I think Vanguard went too far and I think EQ didn't go far enough. Find a good middle ground. I don't need the exact specifics as if they were copied from code and pasted in the UI for us to see. However, some stats in EQ I wish I knew more about because it seemed like they didn't do what they said they would do.
I want to be able to see my stats! I think it helps you progress as a player and seeing the numbers gives you something you can work towards. If I know that wisdom increases heal power for healers and crit for spell casters who deal damage then that can only help the game in my opinion. We don't need to know the equations and the math behind the numbers, but if I get a new piece of gear with more wisdom and I'm a healer I should see my healing power go up in my character sheet and it should be represented on my tool tips when I hover over my spells and abilites in my codex and on my action bars.
The immersion arguments are kind of silly. For example, if I am a boxer in real life I don't know exactly how many punches I can take before I get knocked out but I have a pretty good idea when I'm getting the snot beat out of me without the need for an HP bar. But do I lose "immersion" for having an HP bar in Pantheon? We should all know when our characters are getting beat up in the game right? Thefore we would be losing immersion to see just how close to death we are.
At some point we have to consider the fact that this is a game and treat it as such. Knowing how your stats effect you seems pretty darn important and if you choose to play the game without taking such things seriously then more power to you. The game needs its Hafling Warriors! But allowing others to see their stats should have negatively affect your enjoyment of the game.
Sweety said:Will we be given EXACTLY what each stat does? Not just, “Strength allows you to carry more and adds to your overall melee damage” That’s not enough detail. I want the math and details.
I too expect that, if an item had stats, I see those stats.
If a spell or ability is affected by a stat (or stats) that I see that in the spell scroll.
If anything about my character is affected by a stat I should be told that up front as it will affect how I allocate any points and would very well effect what stats on gear/items I deem are most important to me. Like, if as a Shaman a point of Wisdom gives me some amount of Mana, I should know that ahead of time. If a point in Constitution has some effect on my class, I should know that up front too.
If that effect changes as I level, I should be able to glean that as it happens.
Now I don't need to know the exact equations that govern how everything works in the game, but they should not be so esoteric, vague and of such unnecessary complexity such that mindful players cannot ensure that what VR is telling us about such stats are actually doing what they are supposed to. There's nothing like the hardcore player to keep developers honest when it comes to how their game actually works vs what the developers say how it works. I'll be interested to see what route VR takes.
Immersion is part of the game for me. Without that, I might as well be playing a spreadsheet, however much fun that would be (it isn't).
But numbers in the game provide a structure. Like in D&D, you know your abilities because you have to, it's a representation. You have to know what to do, how to plan, what your character might learn. But you don't know everything. The DM is behind a screen rolling dice you can't see, making decisions bsaed on information that you have no access to.
I need to know the numbers that allow me to make reasonable decisions about training and gear. Will this improve my fighting/healing style or not? I need stat information on items and spells to make informed decision, and I feel like those numbers represent things this person would know in the world.
But I don't need to know a lot of the math going on behind the scenes. I like that the DM has secrets.
Obviously stats should be visible on gear so players can easily and intuitively know which pieces to keep or not.
I for one enjoy trying to figure out underlying systems. So, for me figuring out all those soft caps and hard caps are like a game within the game, and I don't want all of them to be readily apparent the same way weapon and item stats ought to be.
randomrob82 said:The immersion arguments are kind of silly. For example, if I am a boxer in real life I don't know exactly how many punches I can take before I get knocked out but I have a pretty good idea when I'm getting the snot beat out of me without the need for an HP bar. But do I lose "immersion" for having an HP bar in Pantheon? We should all know when our characters are getting beat up in the game right? Thefore we would be losing immersion to see just how close to death we are.
At some point we have to consider the fact that this is a game and treat it as such. Knowing how your stats effect you seems pretty darn important and if you choose to play the game without taking such things seriously then more power to you. The game needs its Hafling Warriors! But allowing others to see their stats should have negatively affect your enjoyment of the game.
I dont think anyone is arguing that there not be a HP bar. They are simply suggesting that you might not need to know that the character has excatly 1003.3 HPs. And that with the exactly 305AC and 92Dex that the character has, along with their 33% avoidance skill, that Mob.001 with 97Str weilding a 20dmg/50delay weapon with +2 fire damage will always hit that character for between 197-240 damage (non-crit). So it can be determined that he can take a maximum of 4 hits from Mob.001 before a heal must land doing at least blahblahblah heal, and that heal rate must be maintained at a X/second cast rate.
Vandraad said:...
