Stats are boring, let's do something about that.

deadman20

Going alongside my pile of crazy ideas, let's envision the 8 core stats in a different way. As things stand right now, this is what each stat does.

Strength: Melee Damage, Melee Knock Strength, Knock Resistance, Pick-up/Throw
Dexterity: Critical Chance, Aggression Stealth (Distance at which enemies aggro onto the character)
Constitution: Max Health
Intelligence: Power Cost, Power Cooldowns, Perception (Seeing through Stealth)
Ego: Ranged Damage, Ranged Knock Strength, Hold Resistance
Presence: Bonus Healing, Hold Strength, Crowd Control Resistance
Recovery: Energy Strength (Amount of energy gained from all sources), Equilibrium, Max Energy (Relatively small compared to Endurance)
Endurance: Max Energy

Of the 8 stats, only Constution and Endurance scale linearly. Recovery does as well, excluding its Energy Strength portion. Personally, I'm a fan o linear scaling. It allows for much simpler math calculations for how effective stats will scale in the long run. Diminishing returns are in place for balance purposes, but I do not think they would be necessary if the linear scaling is performed right. Things will be obviously weaker at lower numbers and significantly stronger at later one. The point of the linear scaling would be to balance out the power of each stat so the player can decide how they want to distribute their stats without worrying about a point where investment in a stat becomes less effective or "unnecessary".

My advice would be to select an average point to bend the power curve linearly. We could say that we want the point of 300 of a stat to be where the swap to linear scaling wouldn't see a change, above is stronger, below is weaker. In either case, the player would be guaranteed value from each point into a stat.

Got it? No? Too bad. ON TO THE NEXT STAGE!

Stats themselves are boring. The main reasons anyone takes any stat is for their specializations and form scaling (unless it's Constitution). Following up on my old idea of destroying forms and specs altogether, we go straight to the stats themselves. That's right, straight to the source! The benefits people would look forward to in the primary superstat's spec trees will now be reliant on what stats the player invests in and what their primary superstat is! WOO! CHAOS!

What do I mean? Well, let's do an example. Let's say that Constitution is my Primary. With that, investment into Strength will give me additional Knock Resist, Dexterity would grant additional Dodge Rating, or Endurance would provide Resistance. Now, let's say I went with Ego Primary instead! Strength would grant Breakfree Strength, Dexterity would provide Ranged Critical Severity, and Endurance would increase Ranged Resistance. There would probably be some overlap with what each stat gives between each primary, but the idea is that people would invest into the stats they want benefits from instead of looking at what forms scale with which stat. Like I said earlier, I want toggled forms (as they are now) to die in a fire.

Those benefits aren't 100% what I have in mind, just some examples on how to make the stats themselves more interesting instead of drawing focus away from them and toward systems like specializations and forms. Superstats took the backseat to prop other things up instead of being the big thing you want to invest in for what they had to offer... with the exception of Constitution, but that's beside the point. Superstats need to be the reason to invest in Superstats, not because Forms or Specializations demand them.

Anyway, there, all done. I'll go back to my padded room and think about what I've done. I'll come back to haunt the Suggestions forum again another day.​​

lezard21

Mmmm but this doesn't sound too far away from what we have in reality. Stats like Con already have a Knock resistance and a Hold resistance adv in their primary tree, and no one bothers taking those due to the fact that

a) in the case of knock resistance, even high knock resistance does not guarantee 100% resist, and even then some attacks like ape meteors are coded to ignore knock resistance altogether and the only way to avoid knock is by blocking, which is a skill everyone has access too
b) similar thing happens to hold resistance, but it's even worse, since you can easily cut the amount of time you are held by mashing F, which doesn't require investing specs or skill points, or by taking damage in 2 out of the 3 hold effects, and in the case of stuns, mob version generally lasts too short to be of any consequence and you still have access to your ADs.

So what I would do I would just rework all primary stats specs, for example

Str Primary:
Con advantage increases your damage resistance
Endurance advantage reduces damage taken by a flat amount
Dexterity advantage increases your offense
Recovery advantage gives you cooldown reduction (a noticeable bonus, not the DR crap we have nowadays)
Intelligence advantage gives you increased charge speed
Ego advantage gives bonus to melee damage equal to 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 (depending on rank) your bonus ranged damage

Ego Primary:
Con advantage increases your avoidance
Endurance advantage increases your equilibrium
Dexterity advantage increases your dodge chance
Recovery advantage gives you cost discount
Intelligence advantage gives you damage penetration
Str advantage gives bonus to ranged damage qual to 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 (depending on rank) your bonus melee damage

And then just give them 2 vanilla advantage that works off your gear to round the set up.??​​

bluhman

The way gear is set up in this game makes it really tough to implement something like this. Like, gear highlighting, superstat design, role benefits - those are all tailored in ways that make it so that you are going to get the absolute most out of your build if you're focusing entirely on just your superstats. This suggestion is radical in that it's basically inverting that model entirely, and now all stats are useful to your build based on what primary you picked.

Could it work? Absolutely! From what I've gleaned from player experience though people are already having enough difficulty discerning how to make powerful builds in this game. Having the priorities of the player tugged in 8 different directions for statting would probably make it a bit more complicated - when making a build now, does the player want versatility, or do they want to max out the damage/threat/etc. buffs they're getting from superstat focus? Should superstat benefits in roles even remain in a model like this?

Going down this route could possibly open up some very interesting doors. Things like, instead of from superstats, you gain class benefits or whatever from your three highest stats, and choices of superstat just determine which stats you're getting a big buff to, as well as the secondary effects of what other stats do to your build.

