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Author Topic: Idea: Stats that are hard to max  (Read 1331 times)

Bonifarzia

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Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« on: April 27, 2014, 07:56:27 am »
After the rule changes for skill progression (removal of theory lessons including PP/tria costs), I have  repeatedly seen complaints in the spirit of "PP are useless once you maxed the stats".

There is a strong connection to one of the oldest recurring discussions: A majority of players just maxes out all six base attributes, as there is no incitement to specialize or reason to keep them low. Hence stats lose much of their (rp) meaning and potential for individuality.

I'd like to throw in a (relatively) simple idea that would make it arbitrarily difficult to bring all six of those stats to rank 400. Yes, stats - skills are an entirely different topic.

Let us assume you have a strength rank of R=300 and you decide to raise any of the other five stats by 1. Suggested rule: There is a probability of R/2000, in this case 15%, that this upgrade will degrade your strength by one. If you are (very) unlucky, raising one attribute could even lower two or more of your other attributes.

It is not hard to see that when all six stats go towards 400, this rule implies some sort of equilibrium - in average, you can gain just as many points from training as you will lose by doing so. In other words, the rule does not imply a dramatic change at low ranks, but it gets extremely hard to bring all stats somewhere near the maximum.

Maxing only one attribute is equally demanding as with the current rules, but raising several stats to very high ranks gets more and more tedious. Also, there is a bit of elasticity, as switching to train certain stats will steadily degrade previously raised other stats.

Maths section for people who like to work with equations and plots:

If you like to, you can see this as a differential equation. For the particular case where a player wants to keep all stats equally trained, you can expect

  dR/dx = 1 - R/L,

where L=400 is the stats limit for rank R, x is the number of upgrade steps spent on one attribute, and 6x is the upgrade total. This leads to

  R(x) = L (1 - exp(-x/L))

if we define R(0) = 0. If the cost for one upgrade step is R progression points, we can integrate R(x') from x'=0 to x in order to get the accumulated PP costs P(x). That should be

  P(x) = Lx + LĀ² (exp( -x/L) -1)

That's nice for plotting, but it does not really tell us anything useful. So, let us invert R(x) for the number of steps x(R) needed to reach rank R and insert this into P(x) to get P(R), the costs for reaching rank R. That should lead to

  P(R) = -LĀ² ln(1 - R/L) - LR,

which is nice for plots and comparison with R(R-1)/2. Also, you can see that this goes to infinity for R towards L. Another useful result: You can take the PP costs for maxing all six stats with the current rules and see how far you could get your stats with this in the new system. That should be an average of R=280, which gives us an idea how player stats could be scaled down if such a new rule was added. E.g. a linear approximation for starter stats of 100 could be

  (if R>100) { R = R *0.6 + 40 }.

EDIT: This is an terribly ugly hack, but pushing some buttons might help to see what the idea implies. Maybe it is also useful to mod and test other rules.
Code: [Select]
<!DOCTYPE html>
<!--  a terribly ugly hack to simulate the suggested stats rule - by Boni  -->
<html>
<body>
<table border="4" cellpadding="1" bordercolor="#88FFFF" bgcolor="#EEFFFF" cellspacing="2" width="800">
<tr>
    <td>
        <text id="str"> 100 </text>
        strength
    </td>
    <td>
        <text id="end"> 100 </text>
        endurance
    </td>
    <td>
        <text id="agi"> 100 </text>
        agility
    </td>
    <td>
        <text id="int"> 100 </text>
        intelligence
    </td>
    <td>
        <text id="wil"> 100 </text>
        will
    </td>
    <td>
        <text id="cha"> 100 </text>
        charisma
    </td>
</tr>
<tr>
    <td>
        <button  onclick="upstr()"> upgrade </button>
    </td>
    <td>
        <button  onclick="upend()"> upgrade </button>
    </td>
    <td>
        <button  onclick="upagi();"> upgrade </button>
    </td>
    <td>
        <button  onclick="upint()"> upgrade </button>
    </td>
    <td>
        <button  onclick="upwil()"> upgrade </button>
    </td>
    <td>
        <button  onclick="upcha()"> upgrade </button>
    </td>
</tr>
</table>
<table border="4" cellpadding="1" bordercolor="#88FFFF" bgcolor="#EEFFFF" cellspacing="2" width="800">
<tr>
    <td>
        <button  onclick="upstr(); upend(); upagi(); upint(); upwil(); upcha()"> upgrade all</button>
    </td>
    <td>
        <button  onclick="reset()"> reset </button>
    </td>
    <td>
        Repeat upgrades
        <input type="text" size="1" value="1" id="looper" >
        times per button click.
    </td>
    <td>
        <text id="PP"> 0 </text>
        PP spent in total.
    </td>
</tr>
</table>

