Suggestion: Stat role tweaking

[RaustBlackDragon]

Hey guys, me again, and I wanted to post my two cents about the one real issue I have with these games. I posted about this before, but I thought I'd take another stab at it, because the issue is honestly rather depressing in my opinion.

 

It seems to be a common trend in Spiderweb Software games that putting all of your points into a single stat, which usually has serious consequences, is instead not only viable, but the most, or even ONLY viable build strategy. I've wondered why that is, and it finally hit me: It's because of the way the stats are generally set up.

 

Let's look at the stats and what they traditionally do in Spiderweb Software games:

 

STR: Improves melee damage and melee accuracy, lets you wear more heavy armor.

 

DEX: Improves ranged damage and ranged accuracy, helps you dodge attacks more.

 

INT: Improves magic damage and magic accuracy, helps you to resist magical and mental attacks and improves MP.

 

END: Improves max HP and resistances.

 

It recently occurred to me that the reason why the prevailing wisdom is to go all-out on a single stat is because the first three stats each provide an offensive bonus that is mutually exclusive and will never take any of the others into account, AND a defensive bonus which can often serve to keep you safe on its own, without any help from the other ones.

 

In short, each stat, except Endurance (poor baby), essentially does the same thing in mildly different ways. Thus, whichever does this same thing best will come out on top, and putting any points into anything else is generally a waste.

 

That's the core of the problem: That you can put all of your points into a single stat without any negative consequences. Such builds in RPGs are supposed to have awesome advantages at some rather unfortunate prices, where in this game every stat can essentially play the role of multiple traditional stats at once, and versatility is utterly useless.

 

So my proposal is that this should change. Builds that can be effective without any investment into one or more stats should be the exception, not the rule, meaning that each stat should offer something different that every build/class could take advantage of. I have an example, one which adds on two new stats. There are arguments against adding in new stats after all this time, but that's not what I'm defending, this is just an example:

 

STR: Improves attack damage for both melee and missile, allows for higher equipment capacity

 

DEX: Improves chance to hit, improves critical hit rate.

 

AGI: Improves chance to evade attacks and reduces cooldown times for abilities.

 

INT: Improves effectiveness of abilities and improves maximum MP

 

END: Increases resistances to damage across the board and makes you harder to knock back.

 

LUK: Reduces chance of getting struck with a critical hit and increases resistance to status ailments.

 

 

 

This is just an example, but as you can see, there would be significant disadvantages to neglecting one or more of these stats entirely. That's not to say it forces you to spread your stats evenly. It does mean, however, that every class has a good reason not to ignore a stat completely. Warriors who go all strength wouldn't be able to hit anything but the most sluggish of opponents, archers who go all dexterity would be extremely useful for taking down those fragile artful dodgers but not much else, and you can no longer be an offensive powerhouse AND capable of dodging everything via the same stat.

 

Again though, this is just an example of a stat system I'd recommend. It's the general principle that I'm advocating here.

[Death Knight]

Im not sure I understand which system is being analyzed. Are you analyzing the old system of spiderweb where you get 5 skill points or x skill points per level and they go up per 2 levels. Or are you referring to the new system in avernum escape from the pit and avadon?

 

This is the article where jeff discusses the system- Jeff Vogel http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2011/08/dont-ask-questions-until-player-can.html

 

I personally think the new system is better in almost every way. You can much more easily spread your stats out and skills as well. If you say want to make an offensive melee fighter, you can put points into strength every level except 5th where you would allocate a point into endurance for defense. Or every 3rd level you would allocate into endurance for a more defensive melee fighter. Traits and skills help make this more simple as well as they work more in unison.

 

The old system was more freedom but the problem was if your like me, and mess up with placing points, you can make the game almost unplayable.

 

Your ideas for agility and luck are great and would be really cool, however I dont think jeff will make a major change.

 

 

[RaustBlackDragon]

This was largely motivated by my discovery that the prevailing strategy for fighters in avadon is to put absolutely everything into dexterity, even for the blademaster, which honestly struck me as an exploit rather than a strategy.

 

It does indeed sound like Jeff cares about avoiding screwing the player over, which is awesome. The stats themselves just feel like they're highly prone to the "one stat to rule them all" phenomenon, and I thought something like this would likely change that.

 

I think I'll avoid discussing the balance issue further until I've beaten both Avadon AND Avernum EftP as well as one of the older games. Can anybody recommend a game that uses the old system which still would run on a modern mac?

[Death Knight]

Avernum 5 and 6 and i think even 4 run on my mac which is brand new. So does Geneforge 3, 4, and 5. On a side note, geneforge 1 and 2 run as well on my mac.

 

By the way, Avernum 4-6 almost forces the fighters to put points into dex, strength, and endurance, and even intelligence if you want to use anatomy.

[Jerakeen]

Avernum 5 or 6 would be a good place to start, if you don't mind playing the series out of order. Or for something completely different, try one of the later Geneforge games.

[Alorael at Large]

Balancing stats is very hard, and Jeff does his best. It's almost never terrible to put points in a few reasonable stats in some reasonable allocation. But damage is, and reliably has been, king. Even in your allocation, I suspect that everyone would dump everything into Strength and still be killing machines.

 

Ultimately, it's not ideal, but it doesn't ruin the games. Fixing the problems is harder than Jeff is willing to tackle, I'd guess.

 

—Alorael, who will point out that Endurance is often necessary as well. And given the rather limited role the attributes take, he's okay with the choice being a no-brainer. Character skills are more interesting choices.