Reworking Stat Requirements

[edge2054]

The stat gear shuffle is a pretty lame mechanic. It adds a lot of tedium, both in hanging on to gear you only plan to wear for two minutes at a time, and in actually going through and equipping everything so you can learn X talent or put on Y piece of gear.

So my proposal is to ditch it completely on gear and only check base stats for talents and upcoming uber talents. You either have the 'innate' ability requirements or you don't.

So on to gear...

Weapons take stats into account pretty heavily already. If you're beating things with a weapon you don't have the adequate multipliers to use properly you're going to do a lot less damage then someone who's been pumping the appropriate stats. So in my opinion, this issue is already solved.

For armor we could do something interesting with fatigue and/or movement speed with Strength and Con working to offset these penalties. In other words... a mage with 10 str and 10 con wearing a suit of vorutan plate mail may have a 50% movement speed penalty and suffer an additional 50% fatigue increase. A bulwark with 50 strength or a bulwark with 25 strength and 25 con may be able to offset those penalties completely.

I'm not sure on the exact mechanics. I woke up late and haven't had my coffee yet. But I think it's a solution that could work and would be willing to work out the raw numbers and put in some code time to implement these changes.

What are other people's thoughts?

[SageAcrin]

1-1 ratio of Fatigue reduction to Strength or Con, added weight fatigue modifiers equal to the current Strength reqs on equipment, only modifiable by base Str/Con, right?

Sounds reasonable to me. I can't think of a class in the game that can't float that if they really want to.

Any heavily durability oriented mage build can float Con, I think, and the major cases of multiple stat dependancy almost always build strength. I'm running the full cast over in my head, and the main problem I can think of is...erm, Shadowblades that want to go heavier armor? eh, I can find a way to pump Strength if I want to do that build, or Con...Temporal Wardens might have some problem too depending on build, as could Mindslayers(though personally I would never play a Mindslayer without pumping Con)...

But overall I think it works. And I kinda think the stat dependency for equipment is a bit of a waste of time, so.

For talents, it barely matters to me either way. The only example I can think of of a character that would try to swap to get stats for talents is, again, Shadowblade, due to the relatively low impact of Spellpower on their Magic-based skills...and even then I like Blur Sight personally, so I personally wouldn't.

Also, to be clear, I wouldn't object to just ditching reqs entirely-even the few issues caused here are more than would be caused by not having any requirements.

Having done some fairly outlandish builds(mail on everything under the sun, Alchemists wearing fullplate and shields, etc.), I can't say they felt particularly overpowered. And with the rallying cry of Multiple Attribute Dependency for many against some of the odder classes, maybe lowering the impact of stats in this way would be beneficial.

[Torokasi]

Strip stat requirements entirely for non-uber talents and for non-artifact gear (and have artifact gear and uber talents check base stats).

Most talents run off stats or derived stats anyway. If your levels in these stats aren't good, you aren't going to make great use of the skill anyway. In essence, the game already double-enforces stat requirements in a hard and a soft manner by encouraging high stats to make good use of skills (and if the tree/skill doesn't use stats actively, why does it have a stat requirement in the first place?). Removing the hard requirement removes eq-stat juggling, which reduces tedium. Making it base stat requirements creates some issues (Hi, Temporal Wardens/Brawlers/Shadowblades. I hope you like a far slower pace in getting to the combos you want/need!); while these could be offset/base stat requirements lowered to compensate, I'd prefer just seeing them gone and letting stats be used to power skills, not to unlock them.

Keeping level requirements I support, as it prevents some more powerful stuff from being accessed early (and would probably overpower Cornacs earlygame, amusingly, as they could grab some of the newly opened trees very early).

Keeping artifacts and uber/elite talents' stat requirements is primarily for the "epic" feeling - yes, you need to be that strong to lift Mjolnir/channel the power of that staff, heroling! - but keeping both is a very... intentional symmetry and gives a focus for endgame stats.

Also, dropping the stat requirements for non-uber skills makes going for that oddball uber that'd be really neat for the build buuuuut isn't a primary stat a lot more doable (who the hell would build Str on an Archmage or Mag on a Marauder otherwise? ) - and as I think that allowing for the build diversity to grab those uber skills is a very good idea, I can't say I see the downside of just dropping it for everything except those.

[wobbly]

I would be glad to see whole weapon-swap thing gone. I actually ignore the option of using it, but I could see the game ending up balanced around it being in there & having to start using it.

So my proposal is to ditch it completely on gear and only check base stats for talents and upcoming uber talents.

