The corollary to the concept of Tactical Transparency is the concept of Imperfect Information, a delightful gameplay construct to mess around with. Imperfect Information can be summed up as what your players DON’T know that they wish they could. Imperfect information creates doubt, keeps the player off-balance and helps keep the little guy in the game.

Game designs run a full gamut on how ‘perfect’ the information they provide. Chess, for example, is a game of very nearly perfect information. All of the information is visible right before your eyes, with the exception of the devious plan resting in your opponent’s mind. Many strategy board games have fully or nearly perfect information — computer strategy games use tactics like ‘fog of war’ to make this information more imperfect. Still, it’s definitely possible to make a classic game with fully perfect information.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have 5 card stud poker, a game where your knowledge is limited to the cards in your hand, and the twitches in your opponent’s facial expressions. All of your information is based on your opponent’s ability to bluff — by design. It’s instructive to note that 5 card stud is the flavor of poker that makes for the best Hollywood saloon scenes. It’s equally instructive to note that Texas Holdem, a far more transparent game, is the brand of poker that’s exploded into America’s conscience right now, and that has a lot to do with the fact that the ‘river’ offers much more in the way of information and tactics. This is important since the Internet was a big part of the revolution, and observing the bluff is a lot harder when your opponent is represented solely by a screen name.

In some games, players are given a glimpse of information, and then have the option of remembering it. In Settlers of Catan, a careful player could concievably track what resources his opponents collects from his territories. Practically, this is almost impossible to do all the time for all your opponents, but you certainly might track those of one opponent who has catapulted himself into the lead. Such mental tracking also figures in largely to playing hearts, spades and bridge, not to mention card counting in blackjack.

Magic the Gathering is a great example of imperfect information. The game gives you clear clues as to what your opponent can do (what colors he’s playing, what mana is available to him) but his hand is hidden from you, and as such, his exact capabilities are hidden from you. If a player’s hand is empty, then suddenly his opponent is playing with purely perfect information: you know his capabilities are limited purely to the visible cards in play, allowing you to play your own gambits with total confidence. Expert players will always try to keep at least one junk card in their hand to create doubt.

Imperfect information combined with the need for tactical transparency creates an interesting game activity – scouting and recon. This is most apparent in RTS games with a fog of war, but MTG has over the years introduced cards which allowed you to scout not only your opponent’s hand, but also look at the cards in your draw pile or his (two other areas of imperfect information in the game). In each game, the value of scouting varies. In RTS games, the need for recon information is critical. In Magic, by contrast, a card that offers nothing but a glance at your opponent’s hand is generally regarded as a waste of valuable deck space, whereas cards that offer that glimpse along with a useful effect are prized. Also, in MTG, different decks place different values on scouting – Blue decks operate primarily by countering their opponent’s spells, so being sure you counter your opponent’s biggest spell is vital. Other colors are better suited to deal with spells after they’ve hit the table, and thus place less value on the information.

So how can all of this be applied to the MMORPG?

In PVP games, we have clear examples of Imperfect Information. You know a player’s class and his level, but you don’t know exactly how that character is built. This doubt is a lot of what keeps a server from descending into total PVP chaos, as otherwise people would always attack others they knew they could kill on sight. On the other hand, if information is TOO imperfect, then it becomes difficult to bring tactics and strategy (i.e. the stuff that makes it interesting) to the fight. If you don’t know anything about your opponent, you’re always going to regress to the one pattern that’s served you the best in the most situations. This, obviously, is less than optimal.

Imperfect Information also speaks largely to the stealth problem, namely that there is an enormous disparity in the quality of information between a hidden backstabber and his prey. The backstabber knows an enemy is nearby – his prey does not. The backstabber knows a fight is going to start in 3 seconds – his prey does not. The backstabber knows the class and level of his opponent before the fight starts, and can adjust his tactics accordingly. The prey is forced to make do with the information he can glean in the face of total chaos and surprise. The question then becomes, how much is all of this information worth, and how do you adjust the backstabber’s power to compensate? Alternatively, how can you introduce more doubt into the backstabber’s mental math?

The doubt inherent with imperfect information also affects replayability quite a bit. One problem with puzzle-y quests like Myst is that, most of the time, when you solve them, the information becomes TOO perfect. Solving those puzzles ceases to be interesting and becomes a hoop to jump through. Designers then have to find other ways to make this content more interesting – console developers do it with alternate goals (speed, collect the coins, etc).

Imperfect information also affects the ‘con’ system. You could argue that most ‘con’ systems are too perfect – you know that you can beat monsters that con green. What’s less intuitive is that you could also argue that they are too imperfect – since all level 35 monsters appear the same, the player will tend to use the same gameplay patterns against each one – which reinforces the mentality that each monster is an Angry Bag of Hit Points. As such, each player tends to use the same handful of powers in the same order. What if, on the other hand, conning a mob told you more in-depth information? As an example:

Melee Damage: High
Spellcasting: Potent
Defense: Low
Hit Points: Weak

Suddenly, you have information to base tactics on. Simply giving more information invites the player to approach each challenge differently, varying their tactics from fight to fight. In this case, not by changing combat at all, but instead by changing what players can observe about combat and bring to the fight.

The important thing about imperfect information is that there has to be some closed set of knowledge so the player doesn’t feel blindsided. Players can be surprised by new Magic cards their opponents play, but once they’ve seen them they can then account for that possibility in future play. The trick is for players not to be surprised – not to feel blind-sided by some event that feels out of bounds of basic fairness. A game that dances this line gracefully will have near infinite replayability. A game that does not risks feeling random and capricious.

It bears mentioning that Design Synthesis has mused along similar lines.