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Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
A stats discussion. What frustrates gamers imo and in your opinion.
georgeblack
Member
My friend was playing a dark elf dark knight character in an mmorpg.
The class had physical abilities like shield bash and sword slash atks.
It also had magical abilities like drain health, poison wounds, freezing strike.
He could equip a sword with bonus magic dmg instead of physical dmg bonus in order tp utilize the classes abilities that caused magic damage.
Then new stats were added to the game, in addition to cooldowns being reduced.
1)Critical rate was seperated in physical critical rate and magic critical rate.
2)Penetration was added as a stat that players need to invest in.
But penetration was either physical penetration and magical penetration.
This dark knight class instantly lost it's Identity and what made it unique since my friend had to either become a Knight, spamming sword slash and shield bash, without any new abilities or a Dark Mage, spamming drain health, dressed in robe for more magic critical and a staff for more magic penetration without any new abilities.
There was no need to split critical into physical and magic, or add penetration.
ESO is another game that I will bring as an example of bad stats. Please read carefully.
In eso you have to chose which stats you care for and then pick a gear set that does have those stats in it.
A fighter has access to:
critical rate
weapon dmg(WD)
penetration
Max stamina(the more you have the more abilities you can cast, but it also improves your dmg output but it is not counted as WD)
Stamina regen, the more you have the quicker your stamina refills and you can cast more abilities
Dot dmg increace
In one set you would get 3 bonuses:
WD
Crit
Max Stam
and one special effect that some times would more of one of the above stats.
So if you chose WD you had no penetration, if you chose Dot dmg, your Dot dmg was increases but because your WD was lower, your dot dmg was decreased.
If you chose Penetration you had no critical meaning your attacks were not as strong so what's the point.
At this point I ask you to read again.
Isnt it stupid to have to do tests to figure out which stats compination is the best every 3 months?( ye, they changed the potency of the stats every now and then).
Wouldnt it better if instead of Dot stat there were just Dot abilities? Wouldnt it better that instead of penetration stats there was just a "Armor Crusher" attack that was best used when a Knight appeared in front of you in the battlefield?
Wouldnt it better if you didnt have to lose stamina regen in order to gain more stamina?
I believe that stats and abilities are the #1 factor in the evolution of games and they should be created respectfully and with a purpose.
For me a roque could sacrifice defence to gain critical rate. A roque could sacrifice HP to gain penetrating dmg.
A roque sacrificing WD to gain penetration makes no sense as to where the benefit was gained.
Imo meaningful stats are:
CP(combat points. Extra HP for certain classes)
HP
MP
Stamina (used for blocking, sprinting, dashing, dodging, teleporting)
Defence
Magic Defence
Stun resistance (reduce chance to be stunned or reduce stun duratiom depending on what the game turns out to be)
Certain debuff resistances such as fear or slow or whatever.
Damage
Magic dmg
Critical
Many other unique passive abilities should improve those stats or add more to a character depending on the class, without stats conflict. An example is critical dmg for some roques and some mages.
Another could be HP or MP regeneration. Maybe HP regen for sturdy warriors and MP regen for healers.
Anyways. Some thoughts that we can gather as a community and present to the devs. That's the purpose of our topics
The class had physical abilities like shield bash and sword slash atks.
It also had magical abilities like drain health, poison wounds, freezing strike.
He could equip a sword with bonus magic dmg instead of physical dmg bonus in order tp utilize the classes abilities that caused magic damage.
Then new stats were added to the game, in addition to cooldowns being reduced.
1)Critical rate was seperated in physical critical rate and magic critical rate.
2)Penetration was added as a stat that players need to invest in.
But penetration was either physical penetration and magical penetration.
This dark knight class instantly lost it's Identity and what made it unique since my friend had to either become a Knight, spamming sword slash and shield bash, without any new abilities or a Dark Mage, spamming drain health, dressed in robe for more magic critical and a staff for more magic penetration without any new abilities.
There was no need to split critical into physical and magic, or add penetration.
ESO is another game that I will bring as an example of bad stats. Please read carefully.
In eso you have to chose which stats you care for and then pick a gear set that does have those stats in it.
A fighter has access to:
critical rate
weapon dmg(WD)
penetration
Max stamina(the more you have the more abilities you can cast, but it also improves your dmg output but it is not counted as WD)
Stamina regen, the more you have the quicker your stamina refills and you can cast more abilities
Dot dmg increace
In one set you would get 3 bonuses:
WD
Crit
Max Stam
and one special effect that some times would more of one of the above stats.
