My staff and I started to discuss whether or not a numeric amount of damage should be displayed when you hit a mobile, or when a mobile hits you.  Some stated that it was unrealistic and that it may provide an advantage, since you would get a basic idea of how many hitpoints certain mobiles have.  Others stated that in traditional D&D you do roll dice and get to see how damage you have dealt, why not on a mud?  Just afew of the statements to get things rolling in your head.

    Since we were trying to determine if it would fit in a roleplaying enviroment, I figured this would be the forum to post this poll in.

Lothios

I think they traditionally signal, not how much RP a mud has, but how much the RP has to do with PK. If you are running a clanwar RP mud, the numbers might be a good thing to have. If you are running a mud based on aspects of life other than warfare, I would suggest using sentences to describe a character's changing condition.

I hate seeing numbers that i don't get. I mean, when i first started playing MUDs i played one where combat was presented in formulas that i just didn't understand. It scared me off and i went on my way.

Next i found a MUD in which damage was stated in descriptions of how hard you hit. Like "You make a bonecrushing hit!", or "You make a grazing strike". All in all, it was alot more interesting and alot easier to understand for those who are new to MUDding.

Hunting, in general, was just more entertaining because you actually saw what you did to the creature. The descriptions of the hits when on, "You make a visious strike that bloodies the 'critter's' lip." And when you looked at the creature, you saw that it had gashes about the head.

So i guess my point is, when it comes to combat, blood is more interesting than numbers.

personally, I find it more fun to be number-less but having vivid descriptions of what is hapenning to us and the enemy in combat, the thing that we have to use numbers and calculations in AD&D and other role-related games of pen and paper is because we dont have any other way of making calculations that involve various possibilities. In MUDs, we have the advantage that the calculations are done by a computer, so we can concentrate on making the environment more real. I think that the disadvadtange of the "text" interface (lack of someone telling you that personally) can be overcomed if you make battles more real and less "24-8=16hp"
cordially yours:
Ruobhe

I enjoy seeing my OWN hitpoints in numbers, however damage done and other people's health in word descriptions.

"Who wouldn't want to know?"  Was more or less the 'yes' to this poll.

Well the original idea we had was simply putting the number amount next to the damage message ex:

Your slash _cleaves_ the city guard <11>

But that just seemed alittle cheesey and thrown in so I decided against it, plus we started to discuss whether or not it would be straying away from roleplaying.  

I could see how it would be fun to brag to people about how much you hit with, but I think we have come to the conclusion that it wouldn't fit in with the roleplaying aspect of our mud.  Instead we may just improve the damage messages, making more, perhaps different hit locations.  


_Lothios

Showing the numeric vaule thingy of someone named bob is STUPID! I hate it! It makes everything look more cluttered then it already is. Plus, you shouldn't really know when the mob is going to die except the messages where you can tell what they look like. Those are realistic.

Though I'm accustomed to "MANGLES" instead of "You did 800 damage!" I liked the idea of BroodWarMud's (about the only think I liked...) number damage, and amount damage. So you could

"Poke the poor defenceless zerg egg just barely, which NEARLY KILLS IT!"

Or on the other hand.

"Empty a gauss-gun clip on a heavily-armored tank perfectly, which it barely notices."

So you get rough percentages of both. It seems like it showed damage numbers 'sometimes' which was turned into a skill. That was a good idea too, make it a skill, though if you include critical hits and the like, numbers on those alone are cool too.

As Lothios asked - do you guys feel having numbers "hurts" the roleplaying atmosphere or not?

I am also very interested in this question since I am trying to decide whether to put the feature in or not.  I have many ideas of how to do it, but don't know if it would be a good idea overall.  I am also curious as to what players think vs. what admins think about this topic - if you wouldn't mind posting as to which you are.

Basically - can a Mu* the claims either "RP enforced" or "RP encouraged" have numbers displayed in combat damage AND stay true to it's claim?

Thanks in advance for the input!

I believe I mentioned this in my previous post, but I wanted to elaborate.

On our system, you can type DISPDAM to display your damage.  You can also turn it off.  You can have a "brief" fighting mode, where you only see :

You did [254] damage and sustained [37].

This is far from role-playing though, and it was created to help reduce lag that was created when a group of 20 players (each hitting between 3-10 times each) was fighting a large creature.

We also have a non-brief mode, which shows a "damage" level (ie: mangles) and also the number, like this :

You ***UTTERLY DESTROY*** a gargoyle hatchling with your slash! [DAM : 120]

Based on the damage message you can figure out what your damage is anyway. (Ie: our "one-star" utterly destroy is between 100 to 115 points.  "two-star" is 116 to 125 - for instance).  

So if the mud is setup to show damage like that - and you know what the basic amount of damage is for each strike, you'd be able to figure it out anyway.

We also show damage for spells :

You engulf a a small gargoyle with your fireball ! [DAM: 125]

I think this helps players to know what spells and what type of spells to use against certain creatures.  Some creatures may be more resistant to fire based spells, for instance, and seeing the damage, they can adjust accordingly, during a fight.  Then they can use that information to better attack that creature the next time they face it.

