I require input.

Spoiler:

These are the current (rough draft) statistics and their respective modifiers for my AoS, I'm considering rethinking Vitality, because adding resistances is questionable for balance reasons, also I've been having some trouble coming up with a way to make a Berserker class shy away from heavy armor, since I won't have any class requirements on equipment and they'll have a high strength value.

I will take any general input on these statistics and their modifiers before I start coming up with the formulas, I'd like special attention paid to Vitality and Luck, I may even add another stat if i can't solve the above problems. Feel free to suggest modifier swapping or new modifiers for the stats.

I will also take any suggestions on formulas for scaling, All damage will be tooltipped as minimum and maximum base values, separate multipliers can be applied to each. Thinking outside the box is perfectly fine, as well a using a different stat for minimum and a different stat for maximum. I look forward to your input.

I thought we were putting armor on CON, so that a zerker will have less CON and therefore have a tendency toward lighter armor.

I was considering that, I still may go with that option, but that would mean that any other class could spam VIT and be able to wear heavier armor and move faster with it and have more hp at the same time. This would unbalance things if I don't use very specific damage and healing curves for INT and SPI.

Basically if I put it all into con then it becomes the premiere defensive stat and if i allow them to spam it and still do enough damage to kill people with relative ease, it becomes heavily unbalanced.

I'm probably going to end up doing that, but it'll make finding formulas very challenging.

You could make a bit of armors give bonuses to stats normally assosiated with berzerkers, and be in the lighter armor group. This might encourage them to wear lighter armor.

Seems a bit too complicated to be able to suggest any balancing without actually seeing anything. It's not your basic Rock Paper Scissors balancing

What Jay said. I've been trying to figure out how to word it for a few hours now.

I'm with J Jay and Dragonheart91. I'm sure you could make this concept work, but there seems to be far too much information in your head, which leaves 2 issues.
1 - How can we answer your question? (is it a spell-based AoS [like MM&M], attack based [like DotA], something in between, or something bran new?)
2 - How are you going to display this information in a way that is easily accessible and understandable to a player?
The reason I tend to stick with my Stamina, Power, and Essence build (as I did with MM&M) is because of Warcraft's inability to display much of anything that is not already built in. I would love to separate out hit point maximum and hit point regeneration, do the same for mana, and even add a move speed stat. It would be cool to through in resistances to damage, etc. etc.

I did that once (I forget the map name) but no one (not even my normal testers) wanted to learn the system, much less look at a complicated multiboard or use an ability to view them. Be careful with the complexity I guess was the purpose of the rant.

Yeah, I've been leery ever since you said it was an AoS. In an AoS, people just want to fight and rape-face. They often have very little patience for learning new things. If your going to use this kind of system, I think it should be in a genre where people put in the time to learn complexities. (A save/load RPG.)

Its a brand new concept, all damage will be generated through abilities.

I didn't ask for balancing input, at least not in the way you mean when you say "balance". I want the stats to lean towards certain class types, and i was asking about that. I did say I would take additional input, however, mostly for additional values to modify with each statistic. With the numbers I can make the stats have wildly varying values as far as individual utility and thus balance can be achieved through tweaking the scalars involved.

Unit current statistics will be displayed in a list on the multiboard, stat selection will be on an invisible dummy hero icon as abilities. The players will be able to read the descriptions of the stats and what they do on those abilities. I also have other ideas to help new players distribute statistics that I will be testing for the future.

I am very aware of the issue of complexity when it comes to gathering new players. I think new players enjoy complexity if there seems to be a grand sense of order to it. For instance, a more dangerous complexity problem than my stat system would be if there are 6 different recipe shops that don't look different from regular shops and you have to find the items to make the recipe from the regular shops and other recipe shops. Hell, maybe the map maker even put a "secret shop" in the woods near one of the lanes for good measure.

From the tests that I've run so far, people pick up the resistance system extremely easily, and have a fairly good time killing each other with the demo units.

The problem I have with save/load games is that they are difficult to balance so that new players don't feel overwhelmed or put off by some guy loading his level 99 uberdude and running off and slaying things without even looking at them ever again. If i was going to make a save/load game I would make it single player, because that's basically what it ends up being.

Hopefully this clears up some questions, I also hope I didn't appear defensive, the voice of this post was meant to lean more towards explaining the reasoning behind my choice.

