Spiral Knights - Complete Open Sourcing of In Game Data: No "make the players find out on their own"

Complete Open Sourcing of In Game Data: No "make the players find out on their own"

12 replies [Last post]

Fri, 04/29/2011 - 11:27

SrBlackDove

Legacy Username

I was recently reading a thread here where someone was discussing their personal issues with the complete weakness of the Cold Iron Vanquisher vs the Leviathan Blade trees of the Calibur weapon.

The Developers seriously told them "we don't want to give players data, since it will make them want to work on it on their own"

I am completely and utterly in disagreement with that idea and notion.

The only viable method for performing any action and running any system is by having all information open to view by anyone who wishes it.

The best cryptography in the world? Open Sourced.

The best game mechanic systems in the world? Reveal their entire rule system for players and game referees to use.

The fact that Three Rings is using such a small minded and backwards ideology; a medieval ideology really; is going to continue to cause players problems over and over and over again.

Be it that a player doesn't, or can't, know how their equipment actually works. Thus makes incorrectly informed choices. Causing player frustration.

That players can't know how the game should be responding, and when things go wrong they aren't able to report actual in game bugs to the developers.

That new players can't ever make informed decisions on the game, ever. Leading them to making uninformed decisions on a regular basis.

I'm not asking for the "Source Code" to be open source; I'm asking for the "numbers" that a player interacts with directly, to be visible to players. How much damage their sheilds will actually block; the percentages that their specific resists will stop; the damage that their weapons will actually deal.

I don't mind playing with a "black box"; however that data does exist and is available, and should be available to the players to better understand the game and play it better.

If other posters agree with this idea, please, would you post a simple "i agree"? I would appreciate knowing how many other players want to know what the useless and vague charge-up and level-up bars mean.

Even if Three Rings does not implement this change; and I very much doubt that they will, barring massive player support for the idea. I would still want to know how many other people like the idea of being able to know as much as possible about the mechanics of games that they play. Call it personal research for future projects.

Fri, 04/29/2011 - 11:39

Icee

Do your own research.

Best cryptography is open source? That's funny! The best cryptography in the world is almost certainly so secret that you've never heard of it. If not, it's not the best because too many people know about it and thus have completed the first step in cracking it.

OOO philosophy regarding all of its games that players are free to post anything and everything they discover on the wiki and forums for all to learn from, but that for many players discovery is part of the fun, so it is not the gave developer's place to spoil the fun of the explorers and experimenters. So the data will become available as it is discovered by players. The black box will become transparent over time, but it will be us, not the developers, illuminating the mechanics.

There is already more than enough information on the wiki for new players, and even experienced players, to make good decisions about their gear. Come back in 2 months and the wiki will no doubt have nearly complete data on all of the current weapons, armors, and levels. But in the meantime, the things that are unknown are there to be discovered by those who like to probe the game and make discoveries on their own, rather than having a spreadsheet of damage outputs handed to them on a silver platter.

Fri, 04/29/2011 - 12:03

SrBlackDove

Legacy Username

Good modern crpyto is open source. Do research.

Actually, Icee, you're only showing that you know very little about modern crypto, and almost nothing about how cryptography works. I recommended the delightful little novel "Little Brother" by Cory Doctorow to dispel your illusions about how cryptography works. http://craphound.com/littlebrother/download/ It's free to download and read, courtesy of the author.

Every attempt by the private sector to protect their data via non-open sourced methods has resulted in... some hacker figuring out the code, and then releasing it. Personally, I'm not surprised. That is the nature of a code, someone will want to try and break it.

Remember, cryptography is a method for encryption. Not the actual encryption itself. Modern open source crypto takes in the time frame of ... longer than humans have been living in settlements (thousands of years, unless you have the original password). Which is usually long enough for most humans today to not care about their encrypted data being used.

When many, many, many people can see the methods used to encrypt data; then the possible exploits, back doors, and flaws can be exploited by others trying to unlock encrypted data. Which results in said possible issues being remedied and solved.

In any case, transparency is the only way to further information building; not obfuscation. Personally, I prefer to have accurate, detailed, clear, information available to me. I've played enough games with and without reliable data for players to use; and I can honestly say that I prefer reliable player data; even when I am designing and refereeing or running a game.

Fri, 04/29/2011 - 12:20

Icee

Free flow is not the same as freely given

I'm sure the NSA has its own codes and methods that don't rely on open source technologies. Nonetheless, you're correct in the assertion that free flow of information leads to greater accomplishment.

OOO does not stifle the free flow of information. They specifically created both a wiki and forums that we may use to communicate everything we discover in their game. They provide staff to help us with annoying wiki formatting and to keep the forums clean from personal insults and focused on the game. They do everything they can to allow players to communicate as much as they want. They even put a lot of basic info into the wiki for us, because we shouldn't have to figure out billing, support, and other aspects for ourselves.

What they don't do is populate the entire wiki with all of the raw data for all of the stuff in this game because that would actually take away our fun. While I may be able to more efficiently clear a given level if I know the exact one or two weapons that will most quickly dispatch its inhabitants, that wouldn't be fun for me. I'd rather try bomb a, sword b, gun c for myself and see how they do. There's some information I get in game (the Hunting Blade is good against beasts, the Faust causes curse and deals shadow damage) and the rest is up to me and the other players to discover.

I choose not to read all of the details in the wiki, or even to occasionally ignore some because I just want to see how tough it is to do a particular level with a given set of gear. I like figuring out what works and what doesn't, even it means becoming a pathetic corpse on the floor of an arena, or dying beneath a sea of slime in the Royal Jelly Palace. For me, discovery is part of the fun. For you, maybe it's not, so then wait a few days and see how the wiki gets populated with the collective knowledge of the playerbase after each new release.

