PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Bonifarzia on April 27, 2014, 02:56:27 pm
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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 + L² (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) = -L² 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.
<!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.)
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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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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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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.
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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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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).
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.
(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.
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.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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(...) 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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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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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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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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An old topic, but still very-very actual, so let's add my two trias to it:
I totally agree what stats / skills system should encourage specialization (means RP), not generalization (means munchkining). I'd like to see some rules for hard to max [all] stats implemented in the PS. As an example, average experienced character should have about 2 stats maxed - with sane amount of training time spent. Want more? Spend much more time!
Stats training should really go along with skill training - e.g. each skill will have 2 bounded stats: primary & secondary (secondary one trains half of speed of primary).
As of wizards Int, Wil, Cha stats - IMHO it's totally wrong to bind them to the Ways. I think the original idea was to make Purple Mages vs. Maroon Mages vs. NavyBlue Mages... but specialization rules should be applied to the Way skills, and spell sets should be more specialized also. Returning to the point... Int should provide more spell power + some MP (magic Str), Wil - more MP and magic resistance (magic End). Cha... what's it for?.. I thing Spd should provide faster casting...
Аnyway, current PS stats system should be reviewed with characters combat & civil roles ("builds") in mind. The more sane character builds could be produced from basic stats, the better this stats system is. And... make music useful in combat, at last.
It will be nice to have a character sheet with detailed resulting characteristics, e.g.: Max HP, HP regen rate, Max MP,
MP regen rate, Max Phys. stamina, Phys. stamina regen rate, Max Mag. stamina, Mag. stamina regen rate, Base physical resistance, Base magical resistance, Base physical damage, Base magical damage, Phys. chance to hit, Phys. critical chance, Mag. chance to hit, Mag. critical chance, Phys. chance to avoid damage, Mag. chance to avoid damage, Movement speed, Cast speed, etc.
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The problem that arises when you need to have the stats to back up something within RP but you don't actually have the irl time to spend time grinding, so the need to do so becomes an obstacle for RP. And then with the stats in general, the amount of experience necessary to level up in things needs to be lowered significantly if the game wants to keep a larger playerbase imo, because people are happier when satisfaction is easier and faster to gain - the way to keep people around is through variety in things they can do, and of course that's where development focus needs to stay so that things can be made a little easier on players in the future. But lets say every intended class/specialization got developed and implemented in game and there were even more enemies and quests, but experience was still too grind-necessary - people would be turned off and choose another game that's not too hard but not too easy. It's all very tricky though and at the end of the day you can't make everyone happy.
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Some skills are harder and some much easier than when I started. I have seen players leave because of the changes. The only ones that haven't been affected by those changes are the rp'ers that never level anything anyway.
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There are certainly rpers who level... just sayin'. The real issue is not "balance," imltho, it's boredom.
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Here's the thing -- the boredom factor is twofold:
1. It takes quite a bit of grinding just to get to a reasonable level of competence at anything under the current PS system -- it's a far cry better than it was, but it's still enough tedium to dissuade at least some RPers from making their chars mechanically match their RP'ed abilities.
2. The PS combat & progression systems are quite vertical -- and this has a strong negative influence on PvP balance, because then you either have a grind so tedious that newbies/low-time players have no chance to catch up to full-time grinders, or so trivial that everyone is able to max everything with ease, rendering character stats/skills rather useless from a RP standpoint.
Fixing the first item is a matter of building a more engaging overall progression system -- crafting training has made some progress in this regard, but still doesn't quite have the degree of back-and-forth dialog that I'd want to see out of a RP game. Combat, though, takes advantage of none of this -- instead, the philosophy is "here's a sword, go have fun" with the associated dismal results. Why can't you have quests involved with learning how to use a weapon? It'd be a good opportunity to help RPers learn how to play their character more accurately when it comes to combat, for one.
The second item, though, is where the real problems with balance lie. New players are forced into a severely uphill grind so that their characters can do what they want them to do, while veterans get split into the "haves" and the "have-nots" by the amount of time they can invest into grinding their characters further, rendering the combat mechanics almost unusable for RP. Fixing this isn't a matter of specialization, either -- trying to bind a character's specialty to some innate facet of a character leads to players spawning numerous alts in order to cover all the roles they wish to fill, which creates an opportunity cost as now they find themselves "caught out" playing the wrong character for the situation, or unable to participate in a RP as they don't have the ability to manage things like disposable characters due to their slots already being occupied by specialist alts.
The solution I see, though, is to take something of an opposite tack to redhound -- instead of focusing on the red herring of specialization-via-stats-and-skills in a vertical system, make it so that veterans don't progress vertically alone, but laterally as well -- instead of forcing everyone to perfect their swordsmanship and become demonic, flashing brutes in order to use the mechanics in combat in a reasonable way, make it so that veteran characters are more versatile, not necessarily better at one thing. That way, new players or low-timers can take a specialization-driven approach in order to achieve a set goal quickly, while veterans who need a training sink can have their characters diversify their capabilities.
"But wait", you may say, "isn't that a recipe for 'perfect at everything' Mary-Sues everywhere?" It may sound as such at first, but there's a solution to that -- equipment. Make it so that you can't carry every glyph under the Azure Crystal on you at the same time. Make it so that we have to make intelligent tradeoffs about what weapons our characters carry into battle. Make it so that there's more than one way to skin an Ulber, so to speak -- giving room for different characters to favor different solutions to the same mechanical problem.
Last but not least -- the entire stats system is based on a rather faulty distributional premise, atop having far too much influence on character performance. Just because you're stronger than everyone else doesn't automatically make you a super-warrior, nor does stubbornness alone turn you into a mighty mage. Letting statistics primarily (and subtly ;) influence how quickly a character can learn things is a much more sensible approach, as it allows the skill system to "even out" the balance differences between races and character creation backgrounds, instead of accentuating it.
