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henry_flower) wrote2020-10-01 05:28 am
The audience may be stupid, but it's never wrong
Найсумніша частина нової Сід Меєровської книжки--відгуки користувачів його ігор:
it wasn't until Civilization Revolution [2008] that my eyes were opened to the full extent of people's irrationality regarding random events.
We had decided it would be neat to display the odds of each battle on the screen, partly because statistics are fun, but mostly to address a particular issue that had turned into a running joke on the message boards. The problem stemmed from the fact that there were no guaranteed wins in any matchup--the odds might be incredibly long, but the underdog always had a shot--and this led to the occasional absurdity like a spearman from an underdeveloped nation defeating a military tank in battle. [...]
But we thought maybe it would help if we showed the players their odds before the fighting started, so they could understand that there were real numbers behind these unlikely battles, and not just a vindictive, petty AI.
We were wrong. Not only were they unimpressed by the long-odds evidence, they fought back even harder on the short-odds information they could now see.
"Sid, the game is messed up. I had this battle with a Barbarian, right? The odds were three to one--and I lost!"
"Well, yes," I would agree. "Sometimes that's going to happen."
"No, no, you don't understand. Three is big. One is small. I had the big number." [...]
It didn't matter how many different ways this conversation played out, I couldn't convince our testers that it made sense for them to lose a three-to-one battle roughly one-fourth of the time. Past certain odds, people expected to win no matter what, but also to occasionally prevail if they were the underdog in the same situation. [...]
So we changed the actual odds behind the scenes, and made sure that the player would win any battle with odds of three-to-one or greater. This might have been unfair to the computer AI, but we never heard any complaints, and once players were given the advantage, they reported having much more fun.
"Sid. There's another problem."
"Uh oh. What happened?"
"Well, I had this two-to-one battle, and I lost. Which is okay, I know we've had this discussion. But right after that, I had another two-to-one battle, and I lost again!" [...]
Again, emotions trumped logic, and we had to accept that. So we started taking into account the results of previous battles, and making it extra unlikely for too many bad (or good) things to happen in a row. We made it less random, so that it could feel more random.
"Now are you happy? Anything else?"
"Well, now, here's a really weird thing. I had a battle, the odds were twenty-to-ten, see? And somehow I lost."
"That's . . . the same as two-to-one."
"No, two is only one more than one, but twenty is ten more than ten. I mean, do the math!"
So we added another "correction."
no subject
no subject
А що стосується odds — це питання до копірайтерів, які пишуть формулювання в інформаційних вікнах гри.
Приклад: APC vehicle 13/6/3, rookie -25% vs. Spearman 2/1/1, Veteran +50%
Погане формулювання: Odds to win: 149/6
Краще, але теж погане: Odds to win: 96% (149/6)
Правильне: Odds: 149/6. You gonna WIN appx 96 fight(s) of 100
І все. Ключовим є:
1) контраст між 96 і 100, 96 завжди менше, ніж 100.
2) «of 100» прямо каже, що треба провести 100 боїв. «2 of 3» створює неправильну ілюзію.
no subject
до речі, а civ2 то ж була лише win-only? я грав тільки у civ1 та civ3+
подивився ув ютубах--у civ2 чомусь відсутня анімація річок та океанів, яка була навіть у civ1 для dos
то є дефект civ2 чи то просто якісь неправильні відео?
no subject
Ні, не дефект. Там дійсно нема ніякої анімації, окрім відео-вставок, та й не треба.
Мені вона до вподоби за те, що коли Сід Мейєр посварився з MicroProse і втік до новозаснованого Firaxis, вони зробили афгєнний сіквел Циви-2 на тому ж движку під назвою Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (SMAC), а потім Alien Crossfire (SMAX), ну дійсно гарно збалансовані ігри.
І я навіть не єдиний, хто в них ще грається. З патчами, звичайно, які дають можливість стартувати на x64 та Amd64, з підтримкою великих екранів і фіксом кількох неприємних крешів.
Якщо ви знайомі з FreeCiv — бажано, старими версіями, без отієї огидної анімації і спрайтів на пів-екрану а-ля Воркрафт — то вам сподобається.
no subject
о, дякую, забув про Alpha Centauri завсім