PlaneShift
Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Easton on June 25, 2006, 02:51:45 am
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I did a search and i didn't find anything on this yet, which kind of surprises me, so if i am wrong in any way or this has been posted before, my deepest apologies.
I was wondering if a "Luck" stat was going to be implemented. It would affect many things, quests, looting, maybe fall damage could vary based on luck, i don't know, it has room to expand obviously, but i think it would add a nice dimension to the game. It could even be something not affected by character creation but something that varies every day. It could be completely random, or certain things could be weighted more towards giving you better or worse luck. And of course certain items and/or spells could afect your luck temporarily.
So there's my not very well thought out idea, but just something to let the wolves chew on.
Easton
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i always liked to believe the server just loved me ;) but yes this'd be a cool idea.
...out of curiosity, is the charisma stat in any way tied into this concept already (obviously charisma couldn't work in the case of fall damage)...
quite like the idea of luck fluctuating depending on hours/days etc. also (something to do with the season we are born into maybe...perhaps for this purpose also add hour of birth into the birthday at character generation).
...also like the thought i could buy my way into greater luck with charms and spells/potions etc.
but omg could be complex to work out.
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I know some people like luck stats, but personally I hate the idea. Luck is an illusion and it should stay as such in-game. If you're always getting good/bad results from the random number generator, so be it, but I don't want that scripted. Essentially, a luck stat removes luck by making it something which is set per character and potentially trainable. I would appose putting this in the game.
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Good point..
it does kinda kill the point..
Easton
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I basically agree with DaveG .. luck is something that is integrated in the game mechanics and the formulas used to calculate things. It can be replaced with the use of a dice for some actions where the game doesn't calculate things itself.
A Luck stat would be odd since you can't grasp luck, let alone train it. Luck is something beyond us so if such a stat is introduced for each character personally, then I'd prefer to have it completely invisible and undetectable. It could be nice to have natural lucky people or those who never have any luck though. Then again ... don't we already have those?
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I never posted here :P Stop confusing me with DaveG xD
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:oops:
It's that confusing axe .. for some reason every time I see it, I automatically assume it's you Kary. Sorry bout that :P
*edits his post*
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A Luck stat would be odd since you can't grasp luck, let alone train it. Luck is something beyond us so if such a stat is introduced for each character personally, then I'd prefer to have it completely invisible and undetectable. It could be nice to have natural lucky people or those who never have any luck though. Then again ... don't we already have those?
This "naturally lucky" people would then be the same as in the "naturally gifted" thread. What would that result in? Exactly, a lot of "create-check-delete-recreate" sessions. If something is in any way scripted, then it can be at least approximately determined by testing and comparing. Soon you would find tables and instructions saying "Mine using a normal rockpick at /pos <XYZ> 100 times, relog and redo 20 times, then compare average success rate to the table below. If your rate is within the yellow or red part, then you should create a new char, rinse, repeat".
It would be an attempt to force disadvantages onto players which would be subverted by almost everyone, punishing the honest.
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Ehhh ... and what keeps people from doing that now?
I've seen people post parts of the code to find out what the best way to mine is, or what skill has which influence on damage dealt. Things like that can't be avoided completely .. besides it's more of a disadvantage to the 'unnerdy' than the honest :P There are always people who enjoy dissecting games completely to find the tiny inbalanced issues and figure out a way to bend those to their hand ... good for them, me, I couldn't be arsed to spend that much effort into a game.
Sometimes I think you're a little bit too negative Seytra, you find something wrong with everything :P
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Ehhh ... and what keeps people from doing that now?
I've seen people post parts of the code to find out what the best way to mine is, or what skill has which influence on damage dealt. Things like that can't be avoided completely .. besides it's more of a disadvantage to the 'unnerdy' than the honest :P There are always people who enjoy dissecting games completely to find the tiny inbalanced issues and figure out a way to bend those to their hand ... good for them, me, I couldn't be arsed to spend that much effort into a game.
There's quite a difference there. With the little imbalances, you'll obviously get people seeking to use them to their advantage, as usual. However, the imbalances will affect a very confined set of activities, normally exactly one, as long as you engage in it, always having the choice not to do it or doing it a different way, exactly as much as everyone does, whereas the luck would naturally affect everything you ever do ingame, without you having any choice but not to play or to re-create. This will then be a severe disadvantage to those who didn't know or care when they created their chars. It would also be impossible to change it without deleting your char.
That alone will warrant quite some effort at char creation to ensure that you have viable luck assigned to you, for quite many players. If you then look at the amount of PL going on, and the fact that it has not changed at all, regardless of how hard / easy it was to level, regardless of what is the bottleneck of advancement, be it money, be it PP, be it trainer locations, it becomes quite obvious that a huge percentage of the players will ensure at least average luck, and quite some will strive for maximum luck.
It also violates the "everyone is equal" rule that is necessary in order to make a game a game. It is already sufficiently unfair by it's nature of depending on when you join, how much time you can spend on it, and the quality of your equipment as-is. If you now start deliberately handing out random disadvantages, you end up trading enjoyment for realism for most of the players, which isn't a good idea for a game that is supposed to be fun.
You can never avoid any and all imbalances and possibilities for abuse, but that by far doesn't mean that you should not do your best to do so if you at all can. This means binning things that can't be made to work right, and I am pretty sure that this is one of them, as it suffers from the exact same issues as the naturally gifted chars idea I referred to earlier (which really can be viewed as "specialised luck").
