When it comes to damage output in games, do you prefer big or small numbers?

[SofNascimento]

Particuarly in RPG and tactical games.

I'm not sure if the title is clear, so what I mean is how your damage output change as the game progress. It's only natural you deal more damage as your character become stronger, but there are different approaches to that.

Take Divinity Original Sin 2 for example. You begin dealing 1~10 damage points. Eventually you'll be doing 1000s of damage. Wasteland 3 which is a game I'm been playing recently follows a similar route. And so many other games.

On the other end we have games like XCOM2, FTL or Baldur's Gate... in FTL for example a weak weapon might do 1 damage and a powerful one do 4. Your HP (30 points) remains the same throughout the campaign.

Personally, as much as can be very satisfying to deal huge tons of damage, small numbers lend themselves much better to a tactical approach. When you're dealing 1000s of damage, you tend to ignore the numbers. They become meaningless. While in the other case, you're always looking for that optimal combination... having a +1 bonus damage can make all the difference in the world. Not to mention this affect enemy design as well.

 

[apocat]

Small numbers. Let me have a real point of reference to help me understand what's going on. I'm not playing pinball. XCOM would be unplayable if you couldn't grasp what was happening.

 

[Neoleo2143]

Small numbers are more readable. Greater readability makes it more reasonable to plan and make good decisions on more significant margins.

 

[Deleted member 16908]

Big numbers are only fun if you start off dealing small numbers.

 

[Finale Fireworker]

I think starting small and ramping up to a few hundred at top levels with exploited weaknesses is my preference. I like seeing my damage go up over the course of the game so 1-10 is smaller than I'd prefer. But I know if the number gets too big I completely lose interest because it feels too artificial and fake.

 

[julia crawford]

I have no preference, but hitting those 9999 in FF never gets old.

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Small numbers, and then big numbers at key moments

 

[dancingphlower]

Smaller can be helpful but I have to admit, I enjoy the dopamine rush of getting big damage with 1000s of points lol

 

[dipship31]

I'll take big numbers all day

 

[Deleted member 8468]

About 90% of the reason I like games boils down to numbers getting bigger the longer I play.

The bigger the numbers start out, the better the game is.

 

[PlayBee]

Small numbers feel more meaningful

 

[fr0st]

Smaller for sure. Division 2 I can get like 50 million 1 shot damage and it's hard to go back to a lower one

 

[Gunny T Highway]

I do not really have a preference for one or the other. But I will admit seeing either 9999 or 0 (If your have damage numbers on your character) is quite satisfying.

 

[Doomguy Fieri]

Diablo 3: why not both?

Level 1 characters hit for 10 damage a pop. A few hours later they crit for 1,000,000,000.

 

[5taquitos]

Small numbers feel more meaningful

Click to shrink...

For sure. When you do 12 damage instead of 9, the gain feels big. When you do 364759502 damage instead of 346352877 damage, it doesn't mean anything to me.

 

[Anno]

Numbers in RPGs should almost never be allowed to exceed 999.

 

[Stoze]

Very small. It's one of the many reasons why I latched onto Paper Mario over other JRPGs when I was younger.

Really loved that type of design in Into the Breach where pulling off a 4 damage attack on an enemy is big.

 

[My Blue Heaven]

big numbers mean nothing unless yeah you were hitting the baby numbers 70 hours before or whatever

 

[Napalm_Frank]

Small numbers make it way easier to see how your character progresses. Going from a fireball doing 12 damage to 25 damage is way more tangible than going from 122058 to 258953 damage.

 

[SofNascimento]

Small numbers. Let me have a real point of reference to help me understand what's going on. I'm not playing pinball. XCOM would be unplayable if you couldn't grasp what was happening.

Click to shrink...

Indeed.

For example, in XCOM2 your assault rifle deals 3-5 damage. On the hardest difficulty the Advent Trooper have 4 HP. Which means that dealing 3 damage or 4 damage can have major differences.

 

[SnazzyNaz]

Starting in the single digits and working up to 999 or maybe 9999 is perfect IMO.

 

[SofNascimento]

I should add that small numbers of a game that you end up dealing huge damage is not the same of the small numbers I'm talking about the OP. We're talking about two different approaches to the game design.

 

[cw_sasuke]

Always small.

 

[Oaklight]

Start with small numbers but by the end and especially the post game you start dealing millions or billions of damage. You can always just abbreviate big numbers to make them more understandable and meaningful like 1,246,764 can be shortened to 1.2m but then you don't lose that sense of power that big numbers convey. I like to feel powerful and massive numbers really help with that for some reason.

 

[ClearMetal]

Big. Nothing says powerful more than going from 5 DPS at level 1 to 15+ million DPS at level 70. (Diablo 3)

 

[Firebrand]

Small. Once they get large enough I kinda stop paying attention to be honest.

Starting in the single digits and working up to 999 or maybe 9999 is perfect IMO.

