"No Bad Builds" a failure in practice? pt 2

[Danathion]

 

 

Admittedly, I don't know how difficult it would be but I made the suggestion in the thread:

 

'Might' and 'Constitution' govern 'Fortitude Defence' - combine and name the attribute: 'Fortitude'

'Dexterity' and 'Perception' govern 'Reflex Defence' - combine and name the attribute: 'Reflex'

'Intellect' and 'Resolve' govern 'Will Defence' - combine and name the attribute: 'Will'

 

That combines the 3 'dump' stats with the 'must have' ones - it's not changing anything in terms of the defence system, other than some balancing that I assume it already needs. If it is possible (and I accept it may not be), to divorce magic damage from 'Might' and move it to 'Will' that would solve a lot of problems (for the people who have problems). Though magic damage being effected by an attribute called 'Fortitude' should hardly be anymore vexing than it is, that it's being governed by one called 'Might' -  They're more or less the same thing.

 

 

 

 Hmm, yeah, that might be better with the current effective range of the attributes.

 

 I think the reason that Perception and Resolve seem under powered now is that the other stats all directly attack or defend against deflection.

 

 Resolve and Perception do too, but indirectly and not as much (or, at least, it is harder to quantify their effect w.r.t deflection).  Perception could be made OP - use a fast weapon and make the stat sufficiently powerful and an opponent will never get an attack off. If that were the case, Resolve would be necessary too. 

 

 

It's a compromise, rather than removing them altogether, with the benefit of taking a further step away from the IE games to make that comparison less likely (people see 6 attributes and expect them to work the way the 6 attributes in BG do - they're just not designed to though). It would still allow for tweaking of the effective ranges as you suggested, if that's decided to be neccessary. Personally, I'm far more interested in the skills and talents etc for class customisation - I think that's where the fun in designing your character will be.

 

According to the wiki, 'Deflection' is not influenced by the attributes - It seems that it's built into the class and adjusted by armour.

[Hamenaglar]

 

Big +1 on the ranged knockdown. Great idea.

 

For the gish weapon focus... not so sure. I think the fun from playing a gish is that you can buff yourself to ridiculous levels, but only for a short period of time. If you're as good with a sword as a fighter and additionally can cast spells, that's just kind of munchkiny. So I'd rather have talents/spells that let your wizard make mayhem in melee for great burst damage.

 

(Also I liked the paladin. Thought it struck a very nice balance between low-maintenance fighters and high-maintenance priests.)

 

Give the wizard are talent thats called something like "arcane focus" and reads: Every buff on you gives you +X accuracy. 

 

 

 

I would like to see a talent like "spell & sword". Basically you convert your spells into buffs (both offensive and defensive?). Lvl 1 spell provides a small buff, Lvl 2 provides a bigger. Perhaps you could combine multiple spells to get stacking bonuses? Initially the talent would require free hand to be activated (Magus/Bladesinger fluff) and the buffs would have a very short casting time. Improved version of the talent would not require a free hand. Duration of the buff/effect would depend on your resolve ofcourse. If the resolve is high effect might for a significant chunk of battle. If it is low, you it would only be a couple of attacks.

[Yonjuro]

 

 

 

Admittedly, I don't know how difficult it would be but I made the suggestion in the thread:

 

'Might' and 'Constitution' govern 'Fortitude Defence' - combine and name the attribute: 'Fortitude'

'Dexterity' and 'Perception' govern 'Reflex Defence' - combine and name the attribute: 'Reflex'

'Intellect' and 'Resolve' govern 'Will Defence' - combine and name the attribute: 'Will'

 

That combines the 3 'dump' stats with the 'must have' ones - it's not changing anything in terms of the defence system, other than some balancing that I assume it already needs. If it is possible (and I accept it may not be), to divorce magic damage from 'Might' and move it to 'Will' that would solve a lot of problems (for the people who have problems). Though magic damage being effected by an attribute called 'Fortitude' should hardly be anymore vexing than it is, that it's being governed by one called 'Might' -  They're more or less the same thing.

