On Sunday, June 7, 2020 10:39:38 AM CDT you wrote: > On 6/7/2020 8:25 AM, nch wrote: > > On Sunday, June 7, 2020 9:03:32 AM CDT Rebecca wrote: > >> On Sun, Jun 7, 2020 at 11:44 PM Kerim Aydin wrote: > >>> On 6/7/2020 1:00 AM, Rebecca wrote: > >>>> I personally greatly prefer Referendum (and voted for it) because it's > >>>> intuitiuve. The rules need less incomprehensible, unintuitive terms of > >>> > >>> art > >>> > >>>> (like Switch!) and more like Referendum imho. > >>> > >>> Huh, interesting. The switch language always seemed really intuitive to > >>> me (and was a great improvement on what was there before). Sometimes > >>> it's > >>> odd that certain things implemented as switches (like when we > >>> implemented > >>> "currencies" as switches) but the underlying metaphor of flipping > >>> switches > >>> always seemed pretty clear to me? > >>> > >>> Officer interest, for example, is a switch, and that can be "flipped" to > >> > >> any list of the five ministries, including a list with multiple of the > >> same > >> ministry. That is not how I would expect it to work. Karma is an integer > >> number that we've shoehorned into switch for some reason. > >> > >> The most unintuitive and pernicious type of terminology is not totally > >> made > >> up terminology (like Blornsbwerg or whatever). It is terminology that > >> works > >> similarly, but not quite the same as, its intuitive meaning, which means > >> that the name actually undermines the full meaning in the rules. Switch > >> would be intuitive if it were only applied to two or three possible > >> values > >> which could be flipped. > >> > >> -- > >> From R. Lee > > > > I agree with this. We've shoehorned every variable into switches because > > switches have well defined conditions and protections we know work. But > > that doesn't mean it makes sense. Anything with more than one value at > > once like a list definitely doesn't make any sense with the metaphor. > > Things with infinitely many values or values that aren't obviously > > opposed in some way are also really stretching the metaphor. > > Ok, just to take the karma example. The goal is to track an integer value > assigned to a person, that has certain behaviors (e.g. default values, > reports that are self ratifying.) > > We can: > > (1) use natural switches - current solution, bad metaphor; > > (2) use currencies - I think that's a bad fit, we don't really want to > treat these quantities as tradable objects and we want to include negative > karma, so with an even "worse" metaphor IMO; > > (3) invent something new in parallel to switches (A "dial" has more values > than a switch. A dial can go to 11.) Is it worth the verbiage of a new > name if it functions just like switches?; > > (4) just change the name of "switches" and the word "flip" (is there a > term that's more intuitive?) > > Don't know the answer... > > -G.
Karma isn't the worst offender by far, ribbons and interests are far more absurd. The ribbons rule adds a bunch of language to hide the switch language behind something more intuitive for ribbons, and even overrides a core mechanic of switches - defaulting when illegal or ambiguous. Just conceptually switches could be replaced with variables. Most of our player-base probably has a passing understanding of computer variables, and they fairly intuitively branch out into booleans, lists, integers and others. -- nch
