Bay 12 Games Forum

Quote from: Silverionmox on June 11, 2012, 04:07:32 pm

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on June 11, 2012, 12:37:57 pm

...quality doesn't mean anything in the DF world, just to us people playing DF. Presumably, the best +gauntlets+ are not noticably different than the worst *gauntlets*.

Equip a squad with +equipment+ and another one with *equipment*, and let them go mano a mano in the arena. You'll notice the difference.

Better equipment matters. However: A. Differences of one quality level are nowhere near as important as pure dumb luck; B. my point was that, if DF was in the real world, one could only decide that this gauntlet was a +gauntlet+ and this a *gauntlet* by assigning arbitrary values of some kind, and they wouldn't agree more than slightly with the "real" values, due to the gradual continuum--my POINT; and C. you can't assign equipment quality in the arena.

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...Mmm, this guy is a talented mason... does that mean fine, good, superior and if so, what can I expect on average?

It means he's good but not the best, and that he'll churn out fair-quality stuff (if not the best).

So what's the difference then with an adept and a proficient mason?

Not much. That's another of my points.

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I don't want exact prediction of the output, where did you get that idea? The output is a bit randomized depending on skill level, so it wouldn't even be possible. That's not my intention or goal, why are you arguing against it?

You might want to be a bit more clear. "Have dwarves show the average quality of goods they produce instead of their skill!...No, I didn't mean that I wanted a good indication of what they'd actually make. How could you think that?" is basically how I'm reading you.

"An indication of what they'll make" is very different from "an exact numerical breakdown of their production". My suggestion was "just show the quality symbol of the median quality they'll produce". That way the number of levels will be reduced by culling the ones that don't cause a measurable difference. In addition, you can mess around with the skill gain rates and the skill labels will still be useful.

Okay, thanks for repeating what you'd said earlier. How is this not just a way to get a theoretically better idea of what you'd produce with this one dwarf?

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...So you can distinguish three or four different skill clusters... Using the quality symbols would indicate five or six different skill levels. Tell me again, what's the use of the extra ones we have currently?

I can distinguish between all skill levels, not just clusters. It's more an issue of where on the continuum they fall, and if it matters that much, again, I can check the q-P page to see an exact listing of skill levels from dabbling to legendary. Not that I can think of any situation where it woud be that important, but it would be IMPOSSIBLE to distinguish between adjacent skill levels with your system unless they happened to fall on either side of an average quality level divide.

You can't think of any situation where they are important, but still want to keep them in at all cost??

"Keep them at all costs?" What cost is there in wanting to keep the current, non-misleading system? It, in fact, avoids costs of confusion, impossibility-to-figure-out-exact-levels-of-skill, and Toady's time, and loses...what, exactly?

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And, as I noted, not only have they been in DF a long, long time, you can check the exact order by glancing at the profile of any workshop and hitting the + and - keys!

That's like saying: Chinese is perfectly understandable for everyone, you can always look up the words in nearby dictionary..

It would be, if there were only a dozen words in Chinese, most people knew most of them, and Chinese people came with a little book that they handed out reminding you of what the word mean.

We're not talking about people here, but robots (it's a program). Just program them to speak straight English...

To continue the analogy, your suggestion is like if each of those dozen words in Chinese corresponded to one of three or four words in English, and if everyone already spoke decent Chinese.

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...

Even legendaries make *items* at times. You'll never be sure.

Your point? That seems to do nothing but show that even you know how stupid it is to show average qualities!

No, it's *you* that wanted to know exactly at which level good items would be consistenly produced - which the current system doesn't allow either (nor should it, deviation from the mean is a feature): so that's not an argument against what I propose.

No, I didn't. I want to be able to tell exact skill levels, because that's A. more useful, B. more realistic, and C. more detailed.

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...Again, just because we only see a level of quantums as far as quality goes does not mean that less than a dozen types of shale mugs, or iron gauntlets, or whatever, exist. We're only supposed to know what our dwarves know...

Difference between actual facts and player knowledge is not relevant here. For now, in DF, an +iron sword+ is always an +iron sword+, with consistent combat modifiers and values between all +iron swords+.

Why is it not relevant?

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To say nothing of how meaningless the average is when low-mid skills produce masterworks and the highest skill levels still produce mere superior-quality goods...

Who are you arguing with? because it's nothing I said.

Again, showing the median item quality, like you suggested, would be misleading because the item quality is so varied.

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Wait, you want the game to tell you average quality, but you don't care that it's a grossly misleading figure?

It's not my goal to give an exact numerical breakdown of production, just to give an indication. The median is not misleading if you know you can expect some deviation from the mean. Again, that's how the game is, that has nothing to do with labeling.

So...if you know that it's a wrong, misleading figure, yet you still support it?

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And what do you mean, "an arbitrary, confusing, superfluous bunch of named levels in between?" To start with, in between what?

In between the way they matter (influencing quality of production) and what we want to know about a skill (how it influences production). Currently the skills influence quality, we have to learn the order of the skills by heart and deduce the quality that skill level will deliver from the relative place of the skill names. Just put a straight indicator of quality produced there and be done with it.

Again, if it matters that much, you can check. And, also again, skill has an influence on quality, but other factors (like hunger, thirst, drowsiness, and especially pure, dumb luck) make any kind of figure of average quality almost completely useless and highly misleading.

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All there is is a slowly graduated scale of chances of making various qualities of goods.

So one wonders why you absolutely want a discrete breakdown of that gradual progression into arbitrarily named chunks, that are hardly discernible. What are the differences between a talented dwarf making mugs and a proficient dwarves making mugs? If you can't tell, there's no use in having different level names.

...Why? Because, again, higher skills = higher average qualities...by fractions of average quality, bear in mind.

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Forsaken1111:
It's better than the current version. But, IMO, if we need to number the levels to distinguish them, it's a flashing indicator that they're useless. Does anyone treat a talented and a proficient dwarf differently?

Not really, but if we wanted to gurantee that only our highest-skilled dwarves were working in the workshops, we'd be able to tell the difference. In your system, they'd both be +dwarves+ or something.

And that would be ok, because the difference would be negligible. With your arguments you should be pleading for displaying the skill xp directly, because that's the only way to always find your most experienced dwarves.

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And "Hey, someone came up with a slightly better system with numbers; the current system must be useless!" argument is stupid.

Numbers? Where? Anyway, show to me that you actually know the difference between the skills.. that would show that at least one person used them.

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If it was true, we'd need to look at the wiki every time we tried to tell if the dabbling mason was better than the legendary one.

As shown above, you yourself can tell only four or five skill clusters apart, and you don't treat talented and proficient dwarves differently. You don't look up skills, because you ignore them anyway beyond the major groups... which would be preserved in the way I would do it.

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Only an idiot would be that bad, or even to be unable to tell which of two dwarvesis more skilled if there's at least a couple divisions of rank between them. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Silverionmox, does that describe you?

Now you've convinced me and everyone.