 

 

 

 Hmm, yeah, that might be better with the current effective range of the attributes.

 

 I think the reason that Perception and Resolve seem under powered now is that the other stats all directly attack or defend against deflection.

 

 Resolve and Perception do too, but indirectly and not as much (or, at least, it is harder to quantify their effect w.r.t deflection).  Perception could be made OP - use a fast weapon and make the stat sufficiently powerful and an opponent will never get an attack off. If that were the case, Resolve would be necessary too. 

 

 

It's a compromise, rather than removing them altogether, with the benefit of taking a further step away from the IE games to make that comparison less likely (people see 6 attributes and expect them to work the way the 6 attributes in BG do - they're just not designed to though). It would still allow for tweaking of the effective ranges as you suggested, if that's decided to be neccessary. Personally, I'm far more interested in the skills and talents etc for class customisation - I think that's where the fun in designing your character will be.

 

According to the wiki, 'Deflection' is not influenced by the attributes - It seems that it's built into the class and adjusted by armour.

 

 

 

 Yes, I didn't say that very well. What I mean is that weapons attack deflection and some of the stats make the weapon attacks more effective. Perception only does it indirectly by causing interrupts (and likewise resolve prevents interrupts).

[curryinahurry]

@ Danathion

 

Background profession will have an impact on dialog.  The backgrounds (and other aspects of this game) are likely influenced by Darklands at a guess, as Josh Sawyer has been heavily influenced by that game.  In Darklands (no sure if you've played it) character creation, on could take a series of professions over successive 4(?) year intervals.  Each career choice had an impact on skills.  While age isn't a factor in this game, thus the multiple career backgrounds are extraneous,  the idea of backgrounds and culture having an effect on both skills and attributes is logical.  

 

Considering that both attributes and skills are fairly fine grained in PoE, I think an additional point here or there shouldn't effect the game a great deal.

[Fiebras]

Im just throwing random ideas here but play ball with me for a bit.

 

Idea #1: What woud happen if they implemented "bonuses/negative bonuses at certain stat thresholds"?

This could be as simple as say you getting +2% Might per point (as you do now) but at 3 Might you have a negative modifier to auto/weaponattack which goes away at 5 Might while at 15 might you have a bonus to ability damage. Im just placing whatever bonuses here but you get the idea. These bonuses/maluses could be every 5 stat points or at certain specific thresholds.

 

The negatives of this would obviously be that now you not only have to balance the stats themselves but also the bonuses and how those affect everyposible ability and combination in the game (aka balance headache, but thats already happening anyway) and that you might have certain stat thresholds become the norm (aka the dreaded cookie cutter. But comunity-agreed on best stat thresholds were gonna happen no matter what already so why not give bonuses or negatives to certain ones).

On the positive this would help with the "feeling of nothing matering/intangibility" since you give the player a hard evidence of "raising this stat this much is OK" or "You can leave this stat unraised but you accept X is gonna happen".

I also feel it gives you a "tangible building block" with which to experient diferent builds ("I feel like playing my Ranger as a suport character that focuses on interrupting rather than dps! Thankfully raising my Perception to this threshold gives all my interrupts extended % duration so I can afford to not put points into Might since Im not going full dps" or something like that).

I know some games have done this but I dont have them in mind atm to use them as examples.

 

Idea#2: Another solution to this could be having certain abilities react tangibly to certain stat thresholds or scale with certain stats. For example, a Fighter´s Knock down could get an extra use per encounter if you have Perception OR Resolve at say 15. Abilities are gonna be balanced individually anyway so this might be less of a headache than having passive bonuses at certain stat thresholds.

Having two or more possible stats contribute to an ability would be important to allow for more build flexibility and mix-and-matching. The amount of stats that influence an ability would be a design choice. One could also have diferent stats have diferent influences to abilities. Using the Fighter´s Knock Down as an example: having 15 Perception can give you one extra use per encounter while having 15 Dexterity makes it faster. This does not have to apply to every ability of course but would help with the feeling of intangibility of the stats and would give more "building blocks" for the player to play around with.

And some of us enjoy having tangible building blocks so very much.