The resistance system is cool and not too over-complicated. The stat system takes a minimum of 10 minutes to begin to grasp it. Probably much longer to really figure out where you should be putting your stats.

So, the resistance in an AoS would be cool, but the stat system is still too complicated in my opinion for people to figure out in the time before the game starts. You need to either make it so that they don't NEED to understand it, find a way to teach them without boring people who already understand, or do a map that is so much slower paced that there is time for them to learn without falling much behind the experienced players.

Like I said, i have a few ideas to help people understand the stats. Besides the part where they're the stats that most RPGs stick to, or some variation of those. Starting stats for classes will be geared towards what stats the class will generally end up depending on. I have a few other experimental ideas that will be more overt clues for the players. I'll have to run tests for those though.

Edit: That's actually part of why I'm so concerned with what each stat will increase, because if people are able to picture a standard RPG class and these stat names and have a ratio of distribution come to mind, then it all falls into place.

If you have ever played TKoK rpg you could easly use that basis of adding stats. If not i could explain. I would rather not but if its neccasary I will.

i feel that the best way to deal with armor is that certain classes get certain bonuses.

e.g.

paladin would have "paladin armor," providing a bunch of armor and possible some stats, and some movespeed reduction (maybe.)

a berserker/blademaster (w/e) would have less armor, possibly cloth, but he would probably have some sort of berserking skill to compensate.

a mage would have cloth armor, providing mana regen and movement (cloth doesn't restrict movement, its very light)

an archer would have leather

a ninja would have cloth



so pretty much... the peoples who would have more armor have less speed and things... (movement speed). for the most part. this is a pretty balanced way to do things, imo. another good idea is that, for someone like a paladin, there could be 2 armor sets; one favoring armor and the other favoring some speed. but the general "heavier hero = heavier armor" thing stays constant.

look at the Orc Gladiators armour, pretty basic and good, also look at the weapon bonuses and stats, good idea if u like it

I think it is a bit too complicated.

like... if you're a ranger, you would have to get like 4 stats to be good.
(strength, dexterity, agility, luck)

I don't like how agility controls ranged attack speed, while strength and dexterity control some of ranged attack damage, and both dexterity and luck affect avoidance...

too complicated, imo.

kuro wrote:

I think it is a bit too complicated.

like... if you're a ranger, you would have to get like 4 stats to be good.
(strength, dexterity, agility, luck)

I don't like how agility controls ranged attack speed, while strength and dexterity control some of ranged attack damage, and both dexterity and luck affect avoidance...

too complicated, imo.

are you talking about TKoK, if so its not complicated at all, just upgraded from what wc3 hero abilitys give for meeles

TKoK doesn't requires you to get 2 stats to be good, (e.g. lich gets int and wisdom, right?) and maybe 3 (if you feel like getting vitality too).

this thing makes you get 4/7 to be good, and if you want more health/mana, 5/7 or 6/7.

that's not how it should be.

in addition to being too complicated, too many people will have 'the same stats.'

To be honest, if there are stats that characters can just ignore, why even have the stats? Might as well just have 2 variables that store "Primary" and "Secondary" stats and then just use if-thens on classes for different formulas

Personally I think having multiple stats that are all important is a good feature for customization. Someone might want to have more health, or cast faster, or hit harder, or move faster, etc etc etc and so on in endless combinations. In fact if you make all the stats useful in some way, there's less of a chance of a newbie screwing themselves with a crappy distribution on their first game.

I was also considering having some mild increasing returns on certain modifiers, so that people who focus on certain stats will get slightly more per point at higher stat values than someone who distributes more evenly and is more well-rounded.

well, thing is...

if you want it to be fun, you would need a load of distributable stat points.

I was thinking 5 per level. with the starting stats being around 30 each. But better numbers would probably fall out of testing.

With like 10 stats and all of them important, you need alot more per level. Maybe as much as 15.

of course with something like that, by level 10 some random person might make their mage 150 intellect for mass damage...

I'd say a "no more than xxx in each stat when you have less than yyy in zzz" limiter like in mm&m.

but kuro, if the do that much dmg, they have almost no regen, and almost no HP. they arent that hard to kill if you have any disables/movement spells.

well, okay then.

but i wouldn't enjoy putting bit by bit in 4 stats just to make my attacks decent...