One thing that's confusing me is when I look at my stats, class bonuses seem to be added to base, race to current. Would not want to see the race bonuses left out.

As far as equipment goes I think you should be able to wear it using items bonuses but auto-unequiped if you took of the stat bonus items.

[edge2054]

Now that I've thought about it a bit. I think the easiest implementation of the armor thing is this...

Code: Select all

--- Computes movement speed
function _M:combatMovementSpeed(x, y)
	local mult = 1
	if game.level and game.level.data.zero_gravity then
		mult = 3
	end

	local movement_speed = self.movement_speed
	if x and y and game.level.map:checkAllEntities(x, y, "creepingDark") and self:knowTalent(self.T_DARK_VISION) then
		local t = self:getTalentFromId(self.T_DARK_VISION)
		movement_speed = movement_speed + t.getMovementSpeedChange(self, t)
	end
	local str = math.max(0, self:getStr() - 10)
	local con = math.max(0, self:getCon()-10)
	local total = math.max(0, (self:combatFatigue() - con - str)/100)
	mult = mult * (1 + total)
	return mult * (self.base_movement_speed or 1) / movement_speed
end

Assuming my code is right. We're using fatigue as a movement speed multiplier and offsetting that by 1 per point our Con or Strength is above 10.

*edit* and my code is wrong, I need some coffee...

*edit two* I think that's better.

[lukep]

I don't like that finding a high tier item can be worse (in the short term) than a low tier one, due to it being unusable. On the other hand, equipment choices should be better for classes that build towards them.

My idea:
- Weapons have their (effective) base power for damage limited to their stat modifier, and their hard stat requirements removed.
--For example, wearing a voratun longsword (power 45) while you have 30 strength would only give you the damage of (100% str * 30 = ) 30 base power, about Stralite equivalent.
--another example, the same character (with 70 DEX) weilding a voratun dagger of massacre (43 base power) would get (45% str * 30 + 45% dex * 70 = 45, which is over) 43 base power, as much as is possible with that weapon.

I don't really know what to do ablout armour. I don't want higher tier armours to be worse for low stat characters, but I don't see a way around it.

As an aside, I don't like that better armours and shields have higher fatigue, as I don't see why higher quality (not heavier) equipment would be harder to wear and move in.

[edge2054]

My idea:
- Weapons have their (effective) base power for damage limited to their stat modifier.
--For example, wearing a voratun longsword (power 45) while you have 30 strength would only give you the damage of (100% str * 30 = ) 30 base power, about Stralite equivalent.
--another example, the same character (with 70 DEX) weilding a voratun dagger of massacre (43 base power) would get (45% str * 30 + 45% dex * 70 = 45, which is over) 43 base power, as much as is possible with that weapon.

Stat modifiers already take care of this. I mean I understand the idea you have but I don't think we need to rework the whole system for this change.

Requiring base stats for learning talents (and upcoming uber talents) combined with some way to make stats matter on armor (the movement speed thing I proposed above) I think would take care of it and be super easy to implement.

[lukep]

Stat modifiers already take care of [weapon power increasing with the appropriate stat]. I mean I understand the idea you have but I don't think we need to rework the whole system for this change.

Kind of. The fact that physical power is added to stat modifier means that strength is much more effective at boosting melee damage, even to the point where it is a better investment than wil/cun for mindstars, and equal to magic (in the very early game) for staves.

In case it was unclear to anyone, the hard requirements would also be removed (edited to add).

Also, yeah, this would be a fairly large change (mechanically) for the desired effect.

[bricks]

I'm not sure about movement speed penalties, simply because it turns into the weird guessing game of whether an enemy will get one or two turns after you move, which can be life or death. But I agree that it makes sense. Here are a few other thoughts on how equipment could work:

Allow the player to equip any tier of armor, but double the fatigue penalty if they don't have the respective training.

Split Armor Training into two talents, one that gives you the ability to use the armor and reduce fatigue, and another that increases armor rating and armor hardiness.

Remove or tweak the artifact stat requirements so more classes can use them. The TW weapon set is a particularly common offender, and its early enough in the game that pumping the missing stat isn't really worth it.

I like Torokasi's idea of focusing on base stats for stat requirements, as opposed to equipment/buff stacking. That said, hybrid classes would need to be reevaluated to make sure that certain builds aren't completely crippled.

(1000 posts!)

[donkatsu]

Stat requirements as they are now are definitely a problem, and there are many viable solutions. Just keep in mind that ToME's learning curve is already steep, so you might want to refrain from adding any more obscure mechanics.