So if you chose WD you had no penetration, if you chose Dot dmg, your Dot dmg was increases but because your WD was lower, your dot dmg was decreased.
If you chose Penetration you had no critical meaning your attacks were not as strong so what's the point.
At this point I ask you to read again.
Isnt it stupid to have to do tests to figure out which stats compination is the best every 3 months?( ye, they changed the potency of the stats every now and then).
Wouldnt it better if instead of Dot stat there were just Dot abilities? Wouldnt it better that instead of penetration stats there was just a "Armor Crusher" attack that was best used when a Knight appeared in front of you in the battlefield?
Wouldnt it better if you didnt have to lose stamina regen in order to gain more stamina?
I believe that stats and abilities are the #1 factor in the evolution of games and they should be created respectfully and with a purpose.
For me a roque could sacrifice defence to gain critical rate. A roque could sacrifice HP to gain penetrating dmg.
A roque sacrificing WD to gain penetration makes no sense as to where the benefit was gained.
Imo meaningful stats are:
CP(combat points. Extra HP for certain classes)
HP
MP
Stamina (used for blocking, sprinting, dashing, dodging, teleporting)
Defence
Magic Defence
Stun resistance (reduce chance to be stunned or reduce stun duratiom depending on what the game turns out to be)
Certain debuff resistances such as fear or slow or whatever.
Damage
Magic dmg
Critical
Many other unique passive abilities should improve those stats or add more to a character depending on the class, without stats conflict. An example is critical dmg for some roques and some mages.
Another could be HP or MP regeneration. Maybe HP regen for sturdy warriors and MP regen for healers.
Anyways. Some thoughts that we can gather as a community and present to the devs. That's the purpose of our topics
1
Comments
You clearly didnt stop to think that Armor of Critical goldened out and enchanted will be wasted once critical is weakened against penetration after 3 months. For no reason. Just a number.
You clearly didn't stop to think that if people in ESO didn't always have a need to go after a different set of armor, the majority of players would have no reason to log in.
Needing to get a new set of gear every few months is literally what ESO is. Take that away and you have no game.
Yes it is.
However, ESO stats aren't just stats, they are ESO content as well.
If you asked if we think AoC should use stats as content, my answer would be no.
However, your question in the context in which it was asked is whether having to get new gear in ESO was stupid or not - and since getting new gear in ESO is the content in ESO, having to get new gear every few months is not stupid.
It is probably worth pointing out that since gear in AoC will degrade, we will likely need to replace it more than once every three months - there is likely to never be a time when working towards an item replacement isn't somewhere on your mind.
Until I played one that didn't do that.
I felt stagnation, I felt bored. There was nothing to chase, nothing to do sometimes. The game was unbalanced and stayed that way, meaning most people played a few classes a certain way because it was the established "over powered" way. People complained about the dev team abandoning the player base.
The fact an MMO is a persistent and dynamic environment means things will change. The dev team will test and trial things, and you may not always like it.
And thus...
Is life.
Armor
Magic Resist
Ability Power
Attack Damage
Attack Speed
Stamina\Mana
HP
Crit Chance
Magic Penetration
Armor Penetration
Slow\Stun Resistance
(and some minor ones)
The mentioned classes balancing each other out similar to a rock paper scissors scenario.
For example:
As rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, paper beats rock.
Another one I heard, which is a more fun version of the game is Cowboy, Indian, Bear:
Cowboy kills Indian, Indian Kills Bear, Bear kills Cowboy.
In a similar way, I imagine it to be similar in ashes, such as:
Mage kills Ranger, Ranger kills Fighter, Fighter kills Mage.... But across all 8 base classes.
All of it will probably have a lot to do with utility as well, rather than just damage based skills.
Bringing the topic back to "stats" in general, I know Intrepid already picked a few for APOC, but I imagine there will be many more added.
I like a more traditional approach to stats,
There's typically Primary stats like (going with base names, not specifics):
Strength - Typically a measure of physical strength, or sometimes physical size
Dexterity - Often a representation of agility, reflexes, or other types of physical coordination
Constitution - Often related to health and/or stamina. Often tied to hit points, sometimes to endurance (how far you can run, sprint, swing a huge sword in combat, fatigue rate, etc.)
