My Problem With Cryptocurrency: There’s No Room for 1
This is one of my main guidelines when designing mechanics for a game: Whatever underlying system you have, there should be some meaning to the lowest number. It doesn’t mean that you should be able to see a ‘1’ in text, in front of you, during the game, but there should be a meaning to that increment/decrement. Because, going from a 1 to a 2 might be too drastic a change in your system as that’s a 100% difference. But there should be a 3 and 4, or even just 99 and a 100. Because, if there isn’t, you’re probably just inflating numbers to make it look better and haven’t examined your systems deeply enough. And so, while I hate the way Souls-like games do it, the fact that E is lowest rank and the highest is A or S, or that the best upgrade you can get is a +10, makes every little uptick meaningful. It started to bug me when I played Warcraft III originally. In I & II, characters had double digit HP, some big or hero characters had triple digits. But the upgrades you could make, for weapons or armor for example, were 12 to 13 or something like that. That was a meaningful upgrade. If your knights did 1 more damage per hit, they could take down an enemy in 3 strikes instead of 4 and that really upped your attack group’s survivability as well. Then, in Warcraft III, everyone started having HP in the Continue Reading →
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