How do you like your stats? Lots of stats that change lots of variables or just a small amount of stats that you have to keep up with it?
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How do you like your stats?
depends
i prefer either hundreds of stats with obscure and mysterious functions, or no stats at all
>i prefer either hundreds of stats with obscure and mysterious functions, or no stats at all
Could I interest you in six stats, three physical and three mental?
How about 9 stats
3 Physical, 3 Mental, 3 Social
Strength - melee damage, maximum equip burden, carry weight
Dexterity - hit chance, crit rate, attack speed
Vitality - HP, physical defense, resistance to poison/disease, HP recovery rate while resting
Intelligence - spell power, maximum spell level
Adaptability - magical accuracy, magical crit chance, casting speed, MP efficiency, magic evasion
Mind - MP, magical defense, resistance to spells, spell memory, MP recovery rate while resting
Charisma - diplomatic power, maximum party size, charm chance
Empathy - reveals opponents current SP, emotional state, disposition, mood, personality type, personality traits
Presence - SP, impacts initial disposition, diplomatic defense, resistance to charm
>not gaining hp when improving strenght
Ngmi
Can do something like STR increases HP at like 1/3rd the rate VIT does.
That's much better.
Ah, a VTM connoisseur
which games have the former?
if i don't have any control over what stats increase on leveling up, i don't even look at them. only thing i look at is whether a new piece of gear makes number go up or down.
Exactly. I never look at stats in Final Fantasy. If my dudes aren't performing, I just go level up. If I have the build the character stats and pick things on level up, I read enough in-game or on a wiki to know what I need. For action games or braindead shit like FF or DQ, few stats is fine. For games with real role playing, I like more stats and skill numbers.
For tactics games like Fire Emblem, I need to know exactly what every stat does and how every single derived stat and effect works. Those games benefit from there being fewer stats and less bloat.
It's funny thinking of some dev sitting there at night pouring over a screen plugging in math equations and trying to balance numbers over dozens of levels against the stats of hundreds of enemies trying to guesstimate where the player will be at level wise and how many numbers they should be giving the player at this point or that point without realizing that 99% of people who play the game will never ever bother to pay attention to any number.
It's kinda nuts how even today most RPG devs haven't figured out smaller numbers aren't just easier to balance but actually would encourage people to do more than just look to see if weapon #353 is green or red when you replace weapon #352 with it.
>smaller numbers aren't just easier to balance
On the contrary, big numbers are easy, because our brain isn't made to see difference between 25.000 and 250.000 so it defaults to "big number good" and we feel excitement from having numbers go up. On the other side of the coin if we don't know what the frick number mean then it can mean nothing at all and nothing have to be balanced because, you can give player +9000 sword as upgrade from +1 sword and still mob will die in 3 hits no matter what.
>just use Taylor series and partial differential equations bro
Less stats I guess. I like the old SPECIAL system best.
I've always had beef with magic types being unable to be athletic/strong. Going to the gym isn't mutually exclusive to magic ability.
Fewer, but more meaningful stats.
>Strength
>Intelligence
>Vitality
>Speed
>Luck
Combine them if you need to for different classes like Warrior/Tank need Str and Vit, Archer/Ranger Str and Spd, Alchemist Lck and Vit. I also don't need absurdly high numbers. If a 10 in str is max, then that's fine with me.
>If a 10 in str is max, then that's fine with me.
Stats should be on a scale from 1-10, or 1-100, or 1-255, but when they bloat into the thousands is just grotesque.
>Luck
Why do you need this superfluous non-stat?
I like goofy, fun, random stats that are there for mostly roleplay.
But maybe a game could have an accessory that swaps luck with the enemy, so you could build an unlucky jinx character.
Stats that govern infliction rate / ailment defence are useful
Luck can be interesting when it influences everything in often subtle and hidden ways. A high luck character might have the game secretly rolling all his checks at advantage or adding a percentage to their success rates, crit chance, and drop rate, where as a low-luck character might experience the opposite. It allows for a plucky adventurer who despite having low-stats on paper always manages to get the upper hand in the end because the goddess of victory let him play with loaded dice.