<script>
function upstr()
{
    bak = document.getElementById("str").innerHTML*1 ;
    p = document.getElementById("PP").innerHTML*1 ;
    l = document.getElementById("looper").value*1 ;
    if (bak+l>399){l=400-bak}
    for (i=0; i<l; i=i+1){
        bak = bak+1 ;
        p = p+bak ;
        gamble();
    }
    document.getElementById("PP").innerHTML = p ;
    document.getElementById("str").innerHTML=bak ;
}
function upend()
{
    bak = document.getElementById("end").innerHTML*1 ;
    p = document.getElementById("PP").innerHTML*1 ;
    l = document.getElementById("looper").value*1 ;
    if (bak+l>399){l=400-bak}
    for (i=0; i<l; i=i+1){
        bak = bak+1 ;
        p = p+bak ;
        gamble();
    }
    document.getElementById("PP").innerHTML = p ;
    document.getElementById("end").innerHTML=bak ;
}
function upagi()
{
    bak = document.getElementById("agi").innerHTML*1 ;
    p = document.getElementById("PP").innerHTML*1 ;
    l = document.getElementById("looper").value*1 ;
    if (bak+l>399){l=400-bak}
    for (i=0; i<l; i=i+1){
        bak = bak+1 ;
        p = p+bak ;
        gamble();
    }
    document.getElementById("PP").innerHTML = p ;
    document.getElementById("agi").innerHTML=bak ;
}
function upint()
{
    bak = document.getElementById("int").innerHTML*1 ;
    p = document.getElementById("PP").innerHTML*1 ;
    l = document.getElementById("looper").value*1 ;
    if (bak+l>399){l=400-bak}
    for (i=0; i<l; i=i+1){
        bak = bak+1 ;
        p = p+bak ;
        gamble();
    }
    document.getElementById("PP").innerHTML = p ;
    document.getElementById("int").innerHTML=bak ;
}
function upwil()
{
    bak = document.getElementById("wil").innerHTML*1 ;
    p = document.getElementById("PP").innerHTML*1 ;
    l = document.getElementById("looper").value*1 ;
    if (bak+l>399){l=400-bak}
    for (i=0; i<l; i=i+1){
        bak = bak+1 ;
        p = p+bak ;
        gamble();
    }
    document.getElementById("PP").innerHTML = p ;
    document.getElementById("wil").innerHTML=bak ;
}
function upcha()
{
    bak = document.getElementById("cha").innerHTML*1 ;
    p = document.getElementById("PP").innerHTML*1 ;
    l = document.getElementById("looper").value*1 ;
    if (bak+l>399){l=400-bak}
    for (i=0; i<l; i=i+1){
        bak = bak+1 ;
        p = p+bak ;
        gamble();
    }
    document.getElementById("PP").innerHTML = p ;
    document.getElementById("cha").innerHTML=bak ;
}
function gamble()
{
    s = document.getElementById("str").innerHTML*1.0 ;
    if (s*0.0005 > Math.random()) { document.getElementById("str").innerHTML = s-1 ; }
    s = document.getElementById("end").innerHTML*1.0 ;
    if (s*0.0005 > Math.random()) { document.getElementById("end").innerHTML = s-1 ; }
    s = document.getElementById("agi").innerHTML*1.0 ;
    if (s*0.0005 > Math.random()) { document.getElementById("agi").innerHTML = s-1 ; }
    s = document.getElementById("int").innerHTML*1.0 ;
    if (s*0.0005 > Math.random()) { document.getElementById("int").innerHTML = s-1 ; }
    s = document.getElementById("wil").innerHTML*1.0 ;
    if (s*0.0005 > Math.random()) { document.getElementById("wil").innerHTML = s-1 ; }
    s = document.getElementById("cha").innerHTML*1.0 ;
    if (s*0.0005 > Math.random()) { document.getElementById("cha").innerHTML = s-1 ; }
}
function reset()
{
    document.getElementById("PP").innerHTML = 0 ;
    document.getElementById("str").innerHTML = 100 ;
    document.getElementById("end").innerHTML = 100 ;
    document.getElementById("agi").innerHTML = 100 ;
    document.getElementById("int").innerHTML = 100 ;
    document.getElementById("wil").innerHTML = 100 ;
    document.getElementById("cha").innerHTML = 100 ;
    document.getElementById("looper").value = 1 ;
 