But really all that is is a bunch of conjecture. Making it so that primary class benefits aren't explicitly tied to your superstats, bottom line, would be the first step into making this suggestion a reality.

nbkxs

I think it's mostly fine the way that it is.

lezard21

It is, but suggestion box is the day dreaming box​​

aesica

nbkxs wrote: »

I think it's mostly fine the way that it is.

Only in a sense that "it somehow manages to work, although neither ideally nor efficiently."

The problem is that there's:

3 different stats for dealing damage: Str, Dex, Ego
3 different stats for energy: Int, Rec, End
1 for healing: Pre
1 for health: Con

Note: I'm only talking about raw stat bonuses, not PSS specializations. Aside from maybe Con, all stats have specializations for increasing damage in some capacity, and that only further muddies things up.

So anyway, while Pre and Con turned out great because they are the sole stat governing their respective effects, the other stats are redundant and really only end up turning the whole stat system into a guessing game for the uninitiated. If we were to mash Str/Dex/Ego together, and Int/Rec/End together, we'd have:

Power: Increases damage dealt, critical hit chance
Intelligence: Increases energy pool size, equilibrium, reduces energy costs and cooldowns.
Presence: Increases healing potency
Constitution: Increases health, damage resistance, knock resistance (sorry, but having it in strength is stupid)

Many of the effects (melee knock strength, ranged knock strength, stealth detection, stealth potency, etc) would make great specialization options. They'd also feel like more meaningful choices than just "increases muh derps by 3/6/9%."

So with that, building your character would become less a matter of "what does my form and energy unlock require me to take" and instead become "what do I want my character to be good at." The latter allows for more organic character creation because, if you make a damage dealer, you of course want to focus on Power because MUH DERPS, most likely intelligence for energy reasons even though you're not going to stack it, and then you'd be able to choose between "a little extra offhealing" or "a little extra health for survivability" but these would be small bonuses because your focus would be on Power. So after stat selection, you'd pick all your powers and your form (why do we have these again?) would just work because there would be no "framework-specific stat" nonsense.

In contrast, the former (what we have now) requires you to plan ahead (know what stats you should have based on the powers you want) which is a bit unfair to ask of a new player and can even turn existing players off to certain power sets.

As for specializations, I'd like to see them better flesh out what each stat does to emphasize specializing in it as they do now. While some overlap is fine, such as extra damage in Presence and Intelligence, a little extra HP from Power/Intelligence, a little extra defense in Power and Presence, etc, things as potent as Juggernaut really have no business being in an offensive stat.

deadman20

After some thought, here is a mockup of what I was thinking of. Doesn't have to be this way in particular, but something to give each Superstat a personality. Like I said, there's probably going to be overlap and it's all disregarding balance concerns.

Strength Primary
*Dexterity Secondary - Melee Critical Severity
*Constitution Secondary - Knock and Repel Resist
*Ego Secondary - Bonus Knock Strength
*Intelligence Secondary - Melee Penetration
*Presence Secondary - Melee CC Strength
*Recovery Secondary - Breakfree Strength
*Endurance Secondary - Max Health

Dexterity Primary
*Strength Secondary - Melee Charge Speed
*Constitution Secondary - Dodge Chance
*Ego Secondary - Ranged Charge Speed
*Intelligence Secondary - Bonus Cooldown Reduction on Active Offenses/Defenses
*Presence Secondary - Critical Healing Severity
*Recovery Secondary - Bonus Self-Healing
*Endurance Secondary - Avoidance

Constitution Primary
*Strength Secondary - Breakfree Strength
*Dexterity Secondary - Dodge Chance
*Ego Secondary - Knock and Hold Resist
*Intelligence Secondary - CC Strength
*Presence Secondary - Bonus Healing received from other sources
*Recovery Secondary - Bonus Self-Healing
*Endurance Secondary - Damage Resistance

Ego Primary
*Strength Secondary - Bonus Knock Strength
*Dexterity Secondary - Ranged Critical Severity
*Constitution Secondary - Hold Resist
*Intelligence Secondary - Ranged Penetration
*Presence Secondary - Critical Healing Chance
*Recovery Secondary - Breakfree Strength
*Endurance Secondary - Knock Resist

Intelligence Primary
*Strength Secondary - Melee Penetration
*Dexterity Secondary - Critical Severity
*Constitution Secondary - Damage Resistance
*Ego Secondary - Ranged Penetration
*Presence Secondary - CC Strength
*Recovery Secondary - Bonus Self-Healing
*Endurance Secondary - Knock and Hold Resist

Presence Primary
*Strength Secondary - Bonus Melee Damage after Healing
*Dexterity Secondary - Critical Healing Severity
*Constitution Secondary - Portion of Healing Done Returned
*Ego Secondary - Bonus Ranged Damage after Healing
*Intelligence Secondary - CC Strength
*Recovery Secondary - Bonus Self-Healing
*Endurance Secondary - Bonus Healing at High Energy

Recovery Primary
*Strength Secondary - Melee Critical Chance at High Energy
*Dexterity Secondary - Critical Severity at High Energy
*Constitution Secondary - Bonus Self-Healing
*Ego Secondary - Ranged Critical Chance at High Energy
*Intelligence Secondary - Breakfree Strength
*Presence Secondary - Critical Healing Chance at High Energy
*Endurance Secondary - Energy over Time in Combat

Endurance Primary
*Strength Secondary - Bonus Melee Damage at High Energy
*Dexterity Secondary - Penetration at High Energy
*Constitution Secondary - Damage Resistance
*Ego Secondary - Bonus Ranged Damage at High Energy
*Intelligence Secondary - Breakfree Strength
*Presence Secondary - Bonus Healing at High Energy
*Recovery Secondary - Energy over Time in Combat​​

spinnytop

Mm, looks complicated and difficult to balance. Think we have enough of that already.​​