Not sure how people feel about this. EQ is a game I will appeal to for the sake of this discussion. In EQ, you had stats like Str/Dex/Agi/Sta, etc. without any real explicit definition of what the stats did. Instead, you simply had to infer it. I don't really like this because it basically requires people to do tons of spreadsheets and third party math in order to come to a meaningful conclusion about the provided stats.
On the flip side, you can have very detailed tooltips when you mouseover a stat in your character window that tell you very explicitly what stacking it will do to modify your performance. For instance:
Agility
OR
Agility: Increases dodge, parry, and block chance.
OR
Agility: Increases dodge, parry, and block chance by X% per point. Your current Agility gives you X% additional dodge, parry, and block chance.
Opinions?
I am just glad that Pantheon isn't going the route of most modern MMORPGs and dumbing down the stats to things like attack power, spell power, etc and leaving all the other stats out. Having a tooltip that tells what they do isn’t a bad idea. I just hope that a single stat doesn’t "rule them all". Stats should allow for use by multiple roles and not just have things like Strength is best for melee DPS, agility is best for ranged bow DPS, etc.
I would like to see something like this:
Strength: Increases melee damage, block amount, carrying capacity.
Agility: Increases dodge, Parry chance, block change, and critical strike chance.
Stamina/Constitution: Increases Health pool, health regeneration
Intelligence: Increases mana pool, spell damage, skill training speed
Just an example but using this setup a tank would immediately throw away things with Agility or Intelligence because it could come in handy. Same with a mage type character may pick up a strength item and find it useful.
I prefer less clutter on a UI/Stat/Inventory screen, but I would not be aganist option #2 as a toggleable option. Another suggestion could be having the base stats shown on your stat screen, with your guildmaster stating how the stats affect your specific race/class. Perhaps agility effects a monk differently than a wizard for example.
I'd much rather they just say Strength, Stamina, etc. No values or numbers behind the scenes. Players should be given very little to no information about how the numbers and mechanics work behind the scene. Firstly, this leaves mystery to the heart of the game for players to figure out and speculate on their own. Secondly, the more you let players behind the curtain, the more they tend to break everything down to just a spreadsheet game.
Don't make this mistake.
Edit: Thirdly, it makes the most sense in game. Your character has no reasonable way to know having X amount of Strenght gives him exactly Y% of block or whatever. Early in EQ they had a good way of handling skill levels like parry or dodge. They had just a proficiency label next to each: Awful, Bad, Below Average, Average, Good, Excellent, etc.
It's reasonable for your character to feel healthier or stronger when they have increased STA or STR, but there's no reason they or you should know exactly down to the decimal / percent how each thing is affected. That's not an RPG.
Aggelos said:See here is the issue I see here. People will figure it out. If you hide the information, someone will just do the math and give you the values on some third party website.
They'll figure it out to an extent, but never know exact numbers or decimals or percents. If you look at something even like current Everquest stats on the progression servers or Project 1999, people generally know how stats affect different things such as 130-140 dex being a breakpoint for getting more procs, or roughly how much attack is gained per strength point depending on class. Yet still, there are no hard numbers like 1 str = 10 attack = 0.5% damage. We have no way to access or know those numbers, and it's been for the best.
There is zero benefit to giving out that information. There is no need for a player to have it, and it is in fact fundamentally detrimental to the game's longevity. Hide things as much as possible.
But in reality they still figured out what the breakpoint is for procs and people I assume aim for that. People will figure out to a pretty precise degree as I know many people (I included) that will sit and repeatedly smash into a dummy (or equivalent monster) to log hours and hours of data to come up with the averages needed to determine statistical stat weights. Every game with serious raiding has this and I fail to see how "hiding" the numbers will prevent people from figuring it out or effecting the games longevity. That is the point I do not see here.
Good game design, flow of content, and a healthy community determine a games longevity. Not if someone knows what 1 strength comes out to. At least that is what I have seen though I am curious to here why you feel this will affect the game negatively if we know stat weights.
Aggelos pretty much follows my argument. The margin of error people will arrive at doing external math will make it trivially easy to stack whatever stat you need. Supplying the data in-game just ensures that people who don't go dgging in third party sites aren't diadvantaged.