}
</script>
 
</body>
</html> (Not sure what to do with this? Just hit the [Select] button, copy paste to a text editor, save as html file and open it in a web browser.)
« Last Edit: April 28, 2014, 07:36:43 am by Bonifarzia »
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Eonwind

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #1 on: April 27, 2014, 10:33:10 am »
Interesting idea and nice math section :)
When we first decided to test the the new system we knew PPs and (exp generally speaking) would loose some importance and trias too. Given PPs could not be spent for anything else but stats it was obvious stats would have been raised a lot. However we wanted to test the system and receive your feedback before deciding whether to go back to the previous system or not, and changing how stats were trained was a lot more work to do for a system we were not sure it would stay.
We are still discussing how stats can be trained, whether to keep the current system (maybe rising the exp requirements) or switch to a practice system like skills (and integrating it in the skill system so there was no need to train stats separately from skills).
The only thing that makes me think about the system you posted Boni is that usually no one wants to see their stats reduced.
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Glaciusor

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #2 on: April 27, 2014, 11:05:49 am »
Yeah, this would really irk completionists and PvPers. Mages who study multiple Ways that use different mental stats (CW and DW masters, specifically) would have a lot of trouble. It's interesting, but would probably cause some people to be annoyed when they're trying to go up, and they spent all that time to just trade a stat for one (or worse, they lose 2 other levels and end up in a worse situation).

I actually have an alternative idea; I'll put it in another thread though so as to not derail this one.
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Calmus

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #3 on: April 27, 2014, 01:51:07 pm »
I like the idea to make the levelling of stats more difficult, the higher someone gets with all stats combined. Being a specialist in just few things should be much easier than being a hero in almost everything.

Instead of making stats deteriorate, it could be a good alternative to calculate the pp cost of a particular stat not just with its own level, but to also consider the average of all stats.

So instead of just considering the level of the one stat to calculate pp and tria cost I could imagine as alternative to consider in the formular:
(level of the one stat + average of all stats)/2

Making something similar with skills and magic could be also considered.

Of course this wouldn't make stats training harder than it is now. Currently it is too easy to max out stats. Skills and magic on the other hand takes a bit too much time IMHO.
« Last Edit: April 27, 2014, 02:26:12 pm by Calmus »
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Glaciusor

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #4 on: April 27, 2014, 03:09:03 pm »
Something like this was tried not too long ago, the higher your stats and skills were, the less PP you would get. This system of course doesn't quite work anymore, and would need a rebalance (likely to not include skills anymore). I do like the idea of making it more costly to increase stat A if stats B and C are maxed out though. This way it's possible to cap, but it takes more effort. I'll note that it shouldn't be insanely difficult to cap all 6 stats (like, take a full year to do it) because that will still likely make people angry.

Even if an alternate method of dealing with excess PP were implemented, I have to say I like this idea as well.
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Bonifarzia

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #5 on: April 27, 2014, 04:44:28 pm »
Quote from: Eonwind on April 27, 2014, 10:33:10 am
When we first decided to test the the new system ...

Thanks for the insight, Eonwind.
I fully agree that changes to core rules should be done only after careful reasoning and testing. Base stats are useful and important, but they are also hard to balance (e.g. comparing the benefits from strength and intelligence), so it is not necessarily a bad thing if all stats can be maxed out conveniently for now.
A rescaling of stats would not feel like a loss to me - it also depends much on what you will want to understand for the numeric ranges of those stats (what values are average, well trained, legendary, inhuman etc.) and of course, which other rules get adjusted at the same time. First thing that comes to my mind is the rule for the mana capacity (e.g. removal of the negative offset, so low mental stats are not such a heavy penalty for spell casting).

Quote from: Glaciusor on April 27, 2014, 11:05:49 am
Yeah, this would really irk completionists and PvPers.

I learned a new word, Glaciusor :)
Do you see "trouble" for mages mainly due to mana and mental stamina, or for other reasons? I have the impression realm 1 to 4 spells reach their caps quite easily if stats are high, and lower stats don't matter all that much. If maxing stats is tedious, do you really need them all maxed? I don't know, it depends on the other rules. But lazy me would not care about getting a few percent extra dps or extra health, if it does not imply a truly unfair (dis)advantage.