Click to shrink...

Agreed, it's a nice range.

 

[RadzPrower]

One of the best things about the Paper Mario series is that damage started at 1. It gets the point across much better when you can use small, quickly understood numbers. Yeah, you technically lose some granularity, but most games don't even do anything WITH that granularity.

I remember playing Yu-Gi-Oh back in the day and they'd have numbers like 1700 or 2500 and like one card that was 1750. They really could've just dropped the two zeros and stuck to 2-3 digit numbers as you're basically just doing the math on those leading digits anyhow.

 

[maouvin]

Start small, then go towards infinity

But for non-N1 games, capping at hundred thousands is cool.

 

[Dekuman]

It has to.make sense. Damage spam in MMOs where you do hundreds of thousand hp damage is a turnoff and a sign they devs would rather scale things linearly than rework the mechanics

 

[shinobi602]

I always turn them off the second I'm able to lol.

 

[Deleted member 33057]

Small numbers overall, big numbers if you pull off a special combo or massive attack. It makes a difference in showing how powerful a move is

 

[SirNinja]

Honestly, kinda both. I like RPGs where stats have an exponential effect: you start by doing ~25 damage an attack but can eventually do 99,999 with enough time and effort. Final Fantasy X uses this to great effect: it makes each successive point in a stat more rewarding than the last one, and it's a great motivator for both grinding and building up characters on that giant grid.

 

[apocat]

I'll take big numbers all day

Click to shrink...

I get why it's fun, but that picture says nothing. There is no way to intuitively grasp what just happened.

 

[Euler007]

No numbers, I prefer visual feedback on successful attacks. One of the things I hated about D3 is hitting for hundreds of millions. What does a point of health mean at that point?

 

[Skade]

Small numbers, i like to be able to actually count what i do and what needs to be done. Humongous numbers are just ridiculous most of the time.

If anything, i prefer no numbers at all.

 

[DontHateTheBacon]

9999 being the max is the best.

 

[Jaded Alyx]

tatsucap.jpg

 

[supercommodore]

I feel like the 0-999 and 0-9999 systems work well.

I know some games allow for breaking the damage limit under certain conditions, but if it is allowed only in one or two cases/moves/summons in the whole game it is still meaningful.

 

[ClearMetal]

 

[styl_oh]

Interesting time for this post as I've been playing some old RPGs (besides FF6 recently which yes I consider a 'new RPG' in these terms).

Dragon Quest 1+2, Final Fantasy... you're going to do 10 damage and you're going to like it because thats a pretty good hit. I got completely out of the zone of later games having parties with 8732 HP and 4587 MP and hitting for 9999 damage per turn. Those are just absurd numbers and after a point it's just like... yeah, I hit hard. How hard, I don't even really know. Nobody has a frame of reference for how much destruction I'm raining down. And that's good too! I also love being OP and seeing it in sheer, chaotic numerals.

But I think you do stop paying attention and having such a minute understanding of the numbers... because usually, you don't have to.

Certain old games, though... it might take a LONG time, but you level up and go from 30HP to 60HP? You just fuckin' doubled your chances of living a little longer. That's a meaningful level up.

 

[ZangBa]

More about how the numbers are displayed to me. WoW Classic has such a good feel when you get a string of critical hits.

 

[LostCauseUnite!]

Disgaea only exists to be number porn and is popular because it is number porn.

don't @ me because you know it's true

 

[pbayne]

9999 cap still feels right to me
I dont play mmos but when i see like a screen that has like 90 different numbers flashing every second i find it distracting as hell

 

[RadzPrower]

No numbers, I prefer visual feedback on successful attacks. One of the things I hated about D3 is hitting for hundreds of millions. What does a point of health mean at that point?

Click to shrink...

Yeah, at that point a bar tells you more than a number ever could.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

It's very hard for me to process power scaling when the upper limit of damage you deal is still single or double digits. Give me big numbers.

 

[Alvis]

I get why it's fun, but that picture says nothing. There is no way to intuitively grasp what just happened.

Click to shrink...

I'l tell you what happened:

The player did a fuckton of damage lol

 

[Fonst]

Big numbers make me think damage doesn't matter. Too many digits negates the impact of a big number.

 

[KillstealWolf]

Big is best, but I feel that 9999 cap is the golden number.

Guess it's because of so many RPGS having it at the max damage. Like, you did it, you did the maximum possible damage in one turn, you can't go higher than this.

...And then some games go "What if you can hit that 9999 multiple times in one turn though..." and your mind then starts thinking things up further.

 

[apocat]

I'l tell you what happened:

The player did a fuckton of damage lol

Click to shrink...

Did they even? In games with that range of numbers that might only be a fraction of the enemys HP.

 

[Greywaren]

Big numbers make you feel stronger, small numbers make it easier to understand what's going on. I guess it depends on the game.