With a minimum game lifespan of 20 10 (! for sake of pushing the constructive discussion along) years in mind.
How many additional stat points would you see yourself spending on a frequent bases. Considering that you want to prevent statblotation (yes I can invent words when I feel like it) or at least restrain it as much as possible.
Would you be ok to receive 1 spendable stat point per level?
Or would you prefer to gain 1 stat point every 10-25% of a level?
Perhaps you like to spend at least 5 or 10 points each level, to "really feel" the difference and your characters' growth?
Can you imagine experiencing 1 additional statpoint being spent. Or would that only work if everything else grows at the same pace? Wouldn't that feel more like a drag through the mud marathon, instead of a healthy progression of your character?
Or would you rather have no increase in stat points at all and work just with skill increases. And every expansion new stats become available? That could really be it's own seperate pace (and much more manageable?).
Barin999 said:With a minimum game lifespan of 20 years in mind.
How many additional stat points would you see yourself spending on a frequent bases. Considering that you want to prevent statblotation (yes I can invent words when I feel like it) or at least restrain it as much as possible.
Would you be ok to receive 1 spendable stat point per level?
Or would you prefer to gain 1 stat point every 10-25% of a level?
Perhaps you like to spend at least 5 or 10 points each level, to "really feel" the difference and your characters' growth?
Can you imagine experiencing 1 additional statpoint being spent. Or would that only work if everything else grows at the same pace? Wouldn't that feel more like a drag through the mud marathon, instead of a healthy progression of your character?
Or would you rather have no increase in stat points at all and work just with skill increases. And every expansion new stats become available? That could really be it's own seperate pace (and much more manageable?).
You talk about a 'minimal 20 year' lifespan of the game then immediately start throwing in additional stats. You do realize that statflation, like we've seen in EQ1, ends up ruining the game. While 1 point per level doesn't sound like much, after 50 levels you're talking 50 points. When we're starting out with just single digits in stats, the ability to add 50 more even after 50 levels is just hugely overpowering and highly unbalanced.
I see myself hoping VR goes with a horizontal progression model, rather than a vertical progression model. Because, as Vandraad correctly pointed out, vertical progression leads to inflation that creates other balance problems within the game that aren't easily solved the longer the game goes on. Look at WoW and what they're having to do with the upcoming Shadowlands expansion- stat crunches to rebalance the player power, abrogating entire expansions to balance the leveling experience. I would much rather see a model like ESO's, where expansions open up other parts of the world that offer gear relative to the content in that part of the world, and player progression comes in the form of new armor sets, not statistical increases in power.
But let's get to release first before we start worrying about how the world is going to be expanded.
Waking from my slumber, I suddenly felt stronger than I ever had before! Tossing the covers aside, I leapt from my bed, bounding down the stairs in a manner my feet had never seen before.
What is this sense of vigor I had not a night before?
A quick gaze into the mirror. Those muscles, where could they have come from?
A moment of reflection before the phone in my pocket begins to buzz, "Happy Birthday!"
Of course! Another year older, another level stronger!
***
In all seriousness, I understand that this is a game with game mechanics, but I do find it odd how quickly characters grow in statistical power in some games. I think I would be much more invested in the system if stats only came from items/buffs and not from extra points every level or so.
I'm not starting out as a child who is rapidly growing through puberty, I'm an adult whose strengths and weaknesses have pretty much already been set in stone. Only long and arduous work could change those things. At least that's normally how I view my characters. The only way to gain those additional stats would be from a magical item.
(Does anyone happen to have some gauntlets of strength lying around? My back's starting to ache.)
There are two types of stat; player based and armour based (obviously) and personally I would like to see the player based be capped depending on race/class.
For instance, if I were a sprinter that trained, then I would gain in strength and speed above that of the average person, but I would max out. No matter how much better training I get, there will be a point where I cannot beat my personal best. So if I want to travel faster, I would get on a bike.