Now I don't need to know the exact equations that govern how everything works in the game, but they should not be so esoteric, vague and of such unnecessary complexity such that mindful players cannot ensure that what VR is telling us about such stats are actually doing what they are supposed to. There's nothing like the hardcore player to keep developers honest when it comes to how their game actually works vs what the developers say how it works. I'll be interested to see what route VR takes.
Do you actually feel that it's important that the game works how the developers designed it? Doesn't it just come down to balance at the end of the day? If a bug exists, but nobody can hear it buzzing, does it matter? If the devs track player performance and behavior, couldn't they sniff out the bugs that make a real impact on the game (or even items that were designed too strong/weak) and make adjustments behind the digital curtain? Maybe I'm putting too much faith in the devs for your tastes.
Ainadak said:Vandraad said:...
Now I don't need to know the exact equations that govern how everything works in the game, but they should not be so esoteric, vague and of such unnecessary complexity such that mindful players cannot ensure that what VR is telling us about such stats are actually doing what they are supposed to. There's nothing like the hardcore player to keep developers honest when it comes to how their game actually works vs what the developers say how it works. I'll be interested to see what route VR takes.
Do you actually feel that it's important that the game works how the developers designed it? Doesn't it just come down to balance at the end of the day? If a bug exists, but nobody can hear it buzzing, does it matter? If the devs track player performance and behavior, couldn't they sniff out the bugs that make a real impact on the game (or even items that were designed too strong/weak) and make adjustments behind the digital curtain? Maybe I'm putting too much faith in the devs for your tastes.
A small handful of devs looking through the combat logs of tens of thousands of players will not catch everything, not even close. But thousands upon thousands of player who are analzying combat logs (and there will be a LOT of them that will do that) can catch these things. Just because a bug exists but nobody notices doesn't mean that bug isn't harmful. If something is supposed to function a particular way, it should actually function that way. There might not be an issue now with that, but later on it could manifest itself in ways not yet imagined.
This got me thinking about the article that has been bandied about by Raidan and others regarding "exponential MoB growth" relative to player level being a good thing in MMO games.
And looking at that from the MoB's perspective, I thought of the following: (please note, I do not know of what I speak)
What if there were no Caps on stats, but there was a de-exponential growth- Logarithmic growth?- to stats with a twist.
That is, you could keep on stacking up STR maybe get as high as 15 and then squeeze out another 5 to get to 20 with some gear shifts. But you dont really notice the difference in performance to your play that depends on STR per the manual after say, 12. BUT, the twist is for every increment over a certain level there is an RNG chance to manifest the full impact of that stat like a crit or perhaps better to describe what I mean as overclocked. Your bad-ass weapon suddenly is overclocked because of the RNG on your stacked stats. Or is that already done, I'm thinking like the rangers headshot but for everyone and unpredictable. Sure, its mathematically predictable to a point, say the given max of 12, but becomes less predictable and noticible after that level except for the few instances where it suprises even you.
could a sliding scale be applied per level? If stat max average from level 1-10 is 3 and one gets 4, then a 40 percentage chance to - not crit- but do as much damage that the stat can do and the weapon will withstand- like thrusting the sword through the belly of your enemy... up to your elbow. Cutting off the head with an axe and ...the feet from being spun around by the centripidal force from the swing- overclocked. I say 40 at that level because it may be a cool thing to have without twinking and sought after at higher levels wher the percentage will increase to say 90 at top level. or all this could be hidden by the devs to be discovered by players
and maybe not based on one stat but combinations of stats. The thinking is: chasing the off-chance to overclock will not be as effective as pursuing balance in other areas to a "normal" level.
Ideally, the situation is: one happens to have a 14 stat in something by accident and at some point something amazing happens.
I fully expect that there will be exact stats before too long for every stat, whether it is in game or not. Soft/hard caps will be up in the air for a little, but that will come down to long term gear. The fact we are getting only like 2 stat points to fill in the character start I assume will let gear do virtually everything for stats so it would be impossible to make a dumb move short of making a melee wizard. (There were posts from people about how often you should get stat points but I never saw VR say you get stat points every x levels or anything along those lines.)
I don't expect VR to have anything but the basics. It is fun figuring the stuff out eventually.
I'm really in two minds about this one.
On the one hand, I want Pantheon to unfold and be mysterious. I don't want the usual obsession some have over stats and metas to take over like it can and gamify the world.
On the other hand, there's little worse than getting to high level and finding the choices you've been making with gear and progression were awful because there were unknown calculations you didn't know about.
I guess I'd like VR to hit the ideal compromise of telling you *just enough* to know what you're doing but not enough to allow minmaxing to take over.
Good luck VR!