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I'm really not against having just one character with all maxed stats and using it for all RP means. Think of that as of "munchking build". So, to encourage specialization is not need to deny generalization. Totally agree what young specialists should have a way to compete with generalist veterans.
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Oh, so one of my old suggestions for rules (yes, there are several) got bumped with a manifold of different ideas. Just as a note, the concept here was about stats in the strict sense of primary attributes: Str, Agi, End, Int, Wil, Cha.
At the time I have opened the topic, it was not meant to make regular character progression any harder. Rather, I wanted to stimulate a discussion about what we consider a trained or progressed character. Back then and still today, it seems common sense that a character will just "max out" all of those stats once a sufficient amount of PP is accumulated (even more so since skill training was decoupled from PP). I still have the feeling that such base attributes could give some fair and useful background for character diversity and elasticity, while keeping the free-to-learn-anything-you-like attitude for the skill system... a system which can be discussed elsewhere, just like the entire progression system with all of its different aspects.
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Stats are not needed for role play. The skill of your imagination is all that is required for role play. Stats don't matter at all.
For PVP, characters need to be able to reach the same level as the more experienced veterans, without spending years grinding. There has to be a close to level playing field for PVPers, regardless of whether or not they RP. When PVPers have similar skill that they can all reach without ridiculous amounts of time and effort, the PVP is more competitive and the fighting becomes less about what stats you have and more about how you use them(The skill of the player). There is absolutely no point for anyone, who only RPs and does not want to PVP to have high stats. I see no necessary connection between stats and RP. I'm sure there are RPers who like to have amazing stats, or stats that suit their character, but it is not necessary unless they want to PVP frequently. Imagination is all that is necessary for them. I know I will meet arguments on this, but this is my opinion.
But PVP does have a necessary connection to stats, not all of them obviously, but to the basic stats and the weapon stats the connection is unavoidable and undeniable. PVPers, some who RP, some who don't, deserve a fairly even playing(fighting) field, considering all the grinding they have to do just to make sure they are not at a massive disadvantage to their opponent. The best PVP fights I have been a part of and watched in PS have always been between players who are virtually maxxed out in any skill that is useful to their chosen fighting method. The PVPer will always strive for the most effective fighting skills and you see this in all games that have PVP mechanics. Whatever kills other players effectively, is what every PVPer wants and will focus on getting/having/achieving, to be fair to themselves and each other.
Furthermore, to be fair to themselves and each other, all frequent PVPers will strive for full sets of enchanted armor, weapons, amulets, etc. and whatever gives them an edge against their opponent. These things are hardly needed for RP, unless you intend to choose to RP your char or your guild into real actual PVP. Which plenty of people have done or still do. Pure RPers who like to roll their dice to decide their battle outcomes, or just pre-design the outcomes of their RP conflicts, from my point of view, have no reason to care. :devil:
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The problem I find with those that want to rp fights and magic is that most have no idea what the mechanics of the game support. Waesed is maxed in all stats, maxed in all armor, 123 in sword and wielding platinum sabres, a crystal way master and full adept (over 90) in all the other ways. I think most rp'ers don't know that the damage done with both magic and weapons is random so that there is no reason for rolling dice and such for us grinders. When PvP'ers fight either can win just on the whim of the computer.
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What bugs me is that it's now 400/200.
Just for PLers to have something to do?
Gosh dang. That makes leveling a character SO hard. I tried it with Mahk, and it's just a waste of time. I like having stats to kill beasties that intrude on my RPs, but not if I'm going to invest 2-400 hours into it.
That is TOTALLY just me though. There are certainly hardcore people who do LOVE that stuff, right?
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What bugs me is that it's now 400/200.
Just for PLers to have something to do?
Gosh dang. That makes leveling a character SO hard. I tried it with Mahk, and it's just a waste of time. I like having stats to kill beasties that intrude on my RPs, but not if I'm going to invest 2-400 hours into it.
That is TOTALLY just me though. There are certainly hardcore people who do LOVE that stuff, right?
Eh, where are you getting the 2-400hours from? It sounds like you're assuming that you still need to buy training for skills (hint: you don't)
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Its considerably easier than it used to be, but if your primary focus is on RP, then you will likely opt out of training in order to better utilize your time. This is off topic, but we spoke in the past about the possibility of having an "rp character" that has enough stats to get around, carry things heavier than a feather without getting exhausted and survive surprise attacks by most aggressive NPCs but without the ability to use those stats for pvp. If being weak is still an issue, then it might be a good topic for another thread.
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A couple of years ago PP's were reworked to slow progression. Rumor had it that the powers that be wanted it to take 3 years to max stats.
I'm not a fan of text-based rp but I do rp. Waesed and Ellis have escorted many weak players to Oja and other places. With the advent of aggressive mobs there was a need for it but, as usual for me, no one wanted to get involved in it. Being a good guy/gal is not in vogue in PS.
Lets face the fact that one may be a great rp'er but that is no help when you come face-to-face with a maulberlord or neoten. Typing /me dodges or some such nonsense will still get you a trip to the DR. ;D
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Has any thought been given to limiting by race how high a character's physical stats can go, similar to how they are set at character creation? For example, maybe a Lemur's max strength is 200 while a Stonehammer can reach 400, a Kran's max agility would be 200 compared to an Enkidukai's 400. Ylians get capped at 300 for all three stats, etc. The Starfire Tourney has an interesting method for determining how the participants' physical stats are set. I have a harder time making the argument that mental stats should also be limited, but it might work over a smaller range.
Another option would be to let the player decide what the character's max in each stat would be. Give the player 2000 points to distribute among the six stats. The character would still start at the levels currently applied at creation and would have to work its way up to whatever cap the player set.