the player could actually discern from examining it I’d be more happy. For example just use Sharpness, Weight and Length. Then based on your skill and knowledge your character may be able to discern the quality of the steel, the skill of the swordsmith etc. Don’t tell me some imaginary ‘Damage’ or ‘Speed’ stat, let me decide what I think is better based off the other values and by trying out the weapon or similar weapons in game or by asking the opinion of others.

@cniht That’s very interesting, I hope they can re-implement it into modern games. I think the idea of having npcs lying to you would pass right the way up from shop keepers appraising your goods and trying to sell you wares to all the political intrigue as you work your way up hierarchy, who can you trust and rely upon? I think it would bring a whole new dimension to the way people think of npcs and make the game feel much more alive.

#11

The main character’s background is as a blacksmith/blacksmith’s son, so he ought to already know certain things.

#12

WOOOW! this is one of the best ideas I’ve read, I fully support this idea. But its too work to make the diferents descriptions. And some sword will be have the same quantitavie characters… the description will be really same, no? This is a important point to have in mind

#13

I would love that and a combat system which would support this kind of information. As it stands tho, it’s a videogame, and in the background, there will be a lot of very precise calculations going on. In a real swordfight, you don’t get ‘damage’ because there’s no such thing - weight, sharpness, length, material a weapon is made from, these are the things that matter because they severely affect how well does the weapon handle, and swordfight itself is inherently inprecise and unpredictable, just like pretty much everything you do in life.

Thing is, this doesn’t apply to a computer game. It would be fantastic if Warhorse managed such a system, and I would definitely love to see something more life-like, more organic than what most games offer. But if Warhorse can’t actually pull that off, and I don’t think they can, first thing all players caring about such things will do is, first, be annoyed that they don’t get precise information and then they’ll go and google ways to convert given values into ‘damage’, ‘speed’ and ‘DPS’. Because, in the background, there will most likely be a system to calculate these values. And the game will get criticized for not providing enough information. But if KC: D can pull of organic fights with chance and degree of unpredictability involved, that would be awesome.

#14

With this system I imagine that a skilled merchant would trick me into buying this long eared but reportedly state-of-the-art horse, only to hear a random citizen later comment on how my donkey is nice. :smile:

3 Likes
#15

Really good idea and I think that what actually will be in the game might not be too far from this. Their general aim for realism is known and you can even get a glimpse at some items in the inventory on one of the released screenshots. Not to mention the test-version livestream. There probably will be some stats, but hopefully they at least won’t differ as drastically between items of the same category as in World of Warcraft and such.

This also always bugged me (and still does) with majority of RPGs, using these cheap sorts of stat-scale design, where one sword has level 1 and damage 10 and another level 10 and damage 100. Real weapons are almost (notice the “almost”!) one as good as the other, real differences being in craftsmanship quality or durability (and price) rather than in “amount of damage it can do”. That depends on how they’re handled.

5 Likes
#16

I kind of liked how the original Witcher handled this, as in base damage is derived from your ability with the weapon, and the weapon itself could improve it. They kind of broke it later on by some swords giving you way too big buffs, but eh.

#17

@cniht
Wow reading your post was like a blast from the past. And you are correct, when the ‘new’ appraisal system was introduced the ability via appraisal to be able to tell even the materials that the weapon was made out of was very impressive. For fellow smith’s you could even appraise the item so that if it had not been stamped with a Maker’s Mark you could tell from the folding and hammering patterns who probably constructed the sword. Just going off on a tangent there I know.

  • Game Host from Dragon Realms.
#18

When reading the thread title I thought this would be a plea to remove any sort of stats screen from the game. As an example skyrim has a page in the menu telling you how far you’ve walked, potions drank, rabbits killed, etc etc. To me that’s pretty immersion breaking, and I can’t imagine it would be in this for any reason, but just in case…

#19

You do realize it’s of informative nature and you can feel free to ignore it

#20

I completely agree. I’m a natural min-maxer and I think many people are. Games like Monster Hunter force you to understand your weapon. I like that in a game.

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