Intelligence - A character's ability to learn and reason (Often related to arcane or non-divine spell casters)
Wisdom - Typically a figure for common sense, willpower, and sometimes intuition (Often related to divine spell casters)
Charisma - Representation of charm, personality, attractiveness (appearance or metal acuity), and ability to lead
Often times Health or Hit Points (HP) is determined from Constitution as well as level, race, class, etc.
Magic/Mana Pool (MP) is determined by Intelligence or Wisdom, as well as level, race, class, etc.
Endurance is typically determined from Constitution. Sometimes Strength and Dexterity, or comes as a unique stat by itself.
From there, secondary stats are typically tied to a character's skills, abilities, or things he/she has learned. Or quite often, physical or magical enhancements, such as:
-Armor or Armor Class
-Physical damage or Attack Power (Could be pure strength, dexterity, or combinations of various stats. Quite often just related to the weapon doing the attacking with primary stats just adding modifiers/bonuses)
-Ranged Attack Power/Ability (Can't exactly hit harder with a bow if you have more strength... unless the bow requires more strength to use/pull - but you can throw things, which is different than hitting them while holding the weapon... if a weapon at all)
-Magical damage/Spellpower (Sometimes this doesn't exist, since the ability is what determines the damage, and intelligence or wisdom maybe just adds a bonus)
-Spell Resistance - Ability to resist magic, ability to resist certain spells, spell schools, any number of possibilities. Sometimes makes the character immune, other times reduces a percentage of damage, other times acts as a level to overcome
-Spell penetration - Ability to overcome spell resistances (inverse of spell resistances)
Armor penetration is theoretically equivalent to your ability to overcome someone/something's armor. Sometimes this means the same thing as a "hit" rating, other times it's based more on a "sunder" type ability about going through the armor, or ignoring the armor (reducing the target's AC)
Outside of these basics, you could make arguments to make it more complicated, but I don't think it needs to be. Such as weapon proficiencies, skill ratings, etc.
@kayra character stats by their very nature are complicated, there is really no getting around that. Even your example of stats in LoL is extremely complicated when you get into it. The key though is to simplify the way the players view the information. LoL does this very well with their stats display on the UI.
This allows the player to make informed decisions ingame without needing to search online for spreadsheets and equations.
If the changes are just being made because armor is "content" intended to keep players playing - well, I wouldn't play that MMORPG... and I haven't played ESO.
If those changes were made in a game I where I was playing a Dark Knight and, instead of feeling like a Dark Knight, I felt like was suddenly playing a Fighter or a Necromancer - I would stop playing that game.
The problem described in the OP is not simply that the stats were changed - the problem is the stats were changed, there were no new abilities and a class stopped feeling like its class and instead felt too much like other classes. It is stupid for devs working on an RPG to ruin the role of a class by making it play like either of two different class roles rather than feeling distinct.
I don't see how that could happen in Ashes, since we will have so many different types of augments. I can't imagine how adding new stats on armor could stop me from using the augments that make the combo of my primary and secondary archetypes unique.
Especially since, in Ashes, it should be possible to craft armor with the stats we want - in this case, sword and shield with stats for physical penetration and magical penetration.
Devs are human - sometimes they make stupid mistakes.
Then we have to see whether the dev response (or lack of response) to player feedback is accepted by the players or causes a mass exodus.
@wanderingmist Agreed. However, when I see so many stats, I feel overwhelmed (Archeage
HP (Hitpoints):
"Do you have more blood in your body then other people?"
Stamina (Running/swimming/diving duration etc):
"How long can you hold your air, while fighting nagas, underwater, that are 3 levels higher then you?"
Endurance (poison resistance, psychic resistance, physical damage resistance etc):
"Tis be nothing more but a flesh wound!"
Strength (Weapon damage multiplier):
"Did you just lift that giant axe and ram it into the ogres skull?"
Agility (crit multiplier):
"You know exactly where to put that sword to do the most damage."
Intelligence (Spelleffect multiplier):
"You know 100 different ways to set someone on fire, but also how to heal that little bunny with 35 different incantations!"
Wisdom (Manaregen multiplier, Manapool):
"You are shure that you can survive most encounters, because you know how to use mana effectively!"
Sub Stats that a game needs in my honest opinion (only increasable through specific items):
Evasion (Hitchance reduction):
"Are you as slippery as an eel? Yes, yes you are!"
Penetration (armour penetration):
"Are you able to find the chink in your opponents armour or not?"
Haste (attackspeed increase, running speed increase, cast speed increase):
"Are you a fast boi or are you not?"