Quote from: Calmus on April 27, 2014, 01:51:07 pm
(level of the one stat + average of all stats)/2

Calmus, I actually thought about that formula first.
Well, I went even a bit more strictly and took the sum of all stats for the PP cost of one rankup on any of the stats. In terms of averages, PP costs are just changed by some factor - no big deal for the grinders. Specializing on few stats saves you at least a few percent of the PP cost, but the effect is way too small to give a real incitement. I concluded it would not really change the situation.

Quote from: Glaciusor on April 27, 2014, 03:09:03 pm
Something like this was tried not too long ago...

Lowered PP gain with higher stats - was that changed at all? It is not a bad rule, and as far as I understood, it only applies to hunting. I don't quite follow your next point, Glaciusor, but once again, I ask myself if it is really desirable to have all stats maxed. Of course it is, in a system where everyone does, it gets "standard", while anything else is sort of an optional penalty. As I wrote in the first section, that situation also has its good sides. On the other hand, it would be nice if players didn't feel that need, and stats were a natural way to express or build your preferences.
« Last Edit: April 27, 2014, 04:54:49 pm by Bonifarzia »
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Glaciusor

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #6 on: April 28, 2014, 08:11:12 am »
The mage issue is the following:
- In order to get the same level of health the weapon-users get, they need to go for all of the physical stats
- In order to do their primary Way effectively, they need charisma
- In order to do the adjacent Ways effectively, they need int and will

Meaning, unless CW and DW magi should only have around 500-600 health, which is highly impractical for both PvE and PvP, they need all 6 stats. The other Way users will need at least 2 of the 3, with the other used purely for mana amount and mental stamina. In contrast, a sword-user might get away with no mental stats at all.

I could understand body development changing this somewhat, but then how much sense does it make to have mage with high body development that can't even pick up a sword because they are too weak and they take 600-700 damage per hit instead of 400 because they can only wear leather?

For solo content, everyone should be able to kill everything, especially with such a small player base at the moment, so forcing mages to group up with a heavy armor user (which has no way to force the mobs to attack them anyway...) is quite unfair. This is to mention nothing about PvP... If this came down to combat in a dungeon-type setting then differing stats makes perfect sense, but not for everyday hunting. With the spells modified to allow better group support and the addition of threat management this part could work in dungeons.

I'd think that to permit this kind of system, a gutting of the current stats system would be in order to prevent these issues. I'm not entirely convinced that such an endeavor would be worth all that work when so much else needs to be worked on.
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Bonifarzia

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #7 on: April 28, 2014, 09:29:54 am »
If I catch you in game, maybe we can discuss some more about the quirks of current rules, Glaciusor. To keep this reply short, let me address just some points:
* agi/str training for raising a magician's health is pretty pointless
* hunting or duels with magic can be much more subtle than nuking and tanking - there's quite a few spells to disable, stun or immobilize your foes. Some work only on mobs, some in PvP.
* when my stats are halved spells don't lose that much of their usefulness - way skills have much more importance.
* still I fully agree that new rules like these are nothing to be considered any time soon ;)

Btw, I added a bit of code at the bottom of the fist post.
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Glaciusor

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #8 on: April 28, 2014, 05:43:52 pm »
Just to note, many of these subtle spells are not known by players, or not by many at least >.>... but yeah, PvP should be full of subtlety but also equality between choice of Way (I'm aware this is a very, very difficult task even if tons of new stuff wasn't being added regularly).

Discussing would be good. I'm currently as in-the-dark about these things as the rest of the normal players...
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Rigwyn

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #9 on: April 28, 2014, 06:55:21 pm »
So if I pay to have my Charisma increased by one point, there's a statistical probability that I'll be dumbed down by one point, or that I'll become a little more awkward, physically. The higher my stats are, the more often these things will happen.

I like the idea of doing something to ensure that everyone does not end up "square", but I'm not sure I like the idea of involuntarily losing a point here and there.

I would rather have a stat point quota personally, and choose myself which point I'm going to sacrifice in exchange for purchasing my next stat point - or else be given the chance to reallocate my stat points from one stat to another once I've used my my pool of X stat points.  This would eliminate the whole "Oh crap! I've been ripped off" experience.

Now if stat points were not purchased, but instead were rewarded automatically based on your activities, then I think your system would fit better. In this case, you would see that you are slower to tire (your endurance is increasing) if you run frequently. You would not notice the dimming of your wits or the atrophy in your spaghetti arms if you are a pure mage.  One who trains sword, armor and magic would not have the peaked stats of a pure swordsman or a pure mage, but somewhat of a compromise. So unused stats would silently fade away and used stats would increase with demand.  The specifics of this would take some fine tuning, though.