I just want the game to have the math somewhere. In-game, or on an official site, but preferrably in-game. Hiding math from the players will never work with all of the amazing tools we have available to us now, even if it means catching a ban on several accounts to use third party tools. I wouldn't personally do that, but I know people who would.
Agree to disagree I guess. I feel that providing all of the math upfront only damages the illusion of the game and turns it into a spreadsheet numbers game like WoW currently is. I personally loathe this style of gameplay, because every bit of info is broken down to the point of dullness.
There's no real reason for players to be able to access these numbers other than to meta game the mechanics to death, which we both agree players will try to do anyway but why dig the grave ahead of time?
Aggelos said:But in reality they still figured out what the breakpoint is for procs and people I assume aim for that. People will figure out to a pretty precise degree as I know many people (I included) that will sit and repeatedly smash into a dummy (or equivalent monster) to log hours and hours of data to come up with the averages needed to determine statistical stat weights. Every game with serious raiding has this and I fail to see how "hiding" the numbers will prevent people from figuring it out or effecting the games longevity. That is the point I do not see here.
Some people, like me, enjoy doing just what you describe so why take away our enjoyment? The search for knowledge like this is no different than trying to figure out a difficult quest. Do you want the entire quest just handed to you fully explained pinpointing exactly where to go, what to get and what to do with it?
Who here remembers all the times after patches that people would complain that the runspeed of Spirit of Wolf 'felt' nerfed? Or that the spawn cycle for the Cyclops in South Ro who dropped the Ancient Ring for the JBoots quest was nerfed? Or the long-lasting 'anti-camping code' people thought was the real reason named mobs rarely spawned?
Look at the game from the characters point of view, not yours.
Vandraad said:Aggelos said:But in reality they still figured out what the breakpoint is for procs and people I assume aim for that. People will figure out to a pretty precise degree as I know many people (I included) that will sit and repeatedly smash into a dummy (or equivalent monster) to log hours and hours of data to come up with the averages needed to determine statistical stat weights. Every game with serious raiding has this and I fail to see how "hiding" the numbers will prevent people from figuring it out or effecting the games longevity. That is the point I do not see here.
Some people, like me, enjoy doing just what you describe so why take away our enjoyment? The search for knowledge like this is no different than trying to figure out a difficult quest. Do you want the entire quest just handed to you fully explained pinpointing exactly where to go, what to get and what to do with it?
Who here remembers all the times after patches that people would complain that the runspeed of Spirit of Wolf 'felt' nerfed? Or that the spawn cycle for the Cyclops in South Ro who dropped the Ancient Ring for the JBoots quest was nerfed? Or the long-lasting 'anti-camping code' people thought was the real reason named mobs rarely spawned?
Look at the game from the characters point of view, not yours.
Agreed. If there is to be a challenge in the game, it should be in every aspect in the game. Any information given on a silver platter takes any challenge out. I think MOST information should be hidden to improve the challenge and immersion.
If some crazy min/maxer wants to spend 1000 hours furiously making spreadsheets to finally get 95% of the info like they did in EQ, always getting closer but never all of it, they should have to work balls hard for it. If you want the data, work it out for yourself or get friendly with someone who did.
I don't want this game to devolve into number crunching to find the Bis gear, then ignoring 90% of content and farming for each single bis item. This is avoided by having a variety of gear, a variety of stats, and lots of behind the scenes numbers that are either impossible or next to impossible to parse out. By the time someone finally has some numbers to work with, we're already onto the next expansion.
I loved running number parsers to figure out which sword combo was best, and which should be primary or offhand. If they gave us those numbers up front, a big part of what separates devoted/skilled players from the elites just went away and suddenly the only thing you need to be an elite is time.
I think we should know hp, mana, and the number for stats. That's its. No exp gauge, no explanation of stats, no dps meters. If people want to make 3rd party stuff, that should be hard to do, and provide it's own challenege. It should be something only the super elite even need to worry about so they can win the hardest raid mobs, not something everyone is staring at during a common group.