OOO lets the information flow. We just get to have fun finding the fountains before we drink it all in.

Fri, 04/29/2011 - 12:32

Leviathan

Legacy Username

"Best cryptography is open

"Best cryptography is open source? That's funny!"

The best crypto-system is one that's been tested in a gazillion ways that the designer never thought of, and stayed good. So, er, it's moderately true. That said, secret-type agencies have protocols for getting the gazillion tests done which don't quite involve open sourcing. Those protocols, from what little I know of them, also cost stupefying amounts of money.

Given those things, as an analogy, it actually kind of works; Three Rings isn't a stupefying-amounts-of-money company, after all. It's kind of a weirdly obscure analogy, but still.

And after all that?

I like the idea of bars for gear having numbers listed, too. But it's not an oh-my-god essential; it'd just be nice.

Fri, 04/29/2011 - 12:59

SirNiko

Legacy Username

I think the game needs a mix.

I think the game needs a mix. Part of the reason why you keep elements of your game secret is to present a puzzle to the players. By revealing the answer to the riddle from the start, there is nothing for the player to solve. One of those puzzles is solving mysteries such as which upgrade result in the optimal performance in certain situations. That's also a critical element of the Explorer Archetype from Bartle's gamer psychologies, who wants the fun of solving that riddle and being the 'first'.

Your second example, where you claim the 'best game mechanics in the world' are open source, requires citation. What are the greatest game mechanics in the world, and what is the metric by which you claim them as best?

Now, eventually you reach a point where certain mechanics are solved and no longer meaningful. At that point it makes sense to spoil the riddle and move on. Replace it with a new riddle, like a new weapon to evaluate or a new foe whose weakness needs puzzling out.

As it stands, though, clear cut transparent mechanics are not so obviously superior as you have suggested.

Sat, 04/30/2011 - 12:23

Path

"Discovery" is only as

"Discovery" is only as entertaining as it is productive. "Discovering" I spent thousands of crowns on a weapon that was markedly inferior than its other upgrade path only served to convince me I'd rather go "discover" another game.

I enjoy spiral knight's gameplay, but I can't convince myself to waste time crafting $%@! arbitrarily, costing time and money, in order to "discover" which damned weapon I wanted to use in the first place.

It's bad enough that you have to create every single weapon in order to try them, but it's naive to think that people will stick around after being screwed by a system that hides all of it's numbers behind completely meaningless bars.

Sat, 04/30/2011 - 13:35

bodines1

Legacy Username

So...

SrBlackDove is the only one in this thread with any real understanding of cryptography... Well, other than me :)

That said, I agree with the OP

Wed, 05/04/2011 - 14:11

netmask

Legacy Username

Completely agreed.

Sat, 04/30/2011 - 14:36

Stardrinker

Legacy Username

I can tell you right now that

I can tell you right now that "we don't want to give players data, since it will make them want to work on it on their own" is a cop out. The reason why we get bars (and not even accurate bars at that) is because this is a game targeted at a younger audience so they try to move away from hard numbers and give visuals instead.

On the subject of letting players find out the data for themselves, I do agree that some people will get some enjoyment out of solving the mechanics, (I do somewhat) but when you get things like weapon bars that aren't even accurate and vary so wildly between weapons, you just cause frustration.

On top of that, you get the normal players, buying and selling from each other, who just want to see how much of an upgrade something is over their old weapon and the only way to communicate that in-game is "The bar goes up to the third 'o' in 'Good chance of causing moderate shock'" or "It's 6 bars and 1/10th of a bar? 1/8th of a bar? 1/16th of a bar?". The more experienced players will also tell you "The bars are lies though, so don't worry about it too much".

Normal players just want to compare weapons and get a rough indication of strength (Lev and CIV blade is a classic example) and having the bars being the same but then finding out that they both are not, in fact, the same 'bars' in strength just causes frustration (especially if you paid Three Rings real money for the Crystal Energy to pay for it), do they really not see how stupid their system is?

So, I do believe that it's good to have some mechanics not completely released to the players (to let them find out for themselves) but you still need to give your players accurate representations of that data and they need to be easily measureable and usable for people to work with. Three Rings failed in this department.

Sat, 04/30/2011 - 15:25

#10

Pupu

Legacy Username

Only thing I'd want is for stat bars to be consistent.
Make a maxed bar the very maximum damage a weapon can deal, and other bars dynamically relative to that one.

Sat, 04/30/2011 - 16:04

#11

Pauling

There have been numerous

There have been numerous problems in the past with stat bars not reflecting item power. It's misleading, frustrating, and arguably prevents players from giving good feedback on balancing.

Sat, 04/30/2011 - 16:10

#12

Icee

Bar bug

"There have been numerous problems in the past with stat bars not reflecting item power. It's misleading, frustrating, and arguably prevents players from giving good feedback on balancing."

I would assume that is a bug because I can't imagine that such misrepresentation is intentional. I have mostly concentrated on just a handful of weapons, so I haven't personally seen a case where a weapon with a longer stat bar did less damage, but if I do see such a thing as I expand my arsenal, I will file a bug report, because either the bar is drawn wrong, or the code is wrongly lowering the strength of a weapon.

The bars don't need to display actual numbers, but they should accurately reflect relative strength to within a percent or two (pixels are only so wide, after all).

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Complete Open Sourcing of In Game Data: No "make the players find out on their own"