« Last Edit: April 28, 2014, 06:58:46 pm by Rigwyn »
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Pakarro

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #10 on: April 29, 2014, 12:41:42 am »
I did propose a cap on the sum of stats some time ago, and I still believe this would be the simplest and most transparent solution. The present system relies on the discipline of players to keep some stats low. Which fails...

Same with ha casters of all ways who can kill an ulber with a single blow of their sword...
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Bonifarzia

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #11 on: April 30, 2014, 08:32:26 am »
Quote from: Pakarro on April 29, 2014, 12:41:42 am
(...) a cap on the sum of stats (...) would be the simplest and most transparent solution.
Agreed, that's very intuitive, and it has been discussed quite a few times (which does not mean we should stop to).
With an up-/degrade system, having plenty of PPs left just gives you more freedom to re-allocate  stats for different needs or strategies. That's maybe not bad as a PP/tria sink.
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Glaciusor

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #12 on: May 01, 2014, 02:20:41 am »
I do like the idea of some form of reallocation; the game is currently highly inflexible and every choice has a high degree of permanence. This would be fine if characters lasted a few weeks, not fine if the character lasts for years and years (and grinding is tuned to actually *take* years and years).

I'd be fine with seeing some sort of cap preventing someone from mastering all the things if the game were more alt-friendly in addition to a reallocation. I've yet to touch Brown or Blue way (apart from realm 2 blue) just because I don't want to go through the hassle of, again, trying to get into the Winch, collecting glyphs I've no clue where they are or what ones to even look for, spending hours randomly mixing glyphs to find spells and hoping there isn't some random glyph from other Ways I'm missing... This is a big reason why you see people mastering everything on a single character and not a bunch of them. I don't think forcing people into even more permanence on one character will help anything at all, just make players angry for the sake of trying to force everyone to RP well via mechanics.

As far as the caster killing ulbers with one hit of their sword, with how high some mobs can get with their resistances, mages who actually follow the current Way guidelines are often forced into using weapons and armor to actually kill something that wants to eat them. I still firmly insist that the damage caps on each spell need to be bumped up and the way resistances are applied for magic are wrong, but that's another discussion entirely... and group combat is still not very practical given many of the mechanics needed for that are also missing (which is another discussion as well). This often leaves mages with the option of mastering HA and a weapon, or becoming food. That's to say nothing of people who want to be able to duel on their main character...

I'll note that mages in other games have a high degree of crowd control and slowing/knockback at their disposal, and mage armor and damage absorbs. Planeshift kinda has some of these though I've not seen any that are implemented in a way that allows a pure mage character without armor. The crowd control spells I've tried like darkness and fear just make everything in a large area mad and cause me to take quite a bit more damage... not what I want when I'm being chewed on already. Armor spells just apply an armor modifier, forcing the use of stronger armors to be effective. The damage caps and very high damage resistance on the mobs means mages cannot kill things before they themselves are killed (barring things like standing on rocks or very high range magics). Even if there are effective crowd control spells, if someone who's played as long as me can't find them there's almost no hope of new players doing so.

So I guess my point is... forcing people to specialize is going to cause a lot of problems to become substantially worse. The game as it stands currently forces breadth and not everyone has time to level the amount of characters needed for the variety needed to actually play the game with specialized characters. Specialization should not be attempted before each specialization can be made combat-viable on its own, and ideally not before grinding alts becomes realistic for more people.

</rant>
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Bonifarzia

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #13 on: May 01, 2014, 02:52:49 am »
Mhm, that's a wide range of topics/issues.
All I have to say about hard limits like rank caps: They should not apply to skills (as apposed to stats) and they should be sufficiently high that they don't cripple your options, but just serve for sort of "fine tuning".
And yeah, I agree with respect to resistance and dmg caps (PS#5573) and with additive rather than multiplicative def buffs, but again, that's another topic.
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Glaciusor

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Re: Idea: Stats that are hard to max
« Reply #14 on: May 01, 2014, 07:25:02 am »
Yeah... I kinda realized that was a wide range so I figured a conclusion was in order after the rant :).

I like the idea of "fine tuning". A RW master who uses axes (like myself) probably would choose to have some extra strength and will, perhaps a few in charisma (high adept in DW), not really bother with agi or int. This won't break stuff, especially if you allow shifting somehow.
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