OXZ and balance

[Zireael]

I love the new balance indicators, maybe link to them somehow in the OXP List? So that non-BB goers know about them?

[Svengali]

Any comments?

Good idea Smivs, but why don't you simply use the [wiki]OXP_Levelindicators[/wiki]?
The template plus images and explanation page is there since 2009, uses a colorscheme close to the Wikis and is used on 100 pages already. Expanding it to indicate that a OXP pushes things in favour of the player is easy - everybody with a Wiki account can do it.

And remember - we've got Parser Functions and Semantic Media Wiki extensions now. It would be possible to autogenerate lists of specific OXP Levels then.

[Smivs]

Good idea Smivs, but why don't you simply use the [wiki]OXP_Levelindicators[/wiki]?

Several reasons really. Firstly the levelIndicators don't offer any sort of at-a-glance comparison, they just tell what level is applied without any sort of reference point, but more importantly they only indicate difficulty level (in a rather complicated way), they do not give any indication of balance which this thread is all about. There is no provision for highlighting OXPs which make the game easier for the player. Also, the balance Indicators can be used for OXPs which can help or hinder the player to different degrees. See here and here for example.
The final version of the Balance Indicator is much nicer than the development version shown above. This is the current 'Green' indicator.

[Svengali]

Several reasons really. Firstly the levelIndicators don't offer any sort of at-a-glance comparison, they just tell what level is applied without any sort of reference point, but more importantly they only indicate difficulty level (in a rather complicated way), they do not give any indication of balance which this thread is all about. There is no provision for highlighting OXPs which make the game easier for the player. Also, the balance Indicators can be used for OXPs which can help or hinder the player to different degrees.

I think you are wrong.

Balance and difficulty are strongly related (exceptions will always happen, regardless of the used mechanism). Reference point is the linked explanation page, it's basic HTML+CSS with a minimum of WIKI syntax and can be expanded easily. It also shows the degree with a graphical representation plus text (numbers).

[Smivs]

I think you are wrong.

You are entitled to your opinion.
Question:- How would the levelIndicator deal with Long Range Scanner? it's a testing tool which escaped into the wild and is basically a total cheat. levelIndicator has no facility to quantify 'cheat' OXPs/OXZs, or even those like my example above of ExtraFuelTanks which help the player to a lesser or greater extent. levelIndicator is not concerned with 'Easiness' at all, but this is a pre-requisite of a balance Indicator.
LRS is easy using the new Balance Indicator - it is Purple, "Significant bias in player's favour. Makes the game much easier".
And I don't think that having a linked explanation page comes close to a complete, at-a-glance indicator for convenience.

[Neelix]

I'm with smivs on this one. While it's true there are a lot of OXP wiki pages with those level indicators, almost every one that I've seen is 0.

I've never gleaned any useful information about an OXP by its presence.

I would also argue that a numerical scale is inherently meaningless without some point of reference as to the what each level actually means.

- Neelix

[Thargoid]

My personal view is anything like this, in almost any format, is going to end up subjective, arguably controversial and open to the personal leanings and desires of the individual player.

Hence I have no wish for any such criteria to be applied to my OXPs or OXZs or their wiki pages.

[Smivs]

My personal view is anything like this, in almost any format, is going to end up subjective, arguably controversial and open to the personal leanings and desires of the individual player.

Hence I have no wish for any such criteria to be applied to my OXPs or OXZs or their wiki pages.

There is certainly no compulsion, or even pressure to use these things. If an author thinks that the information will be useful to their 'customers' they can choose to use them, and it is up to the author to decide which level best reflects their work. Hopefully those who use them will be realistic and honest.
I don't see anything controversial in ether indicator, by the way. They are just a mechanism to convey information. And the player is the end-user, so they cannot affect these rankings in any way. If the player has any leanings and desires, these indicators should be useful to them.

[Redspear]

Please forgive my late intervention here, I hope I'm not too far away from understanding what's trying to be achieved.
I would however like to ask a few questions.