This is exactly how I see the stats in game. Your physical/mental conditioning should have a max value and from there only improved by external factors. Ogres could gain strength to a higher level than half elves. Elves gain dexterity to a higher level than Dwarves, etc. But all of their physical stats should be maxed. Then from that point the equipment and supplies are the driving force for improving the character. So I think that points should be given to spend on each character stop at say 20 or something, from there all gains should be through equipment, spells and nutrition. Especially (as has been pointed out) each point is going to be massive and you will notice the difference as you progress.
Vandraad said:...When we're starting out with just single digits in stats, the ability to add 50 more even after 50 levels is just hugely overpowering and highly unbalanced.
I'm aware of the issue.
This thread was primarily my way to get the topic discussed. And to clarify or distinguish information or suggestions and their consequences and where Pantheon is taking this topic. This is community forum, with continously new pledgers, you want to try and keep them informed as best as possible. To hear how others within the current Pantheon community think about it and hopefully nourish a communal view and expectation when it comes to this aspect stats in an mmo.
From your reply @vandraad I assume you favour the idea of no extra character stats after character creation. And that's fine. Perhaps you can elaborate how you envision how growth and challenge will expand as the game evolves?
To have no extra stats as you level up, is very much acceptable for me. It's just not that common practice in the majority of games. So at the very least it's good to understand if it could/would be applicable to Pantheon or if it's even carried by the community that plans to play it. I'm just not sure how I would feel if I strip my level 50 char from gear and buffs and compare him with a level 1 char and just see no difference. My skills would have increased, but seeing my 50 paladin with 1 stat point..might appear equally unbalanced. Evenmore so if my skills go up to 50 but none of my character stats follow to some equation.
Barin999 said:I'm just not sure how I would feel if I strip my level 50 char from gear and buffs and compare him with a level 1 char and just see no difference.
You don't need to increase stats for the char. It should be gear based. But as you level the calculation that happens on total stats to product you HP/Mana increases.
So a level 1 wiz with 1 INT might have 5 Mana (Stat * level * 5 = Mana). a Level 50 Wiz with 1 stat might have 250 Mana.
You stat of 1 at level 1 is not the same as you stat of 1 at level 50.
Like maybe a boxer. For a featherweight you might have a power score of 80%. That is 80% in the featherwight class. a Heavy weight might also have a 80%, that is across his class. It doesn't mean they are the same when you take the differen weight classes into account, so the same with level. You 1 stat at 50 is 1 in the level 50 class, not the same as a stat of 1 in the level 1 class.
And all of our general concesus on this thread ties in nicely and basically ensures the need for scaling stats for twinking.
Barin999 said:From your reply @vandraad I assume you favour the idea of no extra character stats after character creation. And that's fine. Perhaps you can elaborate how you envision how growth and challenge will expand as the game evolves?
To keep player growth to a highly predictable curve, that growth really has to come mostly from armor, weapons, spells, abilities with skill increases creating the fine tuning nuances. These are things the developers can directly control. They can easily determine the maximum power any player of any class could have by equiping them with the best of everything available. That sets the high end. But if you allow players to freely input some number of points, as you suggested, the ability to accurately determine player power becomes increasingly difficult. While the devs might assume a tank would put all those points into STA, and try to balance content against someone with the best of everything plus 50 STA, what happens when a tank who put 50 points into STR shows up? Or 50 DEX? or AGI? Now extrapole this across 11 other classes and 9 races with all those potential permutations and you can see just how difficult, if not nigh impossible, it would be to accurately predict player growth.
Skills, gear and spell stats are more manageable. They still allow for a variety of outcomes depending on the player's choice.
So the designchoice there seems solid enough. From a theoretical standpoint.
I'll put this one out: Do we expect that players will be excited/thrilled when they get a +1 upgrade at level 50? The steady pace is there for sure, but what about getting the players excited about upgrades and 'growth' of their character? "As in: Oooh I got a +3 chestplate the other day. or Wow that has a +2 int on it! Amazing."
I'm not in disagreement here. I'm wondering how many players will enjoy the game for a long time if you get a +1 at level 1 and at level 50 you also get a +1. In a way you're actually creating a degree of predictability. A character could only stretch so far with their gained stats. And max out is taken quite literally, as it's the game itself that provides the cap at 20 (or at each other level). So when things get predictable, are choices really going to matter?
