Stat hard caps are where you cannot exceed certain amounts of strength/dexterity etc. It can be applied to things like haste% too. So you might cap at 50% haste, and 255 strength, unable to go above no matter what potions you drink, what buffs you get, or what you wear.
Soft caps are when, after a point, a stat becomes less effective (diminishing returns). So say each point of strength gives you 2 extra damage. But after you reach 40 strength, each point of strength only gives you 1 extra damage. 40 strength is a soft cap.
Soft caps can also be when certain sources stop giving benefits to a stat. So if you have 255 strength, and you can only raise it higher then 255 with potions and buffs (but gear no longer works), that is a soft cap.
I'd guess no caps.
This is completely a guess I am led to by recent tradeskill announcements. You will be able to make potions and whatnot that increase your stats, you will be able to buff your stats, and to some unknown extent you will be able to gear up your stats. VR wants all of these to feel like they are meaningful, to the point that at the very least tradeskill supplies and buffs will stack with one another.
Putting in caps for stats like haste% or strength does not make sense imo for this sort of philosophy.
in that case stat caps sound like fun hating practices :(
Edit: also thanks for the explanation
Hard Caps and soft caps are mechanics that are helpful in balancing character power across the level curve. In a game where nearly every item is supposed to be tradeable and characters can buff each other the difference in power between a character fed with lvl 50 gear from level one with a pocket lvl 50 buffer is usually more than an order of magnitude more than a fresh player collecting gear on their own and with only the buffs available from similar level players.
Caps will allow characters to twink with no real effect on game balance and the same goes with the high end buffer. This will also allow low resource characters to still be able to play in the same level range without being excluded from groups due to at level gear. Caps should be 15-30% more than the combined total of a full set of good at level gear + all the buffs available from similar level casters + consumable buffs using ingredients from the similar zones the character is leveling in. An obscenely twinked character will be able to sit at cap most of their adventuring levels with gear alone. A high level buff bot will be able to cap the stats that they buff even on moderately well at level geared players.
All these numbers and assumptions go out the window though if stats really do not have a huge effect on characters but if that is the case then neither do buffs or gear.
Oh god no please no capping of stats. Thats just killing the fun of allways trying to improve youre character and achieve greater power. You would just think "oh this new item is soooo sweet, but oh yeah its not good because my str is capped anyways." If youre looking for balance with this way, just balance the items/buffs so the numbers wont go ridiculous?
To me - and I may be using the terms wrongly - caps on stats are something generally applied at maximum level to prevent a player from trivializing content by getting *too much* super powered gear.
To phrase it very differently - they are there to make it more of a challenge and take longer to get the "best" gear since in getting gear you need to balance strength, intelligence, defense, mitigation and the like not simply max out your offensive statistic and kill mobs before they can hurt you much.
I think of limitations on the impact of gear and buffs on lower levels getting them as twinks very differently. If a level 10 can only get 10% of the benefit from a high level buff or piece of gear I don't view that the same as a hard or soft cap.
I'd be fine with whatever really.
Soft/Hard caps are helpful in a sense that (depending on stat importance) they tend to prevent or otherwise greatly tone down complete domination of particular races for different classes. For example in EQ if Ogre/Troll could just keep stacking more STR/STA then they would have dominated everything (ogre kind of still did but that was from frontal stun immunity), no other tanks would have been able to come close to them.
HEVIS said:Oh god no please no capping of stats. Thats just killing the fun of allways trying to improve youre character and achieve greater power. You would just think "oh this new item is soooo sweet, but oh yeah its not good because my str is capped anyways." If youre looking for balance with this way, just balance the items/buffs so the numbers wont go ridiculous?
You are looking at it in the wrong perspective , this forces you to learn itemization and make selective choices.
This also makes you look at different items for progression besides looking up a "BIS" list.
Hard caps , once aquired makes a player look at other stats in general if viewing items inside the same "tier" of progression.
This also starts to trickle down to the raid enviroment in terms of buffs and there realistic value in comparison to min/max and where you want to be in the soft cap curve.
A total lack of caps can be very hard to code for. Consider a damage calculation that takes strength into account and scales damage with strength. Without a cap a min-maxer will find ways to increase their strength well beyond the "norm". That renders that player overpowered against the environment and other players. It gets even worse if there is a cap and there are buffs or consumables that can raise your strength beyond that cap. I've seen games where going even a few points beyond the "cap" by way of buffs could triple a player's damage output.
Unless VR can come up with the perfect formulae for stat-based calculations there almost has to be a non-exceedable hard cap on stats, at least initially. They have enough to worry about without the added complexity of a cap-less system.
EQ had both hard and soft caps. Vanguard I didn't play much but I'd be willing to guess they had them too.
In a game where gear is tradable almost completely, you kind of have to have some type of caps. You also need a hard cap at end game to stop people min maxxing 1-2 stats otherwise you end up with some people being able to do massive amounts of dmg that the average player would probably never get to.
So should there be caps? Yes. Will there be? I'd say very likely.