• How many here have had the experience of feeling that their game was 'unbalanced' and felt unable to remedy it?
  
  If you're the type to install a buch of oxps at once then how likely are you to check them all for 'balance'?
  
  If you can install an oxp then is it safe to assume that you can uninstall it too?
  
  Might we by trying to create order where a certain chaos is appealing?

I don't claim to know the answers to any of those questions (well, I'll admit to having a leaning for the middle two...) but they all seem rather pertinent to me.

My personal view is anything like this, in almost any format, is going to end up subjective, arguably controversial and open to the personal leanings and desires of the individual player.

Is the idea that this would be used on the OXZ list as well as the wiki?

I think if you write a wiki page and have your own way of illustrating the effects of an oxp then that's probably up to you (and even commendable on some levels) but I'm essentially in agreement with Thargoid here.

If it's to make it to the oxz list however then things could quickly become confusing...

On the face of it, this is an elegant suggestion and quite intuitive until things like 'traffic light thinking' start to come into it.
I'm quite used to red and green appearing as opposites. Yes, there's the stop (caution) and go (safe) association but then we've got the blue and magenta to consider too so that red is now opposite to magenta which some might see as pink and associate more with red than blue (or as purple which they may see as having as much in common with red as with blue).

True, I'm being a little awkward here but it starts to get a little confusing without the writing and therefore (I would argue) less intuitive. Being drawn to the colours first, it did actually take me a few seconds to associate green as neutral and for the colours not to confuse what was written. Maybe I've got a problem

Despite these criticisms, once I'd gotten my head around Smivs' system it did appear to work (at least on a subjective level, which is probably all we can hope for).

I'm still left wondering though how much a consistent cross-author system is needed.
Do we get many new posters talking about this issue as a problem or is it more of a search for elegance on the part of 'us lot'?
Maybe we've had loads of requests, I really don't know (I'm only recently back here).

I think there's now plenty of evidence to show how tricky a concencus is to achieve but I'm not sure how much evidence their is to show a need for the solution being sought.

This turned into a longer post than I thought it would; apologies if it's all nonsence

[Smivs]

This turned into a longer post than I thought it would; apologies if it's all nonsence

Certainly not nonesense - quite insightful in fact.
There are no plans to make anything 'official', or to impose anything on anybody or anything (eg to the oxz list).
This Board is littered with threads about balance and which OXPs are/are not suitable for newcomers and related issues. These matters (as you suggest) are only important to the people they are important to. This particular thread is about game balance (in relation to v1.80) and whether it is safe or wise to just let any OXZ appear in the manager. The arguement is that now it is so easy to expand your game, more people will feel comfortable doing this, and that they may screw their game by installing inappropriate OXZs. This is an old debate of course, just maybe a bit more pertinent now. To go on the record, I do not want to see the manager (or anything else come to that) censored in any way.
During this thread several suggestions were made as to how OXZs could be catagorised with this in mind. None of them actually looked as though they were heading towards something that might work, so I had a think. I considered what is the simplest way we can give an idea of an OXZs affect on Gameplay and game balance - does it affect the game neutrally, in favour of the player or against the player, and came up with the graphical Gameplay and Balance Indicator. It seemed to roughly do what was wanted, in a fairly clear way, so I 'published' it and trialled it on a couple of my wiki pages, as much as a demonstration as anything.
There was a bit of positive feedback, so I rolled it out accross all my wiki pages, and it has now also been adopted by a couple of other authors as well.
And that's it, really. It's there for anyone who wants to use it, as is the difficulty levelIndicator, and authors can either use them (on their wiki pages) or not as they see fit.

[Diziet Sma]

Is the idea that this would be used on the OXZ list as well as the wiki?

I don't see any chance of that happening.. even if only for the reason that it would take up far too much space..

[Neelix]

On the face of it, this is an elegant suggestion and quite intuitive until things like 'traffic light thinking' start to come into it.
I'm quite used to red and green appearing as opposites. Yes, there's the stop (caution) and go (safe) association but then we've got the blue and magenta to consider too so that red is now opposite to magenta which some might see as pink and associate more with red than blue (or as purple which they may see as having as much in common with red as with blue).

