A stats discussion. What frustrates gamers imo and in your opinion.

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

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Comments

Damokles

wanderingmist wrote: »

damokles wrote: »

@wanderingmist
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

bloodprophet

A "Call Meteor" spell from a mage could count as physical damage.
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).

Ravudha

I don't mind stats being tweaked for balancing; it's inevitable.

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.

georgeblack

ravudha wrote: »

I don't mind stats being tweaked for balancing; it's inevitable.

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.

Wandering Mist

bloodprophet wrote: »

A "Call Meteor" spell from a mage could count as physical damage.
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).

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.

bloodprophet

This is one of those things from the old days I miss.
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.

Wandering Mist

bloodprophet wrote: »

This is one of those things from the old days I miss.
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.

bloodprophet

Agreed.
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.

Azathoth

I am not 100% if my response will fit wholly in this thread, but I'm going to post anyways.

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!

Dygz

Since the max is Level 50, I think we're doomed to having the crazy high HP that is typical of MMORPGs.

georgeblack

4 digit numbers are easier for % bonuses.

Azathoth

Easier to see pop up on a screen or displayed on a profile maybe, but that would be it.
Edit: I know it seems silly because nobody has really done it, but 1,235 damage could easily be 123.50 or 12.35 as far as 4-digit numbers go.

Damokles

@azathoth but decimal numbers should be harder to count with in a game. You should not be able to "survive" with 0.25 hp ;D

Caelron

@dygz Since when did anybody state the max level was going to be 50? I know they have thrown around "possible" level caps, but never arrived on a set number.

@damokles I saw your point a while ago. Entirely fine to defend your point, I guess it just wasn't originally worded in an easy-to-understand way to me (which is totally fine given the HUGE scope of this topic/discussion). It's a really good point, too, I just think it needs to be fledged out more in how it relates to other abilities and the rest of the game.

I still think there should be a difference between physical and magical damage, even physical and magical effects, too. But it makes a lot of sense to have a giant ice spell deal physical damage. I would even be all for it. After all, it's the ice and the impact that's dealing the damage, not the "magic" or "magical strength" of it.

But this is where the discussion devolves in to other things related to stats and how they're handled in-game: resistances (typically magical resistance, since wearing armor is essentially physical resistance), spell penetration (essentially the opposite of a resistance), magical power (however that's defined - could be just a pure damage boost to a spell, or many other things), and any number of other ways magic could influence things. If there's a magic missile spell: Well, there's possible ethereal effects that exist on more than just the physical plane, so there wouldn't be a physical way to block it - essentially pure magical damage.

I also like things to be very "classic" in a sense, specifically relating to D&D, since it just makes more sense that way.
Think about the Fireball spell, since it's essentially been in every game there's been a mage in.
To use D&D 3.5e as a reference, it does 1d6 damage per caster level (since you can get the spell at level 5, that's a minimum of 5d6) with a maximum of 10d6 damage without other metamagic applied to it.

Spell damage scaling is based on level with a cap. Essentially no "magical power" or anything else can boost the spell's damage. You might find magical items that boost the caster level, but it wouldn't apply past 10th level in this case. Metamagic abilities are extremely rare and super expensive to have a feat applied to a piece of gear... so let's ignore that for now.

The damage: Not physical damage, not magical damage, just damage. Since it's effectively an area spell, armor has no effect. Reflexes matter, though (basically a quick reaction whether or not you can avoid it and/or roll to safety).

Sooo... what's the point? Why did I bring this up?
Because it's a great argument for 'not' separating out physical and magical damage, since the effect is the same: your character gets hurt. It's the heat of the fireball that does the damage, regardless of how the explosion was created.

But there's also lots of arguments in there for other stats, stat effects, or possibilities. Like the concept of "cover". If a fighter is hiding behind a tower shield when that fireball explodes, it wouldn't go past the shield unless it melted. So the fighter might still take a little damage from the surrounding area, but he'd practically negate the damage.

tl:dr - Arguments can be made either way: Magic can be physical damage, magic damage, or both. Depends how it's applied. But I think a reasonable argument can be made either way.

Azryil

caelron wrote: »

@dygz Since when did anybody state the max level was going to be 50? I know they have thrown around "possible" level caps, but never arrived on a set number.

Steven has said they are looking at a level cap "Around level 50"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1bgSjVXDTY&feature=youtu.be&t=58m48s

Azathoth

@damokles 0.25 > 0... Merely a flesh wound

Nagash

Dygz

@caelron
We especially don't know yet whether a giant Ice spell is dealing physical damage or magical damage.
We don't know if it is freezing people via physics or freezing people via magic - or both.
Is the spell magically summoning physical ice or conjuring magical ice?
Either of those make sense - we just need to know which rules the devs are using.

Again... in DC comics magically summoned physical ice should not penetrate Superman's invulnerability, but conjured magical ice would penetrate Superman's invulnerability. Just as a magically summoned mundane dagger would not cut Superman, but a dagger that is magically sharp would cut Superman.

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