>Luck can be interesting when it influences everything in often subtle and hidden ways. A high luck character might have the game secretly rolling all his checks at advantage or adding a percentage to their success rates, crit chance, and drop rate, where as a low-luck character might experience the opposite. It allows for a plucky adventurer who despite having low-stats on paper always manages to get the upper hand in the end because the goddess of victory let him play with loaded dice
I remember a very old run of Oblivion where I did just that, custom class, very luck based. Luck in that game quietly boosts every skill, so high luck eventually became extremely busted and he could blunder his way past everything on sheer luck. Fun times
>goddess of victory
o fortuna
>Strength - Increases physical damage
>Dexterity - Increases accuracy
>Intelligence/Magic/Spirit/Whatever you wanna use to increase magic modifiers - Increases magic
>Stamina/Endurance - Increases energy/mana/whatever you wanna call it
>Consititution/Vitality - Increases defense
>Agility - Increases evasion
Small number of core stats that influence a wider array of attributes that influence an even wider array of skills.
Ones which help simulate interesting combat, so not your pic
I like stats with many secondary effects and derived stats. Like strength doesn't just increase attack power, but also how much armor you can equip without being weighed down, if you can wield 2-hand weapons with 1-hand effectively, the weight limits of creatures you can pick up/throw/shove/ect.
I also like when multiple stats synergize in unexpected ways. Like if Intelligence+Dexterity are responsible for your follow-up attack rate (occasionally allows a second follow-up attack after you attack, or follows-up a blocked/evaded/missed enemy attack with your own), if you have high scores in one or the other the rate is much lower than if you have both because if you have high INT you can identify the opening but lack the finesse to capitalize on it, or you have the finesse but lack the adroitness of mind to identify it as an opening in time.
For me it's less about the number of stats and more about their purpose. The ideal RPG is where there are no dump stats(like Luck in many games) nor an overpowered one that gimps everyone who doesn't have enough of it(happens very often with agility/speed stats).
How you design your stats is more important than how many stats you have.
That said, avoiding bloat is always fine by me, if your game has more than 6-8 core stats it's very probably awful.
>Stat that increases physical damage
>Stat that increases magical damage
>Stat that increases physical defense
>Stat that increases magical defense
>Stat that increases accuracy
>Stat that increases evasion
>Stat that increases HP
>Stat that increases MP
>Stat that increases charm success (if you have dialogue options)
Thats it really, any sort of minor stats that affect stuff like specific resistances and poison resistances is fiddly, gear can just be stuff like "Helm of poison resistance" and is a better way of doing that IMO.
What about initiative/turn order
Agility/Speed
>Helm of poison resistance
you need a stat to track that, if you dont show it you are just hidding game values
>HP
>MP
>Phy. Atk
>Phy. Def
>Mag. Atk
>Mag. Def
>Spd
>Luck
What is Luck for?
>narrative or campaign focused game where you're always playing the same character(s) and there is no permadeath
Give me as many varied stats and skills as possible, make them obscure as frick and interact in weird ways.
>party based game where characters are replaced frequently over the course of the game, either due to permadeath or being able to hire/fire party members
Don't give me a lot of stats, or just make them all go up randomly by themselves on level up and use.
I like some sort of middle ground but for all stats to be used in some way.
For example if you’re going to add a defensive stat like vit then make sure that damage redirection to a tank character is extremely useful or near required, or make some attacks in certain classes scale of vit.
Same goes for stats like dex and agility.
Frick stats, do traits and skills. At the start, you get to pick 1 to 3 traits - each gives bonus and some penalty, i.e. "Deal more meleee damage, but gets too involved, so lower chance to dodge AOE attacks". Then whatever you do, just grows in power, ala SaGa. Maybe stats for equipment, tho. Stuff like specific armor values, penetration, all of that.
medium amount of base stats
a few visible variables to the player
lots of hidden variables (that treasures/dialogue/choices affect)
something happens when you max a stat or raise to a certain number.
If we're going for realism they should be something like this
Physical
Musculature (how much muscle mass you have, raw strength, meat you've packed on your bones)
Flexibility (range of movement of joints, length of muscles)
Durability (strength of bones, resistance to damage/injury)
Coordination (how much control your brain has over your body)
Stamina (how much strain you can put on your body before you get exhausted)
Recuperation (how quickly your body recovers after exhaustion/injury)
Mental
Memory (how much and how easily you retain information and recall it later)
Comprehension (how easily you come to understand new information, model it mentally, understand its relationships)
Plasticity (how easily you can reorganize your established mental models to account for new information)
Reasoning (how easily you can draw logical conclusions from existing knowledge, form realistic actionable plans to problems)
Perception (how well you can gather information from your various sensory systems)
Communication (how effectively you can relay your information/mental models to others)
the more the better, i like when they have lots of secondary and tertiary effects. a good example is when two primary stats increase the same derived stat but at different rates
I am of the opinion that the stats should be easy to manage for the players but the effect of them should be dynamic
It's the developers responsibility to make it dynamic, not mine
I like smaller numbers
Sorry I thought OP was asking if bigger numbers are better or not
I don't like giving the player numbers at all, I like using words that obfuscate the underlying numbers IE, Instead of 45 STR you tell the player Strength: Ordinary.
