too much information for the player....

[Jinx]

this is what comes form the times when i played everquest. - back in the days before countless expansions made this game insufferable.

there was one thing that was ..... strangely interesting. - and that was that there were status bars ( like the percentage bar in FL that shows shields and damage ) - but no numbers. you knew that you become better, but you never had any numbers, any written and precise stats.

now, imagine that.... - what if:

- the ID cards showed NO more stats, but only a history and maybe the type ( particle, plasma etc ) - it wouldn t show you that it does 1026 shield hull damage and maybe 598 shield damage. - instead it would just say that its an experimental weapon doing extremely much damage at the cost of terribly much energy.

what i liked in everquest about it is that it left the player in the dark... produced a lot of lore. - players said that a fireball would be better against ice creatures and would do more damage than a firelance or whatever... but no one really knew! - there was very much about believe and imagination.

there were also rumors that faction weapons worked better when wielded by the appropriate faction etc etc - facts that turned out to be false when sony gave the players the stats. - by showing the stats, people started bickering about them - one of the few cases when more knowledge led to more problems.

how would it be if every bit of numberic information was deleted from ID cards - would it be beneficial? - people wouldn t know that a buckshot did x damage and a black widow y damage. - however, a xeno would maybe believe that his weapons was better, while the bounty hunter would think otherwise, no one able to prove it but to belive in it...

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