Charisma (buff duration/effect increase):
Are you able to convinve your allies, that they are truly epic or are you not?"
Toughness (debuff resistance, stun resistance, dot resistance etc):
"Are you tough enough to keep on tanking even if you are set on fire or are you not?"
A game should not differentiate between magical and phyiscal damage, a shard of ice hurts in your body as much as a dagger in your back.
A game should differentiate between magical effects and physical effects! Setting someone on fire and keeping it that way is totally different then throwing ice or fire at him!
Superman is can be cut buy a blade that slices bonds via magic rather than via physics. It's the difference between a blade that is magically sharp and a blade that was magically sharpened but slices bonds using physics.
A magically sharpened dagger probably won't penetrate the metal of a mundane shield, but a dagger that is magically sharp could penetrate the metal of a mundane shield.
That's why I said it's important to limit the amount of information the players can see. They don't need to see the damage calculation formulas for their character, just a simple number saying "your ability will do x amount of damage".
You're only thinking about pure damage. Magic can be much more than that. What about a "hold person" or "paralyze" type spell? By that logic, some tank decked out in crazy armor should be able to resist that magic just as much as a sword, even though armor is typically more restricting, unless you're somehow differentiating between magical effects and magical damage, which sounds very complicated.
To use the fire/ice example - If I blast him in the face with ice, sure, it might do the same amount of damage as a sword to the face. But if I completely freeze his armor, shouldn't he be immobile then? Or if I blast him with a fireball, shouldn't his armor heat up and essentially cook him inside his metal armor long after the explosion is gone? Somebody wrapped in a blanket might be less harmed from fire than somebody in metal plate armor.
And if you say he won't cook, or freeze "because magic" - then you just argued yourself into believing that magical damage should be different than physical.
What about resistances, wards, and curses? Magic that affects the mind?
If there was no difference between physical and magical damage, then by its nature, all mental-effect magic would be crazy powerful. Why would I throw elemental magic at you when I can get you to stab yourself? Why would anybody focus on damaging type spells then, if its much better to control the environment around the armored things?
Would it also mean that all healing magic repairs armor, too? Or since healing magic is essentially damage reversal, would it affect an armored person less? (I'd strangely be okay with that.)
Thats where i drew the comparrison between magical and physical effects. A stun or paralysis would fall under "magical effects" and the corrseponsing defense.
This again falls under my comparison of magial effect.
My main argument (i think i didnt bring it across well enough), was that there are magical spells, that should in turn deal physical damage, while leaving a "magical" dot for example and that there should be a differentiation between these sources of damage.
Yes, that is my opinion!
A tank should have to spec into magical and physical defense. But also that magical spells should be differentiated into physical and magical damage.
Thats why i also gave an example for an corresponding stat:
Toughness (debuff resistance, stun resistance, dot resistance etc):
"Are you tough enough to keep on tanking even if you are set on fire or are you not?"
Please read all of my post before thinking that you know everything about my opinion....
This is something that Pokemon games do very well. You have 6 basic stats:
health - self-explanatory
attack - how much damage you do with physical moves
defense - how much damage you take from physical moves
special attack - how much damage you do with magical moves
special defense - how much damage you take from magical moves
speed - who goes first in a battle (highest speed wins)
Moves in Pokemon are either physical or magical, and it clearly states on the tooltip which form of damage a move deals. Very straightforward and easy to understand. At the very beginning at least I don't think you need to get any more complicated than this. Start with a solid foundation and make sure it works, and then if you feel the need to add new stats to counter some gameplay issue you can do so afterwards.
I also think that there should be only two different resistances (magical and physical), what i try to say is that magical spell effects should be split into magical and physical damage.
Something can be magic but still deal physical damage.
Why though?
Dont know tbh, but i think that would be more interesting xD
Edit: a mage could try to counter a magic def focused tank for example
Personally I like a large number of stats and resistances.
Makes things more interesting that way. You never know when you attack a random player if they stacked anti magic stuff and will resist/take reduced damage or reflect it back to you.
Having different types of damage and resistances is important to grouping. One of the warrior tanks in Rift is all anti magic and works great in combat against magic stuff not so much for one that is all physical damage.(things may have changed haven't played last couple of years).
I do dislike when stat functions are changed or new stats are introduced, especially if they are opposing stats like penetration and resistance (to penetration). Those feel unnecessary.
As few base stats as is needed please.
I agree with balancing.