Sometimes I think you're a little bit too negative Seytra, you find something wrong with everything :P
I try to make things as fair, abuse-proof, logical, RP-supportive, universal and realistic as possible, usually in that or a similar order. That means finding the weaknesses of things before or during the planning phase, so that things can be ditched before being developed and then failing (If you are lucky, they may work for a while before failing, but eventually they will fail.). Things turn out wrong unless you force them to turn out right.
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I don't like the Idea of luck as a stat but there might be a random chance thing that has nothing to do with who you are for instance in a fall the computer randomly picks if you take normal fall damage or like 2% more or less damage
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Obi Wan Kenobi doesn't believe in luck... Therefore, no luck in the game except that created by the randomness of the game's mechanics. ;-) Sounds good to me.
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What about it not being t rainable, but relies on what settings you chose during char creation?
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Imagine training luck...
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just some information here not suggesting anything...
in TES games (of which i own Morrowind and Oblivion) there is a stat called luck. in the description i quote Oblivion: "Luck affects everything you do." I looked it up in the game manual and it was also very cryptic. Then i tried looking it up on the Internet and found out how it works. So here goes.
Luck is one of the attributes you have. It has the same affect on every single thing you do from attacking to how many heathers are in a heather plant (those of you who have played Morrowind will think that its completely random, but its not). Its as if the higher your luck is, the more it adds to each of your other attributes and major, minor, and misc skills. I read in another forum that it also is the equivelent of having levels or fractions of levels (depending on the level of your luck) added to each of your skills. Which, in turn, gives you a better success rate for everything.
Just for clarification, Morrowind and Oblivion are similar to Planeshift in that you dont gain attribute levels by training skills in those areas. Every time you gain a level, you may choose 3 attributes that you want to raise and they can go up by anywhere from 1 to 5 levels at a time depending on how much you used the attribute. (except in PS you do that for everything, not just attributes)
There, take that home, eat it, its good.
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just some information here not suggesting anything...
in TES games (of which i own Morrowind and Oblivion) there is a stat called luck. in the description i quote Oblivion: "Luck affects everything you do." I looked it up in the game manual and it was also very cryptic. Then i tried looking it up on the Internet and found out how it works. So here goes.
Luck is one of the attributes you have. It has the same affect on every single thing you do from attacking to how many heathers are in a heather plant (those of you who have played Morrowind will think that its completely random, but its not). Its as if the higher your luck is, the more it adds to each of your other attributes and major, minor, and misc skills. I read in another forum that it also is the equivelent of having levels or fractions of levels (depending on the level of your luck) added to each of your skills. Which, in turn, gives you a better success rate for everything.
Just for clarification, Morrowind and Oblivion are similar to Planeshift in that you dont gain attribute levels by training skills in those areas. Every time you gain a level, you may choose 3 attributes that you want to raise and they can go up by anywhere from 1 to 5 levels at a time depending on how much you used the attribute. (except in PS you do that for everything, not just attributes)
There, take that home, eat it, its good.
TES III and Planeshift cannot be compared. In TES attributes and skills are two different pairs of boots, and advancement in one is knit to advancement in the other. In planeshift training your blacksmith skill does not effect your strength in any way. Furthermore there are no levels in planeshift, Morrowind's solution cannot be directly aplied to Planeshift. period.
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I also have TES3 and TES4, and yeah, thats where I got the idea of it not being trainable, and since there aren't any "Levels", just skill levels in PS, I trhought of it being determined at what things you chose at Char Creation.
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I actually see good points in the suggestion. Baldur's Gate and other RPGs have this implemented and it works pretty well. For the use in PS I like to tweak the idea a bit:
- Base value for everyone is fixed at a certain value (maybe 30 or 50%) luck
- A special birth event or a specifc choice of race in the CC could raise that starting value for example for about 5%
- luck is not trainable but modifyable by spells, potions and items
- luck could affect looting, chances to successfully cast a spell, or avoid negative effects of different things; chances to hit or avoid a hit
- to balance it, i suggest to make it impossible to modify luck with multiply instances of one sort (multiple rings of luck plus necklace plus boots plus or multiple casting "greater luck" or whatever). So it could be only possible to higher luck with one ring plus spell plus potion. That also eliminates the +100% chances of finding magic items insanity like it is in Diable 2 (one could assume that the % are referring to the real chance, but it highers a given value for _that_ %. So with over 1000% (which is more or less common for certain chars) you don't get 100% probability of finding, but thats just a weird system imho).
- Also, for temporary raising like spells and potions, I can think of pretty big effects like raising luck for 10 or 15%, but afterwards for a certain time, lowering the luck for about the same amount. So you have to plan very well on when to use it. Also higher additional values might also wear off faster. For instance a permanent raise (like a ring) would only give a plus of 5%, while an extremely powerful potion of luck could raise the value for 20%, but only for 10 seconds.
With that system I don't see a problem with people abusing the CC as it is very clear on how the CC affects the value, neither I see a problem with abuse by being able to train it. If 100% luck are not acceptable even for a short time, one could cap it at 90% for instance. Eliminating the random factor at the "stats"-side, it also makes it much more convenient, streamlined, for people without removing the random chance factor at all. Also it doesn't mean that people can abuse the system better if the the mechanics are revealed (principle of open source ;) ).
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give everyone 1 point luck for the rest of the game. It can change by charms such as rings or a necklace or any other clothing piece. it could be lowered by long time curses which can be purified at the temple of a god or by the curse caster him/herself