"well you can get a total of +10 if you match your spells/skills/race/abilities/gear. " That's fine indeed. I would still assume that there is some growth to be expected by the players, when it comes to how stats on gear/skills/etc. will increase over time. Or would that assumption be not plausible?
Or are we expecting that in fact a level 1 chestplate will have +1 and a level 50 would have +50 (where each level of chestplate would have increased by 1).
Also, would that design be perceived as 'restrictive'? Being able to choose where you invest character's growth into, is a good portion of the experience of playerliberty. It should be clear for the player/community of Pantheon that, this form of liberty will be differently oriented.
These remarks may not fall under the strict definition of spending stat points, but based on the favourable design suggested in the replies here, that's really where this game might work with. So it's their flavour of spending stat points or spreading stat points, rather.
philo said: While I agree with most others about stats after creation coming from gear, there is a major disconnect and a huge flaw in this premise. "With a minimum game lifespan of 20 years in mind. " Lol ...i get being optimistic and planning for the future but...you are puting the cart way before the horse. Anyone who has been following closely from the beginning should understand that there is no guarantee we make it to release. To think otherwise is naive or uneducated. To plan for 20 years is plainy foolish. Even the most optimistic cant plan that far out. I guarantee VR can't. We all need to temper our expectations. If we make it to release it will be a success. Don't expect to much.
Quite insulting to VR and to Barin?
"Anyone who has been following closely from the beginning should understand that there is no guarantee we make it to release. To think otherwise is naive or uneducated".
To assume Pantheon won't make it to release, given all the positive indicators and progress, is willfully ignorant. Of course there are no *guarantees*, but to discuss the potential of the game based on the assumption it could fail is a hugely flawed premise, not the other way.
"To plan for 20 years is plainy foolish. Even the most optimistic cant plan that far out"
It's not optimism to think Pantheon could do as well as Everquest has, in terms of longevity, and for it to have a better plan for growth regarding things like statflation. If Everquest can do it, Pantheon can do it better. To not plan that far out when there is a solid example of another game getting that far out would be foolish. To want something to succeed, but plan to fail is plainly foolish. To want something to have longevity, but plan for the short-term is foolish.
"If we make it to release it will be a success"
Not if we only planned for the short-term because we thought it would fail. It will be a mess.
"Don't expect to[o] much"
Did the failure of some other game cause the destruction of your life and family, or something? Do we need to worry about you? You know this negativity serves no purpose whatsoever apart from maybe damaging the thing you are supposedly a backer of? This kind of self-destructive behaviour is concerning.
To get back to the OP: I think stat growth with levels is something *some* games have done and I really have no idea if it was a good thing for the longevity of the game or not. I do like the idea of character self-improvement, and that's not a crazy concept at all, but I think we'd need to know much more about the maths of the contribution stats make to skills and abilities to know how much we could allocate ourselves without causing imbalance.
In some ways it is weird for our base attributes to be decimated if we simply take off our gear, but *shrug* that's part of the reason that we don't leave gear on our corpses in Pantheon, but did in Everquest. In EQ, the gear might take us from 120 to 250, but in Pantheon it might take us from 1 to 100. Again, not knowing the maths makes it difficult to tell, but it *seems* like a much greater boost.
In concept, I would like to see us having some control and defining our core attributes somewhat. For our characteristics to improve as we gain experience and training would make sense and to choose how we are shaped by our experiences/training would feel good. I'm sure VR could design around that concept, but perhaps they want to make it all about the gear and not enable characters to progress their stats just by grinding trash monsters and leveling up.
That must have hit close to home dispo. You have made it very clear through these forums that you are someone who has unrealistic expectations so it's not surprising.
To think that Pantheon could last as long as the longest running mmorpg in the history of gaming is optimistic to say the least...
Especially considering all the discussion recently of needing an outside publisher to launch.
Its not bad to temper our expectations when we are talking about comparing Pantheons longevity to that of EQ. That is extreme. It will be successful with much less,
philo said:That must have hit close to home dispo. You have made it very clear through these forums that you are someone who has unrealistic expectations so it's not surprising.