Abysmal (0~15), Meager (16~30), Modest (31-45), Ordinary (46~60) , Superior (61~75), Overwhelming (76~90) Peerless (91+)
>45 STR you tell the player Strength: Ordinary.
> Ordinary (46~60)
????
Physique Intellect Psyche Motorics
I feel like even just adding a 3rd category for attack/defense beside the basic physical/magic split opens up a lot of avenues for builds.
Keep it simple stupid
Shin Megami Tensei does it best:
>you choose to allocate 1-3 points (depending on game) each level up
>each stat is simplistic and tells you what it affects while you're in the menu
>low stat curves make reaching the stat cap feel attainable and satisfying
>stat boosters are static and always worthwhile, they don't feel OP earlygame and useless lategame like other rpgs
loads of stats
I want stats are sometimes redundant and do the same thing, and stats that kinda give an idea of what the character would be like ouside of the game.
So Strength, meaning actual physical strength, that does affect maybe how it attacks with some weapons sure.
So I can be immersed in that character would have a lot of strength outside this game's constraints as well.
Not just "Attack, Power, or Valor" to determine how much damage it deals.
I like my RPGs to be as much of a simulation as possible rather than an abstraction. So the more/fewer isn't as important than how accurate, complex, and layered the underlying simulation is. I hate all the abstractions and gamified compromises you get with typical RPGs if you can minimize them and replace them with like scientific material simulations that's better. Obviously you can't model scientifically something that doesn't exist in our world like magic, but you can come up with a ruleset for magic and model that.
If its a game that uses low stats 10 99 or 100 are the only ones I find acceptable.
If its a game with large stats I like seeing weird numbers like 9999 or 1,000,000
What if the game actually uses 0~9999 but it only displays to you 1~10 by hiding the last 3 digit.
Sounds like you’d be effectively using an order of magnitude of 10^3 and the last 3 digits would be insignificant (like doing 9998 damage instead of 9999).
I also dislike the idea of hiding stats from players. I want the mechanic to be as transparent as possible.
>I want the mechanic to be as transparent as possible.
Anything gameplay related.
Else one might feel cheated.
I'd like to see stats related on multiple levels
> Balance - fall down if goes to zero
> Agility - rate that lost balance recovers
> Fitness - rate that lost agility (and other athletic stats) recovers.
pic not related
Q: why are paladins always falling?
A: because they dumped DEX
A moderate amount of stats that stay low so small changes make big differences.
I’d like to see mental attributes factor in combat (not just for mages). Fight IQ is a thing in martial arts.
*Pillars of eternity barbarian has entered the chat*
SaGa Scarlet Grace has an interesting implementation of that.
INT for instance is a global multiplier for all sorts of elemental damage, not just spells, weapon users tend to learn skills that have elemental attributes on top of physical ones and certain weapons in particular have a lot of those, maces or rapiers benefit a lot from good INT and a character with balanced physical and mental stats ends up being more versatile than one focused on just STR/DEX or INT.
It also helps reducing elemental damage so a weapon user with high INT can also be a good anti-mage tank.
ACU (Acuity) is a mental stat that helps weapon users more than casters, it is a general multiplier for a lot of weapon skills focused on piercing damage, it helps resist mind affecting status ailments such as confusion or sleep and reduce their duration in case you fail the save, it makes your weapon users more accurate and less prone to missing their attacks, and it also gives them better chances to guard against physical attacks with either weapon guards or shields.
Overall it was a really interesting way to make martial characters benefit from mental stats, whereas in most systems they would end up dumping them.
I remember back when Demon's Souls came out people were saying dexterity increased attack speed. It was a lie, but I always kinda thought it should have.
HP: How much damage you can take
MP: How many skills you can use
Accuracy: How accurate you are with weapons
Parry: How well you can negate weapon damage
Evasion: How well you can avoid damage
Magic: Controls failure rate of spell casting
Warding: How well you can negate spell damage
Skills(including spells) and weapons are what determine damage, armor reduces damage in general, and class determines what you can equip or learn. Some skills let you use one stat in place of another. You have limited skill slots, also based on class, but can swap them out at a base, camp or town area.
I don't care, as long as the stats are actually relevant. If I can ignore them without it noticably affecting my gameplay then they're a fricking cop out. Ideally the stats will have solid non-combat applications too.