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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5965888" data-attributes="member: 54877"><p>Not only that, "security by obscurity" never works--especially not in the internet age. That is, everyone is going to figure this stuff out sooner or later--probably sooner. So either the design depends on people not knowing this stuff or it doesn't. If it doesn't depend on the obscurity, then the question is not <strong>if</strong> to present it, but where. (There might be, for example, a good case made for including some of in guidelines, advice, design notes, etc. rather than in a particular listing.) So at that point it becomes a presentation issue, not a design one. OTOH, if the claim is that the design does depend on the obscurity, then that it is an implicit claim that the game is designed to degrade over time. Not a good thing.</p><p> </p><p>The original Asheron's Call MMORPG had a magic balance design based on this idea that there were a lot of different spells, rarely available to a single character, and each one had to be "researched" separately, which was expensive in game (each attempt) and required some thought into the patterns of the various spells. There was literally no spell listing in the manual, and you only had a handful of starting spells to get you started. On top of all that, there were several mistakes in the spell component database that threw people for a loop. Finally, the more a spell was cast in a short time, the less effective it became for everyone, encouraging people to spread out.</p><p> </p><p>I started playing two or three weeks after launch. I deliberately avoided information on the spells in order to have the fun of working out a lot of it myself. Within a couple of months after launch, they had dropped the "multiple casting lowers effectiveness" bit, and when I got bored trying to work around the inconsistencies, I found several sites that had worked out the whole thing--before the Beta had been two weeks old. </p><p> </p><p>They had to redo the entire spell economy within two or three months of launch, because every limit they had built in was bogus. I like some of the maker's games, but they've long had a fair reputation as a group that is more strong on graphics and story than gameplay. They've got some huge blindspots on design that are not unlike some of the things we see advocated for table top. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite7" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue :p" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":p" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5965888, member: 54877"] Not only that, "security by obscurity" never works--especially not in the internet age. That is, everyone is going to figure this stuff out sooner or later--probably sooner. So either the design depends on people not knowing this stuff or it doesn't. If it doesn't depend on the obscurity, then the question is not [B]if[/B] to present it, but where. (There might be, for example, a good case made for including some of in guidelines, advice, design notes, etc. rather than in a particular listing.) So at that point it becomes a presentation issue, not a design one. OTOH, if the claim is that the design does depend on the obscurity, then that it is an implicit claim that the game is designed to degrade over time. Not a good thing. The original Asheron's Call MMORPG had a magic balance design based on this idea that there were a lot of different spells, rarely available to a single character, and each one had to be "researched" separately, which was expensive in game (each attempt) and required some thought into the patterns of the various spells. There was literally no spell listing in the manual, and you only had a handful of starting spells to get you started. On top of all that, there were several mistakes in the spell component database that threw people for a loop. Finally, the more a spell was cast in a short time, the less effective it became for everyone, encouraging people to spread out. I started playing two or three weeks after launch. I deliberately avoided information on the spells in order to have the fun of working out a lot of it myself. Within a couple of months after launch, they had dropped the "multiple casting lowers effectiveness" bit, and when I got bored trying to work around the inconsistencies, I found several sites that had worked out the whole thing--before the Beta had been two weeks old. They had to redo the entire spell economy within two or three months of launch, because every limit they had built in was bogus. I like some of the maker's games, but they've long had a fair reputation as a group that is more strong on graphics and story than gameplay. They've got some huge blindspots on design that are not unlike some of the things we see advocated for table top. :p [/QUOTE]
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