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Preventing the Metagame

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Stryc9Fuego:
I was having some thoughts and I wanted to get them out on the inter-webs, and the main thought is that metagaming can be bad. You know what I mean, someone who isn't playing for the fun of the game, but just for the pluses and minuses situated with a game.

I wanted to open a discussion for ideas on ways to prevent it.

One idea that I had is for set items to impose a stiff penalty for owning the entire set of rather than a bonus. The IRL idea for this being that items like a goofy red squeaky nose, funky shoes, or a loud plaid vest are silly and humorous on their own (adding pluses to some undetermined 'fun' value), but the full clown outfit is creepy and disturbing. Or a white shirt and tie or a blazer by itself can be a sign of trust and professionalism, but a full-on 3 piece suit makes you think "attorney" or "politician".

The second idea would be to hide the numbers. Don't make it obvious what the various bonuses and penalties are for an item. I got this idea while playing through an absolutely ancient CRPG, Dungeon Master. There are 2 special sets of armor there, called the Plate of Darc and the Plate of Lyte. What makes them so special? I had no idea. They just kind of looked cool. I couldn't tell you how they adjusted any stats, or how much they protected, or anything like that. I just know that I felt better about my fighters wearing them.

Somewhere along the line, though, it became less about looking cool, and more about numbers. Less "game", and more "math puzzle".

That's my 2 bitz. What do you think? Any ideas for putting the brakes on metagaming? Thoughts on if it's a good or bad thing in the first place? Let's open the floor.

Jackie Blue:
Min/maxing has been around since games existed.  Most people never played a serious game of Wizardry 1 (which came out in 1981) without patiently re-rolling all their characters until they got a fluke double amount of stat points.

It's not going anywhere.  I don't like it because sometimes it makes me think too hard in unintuitive ways (JRPGs are sometimes really annoying in that way), but at the same time, it's there and it's not going away.

benji:
Are we primarily talking MMOs here? Computer RPGs in general? Table top games? All of the above? In any case, for some people, the mathematical puzzle is a large part of the fun. Some people really enjoy crunching the numbers and finding that combination that hikes that one stat up as high as it will go. I can see the appeal of a game that doesn't let you do that. In table top gaming, we call that a "closed sheet game." The GM is the only one who ever sees the character sheets and everyone else just has a vague idea of what his or her character can and can't do. It's fun, but it's not for everyone. I think if you were to do something like that in an MMORPG, you'd just get a bunch of people experimenting to try and figure out what everything does. The math might be hidden, but that doesn't stop me from figuring out that goblins die faster when I hit them with sword A then they do when I hit them with sword B. And again, there's nothing really wrong with that. Some people like crunching the numbers. Unless they're seriously detracting from other people's ability to enjoy the game, then what's the harm?

Boro_Bandito:
This is why I like something like White Wolf's storytelling system in the case of pen and paper games. The game isn't about stats, or at least isn't if the storyteller is any good. You try and actually role-play rather than maximizing your character. Of course, in that case it always depends on the player/storyteller relationship.

snalin:
I'm playing a text-based MMORPG named Marcoland, and the shear amount of time people put into breaking the numbers, finding monster stats, making calculators, figuring out the best combination and ways to grow... It's staggering. Some people love the feeling of having understood something and sharing it with someone else.

Metagaming is usually (in MMOs) just an endgame thing. And endgame stuff takes another kind of gamer than the average bunch, collectors or pvpers. And collectors love metagaming. The problem comes when people that just want to hang out and fight has to spend hours of grind just to be able to do what they want. But even if you hide the numbers, people will crack them. RPGs are not supposed to be skill-based, they are about numbers.

If you want an MMO where grinding for equipment doesn't matter, wait of Darkfall

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