In a way that's kind of the point... Red and magenta may be 'opposites' on the scale, but here they both mean the same thing - a warning to the player that installing this OXP may significantly affect how they perceive how challenging their game will be. It's then left up to the end user to decide for themselves if that's what they want.

Is the idea that this would be used on the OXZ list as well as the wiki?

I don't see any chance of that happening.. even if only for the reason that it would take up far too much space..

What started this off was that there is a planned 'tag' system for the OXZ list, to the point where the tag field has already been added to the manifest.plist, and the suggestion to come up with a system (or series of systems) to use with it.

In this case, the tag could be something like "Balance: <colour>"

- Neelix

[Redspear]

And that's it, really. It's there for anyone who wants to use it, as is the difficulty levelIndicator, and authors can either use them (on their wiki pages) or not as they see fit.

Well, I wouldn't want to argue with that.

Thanks for the summary Smivs

Is the idea that this would be used on the OXZ list as well as the wiki?

I don't see any chance of that happening.. even if only for the reason that it would take up far too much space..

I was wondering if the colours alone were to be incorporated...

In a way that's kind of the point... Red and magenta may be 'opposites' on the scale, but here they both mean the same thing - a warning to the player that installing this OXP may significantly affect how they perceive how challenging their game will be. It's then left up to the end user to decide for themselves if that's what they want.

What started this off was that there is a planned 'tag' system for the OXZ list, to the point where the tag field has already been added to the manifest.plist, and the suggestion to come up with a system (or series of systems) to use with it.

In this case, the tag could be something like "Balance: <colour>"

Put those two things together and I'd suggest that it could be confusing...

They're similar but they are opposites. If you're not careful could you even mistake them as the same colour?
Plus and minus are similar only in that they move away from something, not in the direction in which they head. We all know that, but grouping them together is only intuitive if you are thinking in a certain way. The text explains that 'way' as I found when I was making sense of it (and tried to explain above), but without that next to the colours, I'm afraid that I can't say it would have been very intuitive to me. It may even have been counterintuitive in some cases...

Apologies for the nay-saying, but in the scenario that I've tried to describe above (with colur tags), I don't think that it would make a very intuitve system.

This particular thread is about game balance (in relation to v1.80) and whether it is safe or wise to just let any OXZ appear in the manager...

If it's a 1.8 issue (in relation to the games oxz download manager) then does the latest version of the game enable linking to the wiki pages (etc.) or does it just list the address?

If it's the former latter then I'd have thought that we have a list that is seperated from much of the relevant information that a beginner might want.
If you've been playing a while however, then you've probably found the boards and the wiki and I would have thought that the version numbers become more relevant.

In relation to the above, it seems to me that such a list is more suited to established players than to beginners (assuming that oolite.org remains the only download site for the game?)

[Thargoid]

This particular thread is about game balance (in relation to v1.80) and whether it is safe or wise to just let any OXZ appear in the manager...

The latter half is precisely what is should not be, and why such discussions always make me uncomfortable.

If anyone bar the OXZ author has any final decision over whether a project is available the manager or not, or indeed if anyone bar the individual player has anything dictated to them over what they should or should not be downloading then this becomes a project I would be uncomfortable in having any association with.

The great strength of this game is anyone can offer their work to it, no matter how "professional" or indeed how "amateur", and the end user/player can pick and choose what they do or don't add to make the game exactly what they want, regardless of what anyone else may deem to be best.

[Smivs]

@ Redspear, I think there are plans to have the manager open links to the 'Information url' (usually the wiki page) in a browser window, sometime in the future.
Re the colours on the indicator, my main inspiration was not traffic lights but the test strips I use to check the water quality in my aquaria.

@ Thargoid, I absolutely agree.

To go on the record, I do not want to see the manager (or anything else come to that) censored in any way.