Re: Re: Mastery notation -- from the Continuum list, was: MG's

From: Mike Holmes <homeydont_at_...>
Date: Fri, 30 Jul 2004 11:13:33 -0500

>From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_...>

> > None of these look good to me. As somebody said, the important thing is
>to
> > capture the TN with a glance and to get the masteries secondarily. A
>simple,
> > unambiguous way to do this that everyone will recognize is to use
> > parentheses.
>
>That makes the rating visually assymetric, but isn't especially
>suggestive (to me) of which number is which. Though maybe it doesn't
>need to be. (But why then the unambiguous claim?)

It's unambiguous as compared to 2W2, precisely as you note, because of the asymetry (or, rather, the encapsulation of one of the figures).

>Note that not _all_ the suggestions have been to add another character
>(and btw, this _would be_ another 'add another character' scheme, at
>least if we're counting net...).

My point was, in fact, that there is no way to have one character say which is which, without understanding the scheme (in which case the orginal notation is just fine). The idea is to get the notation to work without having to memorize which is which. Which I agree will take another character. The thing is that, since the problem isn't remembering that one of the parts of the score is a number of masteries, we don't need one of the characters to be either an M or the mastery rune, or anything like that. Any characters will do as long as they distinguish one number from the other.

The reason that I think that the parentheses work is because the number in the parentheses will always be seen as "secondary" somehow. Which can then be applied to an algorithm.

Know what? I've just had a thought. In play, with so many augments, what happens is the following:

1. The player starts adding up his augments. Let's say, for instance, +8.
2. The player adds this to his original score, say 17W.
3. To do this math, the player either does
4. "20-base math" of a sort, adding 8 to 17, getting 25, which is 5W, and adding that to the previous mastery for 5W2. or
5. they convert to decimal, add 37 to 8 to get 45, and then convert back to "20-base"
6. Either way, at some point the player has to do two steps with the special math. If you just listed abilities as decimal numbers, then you eliminate a step. 37 + 8 = 45 which is then converted to 5W.

The only time that this is less efficient, is when the ability rating, plus the augments is less than 20. Technically, however, the player still does the special math at the end, checking that it's less than 20, and then not adding any more masteries.

Now, I think that the mastery notation is pretty nifty in terms of being an immediate indicator of "level" of power. But can anyone see any handling time advantage to it? Wouldn't it be faster just to list all abilites as normal decimal numbers?

Mike

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