Time to talk about the Stats System, and yes some of it is pretty much Ideas from Elder Scrolls or D&D
Stats
Before I go for Stats, I should mention that there is ofcourse going ot be a Setting that makes everyone have the same unified Stats, just like how all Steves are the same in Minecraft. That Rule can be finetuned too.
That said, I plan on RPG alike Stats being available, the List of which is gonna be in the Table below. The Stats will have 3 Bases, the Physical Base, the Mental Base and the Racial Base.
The Physical Base is how well the Body itself functions. This is typically increased by Training or doing something often enough.
The Mental Base is essentially the things you know and your personal skill. Typically increased by learning about new Stuff.
The Racial Base is essentially all the Stat Boosts that come from being whatever the heck you edited your Body to be. This can pretty much only be increased by Stuff like implants (which technically result in you becoming a different Race).
In the end all 3 Stat Types and the Modifiers to them are calculated together for determining your overall Abilities. They are always freshly calculated and you cant just glitch them out when hitting zero or something.
Stats can be leveled up indefinitely, but the higher your level the lower the increase in actually useful Abilities. You can be Level 135246 but you are at a ~99.9315% āSuccess Rateā when doing Stuff.
For some things the absolute Level Matters (such as Strength for Carrying Capacity), for other things the Success Rate Matters (for most PvP Stats for example, since otherwise you can just level up your Attack Stats to murder everyone).
There will ofcourse also be Sub-Stats that are based on the Main Stats, such as how well you can wield a certain Type of Sword, though more on that later.
To be quite honest, I think this system with stat bases is quite confusing. I understand the need for splitting the physical and mental, but not the race, which I imagine is only a modifier to the physical in most cases.
Iād rather advice a much more common system of attributes (stats of physical nature: endurance, strength, intelligence, etc.) and skills (stats of mental nature, something the character has learned: stealth, heavy weapons, engineering, smithing, etc.).
The attributes would probably interact with the skills in some way, either governing them or making them easier to acquire, but not the other way around. Activities would be modified or decided by skill checks, stats like stamina and health influenced by attributes.
I think itās also important to make the connections between the stats, attributes and skills rather loose, to allow for a plethora of modifiers to them all and the connections themselves, making the system very flexible and fitting the original āracial baseā and all kinds of gear.
Most Players wont see where their Stats come from, they tend to only see the final Stat since that is the one the calculations are based on. The splitting into those 3 groups has reasons for how Stats are modified.
Also a lot of times the racial Bonus can be 0 and not affect anything. Most of the time only the Tallness and Buffness actually influences your Physical Stats, and those would be mostly Racial Type percentual modifiers.
If there is Potions that make you stronger they also tend to be percentual Bonuses, which do get multiplied ontop of the overall stats. At least for normal Potions, some Potions might increase one very specific Stat, like how Coffee would increase Mental Endurance for example.
I quite like it. Keeping stats abstract allows for the creation of new skills down the line without predetermined skill classes.
The issue I have with definite skill levels such as smithing, heavy weapons, stealth etc is twofold:
First it means that you are basically hardcoded to those skills and adding new ones down the line would clutter the skill tree or create confusing hierarchies. Secondly they lead to level grinding and getting good at something for the sake of leveling out a skill. Iām not saying thatās wrong per say, but I believe it would play more naturally to have your ability based on several factors rather than one big number.
I donāt get it, I donāt see the benefit in splitting each stat into three ones. It makes the system extremely unflexible, because adding a new stat would require three versions of that stat, all acting differently. I also donāt get the racial base, why would the origin of the stat change its effect? I think it would be better to just keep the normal stats and add new once that fill the function of the mental/physical/racial not provided by it, if required.
So physical/mental/racial health could be split into health, sanity, disease resistance, poison resistance. Strength into carry weight, punch force, jump height. If wanting to split the stats, donāt just slit them into arbitrary mental/physical/racial versions nobody understands the function of without looking them up on the games wiki, rather keep their name clearly tied to their functionality.
For normal Players you dont even need to know about the difference between those 3. Normal Players dont need to math out their Stats, they can look up the overall effect of where their Stats come from and what is affected by what, but in the end they only see āhey i have level 35 in Strengthā of which 7 levels are from mental, 20 levels are from physical and a 30% Bonus comes from being a certain slightly more buff Race, but in the end you only need to know the 35.
A Tutor could tell you how to use your Strength better, in the end you gain a Level of Strength but at a certain point your mental Strength Level reaches the Level of the Tutor and you cant learn anything from him anymore.
It would be WAY frustrating to find out you are naturally so buff that you couldnāt train with a Tutor because your overall level was too big already, I had that shit happen in Morrowind a lot, and my reasoning is āthe Tutor might know something you dont know already, even if you are much better than the Tutor overallā.
Same Issue with Racial Buffness, you could be a weakling compared to other people of your Race, but you still overpower all Humans you meet, why couldnāt you do some regular weight training to become more buff? Clearly you are strong because of your size and not because of muscle training, so muscle training ontop of your size should have a valid effect and not an arbitrary overall cap!
But you are right about people having to look shit up, I want to keep that as low as possible so I need to make a very good Stat UI.
But too many numbers and factors maybe a mess for normal players.(Thatās why I feel tired about some RPG games)
So can we design a Advanced Mode that suit for these hardcore players?
For normal players, they can just fold these complex factors by a button then just show them with final results and some major factors.
Besides, for learning, the players will forget things which they have learned if they didnāt use it for a long time?
I wouldnāt worry. I believe the aim is for something like this to happen, the numbers would be calculated in the background and the player wouldnāt necessarily have to worry about them.
I wouldnāt punish a player by removing skills to things they rarely use but perhaps a rusty mechanic where success percentage dips a little if you havenāt used the skill for a while and would require a few tries to ārememberā the method and restore said percentage.
Yeah the Numbers wouldnāt be visible until you hover over the Stat, normally you only see āIām Level 25 in this Statā, but not why youāre that Level.
And yeah no Stat degradation, though if you craft shit then the stuff you crafted recently will override the Stuff you crafted long ago, so you might need to look shit up in a Book (which you probably carry on you). XD