I would prefer option #3, and imo, at the very minimum we should get #2. Option #1 would leave me very disappointed. I don't think the challenge of the game should come from misinformation or lack of information to the players. I don't understand the feeling that having a clueless player base will be healthy for the game while the "most dedicated" (most likely all of us on these boards) will rise to the top. I want the challenge of the game to come from finding out if it would be easier to defeat this mob with more absorption or more avoidance or more hp. Not having to find out if 1 point of agility is equal or inferior to 1 point of armor. Or worst, guessing if STR, AGI, STA, END, etc will achieve what I think is the strategy should be. It is more fun to analyze options than gathering raw numbers.
But I will if I have to. And then, you will end up with a bigger divide in combat effectivness between players who use outside information and those who don't, like you did in Vanilla WoW for example.
And to address picks86, yes, I need to know. This is not something you can argue. Some players, like me, feel the urge to digest and understand game mechanics. You might not like it, but that is irrelevant. Also, please explain how this is "in fact fundamentally detrimental to the game's longevity". You claim it's a fact but I don't see the evidence of this anywhere.
I don't know which way to go on this one. On one hand, taking off the platinum fire opal wedding bands and runed lava pendant for the black pearl dex/agi jewelry showed you exactly what AC did(as a Monk). I could see and feel the relative difference. On the other hand, wth did agility do? Dex? How does STR modify ATK and what exactly is ATK? It was frustrating getting an item with 5 of x stat and not being able to quantify it in any meaningful way.
Basically, until primal weaps, the only things that mattered for me day to day were AC and HP. Stats were mostly irrelevant.
Krixus said:I don't know which way to go on this one. On one hand, taking off the platinum fire opal wedding bands and runed lava pendant for the black pearl dex/agi jewelry showed you exactly what AC did(as a Monk). I could see and feel the relative difference. On the other hand, wth did agility do? Dex? How does STR modify ATK and what exactly is ATK? It was frustrating getting an item with 5 of x stat and not being able to quantify it in any meaningful way.
Basically, until primal weaps, the only things that mattered for me day to day were AC and HP. Stats were mostly irrelevant.
Don't get me wrong, if agility increases your AC should should see that absolutely. What you should not see is what % reduction that AC gives you. You should know whether or not Agility affects dodging, but you should not know exactly what % your dodge is.
a) it dulls/simplifies the gameplay mechanics, and b) there's no logical reason for your character to know "I have exactly 34.849% chance of dodge."
Mekada said:And to address picks86, yes, I need to know. This is not something you can argue. Some players, like me, feel the urge to digest and understand game mechanics. You might not like it, but that is irrelevant. Also, please explain how this is "in fact fundamentally detrimental to the game's longevity". You claim it's a fact but I don't see the evidence of this anywhere.
I understand your concerns but I think you misunderstand. See my above reply to Krixus. Players should absolutely know relatively what stats do and how things interact. That's 100% reasonable and required. You (and your character) should know that agility affects dodging, or strength affects blocking, or AC affects damage reduction. You (and your character) do not need nor logically have a way of knowing that 1 agility gives exactly x.xxx% dodge, or 1 point of AC gives exactly y.yyy% reduction.
We can still understand and digest and learn all of the mechanics, in a meaningful way. Spoonfeeding this info so that it becomes "You need at least X% damage reduction to tank this, or at least Y% spell penetration to land this" is poor game design and has been fundamentally detrimental to games like World of Warcraft and others.
Yes players will analyze everything to death and streamline because that's in our nature, but I do not see that as something that should be catered to. There is no benefit to be had by spoonfeeding players such powerful information.
picks86 said:
a) it dulls/simplifies the gameplay mechanics, and b) there's no logical reason for your character to know "I have exactly 34.849% chance of dodge."
I agree with you to a certain extent but I still think people should know either by their own math that the extra point of agility actually effected their dodge or would it be more beneficial to pick up points in another state because due to diminishing returns, you have hit a point where it takes too much agility to gain an extra percent in dodge and it would be better server to pick up that gear with extra strength or constitution.
Aggelos said:I agree with you to a certain extent but I still think people should know either by their own math gameplay that the extra point of agility actually effected their dodge or would it be more beneficial to pick up points in another state because due to diminishing returns, you have hit a point where it takes too much agility to gain an extra percent in dodge and it would be better server to pick up that gear with extra strength or constitution.