I don't know if KNOWING the damage takes away from role-playing though.  As someone stated, in D&D, you do roll the dice, and you know (pretty much) what damage you are doing - unless affected by some magical properties that the DM/GM hasn't told you about.

You can have that kind of affect too, on a mud that shows damage.  Even though you are doing LESS or MORE damage to a creature (based on the amount of damage shown by your strikes) you don't know exactly why.  You have to experiement to find out what attacks hurt that creature more, and what attacks do less damage to it - but you don't often know why.

Thinking about this, I realize that as a player, I would rather SEE the damage indicators.  Not only is it a way for me to better attack creatures, and determine what kind of attacks to use, but it also gives boasting rights if you can reach a certain level of damage.

Hoop

Personally I can't stand those sort of messages. If the mud tells me that I've "utterly destroyed" something, then I expect it to be...well, utterly destroyed. I certain don't expect to carry on fighting it.

If my mud tells you that you've been "disembowelled" by someone, it means that your stomach has been sliced open and your entrails are going to start pouring out within a few seconds. If you don't die instantly from shock, you'll bleed to death within a few minutes.

I have mixed views on this. On the one hand, it can be incredibly useful to know that your opponent is on 34% health- for example, you might be considering whether a fireball would finish it off, and if you know its health value then you can be certain of this.

On the other hand, it does make things seem more like a game and less like an alternate universe. I don't know if anyone's played the offline demo of Neocron yet- it's an MMORPG, apparently- but in that when you hit something, a little red number pops off its head showing how much damage you dealt. And somehow, that pulls you out of the world and makes you realise that you're not actually thwapping a zombie upside the head with a lead pipe in a dark sewer. You're sitting in front of a keyboard staring at a monitor and frantically pressing keys.

On the mud I play, we don't have numbers. In fact, the hitpoints of mobs are largely unknown. We run via a system of attack messages- for example, 'your spell barely scratches a golem', or 'your bite ***SMITES*** a street peddler!'- and also messages used when examining the mob which can be put into your prompt- 'leaking guts' or 'DYING'. These give a sense of realism and at the same time allow you to know how close your opponent is to death.

In light of this, I'd say numbers are bad, and messages are good. But only to an extent- when you get to things like 'You swing your broadsword to the left, slashing the bat across the ear, blood spurts through the side of its head and it looks like it is in immense pain' as an attack message, it's just silly.

Such messages come as stock in most codebases, but they are not "realistic". A mob described as "DYING" will generally heal back to full health if left alone, and you'll see the same sort of "leaking guts" status even if you're fighting something like a skeleton.

Actually I'd find that far preferable to the stock combat messages you described previously, whereby you can "ANNIHILATE" or "DISEMBOWEL" someone who will then be right as rain after a few minutes of standing around.

What about showing a percentage instead of a whole number when hitting something for spells and weapons? example: you strike the skeleton, for 10% damage. This would also make the "MANGLES" type messages a little more useful, i remember first playing on a mud where 'grazes' varied depending on the size of the opposing mob vs your damage, and I liked the system.

The more complicated that combat/magic system, the more complicated the RP messages can become. When you have three mobs in an area, each having certain 'immunities', numbers become part of the experience for the player in learning which spells/weapons to use.

The **annihiliate** kind of messages are just plain silly to me and dont belong in ANY mature MUD. They are more distracting to me in an RP sense than numbers.

Numbers to me are RP assistants: If I really WAS an elf, I would know after a fight or two that a claymore was not a suitable weapon for me compared to a lighter weight longsword. If I were a mage, I could cast a level 3 fire-based spell and a level 3 cold-based spell and would know instantly if a creature was immune to one or the other... I *may* even be able to tell if they only had partial immunity by their reaction and the damage visible.

The way a MUD informs a player how effective their attack has been is numbers. A MUD does not have to be H&S, or PK oriented to benefit from this.

Again.. the more complicated the CS/MS, the more complicated the messages have to be, as in determining what part did they hit? (head, neck, r/l arm, r/l leg/back, belly, foot?) [more damage bonus to critical areas like head], what type of weapon/magic damage? (slash,puncture,crush, earth, fire, water, electrical, necro, psionic etc.?) each would leave certain types of wounds. How powerful the weapon/spell? Armor type modifications?

Numbers give players a 'feel' for how much damage they are doing. I actually prefer numbers to percentages because until you have actually killed a few Ultra Death Goblins, you dont have any idea what their HP range is. Hitting for 50% (barring notification that it was a crit) would let you know the fight will likely be over soon.

Hitting a Fire Drake for 228 may seem OOC, but I just translate that in my head to "Hrmmm. I fair shot, gonna have to hit harder!" whereas,"You mutilate a Fire Drake", even if the coders associate certain damage messages to certain damage range is more misleading than numbers to me. The numbers don't make a value judgement. Mutilation to me indicates that the mob is massively damaged and is either near death, or has lost most of the ability to defend itself.
It bothers me more to have a mob fight on as if it was never hit after a message like that than seeing numerical damage.

sorry for the ramble. long day.