Remember that the more unique stats you put into the game, the more gear you need to put into the game to compliment those stats. Let's say for example you have elemental resistances - Fire, Ice, Nature, Shadow and Light. That's 5 different sets of armour for each armour type (light, medium, heavy, etc). Now you can short-cut it by having elemental resistance gems/enchants that can be applied to any armour piece, but that comes with its own problems. Would you be able to swap resistance gems whenever you liked? Would you have to do it in a town or could you do it in the field? Would the gems/enchants be consumables that had a one-time use, or could they be used multiple times?
The same thing applies to offensive stats. All of this needs to be balanced around the class and combat mechanics.
Started playing WoW as BC launched. I leveled my priest solely in dungeons. So much so in WotLK I got the 100 quest achievement.
In the dungeons boss kill loot drops were not all the same. The Flaming Sword of Jeffery might have stamina and Strength one tine next time it might have Intelligence and and stamina on it. This allowed for us the players to mix and match gears to achieve different goals. Tertiary stats like crit would also fluctuate as well.
Now in the current homogenized version of things The Flaming Sword of Jeffery has all the stats so anyone able to use it the sword will provide the stats to them. Problem is EVERY sword has the exact same stats. This takes away from the individuality of the players and the ability for us to build as we see fit. Not everyone can or should have the exact same gear. If there is no difference in the stats or abilities a piece of gear has then why have them at all.
As PvP will not be balanced 1v1 but around larger groups trying to manage every class to be within .001% of each other is not a concern.
But again I like class roles to be defined. I don't want a doctor fixing planes nor would I want a dentist doing brain surgery.
In the end will there be a meta that the community figures out? Definitely. But I think to few stats leads to everyone being the same and this bores me. Hence why I am currently not playing any MMO.
As far as I know we never got an official reason for this change, but I have a couple of theories:
1. It's easier to implement and balance. One of the biggest problems WoW had before this change was that Every spec had different stat priorities, and it was literally impossible to put individual gear for each spec into the game. This inevitably meant some specs were screwed purely because they didn't have optimal gear available.
Just as an example, back in Vanilla WoW there was very little leather caster gear while leveling, so Resto and Balance Druids had to use cloth gear. This of course pissed off the classes who could ONLY use cloth armour, which leads me to my second reason:
2. To protect players from each other. Back in the day there was very little way to stop players from "stealing" gear from others. If you could equip it, you could roll for it, regardless of the stats on it. Some players took full advantage of this and took every piece of gear they could, out of greed or spite, even when they didn't intend on using it for themselves.
Homogenising gear in the way Blizzard did ensures that more players can make use of the same pieces of gear, which helps with the toxicity and means there are less wasted loot drops. Does it offset the downsides of the system? Honestly I've never really thought about it too much, but my gut instinct is that this was just another bandaid fix that never addressed the underlying problems.
Will be interesting to see how they approach this and hopefully they have some interesting answers on the gearing and stat allocation.
We can only wait and see what ideas they have but with all the long term MMO experience they have hopefully they give us something different or at least some good tweaks on the old.
Sometimes it is better not to reengineer the wheel but maybe a different way of doing it might make all the difference.
For stats I am a classic D&D guy myself, so I would like a stat each to represent the following: Brute Force, Agility, Hardiness, Intelligence, Awareness, and Socializing. In addition to that I would like to see all other stats (resistances mostly I guess) limited to armor, items, and weapons.
For resistances I would like a few different types to keep it interesting without making a single resistance type broken, but not so many we run into the foreseeable issues many here have already pointed out. So maybe: Physical (base weaponry and skills), Magical - Divine (and god/healing type*), Magical - Elemental, Magical - Physical (magic weapons and special abilities in some cases).
*we know at least some healing abilities will have hp-drain associated with them
Now, for the reaching bit.
I would like to not see damage in the 1000's or, equally, Health in the 1000's before the mid-level point for characters. Boss monsters would be different, especially those that would be tied to group content.
I know a lot of the reason this is done is to allow combats to last longer without dealing out single digit numbers and so you can deal a minimum of 100 damage on every attack and feel like you're putting out the pain. I would like to make the argument that 1000hp with damage doing 200 is equivalent to 100hp with damage doing 20 (either way, it's 5 attacks).
I don't mind seeing 9999 damage, but I would like that to be max level stuff. It's just being able to do several hundred points of damage with every attack by level 3 feels pointlessly over-inflated. Thanks for reading!