I also want this exact style of gameplay! This is something players (and your character) should logically have to learn and study to figure out.
a) "It feels like my dodge isn't improving that much anymore from agility, let me try getting some more dexterity or AC and see if my survivability improves."
b)"This here character spreadsheet shows me to the thousandth decimal that more agility is worthless now, time to stack X instead."
One involves gameplay and would be in-line with what your character experiences, one does not and is straight up math. Math =! gameplay.
This is also the same line of reasoning as to why I'd prefer to have no in-game maps or radar, unless they are player crafted/etc. People have forgotten what RPG stands for in MMORPG!
My concern with everything being known is the impact it has on community. What I fear is having situations where the gear someone is wearing is more important than the person playing the avatar wearing the gear. You all know what I'm talking about:
"Hey Joe, you're nice and all, but you've only got 148 Block. You aren't uncrittable until 150. Work harder to get that last 2 points and we'll let you group."
I know folks want to number crunch - but I'd prefer some form of happy medium where players might "know" things - but not so well as to become a barrier between players.
Wandidar said:My concern with everything being known is the impact it has on community. What I fear is having situations where the gear someone is wearing is more important than the person playing the avatar wearing the gear. You all know what I'm talking about:
"Hey Joe, you're nice and all, but you've only got 148 Block. You aren't uncrittable until 150. Work harder to get that last 2 points and we'll let you group."
I know folks want to number crunch - but I'd prefer some form of happy medium where players might "know" things - but not so well as to become a barrier between players.
Numbers don't have to be viable to other players and honestly I do not think they should be but with the stance that this game has with gearing alone about people will know you by the gear you have on that type of behavior will happen anyway. If it isn’t a number it will be "I want to see you with a Raid 1 Sword before we let you into our group for Raid 2"
That type of behavior will exist with certain groups of people. There is no getting around it sadly.
Wandidar said:My concern with everything being known is the impact it has on community. What I fear is having situations where the gear someone is wearing is more important than the person playing the avatar wearing the gear. You all know what I'm talking about:
"Hey Joe, you're nice and all, but you've only got 148 Block. You aren't uncrittable until 150. Work harder to get that last 2 points and we'll let you group."
I know folks want to number crunch - but I'd prefer some form of happy medium where players might "know" things - but not so well as to become a barrier between players.
Exactly. I don't want to be staring at a list of numbers or needing add-ons to interpret a wall of far too precise math for an RPG game.
We should generally know how the world works, we shouldn't be able to see it through such a fine microscope that the big picture is lost entirely.
It's like going to see a famous magician in real life, and they tell you exactly how they do every trick before they even do the trick. It ruins the entire thing.
picks86 said:This is also the same line of reasoning as to why I'd prefer to have no in-game maps or radar, unless they are player crafted/etc. People have forgotten what RPG stands for in MMORPG!
Now I've never played much of pen and paper RPG, but didn't you know exactly what stats you had and what effects they had? You had to, so you could evaluate the dice rolls.
That said, much of this is done by the game, so there is no technical "need" to know the exact numbers and their workings. It's still nice to know, even if only to figure out why exactly you perform so much better with equipment A versus equipment B.
picks86 said:Aggelos said:I agree with you to a certain extent but I still think people should know either by their own math gameplay that the extra point of agility actually effected their dodge or would it be more beneficial to pick up points in another state because due to diminishing returns, you have hit a point where it takes too much agility to gain an extra percent in dodge and it would be better server to pick up that gear with extra strength or constitution.
I also want this exact style of gameplay! This is something players (and your character) should logically have to learn and study to figure out.
a) "It feels like my dodge isn't improving that much anymore from agility, let me try getting some more dexterity or AC and see if my survivability improves."
b)"This here character spreadsheet shows me to the thousandth decimal that more agility is worthless now, time to stack X instead."
One involves gameplay and would be in-line with what your character experiences, one does not and is straight up math. Math =! gameplay.
This is also the same line of reasoning as to why I'd prefer to have no in-game maps or radar, unless they are player crafted/etc. People have forgotten what RPG stands for in MMORPG!