Let's bring this the other way and let me ask a question of all those that have been doing MMO's for a decade or two. How many mmo's out there do NOT have caps of some sort? I may be forgetful of things but I am pretty sure I haven't played in a single one w/o some form of caps. Alternate point; name one MMO that had no min/maxxing done by the community as that would be the game with no caps if there was any.
Dashed said:Let's bring this the other way and let me ask a question of all those that have been doing MMO's for a decade or two. How many mmo's out there do NOT have caps of some sort? I may be forgetful of things but I am pretty sure I haven't played in a single one w/o some form of caps. Alternate point; name one MMO that had no min/maxxing done by the community as that would be the game with no caps if there was any.
There are certainly other ways of preventing min/maxing. Im more concerned with the ability for customization given that the class system is pretty rigid.
Capping stats would further reinforce the phenomenon of, for example, every lvl 50 Rogue being an exact copy of every other lvl 50 Rogue save for the gear they can get their hands on.
I suppose a robust AA system would address this also, but that does not seem likely.
By this time, this design decision should have been made, given they're implementing and testing gear and abilities, as demonstrated in the videos thus far.
With appropriate caps in place, you can allow players greater latitude in the creation of and modification/enchanting of spells, skills, gear, stats, all of that. Without them, you run the risk of players vastly exceeding them with horrible results.
I would be extremely surprised if Joppa didn't already have soft caps and hard caps in place. Surprised, and very concerned. :) Many modern games allow gear mods that directly affect spells and skills. It would be surprising if Pantheon didn't have this, but with such flexibility comes the requirement of caps.
Design-wise, without caps, minmax players will eventually learn how to trivialise certain content. There's always a balancing act between allowing sandbox freedom and having well designed content that is challenging.
If caps are needed to protect the integrity of the world, then they should exist.
It makes sense, too. At a certain level of strength you simply can't use it anymore. You might be 'strong enough' to lift a house, but you'd sink into the ground and suffocate. Once you're strong enough to behead a dragon in one hit, you can't do *more* damage by getting stronger and beheading it easier.
I think there should be soft caps for every level and hard caps toward max. I'd give up a lot of supposed 'freedom' in order to support well designed and challenging content.
Akilae said:A total lack of caps can be very hard to code for. Consider a damage calculation that takes strength into account and scales damage with strength. Without a cap a min-maxer will find ways to increase their strength well beyond the "norm". That renders that player overpowered against the environment and other players. It gets even worse if there is a cap and there are buffs or consumables that can raise your strength beyond that cap. I've seen games where going even a few points beyond the "cap" by way of buffs could triple a player's damage output.
Unless VR can come up with the perfect formulae for stat-based calculations there almost has to be a non-exceedable hard cap on stats, at least initially. They have enough to worry about without the added complexity of a cap-less system.
This.
No caps means people will find the most relevant attribute and build for it, to the exclusion of everything else. It typically results in glass cannon DPS stacking as much of whatever gives them highest damage and barely enough HP/AC to survive without the tanks and healers carrying their ass. Also, if stacking inordinate amounts of a given attribute becomes standard, later content will have to be designed for that meta game, which can crystallize an already bad situation.
While it can be fun trying to see just how far you can take a no-cap build, overall I believe it can hurt the game greatly. Yes to caps, soft caps, or a combination of the two.
Agreed with caps.. but buffs which allow you to go above the cap, or buffs which raise the cap, or ledgendary item stats shouldn't be out of the question
I think a better question is how do caps change from expansion to expansion? How do we prevent stat inflation? And how to we keep the game accessible to new players, even after several years of expansion?
Another mitigating factor for stat creep is the diversity of stats that affect at character in Pantheon. Paladins have abilities that scale off Strength, Wisdom, and Charisma but as a tank will also want to stack Constitution. Warriors have abilities that scale on Strength, Charisma, Dexterity, and Constitution. Druids on Wisdom, Intelligence, and Constitution, and so on.
In general I'd rather see soft caps, and a sensible scaling function for everything (without magic numbers) that includes an inflection point that limits the benefits of additional focus on that stat.
daemonios said:This.
No caps means people will find the most relevant attribute and build for it, to the exclusion of everything else. It typically results in glass cannon DPS stacking as much of whatever gives them highest damage and barely enough HP/AC to survive without the tanks and healers carrying their ass. Also, if stacking inordinate amounts of a given attribute becomes standard, later content will have to be designed for that meta game, which can crystallize an already bad situation.
This is entirely untrue.
Whether there's a cap or not people are going to focus on their primary stat. It was not possible to cap in classic eq. And very difficult to cap in kunark.
If you create a glass cannon build, but manage your aggro you are only ever getting hit by aoes. Unless your raiding, I don't really see this becoming an issue. If you are raiding and your constantly sucking mana from healers or dying, you'll just be asked to change your stat allocation or not be invited.
The only time the game gets designed around things like this is with bad developers, or the ENTIRE community is doing the same thing.
Given the type of game that is being designed, I don'tsee this happening.