To think that Pantheon could last as long as the longest running mmorpg in the history of gaming is optimistic to say the least...
Especially considering all the discussion recently of needing an outside publisher to launch.
Its not bad to temper our expectations when we are talking about comparing Pantheons longevity to that of EQ. That is extreme. It will be successful with much less,
Lol. "hit close to home"? You suggest I'm subconsciously worried and your comments somehow trigger a concern and my optimism is misplaced? It's just not true.
That I choose not to self-sabotage in a forum for fans and developers is far from having "unrealistic expectations", it's just choosing to engage in a worthwhile way.
There is little in what VR have shown us that might indicate it being 'worse' than Everquest or other contempories, much less be a 'failure' and there's much evidence and progress to think it might well be better, but some people continually choose to talk about the game with failure in their minds and negativity on display and that is not only denying all reasonable indications so far, it serves no useful point or purpose.
I continue to be optimistic because being pessimistic has no factual basis and can only make things worse. To call my feelings optimism isn't really correct anyway, since that tends to imply basing an opinion solely in emotion and, actually it is based in reasonable evidence. Where does you pessimism come from? Which is more reasonable and useful?
*shrug* There's no point arguing about this. It's further destructiveness, I suppose. Also off-topic. Some will be optimistic given all we have seen from the devs and some will be pessimistic *shrug*. People are simply wanting to discuss the potential and possibilities of Pantheon. It's pointless and destructive (and rude) to call them "naive or uneducated" just because you aren't as optimistic as them.
Gloria Steinem: “Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.”
Abraham Lincoln: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
philo: Anyone who has been following closely from the beginning should understand that there is no guarantee we make it to release. To think otherwise is naive or uneducated. To plan for 20 years is plainy foolish. Even the most optimistic cant plan that far out. I guarantee VR can't.
Mankind has always planned for the long term fruition of plans; 20 years is nothing compared to some undertakings that have been successfully achieved. To have long term plans is prudent not foolish. To have multiple goals to the ultimate product is not foolish. To have an over-riding concept is not foolish. Not to plan long term is foolish.
Tempering expectations ensures you will not be disappointed; but if you shoot for the moon, you might just get there... oh wait we did already.
It is important to note that the actual effect of an stat gain is relative to the starting value, the maximum value, and the target required value.
If you start with a value of 1000 in each stat and gain 5-10 to distribute each level then even 10 point will seem insignificant level by level. Conversely with a starting value of 10 or less even one point per level over 50 levels would be a huge increase relative to the starting stat.
All of this ties heavily into the character and monster growth by level and the relative effect of stats on actions. In d20 terms a single +1 increases your average outcome by 10%, on a d100 +1 is only a 2% increase, and on a d1024 (d2^10) +1 is ~0.2%. I personally am a fan of d1024 as the base as it gives us interesting options on increasing predictability by changing 1d1024 to 2d512 and so on without increasing the maximum possible result.
Back to Barin’s question I think the game should have either effects that scale by level or effects that scale on stats but character level does not actually enter into any equation. If everything scales purely on stats then I could see each level a character gains a set of stats in a fixed manor and a few floating points to be used as desired. Gear will then be added on to further enhance specific stats or round out lower stats if a balanced build is desired.
Combining both level scaling and adding raw stats tends to lead to major mudflation which is already a major problem with almost all games after their second expansion.
To me anyway it would be much more interesting to see every stat factor into one or all of the following game functions regardless of caster or melee, chance to hit, average damage (crit and non crit), physical avoidance, magical avoidance, physical mitigation and magical mitigation. In this way one could build a melee fighter that uses charisma if you wanted to enhance the effects of the formulas influenced by charisma, what ever that might be (maybe chance to intimidate).
Also keep in mind that your starting stat vs target maximum stat will only have a definite number of integer incremental increases. In a system where nearly all items are tradeable there will likely not be too many upgrades possible after you have gained your first good piece of gear in each slot. This in turn with either drive expansions to keep pushing up the cap to keep you interested or you will quickly burn through the content. This constant increasing of the cap will in turn drive mudflation.
I favor a base die value of 1d1024 and a base stat value of 100 with a cap of 1000 but with stat modifiers equal to (stat-100)/10 rounded down to the nearest whole number. Each player level would equate to roughly +10 in a stat between gear and naked stat increases. Each monster level would gain between 12-20 stat per level. This allows for a high level of control, future proofing and flexibility both in content consumption and challenge design.
I'd honsetly prefer something similar to 5th Ed D&D where you get the choice of a "feat" or a stat 5 times (on average) throughout the 20 levels or the game. If feats were similar to points used to level skills, so you would have to decide in increasing your attrbitue or spendig a skill point to improve a skill with the point being a balance in gameplay while allowing the player to make the choice of having a +1 to an attribute or increasing a particular skill by X%.
It will be impossible to avoid stat bloat "totally" without removing stats entirely from gear and buffs. I would be ok with gear having skill enhancements and clikcy effects instead of attributes (i.e. +5% healing, +2% crit, +10 resistance, etc). If they have attributes on gear or numeric (not percentile) buffs, stat bloat will "eventually" be inevitable.
I agree that slow stat generation is better, but I think it's first important to ask - WHY do games experience mudflation? I don't think it's because game devs are idiots or they sat around at a table and said "by the third expansion I would like players to do 3 gajillion damage please". There are three concepts that are inherently tied together:
1) Stat growth: The expansion of numbers (stats, damage, etc).
2) Generations of relative difficulty: How quickly enemies go from unassailable to reasonable. If at level 1 you can't really hurt a level 10 enemy, then each 10 levels is a approximately a "generation".
3) Combat formulas: This is the bones of combat that take in stats and output damage.
If you want stat growth to be small, then you either need to accept that you will have fewer generations of difficulty or you need to change your combat formulas. So, if your stats from 1-50 grow by 2x, but you keep your standard MMO combat formulas, then level 1 characters will be able to take part in level 50 raid content. Stat growth changes are not made in a vacuum.
Damage is often calculated with variants on the following equation:
Raw Damage = (Base + Coefficient * Stat)
Taken Damage = Raw Damage * Armor Reduction
To-Hit = (Attack Skill - Defense Skill) * Coefficient
Average Damage = Taken Damage * To-Hit
That's all linear stuff, which is approachable and you can just look at it and get a feel for what happens. If you combine to-hit with damage, then two linears makes a quadratic. Quadratic sounds like really fast scaling, but you need higher level enemies to really not be something you can kill. Let's say you do 25% (1/4th) damage to enemies 10 levels higher than you, then with quadratic scaling you need to approximately double your stats every 10 levels. So if you start at level 1 with 10 in a stat, by level 50 you need 300 in that stat. You want close to the same thing to happen each expansion too. So on your fourth expansion you might have 5000 in that stat now.
The problem is how do you get enemies above your strength to be formidable, but keep your own stat growth and damage dealt in check? One approach is to include more multiplicative checks like the following.
Severity = (Attack Precision - Defense Finesse) * Coefficient
Average Damage = Taken Damage * To-Hit * Severity
Now you've got cubic scaling, so your level 50 stats would be 100 instead of 300. An improvement, but your damage calculation is that much more complicated.
The real point I'm trying to make is that this isn't child's play. To formulate equations that are simple, intuitive, and give you the scaling you want isn't easy. The good thing is that the simple linear equations used in most MMO's are not masterful works to begin with. There is absolutely room for improvement with non-linear equations, conditional statements, just straight power laws, etc. I really hope VR is going to put in the time and effort to advance this front of MMO design. I get the feeling that Joppa's and his big brain could spend a few afternoons with excel over the course of a few months and come up with something.
Just for clarity, brad and chris have both talked about having a ten year plan. To try to double that is aggressive. If we make it that far much will change.
Some people must not be aware that a ten year plan has been mentioned?
VR is planning ahead...just not to the extreme 20 years that is mentioned here. Its a bit ridiculous when the mmorpg genre itself is that old. We have jumped the shark lol.